Linux official, Microsoft give thumbs-down to GPLv3

The new GNU General Public License (GPL) version 3 is not a fit for Linux because switching would require permission from the kernel's thousands of de facto owners, a maintainer of the SCSI portion of the kernel said on Thursday. Also, Microsoft released a statement that the company has no GPLv3 obligations.

Although the earlier GPLv2 has been used with Linux, GPLv3, released by the Free Software Foundation June 29, presents problems, according to James Bottomley, gatekeeper of the Linux Kernel SCSI Maintainership, which governs disk storage access in the kernel.

The Linux kernel is not owned by any one person; it is owned by all the people who submit patches to it, Bottomley said. This means the kernel is now owned by anywhere from 3,500 to 10,000 people, he said.

"In order to change the kernel, we'd have to get everybody who owns the kernel to sign off on the re-licensing," said Bottomley, who also is CTO of SteelEye Technology and a member of the Linux Foundation board of directors. This would be required under copyright law, he said.

This presents obvious practical problems should the keepers of the kernel decide they want to move to GPL v3. "We'd have to find all of the owners, first of all," Bottomley said.

The lack of a compelling advantage to GPLv3 "means we're not going to bother," Bottomley said.

A plebiscite could be announced to decide the issue, but a code contributor still could object to any switch, said Bottomley. "The choice at that point would be to rewrite their code or abandon the process," he said.

The GPLv2 and v3 licenses are incompatible, he said. The Linux kernel will stick with GPLv2 for the foreseeable future, Bottomley said.

Previously, Linux kernel developer Linus Torvalds has objected to GPLv3 because of concerns that digital rights management stipulations in the new license would be burdensome.

The Free Software Foundation did not provide a response to Bottomley's claims on Thursday. The founder and president of the foundation, Richard Stallman, has advocated migrations to the new GPLv3 license for free software, emphasizing improvements in such areas as digital rights management and patent protection.

Microsoft posted a statement on its Web site Thursday that said the company is not a party to GPLv3 and that none of the company's actions are to be misinterpreted as accepting status as a contracting party of the license.

"While there have been some claims that Microsoft’s distribution of certificates for Novell support services, under our interoperability collaboration with Novell, constitutes acceptance of the GPLv3 license, we do not believe that such claims have a valid legal basis under contract, intellectual property, or any other law," Microsoft said.

"In fact, we do not believe that Microsoft needs a license under GPL to carry out any aspect of its collaboration with Novell, including its distribution of support certificates, even if Novell chooses to distribute GPLv3 code in the future," Microsoft said.

Under a multifaceted agreement with Novell, both companies agreed to not sue each other's customers over intellectual property issues; Microsoft through the arrangement can sell Novell subscription certificates for Suse Linux. Microsoft has decided the support certificates will not entitle the recipient to receive support or updates relating to code licensed under GPLv3.

CommieWare?

I don’t agree with the political views of most of the Developers that release software via the GPL license. However I support their right to license and do with their software whatever they want.

I don’t think we as a society have the right to force someone to sell something that they want to give away for free.

Secondly, This “CommieWare” as you call it is the only competition Microsoft faces. I don’t think this “CommieWare” is as commie as you think it is, as both IBM and Apple have figured out how to turn big $$$CAPITALIST$$$ profits on it, without breaking the license.

If your against the “CommieWare” you voicing your support for an Microsoft Monopoly Control of 90% of Infomation flow in the US. I remind you Bill Gates and Co. are no friends of conservatives.

You probably believe “Network Neutrality” needs to go the way of the Do Do as well.

Say good bye to FreeRepublic if either happens.

1st: Microsoft never does anything to help anyone but themselves.

2nd: Linux isn’t developed primarily by companies, but by individuals that choose to do so.

3rd: If companies prefer the BSD License, there are at least 5 versions of BSD you can download for free and do what you want with now. They are more than welcome to Sell BSD if that is what they want to do.

4th: The reason Stallman owns so much code is that the developers of said code Chose of their own freewill to do so.

5th: Any copyright holder is free to license their work under any terms they wish, whether they charge for them or not, is their business and no one else’s.

Last: These days most Linux fans are such because
1) It can be obtained for FREE, whereas Winblows cost over $250 and is full of bugs and back doors for the Chi-Coms and Feds.

2)They see the kind of Control Bill Gates wants over your PC, and don’t like it. Bill Gates and Co. want to tell you what your allowed to do with your PC and when, and what information your allowed to access and when. This is in large part what DRM is all about.

There’s already been DRM in Linux. Just take a look at the old Linspire Click-N-Run service. The software packages that your computer would use CNR to download were encrypted in the .cnr file format. However, somebody made a “CNR to DEB” file decrypter which converted encrypted .cnr files into unencrypted .deb files. I used to have a CNR Express CD, and I used “CNR to DEB” to unencrypt the .cnr files on the CD and actually managed to get Sun StarOffice 7 installed that way.

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