Re: GPL V3 and Linux - Dead Copyright Holders
From: Simon Oosthoek
Date: Fri Jan 27 2006 - 08:59:17 EST
Al Viro wrote:
On Fri, Jan 27, 2006 at 11:46:17AM +0100, Simon Oosthoek wrote:
Linus Torvalds wrote:
The Linux kernel is under the GPL version 2. Not anything else. Some
individual files are licenceable under v3, but not the kernel in
general.
I believe that if v2 and v3 turn out to be incompatible, it would be
quite hard to rationalise v3+ licensed files inside the kernel. So when
people want their code to be in the kernel and still be v3+ compatible,
they should probably dual license it, or include a specific section
saying that the code can be licensed under v2 only if in the context of
the Linux kernel.
Bzzert. "GPLv2 only in the context of the Linux kernel" is incompatible
with GPLv2 and means that resulting kernel is impossible to distribute.
really? if it was dual licensed (that's what I meant, perhaps the "or"
should be an "and"? ;-), v2 in the kernel and v3(or any later version,
etc.), if the code is used outside of the kernel, it would "fall back
to" v3+ as soon as it's taken out of the kernel and used in something else.
If I'd want to contribute code to the kernel, I'd have to comply with
the license of the kernel, which is v2 of the GPL. If I would actually
prefer my code to be licensed under v3 or higher, I'd have to specify
that my code is only licensed under v2 for the kernel to humour Linus
Torvalds and respect the license of the kernel, but in all other ways
the code is used, I only grant a license to copy under the conditions of
the GPL v3 or higher. I don't see why that would affect the distribution
of the kernel at all.
Cheers
Simon
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