GPL version 2 only for BusyBox 1.3.0.

Rob Landley rob at landley.net
Thu Sep 14 06:43:08 UTC 2006


Erik Andersen wrote:
> On Wed Sep 13, 2006 at 11:07:51PM -0400, Rob Landley wrote:
> > I'm planning to simplify the BusyBox license to GPLv2 only tomorrow, so
> > that BusyBox 1.3.0 will be GPLv2 only when it ships.
> >
> > Are you ok with that?
>
> Sure, works for me.

So, I confirmed that Erik has objection to simplifying the BusyBox license to 
GPL version 2 only, dropping the "or later".  I also asked the Software 
Freedom Law Center, and on Monday they confirmed they're still happy to 
represent us as a GPL version 2 project.  And I've brought it up several 
times on this list over the past few months and nobody's come up with a 
compelling argument against it.

So I'm going to do it.

Obviously the license on the already released versions isn't changing, and in 
fact the 1.2.2 release I'm in the process of putting together will be "GPLv2 
or later".  Probably the last version that is.  If somebody really wants to 
do a GPLv3 fork based on that, I honestly don't care. (Auditing whether or 
not you can actually use various bits of it under GPLv3 is your problem, not 
mine.)

But BusyBox 1.3.0 and so on will be under the same license as the Linux 
kernel: GPL version 2.

This lets us merge the diethotplug code, and ntpclient, and not have to audit 
our codebase for things like the fact that our fsck_minix.c was written by 
Linus Torvalds (and although the permission statement he put on it back in 
1992 is a bit unclear -- "usable under the terms of the GNU Copyleft" -- he 
made it very clear back in 2000 that his code has always been GPLv2 only).

It also means we can stop arguing about it. :)

I'll update the boilerplate on the individual files as I get around to them.

Rob
-- 
Never bet against the cheap plastic solution.



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