爲什麼 Linus Torvalds 不願意將 Linux 變成 GPLv3 授權？

Q: Do you agree that you undermine GPLv3? and ...

L: Yes

Q: How can we get you to stop?

L: What?

Q: ...How can we get you to stop?

L: Oh I hate GPLv3. I undermined it on purpose. I actually thought the GPLv3 extensions were horrible. I understand why people would want to do them but I think it should have been a completely new license.

Emm my argument for liking version 2, and I still think version 2 is a great license, was that, "I give you source code, you give me your changes back, we are even." Right? That's my take on GPL version 2, right, it's that simple.

And version 3 extended that in ways that I personally am really uncomfortable with, namely "I give you source code, that means that if you use that source code, you can't use it on your device unless you follow my rules." And to me that's, that's a violation of everything version 2 stood for. And I understand why the FSF did it because I know what the FSF wants. But to me it's not the same license at all.

So I was very upset and made it very clear, and this was months before version 3 was actually published. There was a discussion about this long before... There was an earlier version of version 3, years before actually, where I said "No, this is not gonna fly." And during that earlier discussion I had already added to the kernel that, "Hey, I don't have the version 2 or later". And there was no... And I was really happy then when version 3 came out, that I have done that something like 5 years before, because there was ever never any question about what the license for the kernel was.

But I actually thought that version 3 is ... Uh, no ... I actually think version 3 is a FINE license, right. I'm a firm believer in, "If you write your code, it is your choice to pick a license." And version 3 is a fine license. Version 3 was not a good ... "Here we give you version 2, and then we tried to sneak in these new rules, and tried to force everybody to upgrade." That was the part I disliked. And the FSF did some really sneaky stuff, downright immoral in my opinion.

Q: So you are talking about Tivoization?

L: Ehmm, yeah the Tivoization is always my main, eh dislike of version 3. And, the FSF was being very dishonest thing. "Hey, we actually allow you to invalidate the Tivoization clause" and they tried to, they literally lied to people, and say "Hey, so that means that you can use GPLv3 without the Tivoization part", right. This is ... How many people heard this particular statement from the FSF? (Please raise your hands)

Ok, maybe they only tried to convince me with that one. But they did try. And it was like, "I'm not stupid", right. Yes, you can ... The GPLv3 allows you to say "Ok, Tivoization is not an issue for us". But it allows somebody else to take the project, and say "Hey, I ... The GPLv3 without Tivoization is compatible with the full GPLv3, so I will now make my own fork of this, and I will start doing drivers that use the full version of version 3" And where am I stuck then? I am stuck saying "Hey I give you the source code, and now I can't take it back your changes". That's completely against the whole point of the license in the first place.

So the FSF was, I mean the kind of stuff that was going on behind the scenes, ah, made me once and for all to decide to never had any thing to do with the FSF again. So if you wanted to give money to an organization that does good? Give it to the EFF. The FSF is full of crazy bittered people. That's just mine opinion. Uh, actually I have ... Ah ... I overstated that a bit, right. The FSF has a lot of nice people in it, but some of them are bit too extreme.

Q: Well I wish the EFF care more about software freedom. But, uh, can you ... Do you think that Tivoization benefits me as a user somehow?

L: No, no I don't. I mean that ... But that was never my argument. That was not why I selected the GPLv2. This is my whole point. It's not that I think Tivoization is necessarily something that you should strive for. But it is something that in my world view, it's your decision. If you make hardware that locks down the software, that's your decision as a hardware maker. That has no impact on my decision as a software maker to give you the software. Do you see where I am coming from? I don't like the locked down hardware, but at the same time that was never the social contract I intended with Linux.

To me, umm, I mean, people may or may not realize GPLv2 wasn't even the first license for Linux. To me the important part was always "I give you software, you can do whatever you want with it. If you making improvements, you have to give them back." That was the first version of the license. It also had a completely broken clause which was completely insane and I was stupid. Hey it happened. My origin license says that you can't make money change hands. And that was a mistake. That was clearly just wrong and bad because it really didn't have anything to do with what I wanted. But I was young, I was poor, I didn't realize that the whole money thing wasn't the important part. And I have saw the errors in my ways, I saw the GPLv2 and said "Hey, that's the perfect license". And I saw the GPLv3 and I said "No, that's overreaching a lot, that's not what I wanted". And so I made Linux GPLv2 only, right.

Q: So do you think getting the patches back is as useful even if you can't modify the device that it is used on?

L: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean TiVo itself is actually an example of this. Their patches were kind of crafty but I mean they were basically running on a, originally a fairly standard MIPS thing. And their patches were working around bugs in the chipsets they used. And they were valid patches. The fact that they then felt that their hardware had to be locked down someway. I didn't like it. But as I have mentioned, I felt that that was their decision.

And they had real reasons for that. That's something people sometimes missed. There are sometimes reasons to do what TiVo did. Sometimes it's imposed on you by, wireless carriers. Sometimes it's imposed on you by Disney. Uh sometimes it's imposed on you by laws. The GPLv3 actually accepts the last one when it comes to things like medical equipment I think. But the point is that the whole Tivoization thing is, sometimes it's, there is a reason for it. And if you make ... I mean I am not a hardware designer. I think FPGA and stuff like that is really cool. But I always ... I mean I really don't want to impose my world view on anybody else. You don't have to use Linux. If you do use Linux, the only thing I asked for is source code back. And there is all these other verbiages in the GPLv2 about exact details, those aren't important. And that was always my standpoint.

Q: Ok, well I will stop my non-point of making noise now.

L: I mean don't get me ... I mean I like other licenses too. I have used like the four, emmm... Which BSD license is the acceptable one? One of the BSD license is actually really nice. And it's actually the... What?

A: ISC

L: ISC? And I actually encourage people who don't care about the giving code back but care about the "Hey, I did something cool, please use it". I encourage people to use the BSD license for that. And I mean the BSD license is wonderful for that. It so happens that I thought that for my project the giving back is equally important so I, for me BSD is bad. But the point is for me. The GPLv3 maybe the perfect license for what you guys want to do. And that's fine. And then it's the license you should use. It's just that when somebody else wrote the code you don't get that choice.