From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from smtp1.linuxfoundation.org (smtp1.linux-foundation.org [172.17.192.35]) by mail.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 4F508258 for ; Fri, 26 Aug 2016 21:41:42 +0000 (UTC) Received: from imap.thunk.org (imap.thunk.org [74.207.234.97]) by smtp1.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id DA913121 for ; Fri, 26 Aug 2016 21:41:39 +0000 (UTC) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2016 17:41:36 -0400 From: Theodore Ts'o To: James Bottomley Message-ID: <20160826214136.e6oeapzxzwzichdb@thunk.org> References: <1472225332.2751.56.camel@redhat.com> <1472230114.2751.67.camel@redhat.com> <1472241199.5189.86.camel@HansenPartnership.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <1472241199.5189.86.camel@HansenPartnership.com> Cc: Linus Torvalds , "Bradley M. Kuhn" , ksummit-discuss@lists.linuxfoundation.org Subject: Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [CORE TOPIC] GPL defense issues List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , On Fri, Aug 26, 2016 at 03:53:19PM -0400, James Bottomley wrote: > > I think the disagreement is over *when* you give up and go for the > final resort. And who you trust to take that decision. > At the end of the day this is really a governance question. There are a huge number of stakeholders involved. It includes the kernel developers who do the work; and those who own the copyright; and those who pay many of our salaries; and those who might pay our salaries in the future if we can convince them to be good citizens; and so on. Not all of them will be represented at the Kernel Summit. It will include those entities who are GPL maximalists and who believe that kernel modules are always infected by the GPLv2, and those who take a looser interpretation of that particular issue. And that's a political question and a legal interpretation question. (Disclosure: given that I supervised the student at MIT who ported the Transarc's Andrew File System to Linux back in the 1990's, and who requested a clarification from Linus that taking pre-existing third party code and linking it to the Linux kernel via a kernel module wouldn't make it a derived work leading to GPL infection, it should be pretty clear where I fall on that spectrum. During those early years the Linux AFS port enabled the use of Linux by a huge number of MIT students, faculty, and staff, as well as at other universities such as CMU and even some National Labs. As such, I consider that work to be a Good Thing and am *completely* unapologetic if it upsets some of the GPL maximalists out there.) These sorts of legal / political questions are things for which I believe the Kernel Summit isn't well equipped to handle. In particular, if the SFC has a pre-existing agenda --- that is, if they have clients and have lawyers who who believe very strongly that the next step is to "bring the question to a lot of Courts"[1] --- and they want a forum to try to convince kernel developers to support them in trying to force the courts around the world to give us an answer to legal questions around the GPL --- that's inherently a political question, and I don't think it's appropriate give them a soapbox to try to let them advance that agenda at the Kernel Summit. [1] https://lwn.net/Articles/695014/ I've already gotten more than one request from representatives from other non-developer stakeholders requesting that they also be able to attend. And in fairness, if we were to give the SFC a soapbox, then there will be any number of lawyers who would want to attend to make sure that the interests of their clients would also be protected --- and under what standards of fairness would we give lawyers with a specific agenda that they want to push access, but deny access for other lawyers to attend? Let's just not go there. The Linux Foundation has run Legal Summits before, and has invited kernel developers to give input to the legal beagles at those Legal Summits. But we're talking about the Kernel Summit here, and not a LF Legal Summit. - Ted