Who is doing harm here? [LWN.net]

Who is doing harm here?

Posted Oct 3, 2006 22:50 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091)
In reply to: Who is doing harm here? by khim
Parent article: Busy busy busybox

In short: it looks like Linus and kernel developers are intentionally choose the ways of communication which can be used to "poke" FSF and then go away thus avoiding any constructive discussion.

Indeed. Just as they complained that the FSF had already decided the contents of GPLv3 before starting the public consultation, it seems that kernel devs had already decided their opposition before seeing the first draft. It is not surprising, since they were already sticking to GPLv2 since the beginning. It almost seems like they want to retroactively be right: first they said: "I want to stick to GPLv2", now they are saying: "see? We was right to stick to v2, GPLv3 sucks".

Meanwhile Linus was playing the prima donna complaining that

"Eben [Moglen] said he was willing to go over the draft point-for-point after it was published, but not apparently willing to let me read it in the comfort of my own home and send comments back. So, the GPLv3 process couldn't apparently accommodate me, or I couldn't accommodate them."

Why did he need to go first? Linus could certainly read the draft in the comfort of his own home after it was published; we all did. Of course we are not the leader of (arguably) the most important libre software project out there, but then he was talking to the lawyer of the guy who has (and I quote Ingo Molnar freely) "unprecedented legal power over 350 million lines of code" (conservatively estimated). I would expect a bit of humbleness from him. Well, what do I know.

Was it because they don't have time to defend their position or have they no arguments to actually defent it ? We'll see...

Ingo Molnar is displaying a lot of patience, and also spending a lot of time defending the position of the most prominent kernel devs'. He also has a lot of arguments, but so far they are not very convincing, not for me at least. They shift too much.

(Log in to post comments)

Who is doing harm here?

Posted Oct 5, 2006 12:58 UTC (Thu) by wookey (subscriber, #5501) [Link]

Indeed. I would like to commend Ingo and stevenj for their contributions to this thread, which have clarified a number of things for me at least. The whole thing has been pretty civil as these things go. I do now at least understand a bit of why the kernel devs are so grumpy.

But I do not find myself convinced by their arguments, and agree with stevenj that the fears of forking, 'legal strongarming', and 'acting with legal but not moral authority' are overblown.

Nevertheless, Jon Corbet put it well (as ever) in the original article. This debate _is_ causing strife, and there is thus quite a lot to be said for a v3 that only has the uncontentious stuff in it. That would be a pity - the FSF are the ones who are being consistent and 'in the spirit of', and the kernel devs who are being awkward (IMHO), but it is quite finely balanced as to which course would be better in the long term.

We certainly won't be able to say that the issues have not been discussed fully at the end of it all, whatever happens - and that of course, is a good thing - tiresome as it might seem right now.

So, to re-iterate. Thank you for those making an effort to dicuss the substnative issues (which is nearly everyone here). It is appreciated.

Who is doing harm here?

Posted Oct 9, 2006 17:01 UTC (Mon) by malor (subscriber, #2973) [Link]

In my opinion, the difference is that the FSF is thinking about freedom in a multi-generational timeframe, and the kernel devs want success/market dominance *right now*. And they appear willing to trade off freedom to get it.

If you think about it from the perspective of tens or hundreds of years, Linux is not that important; it's essentially the early scaffolding for a great cathedral of code. But, unlike the real multi-hundred-year cathedral projects, I don't think these scaffold builders are even aware that a cathedral will ever exist.

The FSF is right not to bend on this issue; if we want truly free computers, it's incredibly important. Eventually, GPLv3 code will be such an overwhelming presence that it would be insane to try to compete with it in any but the smallest niches.

If, however, the foundation is flawed, the cathedral may collapse. The architect has identified flaws in the design, and is redrawing the blueprints. The scaffold builders are upset about this. Either the cathedral won't look quite how they thought, or they think their project IS the cathedral.

The most popular free kernel, a hundred years from now, may even be called Linux, but it will be related to today's kernel only in the sense that modern man is related to the chimpanzee. But the GPLv3 may very well still be in force. Law, especially good law, lasts a LOT longer than code.