Kernel developers' position on GPLv3

Posted Sep 23, 2006 21:48 UTC (Sat) by kune (guest, #172)
Parent article: Kernel developers' position on GPLv3

Honestly I don't get the following statement:

Finally, we recognise that defining what constitutes DRM abuse is essentially political in nature and as such, while we may argue forcefully for our political opinions, we may not suborn or coerce others to go along with them.

The preamble of GPLv2 starts with:

The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it.

If this is not a political statement, I don't know how a political statement should look like. It appears that the political nature of the GPLv2 didn't prevent it from being successful.

I also wonder, why this "Kernel Developers' position on GPLv3" document is published, if they authors don't want to suborn or even coerce others to go along with their political opinions --- at least about the GPLv3.

Certainly the authors of the document have contributed and are contributing substantially to the Linux kernel. But they should not assert that everybody who has contributed source code to the kernel, which I suppose is the criteria for being a kernel developer, agrees with them. I have contributed source code to a driver just recently included in 2.6.18. My position is not reflected by the document.

Ulrich Kunitz