Well, it's moot any way, since I have no applicable code, but you are right, it doesn't impact Freenet the same way that it does Linux, my concern is more one of compatibility with GPL2 distributions as discussed in the linux kernel position statement.
The GPL3, as the GPL2 is often accused of being, but is not in practice, is a viral license, that is that there are some cases in which as written, it would require a user of the license to release _other_ property under a compatible license. This is a significant problem, and as such, I think that specifying a specific version of the GPL to license Freenet under would be a superior position. It actually seems like this is what you intend any way since you state that there would be no automatic upgrade to GPL3 but only a manual upgrade process. If that's the case, why not specific GPL2 explicitly at this time? --Brandon On 2006-09-27 (Wed) at 01:20:08 +0100, Matthew Toseland wrote: > On Tue, Sep 26, 2006 at 07:05:11PM -0500, Brandon Low wrote: > > I do not give permission for any microscopic amount of code that may > > exist of mine in current freenet to be tagged GPL V2 or later, GPL V2 > > only for me. > > As far as I can see you haven't made any commits that affect 0.7. > > > > I won't go into the reasons for this, they are well discussed by the > > document recently published by the linux kernel developers. > > Linus is always right. Repeat after me, Linus is always right. > > Seriously, I don't see why we shouldn't have a discussion about this. > > Which of the following do you want to do?: > > 1. Use Freenet in TCPA systems without giving the user the right to run > modified code? (The "give away your root password" thing is nonsense). > (I don't think we're likely to have any megacorp sponsors) > 2. Distribute free software while asserting patent rights on it, and > therefore charging a per user fee for the patent license? > (I don't think we're likely to have any megacorp sponsors) > > As I understand it the compatibility issues are considerably easier on > GPL3. If you add a file which is, for example, ASL2, all you have to do > is include the license of that file as well as the GPL3, and the > relevant section 7 additional restriction is automatically added. Remove > that file and it is removed. > > Or perhaps you are going to rewrite the entire Apache Commons corpus > under GPL2-compatible terms? Admittedly we only want to use a few > archiving clases from Commons Compress, and we can probably include ASL2 > code anyway with GPL2 code, but that's technically a conflict and we > should avoid it if possible - probably by having the main source as GPL2 > or later (not necessarily GPL3), and including the ASL2 code. > > > > --Brandon > >
