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Domain: fsf.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to fsf.org.
Comments · 2,536
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Re:Don't be an "indian giver"
"Under GPLv2, you could create a derivative work and run a website based on it, but not share the changes since you weren't technically distributing the software. Or you could create a signed binary, and hardware that won't run it unless that binary is exactly the same. Or you could patent some procedure used, so that people can see the source code, but if they do anything with it, they violate your patent."
You still can run a web site on modified GPL3 software and not share the modifications you made. It's the AGPL3 (http://www.fsf.org/agplv3-pr) that prohibits this. GPL3 only prohibits you from bundling software and hardware in such a way you cannot change the software part, unlike the GPL2 that doesn't disallow that.
Please, read the licenses. We need more information, not disinformation. BTW, the article quoted by the GP is ancient, from before the release of GPL3. -
No it doesn't - web services can be internal too
"web services" is a kind of strange thing; it just means software with an HTTP interface. Just because you use HTTP doesn't mean you have to share. It's perfectly possible to use even AGPLv3 (let alone GPLv3) software yourself or within your company. The only point at which you have to share AGPL software is at the point where the users of your software are outsiders. It's funny how we see so much anti-GPL FUD again. Probably you've learned this by reading articles about the GPL which are spreading such rumors. It's a good idea to jut go and read the license directly together with it's surrounding explanations and you'll find it's much easier to understand this way.
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Re:Impatient, Are We?
Ok, so let me get this straight. You're saying it is a good thing to attack companies that use FOSS at the slightest hint of a mistake, making them afraid of violating the FOSS copyright, effectively putting this on the same level as Microsoft?
So explain then, why should a company even consider using FOSS if they have to worry about a ravenous horde of supporters demanding access to the source code (for a product they didn't even buy) because the GPL says they can have it, then taking up torches and pitchforks if they don't think they get what they demanded?
At least if the manufacturer licenses Microsoft software they know they don't have to fear these types of attacks, they actually have a place to call for support, and they don't have to be bothered with the expense of dealing with the demands of non-customer.
The only draw back is cost, which depending on volume discounts might not be so high.
Seems to me like the community of supporters does more to slow down adoption of FOSS than the competitors.
Where I work we have out right banned the use of GPL packages in any developed applications, even though all our work is in house and we do not distribute. We do use RedHat, and pay a support license for every copy. We use Postgres through EnterpriseDB and MySQL (and pay support contracts). We allow the use of BSD and Apache licensed code, but ban the GPL completely. And there are members of my staff who are contributors to GPL tools, one is even the primary maintainer of one tool. We're now reviewing the recent Affero details because the moment any bundled service on the RedHat servers starts using this license, we'll shut it down and look for a replacement, even if it means we have to move to Solaris or Windows.
The fact of business is that legal drives many decisions. A company like ours might like to use some of these packages, there are some really talented developers out there. But we don't want to risk it. With a Sun or Microsoft we sign a license and are protected. With FOSS we have no central license authority to work with, and we would rather not see massive web postings from non-customers screaming that we should be sued because they can't have access to our source code.
And before you tell me since we don't distribute we don't have an issue let me say that this has been discussed. We have had varying outside legal opinions as to whether or not our distribution to our affiliate companies in different locations would trigger that issue. And when there is not a consensus among lawyers, they always air on the side of caution.
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Re:Please stop spreading FUD.
They would have to supply the source code to people that bought the game.
True.
They don't have to supply it everybody,
False.
They can charge for the source,
True.
but no more then they charged for the game itself.
False.
Please - just stop. Please stop spouting such utter claptrap about a license that you have either not read or not understood. It's not that long, or hard to comprehend. The power to not look like an utter fool is within you. Just. Read. The. License.
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Re:Other Reasons...You're seriously overestimating the ease of the software licence world. It's very easy. Just check if the license is on one of the first two lists on this page. If it is, then you can install the software on as many machines as you need. If it isn't then you need to add another few hundred dollars to the cost of the software, per seat, for admin overheads.
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Re:not cowardiceThe strategy of the scavenger, the coward and the bully. The only effective response is to make sure there are no easy targets, even if that means representing the most vulnerable pro bono or establishing some kind of legal defense fund. Agreed. Here are 3 recommended places:
Expert Witness Defense Fund (For technical expert witnesses, technical consultants, and computer forensic examiners);
Marie Lindor Legal Defense Fund (For defense of UMG v. Lindor);
Jammie Thomas Legal Defense Fund (For defense of Capitol v. Thomas). -
Re:Competition is goodBut that leaves them out of the ~90% of computers that run windows and puts them at a substantial disadvantage in that regards.
That's an important point, and it's why we're seeing so much effort from Microsoft.
The more Linux machines that get out to real users, through the OLPC, Asus EEEPC, Nokia N810 and other similar machines, the clearer it will become how much of a lie that disadvantage claim is.
A successful OLPC project would show the world definitively that an expensive, proprietary, antifeature-laden OS is an unnecessary waste of money and resources.
Would a starving ethernopian...
Ethernopian?
Christ, at least with enough OLPC using kids out there we might get some decent discussions on Slashdot, not more of this ignorant, bigoted astroturf. -
AGPLv3 is a copyleft breakthrough
RMS founded FSF to protect computer users. GPL protected users until the proliferation of the Web made it possible to run a modified program on a network without revealing the source. The new AGPLv3 not only protects users but it also protects Web 2.0 businesses. For example, if I release the code of a blog site under GPL then I run the risk of a competitor improving the code to run a better site without revealing their source. But with AGPLv3, businesses can now safely release the code of their Web 2.0 sites without worrying about competitors. This creates a technological equality in the marketplace where the most successful sites will be those offering the best customer care, or the most sane privacy policies etc, which is actually what matters most in a Web business. How many times did you feel you had to use the services of a site which you disliked some of their policies but offered some features (ie technology) not present in competing sites? If competitors get to compete on customer care and the quality of offered products rather than technical features, then this will be good for the marketplace overall. Furthermore, with the greater adoption of Web 2.0, more and more of your software is going to be network-based, so at some point in the future instead of Matlab, Photoshop, and SPSS you will simply access a website. How would you feel if your mathematical and statistical calculations were done by software which you could not verify their source code because it is hidden behind the network? What if a future voting platform uses networked software? What if all future computers work with a network OS? Users get no protection when their software inner workings are hidden behind a network. AGPLv3 is one of the most wonderful developments in copyleft (but of course credit has to go Affero as well for conceiving the first Affero licence), and I actually immediately started offering generous discounts to any client of my software consulting business willing to release the resulting work under AGPLv3, and actually my discount rate for AGPLv3 is higher than that of classic GPL.
Disclaimer: I am a Contributing Member of the FSF.
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Re:SwellHowever, it doesn't matter if the company doesn't modify the source. The point of the AGPL is that if a user on the intranet uses this web service, then he or she is supposed to have access to the source. So even though company Y doesn't make any modifications, the source is still available, and in turn can distribute the source by the terms of the AGPL. I haven't read the whole AGPL license, but section 13 says: Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge... with emphasis added by me. So it seems that it does matter whether or not the company modifies the source, since it says "if you modify" not "if you use a modified version." Company X must offer source to its employees because it modified the code, but company Y can use the very same code without offering source to its employees if it makes no modifications.
In fact, this suggests a loophole -- company X could form a separate company to create the modified version of the software, that separate company could give a copy of the modified software to company X, and company X could now use it on its intranet without offering source to its employees. -
Re:compatible with GPLv3 ?
There's a special clause written into the GPLv3 which permits compatibility with exactly this one license. See http://gplv3.fsf.org/ for more info.
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Donate
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Re:PDF rant.
While it is true that fonts may be embedded, it is also true that PDF provides the mechanism for proprietary fonts to decline embedding. This is general feature of some proprietary fonts. I run into this frequently with PDF documents that contain ancient Greek or Hebrew fonts. In about a third of these documents the PDF will not render correctly because they have used proprietary fonts that I do not have on my machine. In these cases, the document is completely unreadable since the Latin font equivalent chosen in no way reflects the underlying text.
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Re:I was like that too
Oh, and I forgot the obvious one: Firefox is free software. You can just fork it if none of the above options are good enough for you.
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Tag this "anti-feature".
As restricting an object to be copied even if it would be trivial to do so is an anti-feature.
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Re:Licensing is a critical part of the software.
That is weird. Opinion of FSF about STIX Fonts License is not yet in thei license list pages:
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/ -
Re:i hate to say this but:
Or you can use GNU ddrescue, which is similar to 'dd' in concept but efficiently handles disks with large numbers of bad blocks through binary search of the good and bad areas: http://directory.fsf.org/project/ddrescue/ Once you've backed up any critical files, just run ddrescue to recover and backup as much as you can onto a good hard disk.
This tool is invaluable when you have a dying hard disk - easy to use and very fast, compared to the similarly named dd_rescue (note underscore) and dd_rhelp. It's available as a package in Ubuntu, Fedora and other distros (sometimes package is called gddrescue), and it's part of the excellent SystemRescueCD, a compact recovery and rescue CD that includes many useful tools and includes support of virtually every Linux, Windows and Mac filesystem. -
(Offtopic-ish) Re:"defective by design"The roots of this slashdot tag are in the juvenile site Bad Vista run by Stallman's FSF.
They were asking people(don't know if they still do) as part of a astroturfing campaign to help out by tagging all Vista stories as defectivebydesign. Thus, it has lost its meaning and is just mindless people doing off topic tagging.
I once attended a talk by Stallman, it was fun and all, and the hall was jampacked. But seriously, FSF needs to close that site, it's full of meaningless and mindless half-true FUD and the joke's on FSF for creating that site. Maybe it was just an attempt at spreading FUD on MS to counter(or complement?) MS's anti-Linux FUD, but to anyone with half a brain, the joke's on FSF.
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Re:Don't get itEven most open source involves minor constraints: a manufacturer cannot provide most open source software without including copies of the agreement and sometimes other constraints (like a guarantee that the software will not be used for military purposes to name an extreme licensing condition that occasionally shows up).
Nitpick: software with such restrictions is not Open Source ("The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor.") or Free Software ("The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0)."). You might be able to look at the source code and even modify it under certain restrictions, but it definitely would not be FOSS. Don't refer to it as such because it's factually incorrect and it confuses people unnecessarily.
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Re:Transcript please.As for section 7 I suppose they will say something along these lines, assuming that the problem is with the "people can remove the additional stuff, like BSD licence requisites": GPL Rationale Section 7 first explicitly allows added parts covered by terms with additional permissions to be combined with GPL'd code. This codifies our existing practice of regarding such licensing terms as compatible with the GPL. A downstream user of a combined GPL'd work who modifies such an added part may remove the additional permissions, in which case the broader permissions no longer apply to the modified version, and only the terms of the GPL apply to it.
(...)
In its treatment of terms that impose additional requirements, section 7 extends the range of licensing terms with which the GPL is compatible. An added part carrying additional requirements may be combined with GPL'd code, but only if those requirements belong to an set enumerated in section 7. We must, of course, place some limit on the kinds of additional requirements that we will accept, to ensure that enhanced license compatibility does not defeat the broader freedoms advanced by the GPL. Unlike terms that grant additional permissions, terms that impose additional requirements cannot be removed by a downstream user of the combined GPL'd work, because no such user would have the right to do so.
(...)
Section 7 requires a downstream user of a covered work to preserve the non-GPL terms covering the added parts just as they must preserve the GPL, as long as any substantial portion of those parts is present in the user's version.
(...)
And also here A GPL licensee may place an additional requirement on code for which the licensee has or can give appropriate copyright permission, but only if that requirement falls within the list given in subsection 7b. Placement of any other kind of additional requirement continues to be a violation of the license. Additional requirements that are in the 7b list may not be removed, but if a user receives GPL'd code that purports to include an additional requirement not in the 7b list, the user may remove that requirement. Here we were particularly concerned to address the problem of program authors who purport to license their works in a misleading and possibly self-contradictory fashion, using the GPL together with unacceptable added restrictions that would make those works non-free software.this article So, the FSF view on it boils down to: requirements listed in 7b - that include the requirements of MIT/BSD/ISC-type licences - can't be removed by the end user. Anything more than that can be removed and is not even guaranteed to be compatible in the first place (two scenarios here: one can remove a "in alternative you can distribute this under the XXX licence" or take a LGPLv3 file and remove the LGPLv3 specific parts and work with a GPLv3 licence; one can also remove a "also, you must give your first-born in return of using this file"). -
Re:Transcript please.As for section 7 I suppose they will say something along these lines, assuming that the problem is with the "people can remove the additional stuff, like BSD licence requisites": GPL Rationale Section 7 first explicitly allows added parts covered by terms with additional permissions to be combined with GPL'd code. This codifies our existing practice of regarding such licensing terms as compatible with the GPL. A downstream user of a combined GPL'd work who modifies such an added part may remove the additional permissions, in which case the broader permissions no longer apply to the modified version, and only the terms of the GPL apply to it.
(...)
In its treatment of terms that impose additional requirements, section 7 extends the range of licensing terms with which the GPL is compatible. An added part carrying additional requirements may be combined with GPL'd code, but only if those requirements belong to an set enumerated in section 7. We must, of course, place some limit on the kinds of additional requirements that we will accept, to ensure that enhanced license compatibility does not defeat the broader freedoms advanced by the GPL. Unlike terms that grant additional permissions, terms that impose additional requirements cannot be removed by a downstream user of the combined GPL'd work, because no such user would have the right to do so.
(...)
Section 7 requires a downstream user of a covered work to preserve the non-GPL terms covering the added parts just as they must preserve the GPL, as long as any substantial portion of those parts is present in the user's version.
(...)
And also here A GPL licensee may place an additional requirement on code for which the licensee has or can give appropriate copyright permission, but only if that requirement falls within the list given in subsection 7b. Placement of any other kind of additional requirement continues to be a violation of the license. Additional requirements that are in the 7b list may not be removed, but if a user receives GPL'd code that purports to include an additional requirement not in the 7b list, the user may remove that requirement. Here we were particularly concerned to address the problem of program authors who purport to license their works in a misleading and possibly self-contradictory fashion, using the GPL together with unacceptable added restrictions that would make those works non-free software.this article So, the FSF view on it boils down to: requirements listed in 7b - that include the requirements of MIT/BSD/ISC-type licences - can't be removed by the end user. Anything more than that can be removed and is not even guaranteed to be compatible in the first place (two scenarios here: one can remove a "in alternative you can distribute this under the XXX licence" or take a LGPLv3 file and remove the LGPLv3 specific parts and work with a GPLv3 licence; one can also remove a "also, you must give your first-born in return of using this file"). -
For the purpose of migrationWould GNU want to spend money to encourage use of closed source software? The GNU project tolerates the use of proprietary software specifically for the purpose of migrating to free software:
- Before GNU ran on Linux, it ran on Solaris and other proprietary operating systems.
- FSF's Play Ogg campaign recommends the free VLC media player, and specifically a binary version of VLC media player that runs on Windows, because it takes less resources to fight the MP3 patent battle than to fight both the MP3 patent battle and the Windows copyright battle.
- In the present case, adding GNU/Linux or uClinux clients to a Windows server environment encourages use of more Linux clients, which opens the possibility of long-term migration to a Linux server.
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Re:tshirt and no shoes?
And gcc. And Emacs. And the GPL.
That's nice, and 20+ years old. What has he done lately to keep himself relevant? His personal web page is full of political propaganda and tripe (figures RMS would support the Green Party). It doesn't even have a section on software he's written, outside of the "Serious Bio" portion. His blog is nothing more than a listing of speaking engagements. And doesn't he have some sort of RSI that prevents him from actually typing (using speech commands instead)? As a developer, he's notoriously difficult to work with (why emacs has forked so much, for example). He's pretty much marginalized when it comes to code, and is nothing more than a figurehead for the FSF. A statue of a hippy would work just about as well.
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Re:The REAL reason they failed
but isn't it the position of the FSF that closed-source code is morally wrong? That all code should be open sourced and given away?
Please don't confuse the FSF with the open source movement.
Assuming that by "closed-source code" you mean software whose source is not available to its users, such code does not meet the Free Software Defintion, so yes, the FSF is opposed to it.
Nothing in the Free Software defintion requires that you give source code away. Just that if you distribute binaries (whether gratis or for $1,000 a copy) you have to also distribute the source to those same people. I don't see that including a source CD-ROM with a CD-ROM of binaries that you might charge $1,000 for qualifies as "giving away" either.
As the FSF says, "'Free software' does not mean 'non-commercial'. A free program must be available for commercial use, commercial development, and commercial distribution. Commercial development of free software is no longer unusual; such free commercial software is very important.".
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Re:You nearly had me...
Nothing stopping even Microsoft from using the GPL, other than the fact that they break out in hives at the mere thought.
Easy to assume, but not true. Microsoft has distributed GPL'ed software in the past, and might still be doing so today for all I know. (The example I know of might have gone by the name "Interix" and it included GNU Fortran (g77) as well as GCC among its suite of Unix-y utilities.)
I think it's safe to say that the Free Software Foundation (FSF) has never distributed Microsoft or other proprietary software, however...ideological purity being quite important to that organization.
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Re:Visio would be better
There are several programs that will do code->dia:
autodia http://directory.fsf.org/project/autodia/ is perl based and does a variety of languages.
SharpDia2Code http://sharpdia2code.sourceforge.net/ is written in C# and will do code->diagram as well as diagram->code. Seems to have been abandoned, but works OK (needs to be recompiled to work with
There are others.
The uncompressed dia format is easy enough to work with that several years ago I even wrote my own app to generate class diagrams from VB6 source code. -
Oh but from the mouths of babes...While that's a good point, is it a guarantee that Dell isn't charging anything for the FOSS being on the system?
Just where do you get the idea that FOSS software must not be charged for? Really - can you give us any reference that says "Thou Shalt NOT Charge Any Gratuities For Free/Open Source Software"?
We're waiting...
And I quote (from the GPL FAQ over at the FSF):Does the GPL allow me to sell copies of the program for money?
Yes, the GPL allows everyone to do this. The right to sell copies is part of the definition of free software. Except in one special situation, there is no limit on what price you can charge. (The one exception is the required written offer to provide source code that must accompany binary-only release.) -
GNU GPL#!/usr/bin/env ruby # gl_tail.rb v0.01 - OpenGL visualization of your server traffic # Copyright 2007 Erlend Simonsen # # Licensed under the GPLv2
Hey, this is not the correct way to apply the GNU GPL licence. I don't know whether you had very little time available or just don't care, but the correct way is to explain exactly what licence (full title) the program is under and enable the user to find the licence (provide a copy of it and explain that the author of the licence is FSF, giving their address). We nerds of course understand completely what you mean, but other people may have no idea what you are talking about. To learn how to apply GPL on your program read this.
Good work, by the way. Was there any reason you preferred GPLv2 and not GPLv3? Also from the wording of your licence I think that you intended this to be available only under v2 and not v3 (you say "Licensed under the GPLv2" without a "or any later version" clause).
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Re:(-1, Wrong)
Yes, you're correct. Copyrights can be sold or transferred, as we should know.
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Re:The OIN is a redundant outfit...The OIN apparently using the patent system to protect software freedom. There will be some overlap here, but using 2 different systems to protect the same thing isn't wasteful, it's security. Especially with such an unpredictable system. (Could anyone here have predicted the 1-click patent?)
BTW, Copyright, the basis for the GPL, is also Intellectual Property. If IP really didn't exist, neither would the GPL.
This is wrong at several levels. The FSF is very clear in its view that Copyright is NOT Intellectual Property. This is made explicitly clear by Stallman himself:
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/not-ipr.xhtml/view?searchterm=intellectual%20property It has become fashionable to describe copyright, patents, and trademarks as "intellectual property". This fashion did not arise by accident--the term systematically distorts and confuses these issues, and its use was and is promoted by those who gain from this confusion. Anyone wishing to think clearly about any of these laws would do well to reject the term. The OIN counts IBM, NEC, Novell, Philips, Red Hat and Sony among its members. Except for RedHat none of the other companies have really promoted Linux and the GPL as much as their dollars would allow. Some like Novell and Sony have often done the opposite.
Now that Linux is getting a lot of good press, and Vista has flopped, these outfits are trying to hitch on to the Linux bandwagon. -
Re:A wakeup call
For policy level (i.e., political) activities, check out the EFF or the FSF. These are likely to be tax deductible.
For actual cases, you'll need to send a check to the lawyer. See Ray's blog for many of the cases and other related information. The Lindor case is relatively important, and there's a link there for paypal donations. These are likely not tax deductible, but probably have more impact.
Regards,
Art -
Re:GPL no more.You quoted from http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/info/GPLv2.html selectively :
"3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one [emphasis mine] of the following:
a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)"
We distributed under 3a.
Those to whom we distributed could have freely redistributed the code, but as the aggregate was useful to their potential competitors, and they paid us a lot of money, there were disinclined to do so.
Believe me, we dotted the I's and crossed the T's on this one: we had RMS give a lecture to our devs.
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Re:GPL no more.
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/info/GPLv2.html
3 b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three
years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your
cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete
machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be
distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium
customarily used for software interchange; or, -
Re:GPL is pure communism
Ridiculous.
The GPL merely ensures that all software released under its terms -- and derivative works of all software released under its terms -- remain free for all who wish to make use of it. Anyone is free to make money from GPL software, and several companies, including the FSF itself , freely do so.
BSD does not do that. BSD is more like a 'take a penny, leave a penny' tray at the corner store. It relies on the generosity of those who take the code to produced closed-source versions to give changes back to the community.
GPL works on the principle of 'if you take, you must give back,' with legal enforcement behind it, while BSD is 'take it if you want, but could you please, please, pretty please give back?'
And, true communists don't sell stuff, they rely on the contributions of their members. I know several true communists, who openly profess to be so. Many are actually nice people, if a bit misguided, IMHO. Do you know any? -
I think...
... personally MS have lost the plot and got far too way into trying to keep the monopoly lock-ins and have really lost their way with what a computer (and OS) is supposed to do.
First instance [touched on many times in here] DRM. Visit here --> http://badvista.fsf.org/what-s-wrong-with-microsoft-windows-vista
Second. They are shit scared somebody can interoperate with MS systems (i.e. better systems), so make it as obscure and nebulous as possible (and it appears that happens internally to MS Corp too).
Third. NO WAY are you going to be able to copy this, so make every legal owner go through hoops and rings to get the thing to work (if that is at all possible) [again touched on many times in here].
Fourth. Ttoally ignore security as the aim is to get as many people 'hooked' on the MS crack as possible (this itself spawned a whole new industry in anti-virus/anti-trojan/anti-malware,
Fifth. Visit http://www.lamlaw.com/tiki-index.php
I think what we are seeing here a dying Elephant. And it is their own fault. -
Re:Oh dear!And the statement "Just 6 percent of developers working with open-source software have adopted the new GNU General Public License version 3" is obviously false, since the vast majority of GPL-licensed software have copyright notices that say that the software is available "under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version" - which includes GPL version 3. Well speaking of "obviously false" please explain how you equate the option to adopt a license with actually adopting it. Hey while we're at it why don't we add the entire list of GPLv3 compatible licenses to your list as well, it makes sense that tomcat and apache be counted as GPLv3 projects!
For a bit on anecdotal evidence I should note that in my little 3 person project we considered an upgrade to GPLv3 from v2 (we have the "or later" clause), however decided against it since one of the devs was strongly against the idea. The fact is that GPLv3 is a different kind of license from GPLv2, v2 basically just says you need to allow distribution and modification and stuff, but the GPLv3 also covers usage with its anti-DRM clause. Not to mention the fact that v3 is way longer than v2. Until the FSF comes out with a GPLv4 that somehow manages to appease both camps I really suspect that you're going to see both licenses in wide usage, however I'm not sure that unity is possible. I think the fundamental debate between between GPLv2 and GPLv3 is similar to the old debate between GPLv2 and BSD licenses, it depends on what restrictions you're willing to enforce to ensure what you consider freedom. -
Simply not enough?
The Free Software Foundation considers a GPL violation cured when the offending entity comes into compliance. Given that the software was free to begin with, I am not sure that its a good idea to pursue additional penalties (especially monetarily). Use of GPLed projects (like Linux) is popular in many corporations and is frequently allowed to fly below the radar by most management and legal departments. If the penalty for a violations stops being compliance and starts being gold digging, management, legal departments, and people in general will shy away from the GPL like a plague.
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Re:Not quite
Mangled the quoting a bit and left the other poster comments in the middle, but more importantly left out the link to Opinion on Additional Terms in the FSF site.
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This from a guy who can't Google...> So the GPL no longer inisists that all portions of a GPL-ed program must be under the GPL?
The mentions of that I see is no problem. Section 5 of the GPLv3:5. Conveying Modified Source Versions.
c) You must license the entire work, as a whole, under this License to anyone who comes into possession of a copy. This License will therefore apply, along with any applicable section 7 additional terms, to the whole of the work, and all its parts, regardless of how they are packaged. This License gives no permission to license the work in any other way, but it does not invalidate such permission if you have separately received it.
(Emphasis added.)
What are those additional permission? Oh! They're extras that can be added or removed as needed. You know, like if you want to combine some Apache license code with the GPLv3:7. Additional Terms.
"Additional permissions" are terms that supplement the terms of this License by making exceptions from one or more of its conditions. Additional permissions that are applicable to the entire Program shall be treated as though they were included in this License, to the extent that they are valid under applicable law. If additional permissions apply only to part of the Program, that part may be used separately under those permissions, but the entire Program remains governed by this License without regard to the additional permissions.
Here's the GPLv3. Here's the GPL compatibility matrix.
If you want to say they're incompatible, even though actual lawyers see no problems with compatibility, by all means, show us the problem, but I'm going to want to know what legal authority you base it on.
Perhaps the law should make sense, but it doesn't. That's why smart people hire lawyers for their legal opinions, rather than reading the laws and making up their own mind about what they mean. -
JFGIIf you quit being an ass and took five seconds to look for yourself, you'd find this official paper from the FSF, which says (under the section marked "Apache License Compatibility" beginning on p.9):
We are pleased to report that the Final Draft makes the Apache License,
(emphasis mine)
version 2.0, fully compatible with GPLv3. We are grateful to the Apache
Software Foundation for working with us to achieve this long-sought goal.
The concerns we stated in the Draft 3 Rationale were based on vary-
ing literal readings of section 9 of the Apache license that differed from the
interpretation of section 9 held by the ASF itself. During the course of
productive discussions with the ASF following the release of Draft 3, we
ascertained that, to the ASF, the words "by reason of " in the section 9
upstream indemnification clause meant nothing broader or vaguer than "di-
rectly as a result of." Read in this light, section 9 seems to us a reasonable
and fair approach to protecting upstream developers, even though we do not
wish to adopt such a provision in our own license.
The Final Draft makes the Apache indemnification clause compatible
with GPLv3 by adding a new category of additional conditions in section 7
that may be applied, with appropriate copyright authorization, to material
added to a covered work. -
Google is your friend!Google for "gplv3 apache" then look at the very first link.
Source:Apache License v2.0 and GPL Compatibility
The Free Software Foundation considers the Apache License, Version 2.0 to be a free software license, compatible with version 3 of the GPL.
Despite our best efforts, the FSF has never considered the Apache License to be compatible with GPL version 2, citing the patent termination and indemnification provisions as restrictions not present in the older GPL license. The Apache Software Foundation believes that you should always try to obey the constraints expressed by the copyright holder when redistributing their work.
(Excessive linkage in the original preserved.)
So, as you can see, GPLv3 is Apache-compatible, GPLv2 is NOT. -
Google is your friend!Google for "gplv3 apache" then look at the very first link.
Source:Apache License v2.0 and GPL Compatibility
The Free Software Foundation considers the Apache License, Version 2.0 to be a free software license, compatible with version 3 of the GPL.
Despite our best efforts, the FSF has never considered the Apache License to be compatible with GPL version 2, citing the patent termination and indemnification provisions as restrictions not present in the older GPL license. The Apache Software Foundation believes that you should always try to obey the constraints expressed by the copyright holder when redistributing their work.
(Excessive linkage in the original preserved.)
So, as you can see, GPLv3 is Apache-compatible, GPLv2 is NOT. -
Google is your friend!Google for "gplv3 apache" then look at the very first link.
Source:Apache License v2.0 and GPL Compatibility
The Free Software Foundation considers the Apache License, Version 2.0 to be a free software license, compatible with version 3 of the GPL.
Despite our best efforts, the FSF has never considered the Apache License to be compatible with GPL version 2, citing the patent termination and indemnification provisions as restrictions not present in the older GPL license. The Apache Software Foundation believes that you should always try to obey the constraints expressed by the copyright holder when redistributing their work.
(Excessive linkage in the original preserved.)
So, as you can see, GPLv3 is Apache-compatible, GPLv2 is NOT. -
Google is your friend!Google for "gplv3 apache" then look at the very first link.
Source:Apache License v2.0 and GPL Compatibility
The Free Software Foundation considers the Apache License, Version 2.0 to be a free software license, compatible with version 3 of the GPL.
Despite our best efforts, the FSF has never considered the Apache License to be compatible with GPL version 2, citing the patent termination and indemnification provisions as restrictions not present in the older GPL license. The Apache Software Foundation believes that you should always try to obey the constraints expressed by the copyright holder when redistributing their work.
(Excessive linkage in the original preserved.)
So, as you can see, GPLv3 is Apache-compatible, GPLv2 is NOT. -
Re:Still confusedThe GPLv2 and BSD part is such a grey area (you have put forward some good points) and one which such a pervasive possible wrong use (if you're right) that I'll leave it alone. One unfortunate side-effect if you're right is that it doesn't only work against the GPL: I am now very reluncant to relicense my GPL'ed code under a BSD-type license since I could be making it incompatible with the GPL.
About the GPLv3: The GPLv3 has a problem that I overlooked, in the provision which lets you remove additional permissive terms that are not part of the GPLv3 in downstream distributions, and expressly allows removing such terms even if they are included in a separate license agreement or otherwise phrased as mandatory for redistribution. This is problematic with the BSD, since that would mean you were granting people permission to modify the BSD license in downstream distributions if you included the GPLv3 with the BSD terms. Actually I don't think so. Point 7 of the GPLv3 has *two* different concepts: "aditional permissions" and "aditional requirements". "Aditional permissions" can in fact be removed, this is the situation e.g. in dual-licensing, someone received code under the GPL with aditional permissions that are however removable since they don't afect the fact that the code is under the GPL, only that whomever receives the code can also make use of the aditional permissions. Now, "aditional requirements" are different and that's where the BSDL requirements fall, and they can't be removed as aditional permissions can. The requirements listes cover the general requirements in BSDL/ISC/MIT et. al. and include the possibility of having them as a separate license file or mixed in in a single file. Now, its probably not illegal to combine the licenses, however, there is a problem with that combination, and it might open you up to other attacks from both downstream users (who might accuse you of misrepresenting the legal rights you had to the software, particularly if they removed the BSD terms and then were sued by the original copyright holder of the BSD-licensed portion), or possibly the copyright holder of the BSD-licensed portion more directly under theories other than copyright violation (perhaps tortious interference with contract.) I see your concern but as per above I don't think that is the case. As in this article: A GPL licensee may place an additional requirement on code for which the licensee has or can give appropriate copyright permission, but only if that requirement falls within the list given in subsection 7b. Placement of any other kind of additional requirement continues to be a violation of the license. Additional requirements that are in the 7b list may not be removed, but if a user receives GPL'd code that purports to include an additional requirement not in the 7b list, the user may remove that requirement. Here we were particularly concerned to address the problem of program authors who purport to license their works in a misleading and possibly self-contradictory fashion, using the GPL together with unacceptable added restrictions that would make those works non-free software.this article The list was made to acommodate licenses which were not compatible, so it wasn't made for the BSDL/MIT/ISC licensed but for others which had other minor requirements that were not restrictive but merely incompatible due to the wording of the GPLv2 (this following the FSF reasoning on the compatibility of the BSDL license with the GPL, which you disagree with). Cheers. -
Copyright != patent != trademark != trade secretThe only reason the name "Intellectual Property" exists is for convenience--it flags people as to what specific fields are involved. No it doesn't. As far as I can tell from the Wikipedia article and other sources, the term "intellectual property" is generally held to encompass copyright law, patent law, trademark law, and trade secret law. Trouble is that these four areas of law are more different than alike apart from the fact that they grant exclusive rights. Should a local public utility franchise be considered "intellectual property" because it also grants exclusive rights?
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Re:Against the spirit...
If that were the case, I'd say 'Fuck the GPL!' then. Any time 1 entity has sole ability to declare something 'free', something is seriously fucked up.
Luckily, it's not the case.
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesFreeSoftwareMeanUsingTheGPL -
Re:Winning friends and influencing people...
Swappable on the fly maybe not, but you can in any case run a GNU/NetBSD (http://www.debian.org/ports/netbsd/) system for example.
Linux is just a kernel, sure it can be used with software stacks that are not GNU, but there are not many distributions of GNU/Linux that don't use at least a few of their packages. A quick look at the GNU packages listed on http://directory.fsf.org/GNU/ comes up with a fairly large number of core packages (bash, coreutils, glib, grub, fileutils, gcc, libc, shellutils, etc) without which your system isn't really very useful. -
Re:That's cool
Yes, it's interesting that Larry Rosen is busy spreading FUD when he claims stuff like: Open Source licenses
Basically, this guy is being paid to say "Hey, I'm an Open Sores guy too and I say it's OK, so drink up the tasty chocolate milk and ignore the funny taste from the proprietary ingredient".
QNX is awesome, but this isn't an Free or Open Source license.
Rosen has just disgraced himself. -
False dichotomyFrom what I can tell in many ways Torvalds stays with GPLv2 because it offers a compromise between openess of source code and a license that businesses can tolerate.
It's not about "openness of source code". It's about the freedom to run your business as you see fit, without having to bend to the will of the vendors of the software that you happen to be using. The only businesses that need to "tolerate" the GPL are ones who fancy themselves vendors of mass-market proprietary software, or ones who are doing something illegal (e.g. patent infringement, trojan horses, etc.) and want to avoid getting caught.
RMS has his goals and aspirations, and is also somewhat of extremist in his ideals, IMHO, where compromise is not in the vocabulary.Compromise is not in RMS's vocabulary? Are you on crack? What do you think the LGPL, the "system libraries" clause of the GPL, and the "cover texts"/"invariant sections" of the GFDL are all about? RMS is willing to compromise tactically in order to win strategically.
Why don't you actually go read the FSF website, instead of basing your opinion of RMS on what others have written?
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Re:Hey Stallman, how's Hurd coming along?
You may not consider freedom important, but Stallman does. And despite his difficult persona, he should be applauded.
I will applaud Stallman's stand for "freedom" when he stops restricting the freedom of developers.