Hi,
I was remembering a discussion, we had a few weeks ago. So I'm
forwarding a maybe interesting posting of the Debian legal mailing
list.
Regards,
Fran
Begin forwarded message:
Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2008 22:40:55 +0100
From: Francesco Poli <frx(a)firenze.linux.it>
To: debian-legal(a)lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: GPL v2/v3 ?
On Thu, 6 Mar 2008 09:38:21 +0100 Miriam Ruiz wrote:
> 2008/3/6, Francesco Poli <frx(a)firenze.linux.it>:
>
> > In my opinion, the decision boils down to:
> >
> > o if you want to enhance compatibility *and* you trust the FSF to
> > keep the promise that future versions of the GNU GPL will be
> > "similar in spirit to the present version"[2][3], then you may
> > choose a "v2 or later" approach
> >
> > o if you want to enhance compatibility *and* you don't mind
> > seeing your copyleft more or less weakened (or even completely
> > destroyed) by successive versions of the GNU GPL, then you may
> > choose a "v2 or later" approach[4]
> >
> > o if don't mind reducing compatibility *and* you want a strong
> > and certain copyleft (while not trusting the FSF to keep the spirit
> > of the GNU GPL v2 in successive versions), then you should choose a
> > "v2 only" approach
>
> There's another possibility: dual-licensing your code under the GPLv2
> only and the GPLv3 only.
You're right. That would be the following case:
o if you want to slightly enhance compatibility with existing
licenses *and* you don't mind seeing your copyleft weakened by some
clauses of the GNU GPL v3, *but* you don't trust the FSF to publish
good future versions (v4, v5, ...) of the GNU GPL, then you may choose
a "v2 or v3" approach
--
Frank Lanitz <frank(a)frank.uvena.de>