Re: Dual-Licensing Linux Kernel with GPL V2 and GPL V3

From: Paulo Marques
Date: Fri Jun 15 2007 - 10:47:20 EST


Alan Cox wrote:
But COPYING *is* the entire text and starts with: "
GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
Version 2, June 1991"

so there is no confusion about the version.

The version of the COPYING file (and the licence document), not of the
licence on the code.

Wrong.
Why do you say "Wrong"? Have you contributed some code to the kernel thinking that the kernel was "v2 or later", only to find out later that it wasn't?

A fair bit of the kernel is probably v2 or later but not all of it and
that shouldn't really matter as regards the kernel anyway, the GPLv2 only
bits (if v2 only is a valid status) anchor it.

So we are violently agreeing, then?

This sub-thread started by me showing that:

$ find -name "*.c" | xargs grep "any later version" | wc -l
3138
$ find -name "*.c" | wc -l
9482

This is a somewhat crude measure but it shows that only about 30% of the kernel is "v2 or later" and those pieces could be used on some other "v2 or later" project (including v3). But the kernel as a whole is v2 and my point was that the claim that there are just a few "v2 only" files was bogus.

--
Paulo Marques - www.grupopie.com

"As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error."
Weisert
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