License clarification

[Matthias Klumpp]

Hi David!

Am Sa., 10. Feb. 2024 um 09:51 Uhr schrieb David Boeger <dmboeger at gmail.com>:
>
> Hello,
>
> Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask, but the IRC was fairly silent when I logged in. I am trying to determine the license of packagekit-glib2. I cloned PackageKit from GitHub and see that COPYING and most other files under packagekit-glib2 indicat LGPLv2, but there are a few (including packagekit.h) which suggest GPLv2:
>
> ```
> [root at daring-gibbon packagekit-glib2]# pwd
> /root/PackageKit/lib/packagekit-glib2
> [root at daring-gibbon packagekit-glib2]# grep "Licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License" *.h | wc -l
> 39
> [root at daring-gibbon packagekit-glib2]# grep "Licensed under the GNU General Public License" *.h | wc -l
> 5
> ```
>
> It looks like the intention all the way back in 2010 was to put it under the LGPL, but it's not clear to me that it is currently. Is there any definitive way to determine the license?

No. The packagekit daemon (the thing that actually performs work in
the background) is GPL-2.0 licensed, while anything you link to from a
client, like libpackagekit-glib2, is LGPL-2.0 licensed.
Some backends (loaded as modules) also have their own licenses.

If you use PK from one of your apps, you only ever directly interact
with the LGPL'ed parts from your code, with the daemon processing
things in the background.

I hope that clears things up!
Best,
    Matthias

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