Linus on GPLv2

[Joseph Sinclair]

I've been tracking Linus efforts to stop the GLP3 work, I think it's mostly just his vehement distaste for the FSF, and his more fundamental distaste for any mixing of ethics and programming, that's driving the comments.

Linus never liked that RMS and the FSF view software as an ethical field, and has always wanted the debate to be framed entirely in pragmatic terms.  This latest dust-up is an extension of that, since the new terms in the GPL to limit the use of patents against free software, and to ensure that the 4 freedoms aren't circumvented using encryption and/or hardware locks, are not in any way pragmatic from a code quality perspective, but do have a substantial ethical dimension.

RMS says he's fine with the Linux kernel taking whatever path they're comfortable with, probably because he realizes that the GNU tools will be under GPL3, and that will be sufficient to prevent Tiovisation of the GNU/Linux system.  There's also the Hurd kernel waiting in the wings, and if they ever get it really going (GNU development being the glacial thing it usually is), it should be extremely interesting to see how it competes with the Linux kernel, sort of a rematch of the micro/macro kernel battle that theorists and kernel designers have every decade or so (and which the macro has generally won in the past, but multi-core changes the rules a lot, so micro might win this time around).

Linus has also stated that while he finds the GPL3 distasteful, it's not so much that he doesn't like GPL3 as that he believes that GPL2 is essentially perfect, and sees no point in changing anything.

der.hans wrote:
> moin moin,
> 
> from the PLUG irc channel, #PLUGAZ on irc.freenode.net.
> 
> <aza`_> why Linux prefers gplv2 vs v3
> <aza`_> http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/9/24/246
> <aza`_> interesting read
> <aza`_> s/Linux/Linus
> 
> ciao,
> 
> der.hans