A group of Maintainers of the Linux Kernel (think of them as Grand Dukes to Linus Torvald's Tsar) have released a statement on The Dangers and Problems with GPLv3 (Sept. 15, 2006) telling the Free Software Foundation to scrap the whole project.

The basic objections concern:

The draft's effort to control DRM usage. "FSF's attempts at drafting and re-drafting these provisions have shown them to be a nasty minefield which keeps ensnaring innocent and beneficial uses of encryption and DRM technologies . . . . [which are] tantamount to co-opting the work of all prior contributions into the service of the FSF's political ends, and thus represents a fundamental violation of . . . trust . . . ."

The "additional restrictions section . . . makes GPLv3 a pick and choose soup of possible restrictions which is going to be a nightmare for our distributions to sort out legally and get right. Thus, it represents a significant and unacceptable retrograde step over GPLv2 . . . [and] create[s] the possibility of fragmentation of the licensing universes among particular chosen restrictions . . . ."

The patent provision, which "would potentially jeopardise the entire patent portfolio of a company simply by the act of placing a GPLv3 licensed programme on their website." This would have a "chilling effect it will have on the necessary corporate input to our innovation stream."

The peroration:

Further, since the FSF is proposing to shift all of its projects to GPLv3 and apply pressure to every other GPL licensed project to move, we foresee the release of GPLv3 portends the Balkanisation of the entire Open Source Universe upon which we rely. This Balkanisation, which will be manifested by distributions being forced to fork various packages in order to get consistent licences, has the potential to inflict massive collateral damage upon our entire ecosystem and jeopardise the very utility and survival of Open Source. Since we can see nothing of sufficient value in the current drafts of the GPLv3 to justify this terrible cost, we can only assume the FSF is unaware of the current potential for disaster of the course on which is has embarked. Therefore, we implore the FSF to re-examine the consequences of its actions and to abandon the current GPLv3 process before it becomes too late.

Clearly, either Richard Stallman, Eben Moglen, and the FSF give way, or Linux splits from their wing of the Open Source Movement. But Stallman is moved by religious faith, not prudential calculations. It is unlikely that he failed to anticipate this development, or that he will give way now. So the question then becomes what the FSF as an institution will do; support Stallman, or depose him? And this depends on its Board and governance structure. And, of course, on what the code writiers do in the future; will they choose to write for GPLv3 or stick with GPLv2?

Corporate sponsors are also moving strongly. The Open Source Development Laboratory, an umbrella for corporate interests in Linux and open source software in general, met with FSF reps in Chicago last week, inconclusively.

The technical term for all this is "mess." Maybe next time they should get together in Sinigaglia.

UPDATE (03:00 p.m.): Torvalds weighs in with what he likes about GPLv2, as reported in Linux-Watch. As L-W says, the statement confirms that:

So, it seems that as long as Stallman and the other authors of the GPLv3 stick to their guns that the new license must include its current patent language, its objections to DRM, and its additional restrictions section, it will not be used in Linux. For Linus, and the majority of senior Linux kernel developers, the best open-source license is already here -- and it's the GPLv2.