Release plans

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Uwe Brauer writes:

 > So I am confused now. Do you mean the new release would be
 > fully GPLv3 compliant or not?

Within a short time I will release the last beta in the 21.5 series
under GPLv2+ licensing.  After that, all 21.5 and later versions will
be under GPLv3+.

 > What's about 21.4 then? 

21.4 will remain under GPLv2+.  That means you cannot *distribute*
GPLv3+ packages with it as a system.

>From our point of view, the system is XEmacs 21.5 + packages.  People
who wish to use 21.4 can continue to do so, with whatever packages,
including packages owned by Bill Gates himself and licensed under the
standard Microsoft EULA.  They just can't redistribute that
combination without violating the GPL.  (I'd worry more about
violating the MSFT EULA, myself. :-)

 > Now I admit my ignorance again in these license matters, but
 > it was my understanding that an upgrade of a pkg should wait
 > till we have sorted out the GPLv3 mess for Xemacs core

Yes.

 > and I thought this was for 21.4 and 21.5.

No.  21.5 only.  If the FSF wants to bitch about 21.4, they can do so,
and we'll have to do something at that point.  However, I don't think
they will as long as the mainline of XEmacs is GPLv3+, and we don't
release new versions of XEmacs 21.4, which I think is pretty likely.
21.1 is definitely unaffected because we will never release another
version of 21.1.

Julian Bradfield's friendly fork of 21.4 is not affected, of course,
because he does not distribute packages.

 > I like the idea of changing the version numbers for the
 > GPLv3 compliant versions.

I can only see bad things to come of that, unless the FSF forces us to
do it.  The only people who will understand what the new version is
are the people who already understand.  Everybody else will download
the latest and greatest version of XEmacs and discover that it's just
not ready for prime time.  It will be years before anybody trusts an
XEmacs release to have had any quality assurance.

But maybe that's just me.