Linus Torvalds said on Wednesday he won't convert Linux to version three of the GPL, as he objects to the proposed digital rights management provisions in the update.
The position is a significant — though not entirely unexpected — rejection of the update, the first to the seminal licence in 15 years. Linux, the kernel at the heart of an operating system that clones much of generally proprietary Unix, is considered the best-known and most successful example of open source software.
"Conversion isn't going to happen," Torvalds said in a posting to the Linux kernel mailing list. "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."
Torvalds specifically objected to one new provision in the GPL 3 draft that opposes digital rights management, which is technology that uses encryption to control the use of content and running of software. "I think it's insane to require people to make their private signing keys available, for example. I wouldn't do it," he said.
The GPL is a legal document and manifesto of the free software and open source movements. It outlines several freedoms for collaborative software development, stipulating that a program's underlying source code may be seen, copied, modified and distributed.
The Linux-GPL issue highlights a long-running philosophical split in the collaborative programming movements. Torvalds represents a pragmatic approach that accommodates computer industry prevailing practices. For example, Torvalds worked for years on proprietary software at chip designer Transmeta, and he permits proprietary video card drivers to be loaded as modules into the Linux kernel.
On the other side of the divide is Richard Stallman, founder and president of the Free Software Foundation. His goals are explicitly ethical and social, and his principles are unbending. "The foundation believes that free software — that is, software that can be freely studied, copied, modified, reused, redistributed and shared by its users — is the only ethically satisfactory form of software development, as free and open scientific research is the only ethically satisfactory context for the conduct of mathematics, physics or biology," Stallman and FSF attorney Eben Moglen wrote in a GPL 3 background article.
GPL 3 draft released
The Free Software Foundation released the first public draft of GPL 3 earlier in January. The move began what's expected to be about a year's worth of discussion and revision.
The GPL 3 draft contains new words opposing digital rights management, which Stallman and Moglen regard as technology that restricts freedoms users must have.
"As a free software licence, this licence intrinsically disfavours technical attempts to restrict users' freedom to copy, modify and share copyrighted works," the draft licence states. "No permission is given... for modes of distribution that deny users that run covered works the full exercise of the legal rights granted by this licence."
In other words, some form of locking of GPL code to prevent changes from an authorised version is forbidden.
Torvalds' position is not a surprise. In a 2003 posting to the kernel mailing list, the Linux founder explicitly opened the door to DRM.
"I also don't necessarily like DRM myself," Torvalds wrote. "But... I'm an 'Oppenheimer,' and I refuse to play politics with Linux, and I think you can...
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Talkback
While I admire what Richard Stallman is trying to accomplish, as I've said elsewhere in comments to the GPL3, I think the DRM clause is flawed and in the wrong place for such a campaign.
Yes, DRM is evil and wrong in general, or at least in the way the entertainment industry uses it.
But you aren't going to get the Music and Film industries to treat their customers with respect and not as prospective criminals over night.
This means that anyone using software which conforms to the GPL3 license would be unable to watch any modern films (DVD HD and BD) or copy-protected music.
To RS: Yes, the DRMing of music and film as it is at the moment is wrong - mainly because it only makes life difficult for the legal purchaser, the dedicated copier will still find a copy somewhere which is DRM free. But using the GPL3 as a soapbox to fight against it isn't the right thing to do.
This will just spite the potential users to prove a point and could be more harmful to OSS in the long run.
I would love to live in a DRM free world. It wouldn't affect the number of DVD's and CD's I buy - well, actually it would, because I don't currently buy any CD's or downloaded music that is copyprotected or DRMed.
From a moralistic stand-point RS is correct, but from a practical stand-point Linus is correct...
I'd rather suffer having to put up with some DRM in closed source drivers running on top of my OSS software than not be able to access the content at all, until the conglomerates can be persuaded that people who buy their product aren't the criminals...
Cannot see why Linus should accept GPL3 right now.
It is still a draft, there is no hurry and no reason at all to accept it at this point.
In fact I cannot see a single reason for a decision on GPL3 by
Linus right now.
Which does not mean that I am against a revision of the GPL.