Re: Dangerous back door in the LGPL

On Wed, 5 Jun 2002, Matt Seitz wrote:
[...]
> --- Francois Gouget <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On Tue, 4 Jun 2002, Matt Seitz wrote:
> > > I think I see your point.  If Microsoft bought the FSF, what could happen
> > is:
> > > 1.  The FSF issues LGPL 3, which says "Only Microsoft can distribute this
> > > work".
> > > 2.  Microsoft distributes MS-WINE under LGPL 3.  Microsoft does not have to
> > > distribute source, and no one but Microsoft can distribute MS-WINE or any
> > > derivative work.
> >
> > This does not prevent others from redistributing Wine under the terms of
> > the LGPL 2.1 unless they also modified the COPYING.LIB file in the Wine
> > sources that says 'under the terms of the [...] version 2.1 of the
> > License, or...'.
>
> True, but I assume if Microsoft went to the trouble of buying the FSF, issuing
> an LGPL 3, and creating an MS-WINE version, then they would not be stupid
> enough to leave such an obvious back door.  They would almost certainly ammend
> COPYING.LIB so that the distribution terms for MS-WINE would be LGPL 3 only.

But they cannot do that. If they could, they could also edit it right
now to put any license they want.

The only way to legally modify COPYING.LIB is with the agreement of all
the copyright holders. And I very much doubt that Microsoft could get
it.


--
Francois Gouget         [email protected]        http://fgouget.free.fr/
                  Hiroshima '45 - Czernobyl '86 - Windows '95