Re: Dangerous back door in the LGPL

"Roland" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Hello,
> 
> excerpt from the Wine LGPL:
> 
> "Wine is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
>   the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the
>   Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at
>   your option) any later version. "
>                     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> 
> The dangerous part is the last "any later version". This puts a lot of 
> power into the FSF and is dangerous. Basically it gives WINE to the FSF 
> since the FSF may change its license anytime to something different. What 
> if the FSF suddenly gets bought by Microsoft?

OK, suppose the FSF suddenly does get bought by Microsoft*.  There are
essentially 2 things that can happen:

1.  A new, more restrictive license is issued.  As an extreme example, say the
new license is that only Microsoft can distribute the code.

This would have no effect, since each user can choose to ignore the later
version.  The license doesn't say "the latest version"  is says "2.1 or any
later version".  So if I don't like LGPL 3.0, I can simply ignore it and
continue to distribute my copies under the terms of LGPL 2.1.  So can anyone
else who receives my version.

2.  A new, less restrictive licesne is issued.  As an example, say the new
license places no retrictions on use or distribution.

Now, this could be troublesome.  If the whole reason you contributed to a
project was that it was under LGPL protection, and you didn't want Microsoft to
be able to use it without giving back their changes, this clause could suddenly
nullify that protection.

Conclusions:

1.  There is no reason to fear a more restrictive LGPL, so that is not a reason
to omit the clause.
2.  There is reason to fear a less restrictive LGPL.  So if you want to make
sure your code cannot be used under looser licensing terms, removing the clause
seems like a good idea.

*Stranger things have happened.  An anti-Scientology group, the Cult Research
Network, declared bankruptcy.  It was subsequently bought and is now operated
by the Church of Scientology, the very group they opposed.

=====
Sincerely,
Matt Seitz

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