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ender341341 • yesterday at 11:49 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

> On top of that it was going to be very hard (near impossible) to get all devs to agree to a v2->v3 license bump.

My understanding was this was never a problem, almost all of the kernel was licensed as "GPL2 or newer" until GPL3 was released and they removed the "or newer" from new releases

Replies

tredre3 • today at 12:22 AM

You're mistaken. Here's a direct quote from Linux Torvalds dated 2006:

    The "version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version"
    language in the GPL copying file is not - and has never been - part of the
    actual License itself. It's part of the _explanatory_ text that talks
    about how to apply the license to your program, and it says that _if_ you
    want to accept any later versions of the GPL, you can state so in your
    source code.
    The Linux kernel has never stated that in general. Some authors have
    chosen to use the suggested FSF boilerplate (including the "any later
    version" language), but the kernel in general never has.
    In other words: the _default_ license strategy is always just the
    particular version of the GPL that accompanies a project. If you want to
    license a program under _any_ later version of the GPL, you have to state
    so explicitly. Linux never did.
https://yarchive.net/comp/linux/gpl.html