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Why Torvalds is Sitting out the GPLv3 Process
lisah writes "Linus Torvalds has a lot of reasons for not wanting to participate in drafting the third version of the GNU General Public License (GPL): He doesn't like meetings, says committees don't make sense, has philosophical differences with the Free Software Foundation, and seems to be generally distrustful of the whole drafting process. Though Torvalds prefers the GPLv2, he says if others prefer the GPLv3, they ought to support it because 'it's not like it kills and eats small children for breakfast, and must never be allowed.'" Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.
If you want to contribute to the GPLv3, you can. The FFII, for example, proposed some changes that would clarify the GPLv3 with respect to patent law in Europe (the current draft is too US-biased).
Torvalds doesn't need to contribute, but I'm glad he's moved to a more neutral stance. The GPLv2 is old and out of date and though it still works today, will start to crumble in a few years.
In every new project my firm does, we end up adding our own conditions onto the GPL3 (for instance for patents) and it'd be far better to have these defined as standard.
It's good to be critical of processes that aren't clear, and it's entirely possible that the FSF won't be able to produce a worthy successor to GPLv2, which is an incredibly important document in the history of software, but we should give them the benefit of the doubt.
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Torvalds may not like the GPLv3. However, I think that is orthogonal to why he is sitting out the process. At heart, the man is an engineer/coder. How many people work as software engineers/programmers/code monkeys/whatever and jump at the shot to sit in the "politcal" meetings? Seriously. As a general rule, engineers and programmers would rather be engineering and programming. They don't care so much about marketing. They don't care so much about the political undercurrents of the organization. They just want to do their job well.
Linus doesn't have a choice in the matter: since the kernel is under GPLv2 without an "or later" clause, he can't change it. The Linux kernel is stuck with GPLv2. For him to argue one way or the other is pointless and sounds like post-hoc rationalizing.
Personally, I think the GPLv2 will sooner or later kill the Linux kernel. Some highly successful embedded Linux systems like the WRT54G only became hackable because the manufacturers made a mistake. Evidently, embedded users of Linux just don't get the benefits of openness, and they'll get better and better at circumventing the GPLv2; the GPLv2 will turn more and more into a kind of encumbered BSD license, and you can see how well BSD did with that.
Of course, I'm not too concerned. I think we really need a successor to the Linux kernel anyway, yet the industry is happy to keep running a 30 year old kernel design. If being increasingly the target of GPL circumvention is what it takes to motivate people to move to a new kernel, that's fine with me, too.
I keep going over and over this, and I still can't figure out why Linus would want Linux to be able to be Tivo-ized, but not want it BSD-licensed. Can you explain to me what it is about these specific loopholes that makes them so much more desirable than people taking your code wholesale and making it into a proprietary program?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
about "free software". What they are truly fundamentally about is
creating a comprehensive category of software which is completely free from
corporate/business control, and which individual users can completely control in
all aspects as they wish.
His fundamental motivation is an anti-corporation, pro-individual/community
point of view. The fact that the mechanism for enabling his version of
"free software" is the GPL and a common pool of open source is
secondary. If he could have gotten a global law enforced that all corporations
must release all their source code freely on the Internet, that's what he would
have done, instead of GNU and GPL.
RMS is an absolutist on this point. He truly sees this as good vs. evil, and as
a belief system about which there can be no question.
To help understand this, http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemI
read this interview.
This is where the insistence that DRM and "Trusted Computing" and
software patents must be abolished comes from. These are all tools that
corporations use to protect their property. RMS does not believe they should
have property like this... that it should all be made available to users with no
control by corporations.
Linux is also licensed under the GPL (v2), but comes from a completely
different motivation than RMS. Torvalds simply believes the open-source
development model is the most effective way to create excellent software.
Torvalds is just fine with corporations and businesses using Linux for profit,
even if that means "controlling" some aspects of its use. He
certainly has opinions on DRM, patents, and "Trusted Computing", but
he's not going to let those get in the way of Linux development.
So now starts the struggle for control of "what is the meaning of free
software". RMS is clearly trying to re-establish his vision of the
principles involved by pushing through GPL v3, because he's seen GPL v2 used in
ways that offend his principles deeply. Is it too late? Has the FOSS movement
taken off to an extent that he no longer controls it? Stay tuned.