GPL 3: An Open-Source Earthquake? (CRN)

GPL 3: An Open-Source Earthquake? (CRN)

Posted Jan 26, 2007 18:05 UTC (Fri) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767)
In reply to: GPL 3: An Open-Source Earthquake? (CRN) by JoeF
Parent article: GPL 3: An Open-Source Earthquake? (CRN)

"""But for the whole kernel to change licenses, every contributor would have to agree. And that's just unlikely to happen."""

Some of the contributors are dead. Their benefactors control the license... if they had a proper will. If they didn't... then what?

It's not so much a matter of unlikely. It's a matter of how long it would take to sort out all the legal mess.

And a license change would permanently weaken Linux's legal position.

With SCO, badly as their case has gone, it has taken *years*, with no evidence(!), and the thing hasn't even made it to trial yet.

Do you really want to open the door to another "SCO Case", or even several?

Except that in these future "Linux license change" cases, the opposition might really *have* a case.

Changing the Linux Kernel license would almost certainly precipitate such an ugly situation. I, for one, do not want to see it.

Whether GPLv2 or GPLv3 is superior, and I will refrain from giving my opinion here... a license change for the Linux kernel is a really bad idea.

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