Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 28 Sep 2006 23:22:21 -0700 (PDT) | From | Linus Torvalds <> | Subject | Re: GPLv3 Position Statement |
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On Fri, 29 Sep 2006, Neil Brown wrote: > On Thursday September 28, torvalds@osdl.org wrote: > > > > Btw, it should be stated here: I'm not advocating either of the above. If > > a license says "v2 or later", anybody who removes an explicit right > > granted by the people who originally wrote and worked on the code is just > > being a total a-hole. > > But isn't that the whole point - to replace v2 by v3?
I'm sure it's the point for the FSF. Is it really the point for anybody else? Everybody else is better off with the more permissive license..
> Now I know that is what you would prefer, but it seems obvious that it > isn't what the new FSF wants. > I would be very surprised if new versions of any FSF-control code is > available under v2 more than a few months after v3 becomes final.
I suspect the FSF might well be _very_ careful here. If they move to "v3 or later", they had better be damn sure somebody won't license-fork that project, or they'll be left with nothing at all.
So I would not be entirely surprised if projects remain "v2 or later" just because it's to nobodys advantage to play chicken.
But who knows..
> I don't see the urgency. Why are you "screwed forever"? You can > always take the last version that was available under a suitable > license and fork from there, just like OpenSSH did. > > Sure: the longer you leave it the harder it will be to get critical > mass, but I don't see the need for it to be done immediately.
It obviously doesn't have to be, but it gets a lot harder to do later, if the project has any appreciable amount of real development.
Of course, a lot of projects probably don't have that much. I haven't followed, but I don't get the feeling that bash or fileutils have a huge amount of constant changes..
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