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FSFE wants to better protect free software licenses from bankruptcyFSFE wants to better protect free software licenses from bankruptcyPosted Aug 12, 2012 21:22 UTC (Sun) by Wol (guest, #4433)In reply to: FSFE wants to better protect free software licenses from bankruptcy by welinder Parent article: FSFE wants to better protect free software licenses from bankruptcy
Except that most of the code "owned" by the FSF has been given to them under contract.
aiui the contract of sale forbids such. The trustee would have no ability to "sell on" the code, because in doing so he would be breaching the terms of its "purchase", and creating a copyright violation.
Just as any future version of the GPL must remain in the same spirit as the earlier versions - the "four freedoms" are your guide here, aiui any copyright assignment to the FSF says that the FSF can only relicence the code to a "four freedoms friendly" licence.
If the FSF can't relicence it as commercially friendly, then nor can a "trustee in bankruptcy" - at least, not unless they get a Judge like the SCOG bankruptcy Judge who redefines what words in the English language mean!
Cheers,
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FSFE wants to better protect free software licenses from bankruptcy Posted Aug 12, 2012 21:36 UTC (Sun) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
> If the FSF can't relicence it as commercially friendly...
but they were able to put in the wikipedia exception, allowing anything that was in wikipedia as of a given date to be converted to a different license that they didn't control (which includes it's own "or future version" clause)
If they can allow code to be relicensed under a different license that's controlled by someone else that you don't have such a contract with, what's to keep a couple such transitions from letting your code get to a license that is BSD under some conditions (possibly even only for some particular company)?
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