No developer need go to GPL v3, they can stay with v2.
Without establishing a consensus in the community to support
v3, Stallman will indeed put the FSF into irrelevance and
himself into disrepute. That is all there is to it. Personal
attacks just detract from what is factual.
Smitty
Jim Hartley wrote:
> The real question is, if something has been released under GPLv2, can
> anyone FORCE it to change to GPLv3? Even if the FSF owns the copyrights,
> I would not think they could "unrelease" it, all they could do is put
> out a new version under GPLv3 which everyone could then choose to
> ignore. Stallman's "four freedoms" have given users the choice to
> continue using/modifying/distributing the GPLv2 versions. If there is
> any forking being done, it sounds like it will be the FSF doing it! I
> think most people are going to follow the line of least resistance and
> stay with GPLv2.
>
> Jim Hartley
>
> Chad Perrin wrote:
>> On Mon, Oct 23, 2006 at 12:46:54AM -0400, tom smith wrote:
>>
>>> Steve,
>>> Yes, any article that deals in ad hominem attacks should
>>> raise flags as to the possible existence of a hidden agenda.
>>> The author's influences and motivations are not entirely
>>> clear, thus should be suspect. Is this some sort of power
>>> push against the FSF?
>>>
>>
>> Actually, after reading the thing and considering it in light of recent
>> events, I think there's a lot of on-target speculation in there. The
>> paragraph describing Stallman in less than flattering terms isn't
>> inaccurate as far as I can tell and, though it's somewhat unnecessary
>> (the guy could have just made some off-hand comment about "eccentric
>> personal habits" and so on to make his point without sound snarky), it
>> doesn't really detract from the rest of the article unless you allow it
>> to.
>>
>> There are some very sloppy bits of phrasing in there that make me wonder
>> just how much contact the article's author might have had with the FLOSS
>> community ("GNU license" in particular seems a mite sketchy), but the
>> analysis of Stallman's risk of rendering himself irrelevant raises some
>> interesting points. Frankly, I'm of the opinion that would be the best
>> outcome of this: the FLOSS community moves on, the businesses
>> surrounding it prosper on an open source model of software development
>> and support, and Stallman retires into obscurity.
>>
>> It's certainly better than seeing him threaten small, grass roots
>> community distro projects with lawsuits for failing to have the
>> resources of Red Hat at their disposal but having the temerity to offer
>> a Linux distro anyway.
>>
>> Frankly, it looks to me just a little like Stallman is trying to destroy
>> EVERYTHING. He's specifically targeting corporations inclined toward
>> closed software development and support models, threatening the future
>> of Linux-centric companies like Red Hat, and threatening legal action
>> for small community distributions. A conspiracy theorist might suggest
>> that the FSF aims to wipe out competition so that a full-on GNU system
>> can fill in the gaps (though hopefully with something a bit more useful
>> than HURD). I doubt Stallman and the FSF are really thinking that far
>> ahead on this, though. I think they probably really believe they're
>> doing the Right Thing. Unfortunately, they're attempting to do this by
>> being a real fly in everyone's ointment at the same time.
>>
>> I fully expect that Stallman and the FSF will release a GPLv3 that is
>> simply unacceptable to a lot of people, many will move their projects to
>> v3, and any of those projects that anyone cares about will fork.
>>
>> Meanwhile, I'm seriously looking into replacing all my Linux systems
>> with FreeBSD.
>>
>>
>
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