[Discuss] "Getting Cute with the GPL"

Daniel M. German dmgerman at uvic.ca
Fri Nov 17 12:10:02 PST 2006


 Paul Ramsey twisted the bytes to say:

 Paul> I wonder if Linux is "relicenseable" at this point. Given all the 
 Paul> contributors who have contributed under GPLv2, how could Linus or anyone 
 Paul> by fiat change the license?

No, it is not. It will require every contributor to relicense, which
is most likely impossible.

 Paul> - To answer my question, by forking the GPLv2 code base and saying 
 Paul> "here's a new code base under GPLv3".  But then the community would have 

You can't do this. That is the main problem. You will have to rewrite
all the code (it is a similar issue to xemacs).

 Paul> to choose whether to follow the Leader onto the new tree or stay with 
 Paul> the old tree.

 Paul> Fun fun fun.



--
Daniel M. German                  "Beauty is the first test; there is no
                                   permanent place in the world for ugly
   G. H. Hardy ->                  mathematics."
http://turingmachine.org/
http://silvernegative.com/
dmg (at) uvic (dot) ca
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