can they coexist?

Posted Sep 22, 2006 20:15 UTC (Fri) by b7j0c (guest, #27559)
Parent article: Kernel developers' position on GPLv3

i understand from the article that having fsf migrate all of its tools to
v3 will create a clerical issue for distros, but in a practical sense, is
there any aspect of the gpl that precludes a distro from shipping a v2
kernel and a v3 toolchain? as far as i know, many prominent distros only
enforce that software included be freely/osi-compliant licensed, not
strictly gpl'd. can anyone clarify for me?

to post comments

can they coexist?

Posted Sep 23, 2006 9:53 UTC (Sat) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]

The "license proliferation" concern is that there will end up some
software that is GPLv2 and some that is GPLv3 and that you will not be
able to use source from the one set with the other set.

If people all used GPLv2 as originally written, this would not be
a "problem" as you could always use the clause the GPLv2 license grant
which allows you to license it under a later version to create a combined
work under GPLv3 (or later). If, however, the GPLv3 is sufficiently
unpalatable to a large number of developers, more projects may adopt a
modified GPLv2 that would be uncombinable with software licensed under
GPLv3 only.

I cannot speak intelligently about whether it is kosher to combine works
under GPLv2 with the no-upgrades modified GPLv2.

However, it is true that the Linux kernel developers themselves committed
a kind of license proliferation when they modified their GPLv2 license to
disallow licensing the code under GPLv3. I don't claim that this was a
bad idea, or even unwarranted, but they are now engaging in a little bit
of pot-and-kettle.