Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Why are ebuilds licensed GPL v2 only (no later version)?

[Luigi Mantellini]

can help?

https://lwn.net/Articles/74055/


On Fri, Jan 26, 2018 at 3:47 PM, Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@×××.net> wrote:

> Ulrich Mueller posted on Fri, 26 Jan 2018 10:36:49 +0100 as excerpted:
>
> > Apparently licensing of the Gentoo repository was changed from GPL-2+
> > to GPL-2 (only) in 2002, see for example [1] and [2]. I cannot find any
> > announcement or discussion about this.
> >
> > Who was around in 2002 and still remembers what was the rationale?
> >
> > Ulrich
> >
> > [1]
> > https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo/historical.git/commit/skel.ebuild?
> id=e67af11c176e4dca33846e65c2649aa456de3099
> > [2]
> > https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo/historical.git/commit/header.txt?
> id=dc4dfe8aa903fb467e648da80f8bc3178411a77a
>
> I wasn't around in 2002, but I was researching it by late 2003 and began
> installing in early 2004, by which point Gentoo was suffering the
> aftermath of the bitter split with Zynot and DRobbins was pretty much out
> after having set up the Gentoo Foundation and (what became the) Council.
>
> The Zynot side was focused on embedding and trying to take things
> commercial, while accusing DRobbins of trying to do effectively the same
> thing but with a(n IIRC) gaming focus.
>
> That war has long since been fought and history has played out with
> Gentoo still around and Zynot... not, so I'll try to avoid inserting
> opinion /too/ much (tho I'm sure more recent events played out how they
> did in part due to that history, people around then simply weren't
> interested in what must have sounded rather similar), but...
>
> The switch to GPLv2-only would have been made in the fight for its life
> that was the Gentoo/Zynot fork, and almost certainly had to do with
> trying to ensure that the gentoo/x86 tree could not be taken private
> without community recourse, in an era before GPLv3 existed and there was
> some uncertainty about what its legal terms were going to be, while those
> of the GPLv2 were known, it had broad community support, and was at
> least /somewhat/ legally tested.
>
> Of course as we know it's possible for an entity owning copyright on a
> GPLed work to also sell the rights to use it commercially, with the GPL
> preventing others from doing the same, and that's what both sides were
> accusing the other of trying to do, but as we've seen play out in other
> contexts, the one thing the GPL /does/ do is provide a guarantee that the
> code as-is will remain free, and community improvements to it without a
> CLA letting the entity trying to take it proprietary are then disallowed
> from being used to further that entity's plots.  With the uncertainty
> surrounding the still coming GPLv3 at that point, I believe the intent
> was to ensure that continued.  OTOH, those on the Zynot side would surely
> argue that the intent was to ensure that Zynot couldn't take it private,
> while Gentoo/DRobbins could, especially since at the time copyright was
> assigned to Gentoo.  Of course now we have the advantage of looking back
> it it in history and can see how things turned out, but back then, it was
> far less clear how things would turn out.
>
> --
> Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
> "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
> and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman
>
>
>


-- 
Luigi 'Comio' Mantellini
R&D - Software
Industrie Dial Face S.p.A.
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