Time for some license prioritization

[Geico Caveman]

Linux Torvalds and many other respected people in the community are hung up
over the DRM provisions of GPL v3 draft. The rest is fine with them. In the
meantime, Moglen and others are trying to add some even more cast iron
features to the license that make the clear violation in spirit, and
probable violation in letter of GPL v2 like the Novell deal impossible.

I think that these additional features are definitely more important in
their immediacy than the DRM issue - where there are some good arguments
for Linus' stance.

I think that Stallman and Moglen should be persuaded to delay the DRM
related stuff to GPL v4 and instead add the traitor killer stuff to GPL v3,
get the community united on it and get it out of the door. I have no doubt
that a fair trial will expose Novell's position on their deal's alleged
non-violation of GPL v2 to be a lie, but these legal proceedings can take
years, years that will allow Novell to survive as a Linux vendor and steal
code from developers. I think Novell should be struck totally and
immediately.

They say they will fork anything that goes under GPL v3. Oh yeah, fork the
kernel, fork the toolchain gcc, libs, emacs, and the small matter of about
half a million open source pieces of code, etc. Go ahead - make my day.
Even the combined manpower of Novell, Microsoft, IBM, etc. could not
possibly take that on.

Two years from now, when we are all running Linux kernel 2.8.x, with gcc 5.5
or so, Novell will still be peddling Linux kernel 2.6.22 with gcc 4.1 with
outdated apps promising its increasingly dubious customers that its
products are still this century, while fighting a losing court case trying
to to defend its violation of GPL v2. 

Novell has made its bed. Its laid down with the snake. Its common courtesy
for us to supply the covers and switch off the light.