On Sun, Feb 8, 2015 at 5:45 PM, Tyler Romeo <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sun, Feb 8, 2015 at 7:59 PM, Rob Lanphier <[email protected]> wrote: >> Our code is "GPLv2 or later", which is the functional equivalent of >> being multi-licensed under GPLv2 and GPLv3 (and all later versions of >> the GPL) Therefore, the set of licenses that "GPLv2 or later" is >> compatible with is a strict superset of the licenses that "GPLv3 or >> later" is compatible with. >> > > This is not true. The GPLv2 and GPLv3 are incompatible licenses, and if you > read the actual license disclaimer, you will see it is not the "functional > equivalent" of having our code licensed under both. > > Rather, what the disclaimer says is that our code is GPLv2 only, *but*, > anybody who modifies or distributes it is free to, at their discretion, > change the license to any later version of the GPL. You legally cannot have > both the GPLv2 and GPLv3 because they are conflicting in their terms.
This is virtually identical to how the old MPL multi-licensing boilerplate is worded: https://www.mozilla.org/MPL/boilerplate-1.1/ ...which is widely considered sufficient for GPL compatibility. > I've already described the numerous changes and fixes that have been made > in the GPLv3, specifically easier enforcement due to changed policies on > infringement, better international wording, etc. If you'd like to dispute > any of the good ideas I've listed, then go ahead, but I think the > improvements v3 makes are more than enough of a goal. My apologies. I'll take those into consideration. > As for your point on it being useless because of the server-side nature of > PHP, I semi-agree, which is why I proposed the AGPL, but nonetheless the > advantages of the v3 will still help distributors who download MediaWiki > from our site. The server-side nature of PHP has nothing to do with it. My main point about not thinking too hard about GPLv3 specifically is because I'm generally a little skeptical about GPL's general applicability to our use case. >> In general, I believe we should move more of our licensing toward >> Apache 2.0. It seems to provide a nice tradeoff between simplicity >> and providing some basic legal protections for the projects. > > > That is quite depressing to hear. MediaWiki is supposed to be an open > source software movement, so I would think one of the goals of our > community would be to preserve that and keep MediaWiki open source, but if > the WMF has some future goals to make its software proprietary, then I can > understand why we might want to aim toward something that allows that, such > as the permissive Apache 2.0. Please assume good faith. There is absolutely no intention by the WMF to make our software proprietary. The only reason we'd entertain a switch to a more permissive license is as a means of collaborating with entities (companies, individuals, and organizations) who might steer clear of GPL software but otherwise be good open source collaborators out of enlightened self interest. Rob _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
