4 ms·

I thought Linus and other believed GPLv2 was fine and the improvements of GPLv3 did not outweigh the potential problems introduced by it. It never came to a poi

by cies 3y ago

I thought Linus and other believed GPLv2 was fine and the improvements of GPLv3 did not outweigh the potential problems introduced by it. It never came to a point where all authors were asked to agree, or sign away their ownership.

nabakin 3y ago
Yes, I believe I saw a video of Linus stating exactly this
aftbit 3y ago
My understanding was that some people in the community believed that GPLv3 was better, and one of Linus's criticisms was that it was essentially impossible to switch even if it were better. I also believe Linus was opposed to the switch, which would make it unlikely anyway, but even if he had approved, I still think it would be practically impossible.
- tux2bsd 3y ago
  [dead]
kmeisthax 3y ago
Torvalds considered the anti-TiVo clause to be changing the deal and he didn't want to do that, and there's no way in GPLv3 to opt-out of the clause[0]. This is less "locking down devices is a human right" and more him being angry that the FSF was trying to butt into his project's affairs. He's also similarly angry about "GNU/Linux" as it sounds an awful lot like Stallman just demanding everyone stick "GNU" onto the name of Linus's kernel project. Anyway all of this is going to seem really quaint in 2027 when Broadcom gets sued under DMCA 1201 by a rogue kernel contributor for evading the Linux linker's license checks[1] and they have to hurriedly rewrite them out of the kernel and relicense anyway. [0] Granting a blanket exception doesn't work because others can just remove the exception. "No further restrictions" is an ironclad law of copyleft. [1] The Linux kernel checks the declared license of loaded modules and refuses to link non-GPL-compatible code against any kernel symbol not marked as a user-space equivalent. The reason why this works this way is because Linux ships under GPLv2 plus an exception that says user-space APIs don't trip copyleft, so you can legally load code built to those APIs into the kernel, but anything else might violate GPL. Since this is enforcing an interpretation of the GPL, this is a DMCA 1201 technical protection measure. You absolutely could make a DMCA 1201 anticircumvention claim in court against a proprietary driver developer that tried to evade the checks. Though Linus usually just bans their modules in the next kernel revision since he's mainly worried about keeping proprietary modules from generating spurious bug reports in Linux. But the lawsuit is still possible, since they're on GPLv2. If they had relicensed to GPLv3, this wouldn't be an issue.
- comex 3y ago
  Are you arguing that the GPL check “effectively controls access to a work” or “effectively protects a right of a copyright owner [..] in a work or a portion thereof”? Either way, the bar of how “effective” a measure needs to be to count may be low, but probably not that low.
- yellowapple 3y ago
  > and there's no way in GPLv3 to opt-out of the clause And even if you could, you're basically just left with the GPLv2.
rwmj 3y ago
We changed the license[1] of a project which had 10 contributors, and we got every single one of them to do an Acked-by (by email) which took some weeks. That was on the advice of our lawyers. Can't imagine the impossible hassle of doing the same for something like Linux. [1] https://gitlab.com/nbdkit/nbdkit/-/commit/952ffe0fc7685ea775ed8879bf0b2cb9df3d9044 https://gitlab.com/nbdkit/nbdkit/-/commit/952ffe0fc7685ea775...
- yellowapple 3y ago
  And that's assuming that all the contributors are even alive in the first place; unless you've got a Ouija board handy, you're gonna have one hell of a time changing Linux's license.
- justincormack 3y ago
  It has been done for some fairly large projects, eg openssl managed to swith to Apache for 3.0. It is a lot of work.
- maccard 3y ago
  Can't speak for Linux, but got a few projects I've contributed to I've had to sign a CLA which negates that problem (but causes the one in this thread)

by cies 3y ago

nabakin 3y ago

Yes, I believe I saw a video of Linus stating exactly this

aftbit 3y ago

My understanding was that some people in the community believed that GPLv3 was better, and one of Linus's criticisms was that it was essentially impossible to switch even if it were better. I also believe Linus was opposed to the switch, which would make it unlikely anyway, but even if he had approved, I still think it would be practically impossible.

tux2bsd 3y ago
[dead]

kmeisthax 3y ago

Torvalds considered the anti-TiVo clause to be changing the deal and he didn't want to do that, and there's no way in GPLv3 to opt-out of the clause[0]. This is less "locking down devices is a human right" and more him being angry that the FSF was trying to butt into his project's affairs. He's also similarly angry about "GNU/Linux" as it sounds an awful lot like Stallman just demanding everyone stick "GNU" onto the name of Linus's kernel project. Anyway all of this is going to seem really quaint in 2027 when Broadcom gets sued under DMCA 1201 by a rogue kernel contributor for evading the Linux linker's license checks[1] and they have to hurriedly rewrite them out of the kernel and relicense anyway. [0] Granting a blanket exception doesn't work because others can just remove the exception. "No further restrictions" is an ironclad law of copyleft. [1] The Linux kernel checks the declared license of loaded modules and refuses to link non-GPL-compatible code against any kernel symbol not marked as a user-space equivalent. The reason why this works this way is because Linux ships under GPLv2 plus an exception that says user-space APIs don't trip copyleft, so you can legally load code built to those APIs into the kernel, but anything else might violate GPL. Since this is enforcing an interpretation of the GPL, this is a DMCA 1201 technical protection measure. You absolutely could make a DMCA 1201 anticircumvention claim in court against a proprietary driver developer that tried to evade the checks. Though Linus usually just bans their modules in the next kernel revision since he's mainly worried about keeping proprietary modules from generating spurious bug reports in Linux. But the lawsuit is still possible, since they're on GPLv2. If they had relicensed to GPLv3, this wouldn't be an issue.

comex 3y ago
Are you arguing that the GPL check “effectively controls access to a work” or “effectively protects a right of a copyright owner [..] in a work or a portion thereof”? Either way, the bar of how “effective” a measure needs to be to count may be low, but probably not that low.
yellowapple 3y ago
> and there's no way in GPLv3 to opt-out of the clause And even if you could, you're basically just left with the GPLv2.

rwmj 3y ago

We changed the license[1] of a project which had 10 contributors, and we got every single one of them to do an Acked-by (by email) which took some weeks. That was on the advice of our lawyers. Can't imagine the impossible hassle of doing the same for something like Linux. [1] https://gitlab.com/nbdkit/nbdkit/-/commit/952ffe0fc7685ea775ed8879bf0b2cb9df3d9044 https://gitlab.com/nbdkit/nbdkit/-/commit/952ffe0fc7685ea775...

yellowapple 3y ago
And that's assuming that all the contributors are even alive in the first place; unless you've got a Ouija board handy, you're gonna have one hell of a time changing Linux's license.
justincormack 3y ago
It has been done for some fairly large projects, eg openssl managed to swith to Apache for 3.0. It is a lot of work.
maccard 3y ago
Can't speak for Linux, but got a few projects I've contributed to I've had to sign a CLA which negates that problem (but causes the one in this thread)