GPL3: The Gloves Come Off

A couple of weeks ago there was a major showdown in the free and open source world over GPL3. At one end of the dusty street: Linux kernel developers, led by Linus Torvalds. At the other end of the dusty street: the Free Software Foundation, led by Richard Stallman.

The two gangs faced each other, staring at one another with narrowed eyes, hands hovering above their text editors. "There's a new license in town, " sneered Stallman. "and it's going to clean things up, so that everyone can be free." "We've lived just fine with GPL2, and we're going to keep it that way," snapped  Torvalds in reply.

The townspeople nervously watched, breath indrawn, waiting to see what would happen next...

Actually, what happened wasn't quite so dramatic, although it did provide both serious discussion and some laughs as well. A group of Linux kernel developers published a short paper outlining their concerns regarding GPL3 as it stands today.

A long train of comments, rejoinders, remarks followed in the kernel mailing list (the link above is actually the first posting in that train of remarks). The FSF then issued a "clarification" about one of the issues raised in the paper relating to patents. I have a personal rule: when an organization starts issuing "clarifications," it's obfuscating and I start looking for what they're covering up. Witness the multiple "clarifications" emanating from HP about "Directorgate."

At the end of the week, a couple of things were clear: first, a number of very influential individuals -- Linux kernel developers -- aren't happy with GPL3 as it stands; and second, the FSF isn't really concerned with anyone's happiness relating to the license -- their motivation is spreading freedom as they define it, and if people don't like it, tough. (You can see my earlier thoughts about Stallman's motivation regarding GPL3 here). 

The issues raised in the paper are pretty much the same ones that have been present since the release of the first draft of the license in January of this year: DRM, patents, and the conditions in the license compatibility section of the license. Much of the discussion in the comment thread related to DRM, with participants pretty much acknowledging they didn't really like DRM as it's being used to restrict access to media content, but with many saying that they didn't feel the right place to fight that fight was by imposing licensing conditions. This DRM condition is often referred to as the "Tivoization" clause, as Tivo's handling of Linux seems to really stick in Richard Stallman's craw. 

Here are the key things you should understand about what this paper represents and, more importantly, what the import of GPL3 is:

First, the fact that a number of kernel developers organized themselves enough to generate this paper should indicate the depth of concern about GPL3. While developers by no means fall into the stereotype of solely being interested in technical issues, it's astonishing that this group felt strongly enough to jointly create and publish this document. Organizing a group to do something like this takes a lot of work and it clearly reflects a deep unease with GPL3.

Second, there was quite a bit of discussion that the Linux kernel will remain under GPL2. Torvalds gets to make that decision, and he's made it very clear that GPL2 is his preference. As many people have pointed out, Linux as commonly thought of contains far more than the kernel, since distros usually have utilities and many, many other applications shipped in them. The question is, what license will those other things be distributed under (although it's obvious that there are many other pieces of a distro, I've never seen anyone actually list them, so it's not clear just how much code we're talking about, but it's certainly significant). However, there was some discussion that the conditions of GPL3 might cause the forking of some of those other parts of the distro into GPL2 versions and GPL3 versions, with a concomitant requirement for significantly more engineering effort (if you've ever tried to keep two code lines consistent as to features and bugfixes, you instinctively know how much work this would cause). This forking would be caused by users being unwilling to live with GPL3 conditions for the products and moving toward maintaing GPL2-based versions.

Third, referring to the DRM conditions of GPL3 as relating to "Tivoization" is to trivialize the issue at hand. It's easy to sympathise with someone wanting to tweak their Tivo to do something beyond what Tivo (the company) delivers. After all, why shouldn't they be able to do something with content they've bought? However, the fundamental issue is the ability for a hardware manufacturer to block users from manipulating the software inside the machine. While it's easy to maintain that Tivo shouldn't be able to do that, other scenarios illustrate more serious implications of this ability. For example, should a medical device company be able to preclude end users from modifying how the device works? From my viewpoint, I don't want to wonder whether a radiation-emitting machine pointed at a tumor in my head has been "improved" by the radiation tech running it. While that's an extreme example, it illustrates what precluding DRM could cause. In any case, no manufacturer subject to liability laws would ever deliver software-embedding products that were licensed under conditions by which they could not guarantee the operation of the device. I've spoken to many pro-GPL3 people about this, and they've assured me that no user organization would ever allow this kind of tweaking to occur -- they'd impose conditions precluding anyone from modifying the product. That doesn't matter; no manufacturer would live with this situation, and I wouldn't accept it either. Characterizing this issue as "Tivoization" is a willful attempt to trivialize this critical topic.

Fourth, practical concerns like these concern the FSF not at all. Their focus is on enforcing freedom as they define it, and they reject any reservation about the impact of GPL3 as irrelevant. Consequently, waiting for the FSF to "come around" on GPL3 and its conditions is pointless. Stallman and his colleagues know exactly what they want and are determined to bring it to fruition. 

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