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

Alexandre Oliva
2007-06-15T21:10:38Z

On Jun 15, 2007, Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu> wrote:

> On Thu, Jun 14, 2007 at 08:20:19PM -0300, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
>>
>> So, you see, your statement above, about wanting to be able to use
>> other people's improvements, cannot be taken without qualification.

> No. Linus and other Linux kernels might *want* to take other people's
> improvements, but thanks to Richard Stallman's choices for GPLv3, they
> can *not* legally take other people's improvements without violating
> the GPLv3 license.

This argument is backwards. It's because of Linus' choice for GPLv2
that he can't take improvements under the GPLv3.

Had he chosen any other GPLv3-compatible license, he could.

And the same applies to any other incompatible pair of licenses.

--
Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
FSF Latin America Board Member http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}