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By that argument, every non-copyleft licensed codebase is "dead" with respect to the "people". In reality, the opposite is true even though it burns up FSF fol

By that argument, every non-copyleft licensed codebase is "dead" with respect to the "people". In reality, the opposite is true even though it burns up FSF folks. Linux is alive and well. You can download, read, edit and contribute back to the kernel for free. Maybe your patches won't be accepted, but the license doesn't guarantee that they will be anyway. It is true that you may periodically experience a scofflaw that sells you a router that hides some kernel code, but this should only bother you on philosophical grounds. The vendor has no obligation to allow you to "repair" or modify the device. The vendor is under no obligation to accept a patch from you if you find a flaw. Putting linux in a device does not grant the end user any specific right to change the device's behavior. People seem to be confusing "hackable" with "has GPL code". A shitty router with linux code will probably remain a shitty router. I can see why the FSF and SFC might be throwing a fit; Clang and LLVM can replace GCC, and Linus isn't at all militant about license enforcement. The effective power of the FSF is in rapid decline.

notalaser 10y ago
> In reality, the opposite is true even though it burns up FSF folks. Linux is alive and well. You can download, read, edit and contribute back to the kernel for free. Maybe your patches won't be accepted, but the license doesn't guarantee that they will be anyway. This isn't untrue, but it does not take away the main point: the community that drives the development agenda and dictates priorities is no longer a community of independent programmers (in the broad sense of the word; many contributions used to come from people who were hired by commercial entities, but they were still relatively small groups, and contributions were limited to small pieces that were specifically interesting for their small-ish employers: a driver for this or that network card, improvements in this routing protocol and so on). This is no longer the case, and the development agenda of the Linux kernel is almost completely dictated by large players, at the expense of small ones and, to a large degree, individual users.
- epistasis 10y ago
  > at the expense of small ones and, to a large degree, individual users. Is that a real expense at all though? I would argue that, empirically, it is zero. As in zero evidence of contributions to Linux detracting from my needs as a small player and user. Every community is going to drive things in their "own" direction, and that direction is largely dictated by use by those developers. If it were a difference, an expense on the people, there would be a community with differing views of what the kernel should be doing. They could contribute code towards their ends, or fork. Given that there is practically zero interest in this, I would say that it's fairly clear that a so-called "corporate Linux," in the form of largely corporate code contributions, has come at zero expense to the "people."
Redoubts 10y ago
> People seem to be confusing "hackable" with "has GPL code". Well, to be fair, wasn't the GPLv3 created to make those two strongly correlated? I know Linux is gpl 2, and Linus is publically against v3, but I get the feeling this was considered a large loophole in the spirit of the license.
- karma_vaccum123 10y ago
  You answered your own question - linux is GPLv2 and always will be. It will never be GPLv3; Linus hates GPLv3. GPLv2 doesn't grant you a right to hack, period.

notalaser 10y ago

> In reality, the opposite is true even though it burns up FSF folks. Linux is alive and well. You can download, read, edit and contribute back to the kernel for free. Maybe your patches won't be accepted, but the license doesn't guarantee that they will be anyway. This isn't untrue, but it does not take away the main point: the community that drives the development agenda and dictates priorities is no longer a community of independent programmers (in the broad sense of the word; many contributions used to come from people who were hired by commercial entities, but they were still relatively small groups, and contributions were limited to small pieces that were specifically interesting for their small-ish employers: a driver for this or that network card, improvements in this routing protocol and so on). This is no longer the case, and the development agenda of the Linux kernel is almost completely dictated by large players, at the expense of small ones and, to a large degree, individual users.

epistasis 10y ago
> at the expense of small ones and, to a large degree, individual users. Is that a real expense at all though? I would argue that, empirically, it is zero. As in zero evidence of contributions to Linux detracting from my needs as a small player and user. Every community is going to drive things in their "own" direction, and that direction is largely dictated by use by those developers. If it were a difference, an expense on the people, there would be a community with differing views of what the kernel should be doing. They could contribute code towards their ends, or fork. Given that there is practically zero interest in this, I would say that it's fairly clear that a so-called "corporate Linux," in the form of largely corporate code contributions, has come at zero expense to the "people."

Redoubts 10y ago

> People seem to be confusing "hackable" with "has GPL code". Well, to be fair, wasn't the GPLv3 created to make those two strongly correlated? I know Linux is gpl 2, and Linus is publically against v3, but I get the feeling this was considered a large loophole in the spirit of the license.

karma_vaccum123 10y ago
You answered your own question - linux is GPLv2 and always will be. It will never be GPLv3; Linus hates GPLv3. GPLv2 doesn't grant you a right to hack, period.