4 ms·

> They seem to presuppose wise benevolence on the part of whoever controls the license. I don't have a big problem with the and newer term. Let's imagine three

> They seem to presuppose wise benevolence on the part of whoever controls the license. I don't have a big problem with the and newer term. Let's imagine three possible scenarios. Note: Copyright assignment is different from an "and newer" clause and it's not the subject of this comment. 1. The new license is more restrictive, e.g. the FSF went full evil, GPL became an "All Rights Reserved" proprietary license. Outcome: everyone will just keep using the current version without an upgrade. 2. The new license is more pessimistic, e.g. the FSF went full pessimistic, GPL became a BSD or a public domain license. Commentary: Doing so will not create direct harms to the existing users. Since the software remains free, I'll simply keep using it. And speaking as a developer, in the very unlikely scenario that the FSF decided to end copyleft, chances are, I'd likely to agree. However, a dogmatic copyleft advocate may point out that it's a potential vulnerability. 3. The new license is similar, e.g. GPLv2 to GPLv3. This is the intended outcome. There are some reasonable objections, but I don't see it as a big threat, so I have no problem with it.

michaelt 5y ago
Some would say the spirit of GPLv2 is "I give you this source code, in exchange you give back your changes" But if an evil version of the GPL comes out and someone forks your code and relicenses to it, you can no longer merge their changes.
- a1369209993 5y ago
  Some might say that, but it's never been true; it's always been fine to make changes to a GPL program for personal use, without even telling anyone you did, much less tracking down the original author to give the changes to them. The spirit of GPLv2 is "I give you this source code, if you give it, or a modified version of it, to anyone, you have to (perhaps also) give it to them in a form they can actually use.".
kube-system 5y ago
What if the license is more restrictive and large important GPL projects decide to go adopt it and start demanding licenses to use code that everyone contributed for free over the past 10 years?
- csande17 5y ago
  You can just use the last version of the software released under whatever license revision you prefer. They can't take it away from you! You could also get together with some friends and start a fork based on that version.

michaelt 5y ago

Some would say the spirit of GPLv2 is "I give you this source code, in exchange you give back your changes" But if an evil version of the GPL comes out and someone forks your code and relicenses to it, you can no longer merge their changes.

a1369209993 5y ago
Some might say that, but it's never been true; it's always been fine to make changes to a GPL program for personal use, without even telling anyone you did, much less tracking down the original author to give the changes to them. The spirit of GPLv2 is "I give you this source code, if you give it, or a modified version of it, to anyone, you have to (perhaps also) give it to them in a form they can actually use.".

kube-system 5y ago

What if the license is more restrictive and large important GPL projects decide to go adopt it and start demanding licenses to use code that everyone contributed for free over the past 10 years?

csande17 5y ago
You can just use the last version of the software released under whatever license revision you prefer. They can't take it away from you! You could also get together with some friends and start a fork based on that version.