A fight against evil or a fight for attention?
Two hot issues are making the rounds. First, Debian and Firefox are having a spat, and the end result may be that Debian will distribute Firefox under a different name. Second, the war betwen Linus Torvalds and other Kernel developers and the Free Software Foundation over GPLv3 is continuing, with Torvalds saying he's fed up with the FSF. Here is my take on both, and related issues.
First, let me tell you a little about evil. Lies are evil. Greed is evil. When the attempt to satisfy one's own desire for power and/or wealth prohibits others from engaging in perfectly ethical practices, that is evil.
There are a number of reasons why Linus Torvalds and others do not like the GPLv3 drafts. Let's take the example of its attempt to prevent Tivoization. TiVo uses Linux for its digital video recorder products. TiVo makes its modifications to the source code publicly available, as required by GPLv2. The term "Tivoization" describes the fact that you can't further modify the TiVo source code and make it run on TiVo hardware. TiVo uses a digital signature to prevent you from doing so. The Free Software Foundation objects to this. Linus Torvalds does not.
Mozilla wants to protect its trademark, which reflects its reputation. It is trying to do so by prohibiting anyone from distributing its browser under the name Firefox with the Firefox logo if they apply patches to the software that haven't been approved by the Mozilla team. Debian believes this goes against the spirit of free software. So Debian may distribute Firefox under a different name, along with a different logo and icon.
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