Re: [Gnu-arch-users] GNU Arch moves to GPL v3 or later

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Stefan Monnier writes:

 > > Er, why make Arch code license-incompatible with a lot of GPLv2 code
 > > that's out there, such as the Linux kernel and (for now) XEmacs?
 > 
 > Last I looked XEmacs still was distributed under the GPL>=2, so it is
 > perfectly compatible with GPLv3.

Sure, if somebody wants to incorporate XEmacs in a future version of
tla, they're free to do so, and we'll applaud their taste.  But free
software is about cooperation, and respecting others' goals.  If a
project, for any reason, wishes to continue to use "GPLv2 or later",
then a move by Arch to GPLv3 makes Arch code unavailable to that
project.[1]  I would think that any free software advocate would
consider that in principle a bad thing, and thus want to balance it
with specific advantages of the new license.

Linux and XEmacs are simply examples of that kind of project and of
the variety of reasons why people might wish to continue to use the
same licensing.


Footnotes: 
[1]  Note that this argument is isomorphic to the logic that Richard
Stallman uses for claiming that XEmacs's failure to collect
assignments makes XEmacs code "unavailable" to Emacs, although the
specific obstacle is different.