{"id":"GPL-2.0-only","title":"GNU General Public License, Version 2","reviewed_on":"2026-09-15","reviewer":"Giray Havur","text_source":"https://raw.githubusercontent.com/spdx/license-list-data/main/text/GPL-2.0-only.txt","text_retrieved":true,"verdict":"corrected","summary":"The record models GPL version 2 as a copyleft software license: all six core permissions, a license-wide share-alike duty, source-code, attribution and notice duties on distribute, modify and derive, and a prohibition on changing the license. That matches the legal text. The SPDX identifier was missing and the right to charge for distribution was not modelled; both were added.","findings":[{"rubric":1,"severity":"minor","field":"spdx:licenseId","description":"The record carried no SPDX identifier although its own id is the SPDX list id. Added the non deprecated id GPL-2.0-only.","action":"applied","change":"spdx:licenseId \"GPL-2.0-only\" ;\n"},{"rubric":3,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:permission","description":"Section 1 states: \"You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.\" The record did not permit dalicc:chargeDistributionFee, so a compatibility check would treat paid redistribution as unlicensed. Added.","action":"applied","change":"odrl:permission [ a odrl:Permission ;\n        odrl:action dalicc:chargeDistributionFee ] ;\n"},{"rubric":5,"severity":"info","field":"odrl:duty","description":"The license-wide cc:ShareAlike duty and the cc:SourceCode duties on distribute, modify and derive are supported by sections 2(b) and 3 and are modelled identically in GPL-3.0-only, LGPL-3.0-only and AGPL-3.0.","action":"none"},{"rubric":4,"severity":"minor","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"dalicc:promote is prohibited although GPL version 2 has no trademark or endorsement clause. This is the library-wide default (332 of 343 records) and was left untouched, but it is not text-supported here.","action":"superseded","superseded_by":2,"change":"# remove\nodrl:prohibition [ a odrl:Prohibition ;\n        odrl:action dalicc:promote ] ;\n"},{"rubric":8,"severity":"gap","field":"vocabulary","description":"Section 7 (the \"liberty or death\" clause) and section 4 (automatic termination on breach) cannot be expressed. Proposed terms: dalicc:terminationOnBreach, dalicc:patentFreedomCondition.","action":"none"},{"rubric":10,"severity":"info","field":"family","description":"GPL-2.0-only, GPL-3.0-only and LGPL-3.0-only are the \"-only\" halves of SPDX pairs. Whether the library should also carry the \"-or-later\" variants is one decision for the whole family, recorded once in the review group report.","action":"none"},{"rubric":10,"severity":"major","field":"record","description":"Standard-license addition of 2026-09-15, decision 9: the record was corrected against its new siblings and versioned. The review's finding on family consistency: both clause literals began and ended with a space, and the record did not carry section 1 of the text, 'You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee', which the two new LGPL 2.x records carry as dalicc:WarrantyOrLiabilityAcceptance.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":4,"severity":"minor","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"dalicc:promote was prohibited and no sentence of this text supports it. The statement was the library's reading of a legal default, that a copyright licence which says nothing about endorsement grants no right to it, and it sat in 519 of 581 records as a house convention. That reading is now an adopted dalicc:DefaultRule of the core dependency graph, which supplies it to every licence that is silent about the action, so a compatibility check reaches the same answer and the record states only what the text states. Removed on 2026-09-23; see section 13 of docs/LICENSE_REVIEW.md.","action":"applied","change":"# removed\nodrl:prohibition [ a odrl:Prohibition ;\n        odrl:action dalicc:promote ] ;\n"}],"family":"GNU copyleft family (GPL, LGPL, AGPL, FDL)","port_of":null,"variant_kind":"version","notes":"Version variant inside the GNU family. No jurisdiction port."}