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Torvalds vs Schwartz GPL Wars
javipas writes "The controversial message published by Linus Torvalds (mirrored) in the Linux Kernel Mailing List was from the beginning to the end an open attack to Sun and its Open Source strategy. Linus criticized Sun's real position on GPL, and claimed that Linux could be dangerous to Sun. Upon his words, "they may be talking a lot more [about Open Source] than they are or ever will be doing." Jonathan Schwartz's blog has been updated today with a post that is a direct response to Linus claims, but in a much more elegant and coherent way. Sun's CEO notes that "Companies compete, communities simply fracture", and tries to explain why using GPL licenses is taking so long."
People are perhaps reading to much into it. Linus advanced some scenarios, while at the same time giving his reasons. He was blunt, in his style, about some things but I don't see it as an all-out attack on Sun. Even more interesting is that he says that he could be wrong, and that he hope he is wrong, and that releasing Solaris under the GPLv3 would be a very good thing.
Also of note is Theo's de Raadt message in Sun's blog: "Jonathan, I wish the above was true. 15 years ago I was the biggest Sun fan. Today I speak as the project leader for another set of open source projects -- OpenBSD and OpenSSH. OpenSSH will be better known to your audience, as it is what they use daily to connect securely to and from their Solaris (or Linux) machines. OpenSSH killed telnet and rlogin, for those who still remember those mechanisms. We give our software completely freely to the world, without even the standard encumberances people see in the GPL or CDDL. Yet when we turn around and ask Sun to give us documentation for the chips on their machines -- chips Sun themselves designed, not via contractors -- Sun drags their feet. Recently we tried to reopen these 10-year-old repeated requests, and once again nothing positive happened. You may remember, because you and David Yen were in an email conversation with us. Lots of nice open words were exchanged, but no action. However, let me give an example of the duplicity of Sun. (I wish I could use a lighter word). Two operating systems run on Sun's latest PCI-e based (smallish) Ultrasparc-III machines, the v215/v245 -- Solaris and OpenBSD. The latter system runs on those machines because the code to support the non-processor chips on the board had to be written after painstaking reverse engineering, because Sun refuses to make available documentation for how these chips are programmed. Now we will readily admit that not every programmer in the world needs to know how to program these chips. But does every programmer in the world need to know how to program every little detail on Sun's processors, in system mode? Sun gets great press out of UltraSPARC being all "open", but what use is supervisor-mode documentation when the rest of the chips that the supervisor-mode code has to communicate with are entirely undocumented??? The press does not spot this problem, but Jonathan, you should clearly understand this is a fallacy. There are two operating systems which surprisingly do not run on the Sun v215/v245 -- Linux and OpenSolaris. OpenSolaris?? Yes -- Sun isn't even open enough to give the OpenSolaris community enough documentation to support their new machines. So I think that Linus is right, and Sun has a long road ahead."
I tend to listen to Theo's opinion carefully on this subjects. I'm an "FSF fanboy" to the bone, card carrying and all, which curiously is one of the reasons I tend to view Theo's opinion on this subjects with interest, more so than Linus. When it's not a GPL vs BSD thing (which is a fait-diver discussion in my sense of priorities) the fact remains that he seems to see the problems with licencing with a greater depth and in general is more "idealistic" than "pragmatic".
This is fascinating. It seems to me through the number of references in Linus's post to ZFS that he (or at least members of the kernel team) are drooling over it. This is all actually working quite the way RMS intended. Linux may be a GPLv2 stronghold, but as soon as some piece of GPLv3 software comes along which is a *must have* i.e. ZFS, enough pressure will fall on the major copyright holders that they will consider going through the PITA of upgrading the kernel to GPLv3.
That may be the major reason for Linus's striking change of heart on GPLv3.
You have to wonder whether RMS talked to Sun at all about this. We do know that he has praised the company for the decision to GPL Java. If RMS wanted to strongarm Linux into a license change, what better way to do it than through ZFS?