Slashdot Mirror
Businessweek Recommends License Switch for Linux
MadFarmAnimalz writes "BusinessWeek has an article about the perceived threat of patents to linux, citing the SCO case, the opening of OSRM, and the Munich situation as evidence for the veracity of their conclusion that Linux isn't safe. Their solution? Relicense to the BSD license or the Mozilla license. On a positive note, the article's author does link to RMS' article Why Software Should Not Have Owners; good to see Stallman being quoted and linked to in a publication Like BusinessWeek."
Even if this were a good idea (which it's not - it's roughly on a par with somebody who is being attacked by rabid hyenas deciding that they'd be safer if they distracted the hyenas by attaching large chunks of fresh meat all over their body), it would require that either:
a) Anybody with significant (as in more than 20-30 lines or so) contributions to the kernel give their approval for the switch, and it ain't gonna happen because even if Linus went for it, Alan Cox is very much pro-GPL and has large chunks of code all over the kernel
or:
b) Somebody strip out or rewrite all parts of the kernel copyrighted by people who objected to the license change, which in the end would probably amount to an effective rewrite of the whole thing.
This article stems from a flawed assumption, namely, that the Linux development team really cares whether businesses switch to Linux or not. Linux was written by people who wanted "software that doesn't suck," not people who thought "Hey, let's write a bunch of neat-o code and put it out there and maybe a bunch of businesses will be interested."
In fact the article has it 100% backwards. Rather than Linux switching licenses to appeal more to the business crowd (which of course ain't gonna happen), business should start thinking of software in terms of software as a service -- not a web service, but a service like electricity or plumbing. Once that happens and businesscritters start realizing that you can use Linux in your enterprise without scaring off your employees or having to release all your internal software into the public domain, the arguments over lower TCO will start to take hold.
Someone you trust is one of us.
The GPL has rarely been to court precisely because its implications are clear. Violators settle quickly because the alternative is to stop shipping product. Grumblings about "murky" license terms amount to nothing more than sour grapes.
In any case, changing Linux's license is a practical impossibility. Hundreds of people and companies own bits of it, and all would have to agree to a change. Linux is condemned to retain the source of its success indefinitely.
BSD has a few forks.
Linux has many forks.
Main-line linux, as on kernel.org
Red Hat Linux, with a modified (forked) kernel.
Various patch sets that haven't (yet) made it into the main line.
By applying different combinations of patch sets, you can have more different possible kernels, this is before you start configuring, than there are places to put those kernels.
The critical difference is that Red Hat 2.6 is a fork from the main-line 2.6 not a 2.6 fork of Red Hat 2.4. Forks that aren't worth keeping up with just wither and die. Linux gives the outward appearance of not forking, because there is about as much merging as there is forking.
Yes I see your point it was badly worded by me, there is no way to prove that the donations came cos of the GPL or just because it large. As clearly small projects are likely to attract less donations. However I do believe the GPL has helped attract contributions (both personal and corporate), as I believe the GPL offers better protection from the abuse of a gift of code. It is also interesting that BSD which was more advanced (some would claim still is) when Linux started yet failed to catch on. Perhaps that was more because of the development model rather than the license? As you point out, we can't know the answers.
James