Red Hat and the GPL [LWN.net]

Red Hat and the GPL

Posted Mar 9, 2011 22:14 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1)
In reply to: Red Hat and the GPL by RogerOdle
Parent article: Red Hat and the GPL

You are looking at GPLv3! Given that the context here is the kernel, you really need to be looking at GPLv2.

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Red Hat and the GPL

Posted Mar 9, 2011 22:59 UTC (Wed) by pebolle (guest, #35204) [Link]

> Given that the context here is the kernel, you really need to be looking at GPLv2.

Though, if one is discussing a problem with GPLv2 one might look at the GPLv3 to see if, and how, the author of the GPLv2 (the FSF) tried to solve that specific problem in the GPLv3. So it could provide reasons for a certain interpretation of the GPLv2.

Red Hat and the GPL

Posted Mar 10, 2011 1:34 UTC (Thu) by branden (subscriber, #7029) [Link]

Mr. Corbet is spot-on here.

Linus Torvalds quite deliberately chose to go with version 2 of the GNU GPL, and not any other version. Certainly not "any later version, as published by the Free Software Foundation".

It'd be a funny old world if this matter ended up in court and the judge accepted RMS as an expert witness to expound upon the rationale behind the GNU GPL, while refusing to hear from Linus Torvalds, the leading copyright holder in the work in question.

(N.B., for all I know, Linus is 100% cool with Red Hat's move. If the TiVo lockdown didn't bother him, I don't know what would.)

Red Hat and the GPL

Posted Mar 11, 2011 17:31 UTC (Fri) by dwmw2 (subscriber, #2063) [Link]

GPLv2 actually requires more here than GPLv3. Although GPLv3 only requires the work as a whole to carry a prominent notice that you modified it, GPLv2 requires it of individual modified files:

    a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices
    stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.

Distributing the original source plus the patches would meet this requirement, at least in spirit although perhaps one could argue that for the modified files to carry prominent notices you'd actually have to insert obnoxious comments into the files themselves, rather than providing that information "out-of-band" in the patch set.

Red Hat and the GPL

Posted Mar 18, 2011 19:06 UTC (Fri) by mishad (guest, #69757) [Link]

> Although GPLv3 only requires the work as a whole to carry a prominent notice that you modified it, GPLv2 requires it of individual modified files:

Does that mean that GPLv2 is incompatible with GPLv3.?

That is, that GPLv2 code cannot be incorporated into a GPLv3 derived work, because of the "no additional restrictions" clause?

Surely not?

Red Hat and the GPL

Posted Mar 18, 2011 19:24 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Yes, it does mean precisely that. Unless a codebase is licensed under GPLv2 or later, it typically cannot be incorporated with GPLv3 code.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main#GPL_Compatib...