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Businessweek Recommends License Switch for Linux

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the thinking-about-the-big-picture dept.

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."

3 of 548 comments (clear)

  1. Not going to happen. by BJH · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  2. I wrote to BW, and said this. by Markus+Registrada · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I'm afraid your columnist, Mr. Wildstrom (in "Big Fly", 8/13), has been taken in by some who envy the success of Linux and GNU Project software. Every success is dogged by advice to abandon the wellspring of that success. For Linux, that wellspring is the GNU General Public License. IBM could (and can) as easily adopt a BSD-based OS, just as Apple did. With the best legal advice available on the planet, IBM chose the GPL.

    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.

  3. Re:And of course... by oolon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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