Two GPL Questions

Karsten M. Self kmself at ix.netcom.com
Wed Dec 12 07:08:17 UTC 2001


on Wed, Dec 12, 2001 at 12:55:28AM -0500, Justin Wells (jread at semiotek.com) wrote:
> You might be able to have your cake and eat it too. 
> 
> I see the value of wanting to be able to move to a new GPL without 
> having to consult each individual contributor to your code base. 
> 
> I also see the fear in handing over to the FSF authority to relicense
> the work that you've published. 
> 
> A reasonable compromise might be:
> 
>     "or any later version which has been approved for use by XYZ"

Problem being:  that's not GPL compatible, with current versions of the
GPL.

If you wanted to preserve this option for your own current code, you
might consider licensing under GPL and your own variant.  As the GPL
itself is copyrighted, and _not_ under freely modifiable terms, this
would probably require substantially different language.

I've suggested in the past a model of licensing in which there is a
standard reference of the license, for which compatability is assured if
all derivatives change only the revision authoring authority.  There's
been some interest, but no real movement on the idea.

Peace.

-- 
Karsten M. Self <kmself at ix.netcom.com>       http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
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