Something that isn't transparent in this discussion is the fact that Linux is extremely corporate now.<p>By that I mean, the vast majority of contributions are sponsored by corporations.<p>Both Linus and Greg know that. They are keenly aware that if Linux takes a hardline GPL approach it will gain the reputation of being unfriendly to corporations. That perception will kill Linux in the long run.<p>When they say they "Care about Linux more than GPL" they are really saying they care about corporate Linux since non-corporate Linux virtually doesn't exist anymore.<p>I have nothing against that and honestly I think they have more clear opinions due to their positions as top-level maintainers. I just think the motivations and incentives behind their opinions should be clear to more people.<p>The people's Linux is virtually dead. People need to eat. An analysis of that phenomenon would be interesting as well but is beyond the scope of this discussion.
A lot companies use Linux kernel and don't release any of the source. They are working on the backs of millions of hours of human labor. For example DJI uses linux on its drone and open wrt on its controller. I don't see any source code for that. LeTv and many other Chinese cellphone makers don't release source code for their kernels. They really have no alternate they could go to. I think it makes sense that kernel community would be more aggressive about making companies return the code with which their products couldn't really exist without.
I see this as a stealth attempt by the Software Conservancy to hijack the direction and tone of kernel development, dragging it more to FSF-style militancy.<p>Linus is right, there is no crisis in GPL violation. There will always be violators. Any law or contract or license will be violated. Becoming more militant about enforcement will simply cause most corporate partners to disengage. Most users comply with the license. Users have access to interesting and useful source code and have never been restricted from accessing the kernel. The kernel team is on good terms with most corporate users. Going after the 5% of violators will change how the kernel team interacts with the 95% of good partners.<p>The only thing Linus seems to be disingenuous about is his claim of support for the GPLv2. My guess is he secretly wishes he had chosen a different, non-copyleft license.
The Linus/GregKH attitude might work <i>because it's the Linux kernel</i>. It's almost irreplaceable for those who are using it, it has a huge developer community, it has many corporate sponsors to back up those developers, etc. It's not at all clear that the same approach would work for another project without those things. The way Linux kernel developers make such assumptions and pronouncements reminds me a lot of the way some people talk about social issues from a highly privileged position - utterly blind to the reality for those in different circumstances.<p>As I immediately reacted on Twitter, I think lawsuits are a lot like nukes. Using them might always be terrible, but their absence negates all leverage in any other kind of negotiation. That includes the kind of negotiation that Greg K-H talks about. In those negotiations, he still benefits from the kind of enforcement he himself eschews. Those who live under an umbrella shouldn't dump on the people holding it up IMO, as the LF stalwarts are doing in their attempts to defend their turf.<p>Disclosure: I work for Red Hat, which as a company and a community has probably held just about every possible position on this issue - often simultaneously.
The whole discussion has been one of the best example of people violently agreeing with each other. Sadly, the article only mention the first few statements and not one of the later done by Greg, which makes it look like a bigger disagreement than it is.<p><i>Ok, I'm not saying "never should legal action be taken", but what I am saying is the same thing that Linus said, "only under the most dire circumstances", the nuclear option.</i> - (<a href="https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/ksummit-discuss/2016-August/003678.html" rel="nofollow">https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/ksummit-discuss/...</a>)<p><i>"Lawsuits are always a last resort after nothing else works."</i> - (<a href="https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/ksummit-discuss/2016-August/003620.html" rel="nofollow">https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/ksummit-discuss/...</a>)<p>That is a far cry from implied disagreement from the earlier quoted "I do [want companies to comply], but I don't ever think that suing them is the right way to do it". Maybe the Gregs comment is more colorful and has some slight implied differences, but so far I have see little in the discussion to specific when exactly those differences has an practical impact. Both sides seems to be in an agreement (or atleast, not in explicit disagreement) about the status of VMware, as none in the mailinglist (from what I can see) has said that the lawsuit should not exist.<p>What left is the last paragraph of the article, where at least there is direct conflict. Linus don't trust/like FSF and by extension, SFC. For that, one of the other developers described the situation perfectly. If developers went to SFC instead of the lawyers of LF, maybe Linus should ask why that happened in the first place.
> ... Bradley isn't the one making the decisions here. It's the developers<p>Gee, this debate seems to have given some large amount of power to the individual contributors to the kernel. Any <i>individual</i> developer could defect from Linus' stance and work with the SFC on an infringement case. I'm curious to see if any of them are more dogmatic with respect to copyleft.<p>I <i>suppose</i> it makes sense that features CONFIG_'d off shouldn't be considered for infringement, but for many binary distributions of the kernel it probably still catches a lot of developers.<p>I always thought it was baloney red tape to do copyright assignments but if it had taken place here it would be a very different debate. The developers would have effectively ceded all control over this discussion to the assignee (who probably would've been The Linux Foundation, if anywhere).
One thing that wasn't brought up (edit: ok, quickly glossed over) in the article — if you go to court, you can lose!<p>There are various legal arguments I can think of, that would essentially trash the GPL, and a company with 8 figures to spend on lawyers could make very convincing (I don't agree with these, but a judge and jury could easily):<p>1. It's unclear whom the actual copyright holder or holders of Linux are, and who has standing to sue on their behalf.<p>2. Since Linux is open-source, free-as-in-beer, etc, it's public-domain.<p>3. Linux is a derivative work not entitled to copyright protection.<p>And so on. Again, when one side might have orders of magnitude more budget for lawyers, this kind of stuff will be very convincing. (Many corps will pony up money to protect <i>Linux</i>, but they'll generally be on the opposite side when it comes to the GPL).
I agree on the analysis. You don't need enforce Linux in court, Linux will then keep getting more popular, to the point that those GPL-violation will gradually find that upstreaming/releasing their code is actually more beneficial than making the code closed. In the long run everybody wins.<p>Even Microsoft is embracing Linux as it pretty much has no other choices due to the ever increasing popularity of Linux.
It looks like a simple issue that transformed into drama due to the attitudes on the lkml.<p>It is obvious that there will be cases that the GPL will have to be enforced. Was accepted by the other side in the end.<p>The SFLC will only undertake a case if they have the support of copyright owners, not on their own volition.