<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=us-ascii">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2900.3086" name=GENERATOR></HEAD>
<BODY>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=480282701-05122007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2>Where is recipient being "forced" to do
anything?</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=480282701-05122007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=480282701-05122007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2>And if your analysis is correct, wouldn't someone who wants
to upgrade be required to continue to allow his/her recipients to choose the
downgraded license? I.e., Alice gives under "v2 or later," Bob (who could
be the maintainer) wants to upgrade to v3, but if he can't remove the "v2
permission" then he has to offer to Carol under -- let's see -- "v2 or v3 or
later"?</FONT></SPAN></DIV><BR>
<DIV class=OutlookMessageHeader lang=en-us dir=ltr align=left>
<HR tabIndex=-1>
<FONT face=Tahoma size=2><B>From:</B> Chris Travers
[mailto:chris.travers@gmail.com] <BR><B>Sent:</B> Tuesday, December 04, 2007
5:16 PM<BR><B>To:</B> License Discuss<BR><B>Subject:</B> Re: When to evaluate
dual licenses<BR></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV></DIV>Just as clarification, I have always seen "GPL v2 or at your option
any later version" as simply meaning that if anyone wants to they can
upgrade. The idea is to prevent projects from having to get either
copyright assignment from every major contributor or otherwise show that they
are not infringing on other people's work by getting permission in advance to
upgrade the license. This is then passed downstream to recipients in
essentially a symmetric agreement. <BR><BR>This means that the the upgrade
clause is a part of the license. If the immediate recipient is forced to
remove part of the permissions from the license and choose one of these, then
that would defeat the purpose of having the upgrade clause at all and turn the
license into something very non-open source. In this case, it would make
forking nearly impossible because derivative works could not provide all the
same permissions downstream as they received. Hence my comment-- if this
is the meaning, and everyone agrees with it, then we need a note on the GPL page
which states that the use of the upgrade clause violates the OSD. <BR><BR>Best
Wishes,<BR>Chris Travers<BR></BODY></HTML>