It'll be the other way [LWN.net]

It'll be the other way

Posted Apr 21, 2009 15:05 UTC (Tue) by southey (subscriber, #9466)
In reply to: It'll be the other way by khim
Parent article: Oracle: SELECT * FROM Sun

Unfortunately the usage of "GPLv2 or later" is very misleading because you can NOT change the license of code unless you are the copyright owner of it. Thus, when distributing everything (since that is really when the terms kick in), that "GPLv2 or later" code would most likely remain under the original license. This creates problems if the terms of GPLv2 conflict with the terms of the licenses of other code like GPLv3 defeating the purpose of mixing GPLv2 and GPLv3 code.

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It'll be the other way

Posted Apr 21, 2009 16:16 UTC (Tue) by salimma (subscriber, #34460) [Link]

You may not change the license stipulated by the copyright holder of the file, but the effective license that applies when GPLv2+ and GPLv3 code is shipped together is GPLv3. The file itself would still be GPLv2+.

This is FUD - plain and simple

Posted Apr 21, 2009 20:25 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Take a look on OpenSSL. There are some files under 2-3 compatible licenses. No problems whatsoever - except bloat: now every file must carry few headers. The same with GPLv3: you can not remove original permission header with "GPLv2 or later", but you can safely attach new header before or after that'll say "all changes can only be distributed under GPLv3 or later".

The effective result is GPLv3: to use GPLv2 you need to split the hair and remove "GPLv3 or later" code from the file. If introduced change is not trivial (and for trivial change there are no need to touch header at all - old "GPLv2 or later" copy is still around somewhere, right?) it's very hard.