Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sun 18th May 2008 15:32 UTC, submitted by sjvn
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Member since:
2005-07-24
IIRC, it was more along the lines of ZFS being one of the few things interesting enough that if OpenSolaris went GPLv3 it might be worth *considering* going through the pain of trying to relicense the Linux kernel to GPLv2 or later.
I, personally, think that such an effort would result in FUD vulnerabilities which would come back to haunt us. The kernel has, according to Linus, perhaps as many as 4000 contributors at this point. Linus and all other relevant contributors (or their heirs) would have to be found and formally agree to the change. Code whose owner disagreed, could not be found, or where the holder of the copyright was unclear, would have to have their code rewritten... tricky when it is intertwined with so many other people's code. In short, It would be impossible to do right. What would happen would be a best effort attempt followed by a declaration that it was done. It would be an open invitation to FUD cast by anyone who could benefit from casting doubt on the Linux kernel. And what is worse, their claims would be perfectly valid. Imagine if SCO had actually had a real case?
The validity of Linux kernel licensing is the only thing in this world allowing anyone, anywhere, even the developers themselves, to use the Linux kernel.
Think about that.
Re-licensing, at this late date, would be an incredibly stupid thing to do, and we do not want to even think about going there.
Edit: http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/6/12/232
Edited 2008-05-19 14:04 UTC