On Sun, Dec 09, 2001 at 08:35:37PM -0800, Rick Moen wrote: > The downside risk is, I suppose, the possibility that FSF might make GPL > v. 3 do something radically permissive, e.g., consist of BSD terms.
I trust the current board of the FSF, etc., the real downside is the possibility that in the future the FSF will manifestly change in its nature. One possible reason would be change in personell over time -- people do get old, and the new crop may not agree with the old crop. Another possibility is the FSF gets into a nasty legal conflict with some entity, loses the lawsuit, and huge damages are awarded to the other party. The FSF is unable to pay, and loses all its intellectual property to its adversary. Its adversarity, say Microsoft Corp., has different ideas about how the GPL v3 should be worded... for example, allowing Microsoft (and only Microsoft) to incorporate all GPL'd software into Windows. Anyone care to comment on what would prevent this doomsday scenario? Justin -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3