Linus Torvalds wrote:
Alan argues that that extra notice "changed" the license (and that any
code that is older than 5 years would somehow not be GPLv2). I argue
otherwise. I argue that for the whole history, Linux has been v2-only
unless otherwise explicitly specified.
Hope you don't mind an opinion from a bystander...
I actually believe that Alan Cox is making a fair point, when viewed
from the perspective of the strict language of the license.
The license as distributed with the kernel itself states that unless the
program specifies the version of the GPL that it's under, any version
will do. Alan makes the point that at least upto the 2.4.0-test8
addition, the program never specified the version, as the "v2" was only
in the _license_, which is not the _program_.
And this is not a bad point -- the license and the program are indeed
not the same; they are not even copyrighted by the same people. With the
addition to the COPYING file, there's something added which clearly is
yours, but before that it was just the generic GPL, copyrighted by the FSF.
As additional "proof" of the fact that the license can not be considered
part of "the program" he pointed out that the GPL document in itself is
not GPL compatible, meaning that under this strict interpretation it
could even be argued that there would be a legal problem in combining
this document with the rest of the program.
Sure, I noted all the "intent" stuff, and you may feel an interpretation
this strict is not sensible, but I really do believe he's making a fair
point if you do not want to trust the law, and all judges, to always be
as sensible as you want them to be.
And I don't think even Alan will argue that the "v2 only" thing
hasn't been true for the last five years.
I would not at least. The added bit needs to be considered part of the
program itself, solving the issue.
Rene.
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