Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sat, 23 Sep 2006 12:05:16 +0400 | From | Manu Abraham <> | Subject | Re: The GPL: No shelter for the Linux kernel? |
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Linus Torvalds wrote: > [ Sorry if this shows up twice - the first post to linux-kernel was > apparently eaten by an over-eager spam filter with an agenda ;^] > > On Fri, 22 Sep 2006, David Schwartz wrote: >> This is probably going to be controversial, but Linus should seriously >> consider adding a clause that those who contribute to the kernel from now on >> consent to allow him to modify the license on their current contributions >> and all past contributions, amending the Linux kernel license as >> appropriate. This would at least begin to reduce this problem over the next >> few years, leaving fewer and fewer people with claim to less and less code >> who would have legal standing to object. > > It's the last thing I'd ever want to do, for all the same reasons the > kernel doesn't have the "or later versions" language wrt licenses. > > I don't actually want people to need to trust anybody - and that very much > includes me - implicitly. > > I think people can generally trust me, but they can trust me exactly > because they know they don't _have_ to. > > The reason the poll and the whitepaper got started was that I've obviously > not been all that happy with the GPLv3, and while I was pretty sure I was > not alone in that opinion, I also realize that _everybody_ thinks that > they are right, and that they are supported by all other right-thinking > people. That's just how people work. We all think we're better than > average. > > So while I personally thought it was pretty clear that the GPLv2 was the > better license for the kernel, I didn't want to just depend on my own > personal opinion, but I wanted to feel that I had actually made my best to > ask people.
Regarding the GPLv2 vs v3 debate, i don't think anyone is in favour of a different view, but ..
> Now, I could have done it all directly on the Linux-kernel mailing list, > but let's face it, that would just have caused a long discussion and we'd > not have really been any better off anyway. So instead, I did > > git log | grep -i signed-off-by: | > cut -d: -f2- | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | less -S
When applied to subsystems, the patch author "A" applies his/her patch to the repo, the MAINTAINER cherry picks the patches for submitting to the kernel.
In such a case, it becomes,
Signed-off-by: A Signed-off-by: MAINTAINER
in a subsystem there are indeed many contributors, eventually it is indeed
Signed-off-by: "x" Signed-off-by: MAINTAINER
So it is indeed incorrect to term that the MAINTAINER is the most popular Contributor, because the CONTRIBUTOR is the PATCH AUTHOR himself, not the MAINTAINER.
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