The potentially historic Microsoft-Novell pact announced last week, whereby Microsoft would grant patent peace to users of Novell's Suse Linux software in exchange for royalty payments paid by Novell to Microsoft, will be dead by mid-March, promises Eben Moglen, the general counsel of the Free Software Foundation. The FSF controls the license that governs the distribution of Linux and many other key forms of free and open-source software. "It will surely violate GPL version 3," said Moglen, referring to the forthcoming version. "GPL version 3 will be adjusted so the effect of the current deal is that Microsoft will by giving away access to the very patents Microsoft is trying to assert."
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They could also fork the GNU components at GPL v2, and continue on from there, just like Xorg and XFree86. Linux is not controlled by the FSF, it's controlled by the developers.
Which is something many of the proponents seem to keep overlooking. Even many of the GNU components are contributed to heavily by corporates like Intel and IBM, and depending on the final position of v3 with regards to patents, could just scare them into remaining v2 for future contributions which would result in a fork. It happened to gcc before, it could happen again.
It's noteworthy that some of the major commercial GPL contributors, particularly the patent-heavy ones, have not weighed in with an opinion on the Novell matter and, aside from HP, have not made a public opinion on the patent provisions. If the FSF gets too aggressive with the reach of v3 they could lose the corporate support that made v2 relevant. Which, come to think of it, might be the intent.
Member since:2006-08-26
Bruce Perens may be more current on the corporate opinion. He may still have some connections to the companies involved, and knows some individuals involved who are not so public. Here's a comment from his site (http://technocrat.net/d/2006/11/17/10988):
The Novell-Microsoft deal was the impetus to get everyone on the side of GPL3. It's important to note that the big companies who made favorable quotes thought they were speaking out for a technical collaboration, they had not seen the deal. OSDL, in particular, will not speak in favor of this deal again. The Linux kernel team will switch to GPL3 with the full support of the large companies who formerly objected to it.
There is probably some bluster there, but he stays current. Now back to you:
It's noteworthy that some of the major commercial GPL contributors, particularly the patent-heavy ones, have not weighed in with an opinion on the Novell matter and, aside from HP, have not made a public opinion on the patent provisions. If the FSF gets too aggressive with the reach of v3 they could lose the corporate support that made v2 relevant. Which, come to think of it, might be the intent.
Why would they intend this? Can you be specific, please? Also, could you just spell out what you dislike about v3? No need for an argument right now. That is, what would be the reasons why you would not move a project from v2 to, say, v3, assuming it is released as currently drafted plus the anti-Novell/MS deal bit?
Edited 2006-11-18 07:01
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2005-08-11
The kernel will still be GPL v2, only the GNU components will be affected. Xorg, KDE, Gnome, mysql, apache, firefox, gaim, blah blah blah, all those and thousands more are not controled by the FSF. you could even jettison the CLI userland utlities and port BSDs userland. there are other compilers out there too. you could even rewrite the GPL v3 code and just ignore the FSF if need be. That's a huge job though, would be the last resort I would say. They could also fork the GNU components at GPL v2, and continue on from there, just like Xorg and XFree86. Linux is not controlled by the FSF, it's controlled by the developers.