Bug#1135671: licenserecon: incorrectly guesses GPL-2 despite SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-or-later

[Martin-Éric Racine]

On Mon, 04 May 2026 09:46:43 +0300 =?utf-8?q?Martin-=C3=89ric_Racine?=
<martin-eric.racine at iki.fi> wrote:
> Package: licenserecon
> Version: 15.0
> Severity: normal
> X-Debbugs-Cc: martin-eric.racine at iki.fi
>
> When run against the Forky version of upgrade-system, licenserecon incorrectly finds a license mismatch on only one of 4 files with the exact same SPDX-License-Identifier. Additionally, licensecheck declares GPL-2 on all 4, instead of the expected GPL-2+.
>
> $ licenserecon .
> Ignoring unknown option .
> fi: Versions: licenserecon '15.0'  licensecheck '3.3.9-1'
>
> Parsing Source Tree  ....
> Reading d/copyright  ....
> Running licensecheck ....
>
> d/copyright      | licensecheck
>
> GPL-2+           | GPL-2             upgrade-system.conf.5
>
> $ licensecheck .
> ./upgrade-system: GNU General Public License, Version 2
> ./upgrade-system.8: GNU General Public License, Version 2
> ./upgrade-system.conf: GNU General Public License, Version 2
> ./upgrade-system.conf.5: GNU General Public License, Version 2
>
> $ grep GPL *
> grep: debian: Is a directory
> upgrade-system:# SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-or-later
> upgrade-system.8:SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-or-later
> upgrade-system.conf:# SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-or-later
> upgrade-system.conf.5:SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-or-later
>
> Feel free to reassign or clone to licensecheck as needed.
>
> Martin-Éric

This was cloned from licenserecon since the bug is two-fold. See above
for the explanation.

Cheers!
Martin-Éric