GPL version 2 only for BusyBox 1.3.0.

Rob Landley rob at landley.net
Thu Sep 14 18:53:23 UTC 2006


On Thursday 14 September 2006 1:28 pm, Erik Andersen wrote:
> When the GPLv3 comes out, it will be time for many many
> organizations (including BusyBox) to evaluate the merits of the
> GPLv3, and it may well be time for BusyBox to switch over to
> GPLv3.  Or not.  Regardless, such a change should be just as
> feasible then as it is now.

We do have the source control history and know which patches are going in 
since the switch, and it's not like we haven't cleaned out code we weren't 
sure of the license of before.  (Speaking of which I still plan to replace 
the "with advertising clause" BSD code that's currently in the tree, although 
that's partly because a fresh implementation could significantly improve upon 
it.)

But just the quick check of the BusyBox codebase I did came up with instances 
of GPLv2-only code, some of the code I'd like to add today is GPLv2 only, and 
I really don't want to try to police this issue much more than I already 
have.  I really like having one license, and that license being the same one 
that's on the Linux kernel.

But yeah, if the Linux kernel switched to GPLv3, I'd put in the effort to 
follow suit.

Rob
-- 
Never bet against the cheap plastic solution.



More information about the busybox mailing list