[vox-tech] Self-replacing license [was Urgent news: Linux may be relicensed]

[Micah Cowan]

Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting Micah Cowan (micah at cowan.name):
> 

Rearranged to suit my purposes.

 >
 >>The beef I have with the "at your option" part is that you are placing
 >>the future of your code entirely within the hands of the FSF. Now, maybe
 >>those are good hands. But theoretically, the FSF could come out with a
 >>/completely/ different, and not necessarily better, license, and call it
 >>GPL 3.0. Maybe it's suddenly not even free (not that it's likely, but
 >>who knows what RMS's successors will be like?); or maybe it tweaks the
 >>definition of "free" in a way I don't like.
 >
 >
 > Then, you (the recipient) elect GPLv2.

Well, yeah: as a recipient, I have no problem whatsoever with the "at 
your option" part. I will always choose whichever license gives me the 
most freedom, whether that's GPLv2, 3 or 27.

As an /author/, I elect GPLv2 (no "or later").

However, there is an interesting situation: when I'm both recipient and 
author (as in the case of modifying-and-distributing). In this case, my 
somewhat tenuous understanding is that I could actually elect to limit 
the entire body of code to GPLv2. But as IANAL, I would not feel very 
confident to do this, particularly if my own contribution were slight.

> 
>>If they had done the "version 2 or at your option" thing from the 
>>beginning, then they wouldn't have had to obtain agreement from other 
>>code contributors.
> 
> 
> Of likely interest:
> http://www.catb.org/~esr/Licensing-HOWTO.html#id2790762

In reading that section, I've already seen what I believe to be a 
glaring error of legal interpretation. This paragraph in particular:

   A "collective work" is a creative work of a group of individuals who
   do not share a common copyright in the result. Individual portions of
   such a work may (and often do) have copyrights, and there may also be
   a collective-work copyright on the work as a whole. The difference is
   practically relevant because, according to 17 USC 201 the holder of
   the collective-work copyright is legally privileged to set the
   distribution terms for the package as a whole (in the statute, this
   expressed negatively as a statement that the collective-work copyright
   holder acquires only those rights).

Reads a lot into 17 USC 201, more than I think is viable. I see nothing 
in the referenced text whatsoever that allows for the holder of the 
copyright on a portion of a collecive-work to "set the distribution 
terms for the package as a whole."---especially at the only part of the 
section that includes the referenced words, "acquires only those 
rights." If I believed this to be a legitimate reading, I'd be a helluva 
lot more scared.

But I note that the document you've referred to is still in draft stage, 
so perhaps this position will be altered at a later date.

As I've already said, IANAL, and one of the authors of the document you 
link to appears to be one, at any rate. But I'd at least like to see 
better justification for the paragraph I've quoted then I currently see 
in this document, or a reference to a case decision that bolsters this 
interpretation. (There is a case referenced a short ways down, but it's 
actually an unrelated point.)

Regardless, it looks to be an informative document, and I'm interested 
in seeing how it reads in the end. Thanks for the link!

-Micah