January 31st, 2006
Torvalds at odds with Cox over Linux and GPL3
Ingrid Marson of ZDNet News UK reports on Linux developer Alan Cox’s take on GPL 3:
Cox told ZDNet UK that he thinks that many of the changes in GPL 3 are sound: "The majority of it looks very sensible, such as letting copyright information be displayed in an About box rather than relying on command line instructions (as is the case in GPL 2). Some of the more contentious stuff has sensibly been made optional."….. His viewpoint is in direct contradiction to that of Linus Torvalds, the founder of Linux, who said last week that he won’t convert Linux to GPL 3, as he objects to its proposed digital rights management, or DRM, provisions.
Trouble in Linux paradise? Going back to the possibility that Sun might make OpenSolaris available under the GPL 3, now that I think about that, Sun COO/president Jonathan Schwartz’s announcement of that possibility comes across as a very shrewd move (whether it was intended that way or not). Imagine, for example, a world where OpenSolaris is available under the GPL 3 and Linux isn’t.
