The FSF's copyright assignment mentions that all distribution of assigned work "shall be on terms that explicitly and perpetually permit anyone possessing a copy of the work [...] to redistribute copies of the work to anyone on the same terms. These terms shall not restrict which members of the public copies may be distributed to. These terms shall not restrict a member of the public to pay any royalty to FSF or to anyone else for any permitted use of the work they apply to, or to communicate with FSF or its agents or assignees in any way either when redistribution is performed or on any other occasion".
This would not prevent the FSF from relicensing the code to a more permissive license (and it happened sometimes that GPL code was relicensed to LGPL, in fact; for example, GMP used to be under the GPL). But the GPL cannot be "cracked" by the FSF either; it says explicitly that "new versions will be similar in spirit to the present versions, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns".
Power management, mobile and firmware developer on Linux. Security developer at Aurora. Ex-biologist. mjg59 on Twitter. Content here should not be interpreted as the opinion of my employer. Also on Mastodon.
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Re: Playing devils advocate
Date: 2014-01-21 09:26 am (UTC)This would not prevent the FSF from relicensing the code to a more permissive license (and it happened sometimes that GPL code was relicensed to LGPL, in fact; for example, GMP used to be under the GPL). But the GPL cannot be "cracked" by the FSF either; it says explicitly that "new versions will be similar in spirit to the present versions, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns".