Re: [Monotone-devel] mingw-instructions

[Hendrik Boom]

On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 05:02:13AM -0500, Stephen Leake wrote:
> Timothy Brownawell <address@hidden> writes:
> >
> > Mostly I'm annoyed at the change from straight copyleft to forbidding it
> > from being used as part of things with certain properties. Not that the
> > particular properties they picked are likely to be relevant for a
> > developer tool, so maybe it doesn't really matter that much...
> >
> >> I don't think the process of upgrading requires getting approval from
> >> all current authors, because our license statements say "GPL 2 or greater".
> >> But I'm not a lawyer, so maybe that doesn't mean we get to change it to
> >> "GPL 3 or greater".
> >
> > AIUI changing the license statements on existing code requires
> > agreement, but you could also get much the same effect by just changing
> > the statements for new code... 
> 
> Good point.
> 
> > which seems to already be the case, see {unix,win32}/parse_date.cc .
> 
> That was me. We should have a project-wide agreement on using GPL 3 for
> new code (or not).

Using "GPL 3 or later" instead of "GPL 2 or later" tightens 
restrictions.  A user can already do everything GPL 3 permits because of 
the "or later" clause.  But the user will be restricted from things that 
GPL 2 permits but GPL 3 forbids.  What are those things?  And are any of 
them important enough to the monotone developers that it's important to 
restrict the users, who may have applications and needs we cannot dream 
of?

-- hendrik