Re: GPLv2-only considered harmful [was Re: GnuTLS in Debian]
On Tue, Dec 31, 2013 at 08:59:53AM -0600, Matt Zagrabelny wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 31, 2013 at 8:54 AM, Clint Adams <clint@debian.org> wrote:
> > On Sun, Dec 29, 2013 at 03:50:06AM +0100, David Weinehall wrote:
> >> Apart from the termination clause, the GPLv2 is far more concise,
> >> I don't see tivoization as a problem (it's the software I want to
> >> protect, not anyone's combination of it with hardware), nor do I care
> >> about compatibility with Apache 2.0 -- I do, however, care about
> >> compatibility with GPL v2, which GPL v3 isn't.
> >
> > So your doomsday scenario is that if you license something
> > GPLv2+, someone might fork and modify it to be GPLv3+,
>
> I was under the impression that forks couldn't change licenses. Is the
> scenario which Clint describes (legally) possible?
The boilerplate says: "you can redistribute it and/or modify it
[...] either version X of the License, or (at your option) any
later version."
As I understand it, assuming X is 2, this means I can redistribute
this under 2, 2+, 3, 3+ without needing any persmissions from the
copyright holder because they already said I can redistribute and
modify it under "2 or later". But people of course aren't going
to be interested in my version just because I change the license,
but they might if I make some changes under this new license.
Please note that that doesn't mean that if I get something from
someone and it says "2 or later" that I can say I received it
under 3. I received the 2 version, but I can change it to 3 if
I wanted to.
Kurt
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