Re: [Evolution-hackers] Evolution: Taking forward...

[Michael Meeks <michael ximian com>]

Hi Paul,

On Fri, 2008-07-11 at 12:46 -0400, Paul Smith wrote:
> Once you start accepting a significant amount of code without copyright
> assignment, it will be difficult to the point of impossibility to change
> the license again.

	Yes. Hence (in part) the choice of a more liberal / lesser license:
that hopefully provides some safeguards here against future changes.

> We can only assume that the FSF will, in the future, come out with a
> GPLv4 and that this license will have its own set of incompatibilities
> with the existing GPLv2 and GPLv3 licenses (ditto for LGPL of course).

	Sure; but it seems unlikely that the LGPLv4 will be incompatible with
the LGPLv3 or v2 - the 'lesser' nature of course allow even proprietary
software to be linked to these.

> IMO, if a software project is going to accept code without assignment
> then they really should be using the "LGPLvX or later" license
> structure, rather than providing a list of acceptable licenses.

	Sure - but there are real problems persuading lawyers to license code
under a license that doesn't yet exist & that they havn't read :-)	

	HTH,

		Michael.

-- 
 michael meeks novell com  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot