update 2025-11: WARNING! THIS DIALOGUE NEVER HAPPENED! IT IS A DIALOGUE IMAGINED BY AI BETWEEN STALLMAN VS TORVALDS ON GPL3 (explained) VS GPL2 (explained):

“FOSS means that effort is shared across organizations and lowers maintenance costs significantly” (src: comment by JohnFOSS on itsfoss.com)

getting the naming right: Why is it GNU Linux and not just Linux?

• because it would given the developers who wrote the c compiler gcc (many contributors) and libc (many contributors) that compiles the kernel (and a lot of other stuff) no credit

Linus talking about GPL v3 vs GPL v2 (the better one)

• • the (GPL 2.0) intented social contract is: “i give you sourcecode, give me back your changes”

  • Linus drew criticism over his “stubbornness” to stick with GPL 2.0 e.g. Oracle’s Sun’s ZFS filesystem is released under a GPL incompatible licence, that as seen in this video statement, that is completely on purpose, just as it is (probably) on purpose by Oracle’s Sun to be DELIBERATELY incompatible with GPL (it seems to be a Microsoft-like a fake-support for the Open Source movement attempt companies like that “want to do marketing as Open Source but not really do Open Source”)
    • GPL 2.0: (spdx.org calls it “Deprecated”? calling this the successor version)
      • GPL-2.0+.txt
      • GPL-2.0+.pdf (Courier like Font)
      • GPL-2.0+ (Liberation Sans, Arial like font)
  • Tivoization /ˈtiːvoʊɪˌzeɪʃən/ is the creation of a system that incorporates software under the terms of a copyleft software license like the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL), but uses hardware restrictions or digital rights management (DRM) to prevent users from running modified versions of the software on that hardware. Richard Stallman coined the term in reference to TiVo‘s use of GNU GPL licensed software on the TiVo brand digital video recorders (DVR), which actively blocks users from running modified software on its hardware by design.^[1][2] Stallman believes this practice denies users some of the freedom that the GNU GPL was designed to protect.^[3] The Free Software Foundation refers to tivoized hardware as “tyrant devices”.^[4] (creditz: wiki)

  • Linux kernel licensing rules

  • The Linux Kernel is provided under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 only (GPL-2.0), as provided in LICENSES/preferred/GPL-2.0, with an explicit syscall exception described in LICENSES/exceptions/Linux-syscall-note, as described in the COPYING file.This documentation file provides a description of how each source file should be annotated to make its license clear and unambiguous. It doesn’t replace the Kernel’s license.The license described in the COPYING file applies to the kernel source as a whole, though individual source files can have a different license which is required to be compatible with the GPL-2.0:

    GPL-1.0+  :  GNU General Public License v1.0 or later
    GPL-2.0+  :  GNU General Public License v2.0 or later
    https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/plain/LICENSES/preferred/GPL-2.0?h=v5.17-rc2
    LGPL-2.0  :  GNU Library General Public License v2 only
    LGPL-2.0+ :  GNU Library General Public License v2 or later
    LGPL-2.1  :  GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1 only
    LGPL-2.1+ :  GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1 or later
    

    src: https://docs.kernel.org/process/license-rules.html

  • actually there is a whole folder “LICENCE” that is shipped with the kernel sources, which has the following subfolders:
    • deprecated
    • dual
    • exceptions
    • preferred
  • here is a list of all sorts of free licences https://spdx.org/licenses/ (RSS Feed)

• Can I use the word “Linux” or the Tux logo?

  

  hereby creditz shall be given to Larry_Ewing for creating the Tux Logo

  Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds and its use is governed by the Linux Trademark Institute. Please consult the following page for further information: Trademark Usage

  The Tux penguin logo was created by Larry Ewing using Gimp software. It is free to use, including commercially, as long as you give Larry Ewing proper credit (“if someone asks”). For any other permissions, please reach out to Mr. Larry Ewing directly. (src)

• I heard that Linux ships with non-free “blobs” (pieces of software that are binary closed source)
  
• Before many devices are able to communicate with the OS, they must first be initialized with the “firmware” provided by the device manufacturer.
• This firmware is not part of Linux and isn’t “executed” by the kernel — it is merely uploaded to the device during the driver initialization stage.
• While some firmware images are built from free software, a large subset of it is only available for redistribution in binary-only form.
• To avoid any licensing confusion, firmware blobs were moved from the main Linux tree into a separate repository called linux-firmware.
• It is possible to use Linux without any non-free firmware binaries, but usually at the cost of rendering a lot of hardware inoperable.
• Furthermore, many devices that do not require a firmware blob during driver initialization simply already come with non-free firmware preinstalled on them.
• If your goal is to run a 100% free-as-in-freedom setup, you will often need to go a lot further than just avoiding loadable binary-only firmware blobs.
• src: https://kernel.org/category/faq.html

Links:

https://www.linuxplumbersconf.org/

because this site https://lpc2021.org/ is massively broken (WTF LPC?) who wants to watch the 2021 conference will have to rely on Google: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVsQ_xZBEyN2c21jFUgqI2iMa094zXanH

manpage of man: man.man.txt

mandb.man.txt

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