Mercurial Relicensing
Matt Mackall and Crew have decided to extend the license of Mercurial from GPLv2 to GPLv2+ by adding the standard "or any later version" clause to the license. Among other things, this will resolve a perceived license conflict involved with Mercurial's SVN conversion code, and allow compatibility with a wider body of free software while maintaining a "strong copyleft".
Because no one person holds the copyright to all of Mercurial's code, this process will require obtaining agreement from the bulk of Mercurial contributors, and possibly replacing or removing any code from other contributors.
Process:
- identify all Mercurial contributors from repository history
- find addresses for contributors with unknown addresses
- send form mail to all contributors with known addresses
- collect responses
- follow up with any negative or unresponsive contributors
- if necessary, examine what code we do not have authorization to relicense and determine how to deal with it