Cease Fire, please

Glenn L McGrath bug1 at ihug.co.nz
Thu Sep 21 05:51:49 UTC 2006


The license of this project should serve the best interests of the
project, i fear the future of this project is being jeopardised by
people trying to push their own agenda's.

I am not convinced that the "or later" clause that has been assigned to
original works is revocable, and im sure there are other people who are
uncertain of legal issues surrounding the licensing issues that we are
facing.


GPLv2 clause 9 states "If the Program specifies a version number of
this License which applies to it and "any later version", you have the
option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or
of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation."

I dont see where it implies the right of licensees to remove the "or
later" statement. For all i know removing the "or later" clause may be
adding a further restriction to the license which isnt allowed according
to clause 6.

IANAL, and neither are any of you, so lets not try and prove who is
best amateur.


Can we please get an independent expert legal opinion (i.e. SFLC) on
what is required to move from "GPLv2 or later" to "GPLv2 only" before
we go any further.


When the GPLv3 is released many other projects will face a similar
situation to the one we are now facing, and i believe it is prudent for
us to make sure we do it right.



Glenn



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