On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 01:59:16PM -0700, Andrew Lentvorski wrote:
Ummmm, given that both the BSD and X11 licenses were very much de rigeur
in academia at the time, Linus actively chose the GPL.
In fact, Linus originally wanted *no commercial distribution at all*.
However, he *changed* the license to the GPL so that he could take
advantage of the GNU components.
This makes no sense. There is no incompatility of licenses between the
kernel and userspace. There are no GNU components in the kernel.
The GPL v2 is NOT modified. The kernel is covered by the GPL v2
period. Although some projects use the phrase "GPL v2 or later" it is
not inconsistent to choose only a single version.
It is a very specific snapshot of the GPLv2. Fortunately, the FSF never
updated the GPLv2 or this would have caused issues. They have chosen to
cross the issue with GPLv3.
Um, that would be what the v2 part o the GPLv2 is, it's a version number.
Changing it would require a different version number. I've diffed numerous
copies of the GPLv2 I have around and the only differences seem to be in
the addendum at the end different people have various out-of-date mailing
addresses for the FSF.
A "specific snapshot of the GPLv2" _IS_ the GPLv2.
David
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