On Wed, Nov 22, 2000 at 12:28:04PM -0800, Brian Behlendorf wrote:
> On 22 Nov 2000, Karl Fogel wrote:
> > Brian Behlendorf <brian@collab.net> writes:
> > > So the word back from our legal counsel is this is cool; we should put a
> > > copy of the license on subversion.tigris.org, version-numbered (so,
> > > perhaps, http://subversion.tigris.org/license_1.html), and each file
> > > reference both COPYING and the URL, and it's all good.
> >
> > Will do. I will say that each file is licensed under that licence or
> > any later version, on the theory that if/when we change the license,
> > we'd like people to be able to retroactively apply the new terms to
> > whatever copy of the software they have. Sound good?
>
> Sounds good.
Not to me.
As a user of software, I really dislike that "any later version" phrase.
*) consider the NPL/MPL: it has this "feature". Are you happy contributing
to that project, knowing that AOL/Netscape can release a new NPL/MPL that
says "nobody can copy this software without paying us our licensing fee"
and attach it to the code you wrote? If you were a user, would you
appreciate new licensing that said you must pay for using Mozilla?
*) consider the GPL: are you happy to contribute to that, knowing that RMS
could release GPL V3 that states that you can only use the software on
systems that contain zero proprietary software? He could do it, and
software authors could elect to use V3 and there isn't much you can do
about it since it *said* they could do that.
*) Linus removed that "any later version" phrase from (his portions of)
Linux because he wasn't sure what RMS was going to do in V3, and he
didn't want those changes to magically apply to his software.
I say that software should be released under a specific license. If you want
to change the license, then re-release the software with the change. Let the
people decide whether they want to use the new or old license.
But this whole "hey, we can change it" is a bit scary for developers and
users of the software.
Cheers,
-g
--
Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/
Received on Sat Oct 21 14:36:15 2006