On Sat, 3 Nov 2012 20:31:57 +0100 Michael Banck wrote: [...] > After thinking about this some more, I guess their fear might be that > people modify and redistribute their ELPA library as part of a bigger > GPL project. It's possible... > As the LGPL->GPL relicensing seems to be a one-way street, It is my understanding that the conversion is indeed one-way. > they might understandably think that they will not be able to > incorporate those GPL'd modifications into their version. I think that this is correct, but disabling the one-way convertibility to GPL destroys the compatibility with the GPL itself, thus making the ELPA library unacceptable for *any* project where *any* part or other library is GPL-licensed. That's a fairly large number of projects, I guess! > > Is this a valid concern and if so, is there some way around it? I think the only way around it is adopting the GNU LGPL without any additional clauses and relying on people's goodwill to contribute back modifications under the same licensing terms (even though it would be legally possible to redistribute GPL-licensed modifications, that could not be incorporated back under the LGPL). Another strategy could be to adopt the GNU (ordinary) GPL for the ELPA library. This would have the effect to forbid linking with non-free works (or even with free, but GPL-incompatible works), but any published modification would be guaranteed to be incorporable into the official ELPA library. Well, unless someone plays with the "or later" mechanism: I mean, a work released under the terms of the GNU GPL v2 or later can be modified and mixed with code available under the GNU GPL v3 or later; this modification cannot be incorporated back into the original work, unless you can live with the fact that the original work effectively becomes licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL v3 or later (thus losing GPLv2-compatibility). In order to avoid this, one would have to license under the GNU GPL v3 only (thus losing GPLv2-compatibility upfront) or otherwise under the GNU GPL v2 only (thus losing GPLv3-compatibility upfront)... -- http://www.inventati.org/frx/frx-gpg-key-transition-2010.txt New GnuPG key, see the transition document! ..................................................... Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82 3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE
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