Update GPL license text.

I noticed that this also affects theme tar.gz files as well.

main drupal LICENSE.txt:
51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA

themes LICENSE.txt:
59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA

I'm going to raise the priority

Moving to drupal.org infrastructure queue.

Link above is to GPL3. Drupal is GPL2
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html

Drupal is GPL, not specifically GPL 2.0, but as far as I can tell, Drupal 6 will still be distributed with a copy of the 2.0 license

No, Drupal is GPL 2.0. The LICENSE.txt file distributed with Drupal simply includes the GPL 2.0. That means modules and changes are required to be re-licensable under the GPL 2.0 (if distributed), but that does not mean consent has been given to have the work licensed under newer GPL versions.

@David Strauss - check with Crell - I think my interpretation above is also what the basis he is working from.

@pwolanin:
There are two ways a project can have GPL flexibility:
(1) The code is contributed under the GPL with an addendum that the work may be relicensed under "the GPL version 2 or higher as published by the Free Software Foundation." I'm not aware of Drupal doing this.
(2) Permission of all copyright holders is obtained. "All copyright holders" can be only one entity if all contributors give up their ownership to a defined organization, like the Free Software Foundation. I'm not aware of Drupal doing this.

You cannot simply slap the GPL 3 on GPL 2 code. You can slap the corresponding version of the GPL on LGPL code.

@David - see the GPL:

"If the Program does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation."

Drupal's LICENSE.txt reads:

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

So it seems Drupal is GPL 2.0 or later.

@mfb: The text you're quoting is under the instructions beneath the license (which ends with "END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS") under a section titled "How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs." This is not a statement from the Drupal project.

@pwolanin: This is more plausible, especially given chx's research.

chx has also informed me that the Association is going to issue a paper written by an actual lawyer on this topic, so I'll hold off on further discussion until I can see that.

Well I am hoping that I can distribute Drupal under GPL 3 as I already have distributed it with some AGPL 3 modules. I guess the lawyers know where to find me if I'm in violation :/

@Uwe - if that's the issue, then this shoudl be an issue against core.

Let this issue live or die in core. :-)

As far as I can tell, isn't this just spacing changes? I don't see any substantive changes at all. There's an extra comma in one line, and the address has one fewer space between the state and zip (and the bottom occurrence of it is formatted a bit differently). This version does (on visual inspection) seem to reflect the current version at the url in #13.

Drupal Core itself only has whitespace/trivial differences

[sroberts@vmhost tmp]$ date
Wed Dec  3 10:30:04 EST 2008
[sroberts@vmhost tmp]$ wget -q http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/drupal-6.6.tar.gz
[sroberts@vmhost tmp]$ tar xfz drupal-6.6.tar.gz
[sroberts@vmhost tmp]$ wget -q http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.txt
[sroberts@vmhost tmp]$ diff -bu gpl-2.0.txt drupal-6.6/LICENSE.txt
--- gpl-2.0.txt 2007-06-29 06:04:38.000000000 +1000
+++ drupal-6.6/LICENSE.txt      2006-07-09 21:33:06.000000000 +1000
@@ -1,7 +1,9 @@
+// $Id: LICENSE.txt,v 1.5 2006/07/09 11:33:06 dries Exp $
+
                    GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
                       Version 2, June 1991

- Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
+ Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
  51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA
  Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
  of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
@@ -303,9 +305,10 @@
     MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
     GNU General Public License for more details.

-    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., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301  USA
+

 Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail.

[sroberts@vmhost tmp]$

but the copy provided with contrib (themes+modules) is more different. The address is different, the line wrapping is different, and then section "How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs" is removed:

[sroberts@vmhost tmp]$ wget -q http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/cck-6.x-2.1.tar.gz
[sroberts@vmhost tmp]$ tar xfz cck-6.x-2.1.tar.gz
[sroberts@vmhost tmp]$ wget -q http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/zen-6.x-1.0-beta3.tar.gz
[sroberts@vmhost tmp]$ tar xfz zen-6.x-1.0-beta3.tar.gz
[sroberts@vmhost tmp]$ ls -l cck/LICENSE.txt zen/LICENSE.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 sroberts sroberts 14940 Apr 23  2006 cck/LICENSE.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 sroberts sroberts 14940 Apr 23  2006 zen/LICENSE.txt
[sroberts@vmhost tmp]$ diff -u cck/LICENSE.txt zen/LICENSE.txt
[sroberts@vmhost tmp]$ diff -u drupal-6.6/LICENSE.txt cck/LICENSE.txt > LICENSE.txt.diff
[sroberts@vmhost tmp]$

Why not just make these very small changes to core's LICENSE.txt, and then reset this issue to use core's patched LICENSE.txt as the automatic license file in the packaging system.

Ok, committed #13 to HEAD.

Looks like it should go into 6.x and 5.x as well.

I do not think removing the CVS $id part from the file was right. Please fix. Not committed.

Gabor: The patch in #13 (which webchick committed) doesn't remove that line.

Ok, great, thanks, #13 committed to Drupal 6.

Oh, #13 should go into 5.x as well.

Committed to 5.x.