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Linus Says No GPLv3 for the Linux Kernel
HenchmenResources writes "Late Wednesday a posting from Linus Torvalds appered on the the Linux Kernel Mailing List. In it Linus states that the Linux Kernel will remain under the GPLv2. Types Linus,"The "version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version" language in the GPL copying file is not - and has never been - part of the
actual License itself.""
I've always found it funny that Stallman insists on the term "GNU/Linux". GNU/Linux is a misnomer. There's Debian Linux, RedHat Linux, SuSE Linux, Gentoo Linux, and dozens of others. Debian is probably closest to GNU/Linux, but strictly speaking, because there's no complete operating system that uses only GNU utils and the Linux kernel, there's no such thing as GNU/Linux. Rather, there are competing OSes that use that kernel, and GNU based utils as some portion of the OS. Last I checked, GNU didn't come up with rpm, and it can be argued that the package management system of an OS is about as important as anything else on the system (not sure offhand about apt, but then I said Debian is probably closest to GNU/Linux "purity").
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
I am probably just an old idealist but so is RMS.
It sounds to me more like you're simply an old advocate of RMS, since what you're saying here is his worldview, pretty much word for word.
FOSS, GNU and Linux is about the right to choose, a right wich is very limited outside the FOSS community.
Stallman is not about a choice at all. He cannot tolerate the idea of anyone using any other license whatsoever. This is an example of what I'm talking about, in his own words. This is another good article which illustrates what I'm talking about, in terms of his attitude towards making a living from software development.
In his mind however, it is his way or the highway, and I believe that this and the above attitude are also part of the reason why the BSDs aren't more popular; Stallman has succeeded in alienating many people from them, simply because the people producing them don't adhere to his decrees. I am glad Linus is finally putting some kind of conscious, deliberate thought as to whether or not to stay on this man's bandwagon any longer...it is something that should have been done a very long time ago.
On the surface, Stallman is very good at making his arguments sound compelling...it's only when you look beneath the surface that you start to discover that his motives aren't anywhere near as pure as they initially seem to be.