GPL versions not such a big deal

Posted Mar 24, 2008 18:58 UTC (Mon) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510)
In reply to: Bruce Perens and the OSI board by JoeBuck
Parent article: Bruce Perens and the OSI board

Joe,

Obviously the problem is picking just one. In doing this, you have to consider who is most likely to be influenced by a campaign to use just four licenses for all of your Open Source work. Obviously, new projects are the easiest ones to influence. For old projects that have removed the "or any later version" text to relicense is much more difficult and I'm not going to push them to do that.

So, what license of GPL1, GPL2.*, or GPL3 would you recommend that new projects use? Obviously GPL3.

Bruce

GPL versions not such a big deal

Posted Mar 25, 2008 23:52 UTC (Tue) by raboofje (guest, #26972) [Link] (6 responses)

what license of GPL1, GPL2.*, or GPL3 would you recommend that new projects use? Obviously GPL3.

Without wishing to start a flame war, I don't think this choice is all that obvious. Personally, I don't want my software to be 'protected' against 'tivoization': that's perfectly fair use to me.

On the other hand, I think things like the 'smooth path to compliance' rules in GPLv3 are a considerable improvement over GPLv2.

I don't think the choice is obvious. I, for one, haven't made up my mind.

GPL versions not such a big deal

Posted Mar 26, 2008 0:08 UTC (Wed) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] (5 responses)

Without wishing to start a flame war, I don't think this choice is all that obvious. Personally, I don't want my software to be 'protected' against 'tivoization': that's perfectly fair use to me.

That's fine. You are welcome to waive that term regarding your own work.

GPL versions not such a big deal

Posted Mar 26, 2008 0:25 UTC (Wed) by raboofje (guest, #26972) [Link] (4 responses)

You are welcome to waive that term regarding your own work.

Wouldn't that render my work incompatible with any code under the unmodified GPLv3? Seems like license proliferation on the micro-scale to me...

GPL versions not such a big deal

Posted Mar 26, 2008 0:33 UTC (Wed) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] (3 responses)

Wouldn't that render my work incompatible with any code under the unmodified GPLv3?

No. You are welcome to give people more rights. It's just taking them away that is a problem. But you do not have the right to force the copyright holders of any other GPLv3 software to give away more rights too. So, if you have made a contribution to a larger work, the fact that you give away more rights to your part of that work may not be very useful to others.

You might be able to operate a project where waiving that particular right is the rule for the whole project. You could simply refuse to accept any code that didn't have that right waived. Of course, people could make a fork if they didn't like that.

Bruce

GPL versions not such a big deal

Posted Mar 27, 2008 1:47 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (2 responses)

it just means that someone can take your code and combine it with GPLv3 code and remove the
permission that you granted.

if you just use GPLv2 (without or later) your code cannot be (ab)used this way.

believe it or not Bruce, many people aren't happy with others taking their code and putting
more restrictive licenses on the resulting work and will pick a license that doesn't allow
that

GPL versions not such a big deal

Posted Mar 27, 2008 2:01 UTC (Thu) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

believe it or not Bruce, many people aren't happy with others taking their code and putting more restrictive licenses on the resulting work

I understand. It's my honest opinion that whatever is chosen, somebody would be unhappy with the choice. In this case I think that more people are going to be willing to put up with the tivo stuff in order to have a license that went through that high a degree of legal review.

Thanks

Bruce

GPL versions not such a big deal

Posted Mar 27, 2008 12:52 UTC (Thu) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]

> it just means that someone can take your code and combine it with GPLv3 code and
> remove the permission that you granted.
In the combined work, yes, but in your code, no. You granted the permission to tivoize 
your code, your permission is there, latent. If I take _your_ code and put in my TiVoSX, but 
not the code that the other author does not want tivoized, it's ok. That is the beauty of the 
GPLv3+waivers:

Your code: GPLv3 + waiver tivoizing
My code: GPLv3
Combined code: GPLv3

If anyone wants to tivoize your code, _nothing_ will stop them. Your wishes regarding 
_your_ code are _always_ respected. Now, your wishes regarding _my_ code...

GPL versions not such a big deal

Posted Mar 26, 2008 0:54 UTC (Wed) by viro (subscriber, #7872) [Link] (1 responses)

And that, boys and girls, is what polite people describe as proof
by assertion...

GPL versions not such a big deal

Posted Mar 26, 2008 3:12 UTC (Wed) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

Would you like to engage in argument, or just contradiction?