[arp242]

I suppose my concern with not getting permission from all contributors is that a bad faith contributor could make life hard. For those S signs with a stripe, or just out of spite. For better or worse, in systems like the US anyone can sue anyone for any reason and everyone is expected to carry their own costs, which is why everyone is so paranoid and covers their ass with three tanks worth of metal.

Aside:

"Meanwhile, Richard Stallman, author of the GPL and founder of the FSF, had significant disagreements with the PHP project over their use of the GPL, so the PHP project discontinued the dual-licensing approach, removing the GPL license as an option"

Haha, such classic Stallman.

[jraph]

The PHP Group can do anything they want since they can release a new version of the license without contributor approval because of the "or later" clause.

[mikehall314]

I assume this is the reason they're characterising this as "PHP License V4 will have identical wording to BSD-3" rather than "We will switch license to BSD-3".

It amounts to the same thing, but the former framing means they're covered by the "or later".

[arp242]

That is not what the article says. It doesn't mention "or later" at all?

And reading the full license text, I don't see "or later" there either?

[ameliaquining]

The wording to search for is, "You may also choose to use such covered code under the terms of any subsequent version of the license".

[arp242]

Ah cheers. Don't understand why that's not mentioned at all in the length section on changing the license?

[graemep]

> Meanwhile, Richard Stallman, author of the GPL and founder of the FSF, had significant disagreements with the PHP project over their use of the GPL, so the PHP project discontinued the dual-licensing approach, removing the GPL license as an option

The main link that cites is primarily about the MySQL license change to GPL and the impact on PHP licensing of tha. I also do not understand why anyone would drop the GPL because Stallman does not like their licensing.

[rollcat]

> I also do not understand why anyone would drop the GPL because Stallman does not like their licensing.

Stallman is said to be notoriously difficult to work with, and IMHO he's quite an extremist.

He tried to veto emoji support in Emacs, because at the time it's only been supported on macOS. The reasonable recourse would've been add emoji support on the free platforms, but he seemingly can't see that far. So he's been ousted from the project.

In situations like this, I honestly would prefer to shut him off as well. I have huge respect for his past work, but at this point he's doing more harm than good.

[throwaway9899p]

To understand the value of his behaviour, you need to look at it from a broader strategic point of view, particularly the idea of setting the overtone window.

Without Stallman, the moderate would be cast as the extremist.

Stallman’s positive contribution to humanity cannot be overstated by any measure. Without him and the like of him, it is not improbable that the whole software industry would be like Apple ecosystem.

[rollcat]

I do recognise and respect his past work. But he's come to a point where he'd rather hinder the progress of free software than help it. That's not extremist, that's short-sighted and spiteful.

That, and the uh, "it's not rape if..." comments. I wouldn't want anything to do with this guy following that, just no.

[graemep]

> Stallman is said to be notoriously difficult to work with, and IMHO he's quite an extremist.

You do not have to work with him to use the GPL. You can use the GPL and ignore him completely. Its just a license.

[arp242]

> I also do not understand why anyone would drop the GPL because Stallman does not like their licensing.

Because he can be so obnoxious that people want to sever all ties with him and anything that has to do with him so that they never ever have to talk to him ever again in any capacity.

This goes back a long time. For example Keith Packard on why X11 isn't GPL (from https://youtu.be/cj02_UeUnGQ?t=1705):

> Richard Stallman, the author of the GPL and quite an interesting individual lived at 5405 DEC square, he lived up on the sixth floor I think? Had an office up there; he did not have an apartment. And we knew him extremely well. He was a challenging individual to get along with. He would regularly come down to our offices and ask us, or kind of rail at us, for not using the GPL.

> This did not make a positive impression on me; this was my first interaction with Richard directly and I remember thinking at the time, “this guy is a little, you know, I’m not interesting in talking to him because he’s so challenging to work with.”

> And so, we should have listened to him then but we did not because, we know him too well, I guess, and met him as well.

There are many anecdotes like this over the years from many people, often people who in broad lines actually agree with Stallman.