Re: The GPL: No shelter for the Linux kernel?

Manu Abraham
2006-09-23T08:05:28Z

Linus Torvalds wrote:
> [ Sorry if this shows up twice - the first post to linux-kernel was
> apparently eaten by an over-eager spam filter with an agenda ;^]
>
> On Fri, 22 Sep 2006, David Schwartz wrote:
>> This is probably going to be controversial, but Linus should seriously
>> consider adding a clause that those who contribute to the kernel from now on
>> consent to allow him to modify the license on their current contributions
>> and all past contributions, amending the Linux kernel license as
>> appropriate. This would at least begin to reduce this problem over the next
>> few years, leaving fewer and fewer people with claim to less and less code
>> who would have legal standing to object.
>
> It's the last thing I'd ever want to do, for all the same reasons the
> kernel doesn't have the "or later versions" language wrt licenses.
>
> I don't actually want people to need to trust anybody - and that very much
> includes me - implicitly.
>
> I think people can generally trust me, but they can trust me exactly
> because they know they don't _have_ to.
>
> The reason the poll and the whitepaper got started was that I've obviously
> not been all that happy with the GPLv3, and while I was pretty sure I was
> not alone in that opinion, I also realize that _everybody_ thinks that
> they are right, and that they are supported by all other right-thinking
> people. That's just how people work. We all think we're better than
> average.
>
> So while I personally thought it was pretty clear that the GPLv2 was the
> better license for the kernel, I didn't want to just depend on my own
> personal opinion, but I wanted to feel that I had actually made my best to
> ask people.

Regarding the GPLv2 vs v3 debate, i don't think anyone is in favour of a
different view, but ..

> Now, I could have done it all directly on the Linux-kernel mailing list,
> but let's face it, that would just have caused a long discussion and we'd
> not have really been any better off anyway. So instead, I did
>
> git log | grep -i signed-off-by: |
> cut -d: -f2- | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | less -S

When applied to subsystems, the patch author "A" applies his/her patch
to the repo, the MAINTAINER cherry picks the patches for submitting to
the kernel.

In such a case, it becomes,

Signed-off-by: A
Signed-off-by: MAINTAINER

in a subsystem there are indeed many contributors, eventually it is indeed

Signed-off-by: "x"
Signed-off-by: MAINTAINER

So it is indeed incorrect to term that the MAINTAINER is the most
popular Contributor, because the CONTRIBUTOR is the PATCH AUTHOR
himself, not the MAINTAINER.

Manu