Date: Tue, 16 May 2000 13:47:27 -0700 From: "David Schwartz" <davids@webmaster.com> To: "Rahul Siddharthan" <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> Cc: "Anatoly Vorobey" <mellon@pobox.com>, <chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: RE: Why are people against GNU? WAS Re: 5.0 already? Message-ID: <000701bfbf77$f2159f60$021d85d1@youwant.to> In-Reply-To: <20000517005633.B22400@physics.iisc.ernet.in>
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> For the record, this is what RMS says. He doesn't exactly answer > my question (I had made it clear that I'm not asking whether it > is desirable, only whether it's allowed), but from the tone of his > answer I would imagine that it is not prohibited to do this, > merely a "bad idea". First of all, what RMS says (other than him specifically granting permission for people to do things) is irrelevant. His opinion of the GPL holds no more legal force than anybody else's opinion. The situation is analogous the Linus' note at the beginning of the COPYING file include with Linux. It's an opinion and doesn't grant or revoke any permissions, at least not as far as I can tell. > From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> > To: rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in > Subject: Re: GPL question > > Is it ok to license one's software under "version 2 of the GPL, and > only that version"? > > It is a bad idea, because when we have GPL version 3 and release other > programs under version 3, your program will be stuck at GPL version 2. > And it will be illegal to copy code between your program and all the > other GPL-covered programs that are released under GPL version 3. I think he perceived your question as one of whether it would have adverse consequences, not as whether it would be okay. In any event, one premise of his response is faulty. The same problem would occur even if you allowed any later version. Note that the "or later version" clause applies to the terms under which you can redistribute and/or modify the software. It doesn't grant you any permission to modify the license itself and it certainly doesn't give you the power to remove privileges that other licensees might have. So if you had code that shipped with GPL version 2 (even if it allowed you to distribute it under the terms of a later version), it's not clear how you could combine it what code that shipped with GPL version 3. The GPL version 3 code does not permit itself to be combined with anything licensed under an earlier version, and the later version clause doesn't allow you to modify the terms themselves. There is a big difference between redistributing and modifying a product under different terms and modifying the licensing terms themselves. I don't see how the former implies the latter. DS To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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