Cease Fire, please

[Rich Felker]

On Thu, Sep 21, 2006 at 05:51:49PM +1200, Glenn L McGrath wrote:
> 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.

The best interests of this project are to stop having FSF license
trolls interrupting development.

> 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.

It is not removable from the original work. IT IS REMOVALBLE FROM
DERIVED WORKS if the person making the derived work choses to use GPL
v2 rather than a later version. Would you listen to what you're saying
for a moment and STOP THE INSANITY!

If what you were saying were true, "GPL v2 or later" would ALREADY BE
AN ADDITIONAL RESTRICTION beyond the text of GPL v2, making all
modification and distribution unauthorized. Your same bogus theory
implies that it's impossible to use dual licensed (e.g. GPL+MPL or
GPL+Artistic, etc.) in a GPL project. It would also imply the
existence of perpetual motion machines and would imply that 1==2.

> 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.

This is not the relevant section. The relevant sections are 2 and 3.

> 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.

Nothing is required except removing the words "or later" from your
derived work. This has been part of the GPL since day one. It's only
become an issue now since people like yourself and Bruce want to force
GPLv3 onto people who explicitly do not authorize their code (which
the derived work is) to be distributed under GPLv3. Now stop the FUD,
stop the trolling, shut up, and let Rob get back to coding rather than
worring about your silly license war.

Rich