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Torvalds Puts Support Behind GPL2 Linux
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Tue Jan 08, 2008 10:50 AM
from the license-and-registration-please dept.
from the license-and-registration-please dept.
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."
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How free does Linux want to be? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How free does Linux want to be? (Score:4, Insightful)
It would be less acceptable if Linus immediatelly accepted GPLv3 , without looking at it . The fact that he stays with GPLv2 means he looked into it , and decides to play on the safe side and stay with a license that worked well.
2 vs 3 (Score:3, Insightful)
It depends if its an advantage... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
The real question... (Score:5, Interesting)
Bruce
Re:The real question... (Score:4, Insightful)
I can buy an analog TV converter box because the government is paying for me to have two of them. I can not buy a TV Guide on Screen converter box because none is available and the format is proprietary and DRM-locked.
Bruce
Re:The real question... (Score:4, Insightful)
> That's not freedom, that's tyranny under the freedom banner.
This is a *complete* mischaracterization of the situation. You are using the absolute wrong terms here when you say 'freedom' and 'tyranny'. First off, freedom is such a loaded word that it's really hard to extract anything meaningful out of its use in situations like this. But 'tyranny under the freedom banner' is so clearly just *wrong*. The author of the GPLv3 is giving access to the copyrighted work under very specific terms. These terms don't take way anyone's freedom, and they don't establish any tyranny. They just give fewer freedoms than I suppose you would like them to give. I'd hardly call that 'tyranny'. To use an analogy, if I let any of the neighborhood kids play in my yard but I require that they not play baseball because I am worried that they'll break a window, am I being a tyrant? Not letting them come into my yard to fetch a ball that they accidentally hit there, would probably be tyranny. Not letting them play in my yard at all, maybe tyranny depending on your viewpoint, but I would argue not tyranny because it's my yard and really no one has a right to it except me. But letting them play in my yard and establishing a few rules that I require them to follow? How is that tyranny? And similarly, how is *giving away* the fruits of my labor, but with certain stipulations that don't affect how they use the software at all, just how they redistribute it - how can you possibly call that tyranny?
> I'm sure the intentions of the GPLv3 supporters (yourself included) are noble, but forcing your ideals
> onto other people is no better than what you proclaim to be fighting against.
I thought only people who hadn't put any thought into these issues at all used this argument. I guess not. Can you please explain how anyone is 'forcing [their] ideals onto other people' by releasing software for those other people to choose to either use or not use, depending on a) whether the software is useful to them and b) whether or not they agree to the licensing terms? Do you think that someone publishing a book is 'forcing their ideals' onto other people because those other people, if they were to choose to buy the book, would not be able to photocopy it for their friends? Forget about my pre-emptive arguments for a moment, and please just explain in what way someone who releases their code under GPLv3 is forcing anyone to do anything in any sane sense of the word 'force'?
> This whole GPL thing has just been a big headache to me and I regret ever choosing it.
Clearly you didn't read, or understand, the GPL before you chose it for your work, or maybe you just didn't think far enough ahead to realize that the problems that you had are inevitable if you use the GPL. I personally release my code under GPL *specifically* because I don't care about satisfying people who want to link my code into their application without obeying the GPL. I am not going to re-release it under the Lesser GNU Public License, because I chose the GPL *specifically* because of the freedoms that it guarantees users, and switching to the LGPL just backpedals on that in a way that makes one wonder what the point of using GPL in the first place ever was. Now I'm not saying that *you* have to use the GPL, or that the LGPL isn't the right choice for you, or that BSD, MIT, etc, licenses aren't better for you. It's your code, you should be the only person in the world who says what the best license is for your software. But I don't understand why you would talk about the GPL like *it* was the cause of some problems when in fact it was just your choosing of the *wrong* license for your intentions was the real cause.
Also the BSD without the "advert" clause is almost exactly the same thing as public domain. Why you would care th
Re:2 vs 3 (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:2 vs 3 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:2 vs 3 (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:2 vs 3 (Score:4, Insightful)
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
Old news AND irrelevant... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Pragmatism/idealism (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
RMS and his brilliance (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Not good enough anymore? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A little out of touch, are we? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Torvalds sells out Free Software and RMS (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Torvalds sells out Free Software and RMS (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Do you understand how free software works? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:lookin for a karma whore. . . (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:lookin for a karma whore. . . (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Linux license could be changed easily (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
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:Linux license could be changed easily (Score:5, Informative)
Legally, a reasonable time period like 90 days should work, a month at the shortest. Linus has done this before (when he added a prelude to the GPL, and when he removed the GPL upgrade provision) and I think didn't even wait a month for opposition. But I think it would be best to honor removal requests forever, because whether or not you have to, fixing the code is easier than arguing about it in court. Obviously, you can't remove distributed instances, you can only remove it from the main source tree.
Code ages, and loses value as it does, especially in an active work like the kernel. You don't want code of folks who don't want to work with you any longer. And remember how long it took Linus to replace Bitkeeper? One month.
Now, everybody is responding with can I give legal notice to the RIAA? Of course not. RIAA did not contribute their work to your collaborative project. It is the fact that the overall work has multiple copyright holders that makes changing the license without the active participation of 100% of them possible.
Bruce