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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 The GPLv2 is old and out of date and though it still works today, will start to crumble in a few years.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.
My blog
for the kills small children and eats them for lunch license. Dinner would be OK, too, but not breakfast.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
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.
Second, ability to run the program, but not see the source code. Case in point, Google. It is beyond question that Google are using all kinds of GPL applications, from the kernel to webservers to highly modified filesystem drivers. All of it GPLed and none of the code available for you to see, despite the fact that Google allow you to use all these services online, you'll never see a line of the modified code.
Both these cases violate not the letter of the GPLv2 licence, but the spirit of it. That spirit being the ability to run the program, modify the source, and run the changed program. This is happening on small scales today. It could soon be happening on a huge scale, and that would undermine the whole FOSS community. GPLv3 will be needed in the future.
May the Maths Be with you!
I think Linus's difference with the FSF is quite simple.
The FSF is concerned with users. The whole thing started when Richard Stallman couldn't fix the printer driver that he was a user of. The FSF's goal is to ensure that everyone who uses software, ever, has the technical and legal right to modify the software they are using.
Linus seems more concerned with developers. If someone comes along and contributes some sweet code to the Linux kernel, he thinks it's only fair that any developer gets the opportunity to use that code too, in their own project. But he's not concerned that an end user can't install a modified version of Linux on their Tivo.
Linus has such a dislike for the FSF that he rants on these things that he doesn't even know about and what's worse, uses his position to spread his ignorance like a cancer, a malignant ignorance. Consider that he did not even know the 'meetings' took place over email and IRC. Or his repeated claims of having to give up his private key, which is shown wrong over and over by legal experts. Or saying committees don't take responsibility for decisions and then complaining that they didn't just blindly agree to whatever his kernel developers wanted.
What's interesting to me is when Torvolds says the GPL2 is where companies and open source people can meet in perfect harmony, as if companies like the GPL2. No company likes the prospect of having to open up their product because some 'tard put in GPL code without their knowledge. They put up with it because they have to, because it's a reality they can't escape. I know I have had many heated arguments about making code GPL when others on a project wanted BSD to be more 'corporate friendly'. Perfect harmony? Wtf world is he living in? Use GPLv3 and they will come and work with that too (even though they don't want to) and for the same reasons.
I think the real question is, as an open-source developer, why wouldn't you choose GPLv3 over v2? Because you want some company to use your program and then sue you because you made use of their patents? Or you want your software to make DRM devices cheaper to create? Or you want your license to be worded in a way that is ambiguous in some regions? I wonder why Linus wants linux to be licensed without patent protections, with ambiguous language, and in a way that supports DRM?
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.
Linus just doesn't care all that much. He hasn't learned the proper lesson from the bitkeeper incident yet apparently.
evil is as evil does
it's not like it kills and eats small children for breakfast
GPL3 may not look like that, but Stallman does!!