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Date: Tue, 1 Jun 2021 18:20:38 +0200 (CEST)
From: "Maciej W. Rozycki" <macro@orcam.me.uk>
To: DJ Delorie <dj@redhat.com>
cc: Paul Koning <paulkoning@comcast.net>, gcc@gcc.gnu.org
Subject: Re: Update to GCC copyright assignment policy
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On Tue, 1 Jun 2021, DJ Delorie via Gcc wrote:

> > GCC 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 3, or (at your option)
> > any later version.
> >
> > To me that means the recipient of the software can relicense it under
> > a later license.  It doesn't say to me that the original distribution
> > can do so.
> 
> I've never read it that way.  To me it says "a recipient may
> redistribute it under terms of a newer license, but the license remains
> v3+ even if they do" - we're giving the recipient a choice of actions,
> but not power to relicense.

 My interpretation of this would be for modifications rather than original 
sources, so v3+ applies to unmodified sources (for obvious reasons, given 
that the recipient of the sources is not a copyright holder), however as a 
copyright holder I can release my modifications say under v4 or v4+.  It 
is unclear to me if the newer licence will then "stick" to the rest of the 
sources, but I suspect it will.  A copyright assignment made to FSF (or 
another legal entity) prevents this complication from happening.

  Maciej