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Comment by mytherin | Hacker News Reader

Those GPL files are part of a vendored dependency (TCC) [1] which has been licensed under LGPL. IANAL but GPL does state that you can relicense under any other later version of the license, and LGPL states that it counts as GPL 2.1.

Either way, it is hard to blame the author of Cheat Engine for this. If there is any violation it comes from a vendored dependency. Again, IANAL, but if someone presents you code and claims it is licensed under X, but then you find out they don't have the rights to license that code under X, it is hard to find you at fault.

Edit: The GPL file in question is authored by the same author of libtcc (Fabrice Bellard) who has released libtcc in its entirety under LGPL. No violation has occurred anywhere in the stack, the header is simply incorrect.

[1] https://bellard.org/tcc/

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> IANAL but GPL does state that you can relicense under any other later version of the license

No. Both the GPL and the LGPL encourage you to add the “or any later version” clause that allows the FSF to retroactively add other licensing options to your code, but they do not include that clause themselves. The standard example is that the SMB protocol implementations in the Linux kernel (GPL 2.0 only) and the Samba project (GPL 3.0 or later) cannot share code in either direction.

> LGPL states that it counts as GPL 2.1

Also no. The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) 2.1 (says that it) counts as the successor of the GNU Library General Public License (LGPL) 2.0, not of the ordinary GNU General Public License (GPL) 2.0. GPL 2+ code cannot be treated as LGPL 2.1, and from the FSF’s perspective allowing that would not make sense, as GPL 2 enforces strictly more copyleft than LGPL 2.1.

Why the confusing renaming? As far as I can see, Stallman wanted library authors to switch from LGPL to GPL, so that library users are forced into the GPL as well. The chosen solution was to play language games to redefine the “L” in “LGPL” to mean “lesser” instead of “library”. There is an official article that explicitly points out this piece of manipulation[1], but I still cannot suppress the vague feeling of revulsion at being manipulated.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html

I'm reading the same things and not feeling manipulated at all. The steps are clearly being documented and the reasoning seems sound to me. To incentivize library authors to use GPL don't put the word Library in the name of LGPL. It even distinguishes which one is lesser tainting.

"IANAL but GPL does state that you can relicense under any other later version of the license"

No. GPL encourages people to say "GPLv2 or later" or "GPLv3 or later", but being under one version of the GPL does not automatically afford "or later" unless the copyright holder says so.

Even if it says "or later", this doesn't allow you to switch from GPL to LGPL!

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