I won't convert Linux to GPL 3, says Torvalds

Linus Torvalds said on Wednesday that he won't convert Linux to version 3 of the General Public Licence (GPL), as he objects to digital rights management (DRM) provisions in the proposed update.

The position is a significant - though not entirely unexpected - rejection of the update, the first to the seminal licence in 15 years. Linux, the kernel at the heart of an operating system that clones much of generally proprietary Unix, is considered the best-known and most successful example of open source software.

Torvalds said in a posting to the Linux kernel mailing list: "Conversion isn't going to happen. I don't think the GPL v3 conversion is going to happen for the kernel, since I personally don't want to convert any of my code."

Torvalds specifically objected to one new provision in the GPL 3 draft that opposes DRM, which is technology that uses encryption to control the use of content and running of software. He said: "I think it's insane to require people to make their private signing keys available, for example. I wouldn't do it."

The GPL is a legal document and manifesto of the free software and open source movements. It outlines several freedoms for collaborative software development, stipulating that a program's underlying source code may be seen, copied, modified and distributed.

The Linux-GPL issue highlights a long-running philosophical split in the collaborative programming movements. Torvalds represents a pragmatic approach that accommodates computer industry prevailing practices. For example, Torvalds worked for years on proprietary software at chip designer Transmeta and he permits proprietary video card drivers to be loaded as modules into the Linux kernel.

On the other side of the divide is Richard Stallman, founder and president of the Free Software Foundation (FSF). His goals are explicitly ethical and social, and his principles are unbending. Stallman and FSF attorney, Eben Moglen, wrote in a GPL 3 background article: "The foundation believes that free software - that is, software that can be freely studied, copied, modified, reused, redistributed and shared by its users - is the only ethically satisfactory form of software development, as free and open scientific research is the only ethically satisfactory context for the conduct of mathematics, physics or biology."

The FSF released the first public draft of GPL 3 earlier in January. The move began what's expected to be about a year's worth of discussion and revision.

Stephen Shankland writes for CNET News.com