[IAEP] [Sugar-devel] ANNOUNCE: Moving Sugar to GPLv3+

[Bernie Innocenti]

On Fri, 2011-04-22 at 16:45 +0100, Peter Robinson wrote:

> >  We're not retroactively re-licensing existing code.
> 
> Really? By moving to GPLv3 your removing the ability to use GPLv2
> which is by definition a re-license of the code.

Not really, this is a common misconception: redistributing code under
later versions of the GPL is explicitly allowed by the current licensing
terms (GPLv2 or later).

If it weren't the case, then we'd have to ask for permissions to all
copyright holders, which includes present and past contributors of
legally relevant portions of the code. What constitutes a "legally
relevant" portion is a matter of infinite arguments between copyright
lawyers.

-- 
Bernie Innocenti
Sugar Labs Infrastructure Team
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Infrastructure_Team