Incompatible licenses

[pgrt]

Description of bug

Hello,

I am the Debian developer currently working on the packaging of SPAdes 4.0.0. It turns out the LICENSE file places the software under GPL-2, but some files are under GPL-3+, for instance src/common/io/graph/gfa.cpp.

As is, the software licenses are incompatible. One solution would be to license SPAdes under GPL-2+ (version 2 or later).

Also some files are under Apache-2.0, which is incompatible with GPL-2.

For further reference on the matter:
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-compatibility.html

Happy to help if I can,

Thanks for providing SPAdes!

Pierre

spades.log

No log

params.txt

No params

SPAdes version

SPAdes 4.0.0

Operating System

Debian

Python Version

No response

Method of SPAdes installation

source

No errors reported in spades.log

• Yes

[asl]

Unfortunately, we cannot change the license of SPAdes as SPAdes team does not hold copyright on the code. We are not lawyers as well, so we cannot speak about GPLv2 vs Apache 2.0 compatibilities. I know that different IP lawyers and different jurisdictions have different opinions on this matter as well (and the only reason I used to propose one of LLVM exceptions to Apache 2.0 license is to avoid these debates).

As for GPLv3+ for some files, we will check what could be done here.