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Linux's GPLv2 licence is routinely violated (2015)

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Re: Linux's GPLv2 licence is routinely violated (2015)

#51

Post by aaomidi »

convolvatron wrote: post #45
aaomidi wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this is not a "no license" freedom situation. People routinely get this wrong.

well, you have to admit its a little confusing. its so free, that by accepting it, I can constraint your future behavior (making it less free really), so that other people have the same freedom with respect to your contributions (being constrained) as you did

Because freedom is defined for the thing being licensed, it's not a human centric freedom of "I can do what I want with it."

It's from the perspective of, for example, the Software saying "I'm always free and never beholden to someone else's whims."

Re: Linux's GPLv2 licence is routinely violated (2015)

#52

Post by zokula »

mustache_kimono wrote: post #38
Comevius wrote: post #35

I rather use Mozilla Public License 2.0, Eclipse Public License 2.0, or EUPL 1.2 for copyleft purposes. Strong copyleft as a concept has no legal reality. Linking a program to another don't produce a derivative work. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/news/why-viral-l... FSF is full of baloney about how static or dynamic linking is different than communicating for example through sockets. To be able to use t…

I wish the FOSS community would rally around this idea. Re: GNU/FSF, I think they've done a real disservice to the FOSS community misrepresenting the state of American copyright law. I wish someone with credibility with devs/FOSS users would finally say: "This is such an illusion, it's mostly a joke."

No post body was provided.

Re: Linux's GPLv2 licence is routinely violated (2015)

#53

Post by jcelerier »

convolvatron wrote: post #45
aaomidi wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this is not a "no license" freedom situation. People routinely get this wrong.

well, you have to admit its a little confusing. its so free, that by accepting it, I can constraint your future behavior (making it less free really), so that other people have the same freedom with respect to your contributions (being constrained) as you did

The philosophical stance of GPL is freedom at the individual human level - the only thing that actually matters if you are part of mankind. Yes, a society where you cannot "choose" to be enslaved is semantically less free than one where you can, but hopefully everyone agrees that for definitions of "freedom" which matter for human beings, the first society is a better choice.

Re: Linux's GPLv2 licence is routinely violated (2015)

#54

Post by LocalH »

jcelerier wrote: post #53
convolvatron wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, you have to admit its a little confusing. its so free, that by accepting it, I can constraint your future behavior (making it less free really), so that other people have the same freedom with respect to your contributions (being constrained) as you did

The philosophical stance of GPL is freedom at the individual human level - the only thing that actually matters if you are part of mankind. Yes, a society where you cannot "choose" to be enslaved is semantically less free than one where you can, but hopefully everyone agrees that for definitions of "freedom" which matter for human beings, the first society is a better choice.

Additionally, history has shown that such “choices” are often not exactly choices in practice

Re: Linux's GPLv2 licence is routinely violated (2015)

#55

Post by [deleted] »

admax88qqq wrote: post #46
Comevius wrote: post #35

I rather use Mozilla Public License 2.0, Eclipse Public License 2.0, or EUPL 1.2 for copyleft purposes. Strong copyleft as a concept has no legal reality. Linking a program to another don't produce a derivative work. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/news/why-viral-l... FSF is full of baloney about how static or dynamic linking is different than communicating for example through sockets. To be able to use t…

What? The FSF and copyright in general does not worry about static vs dynamic linking. They focus on "derivative works.". The only question that matters is "does this piece of software derive from this other piece.". How they are linked together has no meaning. Hackers like to misunderstand that and think they can work around the GPL by how they bundle the two pieces together. The CLISP case is a classic example. It…

[deleted]

Re: Linux's GPLv2 licence is routinely violated (2015)

#56

Post by johnny22 »

ladyanita22 wrote: post #22
phendrenad2 wrote: post #16

Good writeup on the intricacies and consequences of the Linux kernel being GPLv2 licensed. The actual headline is debatable. However, It seems to me that the license doesn't matter that much, since everyone has a vested interest in Linux being exactly the way it is, GPL_ONLY weirdness and all. It's unlikely that someone will show up and fork Linux and explicitly break the license (using GPL_ONLY symbols in a non-GPL…

How feasible is it to avoid using GPL_ONLY symbols? Because if you for sure need GPL modules for some use cases[1], then I believe the point still stands. [1] This is, being unable to even reimplement the functions yourself in a self-contained module.

both zfs and nvidia do it, don't they? Or at least they haven't been in trouble over it :)

Re: Linux's GPLv2 licence is routinely violated (2015)

#57

Post by rtpg »

fsckboy wrote: post #23

> It is rather ironic that in some ways, one has more freedom in how one licences a kernel driver for Windows than the freedom one supposedly has in writing a kernel module for Linux. it is not ironic at all: freedom in Free Software is the freedom of USERS of the software to be able to see and modify the source. This is a freedom granted by the writers of the software, and copyleft means that this right is ensured t…

That is not what the word "permissive" habitually means in the English language, especially if you consider a more broad view of users including those who are writing the software and integrating it into their products.

Not to say GPL is bad, just that the VAT-style "only the last user counts" view of things is playing with semantics.

Re: Linux's GPLv2 licence is routinely violated (2015)

#58

Post by asveikau »

johnny22 wrote: post #56
ladyanita22 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How feasible is it to avoid using GPL_ONLY symbols? Because if you for sure need GPL modules for some use cases[1], then I believe the point still stands. [1] This is, being unable to even reimplement the functions yourself in a self-contained module.

both zfs and nvidia do it, don't they? Or at least they haven't been in trouble over it :)

Wasn't there a module in the early 2000s that set its license to something like:

    "GPL\0 with the following exceptions ..."
So when the kernel pieces that enforced GPL_ONLY did a strcmp on the license, it came up as GPL.

I forget who it was who tried that.

This came up in a Google search:

https://lwn.net/Articles/220349/

https://lkml.org/lkml/2006/10/27/233

https://lwn.net/Articles/118269/

Re: Linux's GPLv2 licence is routinely violated (2015)

#59

Post by Dylan16807 »

rtpg wrote: post #57
fsckboy wrote: post #23

> It is rather ironic that in some ways, one has more freedom in how one licences a kernel driver for Windows than the freedom one supposedly has in writing a kernel module for Linux. it is not ironic at all: freedom in Free Software is the freedom of USERS of the software to be able to see and modify the source. This is a freedom granted by the writers of the software, and copyleft means that this right is ensured t…

That is not what the word "permissive" habitually means in the English language, especially if you consider a more broad view of users including those who are writing the software and integrating it into their products. Not to say GPL is bad, just that the VAT-style "only the last user counts" view of things is playing with semantics.

> writing the software and integrating it into their products

That's distribution, not use. (Except for when they're testing it or running local instances, and GPL doesn't get in the way of those things.)

> Not to say GPL is bad, just that the VAT-style "only the last user counts" view of things is playing with semantics.

By my understanding VAT doesn't work that way. Once a user pays VAT and starts using something, that's it. The taxes are done with, and VAT doesn't pass on to later users.

Re: Linux's GPLv2 licence is routinely violated (2015)

#60

Post by ramshorns »

Linux is licensed under GPLv2 with an additional permission (or exception):

> NOTE! This copyright does not cover user programs that use kernel services by normal system calls - this is merely considered normal use of the kernel, and does not fall under the heading of "derived work".

All the contributors license their work under this license with this additional permission. So in that sense it's not really Linus interpreting the GPL, and I don't think there's a risk of a contributor revoking this permission.

But maybe this doesn't apply to kernel modules and doesn't address the GPL_ONLY symbols thing.

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