relicensing dual-licensed works to single license.
On Fri, 29 Aug 2003, paul cannon wrote:
> On Thu, 28 Aug, 2003 at 06:43:48PM -0500, Rick Moen wrote:
> > "...or (at your [the recipient's] option) any later version." The fact
> > that "your" refers to the _recipient_ means that Scott's worst-case
> > scenario of FSF issuing a screwball GPLv3 is not a serious concern
> > _even_ for work whose licence grants include the quoted phrase.
s/_even_/_only_/. There's no way I'd ever recommend anyone allow an
outside group to add or remove license restrictions, even one as
well-respected as the FSF.
> How about this scenario:
> 1- A hostile group gets control of the FSF (treachery, trickery,
> bribery, lawsuits, ...?)
>
> 2- They release a new version of the GPLv4, which states that "this
> software should be treated as released into the public domain"
>
> 3- All copyleft protection of items licensed with the "(at your option)
> any later version" phrase disappears.
Hey, this would at least still be free software. GPLv3 may well include
limitations that render it completely non-free.
> Could this even happen?
It's very likely, IMO, though for smaller erosions of freedom.
Here's a thought: Dual-licensed works can generally be forked to be under
either license. Doesn't this mean that the maintainer (or any distributor)
of a "GPLv2 or any later version" work could unilaterally re-release it
under pure GPLv2 without consulting any contributors? I'd expect so, as
the right to do so for GPLv3 was the driving reason to dual-license it in
the first place.
--
Mark Rafn dagon@dagon.net <http://www.dagon.net/>
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