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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.""
This comes as no great surprise. How could Linus convert it to v3, even if he wanted to? There are thousands of individual copyright holders to contact (not everyone released it under "any later version"). For some of them, that's going to require a seance and/or JLH, since they are dead now. I consider this a non-story, personally, we knew this was going to happen before v3 was even announced.
Linux is licensed under GPL v2. In order to move to GPL v3, v4, v99 etc, EVERY SINGLE CONTRIBUTOR must accept this. Practically impossible.
Don't contributors assign copyright to some type of Linux foundation?
No. Linux kernel contributors retain their own copyright. This is frequently considered to be a good thing, as it means that no single group has copyright over everything, which means that no single group can change the license to e.g. BSD and start selling a proprietary version of Linux.
How can code released under the GPL be relicensed at all, even GPLv3?
1) Because the GPL license can optionally include the statement that it's covered by the GPL and/or any later version.
2) Because a copyright holder can relicense, dual-license and in general put any conditions he or she wants on their copyrighted work, including multiple different sets of conditions (licenses).
What you are asking is akin to saying "If someone lends a book to me on a set of conditions, how can they be allowed to lend it to someone else on different ones?".
If it can be, why can't I take it and license it with a BSD-style or completely closed source license?
Because you don't own the copyright.
He misinterpreted part of the GPLv3. The private key section says that if private keys are required for the code to function (in other words, your program will only load signed code) than you must make available a means to generate the signed code. The theory here is that certain hardware devices (*cough*TiVo*cough*) use GPLed software, but make it impossible to actually modify and run that software on their hardware device. In order to allow people to make changes and actually use those changes, you have to make available any private keys required to make the code actually run.
So if Mr. Torvalds has a private key that he uses to sign code, he is under no obligation to release that key to the public assuming that an end user can build and run the code without requiring the private key. You only have to release your private key if a third-party build of the software will not run without being signed by that key.
Now, another common misinterpretation that came up at the GPLv3 launch was that this meant that if you had set up your system to require signed code that you would have to make your private key available. This isn't the case. The only requirement is that a third party must be able to build and run the system without your private key. If this requires them to generate their own private key, that's perfectly acceptable.
If a GPLv3ed program cannot run without a specific private key, that private key must be made available. That's all the license says. Developers are not required to disclose private keys that they use to sign code.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The guy that started the topic is the same !#@&% guy that offered to relicense the linux kernel for some $50,000 not some time ago.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/1/20/226
http://lkml.org/lkml/2004/10/23/186
As a user, you won't care. It *only* relates to software authors. A quick and dirty summary:-
- Public domain allows people to do anything they like with your code, including making minor mods and claiming it as all their own work, or making minor mods and selling the result as closed-source code.
- BSD allows reuse of your code or a modified version of your code, in anything (including commercial software), without releasing source, so long as they credit you. In other words you can't claim it as your own work.
- LGPL allows reuse of your code as a component part of a commercial software system - hence its alternative name of "library GPL". You don't need to release the code for anything that uses this code/library. However if you make changes to the LGPL code/library then you must release the changes. Again, credits are required.
- GPL goes a step further. If you use a GPL code/library component as part of your software, then you must also release *all* your software as GPL as well, otherwise you may not use that code/library component. Again, there's the requirement for releasing code and credits.
There's many other licenses, but you get the idea.
There's two different philosophies here that drive this.
The first is the Open Source philosophy (Linus and ESR are the drivers here). This says that if everyone works together, we can build something better than closed source software. But it doesn't invalidate the existence of closed source software - it acknowledges that this only works for mass-market software, so there will always be niches where closed-source is a better choice. Basically their drive is to help people do their jobs more efficiently.
The second is the Free Software philosophy (driven by RMS and the FSF group). This says that the very *existence* of closed-source software is immoral, and anyone using closed-source software (even in niches where no free equivalent exists) is guilty of immorality (RMS says that if no free software exists to do a job, then you should refuse to do that job). Software is therefore created as a moral imperative, rather than as a means to an end of carrying out some task (such as web browsing or word processing).
Grab.
> People yield code. I was replying to the statement that the Linux kernel is more popular
> with both individuals and companies because it is more flexible (from a copyright
> standpoint) than HURD.
No.
Linux is more popular than HURD because at certain critical points in history it was "working" and "ready" for definitions of "working" and "ready" that could not really be applied to HURD at the time. Basically, Linux was in the right place at the right time. HURD never showed up to the party, and there was a licensing lawsuit connected with BSD at a particularly critical point in time which left it just a little behind in just the wrong ways at just the wrong time, allowing Linux to get "ahead" in terms of mindshare and popularity in the developer community. Consequently, there was a several-month time window, at a particularly important time in history (right about when a lot of college undergrads were first getting net access) when if you wanted a freely-available, freely-modifiable, freely-redistributable operating system, Linux was _the_ obvious choice. That gave it a leg up, got a lot of people involved with improving it, and made it the leading and most popular free OS. Nothing has yet managed to unseat it from that position.
Just to be clear, I'm not saying that the FSF's policies haven't hampered HURD development. They likely have. What I'm saying is that that is not the key important reason why Linux is ahead of HURD (both in terms of popularity and development cycle). The key reason is because Linus had working, usably complete code at an important time when the FSF (in terms of a kernel) did not.
If the timing had worked out differently, the HURD might have been in the leading position, in spite of the FSF's (admittedly rather strict) copyright policies. It is notable that a number of the FSF's *other* projects, despite said policies, are leading implementations in their respective niches, because those projects were finished to the degree they needed to be and working to the degree they needed to be when they needed to be. Emacs for instance was there enough and working enough (for _most_ of the folks who wanted an Emacs, albeit not for Lucent) that XEmacs is just another, somewhat less popular alternative, rather than completely eclipsing Gnu Emacs as Linux has done to HURD.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.