So GPLv3 bans that. That, by itself, is inherently an additional restriction not allowed by GPLv2. They don't need to go out of their way or have a conspiracy to deliberately make it incompatible. Especially since the GPL2, as distributed and suggested, includes the "or later" text which resolves this incompatibility to allow GPL3 software to use GPL2 code. If anything, this encourages GPL2+ as the default GPL license if maximum compatibility is your goal.

Others (e.g. Linus), are more focused on getting the code changes so if they want to use them in the original project they can, and don't feel being able to install it on the device it was built for is as high up on the priority list.

https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/jul/23/tivoization-and-t... https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/mar/25/install-gplv2/ https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017...

Perf does not permit the license to be redistributed as anything except GPLv2, so it conflicts with GPLv3 code.

Linux doesn’t use “or later”. https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/COPYING:

The Linux Kernel is provided under:

  SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0 WITH Linux-syscall-note

  LICENSES/preferred/GPL-2.0

  LICENSES/exceptions/Linux-syscall-note

  Documentation/process/license-rules.rst

All contributions to the Linux Kernel are subject to this COPYING file.

But this is an example of the ugly side of open source licensing. A lot of people don't have strong feelings about ensuring the distribution terms of their code, and just don't care how it's used. And in those cases, it can be annoying to have e.g. opensource.org insist that GPLv3 is the best option.

Edit: To be more specific, I mean that this problem could be avoided if both softwares were released under a public-domain-equivelent license. But of course, that will never happen.

I'm not sure how you can rationally make an argument for a framework that literally limits the use of improved or more performant code/technology/understanding simply because it does not share a philosophical view of IP/ownership/sharing.

This is the core of the problem with IP in the real world as well, and I find it mind-boggling that we don't look at the SYSTEM and see it as problematic.