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    SubjectRe: Would like to form a pool of Linux copyright holders for faster GPL enforcement against Anthrax Kernels
    On Sun, May 19, 2013 at 03:28:28PM +0200, Jonas Gorski wrote:
    > Because Linus /is/ the highest authority regarding Linux. He holds the
    > copyright to the most crucial parts, and without his cooperation, you
    > will never get the GPLv2 parts to be re-licensed to GPLv2+, unless you
    > remove everything from him and replace it with your own
    > implementations. And do the same with every other contributors' code
    > who doesn't agree to switch to GPLv2+.

    It's not just Linus; many senior Linux kernel developers have spoken
    very clearly that the anti-Tivoization clause in GPLv3 is totally
    unacceptable, and so many of us have stated unequivocally that our
    code will be released under a GPLv2-only license. This means that
    GPLv3-only code is always going to be incompatible with code released
    as part of the Linux kernel, because substantial parts of the kernel
    have and will be available only under a GPLv2 only license.

    If anyone wants to release their code under a dual-license, it's
    easist if that's how you submitted the code originally. For example,
    drivers/char/random.c is released under a BSD/GPLv2 dual license
    (because I wanted to encourage its use in other operating systems,
    since to me high quality crypto is more important that free software
    wankery/idealism).

    If you have only contributed a few lines or partially to a particular
    single file, specifying that "these 15 linues of the function
    I_worship_at_the_altar_of_rms() are under the GPLv2/v3, even through
    the rest of the file is GPLv2-only" is not something that we generally
    do. Speaking as a subsystem maintainer, for the portions of the code
    that I maintain, if someone insisted on line-level copyright
    statements, I'd just simply reject the patch rather than dealing with
    the accounting nightmare.

    If you want to add a GPLv2/GPLv3 dual license to a file which you
    originally contributed to, but then later on other peoeple have
    contributed lines of code, you'll need to get the consent of everyone
    who have contributed changes to that file.

    Finally, as Jonas has stated, if you are trying to impose the
    anti-Tivoization clause through the back door, it's not going to have
    that effect, since people can always choose either license for
    dual-licensed code, and for the kernel GPLv2 always has to be one of
    the choices. The only reason why you might want to dual-license the
    code is if you want to allow said code to be used in other contexts,
    either in BSD-licensed code in the case of a GPLv2/BSD dual license,
    or GPLv3-only licensed code in the case of a GPLv2/GPLv3 dual license.

    Regards,

    - Ted


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