Stable copyleft licence nonsense
Stable copyleft licence nonsense
Posted Aug 2, 2009 11:17 UTC (Sun) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322)In reply to: No, that's not the plugin exception... by dlang
Parent article: A new GCC runtime library license snag?
The Linux Kernel, version 2.6, warns its users that kernel-internal APIs may be revised from time to time for technical reasons (and for the purpose of removing cruft in the kernel) in the file Documentation/stable_api_nonsense.txt.
The GPL, version 2, wants its users that the licence text may be revised from time to time for legal reasons (and for the purpose of advancing free software) in its paragraph 9 (it's Paragraph 14 of version 3).
But it's the Linux kernel developers, and fellow travellers like the Git and Busybox developers, who have chosen not to support version 3 of the GPL.
It's a bit like a vendor of commodity hardware (say, a GPU) whose driver is not yet in-tree deciding they will never, ever support Linux kernel APIs after some API change made in kernel version 2.6.29. That's their choice. But *someone* will want to use that hardware with a later kernel, so *somehow*, the incompatibility will be resolved by someone who cares.