Date: Mon, 15 May 2000 18:21:59 -0700 From: "David Schwartz" <davids@webmaster.com> To: "Rahul Siddharthan" <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> Cc: "Anatoly Vorobey" <mellon@pobox.com>, <chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: RE: Why are people against GNU? WAS Re: 5.0 already? Message-ID: <000001bfbed5$21a44b30$021d85d1@youwant.to> In-Reply-To: <20000516063850.A18527@physics.iisc.ernet.in>
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> OK suppose you're right (which is very unlikely). What then? The GPL > still only talks of using later versions at your *option*. You can > still use GPL 2 if you want. The point is that if you cover a work under the GPL, and then others modify and extend that work, the only entity that has any control over the licensing terms is the FSF. Not even the original owner can modify the licensing terms. This has, historically, created some amusing incidents. Take for example the Linux operating system. It was developed under the GPL from day one. It contains contributions from large numbers of people, all contributed under the GPL. Theoretically, nobody but the FSF should be able to change the licensing agreement. Not even the original author (Linus Torvalds) is supposed to be allowed to do that. But he did. He declared unilaterally the programs that just Linux kernel calls are not covered by the GPL. Now what is this declaration? Is it Linus' legal opinion? Isn't this in direct conflict with what RMS recently said on this list? Linux is not covered by the LGPL, and all programs that run on Linux 'link' to the Linux kernel as surely as any library use. Now somehow in this case, Linus seems to have gotten away with it. But I have no idea how he has the right to change the licensing terms on other people's software. As I read the GPL, only the FSF has that right. How do you address this? Does Linus have the right to relax the GPL on all the contributed works in the Linux kernel? Or will RMS go on record as saying that running on an OS is different from linking to a library? (How so? Technically, they are precisely analogous.) Bluntly, Linus should not have applied the GPL to his work. He should have applied a license that had the terms he wanted to apply, and this would have allowed him to fix erroneous terms later. But he ceded that power to the FSF. Now, if someone really wanted to make a stink, I'm not sure what he could do but throw out all code contributed to the kernel inbetween when it was first released and when he clarified the license. DS To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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