Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S965110AbWIWBgO (ORCPT ); Fri, 22 Sep 2006 21:36:14 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S965120AbWIWBgO (ORCPT ); Fri, 22 Sep 2006 21:36:14 -0400 Received: from smtp.osdl.org ([65.172.181.4]:5059 "EHLO smtp.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S965110AbWIWBgN (ORCPT ); Fri, 22 Sep 2006 21:36:13 -0400 Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2006 18:36:05 -0700 (PDT) From: Linus Torvalds To: David Schwartz cc: Linux Kernel Mailing List Subject: RE: The GPL: No shelter for the Linux kernel? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1673 Lines: 42 On Fri, 22 Sep 2006, David Schwartz wrote: > > I can think of procedural safeguards against the "Linus sells out" or "Linus > goes insane" potential problems, but I don't have a perfect solution. I don't think one exists. The thing is, there's an entirely non-legal reason to never do something like that, namely just the psychology of the thing. Licenses are important for legal reasons (because problems can arise), but I would say that licenses are even *more* important as to how developers see them. And I know that I'm personally very much turned off by any license that grants any particular party any special powers. It doesn't matter _how_ much I respect or trust the party in question, I wouldn't want to use that license. So any license wording that said that I have any special powers would, I'm sure, alienate a large portion of the people who matter - the developers. So the thing is, we're _much_ better off with nobody that firmly "in charge", over the alternative. Everybody feels safer. Nobody needs to worry about me or anybody else suddenly going crazy. Remember: the perfect is the enemy of the good. Asking for things that are perfect "in theory" usually just results in things that are horrible "in practice". So not having anybody in charge could _in_theory_ cause problems. But _in_practice_ it's a hell of a lot better than somebody that people need to worry about. Linus - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/