GPL v3

[David Kastrup]

"Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen at xemacs.org> writes:

> Malcolm Purvis writes:
>
>  > I understand that at some point all of Emacs CVS is going to be
>  > re-licenced v3.  Code present in Emacs up to that point we can
>  > sync with freely, but syncing with code after that point would
>  > cause XEmacs to be re-licenced v3 as a consequence.  The
>  > re-licensing is a problem because we haven't decided yet if we
>  > want to use v3 at all.
>  > 
>  > Have I understood this correctly?
>
> Yes.
>
> Except that there's a theoretical possibility they can relicense
> everything in CVS retroactively, despite the notices in old CVS
> versions, and it might stand up in court.

This is not entirely accurate: they can't either license or relicense
anything in CVS: the license is what covers the _conveyence_ of a
copy, not its existence.  What is in their CVS is, essentially, not
yet licensed to anybody.

They can change the conditions for accessing their CVS, yes: if you
get your copy _after_ that time from _their_ CVS, regardless of what
the old license notices _in_ the CVS say, the whole kaboodle might be
available to you _only_ under GPLv3.  So get your mirror _today_, and
keep the log.

> They can't do that if we already have a copy.

Correct.

> They probably won't, but I'd like to have the option to stick with
> GPLv2 for a while.

The GPLv3 change for Emacs is going to be quite abrupt.  While you
probably have enough things to sort out in connection with the license
change, I should warn you that the GNU projects have been notified and
asked to go GPLv3 fast.  For my own Emacs-related projects, I have
told Richard that I don't see it making sense to relicense AUCTeX
under GPLv3 before there is a GPLv3 released Emacs.

It would appear, however, that the copies of Emacs 22.1 available from
the FSF (without an actual update to 22.2) will get relicensed quite
fast, as well as the CVS.  It is to be expected that at least
GNU-project related separate packages will follow quite close on foot.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum