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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] <http://www.dagon.net/>
