Re: Update some sim copyright headers to GPLv3-or-later

Joel Brobecker
2012-12-19T11:38:28Z

> > IANAL either, but only the copyright holder can change the license.
> > And to me changing the coyright headers as proposed does effectively
> > change the license, since "GPL v3 or later" is more restrictive than
> > "GPL v2 or later". Legal issues aside, I'd consider it impolite, even
> > dishonest, to change the license on somebody else's code without their
> > permission[1].
>
> I will ask the FSF for official confirmation.

Actually, I had already asked. This is case gnu.org #690921.

| > I am one of the GDB Global Maintainers, and I have a question
| > regarding the right of changing the license on some of the files
| > in the GDB project. For some reasons that are unknown to me, the
| > FSF is not the copyright holder of some files in the simulator part
| > of GDB. For instance, we have sim/erc32/sis.h:
| >
| > * This file is part of SIS.
| > *
| > * ERC32SIM, SPARC instruction simulator. Copyright (C) 1995 Jiri
| > Gaisler,
| > * European Space Agency
| > *
| > * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
| > modify it under
| > * the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
| > Free
| > * Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your
| > option)
| > * any later version.
| >
| > It seems that we're explicitly allowed to upgrade the licence to v3,
| > even if the file is copyright Jiri Gaisler. Is that correct?
|
| That is correct. That's strange that code was not assigned. I'm a
| little confused by the 'European Space Agency' bit. Jiri just completed
| an assignment for GCC not too long ago, maybe it would be worthwhile to
| see if he wouldn't want to assign on GDB as well. Thanks for your time.

Now, whether impolite or dishonest is not for me to judge. I am just
following the FSF's request. And FYI, all of this has been taking
hours of my time, soon to add up to days. I don't think I should
be asked to make a list of all involved parties, track them down,
and ask them whether they agree to the change or not. Especially
since the license they chose to use explicitly included permission
for us to do so.

That being said, if someone would like to step up for the group,
and volunteer to inform the various parties involved, I would
entertain the idea of backing the change out - provided that
the FSF is OK with that. And if we could also get them to assign
their past changes to the FSF, that would be awesome.

--
Joel