On Saturday 07 July 2007 04:01:17 Bradley Arsenault wrote:
> I just read the GPL FAQ in its entirety and talked with some GPL gurus.
> Technically, the consent to re-liscense was already given through the
> "either version 2 of the License, or
> (at your option) any later version." clause in the pre-amble of every
> file. As for the translation files, they don't have a pre-amble, so they
> are assumed to have the same liscense as the rest of the project. Since
> every file with a pre-amble says that all changes can be reliscended, under
> clause 9 of the gpl 2 (which although optional, we have used), we can
> re-liscense the translation files. Same goes for the graphics.
I think you are missing the point of the whole discussion there. This clause,
about upgradability, is itself illegal in most world's jurisdictions
according to Cyrille.
Steph
--
http://stephane.magnenat.net
According to the GPL FAQ, the copyright holder is allowed to reliscense their works as they please, (as with the Bernes convention). We can not enforce a new copyright on the copies people already have, but we can release new versions with a changed license based on the same works, being that we own the copyright. Since there are multiple contributors, this involves multiple people wanting to change their portions to the new license, (I could relicense my source files as one and you keep the others but thats pointless), as we need everyone in order to move the whole project to GPL v3.
This clause, however, is the legal permission to relicense to a later version of GPL by any contributor. People who have made contributations know that their copyrighted material may be found under a different license, namely GPL 3 or GPL 4 or so on, so we can legally change the license to GPL v3 without them.