licensing issues with gpl3 due to the gpl2only limitation

[Arne Babenhauserheide]

Am Samstag 04 Oktober 2008 01:24:15 schrieb Matt Mackall:
> Everyone who specifically licensed their code GPL2-only did so out of
> concern that later FSF licenses would not be to their liking. Some of us
> now feel fairly confirmed in this, frankly.
>
> Similarly everyone who started off writing GPL3-only code did so knowing
> that their code would be incompatible with all the existing software in
> the former camp and decided that the GPLv3 was more important to them
> than that compatibility.

For example because they were concerned about weaknesses in GPLv2. Or like 
some of the improvements in the GPLv3. 

So it means, we are in camps, now... why? 

Am I your "enemy", because I like GPLv3+ and use it for most code I publish 
wherever I don't link against GPLv2-only programs (except where I write code 
which is intended to mostly be used as backend by existing projects)? 

The license was updated, because exploits of weaknesses in the GPLv2 became 
unbearable to some, me included. And I for example like it that it allows 
relicensing to AGPLv3, so we have the triple LGPL->GPL->AGPL. 

(With AGPL making sure that "lended" programs which get accesses only over a 
server can't be used to keep ones contributions away from the public, even 
though the public gets access to the programs themselves.)

What for example KDE now does to get fit for the future is to ask developers 
to allow a "proxy" to check if updates of the license continue to fit its 
spirit and to allow usage of the new license in that case (so the 
disappearance of a single developer doesn't make license updating impossible). 

> > On a unfair, mean, tactical sidenote: bzr is licensed gpl2+, so there
> > won't be any license issues for making a native bzr integration.
>
> Uh huh. Let me know when Launchpad is free.

As far as I understand it, the comment was about "it would be tactically more 
efficient to use GPLv2+, if the goal is to make Mercurial the most used VCS". 

But it's the developers choice - and yours as current maintainer. 

Best wishes, 
Arne
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