bits 0x50 - Calender Week 16, 2024

> Public Licenses
GPL has been quite some headache for me recently: not in the way that I have problem with its progressive ideology, but the compatibility terms.

First, the GPL licenses are not necessarily compatible within the GPL family:
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#AllCompatibility

Take GPLv2 and GPLv3 or example, I want to incorporate two code components, A and B into my project (components as code, not libraries).

                        | License of Component A
                        |---------+-----------------------------+
                        | GPLv2 o | GPLv2 + | GPLv3 o | GPLv3 + |
------------+-----------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
License     | GPLv2 o   | Yes     |
of          |-----------+---------+---------+
Component   | GPLv2 +   | Yes     | Yes     |
B           |-----------+---------+---------+---------+
            | GPLv3 o   | No      | Yes     | Yes     |
            |-----------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
            | GPLv3 +   | No      | Yes     | Yes     | Yes     |
------------+-----------+---------+---------+---------+---------+

o means only
+ means or-later
X imcompatible: there is no license that is compatible with both A and B

GPLv2-only (such as the linux kernel) and GPLv3-only/-or-later are not compatible.

Take another example: GPL also applies to library: if you write a kernel module, which is (and must be) linked against the linux kernel code, it has to be compatible with GPLv2-only (if you want a copyleft license).

GPLv3 is not compatible with GPLv2, sorry, you can not have GPLv3-only kernel modules, it’s impossible. https://github.com/jarun/spy/issues/1#issuecomment-147501332

GPL is hardly compatible with other copyleft licenses
I recently learned about the EUPL . It looks really appealing but then I see the issue:

https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/matrix-eupl-compatible-open-source-licences

You can incorporate EUPL licensed code into GPL project but not vice versa! Well, GPL is immutable, that’s the point of GPL no?

Nevertheless, I’d like to try EUPL in the future.

Good Reads

Why X86 needs to die - by Julian Scheffers
https://hackaday.com/2024/03/21/why-x86-needs-to-die/

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