Torvalds Puts Support Behind GPL2 Linux 326
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."
Re:A little out of touch, are we? (Score:1, Informative)
No choice in the matter (Score:3, Informative)
Re:lookin for a karma whore. . . (Score:3, Informative)
Discriminatory patents are restricted as follows: A patent license is "discriminatory" if it does not include within the scope of its coverage, prohibits the exercise of, or is conditioned on the non-exercise of one or more of the rights that are specifically granted under this License. You may not convey a covered work if you are a party to an arrangement with a third party that is in the business of distributing software, under which you make payment to the third party based on the extent of your activity of conveying the work, and under which the third party grants, to any of the parties who would receive the covered work from you, a discriminatory patent license (a) in connection with copies of the covered work conveyed by you (or copies made from those copies), or (b) primarily for and in connection with specific products or compilations that contain the covered work, unless you entered into that arrangement, or that patent license was granted, prior to 28 March 2007.
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:1, Informative)
From here: http://www.sandw.com/news-publications-155.html [sandw.com]
More info that's a headache to read here, also a little older but probably up to date: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20060118155841115 [groklaw.net]
Correct, and deliberately... (Score:3, Informative)
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
GPL3 supports DRM too, just elsewhere (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:Patents (Score:3, Informative)
And even the GPL v2 says quite clearly that you can't distribute GPL2 code without passing on the full GPL rights and cites a patent license as an example of something that might prevent this.
As I understand it, the patent stuff in the GPL 3 was an attempt to prevent attempts to fudge around this with shenanigans such as:
I promise almost certainly maybe not to sue your immediate customers over any intellectual property of mine which may or may not turn up in this code but this doesn't violate GPL2 because I'm not actually going to sign a legal document saying that you need a patent license from us or tell you which patents we mean even if my colleague was spouting off at a press conference about how many of our patents it violates..."
...although trying to anticipate and block variations on that sort of FUD seems like nailing jelly to a tree to me.
Re:GPL3 supports DRM too, just elsewhere (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft does DRM the way I'm talking about. They have a microkernel, called the "NIB", under their macrokernel. It is small, and implements the DRM as a service to the macrokernel above it. It can lock layers above it, which is necessary if the DRM device drivers live in those layers. However, if the DRM device drivers lived in the microkernel, you would be able to modify the kernel any way you wanted and it would not break the DRM.
Another way to handle this is to do the DRM in the audio and video output hardware, in which case you can just send an encrypted stream to the hardware with a kernel that does not need to be locekd down. This may be part of HDMI but I've not read enough about it.
Bruce
Re:2 vs 3 (Score:3, Informative)
Read my signature.
GPLv3 cannot dictate terms to hardware. All it can dictate is which hardware that software may be run on.
In fact, it cannot even dictate that -- unless you intend to redistribute the software.
So, in a sense, it does limit the poor little TiVos of the world -- they are no longer free to simply take GPL'd code and give nothing back. Obviously, we can't stop them from making a locked-down, DRM'd device, but I'm certainly not going to contribute code towards such a device.
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.
Re:Linux license could be changed easily (Score:3, Informative)
If I understand the issue with the Linux kernel, is that it didn't have that "or later version" clause in it for some period of time, but then, I really don't know about that, and I'd gladly be corrected.