Implicit relicensing

Posted Aug 22, 2009 10:56 UTC (Sat) by dlang (guest, #313)
In reply to: Implicit relicensing by man_ls
Parent article: Devices that phone home

the problem is that many kernel developers do not consider GPLv2 and GPLv3 to have the same intent. they have been very vocal about this disagreement. so if you get a judge to override the explicit statements of the developers saying that they disagree with the anti-tivo provisions of the GPLv3, then why couldn't the judge override any other considerations (like release of source code) for a change to another license?

Implicit relicensing

Posted Aug 23, 2009 19:18 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

If you have vocal developers against the change then it is not feasible to start with (even if as in this case the FSF, creators of the license, think it has the same intent). We were talking about implicit relicensing, where developers still active all agree, and there is a number of unreachable contributors. If one of those contributors -- say, Jeff Merkey -- did later come out and say that the change was unreasonable then there is good argument to counter it: all developers present agreed that the two licenses had the same intent.