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FSFE wants to better protect free software licenses from bankruptcyFSFE wants to better protect free software licenses from bankruptcyPosted Jul 30, 2012 16:37 UTC (Mon) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313)In reply to: FSFE wants to better protect free software licenses from bankruptcy by butlerm Parent article: FSFE wants to better protect free software licenses from bankruptcy
> it would no doubt be a violation of the implied promise made by the "new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version" clause.
The problem is who gets to decide.
As far as many people are concerned, GPLv3 isn't in the same spirit as GPLv2
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FSFE wants to better protect free software licenses from bankruptcy Posted Jul 30, 2012 16:58 UTC (Mon) by Richard_J_Neill (subscriber, #23093) [Link]
> As far as many people are concerned, GPLv3 isn't in the same spirit
> as GPLv2
In many cases, that perception is based on a misunderstanding. GPLv3 fixes some "bugs" in GPL2, notably regarding DRM (Stallman was farsighted, but he didn't see that coming when GPL2 was written).
The most popular misunderstanding of GPL3 (even made by Linus) was that you'd *always* have to give up your encryption keys if you published GPL3 software. Actually, all it does is plug the "Tivo" loophole by saying "if you use GPL software, but try to enforce that your hardware only runs a specific signed binary, that's considered cheating, and you must publish the keys required by the hardware".
If you look at the "four freedoms" as the guiding principles, I think GPL3 is definitely in the same spirit as GPL2.
FSFE wants to better protect free software licenses from bankruptcy Posted Jul 30, 2012 19:33 UTC (Mon) by butlerm (subscriber, #13312) [Link]
> The problem is who gets to decide.
If you don't trust the FSF, and aren't willing to let your code be used in projects that use other FSF licenses, don't use the "any later version" clause. If you require copyright assignment, or are the only copyright holder, or require contributors to license contributions under a license that allows the project to relicense, you can wait and see what the new versions are like.
FSFE wants to better protect free software licenses from bankruptcy Posted Jul 30, 2012 20:57 UTC (Mon) by mjw (subscriber, #16740) [Link]
In GPL version 3, for free software projects that want to allow users to be able to upgrade to later versions of the GPL, there is a new option which provides an alternative to just specifying "or any later version" in clause 14:
If the Program specifies that a proxy can decide which future
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