GPLv3 Could Kill Open Source, Top Linux Developers Warn

Published: Sep 23, 2006
Updated: Feb 2, 2021
1 minute read
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Many of the top Linux developers have announced their objections to the proposed GPLv3.

In a position paper released Sept. 22, leading Linux developers like Andrew Morton, James E.J. Bottomley, Greg Kroah-Hartman, Christoph Hellwig, and six others explained in detail why they “reject the current license proposal.”

While Linux founder Linus Torvalds did not sign this document, he has already voiced his objection to version 3 of the GPL (GNU General Public License).

In a note concerning the paper, Kroah-Hartman explained, “No one else is standing up in the free software community besides Linus stating that they think the GPLv3 is bad. So we wanted to make our statement also known.”

The developers open by saying that this is their position on GPLv3 in its current Draft 2 form, “and its surrounding process issued by some of the Maintainers of the Linux Kernel speaking purely in their role as kernel maintainers.”

They go on to write that they dont see any significant reasons to change the GPL.

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Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

I'm editor-at-large for Ziff Davis Enterprise. That's a fancy title that means I write about whatever topic strikes my fancy or needs written about across the Ziff Davis Enterprise family of publications. You'll find most of my stories in Linux-Watch, DesktopLinux and eWEEK. Prior to becoming a technology journalist, I worked at NASA and the Department of Defense on numerous major technological projects.

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