> At the very least, the file headers are a clear representation as to > what license the file is under, and IMO a reasonable person would expect > to be able to rely on such a representation.
Well, all I can say to this is that (with my AdaCore hat on) I had a discussion with somebody in the purchasing department of a major US defense contractor last week who seemed like a quite reasonable person to me and quite rightly was *not* willing to rely on any such "representation" in the file. I think I was, however, able to point her to something that she *could* rely on. These sorts of discussions happen quite often and are one of the main barriers towards commercial acceptance of GPL software. > And, regardless of whether one accepts that argument, if I were to pull > a file with a GPLv2 header out of a "GPLv3-licensed" svn and give an > exact copy of it to my friend, I would have to remember to tell her that > the file isn't licensed under what it says it's licensed under. That's > also not good. Yes, but it's precisely because you might have done that that people are not willing to just rely on statements in files. > Thus, I think it's reasonably critical that _all_ file headers be > updated, quickly, to match the state of intended license for the files > that include them. I don't think you'll get any disagreement on that statement, but that doesn't mean that such an update has any *legal* significance.
