Bruce Perens: State of Open Source [LWN.net]

Bruce Perens: State of Open Source

Posted Apr 8, 2006 20:32 UTC (Sat) by Ross (subscriber, #4065)
In reply to: Bruce Perens: State of Open Source by dlang
Parent article: Bruce Perens: State of Open Source

"it's not what the FSF INTENDS the effect to be, but it's what the letter of the license requires."

If that was the point, then why didn't he work with the FSF to change the wording to match their intent? It seems that it is the perfect time to do that -- when they are seeking input. Instead he said that it wouldn't work and he wasn't going to use it. That really comes across as disagreeing with the intent, or not trusting that the intent was as stated by the FSF.

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Bruce Perens: State of Open Source

Posted Apr 10, 2006 6:33 UTC (Mon) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270) [Link]

I think that Linus does, in fact, disagree with the intent of the current draft, not just the wording. Some of the interviews reported since the initial flap have him saying pretty directly that he doesn't think Tivo-ization should be against the rules.

I think this illustrates very nicely the danger in licensing things using the "or any later version" language. The FSF says the new version is in the same spirit as the original, but quite a few people have said (on the GPLv3 site, in comments in discussion sites, and in personal conversations I have been privy to) that the actual impact of the license in this particular area is significantly different from the previous version and that they prefer the GPLv2 version to the additional restrictions of the current GPLv3 draft. Using the "or any later version" language means giving up the right to react to such changes in future versions.

Bruce Perens: State of Open Source

Posted Apr 10, 2006 6:43 UTC (Mon) by BrucePerens (subscriber, #2510) [Link]

But using the "later version" language makes it easy to fix the problem if your license text has a legal problem that needs to be corrected. And it does that without your having to do odious things like require copyright assignment or get a separate right to relicense from every contributor.

If you're going to use that "later version" language, the FSF is one of the organizations that would be easiest to trust. It's a legal non-profit with a leader who literally dedicates his life to Free Software, something I won't do, and a damn good lawyer. I've actually been opposing expert to Moglen in a case, he's really good. Too bad the case sealed and you won't read about it.

Yes, Richard is hard to get along with. But everything he forecast in the eighties is coming true around us today. Maybe he'll be right again.

Bruce

Bruce Perens: State of Open Source

Posted Apr 10, 2006 18:44 UTC (Mon) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270) [Link]

I'm not sure that you can get a functionally useful "repair" through the "or later version" clause, because it never takes away the "GPLvX or" part. That is, that language allows a downstream recipient to apply the terms of any license included, so the repair could not override the version that had the problem.

On the other hand, that same fact vitiates the concern I expressed, since licensing something as GPLv2 or later always allows the more liberal terms of GPLv2 to be used as well as the more restrictive terms of a later version (assuming some later version is more restrictive, as the first draft of GPLv2 is). I had failed to think that through.

So, using the "or later version" language would be a problem if you objected to some later version making the terms more liberal, but not if you objected to some later version making the terms more restrictive.