FSF is creating a problem that never existed!

Posted Oct 2, 2006 23:54 UTC (Mon) by mingo (guest, #31122)
In reply to: FSF is creating a problem that never existed! by nim-nim
Parent article: Busy busy busybox

So I certainly do not agree with the idea the GPLv2-covered codebase is so big it's impossible to pull a GPLv3, even for the Linux kernel.

Oh, as long as it's on a voluntary basis, once the GPLv3 is known, so that people can do an informed decision based on its true contents, for either new contributions or for relicensed old contributions, i'm perfectly on your side.

But that voluntary basis is not actually what the GPLv3 does. What it does is it retrospectively affects a huge codebase and it potentially makes it "half-incompatible" with GPLv3 projects, which incompatibility is fundamentally slated in favor of GPLv3 projects: by not allowing fixes to be backmerged from GPLv3 codebases into "GPLv2 or later" codebases - even if the code originated from the "GPLv2 or later" codebase.

FSF is creating a problem that never existed!

Posted Oct 3, 2006 6:56 UTC (Tue) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]

The "can not go back" aspect of the GPLv3 is the same as the GPLv2 so the GPLv3 is no worse in this regard than the v2.

That the possibility of relicensing v2 code to v3 exists is an accident of history, namely the FSF writing a great license which has served well many projects. That is has the authority to lead many persons in this fork is a consequence of them trying to wrangle with the legal problems of FLOSS software while others wouldn't be bothered with them.

On the whole even if the FSF exerts this fork-"right" hostilely (which it hasn't so all this is "trial of intentions" so far) I'd say they'll have won the moral right to do so. They're doing the legal work.The BSDs, wine and others have shown it's not something which can safely be ignored because coders find it un-cool.