There'll be no halt

Posted Sep 23, 2006 13:13 UTC (Sat) by Felix_the_Mac (guest, #32242)
In reply to: There'll be no halt by coriordan
Parent article: Kernel developers' position on GPLv3

"There will be no big split. GPLv3 will lose compatibility with "v2 only" software (which there is very little of, Linux being the only big example)"

Isn't this a show-stopper if the kernel is not going to move to the current draft v3?
How do you build a distribution if everything except the kernel is GPL v3?

If that is the case, then I think the best solution is for the major sticking points of v3 to be dropped (DRM & patents??) and the useful work including increasing compatibility with other licenses, including the LGPL, clarification of meaning and changes for the purpose of internationalisation to go ahead.

This has the possible effect of reducing license proliferation and invigorating the OSS ecosystem rather than the reverse.

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There'll be no halt

Posted Sep 23, 2006 13:30 UTC (Sat) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

A distribution is an aggregation of software packages, not a combined work (using copyright law definitions). The software packages are not necessarily linked. An aggregation of packages doesn't require compatible licences (this is why Apache HTTP server and GNU/Linux can be shipped on the same CD).

GPLv2 section 2 says this is ok, and so does GPLv3 in section 5 ("...Inclusion of a covered work in an aggregate does not cause this License to apply to the other parts of the aggregate.").

Copying code from Linux into GPLv3'd packages or vice versa is a separate issue, and there _are_ some potential issues there, but there are solutions to those too. Dual licensing is one obvious one (and this can be done without dual licensing the whole kernel), licence exceptions is another. Or, of course, the best solution would be if consensus could be formed on supporiting GPLv3 (some changes could be made to GPLv3, but protecting the four freedoms to use, study+modify, redistributed, and publish modifications are not up for compromise - but the methods for how to do this in the face of DRM and patents are up for debate and suggestions are really welcome at gplv3.fsf.org).

There'll be no halt

Posted Sep 24, 2006 1:46 UTC (Sun) by grahammm (guest, #773) [Link]

No it would not be a show stopper. There is no connection between the kernel licence and the application licences. Otherwise it would not be possible to run GPL licensed applications on proprietary, non free, operating systems, nor to run closed source applications on free operating systems.