[openssl-dev] License change agreement

Otto Moerbeek otto at drijf.net
Fri Mar 24 09:06:53 UTC 2017


On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 09:40:16AM +0100, Kurt Roeckx wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 08:36:02AM +0100, Otto Moerbeek wrote:
> > On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 08:21:49AM +0100, Marcus Meissner wrote:
> > 
> > > On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 07:48:58AM +0100, Otto Moerbeek wrote:
> > > > On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 04:11:48AM +0000, Blumenthal, Uri - 0553 - MITLL wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > > Apache license is fine for me, while GPL could be problematic. Incompatibility with GPLv2 is not a problem for us. 
> > > > > 
> > > > > If it is a problem for somebody - feel free to explain the details. Though I think the decision has been made, and the majority is OK with it. 
> > > > 
> > > > I like to mention that any license change cannot be made based on a
> > > > majority vote or any other method other than getting each author (or
> > > > its legal representative) to *explicitly* allow the change. The method
> > > > of "nothing heard equals consent" is not valid in any jurisdiction I
> > > > know of.
> > > > 
> > > > While I'm not a contributor (I think I only sent in a small diff years
> > > > ago), I would like to stress that the planned relicensing procedure is
> > > > not legal and can be challenged in court.
> > > 
> > > Well, emails were sent yesterday out to _all_ contributors for ack/deny the change.
> > 
> > Read the last line of the mail, it says the no reactions equals
> > consent. That is the illegal part.
> 
> The legal advice we got said that we should do our best to contact
> people. If we contacted them, they had the possibility to say no.
> We will give them time and go over all people that didn't reply to
> try to reach them.
> 
> But if they don't reply, as said, we will assume they have no
> problem with the license change. If at some later point in time
> they do come forward and say no, we will deal with that at that
> time.
> 
> 
> Kurt

Probably illegal and definitely immoral, in my opinion. Copyright law
exists to protect authors from these kind of practises.

	-Otto


More information about the openssl-dev mailing list