The Torvalds Transcript (InformationWeek)

Posted Mar 21, 2007 20:00 UTC (Wed) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263)
In reply to: The Torvalds Transcript (InformationWeek) by atai
Parent article: The Torvalds Transcript (InformationWeek)

The Linux kernel (binaries) stay GPL2 because combining all the source files that have "GPL2 only" with all those source files "GPL2 and later" only have one common denominator: GPL2. And it would be troublesome to contact every GPL2-only holder and ask them to relicense, not to mention that they might not agree.

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The Torvalds Transcript (InformationWeek)

Posted Mar 21, 2007 21:04 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (5 responses)

Yep.

Which is kinda ironic since that is exactly how:

Now, totally independently of that, I'm doubly happy that I long, long since made that decision because at least the drafts of the GPLv3 have been much worse than the GPLv2 is. They've had glaring technical problems (license proliferation with not just one single GPLv3, but "GPLv3 with various additional rights and various additional restrictions"), and while I certainly hope that the final GPLv3 won't have those obvious problems, I've been singularly unimpressed with the drafts.

Stuff is going to work.
The lowest common denominator is always going to be GPLv3. It's never going to realy end up being any more restrictive then what that license allows.
This stuff doesn't realy affect the kernel any since the kernel is a isolated, lowest-level, sort of thing whose license is completely and utterly irrelevent to any other software that runs on it.

Currently one of the major problems with the GPLv2, which does not affect kernel developers in any real way, is the fact that right now people want to have open source licenses that are more permissive, but still retain some of the 'copyleft' effect of the GPLv2. They like copyleft, but what it weaker in this or that paticular way.

With the GPLv2 these people have no choice but to realy design their own licenses. So nowadays you have a number of fairly popular projects with their own paticular license that nobody else uses. They are usually GPL-like, but aren't realy compatable. Invariably these licenses are not paticularly well drafted or well thought out and tend to have lots of little bugs associated with them. That is the spirit of the license is great, but the legal effects of it do not nessicarially match the intention. It may be bad wording or what makes sense in California law may not make sense in India or Germany.

With the GPLv3 they are attempting to make it so that if you want to do GPLv3 + less copyleft, you just take the GPLv3 and then add your own little whatever. That way you have a strong legal standing for your license and you don't have to worry about incompatabilities with other Linux software. It's cheaper, easier, safer. Win-win.

I think that the problem is that with Linux kernel a lot of the issues regarding GPLv2 simply do not apply to them at all. It's major selling point, the licensing flexibility, is completely irrelevent to them. Also Linus isn't a lawyer, he has shown complete disregard for the licensing proccess to the point were in the past he has shown complete ignorance on how everything works. Saying he didn't have time to fly around the world for this or that meeting, were in reality discussion is all over mailing lists, irc, and such things.

So it's probably not the best idea to take legal advice from Linus. He is a very good programmer, but probably a pretty bad lawyer. (And I am neither, so take it for what it's worth)

the FSF wants the GPLv3 to be able to be LESS free then v2???

Posted Mar 21, 2007 23:43 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (4 responses)

this is the first time I've heard anyone argue that the FSF wants to make the GPLv3 have the ability to be _less_ free then the GPLv2.

I don't believe this at all. I think that what the FSF wants is for people to think that they are compatable, convert code from the other licenses to GPL+options, and then combine it with other code to convert it to GPL without options

if people only look at things one step at a time this is going to be legal, but if people look at the history of the code it won't be.

for example, if GPLv3 vanilla is not compatable with the apache license, but GPLv3+option is compatable, then code released under apache licenses can still never be combined with GPLv3 vanilla code, even though GPLv3+option code could be combined with GPLv3 vanilla code (resulting in GPLv3 vanilla code)

the FSF wants the GPLv3 to be able to be LESS free then v2???

Posted Mar 22, 2007 0:35 UTC (Thu) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link] (3 responses)

>if people only look at things one step at a time this is going to be legal, but if people look at the history of the code it won't be.

...this can't possibly be right.

No-one can remove restrictions from a license willy-nilly; the only time that's possible is if the copyright holder/original licensor explicitly granted that permission. Apache may be compatible with GPLv3+extra-clause, or GPLv3+extra-clause may be compatible with vanilla-GPLv3, but these cannot both be true at the same time (unless Apache is itself compatible with vanilla-GPLv3). Which of them is true depends on the wording of the extra clause -- if it says "you may remove this", then Apache ain't compatible with it; if it doesn't say that, then GPLv3 ain't compatible with it.

the FSF wants the GPLv3 to be able to be LESS free then v2???

Posted Mar 22, 2007 3:13 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (2 responses)

I was mistaken a bit. Mostly right, but somewhat wrong...

Well if you look at the license the amount of restrictions that you can add are _very_ limited.

It's a bit of a legal jedi mind trick realy.

You are allowed to add these specific restrictions under the GPLv3 license.

If you add them they then your software is has additional restrictions as allowed under the GPLv3 license.

However GPLv3 is still compatable. Because these GPLv3 allows these restrictions.

So if you take software from project "A" that has no additional allowed restrictions and combine it with project "B" that has additional allowed restrictions. Then you end up with software "AB" that is GPlv3 with additional allowed restrictions.

It's all still allowed and compatable.

Also keep in mind that the additional allowed restrictions is pretty limited to what you can add. It's mostly pretty non-important stuff. The only one that is scary is the additional patent one, but it's critical if your going to be compatable with Apache, Mozilla, et al.

the FSF wants the GPLv3 to be able to be LESS free then v2???

Posted Mar 22, 2007 3:17 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

Also another thing to keep in mind is that the GPLv3 has a restriction that if you add additional terms (either permissions or restrictions) then it has to be in one central location in the code base.

So it's not like if your worried about this that you would end up having to grep through header files or whatever to find out what your dealing with.

the FSF wants the GPLv3 to be able to be LESS free then v2???

Posted Mar 25, 2007 0:28 UTC (Sun) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link]

So if you take software from project "A" that has no additional allowed restrictions and combine it with project "B" that has additional allowed restrictions. Then you end up with software "AB" that is GPlv3 with additional allowed restrictions.

And then nobody can take changes back from "B" to "A" without changing "A"'s license... or doing a detailed audit to find out where the changes originated, perhaps in "D" which is compatible with "A"

Somebody comes along and uses "A" stuff to create "C" with other added restrictions. "B" stuff can't be used with "C" now.

Can you spell "balkanization"?