Should we drop the "or later" after GPLv2?

Rich Felker dalias at aerifal.cx
Thu Aug 24 15:52:51 UTC 2006


On Wed, Aug 23, 2006 at 06:04:00PM -0400, Rob Landley wrote:
> Five years ago I wrote a firmware installation script.  It downloaded new 
> firmware off of a website and verified a pgp signature on it before 
> installing it.  (It wasn't encrypted, just signed.)  Under GPLv3, we'd have 
> to give out our private PGP key, and so would Red Hat for signed RPMs.
> 
> Now perhaps we could just modify the installer to pop up a warning message 
> about unsigned firmware and let them install it anyway.  And in that case, 

There is nothing different from GPL v2 here. If the private key is
essential in order to run the modified code on the machine, then it is
PART OF THE SOURCE CODE and must be distributed under the requirements
of GPL v2. It is source code because without it, you cannot produce a
working binary. GPL v3 just clarifies this. On the other hand, if you
can use the software without the signature, there's no requirement to
distribute any keys.

As long as you don't take the *malicious* action of trying to make DRM
restrictions on what code can be run on a machine, this issue does not
affect you.

> However, what if somebody _wants_ to rent out hardware (I don't actually own 
> my cable modem at home, it's the cable company's) and make sure that only 
> their software runs on it?  Or what if someone wants to make sure that only 
> an actual World of Warcraft client connects to the World of Warcraft servers 
> to keep the gold farming down to a dull roar?  I can see real world use cases 
> for this.  The GPLv2 says I have to be able to get their source code, it does 
> NOT say I have to be able to run arbitrary code on their hardware.

All of these goals are contrary to the fundamental freedoms that the
GPL tries to guarantee. This is why, for some authors, the spirit of
GPL v3 is very desirable. Unfortunately like I've said many times the
language is idiotic and it's full of unnecessary bloat like everything
that comes out of Cambridge.

> [...]

Some of the remaining things you point out are nonsense (but they do
hilight the fact that the GPL v3's language is so idiotic that people
reading it would think of such things) and others are completely
valid problems that need to be fixed. Regardless of what you or I do,
if the license remains this idiotic I'm quite sure people will boycott
it as they're already doing now by turning to "v2 only". This could
even mean the downfall into irrelevance of the FSF if they license
their code as "v3 only", but as far as I'm concerned most of their
code is already so bloated and nonportable that it's already
irrelevant.

Rich





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