this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2024
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Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Wait... they're militant enough about Free Software to refuse to package anything even slightly non-Free, but their "final goal" is to switch the kernel to BSD (i.e. away from copyleft)? WTF?
HyperbolaBSD is a hard fork, that relicenses the OpenBSD kernel as GPL (as permitted by permissive licenses.)
HyperbolaBSD has already dug into the OpenBSD source tree and discovered numerous licensing issues.
https://git.hyperbola.info:50100/~team/documentation/todo.git/tree/openbsd_kernel-file-list-with-license-issues.md
HyperbolaBSD will be a truly libre distro that takes advantage of copyleft, while moving away from the major issues Linux is stepping into too.
Ah, that's different then!
Hmm...
From https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:manual:contrib:hyperbolabsd_faq:
It's not clear to me that relicensing the existing code to GPL is what they're planning on doing; it sounds more like they're going to mix in GPL code but not change the existing files to GPL en masse after they finish harmonizing them to two-clause BSD.
Frankly, IMO that's too bad: I'd love to see them make the whole shebang GPLv3-or-later
Related question: is all Linux kernel code required to be licensed GPLv2-only, or are individual contributions allowed to be GPLv2-or-later? I'd be nice to see if that project (and stuff like HURD and ReactOS) could benefit from at least some Linux contributions, even if they can't copy it wholesale.
afaik Linus is against GPLv3 in his Linux project https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaKIZ7gJlRU
It's an ancient divide in parts of the FOSS community that believes copyleft licenses are not "free" because they force you to license contributions under the same license.
Yeah, I know, but I would've expected a distro that describes itself as "GNU/Linux-libre" would fall on the other side of it!
No one thinks this. Even permissively licensed BSD operating systems package GPL software and accept it as Free Software.