Results of an informal GPLv3 poll amongst kernel contributors

Results of an informal GPLv3 poll amongst kernel contributors

[James Bottomley]

These are basically just the votes and who voted.  There's also a nice
graphical tally but I'll attach that by replying to this message so it
doesn't get eaten by people's "no mime at all" spam filters.

James

-------------------------------------

Vote key:

   I wouldn't want to use v3 (I really dislike it, or my
   company would have serious problems allowing me
-3 to participate using the v3 draft)

-2 I think v3 is much worse than v2

-1 I think v2 is better, but I don't care that deeply

 0 I don't really care at all

 1 I think v3 is better, but I don't care that deeply

 2 I think v3 is much better than v2

   I wouldn't want to use v2 (I really dislike it, or my
   company would have serious problems allowing me
 3 to participate using the GPLv2)


These votes are opinions of the persons listed in their capacities as
kernel maintainers only. In no regard should any opinion expressed
herein be construed to represent the views of any entities employing
or being associated with any of the authors.

Name                                  Vote
====                                  ====
Linus Torvalds                        -2.5
Alan Cox                              -2.0
James Bottomley                       -3.0
Ingo Molnar                           -1.0
Tony Luck                             -2.0
Neil Brown                            -1.0
Al Viro                               -2.0
Jeff Garzik                           -2.0
Mauro Carvalho Chehab                 -2.0
Arjan van de Ven                      -3.0
David Woodhouse                       -2.0
Greg Kroah Hartman                    -3.0
Ralf Baechle                          -1.5
Stephen Hemminger                     -2.0
Andrew Morton                         -3.0
Dmitry Torokhov                       -2.0
Tejun Heo                             -2.0
Thomas Gleixner                       -3.0
Takashi Iwai                          -2.0
Trond Myklebust                       -2.5
Roland Dreier                         -2.0
Dave Jones                            -2.0
Russell King                          -2.0
John W. Linville                      -2.0
Andi Kleen                            -2.0
Patrick McHardy                       -1.0
David S. Miller                        0.0
Christoph Hellwig                     -2.0
Paul Mackerras                        -1.0


Total Votes Cast                       29
Average Vote                          -2.0  +/-   0.7
Lowest Vote                           -3.0
Highest Vote                           0.0
Median Vote                           -2.0

Re: Results of an informal GPLv3 poll amongst kernel contributors

[James Bottomley]

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On Fri, 2006-09-22 at 10:44 -0500, James Bottomley wrote:
> These are basically just the votes and who voted.  There's also a nice
> graphical tally but I'll attach that by replying to this message so it
> doesn't get eaten by people's "no mime at all" spam filters.

And here's the nice graphic.

James


[-- Attachment #2: tally.pdf --]
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Re: Results of an informal GPLv3 poll amongst kernel contributors

[Jan Engelhardt]

>
>These are basically just the votes and who voted.  There's also a nice
>graphical tally but I'll attach that by replying to this message so it
>doesn't get eaten by people's "no mime at all" spam filters.
>
>Average Vote                          -2.0  +/-   0.7

No surprise here :)



Jan Engelhardt
-- 

Re: Results of an informal GPLv3 poll amongst kernel contributors

[Linus Torvalds]

On Fri, 22 Sep 2006, Jan Engelhardt wrote:
>
> >
> >These are basically just the votes and who voted.  There's also a nice
> >graphical tally but I'll attach that by replying to this message so it
> >doesn't get eaten by people's "no mime at all" spam filters.
> >
> >Average Vote                          -2.0  +/-   0.7
> 
> No surprise here :)

Well, I actually think there were some surprises to some people.

The people involved with the vote were basically selected to be the most 
active kernel developers (by just doing some trivial statistics over the 
last 18 months and just picking the top ~30 people). I added Alan Cox to 
the list, just because, but basically it's otherwise a totally unbiased 
selection.

And trust me when I say that we're an argumentative lot. Some people 
consider the kernel mailing list to be somewhat argumentative at times, 
but I think people are even more open in their opinions when they're 
allowed to vent freely.

And we certainly had some "heated discussion" over a number of details, 
but as you can see from the actual votes, I think the conclusion people 
had come to (regardless of their opinions on some issues) were more 
uniform than you might have expected.

I think a number of outsiders also believed that I personally was just the 
odd man out, because I've been so publicly not a huge fan of the GPLv3.  

So I think some people who see the results - especially people who haven't 
been active in kernel development themselves - might be surprised to see 
that I wasn't even an outlier in the kernel group.

So I suspect your lack of surprise is because you've been on the kernel 
mailing list for too long, and already know the personalities of the 
people involved.

		Linus

Re: Results of an informal GPLv3 poll amongst kernel contributors

[tridge]

James,

Could you give some indication of how many of the people in this poll
have actually read the GPLv3 draft? Were they asked that?

In a moment of weakness one of the people listed in the poll mentioned
to me that he hadn't actually read the draft. While I'm sure that
isn't representative of the level of detailed license analysis that
has been done, it does make me suspect of any conclusions from these
poll results :-)

Cheers, Tridge

Re: Results of an informal GPLv3 poll amongst kernel contributors

[Russell King]

On Mon, Sep 25, 2006 at 05:22:48PM +1000, tridge@samba.org wrote:
> Could you give some indication of how many of the people in this poll
> have actually read the GPLv3 draft? Were they asked that?

It would be rather crass to give a position on something you haven't
read, especially if the results are to be published.

> In a moment of weakness one of the people listed in the poll mentioned
> to me that he hadn't actually read the draft.

That is rather disappointing to hear.  If the point of the poll was to
collect people's whims instead of informed judgements (which is what
it becomes if people didn't read the draft) then the result is meaningless
and would be laughed at.

I can only hope that everyone else did as I did and refused to give a
response _until_ they had read the draft and thought about it.

I also hope that whoever it was is now hiding in a corner feeling very
sorry for themselves for having let the rest of us down.

I think anyone who did respond to the poll but who hadn't read the draft
should have their vote struck off and the results re-published.

Very disappointed.

-- 
Russell King
 Linux kernel    2.6 ARM Linux   - http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/
 maintainer of:  2.6 Serial core

Re: Results of an informal GPLv3 poll amongst kernel contributors

[Thomas Gleixner]

On Mon, 2006-09-25 at 09:22 +0100, Russell King wrote:
> I think anyone who did respond to the poll but who hadn't read the draft
> should have their vote struck off and the results re-published.
> 
> Very disappointed.

Full ACK.

	tglx