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I think it intentionally doesn't work in the way you're speculating here. Assigning copyright to FSF means that they can relicense the code in the future. We
by gmfawcett 4y ago
I think it intentionally doesn't work in the way you're speculating here. Assigning copyright to FSF means that they can relicense the code in the future. We trust that this future license will be a GPL derivative.
Suppose I don't sign over copyright. Instead I license my code to the world under GPLv3, and you incorporate it into your project. You can use and share my code under the terms of GPLv3, of course. But that doesn't mean you can share it under a future GPL version, say GPLv99, without my permission -- because the terms of those versions may be incompatible.
- legalcorrection 4y agoA huge number of projects just license as "GPLv2/3 or later"
- p_l 4y agoThe default copy-paste license statement provided with GPL v2 and v3 explicitly allows "any future version" as well. It's rarer to encounter projects that remove that language (most importantly, Linux kernel)
- munch117 4y agoThe linked FSF statement by Eben Moglen is about enforceability, not future GPL licenses. The normal state of affairs for a GPL'ed project is having mixed copyright. After all, you can't stop anyone from forking to add their own, copyrighted, changes. That's the whole point. If mixed copyright means the GPL doesn't well enough, then the GPL doesn't work well enough, period. This is not an anti-GPL statement, on the contrary: Most people seem to trust the GPL well enough to not require copyright assignment. The FSF is the odd one out.
- gmfawcett 4y agoThank you, that's insightful. I'm happy to be corrected!