Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1752549AbXFQUgY (ORCPT ); Sun, 17 Jun 2007 16:36:24 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1750800AbXFQUgP (ORCPT ); Sun, 17 Jun 2007 16:36:15 -0400 Received: from mx1.redhat.com ([66.187.233.31]:43927 "EHLO mx1.redhat.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750753AbXFQUgO (ORCPT ); Sun, 17 Jun 2007 16:36:14 -0400 To: Linus Torvalds Cc: Daniel Hazelton , Bron Gondwana , Ingo Molnar , Alan Cox , Greg KH , debian developer , david@lang.hm, Tarkan Erimer , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Andrew Morton Subject: Re: Dual-Licensing Linux Kernel with GPL V2 and GPL V3 References: <200706161817.36657.dhazelton@enter.net> <200706162306.14516.dhazelton@enter.net> From: Alexandre Oliva Organization: Red Hat OS Tools Group Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2007 17:34:45 -0300 In-Reply-To: (Linus Torvalds's message of "Sun\, 17 Jun 2007 12\:16\:40 -0700 \(PDT\)") Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.0.990 (gnu/linux) 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: 4857 Lines: 115 On Jun 17, 2007, Linus Torvalds wrote: > On Sun, 17 Jun 2007, Alexandre Oliva wrote: >> >> One more time, I'm not talking about the license (the legal terms). > Ok. Then go away. > Everybody else just cares about the legal reasons. That's false, and the reason I know it is that, if this was true, I probably wouldn't even have got into this debate. The reason I got into it was that there were false claims about changes in the spirit of the license, implied in Greg KH's e-mail that refers to the long thread and position paper that made these false claims. I got into this debate in response to this reference: http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0706.1/1904.html to a thread about an article that stated [...] solemn trust, as stated in article 9 of GPLv2, only to licence the code under versions of the GPL that "... will be similar in spirit to the present version". We, like all the individual contributors to GNU projects, have taken that trust at face value and accorded the FSF a special role in the Open Source Universe because of it. It goes without saying that any updates to GPLv2 must be completely in accord with the execution of that trust. before it went on to misleading references to a DRM clause (*), trying to frame anti-tivoization as end-use restrictions and how unacceptable that is in a license, while blessing tivoization itself (an end-use restriction, no less). (*) meaning the anti-tivoization provisions, in spite of the existence of an unrelated section named DRM in a draft available at that time And then, the article goes on about FUD of jeopardising patent portfolios, which is *obviously* a misunderstanding, as I wrote in my e-mail. In response to that intervention, my first one in this subject, you exploded. And then, shortly after your explosion and all the name calling, there was this: http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0706.1/2235.html And you say people don't care about the spirit? Seriously, I'm not even asking for an apology for the name calling. All I'm asking for is that you don't lie about GPLv3 and about the spirit of the GPL. I know it's hard when you're trying to frame yourself as a victim of a tyranny, but since FSF's offer of a new license, and switching its own projects to it, framing it as "suborn or coerce others to go along with them" (from the article) is utterly false, and an evident misunderstanding of the intent. And that's not even unusual. See, when Free Software advocates *ask* people to refer to the GNU operating system as such, even when it's combined with the kernel Linux, a lot of people over-react and complain that the FSF is trying to *force* anyone to rename Linux. This is false on two accounts. Linux is the name of the kernel, and the FSF has never tried to rename that. GNU is the name of the operating system, and it's people who confusingly call that operating system Linux that renamed it. Free Software advocates merely ask that people call it by the right name. I can appreciate that some FSFers take positions that may come off as unfriendly and trigger this kind of negative feeling of being forced to do something. I suspect this is the same case. But taking it as forcing is just as inappropriate. There's no coercive force to be applied, and no moral grounds to coerce. In both cases, it's a request for people to make the choice of helping defend users' freedoms. I know you're not going to believe this, because it doesn't fit in your world-view. My intent in participating in this discussion was really not to convince you. I had a feeling, all the way from the beginning, that this was probably hopeless, even though there was thin hope. My intent was to enlighten others who were still open to listening and to accepting different viewpoints. From personal feedback I got, I know I've accomplished a lot of that, and I thank deeply all of you who encouraged me to proceed, and who thanked me for the information I added to the debate. I wish I could say I'm going to step out of this debate now, because it's taken me far more time than I could afford. But since my goal was to counter the spreading of mis-information about GPLv3, and since I am indeed addicted to this kind of discussion, I may end up failing to stay away from the discussion. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ FSF Latin America Board Member http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org} Free Software Evangelist oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org} - 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/