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GPLv3 - A Primer on Open Warfare in Open Source

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the tuxes-go-marching-two-by-two-hurrah-hurrah dept.

savio13 writes "A BusinessWeek article about the GPLv3 starts to shed some light on where things are, and what the hold up is in getting the newest version out. They discuss the Stallman vs. Torvalds conflict, issues with DRM, the goal of 'one-stop licensing', and the ever-more-likely possibility that the newest version of the GPL just isn't relevant." From the article: "The impetus to make a profit (and its associated compromises) isn't sitting well with true believers in free software. And the resulting rifts were apparent at last week's LinuxWorld conference in San Francisco. On one side is Richard Stallman and his Free Software Foundation. When Stallman says "free" he doesn't mean price, he means freedom. He believes all software should be freely available to be modified by the public. And for him, this is nothing short of a moral fight. On the other is Linus Torvalds, the father of Linux. He and others in his open-source camp believe that freely sharing code simply produces the best software, but if other people want to hide their code, that's fine, too. Companies will just vote with their feet."

5 of 449 comments (clear)

  1. From the article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    If Torvalds chooses not to go with version 3 for Linux, the Free Software Foundation will become even more irrelevant to the business world of open source.

    So does that mean we call it Linux/GNU then?

  2. Re:This explains an email I got by MankyD · · Score: 2, Funny
    So you 911 only runs a kernel?
    And by your logic, I should have called my old Windows machine "Nullsoft/Apple/HP/GNU/EA Games/Windows". It's not about the periphery software running on top of the system. Using term Linux is blanket enough to describe the architecture for interested parties.
    --
    -dave
    http://millionnumbers.com/ - own the number of your dreams
  3. Re:This explains an email I got by jellomizer · · Score: 2, Funny

    So now except for dialing 911 we will need to dial 468/911 (GNU/911)

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  4. Re:This explains an email I got by Mr.+Underbridge · · Score: 5, Funny

    If Stallman spent half as much time writing code as correcting people, Hurd might actually be out by now. I think it would be great if someone put out a version of Linux that used all BSD userland crap just to prove the point. Call it BSD/Linux just to confuse the crap out of people.

  5. The genesis by hummassa · · Score: 2, Funny

    Stallman begat Emacs
    Emacs begat elisp
    elisp begat gcc
    gcc begat gnu
    gnu begat hurd
    hurd has a growth-inhibiting condition, so
    gcc begat linux, and qt
    qt begat kdelibs
    kdelibs begat kde
    kde begat kubuntu
    and there was light :-)
    Any similarity with the truth is mere coincidence.

    --
    It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048