can help? https://lwn.net/Articles/74055/
On Fri, Jan 26, 2018 at 3:47 PM, Duncan <1i5t5.dun...@cox.net> wrote: > Ulrich Mueller posted on Fri, 26 Jan 2018 10:36:49 +0100 as excerpted: > > > Apparently licensing of the Gentoo repository was changed from GPL-2+ > > to GPL-2 (only) in 2002, see for example [1] and [2]. I cannot find any > > announcement or discussion about this. > > > > Who was around in 2002 and still remembers what was the rationale? > > > > Ulrich > > > > [1] > > https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo/historical.git/commit/skel.ebuild? > id=e67af11c176e4dca33846e65c2649aa456de3099 > > [2] > > https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo/historical.git/commit/header.txt? > id=dc4dfe8aa903fb467e648da80f8bc3178411a77a > > I wasn't around in 2002, but I was researching it by late 2003 and began > installing in early 2004, by which point Gentoo was suffering the > aftermath of the bitter split with Zynot and DRobbins was pretty much out > after having set up the Gentoo Foundation and (what became the) Council. > > The Zynot side was focused on embedding and trying to take things > commercial, while accusing DRobbins of trying to do effectively the same > thing but with a(n IIRC) gaming focus. > > That war has long since been fought and history has played out with > Gentoo still around and Zynot... not, so I'll try to avoid inserting > opinion /too/ much (tho I'm sure more recent events played out how they > did in part due to that history, people around then simply weren't > interested in what must have sounded rather similar), but... > > The switch to GPLv2-only would have been made in the fight for its life > that was the Gentoo/Zynot fork, and almost certainly had to do with > trying to ensure that the gentoo/x86 tree could not be taken private > without community recourse, in an era before GPLv3 existed and there was > some uncertainty about what its legal terms were going to be, while those > of the GPLv2 were known, it had broad community support, and was at > least /somewhat/ legally tested. > > Of course as we know it's possible for an entity owning copyright on a > GPLed work to also sell the rights to use it commercially, with the GPL > preventing others from doing the same, and that's what both sides were > accusing the other of trying to do, but as we've seen play out in other > contexts, the one thing the GPL /does/ do is provide a guarantee that the > code as-is will remain free, and community improvements to it without a > CLA letting the entity trying to take it proprietary are then disallowed > from being used to further that entity's plots. With the uncertainty > surrounding the still coming GPLv3 at that point, I believe the intent > was to ensure that continued. OTOH, those on the Zynot side would surely > argue that the intent was to ensure that Zynot couldn't take it private, > while Gentoo/DRobbins could, especially since at the time copyright was > assigned to Gentoo. Of course now we have the advantage of looking back > it it in history and can see how things turned out, but back then, it was > far less clear how things would turn out. > > -- > Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. > "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- > and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman > > > -- Luigi 'Comio' Mantellini R&D - Software Industrie Dial Face S.p.A. Via Canzo, 4 20068 Peschiera Borromeo (MI), Italy Tel.: +39 02 5167 2813 Fax: +39 02 5167 2459 web: www.idf-hit.com mail: luigi.mantell...@idf-hit.com
