GPL compliance

[Gary W. Swearingen]

Scott Kitterman <ubuntu at kitterman.com> writes:

> No.  The legal cannot become illegal.  v2 or later includes v2, so no matter 
> what were to happen in a future revision of the GPL, the freedoms you have 
> with v2 cannot be taken away.
>
> There is NO risk here.  Please can we stop making stuff up now.

Sorry to trouble you and the list again, but I didn't make this up:

   This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
   it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
   the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
   (at your option) any later version.

NOTE^^^^^^^^^^^^^^  and no usage of "both" or "and" in the key phrase.

THAT (and/or clause 9) permits a GPL licensee to distribute his
derivative under ONLY ONE version.  (In which case it would't have
left any choice to subsequent licensees.  It's my rather fuzzy
impression that most GPL licensors pick only one, v2, glad to say, but
many don't.)  So he could pick only version 3b ("b" for bad, for my
hypothetical case).  And that could be incompatible with licenses that
were compatible with v2 and still in use on non-GPL parts of the
software.  That's what I meant by becoming illegal or whatever I said.
Of course, it would be the publishing of that derivative that would be
illegal.  Don't be so picky about normal English short-cuts.  (It's
like how GPL promoters say that BSD/X software can become closed.  Of
course it can't, really.  It's derivatives that can be closed, because
derivers are given more freedom to control _their_ work.)