Torvalds 'pretty pleased' about new GPL 3 draft

Linus Torvalds, leader of the Linux kernel project and a major figure in the open-source programming movement, said Wednesday he's "pretty pleased" with changes in a third draft of the General Public License (GPL) released Wednesday.

I can't say that I felt good about the possiblity of having to side with one GPL faction or the other. I'm quite happy to see that the divide between the two factions seems to be narrowing. That isn't to say that I expect everone to rally behind the GPL3. Perhaps, we'd be better off with two separate licensing schemes—though both will need to be kept up to date.

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People Are Finding DRM Difficult to Comprehend

There are those of us who had once taken great pride in our music collections. But with DRM, such collections will no longer be possible, and the culture surrounding the keeping of such collections is about to die. If you want a keepsake for the days of your retirement, you'll need another way, because culture no longer belongs to the people; it belongs to the media corporations.

Read the article "How I Became A Music Pirate" to see what the record companies are telling their customers.

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Clearing up anti-GPL3 FUD

The Digg Post:

There's been a lot of talk about GPL version 3: whether it goes too far to be acceptable to business, whether the Linux kernel developers will ever switch to it, whether our community will fork or undergo unrest over it. Much of that talk is based on a poor understanding of the GPL3 terms, and with release of the new license imminent, it'

I was surprised at the intensity of the response to the comment from Linus Torvalds. It's nice to see a sanely written contrasting view.

I think it will take some time for the Open Source community to digest the new ideas presented by the GPL3.

Even if these new ideas aren't embraced by all, I think that its very important to take the time to understand the issues being addressed.

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The Torvalds Transcript: Why I 'Absolutely Love' GPL Version 2

Linus Torvalds: "...I just don't care about proprietary software. It's not "evil" or "immoral," it just doesn't matter. I think that Open Source can do better, and I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is by working on Open Source, but it's not a crusade -- it's just a superior way of working together and generating code."



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