[Bug 960263] Re: Licence issue

[Marcus Tomlinson]

This release of Ubuntu is no longer receiving maintenance updates. If
this is still an issue on a maintained version of Ubuntu please let us
know.

** Changed in: grub2 (Ubuntu)
       Status: New => Incomplete

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/960263

Title:
  Licence issue

Status in grub2 package in Ubuntu:
  Incomplete

Bug description:
  From grub2 1.99 source in grub2-1.99/grub-core/kern/dl.c

  /* Me, Vladimir Serbinenko, hereby I add this module check as per new
  GNU module policy. Note that this license check is informative only.
  Modules have to be licensed under GPLv3 or GPLv3+ (optionally
  multi-licensed under other licences as well) independently of the
  presence of this check and solely by linking (module loading in GRUB
  constitutes linking) and GRUB core being licensed under GPLv3+.
  Be sure to understand your license obligations.
  */

  This indicates that *all* modules must be GPLv3 or GPLv3+

  However, the code actually checks for GPLv3, GPLv3+ and GPLv2+ (this
  might be a separate bug report? - getting the comment consistent with
  the code for grub_dl_check_license)

  Case in point: LVM uses GPLv2 (and LGPLv2.1 for libraries)
  see:
  http://sources.redhat.com/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/LVM2/COPYING?rev=1.1&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup&cvsroot=lvm2

  Seems like the conclusion that 'module loading in GRUB constitutes
  linking' is an issue, whether that conclusion will hold water or not
  is another matter.

  The only 'out' might be that if it is a GPL license, the clause 9
  referring to "any later version" may apply.

  Anyone got a definitive answer to clarify this?

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