[GPL] version 3 was not a good "here we give you version 2" and then we try to sneak in this new rules and try force everyone to upgrade; that was the part I disliked. The FSF did really sneaky stuff, downright immoral in my opinion.

— Linus Torvalds

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "[GPL] version 3 was not a good "here we give you version 2" and then we try to sneak in this new rules and try force everyone to upgrade; that was the part I disliked. The FSF did really sneaky stuff, downright immoral in my opinion." in the context of "(2014), DebConf 14: Q&A with Linus Torvalds" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "Linus Torvalds" (Quotes, 2010s, 2014) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Linus Torvalds

About Linus Torvalds

Linus Benedict Torvalds (born 28 December 1969) is a Finnish-American computer programmer, best known as the creator of the Linux kernel.