GPL "v2 or later" may prevent merging back modifications? in practice, yes

GPL "v2 or later" may prevent merging back modifications? in practice, yes

Posted Oct 2, 2006 11:45 UTC (Mon) by walken (subscriber, #7089)
In reply to: GPL "v2 or later" may prevent merging back modifications? in practice, yes by mingo
Parent article: Busy busy busybox

>> *Yawn, hyperbole alert.* If they used "v2 or later" and the developers don't like the final version of GPLv3, they can always stick with v2's terms.

> You are now compounding your misrepresentation of what was said with a false ridicule of their fears over the 'or later' clause.

It would help if you could clarify, in a concrete way, what these fears are.

Say you contributed code under "GPLv2 or later". now GPLv3 comes out and adds additional restrictions to v2 (the no-tivoisation clauses). tivo can stil use that code you wrote under the v2 terms. no immediate harm done as far as I can see (it'd be different if v3 was relaxing restrictions instead, though).

Later on someone might write a v3-only change, which would be an issue if you want to use his change, and he cares strongly about excluding v2, and you care strongly about allowing it. I suppose that would be too bad, but this is hardly RMS's fault if you can't agree on licensing terms with that future contributor.

Can you clarify what your fears are about GPLv3 ?

> (In my judgement, if this attitude and social skills of yours isnt just an unfortunate one-time deviation in the heat of the moment but common practice then you could not have gotten very far into contributing to free software - but please by all means surprise me with facts to the contrary.)

Aaaaw come on now, as if we don't know of any kernel devs with bad social skills... :)

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