On Friday, 5 September 2014 at 08:39:06 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:
> The idea that an external party, that you are not affiliated with, can change the license of an author is extraordinary!

Indeed, what if MS buys FSF and releases GPL4? Everyone will be screwed.

> And probably at at odds with what is taken as basic authorship rights in some jurisdictions. But it might stand a chance if the author explicitly grant FSF the right to do it in every single source file…

Well, this is what the author does: grants the right to relicense to everybody. It's granted outside GPL, so one can't refer to GPL being hard to understand.

On 5 September 2014 04:20, via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote:
> And the following text is recommended to be put in each source file:
>

<snip>

>
>     You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
>     with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
>     51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.»
>

No one should really use the 51 Franklin Street reference anymore. This is instead replaced with:

If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.


Iain.

On Fri, 05 Sep 2014 02:23:09 -0400
Nick Sabalausky via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote:

> I think this thread, and every other discussion of GPL on the net, demonstrate one of my earlier points: GPL is freaking confusing.
i can't see anything confusing here. v2 and v3 can't be mixed, but any *properly* licensed v2 software can be upgraded to v3, due to "or any later version...". and those who artificially broke this upgrade system using GPL not the way it's intended to use. it's not forbidden, just plain stupid.

On Friday, 5 September 2014 at 09:26:22 UTC, Kagamin wrote:
> Indeed, what if MS buys FSF and releases GPL4? Everyone will be screwed.

It has to be in the spirit of GPL according to clause 9, so GPL4 has to be aligned with the current FSF philosophies...

> Well, this is what the author does: grants the right to relicense to everybody. It's granted outside GPL, so one can't refer to GPL being hard to understand.

Not sure what you meant with this. GPL grants the legal recipient of the object the right to obtain the source code and create copies of it under the same terms. But you cannot claim the right to the source without having obtained the object in a legal manner first and you cannot demand that others give you a copy. (Matters little for wide distributions… but a group of people could in theory cross license programs under GPL and have a mutual non-distribution agreement that if broken would cause full distribution of all the programs.)

So anyone sitting on a GPL2 licensed object with a valid upgrade clause can release it as GPL3? And you can relicense a derived work built on top of GPL2 as GPL2+another license that does not contradict the rights granted by GPL2?

On Friday, 5 September 2014 at 09:34:23 UTC, Iain Buclaw via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> No one should really use the 51 Franklin Street reference anymore.
> This is instead replaced with:
>
> If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

Then FSF should update their own website:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html

On Mon, 01 Sep 2014 16:06:10 -0400, Nick Sabalausky <SeeWebsiteToContactMe@semitwist.com> wrote:

> On 9/1/2014 3:11 PM, Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>> On Mon, 2014-09-01 at 09:43 +0000, monarch_dodra via Digitalmars-d
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Then again, it takes a certain kind of corporate greed to try to
>>> put a patent on things we'd have never thought of as "inventions".
>>
>> Aren't corporate and greed synonyms?
>>

No.

> That's actually true in much more than just a snide comment sort of way. A corporation is *legally obligated* to put shareholder profit above all other concerns. Either they act like greedy f&#ks or they risk getting the crap sued out of them. The problem is we've permitted, and promoted, a system where companies are owned by people (shareholders) whose *sole* interest in the company is purely financial.

Not true. A corporation is run by its managers for the benefit of the shareholders. It's up to the shareholders to determine the best course of action, and what the value should be.

I think what you are referring to is public companies, whose shareholder interest is often purely financial by definition. And yes, there are legal requirements to put the shareholders' interests above other concerns, but not ALL other concerns. There are MANY OTHER legal requirements as well.

But as many people may surmise, maximizing profits isn't always the best course of action for shareholders' interests. There is a reason shareholders vote, it's to express their position on what the company should do, and that isn't always "screw all our customers and employees so we can make a few more bucks."

See e.g. Market Basket.

> The *real* role of businesses in a society is to provide worthwhile goods and/or services. Revenue, and even profit, is ultimately just a necessary means to that end. But stocks and incorporation flip this around, to disastrous results.

Please don't confuse publicly traded companies with corporations. The pure reason for a corporation existence is to shield owners from liability. In other words, if you sue a corporation, you can only go after the assets of the corporation, not the assets of its owners. A corporation can be a company owned by one or 2 people, who simply don't want to risk their entire family's assets to go into business.

There is a LOT of misinformation and demonization of corporations going on in the US. It's actually quite sad that people have no idea what they are fighting for, or who they are demonizing.

And yes, my family owns a corporation.

-Steve

On 09/16/2014 11:05 AM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> On Mon, 01 Sep 2014 16:06:10 -0400, Nick Sabalausky
> <SeeWebsiteToContactMe@semitwist.com> wrote:
>> That's actually true in much more than just a snide comment sort of
>> way. A corporation is *legally obligated* to put shareholder profit
>> above all other concerns. Either they act like greedy f&#ks or they
>> risk getting the crap sued out of them. The problem is we've
>> permitted, and promoted, a system where companies are owned by people
>> (shareholders) whose *sole* interest in the company is purely financial.
>
[...]
>
> I think what you are referring to is public companies,

Yes, sorry, I meant publicly traded corporation.