Torvalds still unconvinced by GPLv3

LINUS TORVALDS says that the new Open Sauce licence, GPLv3 is now officially "not horrible" but not really for him or his Linux operating system.

According to efytimes.com, Torvalds said GPLv3 was not the 'great' licence that the GPLv2 was.

He added that if there was no GPLv2, he would use GPLv3, however since he does not have to, he will not really bother. Torvalds said he tries to be pragmatic and he knows that the difference between the two licences is not black and white.

If there were some advantages to the GPLv3, maybe those other advantages would be big enough to tilt the balance in favour of the GPLv3, he said.

The only thing that could tilt the balance towards GPLv3 was if Solaris really is released under the new licence. He said that the advantage of avoiding unnecessary non-compatible licence issues could mean that it might be worth trying to re-license the Linux kernel under the GPLv3 too.

However he said it was unlikely that this would happen, so Linux is more likely just to be plain old GPLv2.

Torvalds also discloses that he's never talked to Microsoft, but he has been to India, here. µ