Re: Dual-Licensing Linux Kernel with GPL V2 and GPL V3

Dave Neuer
2007-06-19T21:26:49Z

On 6/19/07, Alexandre Oliva <aoliva@redhat.com> wrote:
> On Jun 19, 2007, Anders Larsen <al@alarsen.net> wrote:
>
> > Only, your statement above seems to run counter to your previous claims
> > that the "anti-tivoisation" provisions of GPLv3 would bring _more_
> > developers to copyleft software.
>
> > So which one is it?
>
> We might lose your contributions, that's true, I've never ever denied
> that. And this will even have a cost for you, especially if you go
> proprietary rather than some other more liberal Free Software license,
> or stick with a GPLv2 Linux and hope it's never ruled as prohibiting
> tivoization, or move to Linux on ROM.
>
> But it takes only a small fraction of the tivoizers to decide to take
> out the locks, when faced with the costs mentioned above, for us to
> gain contributions from even a small fraction of their user base
> (which would then grow in hacker density as a result of
> non-tivoization) for us to end up better off.

Even if you're correct, that only takes into account the manufacturers
who are using Linux _now_ who might be pressured to allowed modified
versions to run. What about the lost opportunity cost of all of the
future manufacturers who decide to use ProprietaryOS + locks instead
of Linux? We don't get any of their code.

But all of this is moot anyway. You are not going to win the argument
on practical grounds anyway since Linus, Greg, Ingo and several other
developers with collectively many lines of code in the kernel have
stated in one form or another that they don't agree with the ethical
goals of GPLv3. I don't understand who you think you're going to
convince w/ continued debate?

Dave