--- On Tue, 12/14/10, Mathieu Bouchard matju@artengine.ca wrote:
From: Mathieu Bouchard matju@artengine.ca Subject: Re: [PD] libraries in Pd-extended 0.43 To: "Hans-Christoph Steiner" hans@at.or.at Cc: "PD List" pd-list@iem.at Date: Tuesday, December 14, 2010, 8:56 PM On Tue, 14 Dec 2010, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
I mean no disrespect. When you released
'unauthorized' under the GPL, you made a promise to your users that 'unauthorized' would remain free software. That is the meaning of the GPL.
That's not the meaning of it.
The meaning of the GPL (or any other public license) is that once you put something under the GPL, *that* version of the software can be used under the same license forever. However, the owners of the copyright can choose any other license they want for the existing software as long as they don't make them conflict (users get to pick the license they want in that case).
The owners of the copyright can also stop distributing the GPL version, and make a series of versions under whichever other license, and that's why the FSF considers forking to be a most critical right : the right to continue to update a free version of any software that has been free.
You know this, and in effect, by volunteering as the maintainer of «Unauthorized», you are forking it, or announcing a pending fork (waiting for a diff to apply).
So did the software in question _always_ have the conflicting licenses, or was it originally just GPL and in a subsequent version the other license was added?
| Mathieu Bouchard ---- tél: +1.514.383.3801 ---- Villeray, Montréal, QC
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