7 ms·
I guess we can soon expect them to relicense it all to free the world from the viral nature of the GPL.
by onlydeadheroes 7y ago
I guess we can soon expect them to relicense it all to free the world from the viral nature of the GPL.
- josefx 7y agoThe GPL is published by the FSF, so they could just publish a GPLv4 that declares all the code property of Alphabet Inc. and the "or later" clause would take care of the rest.
- xeeeeeeeeeeenu 7y agoThey actually did something like that with GFDL, they added a special exemption, just for Wikipedia[1]. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License#Compatibility_with_Creative_Commons_licensing_terms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License...
- anoncake 7y agoThat's a very different case. The point of licensing a work under the GFDL version n or higher is that the FSF can relicense it under a different copyleft license – like CC-BY-SA. Of course CC-BY-SA and GFDL aren't identical but neither are different versions of the GFDL.
- anoncake 7y agoAFAIK there are restrictions to that. Either the FSF can't legally stop advocating for free software or the "or later" clause actually refers to a new General Public License, not to any arbitrary license that is called "General Public License".
- josefx 7y agoIt would be interesting to see what restrictions apply to both the FSF and the definition of what constitutes a GPL license. I only considered that the GPL has been published by the FSF in the past so a new one most likely would also have to be published by them.
- emiliobumachar 7y agoThe "or later" clause is at the discretion of the licensee. People who own no copyright of GNU can keep redistributing it under GPLv3 indefinitely, regardless of what GPLv4 says.
- the_why_of_y 7y agoThe FSF is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) charity; if it would institute policies to benefit a single for-profit entity, the inevitable IRS audit would be excruciatingly painful and possily result in jail time for directors.