On Fri, Dec 14, 2007 at 10:21:41PM +0100, Basile STARYNKEVITCH wrote: > Bas Wijnen wrote: >> >> RMS does this, in his attempts to move people to use the newest version >> of the GPL. He has a point, but if Debian would fully agree with it, I >> suppose we would relicense all GPL works as GPL version 3 or later when >> possible. > > I am not a lawyer (and you'll need a lawyer knowing the laws in many > countries) I'm no lawyer either. > but I am not sure that Debian or "you" (who ever that mean) That means the person or entity who has legally acquired the software somehow, under the terms of GPL-2+, and is distributing it to others. This distribution is permitted only under the terms of the license(s). > can change the licence from GPLv2 to GPLv3 without the explicit > consent of the copyright owner No, changing from GPL-2 to GPL-3 is not allowed for anyone except the copyright holder. This is because the GPL-3 choice was not offered to the distributor. However, if the software was licensed using GPL-2+, then GPL-3 was indeed a choice, as were all (currently hypothetical) later versions. In that case that person can indeed do that. Let's say I have an old copy of Emacs, for which the FSF is the copyright holder. I received it with a GPL-2+ license. That means I personally may choose to accept GPL-2 or GPL-3 (and when more versions are released, later versions as well). Assume that I dislike GPL-2, and choose to accept only GPL-3, and theoretically also later versions. Then I can use this GPL-3 to be allowed to distribute the software to you. Since I didn't accept GPL-2, I am not offering you that choice, either. The program is really multiply-licensed. Any user may choose to accept any or several of the licenses. Each license on its own permits distribution, and so you can distribute it under that license only, if you want. "Or later" is really just a series of licenses, which you can also choose to accept and use for distribution (this is allowed, because they will be "similar in spirit" to the other versions). > I understand that the GPLv2 or later is applicable to the user, who > can use the software under GPLv3 (for example). Yes. But this is not some magical "end-user". Anyone who uses or distributes the software may choose to accept or decline the offered licenses. When distributing, the distributor may choose to use only part of the licenses that were offered to them for distribution. Adding new acceptable licenses can only be done by the copyright holder (for example, going from GPL-2 to GPL-2+). Removing them can be done by anyone who distributes the software. But only for the people they distribute to, of course. If users can get the same software somewhere else under a different license, then that license is also a valid option for them. > In short, I am not at all sure that Debian could legally change all > GPLv2+ licensed software to GPLv3. Perhaps you need to be the > copyright owner to do that. We can. But I don't think we want to. Again, IANAL, TINLA. Thanks, Bas -- I encourage people to send encrypted e-mail (see http://www.gnupg.org). If you have problems reading my e-mail, use a better reader. Please send the central message of e-mails as plain text in the message body, not as HTML and definitely not as MS Word. Please do not use the MS Word format for attachments either. For more information, see http://pcbcn10.phys.rug.nl/e-mail.html
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