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 B12E071 for ; Mon, 29 Aug 2016 18:49:10 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail-oi0-f41.google.com (mail-oi0-f41.google.com [209.85.218.41]) by smtp1.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 31E8B1A9 for ; Mon, 29 Aug 2016 18:49:10 +0000 (UTC) Received: by mail-oi0-f41.google.com with SMTP id j203so62384565oih.2 for ; Mon, 29 Aug 2016 11:49:10 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Sender: linus971@gmail.com In-Reply-To: <1472492553.32433.108.camel@redhat.com> References: <20160827183550.GB1601@katana> <20160828074706.GB1370@kroah.com> <1472492553.32433.108.camel@redhat.com> From: Linus Torvalds Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2016 11:49:08 -0700 Message-ID: To: Rik van Riel Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Cc: "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 Mon, Aug 29, 2016 at 10:42 AM, Rik van Riel wrote: > > Companies like IBM and SGI started participating in Linux because > they knew no competitor would run off with their code, improve it > slightly, and offer a proprietary product for sale based it. Absolutely. Right now we're in the situation that a lot of companies are very suspicious of the GPL, I do agree with Bradley on that. But we put the blame on very different things - I at least partly very much do blame the "culture" that goes with the GPL. Corporate users do see the hostility towards commercial use that we have in some quarters. We should be much more vocal about how it protects even companies from people taking advantage of their code. Yes, they'll always want to have their "value add" on top, but we should push the GPL as a great model for core infrastructure everywhere. We should strive to make companies *like* the GPL, and encourage exactly the kinds of things you mention. What happens instead is the reverse. For example, I just got a note from a person on the dronecode project, where the GPL is being actively pushed away in favor of the BSD-licensed code. Quite frankly, when things like that keep happening, all the talk about "GPL enforcement" is almost entirely pointless. Nobody should kid themselves - if it turns out to be almost entirely about the Linux kernel, we should call it that. And I really do blame the hardliner GPL copyleft people. For example, I'd claim that one big reason LLVM has been so successful has been entirely *technical* - but a techjnical issue pushed for by strong copyleft. One of the biggest advantages of LLVM has been the IR, which is obviously one of the really core ideas of LLVM - that's where the whole *name* of LLVM comes from: the generic IR concept, and the "virtual machine" it is for.. Was having a generic and well-documented IR something really revolutionary? No. People have been talking about it for years. Including very much asking for it from gcc. If you write plugins, if you do instrumentation, if you do any number of things (academic people have lots of things that they want to interface with the compiler), you really want to work with a good IR to get access to the compiler without having to actually build and modify the compiler itself. In fact, I myself started "sparse" exactly because gcc was such a pain to interface with. So it's a very basic technical thing. Gcc never had a good externally visible IR. Of course, part of it was that gcc historically used RTL internally, which is just a much nastier format than SSA, but I remember people asking for an architecture-neutral IR long long ago (yes, I used to follow gcc fairly closely), and a large part of it was also a _political_ decision for strong copyleft reasons. rms did not want an open IR, because rms did not want those external plugins. Yes, yes, gcc has a plugin model now. Competition happened, llvm was getting quite powerful, there were tons of reasons why plugins do exist. But I think a lot of people turned to llvm simply because of technical issues that at least partly had a historical political strong copyleft source. So I think a hard-liner attitude ends up really hurting projects technically. If you want to use the license as a "weapon" to expand your reach, it can and does back-fire. There were obviously other reasons for llvm too, so I'm not claiming things like these are the _only_ background, not at all. End result: we want to show how the GPL can help make better technology, and aim to have companies feel like the GPL protects *them* too, and their efforts and assets. I don't think that kind of awareness is very common. Instead, it's seen as a fight. Linus