> Well, it's essentially multi-licensing without knowing what all the licenses are. It gives some power to the FSF to choose what the next license for your work will look like.
Sure, but the FSF's drafting process is open. Not to mention that if you don't like the drafts (or the final version) you can always restrict "or any later version" by saying "or any later version, except versions X, Y, Z". Sure, this'll mean your old code could be used under that license, but new code won't. By the way, the MPL (and CDDL) has the "or any later version" clause built into the license without an option -- by using MPL you are allowing Mozilla to relicense your code whenever they want.
> It's not asking for trouble to avoid relicensing until you can see the new license.
Until you find out that some of your contributors have passed away, and either:
a) Their copyright is in an estate, making it effectively impossible to get anything re-licensed.
b) Their copyright has passed to their next of kin, who might have no understanding of what the deceased's views on free software were and thus probably will do something like ask for money to relicense it (or just refuse outright).
Not to mention that if you're a large project, you're asking for trouble. In most cases, the only contact information you have about a person is their email address -- and since email addresses change all the time it's unlikely you'll be able to contact everyone. Mozilla went through a bunch of trouble trying to re-license all of their code because of problems like this.
Sure, but the FSF's drafting process is open. Not to mention that if you don't like the drafts (or the final version) you can always restrict "or any later version" by saying "or any later version, except versions X, Y, Z". Sure, this'll mean your old code could be used under that license, but new code won't. By the way, the MPL (and CDDL) has the "or any later version" clause built into the license without an option -- by using MPL you are allowing Mozilla to relicense your code whenever they want.
> It's not asking for trouble to avoid relicensing until you can see the new license.
Until you find out that some of your contributors have passed away, and either:
a) Their copyright is in an estate, making it effectively impossible to get anything re-licensed.
b) Their copyright has passed to their next of kin, who might have no understanding of what the deceased's views on free software were and thus probably will do something like ask for money to relicense it (or just refuse outright).
Not to mention that if you're a large project, you're asking for trouble. In most cases, the only contact information you have about a person is their email address -- and since email addresses change all the time it's unlikely you'll be able to contact everyone. Mozilla went through a bunch of trouble trying to re-license all of their code because of problems like this.