On Jun 18, 2007, Hans-Jürgen Koch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Am Montag 18 Juni 2007 23:18 schrieb Alexandre Oliva: >> On Jun 18, 2007, Hans-Jürgen Koch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >> >> Vendor would be entitled to the benefit of the doubt as to the >> >> motivations in this case, so it would likely be unenforceable anyway. >> >> > Right. If GPL v3 comes out, there'll probably be a new task for >> > hardware development engineers: How to find excuses for hardware that >> > prevents software modifications and how to conceal the true intent. >> >> Yup. And then GPLv4 will have to plug whatever holes they find to >> disrespect users' freedoms. That's how I expect the game to be >> played.
> If you were right and it turned out that way, the whole GPL would > become so ridiculous that it won't have any of its intended effects. How so? The intended effects are to protect users' freedoms, by requiring them to be respected. If we keep on plugging holes as they appear, it will keep close to achieving its intended effects. It's earlier versions of the license that will get more and more distant from it. > As far as the kernel is concerned, I expect the game's played by > simply keeping GPLv2. And I like it that way. Just think about it... What if, today, some law passed, or some court decision came up, that rendered a significant defense provision of GPLv2 or GPLv3 ineffective? GPLv4 could plug that, and anyone using GPLvN+ would be able to switch to it immediately. This wouldn't revoke previous licenses, of course, but further developments could be made under the newer license, and at least those could still be defended, and, as time elapsed, earlier versions of the software would become less and less relevant, to the point that the holes in their license also become less and less relevant, until copyright finally expires and they enter the public domain. The distrust for the FSF led to this very short-sighted decision of painting the Linux community into a corner from which it is very unlikely to be able to ever leave, no matter how badly it turns out to be needed. Let's just hope it never is, or that some influx of long-sighted comes in and introduces mechanisms for the license of Linux to be patched, should this ever be needed. I'm not even talking about GPLv2+, there are many other ways to accomplish this, that I've already mentioned in another posting in another recent huge thread. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ FSF Latin America Board Member http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
