GPLv2 or GPLv3?

Which is best?

  • GPLv1

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • GPLv2

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • GPLv3

    Votes: 1 100.0%
  • GPLv1 or later

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • GPLv2 or later

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • GPLv3 or later

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • GPLv2 OR GPLv3

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • GPLv2 AND GPLv3

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Other GPL related license

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Non-GPL

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    1

λ the β-Redex Reducer

β-Redex Reducing Member
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Which one is better?

I am in doubt. I am not sure if the tivoization clause is good. What about dangerous things like medical equipment and cars? Although I think alcohol would probably be a lot more dangerous because anyone can go drunk driving but not anyone would be able to install new software on his car. And cars are dangerous anyway if used by irresponsable people.

Also, why would cars and medical equipment need software updates? GPLv3 allows the hardware to prevent updates from the user if no one else can update the software. So a car could just be made so that no one can update the software on it and the GPLv3 would be fine with that.

When would you want a device that the vendor can update but the user cannot update?

If it were not for tivoization I would be in the GPLv3 camp, but right now I am not sure which is better. I like the anti-patent trolling clause of GPLv3 a lot. Imagine making free software only for MS to then take control over it using silly software patents on simple concepts. And thern people would have to pay MS in order to use your software! Terrible. About as terrible as what Intel did with Tanenbaum and Minix.

I wish I could use GPLv3 without tivoization. Adding the tivoization clause may have been a mistake IMO.
 
Depends if you approach software from a moral or ecosystem-compatibility perspective. I see open-source as a moral stance to begin with, so GPLv3 protects the user better. While GPLv2 might be adopted more by commercial products as it's less strict compared to v3.

Personally I think a product is my product and I should be able to modify it however I wish. For example Comma.ai allows a user to add an advanced cruise-control ('self-driving') to a supported car. https://github.com/commaai/openpilot
I understand that adding such a thing in Europe isn't allowed as we need to guarantee that traffic is safe and follows some standards. But a user should, consciously, be able to change these kind of things.
For example: the Flipper Zero made it easy to copy codes to remotely open a car. Those cars are old and won't get updated to prevent this kind of attack. If the user was allowed to change the code, a patch could be made.
To regulate this stuff you could make the car maintenance person responsible for tracking software versions of a car for example, so there is legally always a qualified person responsible for your cars software. If you do it yourself, you would be responsible.
So, there could be GPLv3 by having a clearer legal process. But that puts the work/responsibility at the government/companies and I guess without that happening GPLv3 will remain more difficult to deploy. But when it has happened tivoization should be less of a problem.

You could have a GPLv3-lite as a light-version without tivoization, or GPLv2+strict which has the nice parts of GPLv3 added, but that could also cause confusion.
 
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