Similar in spirit? [LWN.net]

Similar in spirit?

Posted Oct 7, 2006 13:06 UTC (Sat) by stock (guest, #5849)
Parent article: Similar in spirit?

I fear that the FSF is now behaving like RedHat and Fedora have been
doing over things like the NTFS filesystem driver ntfs.ko and the
abandoning support of popular mainstream audio/video formats like mp3.
Inside the USA this may seem necessary but overseas like in France,
Mandriva has never excluded these.

So the GPLv3 might seem a glove match on American soil, where things like
the DRM legislation will be enforced, in other countries DRM issues will
just be textbook legislative examples only.

So my suggestion for Torvalds is to aim, point and identify which parts
of the Linux kernel can remain under GPLv2, and make a separate
additional part, like if you have linux-2.6.18.tar.bz2, you will now have
linux-2.6.18-std.tar.bz2 + linux-2.6.18-gplv3.tar.bz2, where the latter
is an extra tarball to be extracted over linux-2.6.18-std.

Robert

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Similar in spirit?

Posted Oct 9, 2006 11:29 UTC (Mon) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]

- ntfs: one problem company, already unpopular and watched by regulators wordwide, holding some patents that may not be enforceable in Europe, based on stuff it didn't originally develop, never actually threatened to enforce them

- mp3: a few problem companies, never made their mind if they actually wanted to enforce their patents or not, little global leverage

- DRM: a whole economic sector, with local branches worldwide (including some of the richest multinationals of the world), believing its future is at stake, controling in large part the "free" press, powerful enough to push international treaties and have the sole remaining global superpower enforce them.

1. does the scale of the problem seem even remotely similar?
2. have you read the law the media lobby just got voted in France?
3. do you think after the outrageous lengths this lobby went to have it passed it won't try to use it in the field?

Aside from that the discussion is not limited to the Linux kernel licensing (even Ingo acknowledged it) and your proposal is wrong both at the legal and at the logistical level.