Re: Bad choice of license in BzrForEmacsDevs

[Lennart Borgman]

On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 10:32 PM, Stefan Monnier
<address@hidden> wrote:
>> In addition, I wonder about the other pages in that wiki have a
>> similar license.  Are there programs in the wiki which are licensed
>> this way, allowing GPLv2 and not GPLv3?
>
>> That would be a bad problem.  Can someone tell me if there are any?
>
> There might be some, but if they rely on Emacs-23 features, such a license
> would be illegal, AFAIK.



Alex is not subscribed here. Here is the answer I got from Alex when I
asked him to comment:

On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 10:23 PM, Alex Schroeder <address@hidden> wrote:
> I don't follow it. I think the people involved did not read the entire
> blurb:
>
> This work is licensed to you under version 2 of the GNU General Public
> License. Alternatively, you may choose to receive this work under any other
> license that grants the right to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute the
> work, as long as that license imposes the restriction that derivative works
> have to grant the same rights and impose the same restriction. For example,
> you may choose to receive this work under the GNU Free Documentation
> License, theCreativeCommons ShareAlike License, the XEmacs manual license,
> or similar licenses.
>
> --
> Sent from a mobile phone. Sorry for being terse.
>
> On 25.11.2009, at 19:58, Lennart Borgman <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> Hi Alex,
>
> Are you following this thread?
>
> Best wishes,
> L
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Giorgos Keramidas <address@hidden>
> Date: Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 7:44 PM
> Subject: Re: Bad choice of license in BzrForEmacsDevs
> To: Karl Fogel <address@hidden>
> Cc: address@hidden, address@hidden
>
>
> On Sun, 22 Nov 2009 21:30:27 -0600, Karl Fogel <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:
>
> http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/BzrForEmacsDevs
>
> allows GPL version 2, but not the current version.
>
> This is not a good thing.  Would the author(s) please change it to
>
> allow future versions of the GNU GPL as well?  The documentation we
>
> recommend to Emacs developers has to set a good example for licensing
>
> as well as have useful information.
>
> I wrote most of that page, and would be happy to change "2" to "3" in
>
> the blurb, but don't see how to do so.  It appears to be an
>
> administrative function of the EmacsWiki site, and I'm not sure how to
>
> change it, nor whether it can be changed on a per-page basis.
>
> EmacsWiki uses the Oddmuse engine; a Wiki engine written in Perl.
>
> Indeed, as you have guessed, the license text is a configuration setting
> in the Perl backend of the Wiki (a configurable footer for all pages).
> It is common for all the pages of the Wiki, so you would have to contact
> Alex Schroeder to install a change and it would affect all the pages of
> the Wiki.
>