Heron's Perch

What most people forget is that Free Software is a balance between the rights of the creator and the user. Anything that disturbs that balance needs to be dealt with. Both patents and DRM represent things that disturb the rights of the users in favor of the creators.

RMS is not trying to force his personal beliefs on people. You don't have to change to the GPLv3, no one does. Linus, on the other hand, is coming out and engaging in name calling. I've seen more and more of this from Linus over the past few years. I don't see him as any better than RMS, in fact, I see him as worse. To me he seems like the kind of person who, if you don't agree with him, he'll freely and publicly call you names. That doesn't seem to me to be the approach of an intelligent or reasonable person. It seems to be to be the approach of someone who's ego has gotten a little too big for his own good. Not one of the reasons Linus has yet given for his dislike of the GPLv3 has made a great deal of sense from my point of view. Linus seems unable or, possibly, unwilling to engage in a debate about this pertaining to the facts of the matter. Instead he would rather distract people from the real issues by calling RMS a fanatic and calling anyone that adopts the GPLv3 hypocrites.

He states that the GPLv3 will make it difficult for business' to use GPL'd software. This is, in fact, correct. The GPLv3 will make it more difficult for companies to restrict the rights of their users (people like you and me). The GPL was meant to protect against this type of thing. As the world evolved, the GPLv2 became inadequate due to the simple fact that many of the technologies and problems which exist now did not exist when it was drafted. It therefore, has legal holes it in nowadays that one could drive a truck through. The GPLv3 was meant to address the shortcomings and, in some cases, the lack of clarity of the GPLv2. It protects the users better and is clearer on what is and is not distribution.

If Linus wants to play name calling games, that's just fine. If, however, he wants to actually discuss the facts, he and the rest of his sycophantic followers should engage the FSF in a debate.. or, at least, they should have been more of a part of the drafting of the GPLv3 than they were... certainly... if you don't put your 2 cents into something, especially when you're invited to do so (GPLv3 comments were open to the public and, indeed, Eben Moglen publicly asked the Linux contributors to participate)... then, in my opinion, you have no cause to complain when the process is finish.

Linus and his ilk had their chance to say something and they remained silent. Why should they be listened to now?

The GNUstep project is moving to the GPLv3, as are Samba and many other Free Software projects. Linus has forgotten what Free Software is all about... a balance of individual rights. The GPLv3 is, quite honestly, the best way to proceed forward, since it addresses critical issues in the previous version. If Linus want's to think us all hypocrites, then so be it. I would submit, however, that he is the one engaging in hypocrisy. When someone can take Linux and add DRM code to it and then distribute it under the GPLv2 and get away with it, then that defeats the spirit of the GPL in the first place. Perhaps, then, it's not so much hypocrisy on Linus' part as it is a sheer lack of understanding. Perhaps he never understood the GPL in the first place.

It seems, for whatever reason, that the Linux community has stopped evolving. We only seem to be heading towards one of two environments: GNOME or KDE. Now, of course, I'm not blind, this trend has been obvious for a very long time. It's amusing, however, that so many people buy into it. They don't see the potential for other possibilities, and they assume that anything which challenges the current two dominant players must be "nuts".

Is this the brave new world of open source? Will KDE and GNOME be all we have? I have looked at both and I am unimpressed with what they offer. Both are poorly designed, amateurish pieces of software. They both feel like they have "evolved" to this point and were never *designed* to be like this. In my next few articles, I'll examine them both further.