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@firenze.linux.it To: debian-legal@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@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