Why Torvalds is Sitting out the GPLv3 Process 365
lisah writes "Linus Torvalds has a lot of reasons for not wanting to participate in drafting the third version of the GNU General Public License (GPL): He doesn't like meetings, says committees don't make sense, has philosophical differences with the Free Software Foundation, and seems to be generally distrustful of the whole drafting process. Though Torvalds prefers the GPLv2, he says if others prefer the GPLv3, they ought to support it because 'it's not like it kills and eats small children for breakfast, and must never be allowed.'" Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.
This makes sense. He's a developer at heart. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A simpler explanation (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A simpler explanation (Score:5, Insightful)
LT has made it pretty clear that the spirit of the GPL v3 is not the same as the v2 to him, and that's his objection. I definitely agree with that, even though I strongly dislike the v2 as well.
I suspect the real reason he has dropped out of the conversation is because he has no interest whatsoever in the direction of the v3 and the FSF has made it VERY clear that they have no intent on changing the parts he hates. It doesn't help him or them 1 iota to stay, so he left. Smart man.
"Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."
Re:The GPL3 process is not closed (Score:2, Insightful)
The rest of your points I'd tend to agree with, but I'm not sure what you mean by the one above.
Considering how Sun and Microsoft have been making a mess of 'open' licences lately, the main reason I can think of for continuing to use v2 is that it is stable. It is a known quantity, and everyone (within certain circles obviously) is aware of what they can do with it. I can't see how time would 'age' a licence really.
Re:The GPL3 process is not closed (Score:5, Insightful)
More and more people will start exploiting the loopholes in GPL v.2 (e.g. apps as web servies, so they're not technically "distributed" to the users, TiVo-esque locking of hardware to use only the company's version of the program, etc.).
No, it's not, and you aren't making any sense. (Score:4, Insightful)
Your analogy makes no sense.
Forking the FSF license creation process is not like forking Linux; it would be like forking the Linux development model, which is equally impossible.
Forking Linux would be like forking the GPL itself, which is not only possible, but trivially easy: all you have to do is re-write it however you like, and rename it (e.g., "ACPL," for "Anonymous Coward's Public License").
Re:A simpler explanation (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The GPL3 process is not closed (Score:5, Insightful)
The GPL was designed by the Free Software Foundation, and they made it very clear what they intended (in the GNU manifesto, etc.). By that standard, the loopholes are bugs.
In other words, the FSF's opinion is the only one that matters because it's their license. If you don't like it, use a different one or make your own. And if you already chose to use it (with the "...or later" clause), you had ample oppertunity to understand what you were getting into before you did it.
Two Cases (Score:5, Insightful)
Second, ability to run the program, but not see the source code. Case in point, Google. It is beyond question that Google are using all kinds of GPL applications, from the kernel to webservers to highly modified filesystem drivers. All of it GPLed and none of the code available for you to see, despite the fact that Google allow you to use all these services online, you'll never see a line of the modified code.
Both these cases violate not the letter of the GPLv2 licence, but the spirit of it. That spirit being the ability to run the program, modify the source, and run the changed program. This is happening on small scales today. It could soon be happening on a huge scale, and that would undermine the whole FOSS community. GPLv3 will be needed in the future.
Re:The GPL3 process is not closed (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are only running a web service and not distributing anything then you don't need to compliy with the GPL whatever it or any future version says.
I'm glad he's sitting this one out (Score:3, Insightful)
Every week brings a new drama-bomb in the endless pissing contests and personal rivalries/vendettas. If half the energy expended to one up, or argue with another developer was put into the development process, an untold number of projects might be a bit further along. One thing you can say about closed-source software is that the financial pressures end up stifling a great deal of the petty childishness that seems to pervade the OSS community, and taints its image in the process.
Don't get me wrong, you still get this sort of crap on the closed-source side of things - "I don't want to use your standard...I want to reinvent the wheel for this app..." etc, but it's not at the forefront. Human nature dictates that you will find these problems everywhere, but in the corporate, closed-source enviroment, it comes down to one conclusion - eventually the project needs to get done.
If OSS wants to gain more acceptance, it needs to put this sort of thing aside and get back to the core issue - it's the code, dammit. None of the present issues with the community are insurmountable, but direct action needs to be taken, these problems are not going to going away on their own. Rampant egoism, Not Invented Here Syndrome, coder-centric, not user-centric development methodologies...these all slow the pace of progress and paint open source in a very bad light.
OSS has a large community of smart people, and I just think it can do a whole lot better.
Re:The GPL3 process is not closed (Score:1, Insightful)
They should leave it as it is. It works in a perfectly satisfactory way already. If it isn't broken..
their differences are simple (Score:5, Insightful)
The FSF is concerned with users. The whole thing started when Richard Stallman couldn't fix the printer driver that he was a user of. The FSF's goal is to ensure that everyone who uses software, ever, has the technical and legal right to modify the software they are using.
Linus seems more concerned with developers. If someone comes along and contributes some sweet code to the Linux kernel, he thinks it's only fair that any developer gets the opportunity to use that code too, in their own project. But he's not concerned that an end user can't install a modified version of Linux on their Tivo.
Malignorance (Score:5, Insightful)
What's interesting to me is when Torvolds says the GPL2 is where companies and open source people can meet in perfect harmony, as if companies like the GPL2. No company likes the prospect of having to open up their product because some 'tard put in GPL code without their knowledge. They put up with it because they have to, because it's a reality they can't escape. I know I have had many heated arguments about making code GPL when others on a project wanted BSD to be more 'corporate friendly'. Perfect harmony? Wtf world is he living in? Use GPLv3 and they will come and work with that too (even though they don't want to) and for the same reasons.
I think the real question is, as an open-source developer, why wouldn't you choose GPLv3 over v2? Because you want some company to use your program and then sue you because you made use of their patents? Or you want your software to make DRM devices cheaper to create? Or you want your license to be worded in a way that is ambiguous in some regions? I wonder why Linus wants linux to be licensed without patent protections, with ambiguous language, and in a way that supports DRM?
Even simpler (Score:4, Insightful)
Or, put simpler: I think he simply doesn't understand it. And yes, I know that sounds arrogant, but if you remember his posts on Groklaw, he demonstrated again and again that he thought the GPLv3 demanded things that it didn't, and that he had completely missed the point of what it's actually trying to do. For instance, he actually brought out that old FUD about how disabling DRM will prevent certain security measures, which it doesn't.
I don't think Linus and PJ actually disagree, but I do think PJ actually knows her stuff, and Linus should stick to the actual coding, organizing, and benevolent dictating of the kernel itself.
That, or sometime fairly soon, we're going to actually squeeze a statement from Linus that, given the choice, he'd go with BSD or public domain. They seem more in line with his ideals.
Re:So what does Linus really want? (Score:4, Insightful)
I am a programmer. I am not a tinkerer. I care about
The ability to tinker with a system just isn't that important to me. It's the ability to
There's a lot to what you say (Score:3, Insightful)
It's true. Engineers, scientists, programmers, mathmeticians, etc, would rather engineer than participate in meetings and organizational politics. Often, this is accompanied by an inability to play well with others--which I suspect is the case in this instance.
There are so many cases on the record where LT beats a hasty retreat after his arguments are demonstrated to have poor logic. Let's hope LT learns to moderate his penchant for hyperbole. Let's all be glad he codes better than he discusses policy.
Re:Two Cases (Score:4, Insightful)
Been that way since the 80s. Nothing new. Nothing crumbled as a result.
Second, ability to run the program, but not see the source code.
Ditto.
Back almost two decades ago in college I used plenty of GNU software.
In some cases, we had access to the source, but on the machines on which that software ran, I had nowhere near enough disk quota to rebuild a modified version, let alone install and run it. In some cases the programs we had access to were modified from the GNU source, and the full modified source was not made available.
From my experience at that time, this sort of setup was very common in academia, which was typically where you found GNU software then.
The GPL didn't noticably crumble as a result, and in fact its use has expanded massively since then.
Why ? Because we still had the freedom to look at the source and learn from it, take the source (get the original unmodified source in case 2), modify it to our hearts content, and run it somewhere else. So we did.
I was able in '92 to take a whole set of development tools and applications off a big proprietary Unix box and build/port them onto a Linux PC, which I then used as primary PC for almost ten years. That is the freedom GPL gives, No way could I have done that with proprietary apps.
To follow your logic, any system on which GPL software is installed must grant all users full admin rights to allow them to modify it _in_ _place_ (and therefore you could never use GPL software burned into ROM).
RMS might think that giving everyone root everywhere is the right thing to do, but outside of MIT, in the real world, it is totally impractical. Lots of people definitely _won't_ use GPLv3 software if that is what it means.
Re:This makes sense. He's a developer at heart. (Score:4, Insightful)
None of us, even Debian developers, enjoy dealing with legal issues. We do it because not doing so is short-sighted. IMHO, Linus often fails to understand the full scope of a non-technical problem, and when challenged, he uses "I'm apolitical" as an excuse to remain ignorant.
Linus is a decent programmer and a mediocre project manager. He's not a visionary, and I think his relevance has peaked or will soon do so. For the FSF, on the other hand, it's only the beginning. Linus is probably disappointed because the FSF won't cater to him or change its goals to suit his needs (see his complaint about the FSF not giving him early access to the first draft of GPLv3), but frankly I couldn't care less if the FSF just ignored him altogether.
Re:So what does Linus really want? (Score:3, Insightful)
But you still need a device to run the code on. Consider the fact that in many cases (especially embedded) there isn't a good substitute device. What good does having the code do you in this case? What benefit do you get out of the GPL that you wouldn't get out of, say, MS's "shared source" licenses?
More importantly, why should the hardware device maker get the benefit of the GPL for themselves, without having to give back? I mean, let's assume you like the GPL in the first place. In that case, you already belive it's reasonable to require software writers to open the code they write that's combined with GPL code, because being able to use the combined whole is the point. So, similarly, isn't it reasonable to require hardware makers to open the hardware they make that's combined with GPL code, because using the combined whole is still the point?
Re:I'm holding out (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm holding out for the kills small children and eats them for lunch license.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/eula.mspx [microsoft.com]
Re:He cannot switch (Score:1, Insightful)
Torvalds's decision to remove that clause is probably one of the best he made in the relicensing move.
Re:So what does Linus really want? (Score:3, Insightful)
With GPLv2, people who take your code and alter it have to publish the alterations. This adds to the store of knowledge generally available to the human race. Good ideas that improve your code can be incorporated into your own project or into others. This doesn't happen with a BSD license.
Re:So what does Linus really want? (Score:3, Insightful)
And again, the problem is that there may not be a substitute device. That is, there could be amazing, incredible innovation in some GPL'd code, that would be utterly useless to you without an open mp3 player. Now, that case is actually irrelevant now -- there's a player that encourages rockbox, and you can make Linux run on an iPod -- but it's still a valid point.
If you look at your history, I think RMS will back me up here. The whole free software movement was inspired by a printer driver without source code -- not because RMS particularly wanted to see how it worked, but because it didn't work, and he wanted to fix it.
Alright, then. I still think it's asinine of people to lock down a device so I can't run custom software on it. It is their right to develop such a device, but I do not want to help them, so I don't think it's their right to use my code in such a device.
Re:their differences are simple (Score:3, Insightful)
When you are a developer, you get to decide how the software works. You can decide that, for example, DVDs can have previews that the software refuses to skip over.
When you are a user, you're stuck with the decisions the developer made, unless you have both the technical and legal capability to change the software that someone else packaged for you.
Without a permissive license, it's a grey area whether you have the legal capability to make changes of this sort. On one hand, Copyright only is supposed to cover copying. On the other hand, there are EULAs and interpretations of Copyright that say "loading from disk into memory is copying."
Increasingly, however, there are technical barriers that software manufacturers erect. With special-purpose hardware like a DVD player, there's just no practical way to modify the software that contains annoying restrictions. But even when there's commodity hardware involved like on a Tivo, there can often be measures in place like signing the "blessed" software and refusing to run anything else.
Linus is OK with this: his opinion is that he has no right to force companies like Tivo to allow users to swap in modified versions of Linux. His concern is that the Linux development community cannot be splintered by companies who build proprietary enhancements to Linux. That's why GPL is important to him -- not because he thinks end users should always be able to swap in modified versions of commercial software.
Richard Stallman is not OK with this. That damn printer driver didn't work right. He would not be consoled if you told him that he can get the printer driver's source code and modify it, but the printer itself refuses to run the modified software. He wants to prevent any situation that gives developers more power than end users.
He Can Just Forget Politics (Score:3, Insightful)
Linus, you're never going to have a successful career in politics with an attitude like that.
Re:This makes sense. He's a developer at heart. (Score:3, Insightful)
Then why is he continually debating the legalese of the GPL3 draft? To me, it sounds more like he wants to be "right" but doesn't want to do anything that could put him in a position to look stupid. See also: pretty much every debate Linus gets involved in.
Re:What's actually going on here "spin-free" (Score:2, Insightful)
I would have said the same thing, until I read the interview that I linked to in the parent's parent of this post. Here's quotes from RMS from that interview (note I am quoting his complete answers, not picking and choosing words). This makes it completely clear that he is against businesses and corporations having power, and that the Free Source movement is just one aspect of that larger anti-corporation movement. As an aside, I am quite impressed with the clarity and precision with which RMS speaks. He leaves no doubt where he stands, what his goals are, and how he intends to pursue them.
I suppose you could pick nits here and say that being against corporations having power is not anti-corporation. But, come on. Let's use words that are meaningful, not spin them.
Re:So what does Linus really want? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Two Cases (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, why doesn't he _say_ that in the GPLv3 then ?
The word OWN does not appear in it except referring to "their own keys" and "ther own removal", nor does "owner" or "bought" "sell" or "purchase".
What it does say is this:
It is very clearly about USERS and not OWNERS.
The rest of the licence backs this up - anyone you "convey" the work to has to have full source including all keys, and "convey" is defined in terms of third parties making or receiving copies of the work, nothing about ownership vs. rental.
So, either
1. RMS can't get what he thinks expressed properly in the GPL
or
2. he doesn't think what you think he does.
Given his past writings on the subject of (non owner) users having root access (info su, or google "GNU su support wheel" or similar), (2) is most likely by far.
Re:So what does Linus really want? (Score:3, Insightful)
Your hardware doesn't run (by design) programs that you compile ?
Well, get some that does then. Why did you get non-user-modifiable hardware if you wanted to modify it ?
I can't modify the software on (for one example) my phone, do I care ? no. Because if I _wanted_ to modify it, I'd have bought a phone which supported me modifying it.
You can take every modification Tivo has made to GPL software and use it in your own PVR (or in something completely different) - even compete with Tivo if you wish, and even if you eat their lunch in the marketplace, they _still_ have to give you every improvement they make to the GPL software. You can benefit from _all_ their GPL software R&D, for free.
Provided, of course, that you reciprocate, so they benefit from all yours too (_that_ is the core of the GPL - nothing to do with hardware).
So, why is this code not useful ? It isn't useful to me, as I don't want to build a PVR, but there's loads of GPL code that I have no use for - that doesn't mean it isn't useful.
Linus needs to be more consistent (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:their differences are simple (Score:3, Insightful)
One is that the cost of manufacturing a custom piece of hardware is very high -- completely out of the bounds of hobbyists. That means that individuals are essentially dependent on corporations to manufacture the kind of specialized hardware they want. This is true of many physical products: cars, light bulbs, paper. What makes computer hardware different is that hardware manufacturers can use software to make the product specifically disobey its owner. I can own a physical object, desire that that physical object do something of which it is completely capable, and have the product disobey me based on the manufacturer's wish.
If a pre-90s car tried to pull that kind of crap, you or a mechanic could open the hood and teach it a lesson. But hardware can be made more or less tamper-proof.
You could argue that the market would sort a thing like this out, if it was really important. The flaw again is that custom hardware is so expensive to manufacture, so the hardware will always serve its producer, and not its end user. The market will drive producers to control users in whatever way is lucrative.
The second flaw is that content is not a commodity. Tivo may be able to play locked content that my own software is unable to decrypt. Again you might argue that the market sorts things like that out, but there is no competition involved here. It's not like someone can compete against Bloomsbury to sell Harry Potter books without DRM. The publisher is an absolute dictator about what DRM schemes Harry Potter books can be published under. So I might buy a stupid DRM-encumbered movie I really really like, even though I abhor the DRM, simply because it's a one-of-a-kind movie.
So the balance of power in this situation is really out of whack: companies are the only entities that can produce the hardware, but it is in their interest to program their hardware to control users as much as possible, and users don't have options because the content is exclusive to these user-controlling devices.
Since this is really a power struggle, the FSF is fighting back in the only way they can. They're not trying to change laws or anything, they're just saying that the price of using their software is giving up control of your users. You can't use your software to keep users from doing things they want to do with hardware they own.
(notice I didn't use the word "freedom" in this post, nor did I in any previous posts. This is about power and control).
Re:it's not like he has a choice (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Opening hardware (Score:3, Insightful)
Running modified code on the original hardware is convenient. It's probably what you want to do. It might even have been your inital goal. But calling it a "freedom" is just silly.
Re:The GPL3 process is not closed (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't buy it. The only examples I can think of are Linux vs. BSD and MySQL vs. PostgreSQL. In both cases, there are a lot of other reasons that might explain why the GPLed one's popularity. Mostly historical, I think - the AT&T lawsuit slowed down BSD adoption, and supposedly PostgreSQL used to be a lot slower and harder to use. The PHP people focusing exclusively on MySQL really made its popularity grow.
You can't lose what you never had.
Re:The GPL3 process is not closed (Score:3, Insightful)
BSD was technically superior long after the lawsuit had been resolved and when Linux was still in its early growth stages. BSD could have easily become the dominant open source operating system.
And Solaris is a straw man. SunsOS 4.x and older was BSD based. [...] As for SunOS 5.x, which is more commonly refered to Solaris, is Sys V Rel 3 based.
I fail to see your point. How does Sun changing directions mid-stream turn them into a BSD contributor? And, in any case, being SVR4-"based" doesn't mean they stopped using BSD code.
"Sun didn't make many meaningful contributions to BSD" And what NFS, NIS, etc are nothing?
How exactly do you think Sun "contributed" NFS to BSD? The FreeBSD NFS files, for example, do not have any Sun copyrights. And FreeBSD NIS only seems to have some Sun header files, needed for compatibility. There may or may not be some SunRPC and XDR code in FreeBSD. But NFS, NIS, RPC, and XDR are such shitty standards that any contribution of them was more self-serving than helpful.
Re:So what does Linus really want? (Score:3, Insightful)
This may be true with all methods of machine counts that you're aware of, but that's the ludicrous statement of a luddite to claim that no machine count can ever be trusted. Humans are much more easily bribed and manipulated than machines. Humans from both parties.
It costs more money, though, and it does take some amount of time more. That said, I was pretty annoyed that Kerry conceded before the votes were actually counted.
Quick Google search shows population of Australia to be 20,090,437. Population of US is 295,734,134. That's a significant difference. Now, if I could find out how many actual votes were cast...
Which is also thousands of opportunities to make mistakes, intentional or not.
Oh, I agree, but it would be nice if we could have neither the delay nor the fraud.
Aside from the sheer cost, time, number of volunteers, and potential innaccuracy... No, I don't think electronic voting is wholly uncalled for. I do think that I don't know strong enough words for the level of negligence with which the US has treated voting in general -- from the chads and the butterfly ballot to the Diebold machines.
It's been said over and over again -- we treat our electronic slot machines and poker machines with much more scrutiny than we treat our voting machines. Frankly, I'd feel better trying to win the jackpot from a slot machine than simply trying to have my vote counted by a Diebold machine.