[TriLUG] GPLv3 -- What do you think?

[Barry Gaskins]

   I personally like the goals of GPL3 and I hope that it gets adopted by a
lot of people.  I dont think that the reasons that I have heard from Linus
for not adopting it are valid (the whole must give up your private key
stuff) if you read what the license says.

   However, I do think that he has a lot of other reasons to not use it in
linux.  Mostly because if any of linux goes to GPL version 3 then ALL of it
must go there.  And since he did not write most of linux himself, he would
need to get the permission from ALL of the contributers. Since some of the
contributers cannot be located (some are dead) it would not be possibe for
him to move to version 3 without rewriting a large part of Linux.  So unless
there is some really compelling reason to do so then I dont see him doing
it.  And since he does not seem to share Richard Stallmans religion I dont
think he sees a compelling reason to do it.  I think Linus uses GPL more for
practical reasons so if he thinks it is not broken then I dont see him
trying to fix it.

    New projects would not have that problem so many of them may go with
version 3.  But many established projects will not perceive enough reward to
compel them to endure the pain of converting from version 2 to version 3.
And the more code they have already written and the greater the number of
authors that they need to ask permission from (or rewrite) then the greater
the pain of changing.

   I think the big question will be how many Open Source projects will get
forked over this.  If gcc converts to version 3 then anyone who wants to use
the latest gcc would need to convert to version 3 (or continue developing
the old gcc under a new branch with a version 2 license.)  We could see
whole new versions of a lot of things fork off when the 2 religous
denominations split over this.

   - Barry Gaskins

On 3/12/06, Shane O'Donnell <shaneodonnell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> My apologies if I missed a thread on this earlier...
>
> With Stallman's draft out for a while now and Torvalds' apathy on the
> record, I was wondering what other folks were thinking about v3 in its
> current state, its goals (stated and unstated), its potential impacts,
> and its likelihood for adoption (given current state or a projected
> modified state).
>
> I've got my opinions (they're like certain body parts, you know...),
> but I'll reserve them to avoid sullying the waters.
>
> Replies to me personally or to the list are appreciated.
>
> TIA --
>
> Shane O.
> ========
> Shane O'Donnell
> shaneodonnell at gmail.com
> ====================
> --
> TriLUG mailing list        : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug
> TriLUG Organizational FAQ  : http://trilug.org/faq/
> TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/
>