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Torvalds "Pretty Pleased" With Latest GPLv3
Novus Ordo Seclorum writes "According to CNet, Linus Torvalds is 'pretty pleased' with the current GPL v3 draft. He said, 'Unlike the earlier drafts, it at least seems to not sully the good name of the GPL any more.' After his earlier criticism, some had questioned whether such controversies would lead to rifts in the community, especially if the kernel ended up under a different license than the GNU tools. But with the latest revisions, Linus will entertain moving the kernel over to the GPL v3."
...and this whole time I was losing sleep on whether linus would be pleased.
:)
Slow news day?
"The need to build the internet comes from something inside us, something programmed... something we can't resist."
Of course there was negotiation, but I'm sure Linus paid for his own lunch.
Forget diamonds, copyright is forever.
the gpl is not viral. Also, its just a license. If the copyright holder wants to he can relicense it to whatever he wants.
I don't think there's much chance of a Linux license change. Aside from the fact Linus isn't explicitly saying he thinks it's better than GPL2, there is the issue that the Linux kernel has too many copyright holders and no explicit mechanism to move to a new license beyond every single author agreeing.
Some have proposed that perhaps everything written by people who cannot be contacted or who disagree with relicensing could simply be rewritten. I think they underestimate the impracticality of such a feat. You can't easily determine the copyrights of every single piece of code within Linux, and it strikes me that unless almost everyone who is contactable is agreeable to a license change, the amount of code that'll need to be rewritten is huge.
As an aside, I think it's a shame that some of the stuff aiming to make the GPL more compatible with other licenses was struck out, especially the patent retaliation stuff. There was a very real effort to address reasons why others who generally agree with the principles of copyleft had eschewed GPL2, and that effort seems to be falling apart. I'm hoping this doesn't mean that instead of getting a license that almost everyone agrees upon, we end up with yet another incompatible license to add to the maze of incompatible licenses that, today, undermines the freedom of free software.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
on how to get a Finn to see your point in negotiations. It's easy:
1. Invite the Finn to a sauna that's been heated to a 120C
2. Help him down a case of beer and 2 litres of vodka while enjoying the sauna for 4-5 hours
If you are still able to make your case after this, you will find the Finn much more appreciative of your point of view.
Parts of the kernel are licensed "GPL version 2 or later" (which can roll over automatically), and a lot of the lines of code are owned by a few large companies. So you can get a large percentage of the code just by getting Red Hat, IBM, Intel, Novell, etc. on board. That's not all the code, but it would represent a substantial amount of the code without having to go "door to door" with the contributors.
While Linus Torvalds is not the sole copyright holder of the Linux kernel, it cannot be denied that an "official" project to shift the kernel from GPLv2 to GPLv3 would open up some interesting possibilities.
One immediate question I would have is whether he would leave in the "or any later version" clause this time or remove it again. If he does that we might have to go through this whole mess again in another 15 years, but maybe that's the idea.
Linux as GPL3 only becomes of true importance if OpenSolaris also becomes GPL3. If that is the case, there could be an immediate and dramatic improvement seen in both projects as the code starts to flow both ways. OpenSolaris could start to take advantage of the driver code in Linux (or at least, use it to make the code Solaris would need) and Linux could start working on goodies like Dtrace support. Mutually beneficial, and everyone wins.
Of course, there is no reason beyond speculation to think Solaris will use GPL3. The situation is potentially very exciting, but it would require both Solaris and Linux to move from their current license and neither decision will be made lightly.
Fingers crossed...
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
The bottom line is that FSF cannot realistically release a GPLv3 that doesn't have Linus' stamp of approval. Linux is just too big a part of the Free software community to ignore. Of course Stallman and/or Eben Moglen had to convince Linus. It seems to be that at least some of changes were in direct response to his criticisms.
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Commercial licenses are also viral, most of licenses do NOT allow you to redistribute/resell products using their tools/librairies, unless you pay an extravagant fee.
People who try to scare you when saying that the GPL is viral are the same ones who put patents over their code and resell you their tools for a fee.
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
I still don't feel that Linus "gets it" about GPLv3. I'm still not entirely sure about GPLv3 myself, and I should probably go back and read a draft.
But, at least now it's obvious he's reading and comprehending. He may still disagree with it, and I disagree with him, but it looks like they're talking now.
Which is more than I can say about the last round of flamewars... Last time, he honestly sounded like a Slashdotter who hadn't bothered to RTFA, just repeating the same unfounded arguments, some of which were blatantly wrong to anyone who actually read the license...
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Torvalds may be "Pretty Pleased" with the current draft, but I won't be satisfied with it until Torvalds is "Pretty Pleased with a Cherry On Top."
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
Watch how fast Sun becomes "displeased" with the latest GPL3 draft, and considers not open-sourcing Solaris under the GPL3 license.
Seriously, this is not a troll. I am convinced that the only reason Sun was considering this is because the Linux project was not. There is no chance in hell they want to see any of their kernel code end up inside the Linux kernel.
Stallman, obviously, is a half-Human cleric of Lathander and a Divination wizard, while Linus is a pure Gnome Enchanter wizard and has some powerful equipment.
Sure, Linus has more powerful spells, being a pure class, but, IMHO, Stallman is more powerful because he usually carries the initiative and can cast Silence, which really screws up other casting types.
Hurd has gone nowhere because imho, it lacks a central genius like Linus. BSD gets 1/10 the development effort of Linux (if that). Many developers are willing to work with a BSD license but most aren't. Most people aren't willing to publish their hard work just so some big company can sell it back to them. Without the GPL, Linux would be a poor second cousin to BSD but neither would be as widespread as Linux has become. Both the GPL (Stallman's creation) and Linus were necessary conditions for the success of Linux.
Actually, I would add another real-world genius: Eban Moglen, the Columbia University law professor who is the legal brains behind the GPL.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eben_Moglen
No? Who's bigger and more well-known amongst todays geeks: Stallman on Linus? I'll bet there's a bunch of young whippersnappers out there who have never heard of rms. (HEY YOU KIDS, GET OFF MY LAWN!) Compare to Linus. Not since Ken has a hacker been known universally by his first name only. If I say 'Linus' in the context of software, you immediately know I'm talking about the blanket-holding, piano-playing kid in the Peanuts cartoon.
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What's to persuade anyone to use J. Random Forkoff's kernel, rather than the Linus kernel? FOSS is littered with the corpses of dead forks.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Who the hell is Ken?
The article submitter paints a bit rosier picture than the article and quotes actually support:
Torvalds: "The current draft makes me think it's at least a possibility in theory, but whether it's practical and worth it is a totally different thing," he said. "Practically speaking, it would involve a lot of work to make sure everything relevant is GPLv3-compatible even if we decided that the GPL 3 is OK."
Basically, GPLv3 makes it go from "impossible" to "maybe someday". I doubt Linux is moving off of GPLv2 anytime soon, though. I doubt most GPLv2 projects are, and suspect those that do will fork instead of go completely to GPLv3. This will more or less be the open source community shooting itself in the foot.
E pluribus unum
I suspect Linus might object to his characterization as a Gnome...is there a race that clearly correlates with KDE?
So, if you were a company that GPLv3 punished, then you'd be punished when dealing with these new kernels, even though most of the kernel didn't have a GPLv3 specific license.
Now, this assumes that Linus wants GPLv3, which so far he does not. If he doesn't want GPLv3, somebody could attempt to sneak in some patches/new code with a GPLv3-only license, and if Linus put them into the kernel, then the kernel would then have the same GPLv3 baggage. But I suspect that Linus would reject any such patches for now, and if one was snuck in, it would probably be removed if found later.
In any event, even if the kernel remains non-GPLv3, we may find some commonly used packages going GPLv3-only -- and I'm thinking of things like gcc, binutils, fileutils, textutils, etc. If this happens (and it sound very likely), then anybody who doesn't want to be restricted by the GPLv3 restrictions will not be able to distribute updated versions of these packages. In the short term, this won't be such a big deal, but in the long term, it certainly will be.
I appreciate what the FSF is trying to do with GPLv3, but I suspect that it's going to cause the `free software movement' a lot of pain, as companies will probably try to move to BSD from Linux (and even then they won't really get away from the GPL, as the BSDs use gcc as their compiler. Perhaps there will be another gcc fork, with the official GPLv3 version and the fork still being GPLv2 or GPLvwhatever?)
Linus spends his time reviewing submitted patches, AIUI. It's project management, but a required part of development on a largish scale.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
> Essentially Torvalds replaced a clause allowing for future upgrades with nothing whatsoever,
> which means that it's going to be very, very, very hard indeed to ever upgrade the license
> of the Linux kernel, no matter how necessary.
Not necessarily. It all depends on how code in the kernel is licensed. There are several files in the kernel that are "GPL 2 or above" and several that are MIT/BSD licensed and several that are LGPL.
Currently, the kernel is "GPL 2 only" because mixing a single "GPL 2 only" file with any of the other licenses mentioned above makes the whole kernel "GPL 2 only".
The key question is: What percentage of the code is GPL 2 only? (I believe LWN.net did an analysis a few months back, but unfortunately I can't find a reference. Does anyone have one?)
If the percentage of GPL 2 only code is small (say 5%) and it's in a noncritical area or can be rewritten quickly or relicensed by the original authors (i.e. they're still around like Linus is) or replaced with other sources like the FreeBSD code or the Solaris kernel (when it goes GPLv3), then changing over to GPL v3 (or at least GPL 2 or above) should be fast.
But even if this were the case, I wouldn't expect any immediate changes. The GPL v3 needs to be out in the field and kernel developers need to feel comfortable with it and see advantages for it (e.g. Solaris-Linux code sharing) before they'd even consider a switch. That could take a few years.
That's just insane and I don't understand why a "good" organization like FSF, which also probably tries to educate people, even has such a potentially dangerous clause in their license.
Why is it insane? There is nothing potentially dangerous about it.
Your code doesn't become 'GPLv3 or later' when GPLv3 comes out, it STAYS 'GPLv2 or later', meaning it is now available to someone who wants to use it under either the v2 or v3 licenses.
Thus there is no danger that at some point in the future someone won't be able to use your code with all the rights you assigned to it when you licensed it v2 or later.
However, if someone down the road likes v5, and starts up a GPLv5 project and they want to use your code, they can. Because at that point your code will be available under v2, v3, v4, and v5.
Thus the absolute WORST case of releasing your code as 'GPLv2 or later' is that one day the FSF will release a license you don't like, and people using it will still be allowed to use your code.
IE, the worst case is that future users will have MORE rights to use your code than they have today, if the GPL were to become even less restrictive (e.g. became, say, a BSD-like license). After all if the GPL gets more restrictive people can ALWAYS use your code with ALL the rights of GPLv2.
I think for nearly all of us, that is pretty much a non-issue. The odds the GPL will become less restrictive than v2 is practically zilch. And even if it did, no harm could come to people who want to use our code.
There's two dangers to the "any other version" clause
1) An overly permissive future license allows other people to use and distribute your code in their product without providing source or with restrictions you find repugnant. Not very likely, but consider if the FSF got itself sued for software patent violations or something and Microsoft actually obtained control of it.
2) A more restrictive future license allows other people to use and distribute your code in their product without allowing you to use their code without those new restrictions. This is much more likely.
I don't think it's insane for the FSF to recommend the "and all future versions" clause; they trust themselves, after all. But I don't see why anyone else should.