COPYING file

Could you please change the COPYING file with gnu.org's updated GPL-2 license [1]. Because the current file cause rpmlint incorrect-fsf-address error [2], thank you.

1 : https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.txt

2 : https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_Rpmlint_issues#incorrect-fsf-address

changed the description

Comparing the 17 years old file with the new one, we have:

• some whitespace changes
• a new FSF address
• some extra commas - commas are always problematic, but these are next to the address, so they might be ok.
• all references to GNU Library General Public License have been replaced with GNU Lesser General Public License

This doesn't seem to be a licence change, but I don't speak Legalese.

> diff -b gpl-2.0.txt COPYING
4,5c4,5
<  Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
<  51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA
---
>  Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
>      59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA
18c18
< the GNU Lesser General Public License instead.)  You can apply it to
---
> the GNU Library General Public License instead.)  You can apply it to
306,308c306,309
<     You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
<     with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
<     51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.
---
>     You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
>     along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
>     Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA
> 
338c339
< library.  If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Lesser General
---
> library.  If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Library General

L.E. On the GNU/Website we have this notice:

Please note that the GNU Library General Public License has been superseded by the GNU Lesser General Public License. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/lgpl-2.0.html

Yeah, changes are tiny, I don't think it hurts updating, but this isn't limited to taskmanager.

Merge requests are welcome

cc @kevinbowen

Update might not be the correct wording so let's just say small changes Fedora has a strict policy about not to patch package license files for legal reasons and informing the upstream is recommended. I'll check all the git repos for Xfce project and send PRs, thank you.

Hey Ali. I appreciate you beginning to address this issue. If this is your new policy, it would be helpful if you can review a relatively recent(I think that I did this about a year ago) audit of our licenses and, perhaps, help us remediate this issue https://wiki.xfce.org/licenses/audit

Feel free to work with me in regards to fixing these issues. Thanks!

Sure

Just tell me that this is something that we can work towards and not a pants_on_fire_drill that needs to resolved immediately.

No need to rush and license audit page looks very good, thank you.

@aekoroglu Could you possibly provide me with some context on how this issue arose within the Fedora project? Was this a result of policy changes or something that changed in your tooling? Was this an issue that was on the back-burner that is just now being addressed? Do you have any mail threads to provide me some context that I can pass on to the other devs?

In any case, thanks for compiling the list for us. I will work on creating specific issues for the individual components and begin addressing this. It's been an outstanding issue, for me, for some time. Glad you brought it up. Thanks!

Well, this fsf-address issue reported [1] in 2010. Packagers tests individual packages with rpmlint [2] before submitting to a build system and those procedures are defined in here [3][4][5]. You can still add or update a package even if you have incorrect-fsf-address error. The only requirement [6] with respect to this error is informing the upstream about it. I hope this will help

1. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=637712
2. https://github.com/rpm-software-management/rpmlint
3. https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/package-maintainers/Installing_Packager_Tools/
4. https://pagure.io/FedoraReview
5. https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/package-maintainers/Package_Maintenance_Guide/#_run_some_checks_rpmlint_on_your_package
6. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_Rpmlint_issues#incorrect-fsf-address

Some other FSF address fix issues:

• https://gitlab.com/sane-project/backends/-/issues/320
• https://github.com/mariadb-corporation/mariadb-connector-c/commit/30614c71e83d639a70d4ed9850b8db06932481e9
• https://github.com/jeremyevans/aqualung/issues/3
• https://bugs.launchpad.net/pcb/+bug/1690529
• https://www.mercurial-scm.org/pipermail/mercurial/2011-June/038577.html

Xfce components with outdated licenses

garcon	LGPLv2 + GFDLv1.1
libxfce4ui	LGPLv2
libxfce4util	LGPLv2
thunar	GPLv2 + LGPLv2
thunar-volman	GPLv2
xfce4-appfinder	GPLv2
xfce4-dev-tools	GPLv2
xfce4-session	GPLv2
xfce4-settings	GPLv2
mousepad	GPLv2
orage	GPLv2
xfburn	GPLv2
xfce4-dict	GPLv2
xfce4-notifyd	GPLv2
xcfe4-screenshooter	GPLv2
xfce4-taskmanager	GPLv2
xfmpc	GPLv2
xfce4-battery-plugin	GPLv2
xfce4-genmon-plugin	GPLv2
xfce4-indicator-plugin	GPLv2 + LGPLv2
xfce4-mailwatch-plugin	GPLv2
xfce4-mount-plugin	GPLv2
xfce4-netload-plugin	GPLv2
xfce4-notes-plugin	GPLv2
xfce4-sensors-plugin	GPLv2
xfce4-time-plugin	GPLv2
xfce4-verve-plugin	GPLv2
thunar-archive-plugin	GPLv2
thunar-media-tags-plugin	GPLv2
thunar-vcs-plugin	GPLv2

An additional question @aekoroglu @leborg : are your tests only checking on the contents of the COPYING file? Or are you also looking at the headers in individual files within the component to get your tests passed?

Rpmlint is only checking for the license file [1] but I saw your issue (panel-plugins/xfce4-xkb-plugin#41 (closed)) and it's better to check for the headers as well.

1 : https://github.com/rpm-software-management/rpmlint/blob/main/rpmlint/checks/FilesCheck.py#L210

fsf_license_regex = re.compile(br'(GNU((\s+(Library|Lesser|Affero))?(\s+General)?\s+Public|\s+Free\s+Documentation)\s+Licen[cs]e|(GP|FD)L)', re.IGNORECASE)

fsf_wrong_address_regex = re.compile(br'(675\s+Mass\s+Ave|59\s+Temple\s+Place|Franklin\s+Steet|02139|02111-1307)', re.IGNORECASE)

One issue at a time please.

Could you please answer these questions that I posted upthread:

@aekoroglu Could you possibly provide me with some context on how this issue arose within the Fedora project? Was this a result of policy changes or something that changed in your tooling? Was this an issue that was on the back-burner that is just now being addressed? Do you have any mail threads to provide me some context that I can pass on to the other devs?

Additionally, what does this supposed compliance to your tests mean for the Xfce project and its inclusion in the Fedora project?

Well there is no compliance issue actually, it's just outdated FSF address so you can live with it

Thanks for the links! Good info. That's some good bedtime reading. ;)

This is what I have dug up, so far, in terms of replacement licenses:

• LGPLv2 Old license:

  • https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/lgpl-2.0.html
  • GNU LIBRARY GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 2, June 1991

• GPLv2 Old license:

  • https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html
  • GNU LIBRARY GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 2, June 1991

---

• LGPLv2 New license -

  • https://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-3.0.html
  • GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 3, 29 June 2007

• GPLv2 New license -

  • https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.txt
  • GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 2, June 1991 (with updated address)

mentioned in merge request !31 (closed)

mentioned in merge request !32 (merged)

mentioned in issue orage#10 (closed)

mentioned in issue mousepad#160 (closed)

mentioned in issue xfburn#45 (closed)

mentioned in issue xfce4-dict#7 (closed)

mentioned in issue xfce4-notifyd#61 (closed)

mentioned in issue xfce4-screenshooter#70 (closed)

mentioned in merge request xfmpc!7 (merged)