On Sunday 23 September 2007 15:46, William Stein wrote: > However, in the COPYING file for Sage itself, I wrote: "All original > SAGE code is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public > License *Version 2*." > > Just out of curiosity, would anybody be angry if I were to remove the > words "*Version 2*" from the above sentence in the COPYING file?
Well, I wouldn't say I'd be "angry", but I dislike the GPLv3. My principle reason for disliking it is section 3. I didn't read up on acticle 11 of WIPO, but my understanding is that they are attempting to forbid writing of DRM schemes with GPL'ed code. I don't like where that goes. When I release code under the GPL I'm not concerned about what the users do with it -- I'm only concerned that they release their code that builds on it. I believe this is two fundamentally different issues and I think that the FSF is muddying the waters to mix them. Now, I realize that people who feel strongly opposed to DRM may find my distinction silly. Actually, I feel rather strongly opposed to DRM myself but I don't want to start enumerating all the things that I feel strongly about that I don't want my code to be used for. Anyhow, maybe I'm totally misunderstanding section 3. Also I realize that GPLv3 is probably the only realistic way forward since the FSF is the 800 lb gorilla as far as open licenses are concerned. I guess I would sum up my feeling as being that I'm more strongly opposed to license proliferation than I am against the DRM clause in GPLv3. I very much do not like the blanket "or later version" scheme for dealing with the GPL. This, to me, gives the FSF a blank check for whatever in GPLv4, and after seeing GPLv3, I trust them even less than I used to. On Sunday 23 September 2007 15:46, William Stein wrote: > Evidently nobody (but me) has ever actually submitted any code to Sage > where they explicitly put "Version 2" in their copyright statement. > I'm asking this mainly to see what our options are. I didn't make any requests, but that was because I already knew it was GPLv2 (which was what I wanted). I'm not quite comfortable with your license analysis for PARI and Singular. If they say GPLv2 somewhere prominent in their distribution I would take that to apply to all the source and not view the individual source files differently because they don't specify the version number (i.e. I believe they intended to have each individual source file released under GPLv2, but didn't think it was worth repeating). -- Joel --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://sage.scipy.org/sage/ and http://modular.math.washington.edu/sage/ -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
