On 8 December 2012 08:36, Poul-Henning Kamp <[email protected]> wrote:
> And one other detail most people overlook, is that the default GPL text > gives any users the right to use any later version of the GPL license > instead of the one you copy&pasted. This has only happened once but > it had ground-shaking repercussions through out the industry. I don't agree with that statement. Look at GPL 2 (not the latest version). http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html Section 9 states: "Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation." Note the term: "*IF* the Program specifies ..." My interpretation of the GPL if you specify version 2, and do not specify "or any later version", then the code is released under version 2, and can't be used under any later version. This compatibility matrix http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#AllCompatibility makes it clear if the code is released under GPL 2, without the "or any later version" clause, it is incompatible with version 3. > And as was said, there is a ton of other OSS-licenses out there, > you can see a sort of a list here: > > http://opensource.org/licenses/index.html Unfortunately, the large number of licenses is a real pain. The Sage mathematics project http://www.sagemath.org/ which aims to create a viable free open source alternative to Magma, Maple, Mathematica and Matlab, is plagued by the problem of incompatible licenses, Sage contains the source code from around 100 different bits of software and needless to say some are incompatible. In some cases, when consideration was given to including the source of some program X released under the GPL 2, the projects lead (William Stein) or someone else has contacted the original author of X, and asked them if they will re license it under "Version 2 or any later version". In other instances, packages were made optional, so people could install them if they wanted, but it would be under a different license. Personally I'm not convined that Sage fully complies with the licenses and I'm not the only Sage developer to think that. But the projects lead is happy. The amount of time spent on the Sage developers mailing list discussing license issues is not insignificant. This is a direct result of various components having different licenses. Dave _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
