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

Al Viro
2007-06-15T23:57:25Z

On Fri, Jun 15, 2007 at 08:13:54PM -0300, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
> On Jun 15, 2007, Chris Adams <cmadams@hiwaay.net> wrote:
>
> > Obviously Linus feels that the spirit of the GPLv2 is exactly what
> > he wanted
>
> spirit != letter. He liked the letter. He couldn't even tell spirit
> from letter 2 or 3 days ago.
>
> The spirit is the motivations behind the author of the license.
> Anyone who thinks the motivations of RMS and the FSF are not defending
> users' freedoms, as defined in the Free Software Definition, hasn't
> been around for very long.

Aha. I.e. "similar in spirit" means simply "written according to
motivations of RMS and FSF". Which means, of course, that RMS and
FSF are the sole judges in that area. There is just one problem:
it's not vague enough to be stated openly in the license. Can't
scare the suckers away - that would reduce the user freedoms, right?