relicensing to GPLv3-family of licenses (was Re: Distribution Naming System)

["Bradley M. Kuhn" <bkuhn ebb org>]

Sébastien Wilmet wrote at 15:35 (EDT) on Sunday:
> We can also upgrade our software licences to the GPLv3 and LGPLv3.

While this is a separate issue from the main thread, I must admit that I
personally would very much like to see this happen.  I gave a talk at
GUADEC four or five years ago now explaining how this could be done in
an easy way, step by step.

If anyone wants to work on this, I would be delighted to help.

Emmanuele Bassi wrote at 05:11 (EDT) on Monday:
> > on top of that, the v2 has given us the widest adoption possible, and

Copyleft is always a trade-off between more software freedom for users
and wider adoption.  I don't actually think GPLv2 gave you the widest
adoption possible -- a non-copyleft license like the X11 license
probably would have done that, but at the cost of users' software freedom.

RMS wrote at 12:58 (EDT) on Monday:
> > > For many libraries, using LGPLv2.1 may be best, to allow use in
> > > GPLv2-covered programs.

I have to disagree with RMS on this point.  As I proposed on
desktop-devel a long time ago:
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2010-July/msg00097.html

IMO, the best license for currently LGPLv2.1-or-later libraries is to
upgrade to (GPLv2-only|LGPLv3-or-later).

As I suggested in my aforementioned GUADEC talk,  this is an easy first
step toward moving fully to the GPLv3 family of licenses.

Emmanuele Bassi wrote at 05:11 (EDT) on Monday:
> > even if we don't take the "or later" at face value, re-licensing our
> > platform is going to be impossible: we don't have copyright assignment
> > (for a lot of good reasons) and in some cases some contributors do not
> > exist any more, making the re-licensing effort a non-starter.

As others have noted, this doesn't really make sense.  "or-later" is
designed to make such GPL-family-version relicensing possible without
copyright assignment nor CLAs.
-- 
   -- bkuhn