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Accident Forgiveness Comes to GPLv2

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Re: Accident Forgiveness Comes to GPLv2

#41
post #39

Doesn't this clause seems not backwards compatible with GPLv2? At face value GPLv3 seems more constrained - so it's easy to relicense an existing v2 project. You just tell everyone working on it, okay, now every addition we make has extra requirements (if you want the looser version, you can grab an older copy of our project from when we switched licenses) Loosening the license on pre-existing code is sorta like if y…

No, GPLv3 and v2 have always been incompatible. v2 forbids placing additional restrictions on distribution, whereas v3 adds more requirements (e.g. patent grants). So if you receive code under v2, you can't distribute it under v3, nor can you distribute v3 under v2, nor can you combine them.

https://opensource.stackexchange.com/a/1778

Re: Accident Forgiveness Comes to GPLv2

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not arguing that the FSF shouldn't push an ideology. Nor is he arguing that he doesn't have an ideology-- he states it clearly in the video regarding his understanding of the GPLv2-- "I give you the source code, you give me back your changes, and we're even." He is making a claim that FSF tried to persuade him that the GPLv3 would satisfy Linus' ideology under the reasoning that it allows him to invalidate the t…

> That's rather hard to believe IMO, as I've never read or heard anything from the FSF that is purposely deceitful in this manner. The FSF has claimed that several licenses that have requirements not present in GPLv2 are compatible with GPLv2; the FSF is very aggressive in pushing the use of their license and their bias for such use definitely colors their representation of facts.

But do you have any evidence of a developer telling them, "I don't want the additional requirements GPLv3 would bring," and the FSF replying, "That's fine, you can just use GPLv3 without the such-and-such clause"?

Aggressively pushing the GPLv3 and misrepresenting its efficacy to GPLv2 fans are two completely different things.

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