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."

Comments

How free does Linux want to be?

[Dareth]

We are just clipping Tux's wings a little bit. It is not like he can fly anyway.

Pragmatism/idealism

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Linux license could be changed easily

[Bruce Perens]

Would you please stop propogating that misinformation? Linus could change the license in one month, if he wanted to. It doesn't matter how many copyright holders are absent or dead. All he has to do is publish in a legal notice his intent and a clear means for any copyright holder in opposition to request removal of their work.

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

Re:Linux license could be changed easily

[Bruce Perens]

The difference is that Linus manages a collaborative community to which the copyright holders have submitted their work. He has made license changes before through just this process. One was to put a prelude on the GPL explaining the system call exception, and another was to remove the GPL upgrade path.

Could a BSD developer do this to GPL software? No for two reasons. One, because the GPL software was not a contribution to his project. And two, because that changes the entire intent of the license, where a modification of GPL2 to GPL3 would not.

I am not an attorney, I just work with them a lot because I do corporate Open Source strategy for many big companies. I've discussed this particular question with multiple attorneys.

Bruce

Re:2 vs 3

[TheRaven64]

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).

The real question...

[Bruce Perens]

The real question is would a move to GPL3 benefit your freedom? Unfortunately, Linus doesn't give a hoot about your freedom. Here's a practical example of the importance of freedom for those who aren't willing to consider it in the abstract. I have some Sony HDTV hard disk recorders. They are going to stop getting the TV guide and will stop having the ability to set their clock when the analog TV shutdown completes at the San Francisco PBS station (which broadcasts that data in its vertical interval). These devices use Linux and indeed they come with a copyright notice for Busybox (which I created). They are also DRM locked. Sony is just going to allow the devices to become bricks, even though they were sold as HDTV, rather than analog TV, recorders. I will have to somehow crack their DRM if I want the devices to be useful after next February. GPL3 would have given me a better ability to do this work and save my device from an uncaring vendor. GPL3 is also compatible with DRM for media, as long as the DRM isn't done in the GPL3 program. So, Sony could have used it, and could have made it more possible for this device to continue to live.

Bruce

Re:lookin for a karma whore. . .

[SanityInAnarchy]

I can understand that this would make people wary of committing code because they might inadvertently give an algorithm to the public domain.

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.

What would happen with the GPL v2 then? The company could order a cease and desist to the open source project because it violated one of their patents, even if they themselves provided the code?

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.

RMS and his brilliance

[alexhmit01]

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