-----Original Message----- From: Bradley M. Kuhn bkuhn@ebb.org
[ Full Disclosure: I've written parts of copyleft-next, have been involved with the initiative basically since its inception, and obviously I like the license a lot. Take my comments with the recommend dose NaCl granules those facts require. ]
Greg KH wrote:
Any chance you wish to just change the license of these files, given that you are the only one that has tried to use it for kernel code?
There is a lot of dual-licensed (GPLv2-only|{2,3}-Clause-BSD) code already in Linux. Many corporate copyright holders have well documented strong reasons for wanting that. (Those policy goals and the analysis behind them, I find problematic and sometimes outright wrong, but nonetheless it's their right to license their copyrights that way, and the license *is* GPLv2-only compatible, as is Luis'!).
I assume that you're not asking those companies to relicense to pure GPLv2-only. While those companies perhaps faced early resistance when they began their dual-licensing-in-upstream endeavor, it was ultimately accepted and that opens the door, IMO, to accepting any form of GPL-compatible dual-licensing upstream. There is no cogent argument that I can see that says “(GPLv2-only|{2,3}-Clause-BSD) is so special that it should be grandfathered in over other forms of dual licensing”.
(Ironically, IIRC, (then acting on behalf of Qualcomm/Atheros, Luis — the person proposing the (GPLv2-only|copyleft-next) dual-licensing *now* was a champion of upstreaming (GPLv2-only|{2,3}-Clause-BSD) code years ago before it was a wide and common practice.)
As a follow-up to this, I do not want to see your "test_sysfs.c" module as a dual-licensed file, as that makes no sense whatsoever. It is directly testing GPL-v2-only code, so the attempt to dual license it makes no sense to me. How could anyone take that code and do anything with it under the copyleft-next license only? And where would that happen?
But, it's a valid compatible license, so there is no harm. And, see below, regarding policy reasons …
I understand the appeal of copyleft-next in that it resolves many of the "grey" areas around gplv2, but given that no one is rushing to advise us to relicense all of the kernel with this thing,
Consider me to be the first to advise that! I realize it's a tough thing to do, but every great adventure to solve a big problem starts with a first step! I further realize it's a non-starter, but please don't say again no one has advised you such!
BTW, the only reason I didn't advise it because I know a top-level license change away from straight, no-exceptions/no-additional-permissions GPLv2-only is a non-starter for the Linux community. (Great, BTW, that you've stuck so firmly to your steadfast plan on this!)
Greg continued:
there is no need to encourage the spread of it given the added complexity and confusion that adding another license to our mix can only cause.
Relatedly, Christoph asked (footnote mine):
Why do we need a random weirdo [0] license in the kernel tree? Is there any benefit?
To be frank, we in the copyleft-next community were very excited to learn that such dual-licensed code had been added to upstream Linux, back when it was many years ago. It's a vote of confidence from a well-known developer who really is excited about our policy goals. FOSS licensing isn't just about simplicity and cleanliness. Like budgets, which seem dry topics on surface, they are actual moral documents that make a statement about the philosophy and aspirations for software freedom by the licensor. Of course, we all know it's completely symbolic to dual license (GPLv2-only|copyleft-next), just like it's purely symbolic to dual license (GPLv2-only|2-Clause-BSD) upstream [1].
It's not at all purely symbolic to dual license (GPLv2-only|2-Clause-BSD). That dual-licensing has allowed the interchange of a lot of code between the BSD Unixes and Linux, that otherwise would not have happened.
It's very much in the spirit of Linus' tit-for-tat compact to allow the BSD Unixes to benefit from improvements made to code that originated there and made it's way to Linux. -- Tim
But it makes a statement that I think is a good one.
Finally, while GPLv2-only compatibility has been a mainstay so far in copyleft-next drafting, it's not clear to me that we can keep that compatibility forever and reach copyleft-next's policy goals. There's been no discussion of this yet, but it's certainly in the realm of possibility. If GPLv2-incompatibility ultimately happens in future copyleft-next versions, having dual-licensed code out there will be a huge help as it will assure that code can forever be used both on GPLv2-only and copyleft-next sides of future single-license-project equations.
Thanks for listening; of course it's the sole prerogative for the copyright holder to decide whether to change the license of their code or not, and I hope that they don't bow to pressure, just as Qualcomm wouldn't bow to pressure if you started asking them to stop dual licensing all their upstream Linux code under BSD licenses.
[0] BTW, Christoph, I remember when I started in FOSS in the early 1990s, everyone called the GPL a “random weirdo license”. The incumbent always seems not as random and weirdo as the challenger.
[1] There is the argument that 2-Clause-BSD has fewer requirements than GPLv2-only; however, that's not an argument to release the code *upstream* that way, it's an argument to release a separate version under 2-Clause-BSD.
-- Bradley M. Kuhn - he/him
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