Talk:Legal Team/later-version-clauses

On 2017-08-03 09:59, User:Jlovejoy marked Motosoto as “no "only option”. But because the only source of later licenses is the Licensor, the distinction seems less clear. If the Licensor wants only semantics, they can just never publish a later version of the license. Motosoto looks like a one-off license (only useful to Motosoto.Com B.V., because the opening paragraph is so specific), but the same sort of issue applies to the APL-1.0 (which is setup to be project-generic). The GPL, CC, and similar families are different because they are generic licenses whose future is goverened by a third party (so the licensor needs to make the only/or-later call at licensing time, vs. making the call at “maybe I'll write a new version of this license” time). I've marked the APL-1.0 as allowing only, but we should probably figure out which way we want to go on this for consistency.

I don't think we're being consistent about marking defaults. For example, the CDDL family allows later versions unless “the Initial Developer includes a notice in the Original Software prohibiting it from being distributed or otherwise made available under any subsequent version of the License”, while the GPL family allows later versions only if the program specified “any later version”, and yet both are marked with “or later” as the default. I think the default logic should be what happens if someone hands you a paper copy of the license text, and says “I'm licensing this work to you under these terms”. In that case, the GPL family would default to “only” (because there is no explicit “any later version” grant). UPDATE (2017-08-08): in today's meeting, there wasn't agreement about what the implied terms were if someone just hands you a copy of the license with no further grant. John Sullivan is going to discuss this case with the other FSF folks and see if they have an opinion.