Re: Kernel developers' position on GPLv3

Posted Sep 23, 2006 11:56 UTC (Sat) by mingo (subscriber, #31122)
In reply to: Re: Kernel developers' position on GPLv3 by bug1
Parent article: Kernel developers' position on GPLv3

Would you prefer Linux (the kernel) be under a BSD license then?

not all. I would not contribute to the Linux kernel if it were under the BSD license. As i said in my comment, the GPLv2 gives a fabric of freedom and fairness:

[...] the GPLv2 already gives enough moral and legal background for people to build a community and great free software around - and people are already giving back much, much more to Linux and FOSS than the GPL forces us to do.

In my opinion the BSD license does not achieve that.

Ingo

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Re: Kernel developers' position on GPLv3

Posted Sep 23, 2006 12:55 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

people are already giving back much, much more to Linux and FOSS than the GPL forces us to do. [...] In my opinion the BSD license does not achieve that.

It is quite unfair to say that. Have you seen the wealth and breadth of documentation available for FreeBSD, OpenBSD or NetBSD (in many cases much better than for Linux)? The number of contributors for the many Apache packages? Or the SubVersion manuals? PostgreSQL documentation? I wish all GPL-licensed programs were so good in these respects.

No, the crux of the matter lies elsewhere; not in volunteer contributions, but in corporate contributions and sponsorship. Companies must justify their contributions, and a BSD-style license lets them get away with keeping them secret.