Draft GPL v3 in Doubt
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Currently under review, the proposed draft of the GNU GPL version 3 licence looks in jeopardy as open source guru and Linux kernel developer Linus Torvolds give the proposed changes a big thumbs down.

In a posting on a Linux Kernel forum Torvolds makes it pretty clear that he has no intention of converting his existing Linux code across to the new licence

Clarifying the existing terms of the licence Torvolds says “The Linux kernel is under the GPL version 2. Not anything else. Some individual files are licenceable under v3, but not the kernel in general.

“And quite frankly, I don’t see that changing. I think it’s insane to require people to make their private signing keys available, for example. I wouldn’t do it. So I don’t think the GPL v3 conversion is going to happen for the kernel, since I personally don’t want to convert any of my code,” he writes.

The new licence proposal, developed by the Free Software Foundation includes provisions which prevent software licensed under GPL v3 being controlled by DRM. The licence would make it impossible to impose restrictive conditions on any software distributed under the licence.

Torvolds, who is keen to maintain the commercial viability of the Linux kernel seems disinclined to forgo final control over the code.

The DRM provisions in the draft licence, which is unlikely to be finalised until we have seen another 12 months of public discussion, is partly targeted at movie studios who use Linux in their production houses and companies such as TiVo which runs on Linux yet invades user privacy by monitoring usage.

The Free Software Foundation argues that DRM and open software are “fundamentally incompatible”. Founder, president  Richard Stallman, take a fundamental position that free software must by capable of being freely studied, copied, modified, reused, redistributed and shared by its users.

Torvolds failure to adopt the new license could force a change in the FSF draft, cause a rupture or fork in the Linux development, or fundamentally cripple the new license before it gets off the ground.

However, exactly how Torvolds feels about the DRM provisions is still a little unclear, to date he has declined to comment further on his initial posting.