the FSF wants the GPLv3 to be able to be LESS free then v2???

the FSF wants the GPLv3 to be able to be LESS free then v2???

Posted Mar 22, 2007 3:13 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333)
In reply to: the FSF wants the GPLv3 to be able to be LESS free then v2??? by njs
Parent article: The Torvalds Transcript (InformationWeek)

I was mistaken a bit. Mostly right, but somewhat wrong...

Well if you look at the license the amount of restrictions that you can add are _very_ limited.

It's a bit of a legal jedi mind trick realy.

You are allowed to add these specific restrictions under the GPLv3 license.

If you add them they then your software is has additional restrictions as allowed under the GPLv3 license.

However GPLv3 is still compatable. Because these GPLv3 allows these restrictions.

So if you take software from project "A" that has no additional allowed restrictions and combine it with project "B" that has additional allowed restrictions. Then you end up with software "AB" that is GPlv3 with additional allowed restrictions.

It's all still allowed and compatable.

Also keep in mind that the additional allowed restrictions is pretty limited to what you can add. It's mostly pretty non-important stuff. The only one that is scary is the additional patent one, but it's critical if your going to be compatable with Apache, Mozilla, et al.

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the FSF wants the GPLv3 to be able to be LESS free then v2???

Posted Mar 22, 2007 3:17 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

Also another thing to keep in mind is that the GPLv3 has a restriction that if you add additional terms (either permissions or restrictions) then it has to be in one central location in the code base.

So it's not like if your worried about this that you would end up having to grep through header files or whatever to find out what your dealing with.

the FSF wants the GPLv3 to be able to be LESS free then v2???

Posted Mar 25, 2007 0:28 UTC (Sun) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link]

So if you take software from project "A" that has no additional allowed restrictions and combine it with project "B" that has additional allowed restrictions. Then you end up with software "AB" that is GPlv3 with additional allowed restrictions.

And then nobody can take changes back from "B" to "A" without changing "A"'s license... or doing a detailed audit to find out where the changes originated, perhaps in "D" which is compatible with "A"

Somebody comes along and uses "A" stuff to create "C" with other added restrictions. "B" stuff can't be used with "C" now.

Can you spell "balkanization"?