LGPL Version Exclusivity (Was: Releasing software under both LGPL 2.1 & 3 - A good idea?)

[colin davidson]

First off, to release under any license (or at least, to do so legally), you
must be the copyright holder. As copyright holder you may release under as
many licenses as you choose, unless or until you enter into a legally
binding agreement with someone else not to. In other words, if you want to
do an LGPLv2.1 release and then a seperate LGPLv3 release, noone in the
world can legally prevent you.

However, if one person releases a patch under v2.1 and another releases a
different patch under v3, you may never be able to (legally) combine them.
For that reason, you need to seriously consider if you actually want your
code running around out there under 2 different (and for all that they have
the same name, incompatible) licenses.

Cheers, Colin

On Thu, Nov 6, 2008 at 11:00 AM, Scott Elcomb <psema4-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 2:30 PM, Scott Elcomb <psema4-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> [...]
> > In order to get around this I'm thinking to excerise the "at your
> > option any later version" bit and release under the LGPL 2.1 then a v3
> > version immediately following (as part of the build process).
>
> In following up with licensing-at-gnu.org, I received this reply:
>
>  The "later version" option doesn't mean that the software is licensed
>  under both LGPLv2.1 and LGPLv3. It means that the software is licensed
>  under LGPLv2.1 *or* LGPLv3 (with an exclusive "or"), and it is the
>  option of the distributor to choose which one.
>
> I've responded by saying that I'm still thinking on the matter and
> that I'd be in touch in a few days.
>
> I can't quite put my finger on it, but this just strikes me as wrong.
> (I can release under the LGPLv2.1, but if I want an LGPLv3 version out
> there someone else has to do it?)
>
> Just curious if anyone has any thoughts on this.
>
> Take care,
> - Scott.
>
>
> --
>  Scott Elcomb
>  http://www.psema4.com/
> --
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