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Re: [Matt Asay Tells The Truth] Stallman: GPL doesn't guarantee software


From: David Kastrup
Subject: Re: [Matt Asay Tells The Truth] Stallman: GPL doesn't guarantee software freedom
Date: Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:55:59 +0200
User-agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.1.50 (gnu/linux)

Alexander Terekhov <terekhov@web.de> writes:

> David Kastrup wrote:
> [...]
>> > THE LACK OF A MORE FLEXIBLE LICENSE FOR MYSQL WILL PRESENT CONSIDERABLE
>> > BARRIERS TO A NEW FORKED DEVELOPMENT PATH FOR MYSQL.
>> 
>> Uh, you conveniently forgot to mention that this is about MySQL being
>> licensed GPLv2 _only_ (not as common, GPLv2 or later).  Since GPLv2 is
>
> Does the BSD/MIT/Apache... suffer from that "problem"?

Most certainly.  You can't just move code from BSD with advertising
clause into BSD without it.

> Apart from that, "or later" is utter legal nonsense because absent
> sublicensing, the "later" license terms may come into effect only by
> the affirmative act of the copyright holder and for that nobody needs
> "or later" clause.

Nonsense.  The "affirmative act" is accomplished in advance when the
copyright holder acts according to the recommendation:

            How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs

  If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest
possible use to the public, the best way to achieve this is to make it
free software which everyone can redistribute and change under these terms.

  To do so, attach the following notices to the program.  It is safest
to attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively
state the exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least
the "copyright" line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.

    <one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of what it does.>
    Copyright (C) <year>  <name of author>

    This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
    the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
    (at your option) any later version.

[...]

-- 
David Kastrup


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