Replies

What programmers can do is to fork all this code, before -any- GPLv3 only changes are made to it, and continue to use, modify, and distribute it, under the GPLv2 license terms granted everyone. The major distributions, such as Red Hat, SuSE, Debian and Ubuntu, could seal the success of such a fork, by refusing to pick up GPLv3 code.

If that happened, the FSF would cease to be an active player. They would continue to hold copyright on this code in perpetuity. But almost no one would send them any more changes, and they would be out of the loop, both in terms of license affect, and in terms of code maintenance.

Thats the Rub, Linus, Red Hat, Novell, and IBM have far more power than Stalman does and this is perhaps the nutballs last gasp. If RedHat, Novell, and IBM said no to the GPLv3 and Linus backed them with the kernel the fork would keep the GPL2 going. The sad thing is stallman is going to obsolete him self (more than he already is) over nothing but DRM and Tivo.

I personally dont like what Tivo did but hey, its their hardware!

I personally dont like what Tivo did but hey, its their hardware!

Actually it's yours -- you bought it. Or is everything licensed now?

But I am on Linus' side. That's a hardware issue, and Stallman has no business butting in with his software license. Absolutely nothing prevents us from downloading the TiVo software and modifying it to put on a different box, so IMHO the terms of the GPL (letter and spirit) are fulfilled.

Linus, Red Hat, Novell, and IBM have far more power than Stalman does

They have more money than he does, but he has an army of programmers across the world that have dedicated their lives to his free software "manifesto" who wrote and manage most of the Linux O/S components. They're not easily bought off by bribe, so unless those companies are willing to invest the billions to rewrite or manage those products independently, Stallman is in the position of power.