Recommendation: no GPLv3 for Solaris

Posted Feb 10, 2007 23:54 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Because it invalitades compatibility with GPLv2.

That's the whole point, you know. Fix the license to deflect new attacks on freedom. It was known that GPLv3 will not be compatible with GPLv2 many years ago - when the GPLv2 was written.

Because it specifies particular uses (DVD issue)

Have you read the GPLv3 draft?

Because its not in clear words, and i saw many confusion in various posts, and i cannot understand it clearly myself.

Again: have you read the GPLv3 draft? I too saw a lot of strange posts - mostly from the people who never bothered to read the latest draft (or in most cases never read any draft). Sure - it's impossible to understand GPLv3 unless you've read it at least once. That's not GPLv3 fault...

Posted Feb 11, 2007 0:42 UTC (Sun) by b3timmons (guest, #40286) [Link]

It seems your complaints are against not the drafting of the GPLv3 but against its aims.

Because it invalitades compatibility with GPLv2.

The main aim of the GPL is to protect the four software freedoms which v2 now can no longer do because of loopholes which can make v2-covered code effectively nonfree. Any license compatible with v2 would allow the covered code to be linked and distributed with v2 which would expose the covered code to the same loopholes and thus offer no better protection. Thus, by its very purpose, v3 must be incompatible with v2. In practice, this incompatibility will affect only "v2 only" projects. Moreover, v3 gains compatibility with two important v2-incompatible licenses, Eclipse and Apache.

Because it specifies particular uses (DVD issue)

No version of the GPL has or will ever have to even be accepted for any kinds of uses or modification of the covered code, short of distribution, so you must be referring to not a particular use but a particular form of distribution. I assume you are referring to Tivoization, which is an obvious loophole that v3 must close if the GPL is to fulfill its aim of ensuring that covered code remain free.

Because its not in clear words, and i saw many confusion in various posts, and i cannot understand it clearly myself.

The very same complaints have been made about v2 for over a decade. While v2 has aimed for clarity, it has also had been constrained in several other areas. One way to see this is that it has been by far the most reviewed and negotiated over software license in history. You can definitely understand v3 better by reading transcripts of speeches by RMS and Moglen and rereading the v3 draft. Any clarifications you can then make can still be considered within the next month.