On Tue, Jan 04, 2011 at 09:04:40PM +0100, Dominic Fandrey wrote: > > 1) ID owns the copyright on their code. > > 2) The copyright owner [ID] has specifically chosen a license under > > which the code is to be distributed: GPLv2+ > > 3) You don't get to change the license to "GPLv3" when the copyright > > owner has specifically chosen the license "GPLv2+". > > The copyright owner has decided to release the code and given us > free choice to use any version of the GPL starting with 2. > > I.e. you can create a copy of the code and license it under GPLv2 > or GPLv3 oder stay with GPLv2+ or change it to GPLv3+.
Not as I understand it. The copyright owner has granted you the privilege of adhering to the terms of the GPLv2, or at your discretion, a later version, when you're distributing or modifying the code. The copyright owner hasn't granted you the privilege of changing the license: "This program 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 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version." > The "or later" clause is quite common and this is the first time > I have seen it disputed. I really wonder where this notion comes from. You see it a lot, but you are not at liberty to actually *change* the license at the top of the code. You are merely at liberty to choose which rules you wish to modify or distribute it under. Depending on viewpoint, the GPLv3 may have removed privileges that the original author intended by licensing it under GPLv2+. If you were to change the boilerplate at the top of GPLv3+ [or just GPLv3], you have effectively taken away a right that otherwise would have been granted by the original author, viewpoints and implicit social contracts notwithstanding. IANAL, of course, but intuitively... someone else put a license at the top of the code. You aren't at liberty to change that license. Gary (-; _______________________________________________ ioquake3 mailing list ioquake3@lists.ioquake.org http://lists.ioquake.org/listinfo.cgi/ioquake3-ioquake.org By sending this message I agree to love ioquake3 and libsdl.
