OT: Using collective-work copyright to upgrade from GPL v2 to v3

[Donovan Hawkins]

On Sun, 9 Sep 2007, Rick Moen wrote:

> Quoting Donovan Hawkins (hawkins at cephira.com):
>
>> And given that background, do you see why the GPLv2 is _still_ better
>> than the GPLv3?
>
> This question completely lacks relevance to the legal issue at hand,
> which is a collective-work project leader's duty to avoid injuring
> contributors' economic and legal interests, when upgrading project
> licensing.
>
>> If you were the project leader who took the Linux kernel to GPL v3,
>> Torvalds could claim damages in exactly the same way that taking it
>> non-copyleft would damage him.
>
> This is an ideological construing of the term 'damage' that would carry
> zero weight in tort law.

You yourself quoted Licensing HOWTO which gave the same argument for why 
you cannot convert from copyleft to non-copyleft:

"Note, however, that an `upgrade' from a copyleft license to a 
non-copyleft license (or vice-versa) would be a different matter. If you 
are a GPL partisan, you would be injured by a move to a non-GPL license, 
and vice-versa."

What other injury does the "GPL partisan" suffer besides the ideological?


> Oh, give me a break.  If you want a warranty, Mr Hawkins, go buy one
> (from someone willing to deal with you, as I'm guessing you'd be a
> pretty high-maintence customer).

Your personal attack aside, if you aren't willing to take the risk then 
why should the project leader? I personally don't think either of you 
should do so, but you seem to think it is ignorance on the part of project 
leaders who don't know they are allowed to do it. Maybe they, like you, 
see no reason to take on legal exposure when they aren't being paid.

And in case you feel the need to continue to make personal attacks, it's 
actually Dr. Hawkins. "Donovan" is fine, too.


>> If you believe as Torvalds does and think GPL v3 is a very different
>> license following a different vision, you have every right to expect
>> your project leader to ask first.
>
> In _law_, actually, you do not.

You chose to remove the quote from you that I was replying to. If you'll 
take the time to look at it, you'll see I was replying to whether or not 
it was ethical.


I have changed the subject line since this is no longer relevant to MS-PL.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Donovan Hawkins, PhD                 "The study of physics will always be
Software Engineer                     safer than biology, for while the
hawkins at cephira.com                   hazards of physics drop off as 1/r^2,
http://www.cephira.com                biological ones grow exponentially."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------