Linus Torvalds says GPL v3 violates everything that GPLv2 stood for

What Hacker News said

Recommends rkowalick · 2018-01 · on “Antique BeOS Content by Scot Hacker (2011)”

Here is an excellent video of Linus talking about why he specifically chose the GPLv2 and how he felt betrayed when the FSF released GPLv3: [this video]

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Well, I don't think I agree with him and would licence GPL code with the "or later" clause, but he has a very reasonable and convincing argument against it. See this video of him explaining his take on GPLv3 and the "or later" clause at Deb Conf if you are interested: [this video]

Cites TylerE · 2015-05 · on “Relicensing Dolphin: The long road to GPLv2+”

Linus is very anti-GPL3 Quote: "In a very real sense, the GPLv3 asks people to do things that I personally would refuse to do. I put Linux on my kids computers, and I limit their ability to upgrade it. Do I have that legal right (I sure do, I'm their legal guardian), but the point is that this is not about "legality", this is about "morality". The GPLv3 doesn't match what I think is morally where I want to be. I think it is ok to control peoples hardware. I do it myself." For something quite recent: [this video]

Cites myztic · 2016-01 · on “Linux Foundation quietly drops community representation”

I am sorry that I have to say this, but large parts of the GNU/Linux community are just irrational idealists hard to work with. Read the GPLv3, it's a great political document, and somewhere in there there also is a software license, hidden between the lines. Linus always said: He cares about the code back and otherwise not what vendors do with it. He is not in any sense one of those GNU-people about Software Freedom everywhere and for all. When the Free Software Foundation (FSF) created the GPLv3, indeed during the process, Linus already spoke out against it and said he would never ever use it[1]. He cited reasonable use-cases for which vendors have no other way than to not to give open acc

Cites vacri · 2016-02 · on “Canonical, Ubuntu, and Why I Seem so Upset About Them All the Time”

Well, have a crack at it, then. Here is Torvalds talking about how he sees the point of the earlier GPL being subverted by v3, and that he thinks that the FSF lied to people about it. In his opinion, it should have been named a different license. He goes into detail about how it's not the license he hates, but how the FSF behaved around it. [this video] > since they wrote both the GPL itself and the four freedoms Also, having been part of organisations that have operated against their own philosophical principles and mission statements, I don't accept that the FSF is immune to changing their angle on things. And having hung around plenty of radical progressives growing up, I've seen some handy re

Cites snuxoll · 2016-02 · on “GPL Violations Related to Combining ZFS and Linux”

[this video] - he telegraphed GPLv3 many, many years in advance - just because it wasn't published until 2007 doesn't mean there wasn't talk about it for a long time before then.

Cites cyphar · 2016-04 · on “Head of Oracle Linux Moves to Microsoft”

> > Torvalds doesn't believe in software freedom > Source for that? I thought I read a quote from him saying that GPL licensing the Linux kernel was the best decision he ever made. If you ever hear his explanation of why he used the GPL (which boils down to "I give you code, you give me code back, we're even"[1]) skips over the software freedom aspect. Not to mention that he's one of the advocates of the open source movement which doesn't have any views on software freedom. I can't give you an explicit quote where he said "I don't care about software freedom", but it becomes quite clear if you look at his actions (particularly toward the GPLv3, where he clearly differentiates his views from

Cites delinka · 2016-11 · on “Minoca OS: A new open source operating system”

Linux is not GPLv3 for a reason[1]. Not to mention it's only a kernel, not an entire OS. Basing your OS on a Linux kernel doesn't expose your other code to the GPL. Writing apps to run on a Linux system doesn't expose your code to the GPL. The Minoca OS folks are asking for the community to contribute code to their OS that's licensed under GPLv3. GPLv3 supporters are necessarily a subset of open source supporters. I contend that the subset is small enough that a Minoca OS licensed under GPLv3 will continue to experience a lack of widespread circulation. 1 - [this video]