http://www.openbsd.org/policy.html
Scroll down to the section 'Permissions - the flip side' and consider the consequences of the statements in paragraph 4. This section is probably the biggest one that supports my view that GPL cannot be recinded and after initiation and that all GPL code should be carefully considered with regard to future use in GPL environments even by the original author. I am open to having that view changed if you have a more definitive source of reference, however, it may well be the case that some of the flexibility that may be present in under one regional boundary isn't present in another region. To this end many licenses state that the licensing terms are in accordance with 'California state law..' or whatever, by accepting the terms you are therefore reducing ambiguity on the use of the license. -Andy -----Original Message----- From: Adam [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 05 April 2006 01:14 To: Andrew Smith Cc: misc@openbsd.org Subject: Re: GNU license files rules replacement guidelines with BSD one On Wed, 5 Apr 2006 00:15:02 +0100 "Andrew Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > GPL cannot be revoked by the author and, what is more, a new version > being classed as a 'derived work' would still under the terms of GPL > be classed as GPL and the original author couldn't do anything about > it. Revoking is not involved here. The copyright holder can do whatever he or she wants with their code. If I made something GPL, I can turn around and make it BSD licensed, or close the source and not license it at all, its up to me. If you can still get your hands on the code from when it was licensed under the GPL, then your copy is still under the GPL, and you can do whatever the GPL allows. But it has no impact at all on future versions and how I choose to license them. - Linus faces this issue with future versions of Linux, he > doesn't like GPL 3 and won't accept it but he can't take GPL 2 off > Linux kernel since it is an evolving project and is derived from > previous versions. No, he can't take the GPL 2 off because hundreds of different people own the copyright to GPL code in the kernel. All of them would need to agree to re-license it. Adam
