Remove "or later" from copying.txt

[gerald-hartig]

Link to issue number:

Revert #16830

Summary of the issue:

Inadvertently merged PR before licence clarification was fully addressed

Description of user facing changes

Revert "GPL-2 or later" to "GPL-2"

@coderabbitai summary

[seanbudd]

My concern with merging this as-is, in #16830 we declared a bunch of apache licenses as compatible in the license check, but if we revert "or later" these changes should probably be reverted too.

[seanbudd]

Other updates that may need to happen:

• the "license" section in pyproject.toml
• the copyright headers file (however I think we can declare new files as GPLv2 or later with no issue)

[ethindp]

Look, this PR and the older license PR should've never been merged to begin with. Revert the old PR and then re-open it. Right now this project is actively violating the GPL because the right way to do this is to ask (every) contributor, past and present, and to get their confirmation before re-licensing.

[gerald-hartig]

@ethindp We're currently speaking to our legal team and the FSF to get clarity on what is required and the best way to proceed. This PR is on the 2025.1 milestone which means that if this issue is not resolved by the time our next release comes out, the addition of the lifeboat clause will be reverted. The 2024.4 release also does not contain the lifeboat clause.

[ethindp]

@gerald-hartig Ah okay. I do believe I am correct on this matter, unless the FSF explains otherwise. I would recommend you just revert the mistaken PR and go from there.