On Tue, 1 Jun 2021, DJ Delorie via Gcc wrote: > > GCC is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify > > it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by > > the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option) > > any later version. > > > > To me that means the recipient of the software can relicense it under > > a later license. It doesn't say to me that the original distribution > > can do so. > > I've never read it that way. To me it says "a recipient may > redistribute it under terms of a newer license, but the license remains > v3+ even if they do" - we're giving the recipient a choice of actions, > but not power to relicense.
My interpretation of this would be for modifications rather than original sources, so v3+ applies to unmodified sources (for obvious reasons, given that the recipient of the sources is not a copyright holder), however as a copyright holder I can release my modifications say under v4 or v4+. It is unclear to me if the newer licence will then "stick" to the rest of the sources, but I suspect it will. A copyright assignment made to FSF (or another legal entity) prevents this complication from happening. Maciej
