Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S965067AbWI1B3O (ORCPT ); Wed, 27 Sep 2006 21:29:14 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S965171AbWI1B3N (ORCPT ); Wed, 27 Sep 2006 21:29:13 -0400 Received: from outpipe-village-512-1.bc.nu ([81.2.110.250]:32493 "EHLO lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S965067AbWI1B3L (ORCPT ); Wed, 27 Sep 2006 21:29:11 -0400 Subject: Re: GPLv3 Position Statement From: Alan Cox To: Linus Torvalds Cc: Chase Venters , Theodore Tso , Jan Engelhardt , Sergey Panov , James Bottomley , linux-kernel In-Reply-To: References: <1158941750.3445.31.camel@mulgrave.il.steeleye.com> <1159319508.16507.15.camel@sipan.sipan.org> <1159342569.2653.30.camel@sipan.sipan.org> <1159359540.11049.347.camel@localhost.localdomain> <20060927225815.GB7469@thunk.org> Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2006 02:53:40 +0100 Message-Id: <1159408420.11049.403.camel@localhost.localdomain> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.6.2 (2.6.2-1.fc5.5) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2431 Lines: 53 Ar Mer, 2006-09-27 am 17:18 -0700, ysgrifennodd Linus Torvalds: > _not_ been unknown to the people involved. Trust me, the FSF knew > very well that the kernel standpoint on the GPLv2 was that Tivo was s/kernel/Linus and some other copyright holders/ I reserve the right some day to attempt to sue the ass of people who tivo-ise my code. Hey I might lose but I reserve the right to. That said the FSF DRM clause is problematic, the GPLv2 leaves things in a slightly woolly situation with regards to keys in terms of whether they are part of the scripts etc (for the benefit of anyone's corporate lawyers: I think they usually are and I've said so in public). That vagueness is actually a good thing because it lets the legal system interpret the intent of the license and the situation at hand. Lawyers generally don't like vaguenesses of course and the GPLv3 draft tries to be non-vague. It's also flawed as a result precisely because it has to cover every imaginable case in one paragraph. There are lots of problems with the current v3 draft 1. "anything users can regenerate automatically" is horribly vague. Automatically *how* - with a $25,000 proprietary tool for example .... 2. Section 3 is US specific and doesn't really work. In some parts of the world breaking a technological protection seems to be a criminal matter and you can't waive the criminal law. 3. Additional terms is a license explosion and the interactions between them will get ugly. 4. The geographical clause still has the same bug as GPLv2. Who is the "original author" and what happens when I write a new OS and import 90% of Linux into it - am I the original author now ? Some of this is quite fixable - the "regenerate automatically" for example and the glitches in the patent clauses are just a matter of a little more lawyering, others like the DRM clauses don't work and also don't really address rented equipment for example. Personally I'm still hopeful the final GPLv3 will fix at least the majority of problems. I'm not sure it ultimately matters for the kernel whether it does or not, but for the general case of free software it is clearly important to get it right. Alan - 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/