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by boomboomsubban 1908 days ago
>Thus, the future of the GPL is entirely in the hand of a few people who picked themselves so to say.

What does this even mean? As Linux staying on v2 shows, the FSF doesn't have any real control over GPL licenses. And I'm fairly sure the only limitation on modifying the GPL myself is I couldn't use the word "GNU."
2 comments
Denvercoder9 1908 days ago
The FSF can issue new versions of the GPL, which will automatically apply to software licensed under the GPLv2 or GPLv3 with the "or any later version" clause (which is present in the standard boilerplate).

A completely non-representative grep through copyright information indicates that about two-thirds of the GPL-licensed packages on my Debian system have the "or any later version" clause.

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boomboomsubban 1908 days ago
>which will automatically apply to software licensed under the GPLv2 or GPLv3 with the "or any later version" clause (which is present in the standard boilerplate).

Unless I'm missing something, the "or any later" clause means that a new GPL would cause further software releases to be dual licensed as GPL v2/3 and 4. The project could choose to go to v4 only, or continue releasing it under both.

I can only imagine that causing problems if they say released a non copyleft v4, and it's hard to see that surviving a legal challenge.

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Denvercoder9 1908 days ago
> Unless I'm missing something, the "or any later" clause means that a new GPL would cause further software releases to be dual licensed as GPL v2/3 and 4.

It also causes past releases to be immediately and retroactively available under the GPL v4 (in addition to the GPL v2/v3 it was already available under). As such the FSF has the power to make a large amount of software available under a new license.

> I can only imagine that causing problems if they say released a non copyleft v4, and it's hard to see that surviving a legal challenge.

A hypothetical GPLv4 has to be similar in spirit to the previous GPL licenses, but the devil's in the details -- just look at the prolonged debates about GPLv3. Depending on the exact details it might not be acceptable to parts of the free software community.

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boomboomsubban 1907 days ago
> hypothetical GPLv4 has to be similar in spirit to the previous GPL licenses,

This doesn't cause an issue though, the software is still licensed under v3. A more restrictive v4 can be ignored, an issue would only arrise from a less restrictive v4.

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p_l 1908 days ago
As Wikipedia shows, FSF has/had a lot of power (Wikipedia was originally GFDL licensed)
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boomboomsubban 1908 days ago
It still is licensed under the GFDL, I'm not seeing how this is an example of them having power, and this is the GFDL is not the GPL.
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p_l 1908 days ago
Significant portion of the text on Wikipedia is now dual licensed Creative Commons and GFDL (specifically unversioned), something that was made possible by change introduced in later version of GFDL (1.3, afaik) that didn't exist in earlier one.

The licensing move was done in 2009.

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