Re: Copyright arrangements for a web project

Paul Tagliamonte writes ("Re: Copyright arrangements for a web project"):
> On Thu, Dec 12, 2013 at 02:44:19PM +0000, Ian Jackson wrote:
> > This program 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, version 3, or (at your
> > option) any other general public free software licence publicly
> > endorsed for PROJECT by Software in the Public Interest Inc
> > (i.e. SPI is a proxy as described in s14 of the GNU GPLv3 but SPI
> > is not limited to endorsing only future versions of the GNU GPL).
> >
> > (Along presumably with some Signed-off-by system for contributions.)
>
> This is the approach KDE takes (I saw this in NEW a few times) -

Thanks for the report:

> | This program 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 2 of
> | the License or (at your option) version 3 or any later version
> | accepted by the membership of KDE e.V. (or its successor approved
> | by the membership of KDE e.V.), which shall act as a proxy
> | defined in Section 14 of version 3 of the license.

Of course that only applies to future versions of the GNU GPL. It's
not possible to switch from AGPL to GPL (or the other way) with that
wording.

> I trust Debian with license freeness, and I do also trust SPI as well.
> I'd be happy to allow them to relicense my work, or even give a list of
> licenses that it can be used under.

Debian is ill set up to make this decision for other people,
unfortunately. You'd have to nominate someone in particular.

Thanks,
Ian.