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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+

#41

Post by carussell »

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…

Even in the worst case scenario, it remains available under the original license, and that's not going to change.

What is the worst case scenario, by the way? You could say it depends on who you are. One such scenario would be for developers who agree with the FSF's strong copyleft philosophy who are betrayed by a future hypothetical revision that removes all copyleft provisions to make it no stronger than, e.g., BSD. This affects only a subset of those choosing a license for their project. (I.e., if you don't care about copyleft, this purportedly horrific thing doesn't even affect you.) Funnily enough, the subset of those who would be affected are hardly ever the ones I see making the argument you are.

So what terrible things do you imagine the worst case scenario involving?

Re: Relicensing Dolphin: The long road to GPLv2+

#42

Post by glass- »

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…

Wikipedia's content used to be licensed under GFDL 1.2 or any later version. In order to transition to a more appropriate license the Wikimedia Foundation asked the FSF to release a new version (GFDL 1.3) that specifically allowed relicensing to CC BY-SA.

The new license may be "similar in sprit" but what it allows relicensing to may not be.

Re: Relicensing Dolphin: The long road to GPLv2+

#43

Post by sokoloff »

chii wrote: post #38
silon5 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 traged…

AGPL is a market failure as I see it. I understand and sympathize with what that license is trying to do, but in practice, it just means that many companies won't touch that software (or will only touch it in a fashion where they don't modify that part of the system), meaning that there are far fewer adopters at all, and of those that adopt, fewer modify the software, meaning that it evolves more slowly than products with more used licenses.

Re: Relicensing Dolphin: The long road to GPLv2+

#44

Post by yarrel »

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…

I trust the FSF twenty years from now more than I trust someone today who doesn't use "or later version".

Re: Relicensing Dolphin: The long road to GPLv2+

#45

Post by RisingFog »

warp wrote: post #10
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…

Looking at the graph mouseover, I think 10 contributors refused to relicense. Their contributions were removed from the codebase.

Incorrect. One contributor refused while 10 we were unable to contact.

Re: Relicensing Dolphin: The long road to GPLv2+

#46

Post by carussell »

tzs wrote: post #25
jordigh wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people (Linus Torvalds is a notable example) think that GPLv3's provisions that forbid things like locked down hardware are too much. They would rather be "permissive" and allow hardware that restricts what the user can do with it. What good is modifiable software if the hardware will refuse to run software if it's modified? Tell me, Mr Anderson, what good is a phone call when you are unable to speak?

Note that while GPLv3 prohibits Tivoization, that is only one way to lock down hardware. For instance, the locked apps model of iPhone is OK under the GPLv3 (GPLv3 is incompatible with the App Store, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with the locked hardware. That's due to the TOS for the App Store requiring the user agree to not reverse engineer and not redistribute apps they obtain from the store). The anti-Tiv…

Can you explain in more detail why you think trying to distribute a GPLv3 app on the App Store wouldn't run afoul of the terms you quoted:

> you convey an object code work under this section in, or with, or specifically for use in, a User Product, and the conveying occurs as part of a transaction in which the right of possession and use of the User Product is transferred to the recipient in perpetuity or for a fixed term

Is it because you see this as meaning that downloading from the App Store at a later time doesn't qualify as "occur[ing] as part of a transaction [that transfers possession/use of the device]", and that the binaries have to be present at the time the iPhone is purchased for these terms to have any effect?

Have you raised this issue with the FSF? Have you gotten any sort of response?

Re: Relicensing Dolphin: The long road to GPLv2+

#47

Post by jordigh »

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…

> they _could_ do so.

They already wrote legalese that says that they can't do so. This isn't merely an empty promise: it's already encoded into the text of the license. If a later version of the license is radically different and not in spirit of the GPL or imposes upon authors obligations that earlier versions of the GPL do not, then the current version of the GPL already says that later version would be invalid.

Re: Relicensing Dolphin: The long road to GPLv2+

#48

Post by detaro »

sokoloff wrote: post #43
chii wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 traged…

AGPL is a market failure as I see it. I understand and sympathize with what that license is trying to do, but in practice, it just means that many companies won't touch that software (or will only touch it in a fashion where they don't modify that part of the system), meaning that there are far fewer adopters at all, and of those that adopt, fewer modify the software, meaning that it evolves more slowly than products…

Biggest problem seems to be kind-of unclear rules where it stops, especially when it comes to web applications (templates, linked assets, ...).

There are surprisingly few "trustworthy" comments on that out there, most stuff you find is a bunch of people going "I think XXX, but IANAL" on stack overflow.

Re: Relicensing Dolphin: The long road to GPLv2+

#49

Post by yellowapple »

jordigh wrote: post #47
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…

> they _could_ do so. They already wrote legalese that says that they can't do so. This isn't merely an empty promise: it's already encoded into the text of the license. If a later version of the license is radically different and not in spirit of the GPL or imposes upon authors obligations that earlier versions of the GPL do not, then the current version of the GPL already says that later version would be invalid.

Would the anti-TiVoization wording in the GPLv3 count as "obligations that earlier versions of the GPL do not [impose]", and if so, does that mean that the GPLv3 is invalid?

Re: Relicensing Dolphin: The long road to GPLv2+

#50

Post by JoshTriplett »

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 don't trust the FSF, the GPLv3 actually offers another alternative: "If the Program specifies that a proxy can decide which future versions of the GNU General Public License can be used, that proxy's public statement of acceptance of a version permanently authorizes you to choose that version for the Program."

So you could say "GPLv2, GPLv3, or any later version approved by ...". Which then means that a future relicense to allow GPLv4 (after reviewing it to your satisfaction) would not require contacting every single contributor.

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