Hi everyone. Audacity's source code and binaries are currently released under a particular open source software license called the GNU General Public License, version 2 (GPLv2). However, we intend to switch to releasing the binaries under version 3 of the GPL (GPLv3) to enable support for new technologies that require it, such as the VST3 audio plugin interface. Most of Audacity's source code will remain GPLv2, but with the "or any later version" statement added in places where it is currently missing to allow distribution under GPLv3. This change will apply to future Audacity releases: past releases will remain GPLv2.
GPLv2 and GPLv3 are very similar licenses, yet they are technically incompatible with each other. This means that GPLv2 code cannot be combined with GPLv3 code unless all copyright holders agree to it; for example, by including a statement that says code is available under "GPLv2 or any later version". Fortunately, Audacity has had such a statement in README.txt right from the beginning, so it applies to all contributed code by default. However, there are a small number of files in the repository that explicitly mention GPLv2 in the copyright header without saying "or any later version". To be on the safe side, we have reached out to the contributors of those files to seek their permission to add the "or any later version" text. Happily, everyone we contacted has agreed to this, but there were a handful of people who we were unable to contact so please get in touch if you are one of them.
Once we have permission from all contributors of active code, we will update the license text on the website and in Audacity's About dialog to say that the binaries are released under GPLv3. This will be necessary when Audacity is compiled with support for VST3 and other libraries that require GPLv3. However, we know that there may be members of the open source community using Audacity's code in their GPLv2 projects, and we would like to continue providing this option for the foreseeable future. Therefore, while the binaries will become GPLv3, we will continue to release the majority of Audacity's source code under "GPLv2 or later", with GPLv3 explicitly used only in places where it is unavoidable.
If there are any questions about this, we're ready to answer in the comments.
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