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Linux Creator Calls GPLv3 Authors 'Hypocrites'
AlexGr writes "We've heard conflicting tales regarding Linus Torvalds' acceptance of GPLv3. InformationWeek reports on comments by Mr. Torvalds that would seem to decide the issue: 'Torvalds said the authors of a new software license expected to be used by thousands of open source programmers are a bunch of hypocrites ... For Torvalds' part, it appears unlikely he'll ever adopt GPLv3 for the Linux kernel. He accused the Free Software Foundation leadership, which includes eccentric, MIT-trained computing whiz Richard Stallman, of injecting their personal morality into the laws governing open source software with the release of GPLv3. "Only religious fanatics and totalitarian states equate morality with legality," Torvalds wrote.'"
....have my tin hat on and am hiding under the desk to avoid this flamefest.
"He accused the Free Software Foundation leadership, which includes eccentric, MIT-trained computing whiz Richard Stallman, of injecting their personal morality into the laws governing open source software with the release of GPLv3."
Does this mean that Linus didn't understand that the FSF is a organization with specific goals based on the morals of it's members? It's kinda obvious.
His point of view represents all of the reasons why I left proprietary software and went with Linux.
Ahem, GNU/Linux.
The kernel can be replaced.
The philosophy, which is 100% wholly accurate, cannot.
We always knew that RMS is a zealot. I ran into him quite a bit in the 1980s. I could tell that then. While one may have thought it was a bit much then, now is it that radical? Companies are putting rootkits into computers in the name of DRM, sponsoring bills that allow copyright holders to hack into your system and destroy YOUR system with immunity -- if they think that you may have violated their copyright.
Is GPL 3 that unreasonable given the behavior of the RIAA and MPAA of recent?
Fight Spammers!
If only CEO types would start doing that (w/o hiding behind an alias, that is)...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Could everybody get back to coding and kiss politics goodbye? WTF is everybody doing these days? It seems like every single programming in the world is now a politician... Long gone are the days where programming was considered a noble art of logics and things were so uncomplicated... Humans are a strange animal, indeed... Instead of producing more, we must complicate things and waste our valuable with egoistic intrigues, politics, strange licence deals, and... oh well...
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
Who cares what Linus has to say? It's readily apparent that the inevitable consequence will be a shift away from Linux kernel under GPL2 towards Solaris under GPL3.
Linus is a tool. He goes on about how he picked his methodology because of efficiencies, not morality. But the fact of the matter is, other people have spent all this time assisting him because of the morality of the license. If they just wanted open-code efficiency, they would have went with the tried and true BSD license.
Linus doesn't even write code anymore. If not for the perceived morality of having a kernel under the GPL, and the droves of developers who participated for that very reason, he would be a complete non-entity.
Easy enough to mouth off at this point.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Reading the article, my main impression was that I'd like to see Linus' quotes in context.
Without seeing the context, in general I would say the core disagreement between RMS and Linus (setting aside the frivolous GNU/Linux naming thing) lies in their respective notions about morality: RMS believes it to be essentially objective, whereas Linus considers it a subjective concern. This seems to be another manifestation of that disagreement.
DNA just wants to be free...
The kernel can be replaced.
;)
then why hasn't Stallman done it?
He's a brilliant engineer, a witty person, but he's an idiot when it comes to freedom related issues and he displays what basically amounts to ignorance about the subject. GPLv3 is nothing more than GPLv2 with some loopholes closed. I often wonder how Linus ended up with GPLv2 in the first place?
The contrast is striking because as an engineer he's brilliant, but he's absolutely lost as a long term thinker in relation to freedoms and morality. He'd make the worst leader in those matters.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
What is the problem here?
RMS writes licence named GPLv3 - so what? Nobody is forced to use that license so I don't think there is a problem here. When somebody uses his license it is not his (RMS) fault. It is fault of the entity which choosed this license. Or isn't it?
So basically Linus is yelling that if *I* use f.e. GPLv3 for *my* project it somehow not my fault but RMS?
I don't get it. I must have not understood something since Linus usually speaks quite sane and I belive him.
So again - somebody please explain what is the problem here?
Is GPL version change really such a disaster?
What should I care as Linux user?
No one is switching to Solaris, because Solaris is dying, if not dead already. The only reason why Sun has opened it up is because they're desperate. Their expensive hardware has been replaced with commodity components, and their expensive OS has been replaced with one that costs nothing to aquire, Linux. Opening Solaris is desperation move, just like Netscape opening Navigator, only OpenSolaris won't get any traction in the Community, because the open source unix kernel niche is already occupied -- by Linux.
Oh, and you forgot to call it GNU/Solaris. Linus is a tool. He goes on about how he picked his methodology because of efficiencies, not morality. But the fact of the matter is, other people have spent all this time assisting him because of the morality of the license. If they just wanted open-code efficiency, they would have went with the tried and true BSD license. You conclusion doesn't follow, since both BSD and GPL provide efficiency by leveraging the Bazaar as ESR called it. Linus decided for whatever reason, that GPL was more efficient. People assisted not because of the "morality" of the license, but because they got something out of it. An improved Unix kernel that ran ubiquitious 386 hardware. They could contribute, so they did. The same would have happned if he chose the BSD license. The GPL Is The One True License(tm) crowd is not, and never has been, the majority of the contributors, nor a majority of the key contributors, to the Linux kernel.
If you want to look for a project that appeals to people that care more about political wankfests than getting real work done, look at HURD, or even FreeBSD, and look where those projects are. What's the install base of HURD? Twelve? Linus doesn't even write code anymore. If not for the perceived morality of having a kernel under the GPL, and the droves of developers who participated for that very reason, he would be a complete non-entity. Yeah, and RMS writes 1500 LOCs a day.
Since when does someones ability to critique a political and legal document hinge on whether some one is actively writing code? It's not like Linus is sitting back and resting on his piles of money. (Like he has any.)
You want to believe that people flocked to Linux because the GPL made it more "moral." Bullshit. People jumped on the Linux bandwaggon, because it was unix that ran on the 386. FreeBSD didn't even exist until 1993, and prior to that 386BSD wasn't even released until 1992. By comparison, Linux was initially released in 1991. It had first mover advantage and an open source license. That's it. So go and spout your historical revision somewhere else, because contrary to what RMS and the FSF mailing lists say, most people don't care about political statements. They just want their code to work. Easy enough to mouth off at this point. Isn't that all RMS does? And even more to the point, what you're doing?
Now run along and file your bug report against the Linux kernel for using bitkeeper, or not calling itself GNU/Linux. The grown-ups have work to do.
GPLv3 affects any hardware that the software is distributed with. I'm pretty sure that this makes it viral *by definition*. I also consider this to make it evil, but that's a separate issue.
"you become what you hate".
It's an amazingly true expression borne out again and again. People in their zeal to defeat an enemy they hate because of what they do, tend to gradually adopt the enemy's tactics. E.g. to "defeat" the soviet union in the cold war we became more totalitarian. To defeat the enemies of freedom, kidnappers and torturers, GWB has asked us to sacrifice civil liberties and set up guantanamo.
THis happens at the personal level too not just in the drama of nations.
One might even suspect Google finds it must sometimes adopt dubious tactics in order to quash what it sees a s Evil.
Stallman appears to be on the same road in his obsession to counter microsofts.
Kafaka's principle is hard to avoid. And when an entity feels threaten, feels it might loose or be seriously damaged it feels the ends justify the means. SOmetimes its' neccessary to stay with ones principles and tough out the assualt, rather than lose those principles.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
"I also consider this to make it evil, but that's a separate issue"
That's the distinction that often gets missed in the "evil/viral" argument, I wish I had mod points to give you.
Sure, the GPL is viral. I don't think anyone really denies that. Some think that's evil, some not. I'm in the "not" camp.
The reason I'm in the "not" camp is because the viral nature of the GPL is not primarily intended to cause someone's non-GPL software to unintentionally fall under the GPL; rather, it is a defensive mechanism aimed at the misappropriation of GPLed software. To wit, you can't use GPLed software in non-free software, and to make sure you don't, the license requires you to release any software you combine with GPLed software under the GPL or a GPL-compatible license. In practice, people who don't want to do that have generally been given the option of ripping out all the GPLed software from their product(s) and duplicating the functionality on their own.
I have no problem with this. The GPL isn't trying to hide anything or get Free software in through the back door. It tells you up front what your rights and obligations are, and like other FOSS licenses, is orders of magnitude more clear about that than proprietary licenses. The GPL requires that if you get, you have to give back, and you can do anything you want with GPLed software except make it non-free. I have no problem with that. It's clear and up-front, and if anyone doesn't like it, the answer is simple: use something else, write it yourself, or pay someone to write it yourself. Those are the same three options you have with a proprietary license you don't like. Well, with the additional stricture that if you write it yourself or have someone do it, the proprietary vendor might look for some software patent violation they could use as grounds to sue you.
Software licenses are not "evil" or "good" - they just are. They reflect the beliefs and values of those who right them. The FSF believes you can do anything you want with software except make it non-free. BSD and similar believe you can even make it non-free. Proprietary licenses believe you can only do what they specifically authorize you to do, and what they authorize really isn't a whole lot. If I were going to sling terms like "evil" around, I daresay the target wouldn't be any open-source license.
I'm going to disagree with you on this one. Having tried to contribute to all three of popular systems in the early nineties (Linux, BSD, and Hurd), Linux was the *only* one where you could easily get any work done. I still remember getting emails from a certain someone (not RMS) telling me to go away because they only wanted experienced people working on the Hurd.
People who have read my posts previously know I'm a huge FSF fan. I'm also a huge RMS fan. But Linus changed the way free software was written. It didn't matter who the hell you were, if your code was good it got submitted. Before Linux you often needed to be in a clique to work on a high profile project.
While RMS envisioned free software development, IMHO Linus was the first to really realize it. He was the first to lead a huge group of people to do amazing things over the internet. Free software owes him a huge amount. The way we work now, the things we take for granted, are in large part inspired by how he ran the Linux kernel project in those early years. Now almost everyone does it that way.
Maybe it's hard to understand how this was a choice of "morals". But quite seriously, after being treated like I was, I wouldn't work on the Hurd nor *-BSD if you paid me to. Linux was the place to be *precisely* because it implemented the moral situation that was ideal for free software development. Everyone was treated as an equal. There was no "secret code". There were no "private" repositories. You could just do your thing. If it was good enough, Linus would roll it into his distribution.
The GPL doesn't enforce morals. It is a legal document after all. But it can set the stage to clear barriers for people working together. Many licenses force people not to work together, even if they want to. They insist on creating classes of users/developers -- some with more rights than others. IMHO, this is the "moral" issue that the FSF is trying to tackle. There's a hell of a lot more to it than just a license. But it's a start.
So while most people didn't sit down and say "Hey, Linus is being more moral", people chose to work on the project simply because it was better. He actually acted in the spirit of license he chose. It was fun/possible to contribute. You didn't feel like a schmuck just for asking for the latest build. And I suspect if this ever changed dramatically in the Linux kernel development, you'd get a lot of people jumping ship.
P.S. You won't find my name amongst the Linux kernel developers. Shortly after started working on things I actually signed an inventions agreement that forbade me from doing free software development. Yes, I sold out. I did that for years and years. Until finally I got sick of treating my customers like shit. I finished my last proprietary gig a week ago and I'm not looking back.
Yes, and the software they distribute is in no way limited. You can take it and run it on your home built PVR box if you want. What TiVo restricted was running someone else's code on their HARDWARE. So why is a software license limiting their choices in regards to their hardware, dummy?
Preventing "evil" by denying someone freedom who has done nothing wrong is evil. It's not "evil" for TiVo to say "our hardware will not run unsigned binaries". It's a business decision. If you don't like it, take your business elsewhere.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
That, and (as MSFT later proved head-on w/ their TCP/IP implementations), the classic BSD license really doesn't protect against theft and proprietary lock-down of improvements.
Please explain how it is possible to "steal" BSD-licensed code. The whole *point* of the license is that it allows anyone to take the source code and do whatever they want with it.
There are few things that identify a GPL-zealot more effectively than talking about code being "stolen" because someone else's changes to it were not "shared". It's like making a speech in public and then complaining about how all the people who heard it "stole" from you.
Tivo legally limited hardware they owned, and people willingly bought this legal object. In that case you've lost the right to say I want xyz in my widget. That comes before the purchase.
I believe the (not inconsistent) position is that copyright is bad for society. So the GPL exploits the flaws of copyright in order to make the flaws in copyright extremely painful (or impossible) for others to exploit. In the event that copyright is abolished, then the GPL becomes both unenforceable and unnecessary at the same time.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
What do you agree/disagree with in GPL3? I am glad that patent abuse is addressed. However, I never thought Tivo was all that evil. You *could* after all, take their code and use it on your own hardware. We all want our voting machines to run open source software - but such hardware needs to be locked in the same manner as a Tivo. GPL3 software could not be used for an open source voting machine! Fortunately, the application is small enough that alternative licenses could probably be bought/negotiated from copyright holders.
While the above post never referred to GPLv3 specifically, I think it made a good and interesting point. I will hijack this part for my own purposes
Fundamentally, I think the poster's quote is one of the biggest arguments against the adoption of GPLv3.
GPL version 2 had no restrictions on what hardware was required upon which to run the software. The license merely required that all modifications to the software were contributed back to the original work. It did not care how you used the software, merely how you contributed back to the project.
Version 3, on the other hand, makes statements about how software is used. As far as I can tell, TiVo is one of the most predominant factors in spurring GPLv3. TiVo contributes their software back to the community, as can be seen right here. TiVo, however, runs their software on a DRM'ed box. Anybody can use TiVo's source code modifications in their own hardware projects if they so desire. The software is still just as free as if TiVo decided to run it on a non-DRM'ed box.
The FSF believes you can do anything you want with software except make it non-free This is what the FSF would like people to believe. However, it is inconsistent with what the FSF is actually doing in advocating GPLv3. GPLv2 ensured that all software remained free. The old license fully satisified that software remained "free," not just in price but in the availability of people to choose how to use it.
GPLv3, on the other hand, makes restrictions upon what kind of hardware-software interactions are allowable. Forcing people, corporations, or whomever to use freely available code in a certain way is contradictory to freedom. This is the argument for version 2 of the GPL. It is also the argument against DRM. Strangely enough, it is also the argument against GPLv3.
Enforcing freedom is an oxymoron. This however, is the logical extent of what RMS and people at the FSF are proposing with the adoption of GPLv3, forcing people to run their software on certain hardware. In the words of the poster, the FSF acting exactly like proprietary vendors in limiting the scope of their software to what they "specifically authorize you to do."
I believe you're correct in that the original copyright holder can relicense their software.
For the umpteeth time: of course can any author relicense her software at any moment. But that does not at all affect the earlier licence !
There is no way of retro-actively changing the licence for those who received the software under the 'old' terms. They may use the software for infinity. Only modifications and patches added after the moment of relicencing fall under the new licence. XFree to Xorg is a good example here: XFree changed their licence; fine. Xorg took the software as it was a split second before the change of licence and fully legally so. The former licence remains valid for that software before the change.
The trouble for any fork: The licenses could be non-compatible, and then you compete with yourself, so to say. Who is installing XFree these days ? See. With quite a few of the applications moving to GPLv3, who is going to use a GPLv2-licensed kernel once a GPLv3 licensed kernel becomes available (whispers: SUN-SUN-SUN), which permits the use of the latest versions of those GPLv3-ed applications ?
> Sure, the GPL is viral. I don't think anyone really denies that.
I do. The "GPL is viral" meme was invented by GPL-haters as a replacement for real arguments, and spread by trolls and useful idiots.
The GPL encourages people to volunteer their own software under similar terms, by offering them something valuable in return. A virus (biological or computer) is extremely poor analogy for that, except for the strong negative connotations. Which is the only reason it was invented.