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Torvalds Puts Support Behind GPL2 Linux
Christiangrays writes "Linux creator Linus Torvalds has used an interview being made public by the Linux Foundation to stress that version 2 of the GPL still makes the most sense for the Linux kernel over the newer GPL version 3. GPL 3, which was released last year by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), reflects the FSF's goals while GPL 2 closely matches what Torvalds thinks a licence should do, Torvalds said. "I want to pick the licence that makes the most sense for what I want to do. And at this point in time, Version 2 matches what I think we want to do much, much better than Version 3," said Torvalds, who is now a fellow at the foundation. He was interviewed in late-October by Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin."
We are just clipping Tux's wings a little bit. It is not like he can fly anyway.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
a: This is very old news, from back in October, just rehashed to get more clicks.
b: It is irrelevant. Even if Linus loved the GPLv3, there is so much code contributed to the Linux kernel without a transfer of copyright and under GPLv2 only terms that it couldn't be changed anyway.
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Yes, because Linus represents the views of all linux programmers.
A lot of people characterise Torvalds as being pragmatic as opposed to Stallman's idealism, but Stallman is pragmatic too, he just looks further ahead than Torvalds. This short-sightedness doesn't pay off. Stallman warned about the BitKeeper problem, but Torvalds didn't do anything about it until the situation blew up in his face. The FSF started requiring a paper trail for GNU contributions, Torvalds didn't follow their lead until SCO started suing.
I'm not a fan of GPLv3, but I can't understand why people consistently deride Stallman and worship Torvalds. Stallman is consistently proven right.
Statements like these are not new. Linus has been avoiding GPL 3 for a while now, even though he says he likes the final license better than some of the early drafts. It's really all to obscure the fact that he can't change the license even if he wanted to. He would have to control the copyrights for all contributed code in order to switch from GPL 2 to any other license, including GPL 3. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your option of the new revision) he does not have the power to do this.
Wait, so GPL 2 is "locking code up?" Where were all these people who had strong anti-GPL 2 sentiments before 3 was released? Was it not good enough then, or are we just angry because the FSF is telling us to be?
So now, suddenly, since there is a new version of the GPL, anyone who stays on the old version hates software freedom?
Wow. That's kind of an extreme way to look at it. Especially since RMS himself said that there's nothing wrong with continuing to use GPL V2, if that's what a project wants to do. If I were RMS, I would forbid the packaging of any GNU code with a GPLv2 GNU/Linux. Without altering the language of the GPL, simply put, he can't.
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More to the point, this is much ado about nothing. Even if Mr. Torvalds "saw the light" and decided he wanted to move to GPL v3, this would be impossible in practical terms since Linux has no copyright escrow agent similar to the FSF for GNU. In other words, to move code licensed to Linux under GPL v2 (only) to GPL v3 requires re-licensing by the original author -- which you may never be able to find. So, you may safely assume that Linux will be GPL v2 until it is re-written from scratch.
Before everyone starts arguing about the merits of GPLv3, let's remember that it's just the license for the kernel. It's not going to be changing much when used in proprietary consumer devices. On the other hand, if it's not going to change it much, why lock it up? Kinda a moot point...
The real question, is how would a move to GPLv3 benefit Linux? If the answer is not at all, then by keeping it a GPLv2 helps make everyone's life simpler. Any change in license would in certain cases mean that Linux would have to revetted by legal departments in a number of companies and for TiVO-like products a real pain in the neck.
In many ways GPLv3 is a reaction to DRM, but getting all religious about things is not going to be the solution either, IMHO.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
OMG, it... is... ON!!!
L. Ron Torvalds has just declared all out war on Richard Stallman and his radical attempts to conquer all software via the GPLv3.
These two guys are, like, the Gods of FOSS. Who will win this epic, climactic struggle? The FOSS world is obviously not big enough for the two of them... so who will win? Will this Clash of the Titans bring down all the hopes and dreams of the FOSS world? Will pasty white nerds be furiously waging war from their keyboards? Which side will be the first to hire the veteran "warblogger" mercenaries away from the GOP?
I don't have any answers, but I've got a ton of popcorn and a strong desire to watch the inevitable sissy-fight!
Let's get ready to RUMBLE!!!!!
Any company building a product like this has three choices:
- Use a proprietary kernel like QNX or Wince.
- Use a BSD licensed kernel.
- Use Linux.
Linus believes that changing to GPv3 would push companies to choose one of the first two options instead of Linux. RMS believes that switching to v3 would cause companies to continue using Linux but rethink their policy about locking users out of the systems they bought.[1] Please replace stable with any other adjective you feel applies to the Linux kernel.
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Bullshit. That's like saying that because you pay taxes, you support torture! Or like saying since you support slashdot, which is part of a corporation, you're promoting the exploitation of poor chinese children! Linus believes that there's a difference between hardware and software, and that software shouldn't dictate hardware. That makes sense to me.
That's true, but we're not discussing that difference. The difference that we're mostly discussing here is that if you produce hardware that uses open source code, you have to let the user run modified code on that device. Tivo uses linux on all their boxes but they have a checksum to make sure that if the software is modified, it won't run it. They do this because they are required to make sure that you can't use their device for widespread copyright infringement, to shield themselves from the MPAA.
Stallman, in the meantime, sees Tivo using their software but not allowing people to modify it and run it on their device, gets his panties in a bunch and decides that they need to modify the license to keep device manufacturers from doing that.
Linus, on the other hand, takes his evil corporate leanings and decides that hardware is different from software and that hardware manufacturers are, therefore, different from software developers and proclaims that hardware manufacturers should be able to do whatever they want.
Slashdot, in the meanwhile, get's a huge boner off of the conflict, especially Zonk, who's tickled pink that he doesn't even have to give misleading headlines and summaries to inflame people.
Welcome to the license wars, where both sides are populated by fanatical idiots. Stallman, in particular, gets on my nerves because he's become nothing more than pontificating mushroom. At least Torvalds remains a productive member of society, even if he's a bit of troll in his own right.
The nice thing about lots of licenses is that you, as the developer or development team, can pick the one that you feel best serves your project's interests. It seems to me the license wars are the very dichotomy of the idea of an open license, because they're all about trying to force developers down a specific path.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
A license change (alteration of the terms of the GFDL) was recently done for Wikipedia which is a much bigger problem than the kernel due to the fact that it has tens of thousands of times as many copyright holders. FSF cooperated. It proceeded very quietly.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
The Solaris kernel is superior to Linux in a great many ways, but inferior in one very important one; device support. That said, the importance of Linux to the Free Software movement is greatly overstated. There are several very solid kernels that can be used as drop-in replacements for Linux (right down to ABI compatibility in some cases).
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Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I don't really see how. I mean, if you're worried about giving an algorithm up, maybe you shouldn't be releasing the source in the first place?
Don't take that as a "we don't want your code" argument. It's more of an appeal to your own sanity. If that algorithm really is so critical to your success that you need to patent it, it's probably not something you want other people to know how to implement.
If the project accepted that code, then yeah, pretty much. That's why people are so wary of Mono.
However, there are other rather large changes with the GPLv3 -- mostly, closing loopholes which revolve around the definition of "distribution" and the usefulness of "source code". Distribution is the easier one to explain -- if you're running a website on open source (Apache, etc), you are technically not "distributing" it, even if you get a million hits per day. Because you're not distributing it, you don't need to accept the GPL, and you don't need to give source code to visitors of your site.
As for "source code", the GPL was originally written not because Stallman wants to see the source, but because he wants to be able to modify any program he's running -- the original story is that Stallman made a modification to a printer driver (because they provided source, as a matter of consideration), but later, when the lab got a new printer, it did not come with source, so he could not make that modification.
Linus claims to use the GPL for a different reason: He only wants to be able to see the source -- see what people are doing with his code -- and then re-incorporate any useful changes they made back into the project.
GPLv3 is a problem because it closes some loopholes by which you could get the source code, but not be able to modify that same program and run it on the same hardware. This is the "Tivoization" argument -- Tivo gave you source code, but no actual Tivo player would let you compile and run a modified version. Specifically, the hardware would use checksums to verify that the software had not been modified.
Linus has no problem with Tivo -- in fact, he likes it, because his software gets used for more things, and he still gets source code to play with on non-Tivo devices. Stallman hates Tivo, because he can't buy a Tivo and start tinkering with it, so the source code, while useful, no longer serves that original purpose of the GPL.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
RMS is absolutely brilliant, no doubt about it. Anyone who has known him in real life can attest to his brilliance. He body of work speaks for itself, he has consistently predicted things that would happen and proposed solutions. His being the "smartest guy in the room" gives him tremendous abilities to logically predict trends well before those of us normally gifted" people, and with the ability to look like magic divination to those that are of normal intelligence or lower. These facts are not in dispute.
However, for all RMS's brilliance, his lack of social grace, to put it mildly, undermines him as the CEO of the Free Software/Open Source Enterprise. Indeed, the fact that his "movement" was hijacked and renamed Open Source, and his operating system was hijacked and renamed from GNU to Linux, is a testament to that.
Big companies don't hire CEO's that can forecast the future. CEO's hire rooms of people that do that. Companies hire CEOs that can communicate the vision of the company to the outside world AND the people inside the company. The forecasting ability of Stallman is tremendous, but the lack of communication skills is devastating for him as leader of the movement. It's tragic, because he wants to hold the reigns because this is 100% all his idea, but he's a lousy spokesman for his own ideas, and lost control by not finding a better one.
The Biggest Elephant in the Room: Copyright ownership and standing
The most important thing to the FSF is copyright assignment to maintain a single owner to have standing to enforce. If this is so important to free software, why was that not incorporated into the license. You could have a provision that did roughly the following:
1. You are free to modify for your own use, no need to even agree to license
2. You are free to distribute modifications, if you do, you agree that your modifications are a derivative work, and all copyright is maintained by the maintainer of the software (define this in the license, first person to distribute becomes maintainer, unless a new maintainer is named by them)
3. You are free to fork, but you have to rename the software, you then become maintainer of the fork, owning all derivative changes from here on out of your version
That might not have been an obvious problem in the 80s, but given the Emacs vs. Xemacs ownership of code issue (Xemacs could use Emacs, but not vice versa because FSF requires ownership of all copyrights), arguments about relicensing, etc., this was obvious by the time v3 was created. Some solution should have been found to maintain single ownership of projects for the purpose of standing that didn't require a lot of paperwork.
Examples of this:
1. GNU vs. Linux... Linux sounds like Unix (people knew Unix, liked Unix, but couldn't afford Unix), and the fact that it's a play on a name is irrelevant. Digital Unix, Xenix, HP-UX, etc., all prepped people for a *ux/*ix name for a Unix. GNU? Hard to pronounce, a silly inside joke, etc., lousy brand. The system didn't become Linux instead of GNU by fluke, Linux's superior name and brand displaced GNU.
2. Free Software / Open Source: Open Source is descriptive... there is more to it than the source being viewable, but that's the main action item, the rest is details. Free Software? confusingly vague, similar to Freeware (an already existing term with a lousy brand), and required a "manifesto" to understand. In fact, the existence of a "manifesto" was problematic, because we only here the word "manifesto" used in conjunction with "crazy people" and "revolutionaries," with a tremendous overlap between them. Free Software, captured the ideal if you understood the concept... clever for someone with a 180 IQ to create, interesting for people in the 130-150 range to understand and ponder, and meaninglessly abstract for someone in the normal range... bad branding #2, and RMS lost his movement.
3. Emacs vs. Xemacs: the exchange ab
So what is wrong with the TiVo picture? Apparently some GPL fans feel that the political aims are more important than the engineering aims. The goal is not to promote reuse, except by people who agree with them. "Give nothing back" sounds too much like the crazy BBS days when readers were rated on "upload to download ratios". But if TiVo had decided not to use Linux, would these GPL people be happier? If someone doesn't like DRM, then bitch at Hollywood or Hughes Satellite, not the company that's trying to create a useful product under real world conditions.
Open source should not be about "preventing" proprietary software. And it usually isn't about that. Except in the GPL case. Open source should be about creating software and letting others use it in any way they want, no matter what political views they have. That's software 'freedom'.
It is clear you're an accusatory and condescending ass. That's what's clear. Because someone disagrees with you is no reason to say they don't understand an issue. If everyone agreed, there wouldn't be an issue to discuss and no licenses pointing out the differences would be necessary. Come down off your high horse if you want to continue the subthread, please.
Why is a developer of something with open source code any more privileged than the end user? That's the whole point of the source code being available.
Furthermore, why is the manufacturer of a particular piece of hardware more privileged than the end user? The end user has every right not to buy that brand of hardware. The only real disadvantage the end user has isn't that the hardware in non-free. It's isn't even that they can't run their update kernel on the proprietary, sealed hardware without modifying the hardware. It's that without being able to decrypt the OS and then uncompile it, or to be able to run it in a sandbox, that they can't be sure the compiled kernel is really the same as what the manufacturer supplies as source. If Linus pushed the matter of making them prove it's the same, he could probably witness the signing of it and vouch for them. Otherwise, the very act of distributing a signed binary is counter to the requirement to provide the real source. However, if you have that little trust in the vendor, why would you buy their hardware, as it could be doing any nefarious thing too?
When someone calls themselves the "Free Software Foundation", they should be limiting the free use of the software as little as possible to further its greater freedom. The GPLv2, for all its perceived flaws, does that pretty well. To say something is free software, but that it can only be used in this or that way by people who agree with the whole political platform of the foundation is frankly blatant hypocrisy. What good is it to the end user to have the source code if they're not allowed to run the software? How is that keeping the privileged developers and members of the FSF from limiting the freedoms of end users?
Why is it a problem that Linus doesn't agree with the FSF altogether? Is complete agreement with the FSF prerequisite to abhor slimy, lying, monopolistic, closed-source Unix vendors? Is it important to carry an FSF card to think that cooperating with other developers around the world can produce something better than what's being pushed by the innovative marketing department at Microsoft? Linus chose the GPLv2 because what RMS codified in it made a lot of sense to him and to many other people.
It might help you to remember that RMS and the FSF are the ones who have changed position. The people who are sticking to the GPLv2 are doing exactly what the FSF asked of them up until a few months ago. Now, the FSF wants to ask them to change. Why is it that Linus or anyone else is being called anti-FSF when it's the FSF that has changed direction?
The FSF used to always say that if you liked the GPLv2 even enough to consider it, that it was better to use it and stand united as a Free Software community than to splinter off new and slightly incompatible licenses. That's true, and Linus saw the wisdom in that. Now, the GPLv3 is a license other than the GPLv2 and it's causing a bunch of strife and incompatibility in the community. Many people in and adorers of the FSF think that because they wrote both licenses that everyone should just switch. However, they encouraged the use of GPLv2 by a much wider audience than their core group, and now they're trying to say there's some dogma attached to the licenses. The licenses are legal documents for men, though, and not handed down from on high and dictated to software developers by angels.
The FSF should be glad so many people are using the GPLv2 rather than BSD, MPL, or any of a hundred thousand closed-source EULAs. By bickering with people who support the major beliefs of the FSF but not the dogma and specifics, the FSF is alienating all the OSI crowd who never bought into a centralized repository of "free" software at MIT in the first place. These are the people they should be glad are on the same side, even if they're not in the same tent.