The headline you picked for your post about Ed Burnette's suggestion to
Linus:
[News] Ed Burnette Calls for Linus Torvalds to Embrace GPLv3
And here is what Burnette actually wrote:
==== begin quote ====
Dear Linus,
Like you, Iâ??m pragmatic, not dogmatic. I believe software wants to be
used and shared, but licensing issues keep getting in the way. As an
industry, weâ??re making this way too hard on ourselves. Weâ??re wasting our
energies on unproductive issues and unnecessary restrictions.
Somethingâ??s got to give.
GPLv2, because of its ubiquity and common sense values, plays a central
role in where we are today. It deserves a lot of credit, but itâ??s not
without its flaws. GPLv3 started off trying to fix some of the problems
but it became highly politicised and mixed up with the software
equivalent of â??social engineeringâ??. Just look at the confusing
distinction it makes between user and non-user products for example.
A license is no place for a political or social agenda. So Iâ??ve got a
radical idea Iâ??d like you to consider:
Letâ??s fork the GPL itself, and come out with our own revision, say, â??GPL
version 2.2?[1], which would become the â??realâ?? successor to GPLv2.
Remember what happened to RSS[2]? RSS 1.0 came out but it was
considerably different from RSS 0.91. So Dave Winer developed RSS 0.92
to carry on the 0.91 tradition. Eventually, RSS 2.0 grew out of RSS
0.92, making 1.0 an evolutionary dead end. GPLv2 is like RSS 0.91, and
GPLv3 is like RSS 1.0. The new license could be the equivalent of RSS
0.92. And maybe someday there would be a GPLv4 which would be based on
2.2 not 3.0.
Some of the guiding principles of â??v2.2? could be:
â?¢ Unambiguously allow use of code in embedded devices (like TiVo).
â?¢ Unambiguously allow plug-ins, device drivers, and other add-ins to
be covered by any license.
â?¢ Explicitly allow combinations with code in other licenses, but
preserve the idea of giving back improvements.
â?¢ Grant enough patent rights to make contributions useful, while not
pursuing an agenda.
â?¢ Make it short and sweet (v3 is too long and lawyerly).
â?¢ Respect the freedoms of programmers (and their code) too, not just
users.
There are not many people who could pull this off; in fact you may be
the only one. If you get behind it, others will follow.
So what do you think?
==== end quote ====
<http://blogs.zdnet.com/Burnette/?p=512>
Why do you keep lying in your headlines? Do you think people won't go
read the stories and catch you?
--
--Tim Smith
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