关心自由软件的人应该都知道 Linus 对 GPL v3 不是非常支持。今天看了 Linus 的这封邮件以后大概明白了他的理由。

… Laws (like copyright law) and legal issues, on the other hand, are fundamentally *not* about “personal” things, they are about interactions that are *not* personal. So laws need to be fundamentally different from morals. A law has to take into account that different people have different moral background, and a law has to be _pragmatic_. So trying to mix up a moral argument with a legal one is a fundamental mistake. They have two totally different and separate areas. The GPLv2 is a *legal* license. It’s not a “moral license” or a “spiritual guide”. Its raison-d’etre is that pragmatic area where different peoples different moral rules meet. In contrast, a persons *choice* to use the GPLv2 is his private choice. Totally different. My choice of the GPLv2 doesn’t say anything about my choice of laws or legal issues. …

License 是 legal issue，它会对许多人产生影响，必须考虑实际的问题。而 RMS 在 GPL v3 加入道德上的东西，但道德是很个人的事情，法律跟道德完全是两码事。Linus 在邮件的后面还举了纳粹士兵、甘地、罗宾汉的事例来说明 moral 的未必就是 legal 的，因此在 license 中混入道德上的东西从根本上来说就是一个错误。

还没有看过 GPL v3，有时间要去看看。对这些争论以我的阅历没有资格去做什么评论，能做的只能是关注而已，并做些思考。