linux-kernel - Re: The linux devs can rescind their license grant.

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Message-ID: <871s8d63lx.fsf@notabene.neil.brown.name>
Date:   Fri, 26 Oct 2018 09:52:42 +1100
From:   NeilBrown <neil@...wn.name>
To:     esr@...rsus.com
Cc:     "Theodore Y. Ts'o" <tytso@....edu>,
        Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
        visionsofalice@...chan.it,
        linux-kernel <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>, rms@....org,
        bruce@...ens.com, moglen@...umbia.edu, bkuhn@...onservancy.org,
        editor@....net, Laura Abbott <labbott@...hat.com>,
        Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
        ksummit-discuss@...ts.linuxfoundation.org,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
        Olof Johansson <olof@...om.net>, Chris Mason <clm@...com>,
        Mishi Choudhary <mishi@...ux.com>,
        linux-kernel-owner@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: The linux devs can rescind their license grant.

On Thu, Oct 25 2018, Eric S. Raymond wrote:

> NeilBrown <neil@...wn.name>:
>> I think you are blurring two groups here.
>> Ted describes "anti-CoC dissidents" as people who are advancing an
>> argument about rescinding their license.  This is a smaller groups than
>> the "ant-CoC camp" who don't really like the CoC.  I suspect is it is a
>> much smaller group when restricting to actual copyright holders.
>
> You may be right that these are semi-distinct groups.  I don't think
> the distinction makes a lot of difference to my argument, though.
> Either way, (a) there's been a process failure by the leadership, and
> (b) the threat of a massive legal disruption is real.
>
>> I am against the CoC as it stands, but rescinding any license is such an
>> enormous over-reaction, I find the concept laughable.
>
> I'm...not sure I do.  I was going to agree with you that it's a
> massive overreaction, but then a simple question occurred to me: what
> else could *I* do if I thought I had a significant stake (I don't; my
> kernel contributions are minor and old) and felt my interests were
> damaged?

Reasonable people can certainly see this issue differently.
My perspective is that I have already gained so much benefit in return
for my investment that this is little more than a rounding error.  If
something happened that really did threaten the value of my investment,
I'm sure there would be so many others who thought so too, that we would be
able to fork the community.

>
> All this could have been avoided so easily. A felt need for a new Code
> should not have been followed by the immediate imposition of one,
> but by a public RFC process and consensus-building - a process in which
> even those who lost arguments about the construction of the code could
> know they had been heard.

I do agree about the process failure.  The "immediate imposition" was
unnecessary and (I think) harmful.

Thanks,
NeilBrown


> -- 
> 		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>
>
> My work is funded by the Internet Civil Engineering Institute: https://icei.org
> Please visit their site and donate: the civilization you save might be your own.

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