GPLv3 & trust?

Posted Sep 27, 2006 0:27 UTC (Wed) by Zack (guest, #37335)
In reply to: GPLv3 & trust? by mingo
Parent article: Why Torvalds is sitting out the GPLv3 process (Linux.com)

>isnt there a danger that their trust would be abused, if things dont change and the FSF relicenses the GNU codebase to GPLv3 and if "GPLv2 or later" projects become automatically licensed by the GPLv3 too on the day the GPLv3 is released?

Basically, no. The worst that could happen is that you'll be stuck with GPLv2 forever.

Basically the developers you are worrying about are the same developers who are distributing their software under the GPL. If the GPLv3 comes around and everybody hates it, the developers of these projects would naturally fork.
This remains even true if the copyrights are assigned to the FSF. Even though they would be the sole copyright holder of a certain program A that was licensed under "GPLv3 or higher" it would be a stale project if it had no developers left and last free version would become the main tree.

The only catch would be that the FSF could always incorporate the changes from the now-main "GPLv2 or higher" into their hypothetical onerous (or even proprietary) "GPLv3 or higher" version. But with no developers left and all goodwill destroyed it would quickly become a futile effort.
This would be in a worst case scenario.

The "at your option" is there for a reason. And that reason is that you should never have to blindly rely on any person or any institution, no matter how benevolent they may seem at the moment.
It's there to mitigate the worst case scenario and enable GPL-licensed Free Software to survive under very hostile conditions.