The GNU General Public License, which is the most widely used free-software license and is used to license the open-source Linux kernel, is set for its first revision in 13 years. Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux operating system, last week weighed in on the upcoming challenges facing GPL Version 3 in an e-mail interview with eWEEK Senior Editor Peter Galli.
There are reports you have had problems with the GPL and, at one point, were looking at another license for Linux. Is this correct?
I don"t think the GPL is perfect, and one of my issues has been how verbose it is. Another is just the politics involved, which I haven"t always enjoyed. For example, for another small project, I use the Open Source License (OSL), which is more to the point and not as political, but [it] has otherwise similar approaches as the GPL. But, hey, nothing is ever perfect. So while I may have some niggling concerns with the GPL, they are in the details, and in the end, I actually think that the GPL simply is the best license for the kernel.