Re: [sigc] Linking dynamically with SigC++ (now rather: License)

[Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com>]

On Mon, 2007-07-16 at 08:42 +0200, Hans Meine wrote:
> On Samstag 14 Juli 2007, Chris Vine wrote:
> > Since the libsigc++ source files are distributed under a licence
> > enabling them to be used and copied under "version 2.1 of the License,
> > or (at your option) any later version", happily this avoids you having
> > to obtain the consent of every person who has contributed code to
> > libsigc++ (assuming that they have explicitly or impliedly donated the
> > code on those terms).  You do not need to change the licence to v3 to
> > achieve the required result, although you could do so.
> 
> IANAL, but AFAIK this is not true.  You can *never* change the license at all 
> without consent from the authors.  It may be that an author wants his code to 
> be available under "version 2.1 or later", not under v3. :-(

If you've given consent for your code to be released under "version 2.1
or later" then you've given your consent for someone to release it under
version 3,  4, 5, etc. The original copyright holders are free to
continue to release their original code under version 2.1. This is well
accepted.

Of course, it's only polite to check that this is what people would
like.

> But IANAL, so take this as another of these non-authoritative contributions to 
> a license discussion thread.. ;-/  (FWIW, I repeatedly read the above on the 
> kde-core-devel list.)

Which doesn't make it correct.

-- 
Murray Cumming
murrayc murrayc com
www.murrayc.com
www.openismus.com