Sun rises on GPL 3 for Linus?

The soap opera of open source has long been enlivened by the tensions between some of the leading players. Viz:

RMS: "Call it GNU/Linux!"
Linus: "No!"
RMS:"You slag!"
Eben:"Leave it, Richard, he's not worth it"

As with all good soaps, this basic premise is capable of infinite looping.

RMS:"Let's go to GPL 3"
Linus: "No!"
RMS:"You slag!"
Eben:"Leave it, Richard, he's not... oh, sod this for a game of lawyers. I'm off."

However, what characterises a great soap is character development. And, rather excitingly, this seems to be happening. Take a look at this post from Linus yesterday, to the Linux Kernel Mailing List, where he says:


> I have yet to see any actual *reasons* for licensing under the GPLv3,
> though.

Btw, if Sun really _is_ going to release OpenSolaris under GPLv3, that
_may_ be a good reason. I don't think the GPLv3 is as good a license as
v2, but on the other hand, I'm pragmatic, and if we can avoid having two kernels with two different licenses and the friction that causes, I at least see the _reason_ for GPLv3. As it is, I don't really see a reason at all.

I personally doubt it will happen, but hey, I didn't really expect them to open-source Java either(*), so it's not like I'm infallible in my
predictions.

(*) And I've been pushing for that since before they even released it - I
walked out on Bill Joy at a private event where they discussed their
horrible previous Java license.


I wonder how this links to the current and rapidly rising interest in Sun's ZFS filing system, which is looking like a really good thing, is open source, is going to be part of Mac OS X Leopard, but is on an incompatible licence to GPL and thus can't be made part of the Linux kernel.

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We hope that's cleared things up. Really.