"After internal consideration in the Samba Team we have decided to adopt the GPLv3 and LGPLv3 licences for all future releases of Samba. The GPLv3 is the updated version of the GPLv2 license under which Samba is currently distributed. It has been updated to improve compatibility with other licenses and to make it easier to adopt internationally, and is an improved version of the license to better suit the needs of Free Software in the 21st Century. To allow people to distinguish which Samba version is released with the new GPLv3 license, we are updating our next version release number. The next planned version release was to be 3.0.26, this will now be renumbered so the GPLv3 version release will be 3.2.0. To be clear, all versions of Samba numbered 3.2 and later will be under the GPLv3, all versions of Samba numbered 3.0.x and before remain under the GPLv2."
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2005-07-09
Actually they can. Anyone can take GPLv2 or later code and relicense it as "GPLv2 only" or "GPLv3 only" or "GPLv3 or later" or even "GPLv4". It's at the *user's* discretion (read the license). Now they can't relicense copies that they don't possess, so if Novell decides to fork the current Samba as "GPLv2 or later" or even "GPLv2 only" they could do so. But they couldn't take any updated code from the Samba team without going GPLv3.
Member since:2006-01-03
"Anyone can take GPLv2 or later code and relicense it as "GPLv2 only" or "GPLv3 only" or "GPLv3 or later" or even "GPLv4". It's at the *user's* discretion (read the license)."
Hmmm, no. You can't relicense the code, only the original copyright holder can.
If the code is licensed "v2 or later", *you* can choose to follow the terms of version 2, 3, 4, etc., but when you redistribute the code, the people that receive it *must* receive the right to do the *same*. If you redistribute the code as "v3 or later", you are limiting the rights of the recipients by preventing them from choosing to follow v2's terms.
Member since:2005-11-13
Member since:
2006-01-03
There's something that I don't get... Does the samba team require all contributors to assign copyright to them (just like most GNU projects require contributors to assign copyright to the FSF)?
If they don't, then they can't actually change the licence without permission from everyone that made a contribution, however small, because they (implicitly) licensed their code as "v2 or later" and not "v3 or later".