Please tone down the GPL3 paranoia

Bruce Perens bruce at perens.com
Fri Sep 15 00:13:41 UTC 2006


Rob Landley wrote:
> In which case the Linux kernel would have to abandon GPLv2.  Now which is more 
> likely to be able to legally defend itself: a multi-billion dollar industry, 
> or a boston foundation?
>   
An "industry" doesn't defend itself so much as individual companies do.
This is evident with SCO - there is an SCO v. IBM lawsuit, there was an
SCO v. Autozone lawsuit, and there is a Redhat v. SCO lawsuit that is on
hold until the resolution of IBM v. SCO.

In general any public stock company will make its highest priority their
ability to continue to do business profitably, that's their fiduciary
duty to their stockholders under securities law. To make this a more
concrete statement, I do not trust HP, IBM, and OSDL's board to refrain
from entering a settlement that would preserve their business and avoid
further legal cost but would be to the disadvantage of Open Source /
Free Software in general. That they have not done so yet in existing
cases is not from altruism, but is driven by a strategy to deter further
suits.

In contrast, I trust FSF to fight to the death for your GPL rights and
never compromise. And I am sure that they can find funding and pro-bono
legal resources to do so. Aren't you taking advantage of those resources
right now?
> No, I was talking about IBM, HP, SGI, Sony, Toshiba, Samsung...
>   
Rob, I spent a time in Europe fighting those very companies while they
were lobbying for globaly-enforcible software patents that would likely
have been used against us. W3C rules do not allow to tell you who I was
fighnting when W3C had a draft policy that would have put software
patents in web standards. Don't assume that those folks are willing to
stand behind you.
>> I think you need to leave the option to progress to GPL3
>>     
>
> It is.  For versions 1.2.2 and earlier.
In other words, your GPL strategy is that you will discard all work that
the project does from next week until whenever, if it is necessary to go
to GPL3. This seems hollow.
> The license says "end of terms and conditions", and that's where the actual license ends.
>   
If you look at my own copyright grant in the file "LICENSE" of older
busybox releases, it has my copyright statement at the top, and on the
bottom of the file says "This program suite may be distributed under the
GNU General Public License." You are changing those terms. This is
regardless of the text of the GPL, which is a separate document from my
copyright grant and was indeed not included in the tarball at that time.

Now, you may attempt to prove that everything I've written has been
filtered out over 6 years. But that would be your only excuse for
changing the terms of my copyright grant without my permission.
>   
>> only for a 
>> future in which GPL2 may no longer be viable because major license
>> circumventions are found acceptable by some court and thus gain the
>> strength of law.
>>     
>
> And you're calling _me_ paranoid?  (Yes you did, check the title.)
>   
We would not be developing GPL3 if there wasn't a problem with changes
in the law and in software that potentially weaken GPL2. I've certainly
seen people cite Nintendo v. Goloob as an excuse for their GPL
violations on Busybox.
> How?  The new DRM provisions are a restriction that GPLv2 didn't require
But surely would have, if DRM existed back then. The world is changing,
the license has to keep up.
> I did think about this a lot.  I've been thinking (and talking) about it for 
> months now.  The timing of your message sucked
Well, it sucked that you never asked me. You have to know that I've
spent a lot of time thinking about Open Source licensing policy.
Bringing me in at the start of the discussion would have been a good idea.
> The last time you touched this project, I'd never even heard of it.  Before 
> Erik took over, it wasn't even an independent project but a niche utility for 
> the Debian boot disk.
Busybox had an independent release on the system where most Linux
utilities were distributed from when I created it: sunsite.unc.edu (now
called iBiblio) and had Debian-independent users before Erik came along.
Busybox it was released before the formation of Lineo and Monte Vista,
before there was any commercial interest in embedded Linux. Lineo was an
early embedded linux commercializer and Erik's employer.
> Erik took what you had lost interest in
Rather than lose interest, I finished the project and went on to other
stuff, of which there has been more than enough. I was glad to see that
Lineo was investing in the further development of Busybox.
> Have you ever even posted to this list before?
>   
There has been no need until now. Erik was doing fine and he and I
corresponded directly when necessary.
> But you don't seem to think it's ok to drop GPLv3 and go with GPLv2 only.
I don't think it's necessary, and I think it's bad strategy.
> I do not consider that position internally consistent.
It seems that you are requiring my decision to be idempotent before you
will consider it to be logically consistent. That's bad logic in that it
rejects any possible reason for progress.
>   This is aside 
> from the fact that GPLv3 doesn't even exist yet and GPLv2 is the only actual 
> license the project has ever been under.  That doesn't matter: if it's 
> morally ok to drop GPLv2 and go to GPLv3 at some point in the future, then it 
> must be ok to drop GPLv3 and stick with GPLv2 now.
>
> And thus I stuck by my original decision.
>
> Thank you for expressing your opinion.  I did take it into consideration.  I 
> disagree.
>   
So, you're forcing my hand. You're forcing me to fork the project for
software that I created. I'd rather this hadn't happened.

    Bruce
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