[Savannah-help-public] Re: [gnu.org #419598] Numdiff project: from GPLv2 to GPLv3

[ivano . primi]

Hi Karl,

Thank you very much for your answer.

> As long as all the pieces you are using were released under GPLv2 *or
> later* (= GPLv2+ for short), you can do so, since the "or later" gives
> permission.
>
> And for the pieces you are using from other GNU packages, they should all
> be under GPLv2+.  That doesn't mean you have to (or should) actually
> change the "2"s to "3"s in the files, incidentally, since that would
> make future updates much more complicated.

It is exactly my case. Then it is enough to replace the text
of the GPL in the file LICENSE with the new GPLv3. I will also
accordingly update the message shown by the -v option.
In the files copyrighted by me, I will replace version 2 or later
by version 3 or later.

> Would you like to make it an official GNU package?
> If so, please see http://gnu.org/help/evaluation.html.

Well, I thought about it and I would like to do it.
I am only scared, since this would require a lot of work,
that someone from China, India or Arabia could come up and ask
to modify Numdiff to handle also text files with Chinese,
Indian or Arabic characters. Now, if it is true that the
original GNU diff just works with bytes and then makes
no distinction between 1-, 2- or 4-bytes characters,
on the other hand the numeric filter of numdiff is
bound to the assumption 1 character = 1 byte (which means
Ascii or ISO-8859-* text files).

And I am not so willing to do the effort to modify the program
so that it can handle also UTF text files.
I would be of course very glad if someone else would do it :),
but I do not know if the GNU people are expecting that I have
personally to do all the possible improvements that could be
requested by the users in the future.
Best,
                                  Ivano