Thanks, I'm very aware free software coders aren't being paid by the FSF, but as you indicated the FSF does still in many cases have those copyrights assigned to them because the developers believe in the FSF philosophy, and Stallman of course is the creator of the FSF.
Your comment was "There are currently over 5,000 such GNU software packages, as listed at FSF/UNESCO Free Software Directory. These packages are critical to all BSD and Linux based systems, including Mac OS X. FSF owns this code.". That is Stallman's power, and unless that Army of developers suddently decides they'd rather commercial companies like IBM etc benefit from their work, instead of advancing Stallman's vision for free software, they will continue coding for the FSF and hence the GPL3.
I've not heard of any major GPL product other than the linux kernel that is advocating sticking with GPL2, there may be some, but are almost certainly a minority in the 5,000 different packages you cited, are they not?
His FSF holds copyright, but he licensed it under GPLv2.
Once he, or anyone, does that, they no longer control the use of software, so long as GPLv2 license terms are followed.
That "army of coders" bloody well doesn't code for Stallman. We code for various reasons, and get paid various ways. A well known computer company pays my salary, for instance. I'm sure as h**l not coding for Stallman's vision of the world. Most likely some small bit of my code is in that pile of GNU software, under FSF copyright, but Stallman has no power over our continued use of it. It is published under GPLv2, and you, me or anyone else can use, modify and distribute it, under the terms of that license.
I'm not currently actively involved in any GPL project other than the Linux kernel, so I can't tell you what will happen. But I'd expect work to continue on the GPLv2 available code, for all projects of interest.
There is way too much money, from too many big players, involved in this by now, and FSF has no choke hold, nor any significant resources, with which to change that now.
All it will take is for one of the major players to determine that they cannot accept GPLv3 code, and the die will be cast. Continue to code for GPLv2 distribution, and your code will be available to all. Let FSF take that copyright for any new code, and your code is on a dead end to nowhere.
It's not a fork if everyone goes one way.