Bernd Wurst wrote:
> Am Mittwoch, 20. Dezember 2006 10:42 schrieb Alessandro Vesely:
>> GPLv3 should 
>> come in a few months and Courier's Copyright holder may want to use it.
>> Then, there will still be an incompatibility: would the DomainKeys
>> Identified Mail (DKIM) addition have to be reverted in that case?
> 
> Don't spend too much brain about that version-stuff. After all changes that 
> have been made, I still hope that GPLv3 will be somewhat compatible with 
> GPLv2, so you can use GPLv2 code in GPLv3 projects. Everything else would 
> break GPLv3's neck.

IANAL, and usually try and avoid wasting my time on legal stuff. However,
when patent encumbrances apparently threaten valuable work, I'd rather
keep an eye open.

Patents are one of the issues that GPLv3 is meant to tackle. I don't suggest
anybody should upgrade to a new license in a hurry, but we know patents can
limit software freedom, and we know GPLv2 has a bug about patent licenses.

Although Yahoo! released DKIM under GPLv2, it did so for standardization
purposes, not for providing free software. Of course, we can take advantage
from that compulsion and let Courier be DKIM compliant through a library,
as Sam said. However, as we see how Yahoo! behaves, we know that the day
DKIM will be determinant for sustainable emailing, Yahoo! will be willing
to play unfairly w.r.t. the GPL spirit.

Recall what happened last century with software doing GIFs? Putting a
royalty on each email message is too much tempting for too many people...


















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