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Adrian Bunk wrote: > On Fri, Sep 22, 2006 at 11:15:50AM -0500, James Bottomley wrote: > >> Although this white paper was discussed amongst the full group of kernel >> developers who participated in the informal poll, as you can expect from >> Linux Kernel Developers, there was a wide crossection of opinion. This >> document is really only for discussion, and represents only the views of >> the people listed as authors (not the full voting pool). >> >> James >> >> ---------- >> >> The Dangers and Problems with GPLv3 >> >> >> James E.J. Bottomley Mauro Carvalho Chehab >> Thomas Gleixner Christoph Hellwig Dave Jones >> Greg Kroah-Hartman Tony Luck Andrew Morton >> Trond Myklebust David Woodhouse >> ... >> 6 Conclusions >> >> ... Therefore, as far as we are >> concerned (and insofar as we control subsystems of the kernel) we cannot >> foresee any drafts of GPLv3 coming out of the current drafting process that >> would prove acceptable to us as a licence to move the current Linux Kernel >> to. >> ... > > > Some people might wonder why kernel developers have any business > discussing the GPLv3 in their positions as kernel developers and why > 10 core kernel developers put their names on a document containing this > statement. > > > Isn't all this complete nonsense considering that the COPYING file in > the kernel contains the following? > > <-- snip --> > > Also note that the only valid version of the GPL as far as the kernel > is concerned is _this_ particular version of the license (ie v2, not > v2.2 or v3.x or whatever), unless explicitly otherwise stated. > > <-- snip --> > > > Considering that the number of people that contributed to the Linux > kernel during the last 15 years might be in the range 5.000-20.000, so > asking all contributors to agree with a licence change from GPLv2 to > GPLv3 (or any other license) and handling all the cases where > contributors do not answer, are not reachable or disagree, and doing > this in a way not creating legal issues in any jurisdiction is not a > realistic option. > More than that the people who are classified as the top ten are just MAINTAINERS. a MAINTAINER collects patches from various people. So eventually a MAINTAINER is the top most contributor ? this might be valid in certain cases, but not be applicable in all cases. > > So aren't all discussions about "acceptable to us as a licence to move > the current Linux Kernel to" silly since this is anyway not an option? > > > In the internal discussions there was one point that changes this > pictures, and I would consider it highly immoral to keep it secret since > it affects every single contributor to Linux. > ACK. cent per cent Talking about openness and still closed ? > > Thinking about probably changing the license of the kernel makes sense > if you believe the following "nuclear option" is a real option: > > 1. It is a legally tenable and arguable position that the Linux > kernel is a work of joint authorship whose legal citus is that > of the USA. > 2. On this basis, a single co-author can cause the kernel to be > relicensed. > 3. To be legally sound, such a co-author would have to be either a > current major subsystem maintainer or a demonstrated contributor > of a significant proportion of code of the kernel. > > > cu > Adrian > Manu - 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/ | ||||||||||
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