Re: GPL version 3

[Stefan Reinauer <stepan@coresystems.de>]

* Jeroen Dekkers <jeroen@vrijschrift.org> [070704 23:10]:
> At Wed, 4 Jul 2007 21:40:15 +0200,
> Yoshinori K. Okuji wrote:
> > So I bet that GRUB Legacy should remain under GPLv2. But this can cause some 
> > problem potentially. Let's say, we find the same bug both in GRUB Legacy and 
> > in GRUB 2. In the current trend, the bug would be fixed in GRUB 2 sooner. But 
> > this fix may not be backported to GRUB Legacy as it is, once GRUB 2 migrates 
> > to GPLv3, because of the license incompatibility. Thus this means that the 
> > maintenance of GRUB Legacy would be harder.

These sound very much like house made problems, invented to push a
conversion to GPL3. Why would it be any harder to maintain Grub legacy?

1. There is no shared code between GRUB2 and Grub Legacy

2. Just have all the patches GPLv2 or later, and it will automatically
   be GPLv3 or GPLv2, whatever applies. 

> Are you sure about this? Given that we've assigned copyright to the
> FSF, the FSF can decide under which free software license to license
> that code. So I don't really see why we can't release the same code
> under GPLv2 or later in GRUB Legacy and under GPLv3 or later in GRUB2.
 
Yes, it is simply not the author's choice anymore, but the FSF's. At
least in some countries of the world.

Stefan

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