- Friday, 9 January 2009
- INQ Mobile
- RSS Feed
Look wise, say nothing, and grunt. Speech was given to conceal thought - Sir William Osler
Torvalds launches into GPLv3
CREATOR God of Linux, Linus Torvalds, peace be upon him, has spake unto the masses and said unto them that GPv3 he liketh it not.
According to ComputerWorld, Torvalds said that the new GPL makes the Free Software Foundation (FSF) feel good about itself, but does nothing.
GPLv2 is still the righteous and holy way for a licence to be, and GPLv 3 should go forth and multiply.
He said he wanted to pick the licence that makes the most sense for what he did. Version 2 matches what he wants much better than Version 3.
Torvalds admits that he should not have attacked GPLv3 before it was released. At the time he was opposed to the digital rights management provisions in early-2006, calling them burdensome.
However Linus does offer some redemption for the GPLv3 licence. It might be useful if there ends up being shed loads of external code that people feel is really important under the version 3 license.
So the secret to getting Linus to bless GPLv3 is to release lots of really good code that uses it. Otherwise he is sticking to GPL2. So there.
More here.
Share this:
Business Intelligence Software
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Enterprise Accounting Software
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Enterprise Systems Management
I thought that St. Steve of Cupertino was the creator of all good that comes to us? Surely, Torvalds cannot be a God as well. Unless this be one of them polytheistic sites and if so I am never coming back. By the way, if Torvalds is God of Linux and Steve is God of Everything else... what be Mr. Gates? Is he 'akuma' ? I knew there was good reason to stay away from PC's. Still there can be only one God so figure it out Inq. or you'll face excommunication by the bible belt.
The kernel is a key technology. Linus holds the keys to that. Other technologies are also key. Other people hold the keys to that. Some have gone to v3 already. Some have stayed with v2. It doesn't matter. If you license the kernel under v2 and then SAMBA under v3 then you are effectively tied to v3. Which is the key here. The kernel is standardized and widely available on many platforms and v2 is fine for it. But other technologies such as SAMBA extremely key to using the kernel in whatever environment. So, just having SAMBA under v3 is enough to keep the likes of Novell from abusing the system. Not to mention there can always be a v4 and v5. No one said we have stopped at v3. It may take a few more years but expect some variations on v3 sometime.
It's only the anti-DRM provisions that he's opposed to - he's said on the LKML that he's fine with the rest. Basically, he doesn't like the fact that the software license talks about hardware.
Linux has been contributed to by thousands of authors at this point, each of them sublicensing their code back under GPL2. Many of them are now dead. Changing Linux to GPL2 has never been an option.
>> Linux has been contributed to by thousands of authors at this point, >> each of them sublicensing their code back under GPL2. Many of them are now dead. Dangerous business, this Linux coding, eh? <grin>