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Out of curiosity, how much code is actually GPLv2 only, and how hard would it be to replace those sections with code that was GPLv2+?
by synchronise 10y ago
Out of curiosity, how much code is actually GPLv2 only, and how hard would it be to replace those sections with code that was GPLv2+?
- cyphar 10y agoA lot of the core code (and dissapointingly, btrfs) is GPLv2-only. So rewrites are unlikely, you'd have to ask contributors to update the license. Just do a grep for "at your option", since that's the wording in the copyright header to specify that it's released under GPLv2-or-later, tells me that it isn't that great. It's around 10000 files (Linux has ~50000 files) so it's ~20% of files. This doesn't account for documentation or files that don't specify that they are under GPLv2-or-later.
- synchronise 10y agoWas there any specific reason that license was chosen for btrfs that you know of?
- cyphar 10y agoMy guess is >Oracle. They want to make the minimum possible community contribution.
- cyphar 10y agoNote: I just realised that I licensed kernel/cgroup_pids.c under GPLv2-only. which is wrong. I've sent a patch that also includes a fix to that header. http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=146673699017938&w=2 http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=146673699017938&w=2