"But, with at most 12 months of security updates, this isn't really a viable option for use in any environment outside the home (and not even for a lot of them). Personally, I want to use my computer, not be updating it all the time."
No, it is not AT MOST 12 months. It is AT LEAST 12 months. The wording makes all the difference.
Red Hat did not use to have a policy on erratas. Now they have. The policy is that they guarantee erratas for 12 months on their consumer/hobbyist distribution. It says nothing about them not offering anything beyond that, it is just not a guarantee. Before this policy they guaranteed you nothing at all.
Apt-get exists for Red Hat too (for instance: apt.freshrpms.net). You do not have to pay for up2date.
Red Hat is a commercial company, but people can download Red Hat Linux for free. I see no reason why Red Hat should also have to provide bandwidth and free services for people downloading the distribution for free.
That said, nothing is stopping people from offering free services for Red Hat, something freshrpms.net does.
"$299 for a basic workstation? I can get Win2k Pro for $150 or so with limited support, or I can get Debian (or other various Linux distros) for free"
May I remind you that you can STILL get Red Hat Linux for free?
These are advanced offerings from Red Hat that is meant to compete against similiar advanced offerings from their competitors. If it works out remains to be seen, but Red Hat continue to be one of the (if not THE) most GPL-friendly companies around.
"The last release of KDE had some pretty cool stuff in it - I was eager to get my hands on it and play with it. In contrast, most of what I've heard about Gnome 2.2 has been about what it doesn't have in it anymore. It apparently won't even be featured in the next Knoppix release, since it's broken so badly."
While I'm not that opposed to the rest of your post, this one is assuming way too much. GNOME 2.x has been about cleansing and purifying. You assume that removing things makes it broken. I on the other hand applaud what have been done, since it makes GNOME easier, simpler and more elegant. The people complaining are very loud. The people that like this do not bother screaming about it. In addition the project is trying to attract newbies, which would not care about the ability to switch window manager in the GUI (which KDE thankfully does not do either).
Knoppix has always been about KDE (the whole name implies it). That they did not like GNOME 2.x does not surprise me the least.
I also disagree that KDE feels more unified, I personally think it is the opposite, but every one has their own taste.
The file dialog is not good, and is being fixed, but there is a lot of applications out there that just use GTK+ and not the rest of GNOME. Two totally different file dialogs for The GIMP and Gedit would not be very good, so it has been decided that the file-dialog will need to be fixed at the GTK+-level.
The rest of the GNOME-project is not going to stand still and wait for it to be included in GTK+, so it is highly possible that the next GNOME-version (2.4) will still be based on GTK+ 2.2 (with the old file dialog).
Re:The only once inside the GNOME-community
on
Has GNOME Become LAME?
·
· Score: 2, Funny
"once inside"?
HA! The preview button is for cowards.
The only once inside the GNOME-community
on
Has GNOME Become LAME?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
.. that complains about GConf, is the ones that do not know what it means.
It is basically a configuration database that provides notification, and can use any backend, where the default is pure XML-formatted text files.
An LDAP-backend is also being worked on, something which should be a boon for network administrators.
The file-dialog is lame, and is being replaced.
This article is basically a troll. Use whatever you like. Some people like KDE, others like GNOME.
"Begging the question does not mean what you think it means."
Actually I think you are wrong. I do not for one second doubt that your interpretation was the original meaning, but when almost everyone uses it to mean what the original poster did, then "begging the question" has taken a new meaning. It really DOES mean what the original poster used it to mean.
Besides, this new meaning is much more obvious than the old one.
" The law doesn't say anywhere that you're allowed to acquire copyrighted material without paying for it, as long as it's not for commercial purposes."
Actually yes. There are plenty of countries around where this is legal. My country, Norway, is one of them and the new proposed EU legislation also permits downloading copyrighted material for personal usage.
There are very few countries where copyright infringement like taking other peoples code and passing it off as their own is legal.
You haven't responded to a single one the issues I talk about. You haven't provided a single argument about WHAT exactly Red Hat has done that is so horrible.
Yes, Bero left and did not feel very welcome around there. Which is understandable. Most of Red Hat are very much into GNOME. Do you KNOW what actually happened?
There is not a single shred of evidence that problems around Red Hat and KDE was intentional crippling.
Some KDE-people get worked up over nothing, and this all just builds on the sad "let's bash Red Hat" attitude that has been going on for years. If you are a KDE-user there are probably better distributions out there for you, so quit whining.
SuSE and Xandros also runs Linux applications, and there are actually quite a few excellent applications out there now. Most of them are free software and thus provides added value for anyone purchasing these systems.
They are both actually mainly out there for running Linux applications, strange as this may sound. I know it shocked me greatly. Still being able to run some Windows applications is just an added bonus.
If you just want to use Windows applications, then yes, you are better off with Windows XP.
I too think ExtremeTech are biased towards GNOME, and I agree that complaining about SuSE not doing much about GNOME is a strange complaint. SuSE is focused on KDE, if you want to use GNOME there are better distributions out there.
Now to the extremely sad and biased view of what Red Hat has done with KDE. Please excuse my ranting, but I am really tired of this.
KDE in Red Hat has not been purposely crippled. Don't listen to Mosfet. He is extremely eccentric, and did not mix well with the KDE developers. But when he says something bad about Red Hat he is suddenly an authority on the matter.
The font-installer worked badly because Red Hat wanted to ship the new state of the art fontsystem, fontconfig. They might not have done as good a job as with GNOME, but the fonts were a lot better than in most other distributions.
They patched KDE so that it supported the new notification area. This meant that their Red Hat Network tool would not have to be written twice to show status reports in the panel of both KDE and GNOME. This is now included in the main KDE-distribution.
Their choice of theme is just a bull**** complaint. Since when was distributors forced to use the default theme? If you don't like it, change it.
Their choice of Mozilla as default Web browser is their choice. They found that Mozilla rendered more Web pages better, and they wanted to focus on one tool in each task. Konqueror is still there, and it is actually quite easy to change the default. The web browser launcher actually runs a shell script that wraps "The Browser Of Your Choice [tm]".
When it comes to the menu system, well Mandrake also created their OWN menu structure that is the same in both KDE and GNOME. Mandrake did a better job on this one, but this is hardly purposely crippling KDE.
KDE in Red Hat 8 actually works very well. The theme is more focused on simplicity rather than flash, but this is Red Hats choice. This IS free software, remember?
If you don't like Red Hat, don't use it, but this FUD is getting rather tiresome.
Well.. if the consortium wants advocate KDE as the Linux Desktop system, then I might see that Red Hat would have a problem with joining it, since they are heavily into GNOME.
Since Ximian in is on the list of members, this seems rather unlikely to be the case.
You seem to be under the impression that the OSX-icons are SVG. This is not true. They are just resource forks containing several different sized icons so that they seem to scale "magically".
They might be drawn with Vector based drawing, but they ARE converted before used as icons. KDE does the same thing. The excellent Crystal Icons are SVG-based, but they are converted to PNG for KDE, hence the incorrect assumption that KDE supports SVG. KDE is supposed to get SVG-support in KDE 3.2.
And an incorrect one at that. Nautilus has supported SVG since GNOME 1.4, and KDE 3.1 STILL does not support SVG. It is however on the plan for KDE 3.2. Now GNOME will support SVG in all areas of the desktop.
Moderators: "<INSERT FAVOURITE DESKTOP SYSTEM> has supported this for years", is always a pure troll. When it is also totally incorrect it certainly does not warrant a +1 interesting.
The only thing this article says, is that the people that thought XBoxes would be nice as cheap components in a cluster are most likey deluded. I won't comment on the truth of this as I have no idea other than what the article tells me.
This does not bash Microsoft at all. Microsoft has never said that XBoxes was meant as cheap Linux clusters. Does this article claim they have?
Read the article before you post.
Re:Longtime GNOMEr Ready to Try
on
KDE 3.1 Released
·
· Score: 2, Informative
You include both themes in the same tarball, so that in the directory "MyTheme", you should have the directories "gtk" and "gtk-2.0".
The latest versions of the gnome theme-selector is supposed to change both gtk and gtk-2.0 themes based on this. If it does not, then it is a bug, and should be filed at http://bugzilla.gnome.org.
I know it works like this in Red Hat 8.0. Now, Red Hat did patch some things in 8.0 that was not in GNOME 2.0.x, but if so, then it should most definitely be in GNOME 2.2 scheduled to be out next week.
Eh.. I know this news might not be very good, but you are falsely making it even worse.
The policy was not to EOL something when a new version comes out. The policy was to EOL something after 12 months. It is also only for the "consumer"-version. If you are a business, you bought the professional versions, right?
Besides, this is just a guaranteed policy. I'm willing to bet that there will be important security erratas for Red Hat 8.0 beyond that guarantee period.
I still think it is too short, and I hope they extend it to two years for "consumer versions", three years for "professional versions", and say four years for "advanced server".
This is oversimplification to the extreme. What really matters is wether you think the product will succeed or not. As opposed to chocolate or candy bars, it really, really matters what technology "everybody else" chooses.
People generally look at themselves as superior to most of their peers. And it might just be that average Joe is saying EXACTLY what you are saying, but because he thought VHS would succeed and Betamax would not (possibly because of other peoples stupidity), he chose VHS.
This is of course a self-fulfilling prophecy, and one of the things that tip the scale is good marketing.
While I like that you try to confront FUD, this is not entirely correct.
GPL-based libraries does NOT allow the distribution of closed applications using these libraries, unless a specific exception is included in the license.
If you want this, you need to use the LGPL-license. It used to be an acronym for "Library General Public License", but since FSF actually encourages the usage of the GPL for libraries as well, they renamed the LGPL license to "Lesser General Public License". There is also an exception in the GPL-license covering libraries that are normally included in the operating system. This can possibly be open for interpretation. Perl-libraries are mostly included in Linux distributions. The absence of Glibc or an equivalent renders the system pretty useless and it can safely be said to be system libraries.
Usage of the libraries and the compiler are also two seperate issues. The compiler may very well be GPL and still allow for closed applications, but the libraries do not. Apple uses the GPLed compiler GCC for compiling their closed product MacOS X.
To summarize, if the entire Java SDK was made GPL, new products based on this would probably have to be GPL if they used both the compiler and the libraries (which most apps do). The solution could be to make the compiler (and possibly the VM itself) GPL and the class-library LGPL. Or you could just LGPL the entire thing and not have to worry about this.
Frankly I think it all comes down to focus. While it is true that most community run software does not focus on "consumers" I do not think there is anything inheritly impossible about community run software focusing on ease-of-use.
Mandrake has only had one eye focused on ease-of-use with reasonable success, the other one has been focused on trying to become as professional as Red Hat with very little success. The goals of Mandrake as a business may very well conflict with the idea of ease-of-use, since Mandrake believes (possibly correct, but I do not know) they have to go after the server/professional market to make money.
This have made Mandrake a "jack of all trades" like all the other distributions instead of a very polished specialized desktop distribution. A poor mans Red Hat if you like.
If a community run Mandrake distribution give up this notion it might even improve on Mandrakes level of ease-of-use.
"So very wrong. If you were right, that would mean that I could write a GPLed program that reimplements the MP3 patent, and then tell Thompson Media that their patent is violating the GPL."
You misunderstand the whole issue. The GPL will not invalidate patents, it will invalidate the patent holders rights to distribute the GPL-software.
So if Fraunhofer distributed mp3 players based on GPL-code, and refused to give out royalty free licenses for their mp3 patent, they would loose their rights to distribute the GPL-based mp3-software.
They would still be able to enforce their patents and they would still be able to distribute mp3-software for which THEY are the copyright holders.
It is not in Calderas interest to enforce royalty fees on their patents, because that would mean they could not distribute Linux anymore.
"So esentially, if SCOs to proved to be correct, that would make the GPL invalid for those portions of code, and thus it would be free game for anybody to use the code. Then SCO could be free to grab the code and enforce their patents anyway, an effort must made easier by removing that pesky GPL."
Here you are just plain wrong. You do not understand copyright law at all. Without the GPL-license, Caldera has no rights to the code AT ALL, apart from the very few portions they might have written.
If the GPL-license was declared void, then only the original copyright holder would have any rights to the code. In Linux's case, that would be a big mess, since there are (AFAIK) lots and lots of copyright holders for the Linux kernel. Linus would probably have to contact as many as possible, and ask them for permission, and rewrite portions of the code that had owners that he could not reach.
For the GNU-tools, the Free Software Foundation is the copyright holder, and they could do whatever they pleased. Noone else would have any rights besides what FSF decided to give them.
Slashdot Mirror
"But, with at most 12 months of security updates, this isn't really a viable option for use in any environment outside the home (and not even for a lot of them). Personally, I want to use my computer, not be updating it all the time."
No, it is not AT MOST 12 months. It is AT LEAST 12 months. The wording makes all the difference.
Red Hat did not use to have a policy on erratas. Now they have. The policy is that they guarantee erratas for 12 months on their consumer/hobbyist distribution. It says nothing about them not offering anything beyond that, it is just not a guarantee. Before this policy they guaranteed you nothing at all.
"I think the simple solution to people not wanting to pay the Redhat (damn where can I put the $) tax, is to not pay it - use another distro."
The simpler solution is just to download Red Hat Linux for free.
"Use another distro" is an argument you use if you have another agenda.
Apt-get exists for Red Hat too (for instance: apt.freshrpms.net). You do not have to pay for up2date.
Red Hat is a commercial company, but people can download Red Hat Linux for free. I see no reason why Red Hat should also have to provide bandwidth and free services for people downloading the distribution for free.
That said, nothing is stopping people from offering free services for Red Hat, something freshrpms.net does.
"$299 for a basic workstation? I can get Win2k Pro for $150 or so with limited support, or I can get Debian (or other various Linux distros) for free"
May I remind you that you can STILL get Red Hat Linux for free?
These are advanced offerings from Red Hat that is meant to compete against similiar advanced offerings from their competitors. If it works out remains to be seen, but Red Hat continue to be one of the (if not THE) most GPL-friendly companies around.
"The last release of KDE had some pretty cool stuff in it - I was eager to get my hands on it and play with it. In contrast, most of what I've heard about Gnome 2.2 has been about what it doesn't have in it anymore. It apparently won't even be featured in the next Knoppix release, since it's broken so badly."
While I'm not that opposed to the rest of your post, this one is assuming way too much. GNOME 2.x has been about cleansing and purifying. You assume that removing things makes it broken. I on the other hand applaud what have been done, since it makes GNOME easier, simpler and more elegant. The people complaining are very loud. The people that like this do not bother screaming about it. In addition the project is trying to attract newbies, which would not care about the ability to switch window manager in the GUI (which KDE thankfully does not do either).
Knoppix has always been about KDE (the whole name implies it). That they did not like GNOME 2.x does not surprise me the least.
I also disagree that KDE feels more unified, I personally think it is the opposite, but every one has their own taste.
The file dialog is not good, and is being fixed, but there is a lot of applications out there that just use GTK+ and not the rest of GNOME. Two totally different file dialogs for The GIMP and Gedit would not be very good, so it has been decided that the file-dialog will need to be fixed at the GTK+-level.
The rest of the GNOME-project is not going to stand still and wait for it to be included in GTK+, so it is highly possible that the next GNOME-version (2.4) will still be based on GTK+ 2.2 (with the old file dialog).
"once inside"?
HA! The preview button is for cowards.
.. that complains about GConf, is the ones that do not know what it means.
It is basically a configuration database that provides notification, and can use any backend, where the default is pure XML-formatted text files.
An LDAP-backend is also being worked on, something which should be a boon for network administrators.
The file-dialog is lame, and is being replaced.
This article is basically a troll. Use whatever you like. Some people like KDE, others like GNOME.
"Begging the question does not mean what you think it means."
Actually I think you are wrong. I do not for one second doubt that your interpretation was the original meaning, but when almost everyone uses it to mean what the original poster did, then "begging the question" has taken a new meaning. It really DOES mean what the original poster used it to mean.
Besides, this new meaning is much more obvious than the old one.
Now you are just being silly.
1. There is a huge chance that the NVIDIA-drivers won't work on an XBox.
2. The XBox only has 64MB ram. That is not nearly enough to run newer games well on top of an OS (and X) that is already taking up some memory.
" The law doesn't say anywhere that you're allowed to acquire copyrighted material without paying for it, as long as it's not for commercial purposes."
Actually yes. There are plenty of countries around where this is legal. My country, Norway, is one of them and the new proposed EU legislation also permits downloading copyrighted material for personal usage.
There are very few countries where copyright infringement like taking other peoples code and passing it off as their own is legal.
EULAs takes away rights, the GPL grants rights. See the difference?
You haven't responded to a single one the issues I talk about. You haven't provided a single argument about WHAT exactly Red Hat has done that is so horrible.
Yes, Bero left and did not feel very welcome around there. Which is understandable. Most of Red Hat are very much into GNOME. Do you KNOW what actually happened?
There is not a single shred of evidence that problems around Red Hat and KDE was intentional crippling.
Some KDE-people get worked up over nothing, and this all just builds on the sad "let's bash Red Hat" attitude that has been going on for years. If you are a KDE-user there are probably better distributions out there for you, so quit whining.
SuSE and Xandros also runs Linux applications, and there are actually quite a few excellent applications out there now. Most of them are free software and thus provides added value for anyone purchasing these systems.
They are both actually mainly out there for running Linux applications, strange as this may sound. I know it shocked me greatly. Still being able to run some Windows applications is just an added bonus.
If you just want to use Windows applications, then yes, you are better off with Windows XP.
I too think ExtremeTech are biased towards GNOME, and I agree that complaining about SuSE not doing much about GNOME is a strange complaint. SuSE is focused on KDE, if you want to use GNOME there are better distributions out there.
Now to the extremely sad and biased view of what Red Hat has done with KDE. Please excuse my ranting, but I am really tired of this.
KDE in Red Hat has not been purposely crippled. Don't listen to Mosfet. He is extremely eccentric, and did not mix well with the KDE developers. But when he says something bad about Red Hat he is suddenly an authority on the matter.
The font-installer worked badly because Red Hat wanted to ship the new state of the art fontsystem, fontconfig. They might not have done as good a job as with GNOME, but the fonts were a lot better than in most other distributions.
They patched KDE so that it supported the new notification area. This meant that their Red Hat Network tool would not have to be written twice to show status reports in the panel of both KDE and GNOME. This is now included in the main KDE-distribution.
Their choice of theme is just a bull**** complaint. Since when was distributors forced to use the default theme? If you don't like it, change it.
Their choice of Mozilla as default Web browser is their choice. They found that Mozilla rendered more Web pages better, and they wanted to focus on one tool in each task. Konqueror is still there, and it is actually quite easy to change the default. The web browser launcher actually runs a shell script that wraps "The Browser Of Your Choice [tm]".
When it comes to the menu system, well Mandrake also created their OWN menu structure that is the same in both KDE and GNOME. Mandrake did a better job on this one, but this is hardly purposely crippling KDE.
KDE in Red Hat 8 actually works very well. The theme is more focused on simplicity rather than flash, but this is Red Hats choice. This IS free software, remember?
If you don't like Red Hat, don't use it, but this FUD is getting rather tiresome.
Well.. if the consortium wants advocate KDE as the Linux Desktop system, then I might see that Red Hat would have a problem with joining it, since they are heavily into GNOME.
Since Ximian in is on the list of members, this seems rather unlikely to be the case.
You seem to be under the impression that the OSX-icons are SVG. This is not true. They are just resource forks containing several different sized icons so that they seem to scale "magically".
They might be drawn with Vector based drawing, but they ARE converted before used as icons. KDE does the same thing. The excellent Crystal Icons are SVG-based, but they are converted to PNG for KDE, hence the incorrect assumption that KDE supports SVG. KDE is supposed to get SVG-support in KDE 3.2.
And an incorrect one at that. Nautilus has supported SVG since GNOME 1.4, and KDE 3.1 STILL does not support SVG. It is however on the plan for KDE 3.2. Now GNOME will support SVG in all areas of the desktop.
Moderators:
"<INSERT FAVOURITE DESKTOP SYSTEM> has supported this for years", is always a pure troll. When it is also totally incorrect it certainly does not warrant a +1 interesting.
"Isn't this true they add fat and chemicals to their fries so they taste better ?"
If so, I'd say they've failed rather miserably. Almost all small burger-joints have better tasting products than McDonalds and Burger King.
What?? Bash Microsoft? Where?
The only thing this article says, is that the people that thought XBoxes would be nice as cheap components in a cluster are most likey deluded. I won't comment on the truth of this as I have no idea other than what the article tells me.
This does not bash Microsoft at all. Microsoft has never said that XBoxes was meant as cheap Linux clusters. Does this article claim they have?
Read the article before you post.
You include both themes in the same tarball, so that in the directory "MyTheme", you should have the directories "gtk" and "gtk-2.0".
The latest versions of the gnome theme-selector is supposed to change both gtk and gtk-2.0 themes based on this. If it does not, then it is a bug, and should be filed at http://bugzilla.gnome.org.
I know it works like this in Red Hat 8.0. Now, Red Hat did patch some things in 8.0 that was not in GNOME 2.0.x, but if so, then it should most definitely be in GNOME 2.2 scheduled to be out next week.
Eh.. I know this news might not be very good, but you are falsely making it even worse.
The policy was not to EOL something when a new version comes out. The policy was to EOL something after 12 months. It is also only for the "consumer"-version. If you are a business, you bought the professional versions, right?
Besides, this is just a guaranteed policy. I'm willing to bet that there will be important security erratas for Red Hat 8.0 beyond that guarantee period.
I still think it is too short, and I hope they extend it to two years for "consumer versions", three years for "professional versions", and say four years for "advanced server".
This is oversimplification to the extreme. What really matters is wether you think the product will succeed or not. As opposed to chocolate or candy bars, it really, really matters what technology "everybody else" chooses.
People generally look at themselves as superior to most of their peers. And it might just be that average Joe is saying EXACTLY what you are saying, but because he thought VHS would succeed and Betamax would not (possibly because of other peoples stupidity), he chose VHS.
This is of course a self-fulfilling prophecy, and one of the things that tip the scale is good marketing.
While I like that you try to confront FUD, this is not entirely correct.
GPL-based libraries does NOT allow the distribution of closed applications using these libraries, unless a specific exception is included in the license.
If you want this, you need to use the LGPL-license. It used to be an acronym for "Library General Public License", but since FSF actually encourages the usage of the GPL for libraries as well, they renamed the LGPL license to "Lesser General Public License". There is also an exception in the GPL-license covering libraries that are normally included in the operating system. This can possibly be open for interpretation. Perl-libraries are mostly included in Linux distributions. The absence of Glibc or an equivalent renders the system pretty useless and it can safely be said to be system libraries.
Usage of the libraries and the compiler are also two seperate issues. The compiler may very well be GPL and still allow for closed applications, but the libraries do not. Apple uses the GPLed compiler GCC for compiling their closed product MacOS X.
To summarize, if the entire Java SDK was made GPL, new products based on this would probably have to be GPL if they used both the compiler and the libraries (which most apps do). The solution could be to make the compiler (and possibly the VM itself) GPL and the class-library LGPL. Or you could just LGPL the entire thing and not have to worry about this.
Frankly I think it all comes down to focus. While it is true that most community run software does not focus on "consumers" I do not think there is anything inheritly impossible about community run software focusing on ease-of-use.
Mandrake has only had one eye focused on ease-of-use with reasonable success, the other one has been focused on trying to become as professional as Red Hat with very little success. The goals of Mandrake as a business may very well conflict with the idea of ease-of-use, since Mandrake believes (possibly correct, but I do not know) they have to go after the server/professional market to make money.
This have made Mandrake a "jack of all trades" like all the other distributions instead of a very polished specialized desktop distribution. A poor mans Red Hat if you like.
If a community run Mandrake distribution give up this notion it might even improve on Mandrakes level of ease-of-use.
"So very wrong. If you were right, that would mean that I could write a GPLed program that reimplements the MP3 patent, and then tell Thompson Media that their patent is violating the GPL."
You misunderstand the whole issue. The GPL will not invalidate patents, it will invalidate the patent holders rights to distribute the GPL-software.
So if Fraunhofer distributed mp3 players based on GPL-code, and refused to give out royalty free licenses for their mp3 patent, they would loose their rights to distribute the GPL-based mp3-software.
They would still be able to enforce their patents and they would still be able to distribute mp3-software for which THEY are the copyright holders.
It is not in Calderas interest to enforce royalty fees on their patents, because that would mean they could not distribute Linux anymore.
"So esentially, if SCOs to proved to be correct, that would make the GPL invalid for those portions of code, and thus it would be free game for anybody to use the code. Then SCO could be free to grab the code and enforce their patents anyway, an effort must made easier by removing that pesky GPL."
Here you are just plain wrong. You do not understand copyright law at all. Without the GPL-license, Caldera has no rights to the code AT ALL, apart from the very few portions they might have written.
If the GPL-license was declared void, then only the original copyright holder would have any rights to the code. In Linux's case, that would be a big mess, since there are (AFAIK) lots and lots of copyright holders for the Linux kernel. Linus would probably have to contact as many as possible, and ask them for permission, and rewrite portions of the code that had owners that he could not reach.
For the GNU-tools, the Free Software Foundation is the copyright holder, and they could do whatever they pleased. Noone else would have any rights besides what FSF decided to give them.