On Thu, 28 Aug, 2003 at 06:43:48PM -0500, Rick Moen wrote: > "...or (at your [the recipient's] option) any later version." The fact > that "your" refers to the _recipient_ means that Scott's worst-case > scenario of FSF issuing a screwball GPLv3 is not a serious concern > _even_ for work whose licence grants include the quoted phrase.
How about this scenario: 1- A hostile group gets control of the FSF (treachery, trickery, bribery, lawsuits, ...?) 2- They release a new version of the GPLv4, which states that "this software should be treated as released into the public domain" 3- All copyleft protection of items licensed with the "(at your option) any later version" phrase disappears. Sort of the "tentacles of evil" thought exercise. This is what I was always worried about when seeing that phrase. Sort of seems like a back door being reserved. Could this even happen? -- .------------------------------------------------------------. | paul cannon [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | IWIWAL http://people.debian.org/~pik/ |
