<div dir="ltr">I agree with Richard here. The -only and -or-later variants are all deployment options for the GPL licenses and do not reflect the licenses that OSI has actually approved, which embrace both variants.<div><br></div><div>Simon</div><div>(in a personal capacity)</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, Mar 10, 2026 at 9:00\u202fPM Richard Fontana via License-discuss <<a href="mailto:license-discuss@lists.opensource.org">license-discuss@lists.opensource.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">I agree with the comment. SPDX's replacement of GPL-2.0/GPL-2.0+ with<br>
"GPL-2.0-only"/"GPL-2.0-or-later" (etc.) (at the instigation of the<br>
FSF) has been pretty much a complete debacle IMO, but "GPL-2.0"<br>
continues to be a valid SPDX identifier and I think it is usefully<br>
used for things like this where the license is one level of<br>
abstraction removed from its actual application to some sort of<br>
licensable material.<br>
<br>
Richard<br>
<br>
On Tue, Mar 10, 2026 at 11:19\u202fAM Nick Vidal <<a href="mailto:nick.vidal@opensource.org" target="_blank">nick.vidal@opensource.org</a>> wrote:<br>
><br>
> Cross posting comment from ferdnyc at <a href="https://github.com/spdx/license-list-XML/issues/2959#issuecomment-4018341555" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://github.com/spdx/license-list-XML/issues/2959#issuecomment-4018341555</a><br>
><br>
> I wanted to bring up the GPL specifically: I notice that OSI is listing all of the GPL versions as "GPL-X.Y-only" (and in fact, URLs like <a href="https://opensource.org/license/GPL-3.0-or-later" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://opensource.org/license/GPL-3.0-or-later</a> result in a 404 error), but the license text displayed at <a href="https://opensource.org/license/GPL-3.0-only" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://opensource.org/license/GPL-3.0-only</a> has a "How to Apply These Terms..." section that includes the "either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version." text, making it appear to be GPL-3.0-or-later.<br>
><br>
> (In truth, AIUI the FSF doesn't differentiate between GPL-3.0-only and GPL-3.0-or-later themselves, the difference is in how you choose to apply the license to your work. But in light of that, calling the license "GPL-3.0-only" doesn't appear to be correct... it's either just "GPL-3.0", or it's "GPL-3.0-or-later" (as it allows for the "any later version" stipulation, or it's BOTH.)<br>
><br>
> On Tue, Mar 10, 2026 at 9:16\u202fAM Nick Vidal <<a href="mailto:nick.vidal@opensource.org" target="_blank">nick.vidal@opensource.org</a>> wrote:<br>
>><br>
>> Hi everyone,<br>
>><br>
>> The OSI is looking for feedback from the community about an important change to the OSI-Approved licenses listed on our website.<br>
>><br>
>> We've standardized OSI license URLs using SPDX identifiers, while carefully preserving compatibility with the many links that already exist across the web and tools.<br>
>><br>
>> The full set of OSI-approved licenses continues to be available at:<br>
>><br>
>> <a href="https://opensource.org/licenses" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://opensource.org/licenses</a><br>
>><br>
>> More details about the update is available here:<br>
>><br>
>> <a href="https://opensource.org/blog/osi-adopts-spdx-ids-for-license-urls" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://opensource.org/blog/osi-adopts-spdx-ids-for-license-urls</a><br>
>><br>
>> If you spot any broken links or odd behaviour, please let us know.<br>
>><br>
>> Feel free to reach out to us by replying to this mailing list or by commenting here:<br>
>><br>
>> <a href="https://github.com/spdx/license-list-XML/issues/2959" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://github.com/spdx/license-list-XML/issues/2959</a><br>
>><br>
>> Thanks,<br>
>> Nick<br>
><br>
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