No dangerous back door in the LGPL, at least not this one...

Il gio, 2002-06-06 alle 04:40, [email protected] ha
scritto:
> Message: 6
> Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2002 17:17:11 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Matt Seitz <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: Dangerous back door in the LGPL
> To: Francois Gouget <[email protected]>
> Cc: Wine License <[email protected]>
> 
> 
> --- Francois Gouget <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On Wed, 5 Jun 2002, Matt Seitz wrote:
> > > 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.
> 
> They cannot do that today, because Microsoft is not the FSF.  But if Microsoft
> controlled the FSF, then they could.
> 
> > The only way to legally modify COPYING.LIB is with the agreement of all
> > the copyright holders. 
> 
> No, the only way to legally copy COPYING.LIB (or a work derived from
> COPYING.LIB) is with the agreement of all copyright holders.  Microsoft could
> simply replace COPYING.LIB with their own license stateme

  ehm, from what I understand of the issue, the only thing the clause
says is that you, as a redistributor, or as a user who have received the
code, can redistribute the code under the current license or under the
new one, if such one exists.

  First of all, this means that in the unlikely event of the license
changing for the worst, this change is not retroactive. All already
released code is not affected and you can still use it under the license
you prefer, be it the old or the new one.

  Second, by all means this can only create a code fork just like the
current situation, just more clear from the point of view of which fork
will prosper, since I don't think the new fork will ever get any
attention by the community.

  This is true for both kind of changes, be them trying to enforce a
more extremist one or a more "proprietary" one.

  So, I wouldn't worry to much about this issue. After all, it's the
community working on Wine who will decide how a new version will affect
the code.

  bye,

/pietrobo


-- 
Stud. Marco Pietrobono            | Murphy's Law: if something could
v. del Calice, 39 - 00178 ROMA    |     go wrong, it does.
Tel. +39.06.7186329  339.7410893  | Legge di Murphy: se qualcosa può
http://www.pietrobo.com           |    andar male, lo farà.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Strange game.
The only winning move 
is not to play.
What about a nice play of chess ?

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