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Fork ahead...?

Posted Jul 10, 2007 15:59 UTC (Tue) by amikins (guest, #451)
In reply to: Fork ahead...? by sepreece
Parent article: Samba Adopts GPLv3 for Future Releases

Yeah, the discussion so far seems to assume a fork would be for the purposes of avoiding freedom or avoiding responsibility to contribute back to the community. Why is it so implausible that a community might not like the GPLv3, but still wants to collaborate?
After all, the Linux kernel is just such a community.

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Fork ahead...?

Posted Jul 10, 2007 16:30 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Linux (BusyBox and few other projects) are special cases. GPLv3 was rejected way in advance. Because it's always possible to switch from "GPL v2 or later" to "GPL v3 or later" but it's not possible to switch back patches will have the tendency of flowing one way. The situation is somewhat similar to "GNU Emacs" vs "X Emacs" (different reasons, the same outcome). It's hard to support "v2" project in this state, it's even harder to support "v2 or later" project and it's especially hard to support project when you are forking it without support of core developers.

In the end few "GPLv2 only" forks will succeed (if backed by significant percentage of core developers), but most will fail. "v2 only" projects are more robust but there are also quite real possibility that someone will create GPLv3 replacement (yes, even with Linux kernel - it depends on aggressiveness with which MS & Co will use GPLv2 loopholes).

Fork ahead...?

Posted Jul 10, 2007 17:57 UTC (Tue) by amikins (guest, #451) [Link]

I think it also depends on the viability of those loopholes. Aggressive attempts to exploit that fail only strengthen the license.

I do see your point about the one-way nature of code flow, though.

Fork ahead...?

Posted Jul 10, 2007 20:35 UTC (Tue) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270) [Link]

Which side of the fork flourishes, and where the patches are developed, will depend on the specifics of which existing developers follow which side of the fork and which side is favored by new developers. You can't just assume that the v3 side would be the one that "wins" the competition for developer minds.

Fork ahead...?

Posted Jul 10, 2007 16:48 UTC (Tue) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]

The community will likely to stay with the developers, whether they prefer GPLv2 or GPLv3. GPLv3 would have to be quite obnoxious for the community to embrace a fork. We'll see, but my feeling is that GPLv3 is not so bad as e.g. the license that caused a fork in XFree86 a couple of years ago.