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Relicensing Dolphin: The long road to GPLv2+

dolphin-emu.org

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Re: Relicensing Dolphin: The long road to GPLv2+

#31

Post by maaku »

Ruud-v-A wrote: post #30

I think it is a mistake to license anything under a “or later version” license. If you do that, you licence your code under a license that you have never read, so how can you know that it serves your intentions? You are blindly licensing code under a licence that has yet to be written! In the GPL case, the Free Software Foundation states that “The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of th…

If you are pro-patent protection, the FSF already released something radically different.

Re: Relicensing Dolphin: The long road to GPLv2+

#32

Post by jordigh »

joesb wrote: post #29
jordigh wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But what if you objection to GPLv2+ is specifically already realized in GPLv3,like, say, the market-differentiated anti-Tivoization rules. Yeah, if you like tivoisation, you probably don't like the spirit of the GPL at all. Tivoisation is really a loophole that wasn't anticipated in GPLv2. It should not have been allowed by GPLv2, but it simply wasn't anticipated. > (Also, "similar in spirit" is so vague as to be c…

The problem is I can never be sure exactly what the "spirit of GPL" is.

It's explained in the preamble.

    [...] the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your
    freedom to share and change all versions of a program--to make
    sure it remains free software for all its users.

Re: Relicensing Dolphin: The long road to GPLv2+

#33

Post by carussell »

lnanek2 wrote: post #9
jordigh wrote: post #3

> In practice, GPLv3 only adds more restrictions to the license Not at all. They say so themselves: GPLv3 adds compatibility with Apache v2, which GPLv2 lacks. This thus removes a restriction. GPLv3 also clarifies some things from GPLv2, such as being explicit about being applicable not only to software, and giving a clearer meaning of what distributing software means. GPLv3 calls this "conveying".

That's not true at all. Read up on the different licenses. The reason v3 was created was to fight tivoization, where the code is realeased, but the hardware prevents loading updated copies. From the point of view of a company licensing their source, v3 is much more restrictive. It requires a lot more things than a more free license. Linux is famous for rejecting it because of that. Yes, there's a benefit that you are…

This is off-topic to the comment jordigh made. Describing it as "not true at all" is worse than stretching; it's just wrong on its face. Re-read the original comment.

Re: Relicensing Dolphin: The long road to GPLv2+

#34

Post by silon5 »

lnanek2 wrote: post #9
jordigh wrote: post #3

> In practice, GPLv3 only adds more restrictions to the license Not at all. They say so themselves: GPLv3 adds compatibility with Apache v2, which GPLv2 lacks. This thus removes a restriction. GPLv3 also clarifies some things from GPLv2, such as being explicit about being applicable not only to software, and giving a clearer meaning of what distributing software means. GPLv3 calls this "conveying".

That's not true at all. Read up on the different licenses. The reason v3 was created was to fight tivoization, where the code is realeased, but the hardware prevents loading updated copies. From the point of view of a company licensing their source, v3 is much more restrictive. It requires a lot more things than a more free license. Linux is famous for rejecting it because of that. Yes, there's a benefit that you are…

IMO, GPL2 has all the stuff against tivoization already there (preferred form for modification -- if I can't modify it for actual hardware, it's not enough).

Re: Relicensing Dolphin: The long road to GPLv2+

#35

Post by baghira »

maaku wrote: post #31
Ruud-v-A wrote: post #30

I think it is a mistake to license anything under a “or later version” license. If you do that, you licence your code under a license that you have never read, so how can you know that it serves your intentions? You are blindly licensing code under a licence that has yet to be written! In the GPL case, the Free Software Foundation states that “The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of th…

If you are pro-patent protection, the FSF already released something radically different.

To be fair, most FLOSS license, including GPLv2 and BSD 2-clause and 3-clause, are (were?) usually considered to have an implicit patent grant, similar in spirit to the one in MPLv2 or GPLv3. I don't think that argument that one could use GPLv2 while thinking that software patent are good has that much ground.

Re: Relicensing Dolphin: The long road to GPLv2+

#36

Post by Flimm »

dragonwriter wrote: post #21
jordigh wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As long as RMS is in charge, I'm not worried about the contents of the next GPL dramatically differing from the current spirit. You don't have to trust RMS. You can trust lawyers interpreting clause 14 of GPLv3 correctly. This clause says that later GPL versions must be "similar in spirit". It also says that newer versions cannot impose any more obligations or restrictions on authors or copyright holders.

But what if you objection to GPLv2+ is specifically already realized in GPLv3,like, say, the market-differentiated anti-Tivoization rules. (Also, "similar in spirit" is so vague as to be completely meaningless.)

Then people can still use your code under GPLv2.

Re: Relicensing Dolphin: The long road to GPLv2+

#37

Post by malka »

xahrepap wrote: post #12
comex wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're talking about Dolphin, read the article again. Nobody refused, but a few people couldn't be contacted - unlike Linux, Dolphin has never required real names from contributors, so this mostly consisted of a few people who contributed under an alias a few years ago before utterly vanishing from the Internet. EDIT: disregard; didn't see the graph, and wasn't previously aware of the one person who refused. See h…

I read it. And it's still confusing because of this graph (from the article): https://dolphin-emu.org/m/user/blog/relicensing/relicensepie... Note: "0.5% Refused. Code Rewritten" If you mouse over that graphic in the article it says 1 person refused. However, the article otherwise completely ignores that 1 person... (unless I missed it, both times ;) )

they Probably do not want to générale (further ?) Drama by publicly pointing fingers.

Re: Relicensing Dolphin: The long road to GPLv2+

#38

Post by chii »

silon5 wrote: post #34
lnanek2 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true at all. Read up on the different licenses. The reason v3 was created was to fight tivoization, where the code is realeased, but the hardware prevents loading updated copies. From the point of view of a company licensing their source, v3 is much more restrictive. It requires a lot more things than a more free license. Linux is famous for rejecting it because of that. Yes, there's a benefit that you are…

IMO, GPL2 has all the stuff against tivoization already there (preferred form for modification -- if I can't modify it for actual hardware, it's not enough).

then why can you not modify your tivo?

GPL2 hasn't had that problem present when it was written, and so tivo found a way to prevent practical modification, even tho they followed the letter of the license.

In my eyes, most, if not all open source software should use AGPL, and dual license a commercial license offer for those people who want to buy it for modification. You should contribute, or pay up, else the tragedy of the commons will occur.

Re: Relicensing Dolphin: The long road to GPLv2+

#39

Post by zanny »

silon5 wrote: post #34
lnanek2 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true at all. Read up on the different licenses. The reason v3 was created was to fight tivoization, where the code is realeased, but the hardware prevents loading updated copies. From the point of view of a company licensing their source, v3 is much more restrictive. It requires a lot more things than a more free license. Linux is famous for rejecting it because of that. Yes, there's a benefit that you are…

IMO, GPL2 has all the stuff against tivoization already there (preferred form for modification -- if I can't modify it for actual hardware, it's not enough).

If GPLv2 were sufficient against Tivoization than Tivo would have been able to be sued for violating it.

It wasn't, and they amended GPLv3 to make sure that if Tivoization ever happened with GPLv3 code, they could sue for that.

Re: Relicensing Dolphin: The long road to GPLv2+

#40

Post by maxerickson »

jordigh wrote: post #13
0x0 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Licensing GPLv2+ means you'll accept any future "GPLv4", "GPLv5" etc without having any idea what those licenses will look like. You might end up not liking having them apply to your code. What if control of FSF is taken over as if like a coup and a nasty "GPLv4" is released?

The worst that could happen is that there is a future GPL version that removes copyleft. If there is a future GPL version that is horrible for the receipient, then at worst that receipient can simply opt for GPLv3. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.html#V... Clause 14 of GPL 3 also clarifies what later licenses can do. They must be "similar in spirit" and they cannot impose any additional requirem…

The FSF has in the past shouted "YEEEEHAAAAW" and done whatever happened to suit Wikipedia:

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html#section11

I guess "Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0" is probably similar in spirit to the GFDL 1.2, but there was some large amount of top-downess in using the or later clause to help Wikipedia switch licenses.

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