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

Alexandre Oliva
2007-06-15T03:08:43Z

On Jun 14, 2007, Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> wrote:

> On Thu, 14 Jun 2007, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
>>
>> It's disappointing that I took so much of everyone's time without
>> achieving any of my goals.

> What do you expect, when you tried to entertain a legal picture of the
> GPLv2 that even the FSF counsel doesn't believe in?

I don't think I made significant legal arguments. My points were
about the spirit of the license. That's not legal at all. That's
moral and ethical background.

Your aggressive response directed at the FSF came as quite a surprise
to me, given the way I got into this conversation.

> I will state one more time: I think that what Tivo did was and is:

> (a) perfectly legal wrt the GPLv2

I respectfully disagree, and I know I'm not alone in this assessment.
I know other kernel developers agree with it. And they're as entitled
to claim failure to comply with the license as you are.

> (and I have shown multiple times why
> your arguments don't hold logical water

You countered one of the various arguments I have, and you failed at
that. It was another, quite different argument, that got me to
realize it didn't work legally. But this says nothing about
compliance with the spirit of the license.

> (b) not just legally right, but perfectly morally right too

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.

> (c) the only reasonable thing many companies *can* do in the face
> of laws and regulations and entities like the RIAA/MPAA.

No, TiVO could just throw the key away. Why doesn't it?

> and you should admit that the fact that the FSF counsel says that it
> couldn't sue Tivo in the US, it means that while my standpoint may not be
> the _only_ possible one, I'm certainly not "confused" about (a) above.

I don't think I've ever claimed you were confused about (a). I said
we disagreed. That's quite different.

You were confused between the legalese and the spirit.

> The (b) and (c) points are not "legal" points, they are about the fact
> that quite often, morality and practicality are independent of legality,
> and you should never see law as being the *only* thing that matters.

Aah, now we're getting somewhere!

> Dammit, if I cannot say that I think what they did was fine, who can?

If you and all other Linux copyright holders agreed about it, sure.

Just like you could all grant it an additional permission, just so
that they feel safe about it.

> Now, we both agree that GPLv3 would change the situation wrt Tivo, don't
> we?

Yes. They'd have to give up the ability to update the software, or
pass it on to the user. If they can't do the latter, they could still
do the former. How bad would this be for them, do you know?

> And yet you claim that you cannot understand why I (and others) would
> consider the GPLv3 to be a "worse" license.

That's because when you talk about why GPLv2 is better, you always
talked about virtues that are just as present in v3, and that AFAICT
would in fact by increased by v3.

> .. but I guess you'll ignore that argument, the way you ignored all the
> other ones too, and continue to blame your lack of understanding on me
> being "confused" about the issue.

I'm sorry if I come off that way. But we really look at this issue
from very different perspectives, and it's difficult for me to try to
see it your way. Please cut me some slack here. I'm trying hard, but
there is so much noise and so many hard feelings that seeing what the
real issues are is not that easy.

Thanks for your understanding,

--
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}