Move GPLv2 vs v3 fun...

[Rob Landley]

On Thursday 14 September 2006 5:37 pm, Bernhard Fischer wrote:
> That said, no, you have to check with the contributors if you change the
> license.

I'm not changing the license, I'm selecting to one specific license from a 
project that currently has multiple license permission grants.

When the permission grant says "GPLv2 or, at your option, any later version 
published by the FSF", that's two separate permission grants.  (The "or" is 
the giveaway there.)  It's a dual license: You can use GPLv2, or you can use 
later versions of the GPL (ala GPlv3).

What happens if somebody takes dual licensed code that's dual licensed under 
Sun's CDDL and the Mozilla license, and combines it with code that's dual 
licensed under Sun's CDDL and Perl's old "Artistic" license?  You can only 
distribute the combined result under the terms of the one license they have 
in common: the CDDL.

If I take code dual licensed under GPLv2 and GPLv3, and combine it with code 
that's licensed under GPLv2, what license can I distribue the result under?

If I add Diethotplug to BusyBox and build alldefconfig, what license is the 
resulting binary under?

> I don't really see a need to drop 'or later' for now. That may 
> very well be just me, though, since i didn't hear of any significant
> drawback it would come with (except the possible size impact for
> standalone applets).

I don't see any significant benefit of maintaining the code's current dual 
license status.  (I've been complaining because it's _work_.  I want to stop 
doing it.)

> Busybox is licensed under the GPL. It's not BSD licensed nor proprietary
> but 'GPL only'.

I agree.

Rob
-- 
Never bet against the cheap plastic solution.