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slow down there cowboy...take a look at what you quoted from me...I'll place it here for you convienience:

current users of software "X" are unaffected by someone taking an open source project proprietary, it is only the code itself which is no longer free
(emphasis is mine)

I rather explicitly said "someone", not "some company". so no villans ..

Enlighten me, please: how can code be free? In my humble, freedom belongs to people, and people are perfectly free to use this code any way they want.

and IMHO, if you license the code under the GPL, then it is code that is free, and according to the GPL, it will remain free.

the FSF doesn't really agree with me onthis, so it probably makes sense that you don't either.

but again to me, it comes down to the GPL protecting code, and the BSDL providing users/developers freedom to do anything they wish. It would seem that the GPL would make for a more long term freedom...but so far the *BSD's are still kicking around.

You can read RMS's position online.

As I recall, that was version 2.96, which was actually the development branch for 3.0. Not surprisingly, development versions have bugs, which is why they shouldn't be used by mainstream users.

When I think of "hot air", I'm more likely to think of posts that make no substantive argument and engage in name calling ("retarded") rather than the work of someone who has written a lot of software, started a social movement for securing software freedoms, and asks for a fair share of credit when people mention the name of a project where the initial author is quite derisive about said freedoms.

I can't agree with your overmoderated post. I think you would benefit from reading the GNU/Linux naming FAQ which addresses your concern about why people ask others to refer to the union of the GNU OS and the Linux kernel as "GNU/Linux" or "GNU+Linux".

Fifth: GCC produces crappy code more often than anyone would like. GCC bugs are far from unheard of, performance of generated code is often unpredictable between releases, and in many less commonly used architectures or sources GCC will produce incorrect code. Yes, these cases are very rare, but the BSD folks have hit the problem often enough for it to be a concern. PCC, being simpler and less bloated with cruft from multiple rewrites of the internals will hopefully produce correct and predictable code more often than GCC.

http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/

There is no need under the Berne Convention to include a copyright notice at all. The original author automatically aquires a copyright allowing them to dictate how their work may or may not be used.

Personally I have some doubt whether 'license' text in a source file has any legal status in itself, or whether it's simply a statement of policy. (See gplv2, clause 5).

But it would be very unwise for somebody downstream to (try and) change the licensing terms, because they're not the copyright holder, and they'd leave themselves wide open to a legal challenge.

Rather more useful would be a reimplementation of gperf whose output could be used in non-GPL software. Or FSF could just bring the licensing of gperf into line with gcc, bison, etc.

You are not wrong. The Free Software Foundation explicitly states that binaries produced by GCC are not covered by the GPL. (Why people never read the GPL FAQ is beyond me.)

I can only think of two reason why they want to replace GCC with PCC:
1. Because they can.
2. Because they're anti-GPL zealots.

The Right to Read

What seems to be lost in this debate is respect for the original author's intentions...

Say I write a piece of code and want to put a "permissive" license on it. I basically have two choices:

• Use the BSD license
• Use the LGPL license

LGPL 2.1 clause 3 says that you can basically decide to replace the LGPL with the GPL at any time. LGPL 3.0 clause 2 effectively says the same thing. Or, in other words, choosing the LGPL explicitly gives users the freedom to relicense under the GPL

By choosing to use a BSD license, an author is basically saying "I don't want this to end up GPL'ed - If I did, I would have used the LGPL instead of the BSD license."

It all comes back to the fundamental difference between the BSD and GPL camps - does freedom include the right to close the source?

For better or worse, I feel that people should respect the intentions of the original author.

What seems to be lost in this debate is respect for the original author's intentions...

Say I write a piece of code and want to put a "permissive" license on it. I basically have two choices:

• Use the BSD license
• Use the LGPL license

LGPL 2.1 clause 3 says that you can basically decide to replace the LGPL with the GPL at any time. LGPL 3.0 clause 2 effectively says the same thing. Or, in other words, choosing the LGPL explicitly gives users the freedom to relicense under the GPL

By choosing to use a BSD license, an author is basically saying "I don't want this to end up GPL'ed - If I did, I would have used the LGPL instead of the BSD license."

It all comes back to the fundamental difference between the BSD and GPL camps - does freedom include the right to close the source?

For better or worse, I feel that people should respect the intentions of the original author.

Have you see the question:
How are the various GNU licenses compatible with each other?

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#AllCompatibility

Look at the table.
There a dozens of different GPL & LGPL.
Even codes between some of these licenses are "legally incompatible". And all this texts came from the same source. What's the point?

Are we suppose to make free software or to invent a new market for lawyers?

I don't think it's incompatible the way you describe. On the GPL compatibility list, it says that the original BSD license is incompatible, but only because of the advertising clause.

Basically, it boils down to this: The BSD grants the recipient certain rights (such as the right to distribute binary-only products based on the licensed software) and certain responsibilities (give proper attribution). Recipients of BSD code are able to sublicense it to others, but while the sublicensees are required to live up to the same responsibilities, they receive only the rights granted by whoever licenses it to them.

The FSF thinks the GPL is the only license that should be allowed to exist.

Why don't you take your medication, then wander on over to the FSF and Gnu sites? There's discussions of licenses at the Gnu philosophy site, including a list of free licenses. You will find a mention suggesting once circumstance under which you might want to use another license; there are likely others. They do seem to prefer licenses that are compatible with the GPLs, but that seems reasonable to me.

Those facts can be so inconvenient to a good rant, can't they?

The FSF thinks the GPL is the only license that should be allowed to exist.

Why don't you take your medication, then wander on over to the FSF and Gnu sites? There's discussions of licenses at the Gnu philosophy site, including a list of free licenses. You will find a mention suggesting once circumstance under which you might want to use another license; there are likely others. They do seem to prefer licenses that are compatible with the GPLs, but that seems reasonable to me.

Those facts can be so inconvenient to a good rant, can't they?

The FSF thinks the GPL is the only license that should be allowed to exist.

Why don't you take your medication, then wander on over to the FSF and Gnu sites? There's discussions of licenses at the Gnu philosophy site, including a list of free licenses. You will find a mention suggesting once circumstance under which you might want to use another license; there are likely others. They do seem to prefer licenses that are compatible with the GPLs, but that seems reasonable to me.

Those facts can be so inconvenient to a good rant, can't they?

This is nonsense, http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html it wasn't per se forbidden, but the 'problem' evolved during the years. >the Linux stack was written from scratch. Even most developers of Linux do know better. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-linux-networking-stack/?S_TACT=105AGX59&S_CMP=GR&ca=dgr-lnxw07LinuxNetStack But apart from that, Free/Net/OpenBSD are opensource derivatives of original UNIX. Even then if there isn't any code from original UNIX in it anymore. http://www.lemis.com/bsdpaper.html Urband legends spread by Linux community to gain somewhat an independency from other project, because they have a huge problem paying someone the respect.

I would suggest to Theo that if he wants those GPL slackers to give back to the BSD community and not run roughshod over the BSD license that he add a simple provision that forces the miscreants to give back their improvements.

In fact, in the interest of sharing hard work freely with others, I happen to have a draft copy of what such a license would look like right here.

P.S.

The license shown even encourages non-GPL borrowers to keep their code open, all for the same low price.

Here's the rub, much of the original content was issues under CC NC-SA but the site is now licensed GFDL 1.2, which specifically allows commercial usage, but the content is specifically disallowing commercial usage. Changing the license was really bad form, but assuming that any new content added by a contributer under the GFDL would change their previous CC NC-SA licensed property was naive and using the content commercially probably illegal.
  The definiton of commercial is pretty vague at times, probably to keep lawyers in bussiness, but now site seems to be driven primarily by a profit motive, unlike the orgininal where the revenues were intended to offset expenses, so the first site was in a gray area, but the second is probably over the line. The poster should talk to a lawyer, maybe the EFF or legal aid would be interested.

Blasphemy! God would be using ed!

Maybe I'm becoming more and more of a luddite... I played with compiz a bit maybe a year ago using XFCE and it was pretty cool, but that's all it was. It didn't actually do anything to improve my computing experience other than look cool. That makes it mostly a waste of electrons, IMO.

But then, I now use wmii almost exclusively, if I'm not just using plain ol' screen.

damn, you be a good poster and go check your links and there goes that frsit psot. oh well...

I'm not sure what "native" means with respect to Linux

Part of the OS; available to everyone, no charge, no license, etc. Compare to the OS widgets in Windows or OS X. For either OS, you can code up something that uses them, they're 100% standard and you don't need to worry about them. They're always there. There is no obligation; no fee to the developer. You know how you can count on Linux to provide memory allocation? Graphics widgets should be the very same way as far as I'm concerned. Not that I'm suggesting X and all its various window managers and widget sets should be dumped, I'm not; but the OS needs a standard set to start with.

LGPL, which should be good enough for commercial development. Or am I missing something here?

Yes, you're missing section 4(d) of the LGPL which requires (0) that I, as a vendor, either provide source code for my application (never going to happen for several reasons, each sufficient unto itself) or (1) requires me to only use libraries that are already installed on the user's system, which means I can't ensure that an installation will work by distributing and installing them with my own installer, which in turn means I'd be incurring end-user frustration and reputation and support costs I am entirely unwilling to bear because some number of installations will fail outright.

Our rock-solid policy is that the install has to work every time, period. It is entirely unacceptable to leave the user floundering about, searching for compatible libraries, fonts, or anything else. This is one of the reasons I think Linux ought to have an always-there set of OS level widgets.

Such widgets could be minimal, perhaps like the OS widgets of Windows 95, but they ought to allow you to code up a basic application, have menus, etc., without having to get into any questions of whether your application will install correctly.

Speaking of redistribution rights, consider the following quote from page two of the two released docs:

No license, whether express, implied, arising by estoppel, or otherwise, to any intellectual property rights are granted by this publication.

If we assume that the propaganda term "intellectual property" is to include copyright, it would seem that distributing copies of these specifications non-commercially and verbatim is disallowed. One wonders what else you're not allowed to do with these specs, make derivative works perhaps? After all, "no license" is granted.

Is there a GNU/Mach distribution?

Here is an addition to my comment above:

Read Richard Stallman's excellent article: Why Upgrade to GPLv3?

He says, "The ban on tivoization applies to any product whose use by consumers, even occasionally, is to be expected. GPLv3 tolerates tivoization only for products that are almost exclusively meant for businesses and organizations. (The latest draft of GPLv3 states this criterion explicitly.)"

The paragraph before that says, "GPLv3 ensures you are free to remove the [DRM] handcuffs. It doesn't forbid DRM, or any kind of feature. It places no limits on the substantive functionality you can add to a program, or remove from it. Rather, it makes sure that you are just as free to remove nasty features as the distributor of your copy was to add them. Tivoization is the way they deny you that freedom; to protect your freedom, GPLv3 forbids tivoization."

The thinking and writing in Mr. Stallman's article is of excellent quality, in my opinion. The mistake he is making is not providing enough examples of abuses possible under GPL2, to show why GPL3 is necessary. We know that he has made a mistake in not providing those examples, because people are posting nonsense comments to this Slashdot story.

Mr. Stallman also makes the mistake of assuming that all readers understand the meaning of "Tivoization", a new word recently invented.

I think Linus Torvalds is a wonderful leader. But sometimes Mr. Torvalds does not think carefully enough about the social implications of what he says. Mr. Torvalds is not perfect, but he is the best we have at what he does well; he is a truly beneficial leader.

My best understanding, which may be very imperfect, is that Mr. Torvalds does not understand the potential for abuse in the GPL2 license. Why? Maybe partly because Mr. Stallman didn't explain it well enough.

The only thing that allowing Tivoization would provide is that companies could sell products for less than they expect to make, and trick buyers into paying more later, as happens with 2 year cell phone contracts when cell phone service prices are dropping fast.

Note that the invented word "Tivoization" is an abuse of trademark. Mr. Stallman is suffering from his adoption of that abuse, because people like their Tivos and, without thinking or investigating, they assume that the GPL3 license would take their Tivos away.

Mr. Stallman should read the comments on this Slashdot story carefully to take the true measure of what even technically knowledgeable people know and don't know, and how little they are willing to investigate before they think they understand. His articles should be written for the audience he has, not the audience he wishes he had. After more than 24 years of thinking about this, Mr. Stallman makes the mistake of not realizing how advanced he is in his thinking, and makes the mistake of not realizing most people are not as advanced.

(Copyright 2007, as are all my comments, and everyone else's also. I don't want someone using what I have said here without my permission.)

The GPL requires no such thing. The GPL only governs distribution of the software. This is an important semantic distinction, as many of the largest internet companies (Yahoo!, Google, etc.) use GPL'd software extensively to build their services, often with extensive modifications, and yet they do not distribute source code. This is fully in compliance with the GPL, as the software itself is not distributed. This is explicitly addressed in the GPL FAQ.

Each contributor grants you a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free patent license under the contributor's essential patent claims, to make, use, sell, offer for sale, import and otherwise run, modify and propagate the contents of its contributor version.

To enable these activities, QNX intends to publish all of its runtime component source code (some source code wont be published immediately because of third-party licensing or confiden-tiality restrictions)

Technology companies implement their fundamental business strategies through licensing their intellectual property. It is a subtle task. If a company gives too much away through overly generous grants of copyrights or patents, then its competitors and customers get a "free ride" on its products; the company loses its incentive to invest in research and development.

GPLv3, unlike GPLv2, attempts to dictate what you're allowed to *do* with the code.

GPL3 does no such thing.

You can use the code however you like. You cannot distribute the code with a device that will not accept modified versions of that code to run on it. This is a restriction for distributors, in order to protect the rights of the users.

Linus is a brilliant individual, which is why I cannot help but think that he is purposefully disingenuous when he frames GPL3 in the terms you described. The GPL was always about protecting the rights of the end users to take the code, inspect it, change it, and give the (hopefully) improved versions to others, if they so please. Among other things, that allows people to continue to use their software even when the vendor refuses to fix it, or when the vendor goes out of business. (One primary motivator for creating the GPL was a stupid printer driver whose code had to be kept "secret".)

The confusion starts when certain users are also developers, and further, when some of those developers also want to become distributors. Now, Linus would like to "protect" the rights of these developers to "use the code however they please", meaning in this context that they should be able to distribute it with a device that only runs signed versions of the code. But this "usage" is simply distribution that takes away the rights of a much larger constituency: the many users out there, who now just lost, for any practical purpose, their original right to modify the software and run that instead of the original software (and give it to others, if they so please.)

GPL3 does not change the spirit of GPL2 one iota. On the contrary, it closes the TiVo-isation loophole that allows certain distributors to nominally comply with the GPL2, while at the same time violating its spirit with impunity: "here is the source, you just can't change it and run it. Look, but don't touch."

GPL protects the rights of users, not just of a small subset who happen to be developers&distributors. When the rights of this small subset start conflicting with those of the much larger set of regular end-users, GPL3 rightly settles it if favour of the users.

Stallman was responsible for contributing many necessary tools, including a text editor, compiler, debugger, and a build automator. The notable exception was a kernel.

It seems like I better start hoarding bomb making plans then, so I can go trough with my plan to overthrow the government, so I can install a leftists, flip-flopping, black, gay, Islamo-atheistic, liberal terrorist government.

Just kidding, I got my bomb plans of the internet ages ago.

BTW: Wouldn't this just make the people interested in using bombs in a bad way start using code names, like booms for bombs etc?

BTW2: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

GNU Coreutils is released under the full GPL, not the LGPL. In fact, the latest version is already released under the GPLv3.

http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/coreutils/

Yeah, I always find this debate pointless on its face. BSD uses huge amounts of GPL-licensed software, so there's no substantial difference. In fact, BSD will be using GPLv3-licensed software, unless they intend on taking over their own fork of GCC (a monumental task which would substantially harm their ability to support BSD itself).

From GPLv3:

Why would a hypervisor be excluded from this?

The GPL http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html goes on to say:

--e

Well, when it comes to .NET, there is a crap ton of copyrighted and patented stuff, and Mono breaks a lot of em, and they know it. They just know Microsoft won't do anything, since they are semi-partners and all.

Ah, I see. And I suppose the GNU project is in on the conspiracy as well? They are producing their own, independent implementation of C#, CLR, and .NET as well, you know.

So, get real and stop spreading FUD! Miguel may have gone slightly insane, but that doesn't affect the status of Mono. Nobody has ever been able to show a Microsoft patent that Mono infringes. If you can demonstrate one, please share it.

Well, there's GNAT. And generally most Pascal compilers are incompatible with one another, as Pascal itself is a somewhat ill-defined language which is unusable in its most "agreed upon" form, so having support for "Pascal" across a range of platforms is of questionable usefulness.

Why read someone's paraphrasing of the GPL when you can easily read the GPL itself. Note third party servers are an option. The distributor does not have to make the source available himself.

"If the place to copy the object code is a network server, the Corresponding Source may be on a different server (operated by you or a third party) that supports equivalent copying facilities, provided you maintain clear directions next to the object code saying where to find the Corresponding Source."
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt

I suggested reading the GPL itself, you cite someone's paraphrasing of the GPL instead. At least you had the brains to post anonymously. Here is an excerpt of the GPL that discusses one of the methods by which you may convey source code. Note "third party".

"If the place to copy the object code is a network server, the Corresponding Source may be on a different server (operated by you or a third party) that supports equivalent copying facilities, provided you maintain clear directions next to the object code saying where to find the Corresponding Source."

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt