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<img src="http://parcom.pro-networks.org/PROneT-News/Linux/News/3.jpg" align="right" alt="Torvalds should create a better GPL">Torvalds should create a better GPL
by John Carroll
September 29, 2006

The anti-GPLv3 position of Torvalds, and now a large cross-section of Linux kernel developers, appears to be hardening. In response to a rebuttal by Eben Moglen, chief counsel for the Free Software Foundation, re-invited the Linux kernel team to engage in the GPLv3 discussion process, Torvalds had this to say:

<i> I wonder why everybody but the FSF seems to know my email address, but the FSF can't find it.

If it has an anti-Tivo clause, I think it's bad. I've tried to explain it to some people (the freedom of the _project_ is much too important to let any license clause limit how you can use it), but when other people did that, the FSF just explained how they had mis-used the word "use".

But I'm so fed up with the FSF right now that I'm not in the least interested. There's no way in _hell_ they can claim that they don't know my standpoint, so what are they even asking for? </i>

Other quotes from Torvalds in the aforementioned article on NewsForge provided what I thought to be a clear and distilled explanation of the problem with the anti-DRM provisions in GPLv3:

<i>It's their hardware. I do _not_ want to ask for control of the "environment" back in a license. I want the improvement to the _software_, not the keys to the kingdom. The "environment" a program runs in (or the medium it is distributed on) doesn't have to be open. Just the program itself.</i>

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