Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1161421AbWI2GW5 (ORCPT ); Fri, 29 Sep 2006 02:22:57 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1161422AbWI2GW5 (ORCPT ); Fri, 29 Sep 2006 02:22:57 -0400 Received: from smtp.osdl.org ([65.172.181.4]:23015 "EHLO smtp.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1161421AbWI2GW4 (ORCPT ); Fri, 29 Sep 2006 02:22:56 -0400 Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2006 23:22:21 -0700 (PDT) From: Linus Torvalds To: Neil Brown cc: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?J=F6rn_Engel?= , Lennart Sorensen , Chase Venters , Sergey Panov , Patrick McFarland , Theodore Tso , Alan Cox , Jan Engelhardt , James Bottomley , linux-kernel Subject: Re: GPLv3 Position Statement In-Reply-To: <17692.26687.478584.156639@cse.unsw.edu.au> Message-ID: References: <1158941750.3445.31.camel@mulgrave.il.steeleye.com> <1159415242.13562.12.camel@sipan.sipan.org> <200609272339.28337.chase.venters@clientec.com> <20060928135510.GR13641@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> <20060928141932.GA707@DervishD> <20060928144028.GA21814@wohnheim.fh-wedel.de> <17692.26687.478584.156639@cse.unsw.edu.au> 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: 2039 Lines: 49 On Fri, 29 Sep 2006, Neil Brown wrote: > On Thursday September 28, torvalds@osdl.org wrote: > > > > Btw, it should be stated here: I'm not advocating either of the above. If > > a license says "v2 or later", anybody who removes an explicit right > > granted by the people who originally wrote and worked on the code is just > > being a total a-hole. > > But isn't that the whole point - to replace v2 by v3? I'm sure it's the point for the FSF. Is it really the point for anybody else? Everybody else is better off with the more permissive license.. > Now I know that is what you would prefer, but it seems obvious that it > isn't what the new FSF wants. > I would be very surprised if new versions of any FSF-control code is > available under v2 more than a few months after v3 becomes final. I suspect the FSF might well be _very_ careful here. If they move to "v3 or later", they had better be damn sure somebody won't license-fork that project, or they'll be left with nothing at all. So I would not be entirely surprised if projects remain "v2 or later" just because it's to nobodys advantage to play chicken. But who knows.. > I don't see the urgency. Why are you "screwed forever"? You can > always take the last version that was available under a suitable > license and fork from there, just like OpenSSH did. > > Sure: the longer you leave it the harder it will be to get critical > mass, but I don't see the need for it to be done immediately. It obviously doesn't have to be, but it gets a lot harder to do later, if the project has any appreciable amount of real development. Of course, a lot of projects probably don't have that much. I haven't followed, but I don't get the feeling that bash or fileutils have a huge amount of constant changes.. 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/