| Torvalds' Ode to GPLv2 |
Sep. 25, 2006
When many of the top Linux developers announced their disapproval of the GPLv3 draft, there was one major name conspicuously missing: Linus Torvalds. On September 24th, Torvalds explained why he hadn't signed it, and why he thinks GPLv2 is the best possible open-source license.
Torvalds explained in his note to the Linux Kernel Mailing List, "One of the reasons I didn't end up signing the GPLv3 position statement ... was that a few weeks ago I had signed up for writing another kind of statement entirely: not so much about why I dislike the GPLv3, but why I think the GPLv2 is so great."
He then went on to explain that while, "A lot of people seem to think that the GPLv2 is showing its age, but I would argue otherwise. Yes, the GPLv2 is 'old' for being a copyright license, but it's not even that you don't want to mess with something that works -- it's that it very fundamentally is such a good license that there's not a whole lot of room for fixing aside from pure wording issues."
Torvalds then pointed out that some of his explanation on why GPLv2 is great had already appeared on Groklaw as part of the discussion on the recent Groklaw story, GPL Upheld in Germany Against D-Link.
He then quotes Pamela Jones, editor of Groklaw, as she pointed out several problems with the GPLv2. These include that it's "not compatible with the Apache license. It doesn't cover Bitstream. It is ambiguous about web downloads. It allows TiVo to forbid modification. It has no patent protection clause. It isn't internationally useful everywhere, due to not matching the terms of art used elsewhere. It has no DMCA [Digital Millennium Copyright Act] workaround or solution. It is silent about DRM [Digital Rights Management]."
To Torvalds, though, these aren't problems; these are "Why the GPLv2 is so great. Exactly because it doesn't bother or talk about anything else than the very generic issue of "tit-for-tat."
He went on, "You see it as a failure. I see it as a huge advantage. The GPLv2 covers the only thing that really matters and the only thing that everybody can agree on ("tit-for-tat" is really something everybody understands, and sees the same way -- it's totally independent of any moral judgment and any philosophical, cultural or economic background)."
"The thing is, exactly because the GPLv2 is not talking about the details, but instead talks entirely about just a very simple issue, people can get together around it," he added. "You don't have to believe in the FSF or the tooth fairy to see the point of the GPLv2. It doesn't matter if you're black or white, commercial or non-commercial, man or woman, an individual or a corporation -- you understand tit-or-tat."
Torvalds continued, "And that's also why legal details don't matter. Changes in law won't change the notion of 'same for same'. A change of language doesn't change 'Quid pro quo.' We can still say 'quid pro quo' two thousand years later, in a language that has been dead for centuries, and the saying is still known by any half-educated person in the world."
"Sure, other licenses can say the same thing," wrote Torvalds, "but what the GPLv2 did was to be the first open-source license that made that "tit-for-tat" a legal license that was widely deployed. That's something that the FSF [Free Software Foundation] and rms [Richard M. Stallman, author of GPLv2 and co-author of GPLv3] should be proud of, rather than trying to ruin by adding all these totally unnecessary things that are ephemeral, and depend on some random worry of the day."
As an example, Torvalds then cites his own, self-made, original Linux source license, which basically said: "Give all source back, and never charge any money". It took me a few months, but I realized that the 'never charge any money' part was just asinine. It wasn't the point. The point was always "give back in kind".
"In other words," he continued, "my original license very much had a 'fear and loathing' component to it. It was exactly that 'never charge any money' part. But I realized that in the end, it was never really about the money, and that what I really looked for in a license was the 'fairness' thing."
So, from Torvalds' viewpoint, "And that's what the GPLv2 is. It's 'fair.' It asks everybody -- regardless of circumstance -- for the same thing. It asks for the effort that was put into improving the software to be given back to the common good. You can use the end result any way you want (and if you want to use it for 'bad' things, be my guest), but we ask the same exact thing of everybody -- give your modifications back."
"That's true grace. Realizing that the petty concerns don't matter, whether they are money or DRM, or patents, or anything else," Torvalds wrote.
But, when Torvalds looks at the "additions to the GPLv3, and I still say: 'That's not what it's all about.'"
He concludes, "My original license was petty and into details. I don't need to go back to those days. I found a better license. And it's the GPLv2."
So, it seems that as long as Stallman and the other authors of the GPLv3 stick to their guns that the new license must include its current patent language, its objections to DRM, and its additional restrictions section, it will not be used in Linux. For Linus, and the majority of senior Linux kernel developers, the best open-source license is already here -- and it's the GPLv2.
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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