Jeremy's Blog

The Torvalds Transcript: Why I 'Absolutely Love' GPL Version 2

An InformationWeek article (via Matt) delves into how Linus feels about the GPLv3. This is a topic I’ve covered before, but the interview has some good explanations:

Linus: First off, I don’t even know what the GPLv3 will look like. I would be totally crazy to accept a license for my code sight unseen. I think people who just say “version 2 or any later version” on their code probably don’t care about the license of their code enough. Before I say that “yes, you can use my code under license X,” I’d better know *what* that license is.

Me, I just don’t care about proprietary software. It’s not “evil” or “immoral,” it just doesn’t matter. I think that Open Source can do better, and I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is by working on Open Source, but it’s not a crusade — it’s just a superior way of working together and generating code.

I’ve never understood the “or any later version” clause either. You’re basically implicitly trusting whomever runs the FSF in perpetuity. That seems like a bad idea, regardless of whether you trust RMS now or not. He continues:

So the FSF and I really don’t agree on some very fundamental things. I absolutely love the GPLv2 — because it embodies that “develop in the open” model. So with the GPLv2, we had a thing where everybody could come around it, and share in that model.

But the FSF seems to want to change the model, and the GPLv3 drafts have not been about developing code in the open, they’ve been about what you can do with that code. To go back to the science example, it’s like saying that not only should the science be peer-reviewed and open, but you also add the requirement that you cannot use it to build a bomb.

Matt puts it well when he says “We need to be careful about trying to thwart all future wrongdoing with present understanding. It’s just fraught with difficulty..” It does seem like the FSF may be trying to do a bit more with a software license than they should. That being said, the GPLv2 has been a spectacular success, so they clearly know what they are doing. I’m really hoping the next draft clears some of these issues up, but I fear that the recent Novell-Microsoft patent deal may make the FSF even more ardent in some of the sections.

–jeremy

Living (and dying) with Linux in the workplace

Here’s another look at a person documenting an attempted switch to Linux. This time it’s Sharon Machlis, Computerworld’s online managing editor. The article is an educational read, and it comes down to the same thing it has to for a while now. Linux is ready. For users at both edges, the switch will be mostly painless and you’ll find yourself with a better system in no time. If you’re in the middle, you may find that an app you depend on simply isn’t compatible with Linux. In many office environments, this can make a Linux switch non sequitur. When you’ve been in the Linux world a long time, it’s easy to forget things like this. It’s good to get steady reminders. It frames things in a useful manner and keeps you grounded. Here is Sharon’s conclusion:

I expected to be a poster child for the next wave of Linux desktop adopters. I wanted to be. I like the whole idea of a technically macho, open-source operating system — one that doesn’t assume we all must be protected from an operating system’s inner workings. I don’t fear command lines, and enjoy fiddling around with programming.

While I liked many things about my Linux desktop (look and feel, elegant command-line implementations, robust open-source apps, the whole open-source concept), I found the lack of some key applications and the occasional hardware non-plug-and-play too limiting. Unlike Scot Finnie on Mac OS X, I’m not willing to tell Microsoft buh-bye. Not yet, anyway. But there’s enough here I like that I’m going to keep the Linux system set up, too.

–jeremy