Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on January 29, 2006 03:47 PM
Many people said Linus should accept GPLv3, but I think this is a non issue, because Linux cannot change license anymore.
Linus is not the only copyright holder for ages now, and finding all of them to ask if they agree to change the license is virtually impossible (as always, some of them vanished or may even have died). It's the same problem as POVRay-V3 for instance. The only project that managed to do so was Wine, and I highly suspect it was illegal and they didn't managed to agree with still-to-find copyright holders...
In other words, even if Linus would accept to use GPLv3, he cannot make any move anymore. That is the reason of th "or any later version" of the GPL copyright statement, which was not explicitly said in the kernel's license.
Linus refused that clause because, as many people, he didn't want to sign a blank check. That is how I interpreted his comment of "giving out private keys" (but I didn't read the original post, I may be totally off the point there).
Anyway, I don't trust neither the FSF nor anybody else, and I understand perfectly his choice: you cannot stand a phrase as "or any later version". Why not "or any other license" then? Who has the right to defines another GPL license? What if anybody else than the FSF decides to do so and get the source code for free? This clause is very dangerous indeed. He found the GPLv2 sufficient for his project and chose it, but took the risk of being unable to change the license if a later version proved better (which may, or may not be the case, he couldn't know at that time).
Learn about Linux
Download Linux
Get Linux help
Re:When Linus says no to the GPL v3, it means NO.
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on January 29, 2006 03:47 PMLinus is not the only copyright holder for ages now, and finding all of them to ask if they agree to change the license is virtually impossible (as always, some of them vanished or may even have died). It's the same problem as POVRay-V3 for instance. The only project that managed to do so was Wine, and I highly suspect it was illegal and they didn't managed to agree with still-to-find copyright holders...
In other words, even if Linus would accept to use GPLv3, he cannot make any move anymore. That is the reason of th "or any later version" of the GPL copyright statement, which was not explicitly said in the kernel's license.
Linus refused that clause because, as many people, he didn't want to sign a blank check. That is how I interpreted his comment of "giving out private keys" (but I didn't read the original post, I may be totally off the point there).
Anyway, I don't trust neither the FSF nor anybody else, and I understand perfectly his choice: you cannot stand a phrase as "or any later version". Why not "or any other license" then? Who has the right to defines another GPL license? What if anybody else than the FSF decides to do so and get the source code for free? This clause is very dangerous indeed. He found the GPLv2 sufficient for his project and chose it, but took the risk of being unable to change the license if a later version proved better (which may, or may not be the case, he couldn't know at that time).
#