Re: Dangerous back door in the LGPL

On Fri, May 31, 2002 at 05:32:47PM -0700, Matt Seitz wrote:
> "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.

On the contrary, this is a problem because many people who choose copyleft
licenses want to prevent anyone from receiving preferential treatment.
That includes the FSF, and /definitely/ includes Microsoft.  If the FSF
were acting in bad faith (and if Microsoft bought the FSF, you can bet
they would), they could write a successor license to the LGPL that
restricts what *other* people could do with code so licensed, while
placing no such restrictions on Microsoft itself.

This is indeed a potential loophole in the license, but the community is
faced with a difficult choice between opening themselves up to this sort
of abuse, or leaving themselves with no way to correct for unforseen legal
weaknesses in the license.  The good news is that the FSF gives you an
easy way to choose for yourself: if you're more concerned about the FSF
"selling out", you need only add a statement to the license on your code
indicating that this clause cannot be exercised.

Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer