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boramalper 9 hours ago

If you are an individual developer, please don’t do this. I think proxy delegation is best suited to an organisation (ideally to a non-profit) whose lifespan is longer than of a solo developer and more likely to have “checks and balances” that protect all maintainers’ rights vs just you and yours.

If you don’t want to hand FSF a carte blanche regarding your project—perfectly understandable—then pick a “version X only” variant and move on.

Quarrel 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Why?

It seems like there are two options:

a) The "founder" of the code disappears in to the ether, and it is the equivalent of "version X only";

b) The "founder" stays involved, and if GPL 3 is updated, they can choose.

only b is worth speaking of. In b, isn't having someone in a position to make a choice much better than no one? What is the boogie monster that is the worry? The FSF puts out the 4.0 version, with a special "except for boramalper" clause, that lets you specifically monetise the hell out of it while keeping it closed source? I would not lose much sleep over that.

Stallman is a nutcase, in an endearing way (ok, maybe you have to have moved in the right circles). But he has put in place a system that needed just such a nutcase, who established clear black lines that could not be crossed, and who was also writing enough amazingly meaningful code that we needed to take his license seriously, that could then establish the institutions and governance to make it all live beyond him.

boramalper 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> only b is worth speaking of. In b, isn't having someone in a position to make a choice much better than no one?

Actually, you're right! I thought the proxy can nominate/decide that any other license can be used in the future (i.e. "licensed under GPLv3 or X" where I can chose X to be anything) but it seems that I was wrong. Re-reading more carefully (emphasis mine):

> If the Program specifies that a proxy can decide which future versions of the GNU Affero General Public License can be used, that proxy’s public statement of acceptance of a version permanently authorizes you to choose that version for the Program.

So FSF creates the future versions of a specific license the work is under (in this case AGPL) and the "founder" chooses whether to allow its usage or not. That sounds reasonable to me.

Thanks for the pushback!