SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The GNU project was officially announced on 27 September 1983 by Richard Stallman. Thirty-five years of a project that has now become the fundamental building block of everything we use and see in technology in 2018. I would not be wrong to say that there isn't a single proprietary piece of software that anyone is still using from 35 years ago – please post comments if there is something still being used.
There is only one reason for this longevity: the GNU project was built upon the premise that the code is available to anyone, anywhere with the only restriction that whatever is done to the code, it shall always be available to anyone, forever. Richard Stallman's genius in crafting the copyleft license that is the GNU General Public License is probably the best hack of the 20th century software industry.
Extra: Happy Birthday, GNU: Why I still love GNU 35 years later
(Score: 5, Insightful) by stormwyrm on Friday September 28 2018, @11:10AM (4 children)
Gee, you say that as though it were a bad thing. But even though I'm not really against this happening, it probably will never happen. Since Linus Torvalds has never insisted on copyright assignments for code contributions to Linux so all such contributions are still copyright whoever contributed them. These many copyright holders must all agree on a sweeping licensing change such as that, and I seriously doubt that any movement will get them all to agree. If even one code contributor refuses or cannot be contacted, any such attempt has difficulties in proportion to the significance and complexity of the contributions they hold. It will become necessary to excise all of the code of the holdouts and replace them with equivalents that can be proven in a court of law to not be derivative of the original code, or else anyone distributing the kernel under new license becomes guilty of copyright infringement against the holdouts. GPLv2 vs. GPLv3 has been a divisive topic ever since the new license came out, and there will be certain to be many contributors of significant portions of the kernel who will refuse any such attempts to change the license. Given the kind of waste of effort that this would entail, I don't think even Richard Stallman would agree to such attempts to change the license of the Linux kernel. The FSF is nothing if not pragmatic, and the GPLv2, while not ideal for them, still helps advance their cause.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 0, Troll) by VLM on Friday September 28 2018, @11:57AM (1 child)
You say that like its a problem, but we're dealing with people who care a lot more about the author of the code being a sassy black woman than they care about the code actually working or security in general or memory leaks or priv escalation attacks. In fact the NSA would love to fund it as long as it results in more useful zero-day exploits. A kernel written entirely by gay trans non-white non-asian women is a win to those people regardless if it works or not and regardless if anyone uses it or not. What matters is white males can't have associate with each other or have a "safe space".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @05:31PM
muh uppreshun!!! they are tryin to mahk me talk guhd!
oh noes my neo nazi friends might think i got cucked
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday September 28 2018, @04:51PM
Actually it's not as if all developers must agree at once to it. There can be lobbying to add the "or later" (or even just a more restrictive "or 3") clause to the license of individual code snippets; such code snippets continue to be license compatible with code only under GPL version 2. Then when a critical mass is reached, an effort can be started to replace the code of people who don't want to add the version 3 disclaimer. As soon as all code has the "or later" or "or 3" clause, it can be easily switched to GPLv3.
Indeed, should it actually happen that people withdraw their license due to CoC issues, it might even speed up such a transition project, because then that code has to be written anew anyway, so the "or later" provision can be added to all that new code immediately.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Friday September 28 2018, @11:03PM
I was trying to present the outcomes neutrally, although i was initially listed negative ones only, maybe some of that tone still crept in.
Didn't mean it as good or bad, but as something we might reasonably see come about as a result of the kernel getting torn up by code withdrawals. If that occurs I could easily see a push to move to the next version GPL that doesn't allow that type of behavior.
I was typing in a rush as it was time to head to work :-)
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды