Linus on Linux, 20 Years In

Radium_ writes "Along with the 20th anniversary of the release of the first Linux kernel, Linuxfr — a French-language Linux website — published an interview with Linus Torvalds. [Interview in English.] The creator of Linux answers questions about Linux kernel licensing, his contributions to the kernel development model and Linux in 2031."

Comments

A really interesting quote from Linus

[frostmages]

A lot of other people think that the BSD license with its even more freedoms is a better license for them.

The creator of Linux thinks the BSD license is more free. Now we can stop the fighting. BSD license doesn't try to tell other people how they can use the code, GPL does. Who is more correct man to say it?

Re:A really interesting quote from Linus

[ivucica]

BSD license is more free, but does not preserve the freedoms.

Choice of license should depend on your goals. If one of them is philosophy, so be it. If one of them is business, so be it. I always pick the license that I feel best for a project.

Re:A really interesting quote from Linus

[ToasterMonkey]

I don't understand this.

BSD license is more free, but does not preserve the freedoms.

If somebody builds on your work and doesn't release it back to you, you don't lose anything. Effectively, there's no difference between that and if they had never even touched your stuff... which they wont do if they didn't want to have to share their changes with a GPL project anyway.

So you're only retaining contributors that are OK with sharing anyway and you're excluding people who do not want to give their modifications away openly and for $free. My idea of freedom is not "here is a free widget, but you can't improve and sell it, you can only give it away" - WTF?

This is strong-arming people into open source, just like the unnecessary association of $free with open. This isn't preservation, protection, nothing like that, it is attempting to SPREAD an ideal that has lately been starting to freak me out, and is counter intuitive to a healthy economy. There simply is no market demand for these ideals. GNU and FSF resort to this asshattery to attack a (once healthy) software market, forcing reimbursement for software development into areas that are unfeasible for small software businesses all for the sake of ideals that have zeeeeeeero demand in the marketplace. "Look at me, you can get a quick start on your project, for FREEE, there's just this uh, one string attached... you must support my agenda, mwahahahah! (evil Bowser laugh)"

Look, nobody uses Ubuntu because it has source code available. They use it because it's $free. I know everyone here knows this... "well duh, it has to be $free or nobody would use it and open source wouldn't advance"
Why doesn't creep out more people?

Re:A really interesting quote from Linus

[DeadCatX2]

You keep saying that word - freedom - but it does not mean what you think it means.

The GPL is about asserting control over derivative works. It provides the illusion of freedom, but the source code is not actually free. If it was free, there wouldn't be any restrictions at all.

To say "the GPL protects the freedom of the source code" also implies that if a commercial entity made a derivative work, somehow the original source code is no longer free. That is complete bullshit. The only purpose the GPL has is to control derivative works.

If you want to use the GPL because it works for you, that's fine, go right ahead. But don't fool yourself into thinking that it has anything to do with freedom.

Re:A really interesting quote from Linus

[shutdown -p now]

The BSD is fine if you want some robber baron to exploit your work and lock you out of the end result.

What "work"? How do you "exploit" it? It's just bits. We all know that copying bits around is not wrong - after all, it's what TPB is all about, and we know they aren't wrong.

In all seriousness, if you feel the urge to correct anyone who calls copyright infringement "stealing", then you probably shouldn't call people who take BSD code and use it in closed-source programs "robber barons". It's about the same level of wrong.

Big thank you to all the contributors

[bl8n8r]

To all the people who contributed Open Source projects over the last 20 years, a big THANKS. Can you imagine this landscape without open source software and alternatives to run it on like Linux and the *BSD variants?

Most of the internet would would need downtime for reboot every night, and the cost incurred by your ISP for all the proprietary licensing would probably put the net out of reach for most common folks.