Eben Moglen's linux.conf.au keynote

Eben Moglen's linux.conf.au keynote

Posted Apr 25, 2005 23:52 UTC (Mon) by brouhaha (subscriber, #1698)
In reply to: Eben Moglen's linux.conf.au keynote by job
Parent article: Eben Moglen's linux.conf.au keynote

I'm not worried about the GPL becoming more restrictive; as you've pointed out, the "or" clause would allow end users to stick to the older license. But if the GPL became less restrictive, the "or" clause could be a problem.

For instance, if I used the "or" clause, and the FSF released GPLv37 which said that the software could be used in military robots with mind control beam projectors without needing the source code to be released, I'd be SOL; there'd be no way for me to retract that permission.

Thus I don't use the "or" clause. I don't expect that the FSF will do such a thing, but by not using the "or" clause I can completely avoid the problem. When it turns out that I actually am happy with GPLv3, v4, etc, I can easily enough change over to using them.

Eric

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