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

[C. Scott Ananian]

On Sat, Apr 23, 2011 at 7:39 AM, Sean DALY <sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://fsfe.org/projects/gplv3/europe-gplv3-conference.en.html
> http://fsfe.org/projects/gplv3/barcelona-rms-transcript.en.html
>
> see question 6b from this Q&A from the 3rd International GPLv3
> Conference (Barcelona, June 22-23, 2006):
>
> **********
> Q6b: Second question, when people start to update their licences to
> the new versions, how will that happen in practice?
>
> RMS: In practice, any program that says it can be distributed under
> GPL version two "or later" will automatically be available under GPL
> version 3, but, when people make subsequent releases, they can change
> that to say "GPL version 3 or later", that's what we will do in
> subsequent releases of GNU software.

The FSF can do this because they own the copyright on all their code
(via mandatory copyright assignment).

In fact, they've done this on my code, too -- I've assigned copyright
on patches to the FSF.  I'm not objecting to the FSF doing this, or to
the GPLv3 in general -- I'm objecting to dragging *Sugar* through a
debate it has no part in, for no compelling reason.  Since the FSF has
maintained explicit copyright over its code for the explicit stated
reason to allow it to move aggressively to "hold the left" of the
copyright wars, I have no objection to the FSF using my code for this
purpose.  That's why I support the FSF, and why I contribute code to
them.

That's *not* part of SugarLab's core goals (unless you somehow think
that the GPLv2 is no longer a "free software" license).  I object to
the Sugar code being manipulated as a pawn in this fight.  It has
enough battles of its own to fight without being dragged into more.
  --scott

-- 
      ( http://cscott.net )