Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 7th Feb 2006 23:54 UTC, submitted by sean batten
"Linus Torvalds doesn't want to change the Linux kernel's software license, and he said so again last week. For good measure this time, he threw in some inflammatory remarks. "I literally feel," wrote Torvalds, "that we do not, as software developers, have the moral right to enforce our rules on hardware manufacturers. We are not crusaders, trying to force people to bow to our superior God." Since the crusades were a foreign adventure responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands, that's not the most diplomatic response, and FSF counsel Eben Moglen refused to be drawn into retaliation when we contacted him for comment."
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Member since:
2005-07-06
It's far better for web-applications (which aren't distributed in the normal sense) and web-application frameworks. It also features some tweaks to the wording so it works (or works better) in more jurisdictions.
More controversially, it tries to avoid situations where a DRM mechanism could be used to avoid disclosing the source of a program which uses GPL software. This appears to be a ban on DRM in general though, which is what is causing such a ruckus in some parts of the world...
...but not the kernel. The main problem there is figuring out how to relicense all the tens of thousands of contributions that have been made under the previous version. Linus isn't against open-source, or even free software, however he doesn't feel like he needs all the entitlements that the GPL provides to authors (such as forcing the writers of modules to reveal their source to him).