> > Linus can place all his
> > personally written code under a different license at any time,
> > he can't do that for code written by others. One effect
> > of the GPL/LGPL license is that contributions from others
> > infect your work, taking away your freedom to change the
> > licensing for the whole.
> ---------------------------------------------
> That is my point exactly.
How could it? Nothing personal, but you just contradict what
I say and claim to agree? Wow.
> I reiterate "the next kernel version". This
> has already been done by a number of folks that decided to change the
> license of the software. By not allowing any additions of code by
> contributors in the next version issued, any originator of code can then
> implement a new license.
On his own code minus all past contributions. Big F*** Deal.
What's your point? Linus can't take the past contributions
with him (Copyright Alan Cox, Donald Becker, ...). He
can't take back what he has released before. Your point
is essentially that he can stop to contribute to the
existing code, and that he can re-use his own contributions
to the existing kernel under a different license in a
different context. That'll leave him with what?
I am not a big fan of the GPL, but it works. The more
cooperative an effort, the less probability for a single
individual or minority to hijack the combined results.
The only ways to retain that amount of control are to require
all outside contributions to be put in the public domain,
to have the contributors waive their rights explicitly
in you favor, or to never accept contributions. Even then,
you could not undo your earlier releases, so you'd still
have to outpace the open branch based on your last free
release.
What's the problem?
> > > > Does that shock you?
> >
> > Quite frankly, it does.
As in: after all these years in netland, bold nonsense
still has that effect on me. Amazing :-). I *am* a fool,
after all.
> --------------------------------------------------------
> Remember I started this chain of thought by stating that
That people should make themselves familiar with Copyright
law, followed by a quite bogus statement on what that very
law combined with current kernel licensing would allow for.
The hypothetical "Evil Linus" case you have construed is near
meaningless. The SCSL is a serious, imminent danger. Mixing
these up is just FUD on the Linux end, and irrelevant on the
Java end. Hope I have been a bit more successful this time
in explaining what I find so annoying here.
b.
