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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