Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Daniel Robbins' come back ?

[Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>]

On Monday 14 January 2008, James wrote:
> OK, then why does the GPL not make a simple rule change. If you have
> grossed over 1 million dollars on your linux product or service, then
> you have to open source your code.

Because it *already* says that if you redistribute your code you already 
*have* to open source it. 

I suppose by implication you mean that companies grossing less than 1 
million dollars are not required to open source their stuff. Well, that 
flies in the face of the 4 freedoms that the GPL is built on.

A change like that is incompatible with GPL2 so we come back to the same 
mess we currently have with GPL3. The Linux kernel is licensed GPL2 
ONLY (Linus removed the "or later" clause) and that can't be 
realistically changed. The only known way to do it would be to get the 
agreement of a large group of kernel code copyright holders, take all 
their code currently in the kernel, strip out everything else, rewrite 
the now missing bits and re-license the result. Note that this will 
involve huge amounts of developer work, for no discernible benefit to 
the developer.

Seeing as Linus himself has stated that he has absolutely no intention 
of changing the license on the kernel, your idea is unworkable.

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
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