Re: Changing top level files and include/ files over to GPLv3

[Alexandre Oliva <aoliva@redhat.com>]

On Jul  9, 2007, Gerald Pfeifer <gerald@pfeifer.com> wrote:

> On Mon, 9 Jul 2007, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
>> At which point I wonder why someone would have problems upgrading the
>> license of an earlier GCC code base.  Can anyone list any reasons why
>> this upgrade would be objectionable, considering that it was widely
>> (?) known that GCC (and any other FSF-owned code) would upgrade to
>> GPLv3 pretty much as soon as it was available?

> I am not sure the customers of $X will appreciate a license change of
> this kind with a point release,

The code was already GPLv2+.

And then, any customer can still do whatever they could, beyond any
doubt, under GPLv2, and then some more: GPLv3 relaxes a number of
GPLv2 requirements, and clarifies a number of GPLv2 requirements to
make sure none of newly-invented restrictions are interpreted as not
covered by the "no further restrictions" wording.

And then, people can still run the program without accepting the
license.

So, honestly, what's the big deal?  Is it just "fear of the unknown",
or is there more to it?

-- 
Alexandre Oliva         http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
FSF Latin America Board Member         http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist  oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}