Re: Move to LGPL3

[Sven Herzberg <herzi gnome-de org>]

Hi Tommi,

Am Dienstag, den 18.03.2008, 11:56 +0200 schrieb Tommi Komulainen:
> On Sat, 2008-03-15 at 21:03 +0100, ext ryan lortie wrote:
> > After some talk at the Hackfest about it, I'm writing the list to
> > officially request that glib and GTK be moved to LGPL "version 3 or
> > later".
> 
> IANAL and all, but here are a few points for consideration based on my
> experience after being exposed to Nokia legal machinery.
> 
>      1. Changing the wording from "version 2 or later" to "version 3 or
>         later" will remove the "2 or later" option. To my understanding
>         changing the terms of the license text counts as relicensing.

Not really, using "LGPL 2 or later" code unter the terms of "LGPL 3 or
later" is explicitly allowed by the "or later" amendment. Replacing the
"LGPL 2" part of that phrase with "LGPL 3" is completely okay. The text
would only have to be changed once the first patches with "LGPL 3 or
later" (no LGPL 2 anymore) start getting applied.

Remember, anyone is still free to use the last release published under
"LGPL 2 or later" (that's why I actually think that we should only do
that with GTK+ 3.0 if we have really large/good features arriving after
3.0 which people will want to see in their applications - to make them
consider relicensing).

Regards,
  Sven