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SPI is a well run non-profit with tax exempt sttus from the IRS that supports several projects including Debian and the Open Source Initiative.

The GNU site is a very biased place to go. However it is a good place if you want to know if a license is compatible with the GPL.

I can't think of any places which aren't biased, but opensource.org lists a whole tonne of them without stating one is better than the other. I suppose they have to be certified as "open source" by the site to be listed there, but it seems more objective to me...

The SCO group, and both Old SCO and Caldera before it, directly acknowledged and assisted IBM with the scalablity of Linux

In August 2000, just days after Caldera purchased the Old SCO server division, the then CEO of Caldera, Ransom Love, made a keynote speech at LinuxWorld 2000. A RealPlayer video stream of the event can be found at DrDobbs Journal's Technetcast

In the question and answer session at the end of the keynote, Love was asked about the possible conflict over Monterey and Linux IA-64

A mp3 capture of the following transcribed portion

Q: What happens about Project Monterey, because that conflicts with the AI-64 Linux, 64-bit Linux?

Love: OK. I don't -- if we do our job right in making Linux scale over like UnixWare to the degree that everybody, that we know we can... May I ask, some people have said, "Well, people have tried this in the past, but they haven't been that successful," may I suggest: we don't have any ulterior motives for not making it successful. Technologically has not been the reason why it hasn't done it before. There's always some other motive, right? And so to talk about Monterey, clearly we want to make sure we have the same level of Linux integration on Monterey that we would have in our Unixware product. Now, we don't control, I mean, we have a great relationship... it's a joint development relationship with IBM which we intend to preserve ... but they have similar interests and so this is really a very synergistic, uh, this transaction is great for all of the major partners as they have already wanted to embrace Linux moving forward.

Now, let me address one other aspect of your question, which is that the Monterey Project is in conflict with the IA-64 Linux Project. I don't believe it's in conflict at all. Now, clearly, we have tremendous vested interest in the IA-64 Linux Project and with the acquisition of SCO, they've been doing a lot, so you combine those, and we've got one of the more comprehensive offerings, I believe, on the IA-64 Linux. So that's clearly an area that we're very committed to. But like Unixware, there's elements of the Monterey kernel that are more scalable, OK? Now, on the IA-64 platform, I don't know how long of window that is, but today, it's a little bit more robust and more scalable than the IA-64 Linux is today. Now, I'm not saying that over time that won't change.

But, and let me address one other thing. Sorry, (laughs) you're getting all of it through one question. But clearly we are going to add components back to the Linux kernel on both IA-32 and IA-64 platforms. We'll work with Linus and everyone in order to make that available. That will take some time. And as I mentioned earlier, I don't know that over time you can have a single kernel -- in fact I know you can't -- that will scale, you know, the breadth of IT technology needs. So I think we're looking, in the Linux community, at having multiple kernels, so...

Q: Multiple Linux kernels? Or multiple UNIX kernels?

Love: Multiple Linux kernels as well, over time.

Q: Thank you.

Love: You bet.

It's about time to reexamine the recent claims of The SCO group and call in the lawyers and maybe the authorities

Yeah, old news. This is footnote 39 in the OSI position paper on the SCO-IBM lawsuit.

I am sick of that groundless case causing fear within the community. Anyone with lingering doubts please see the OSI Position Paper on The SCO-vs-IBM Complaint

I'd love it if that stupid fiasco didn't have to spill over into anything that has to do with OSS.

It is the most relevant and insightful material I have seen to date and I highly recommend reading it.

You seem to think that OpenSource = GPL. This is not true. There is plenty of open and not-so-open source license. In fact the FSF try to distance itself from the open source movement. The GPL is probably the worse of these license. Don't get me wrong. I don't want to post a troll here. IANAL but I have some arguments who make me think GPL should never be used.

1- The text is too long. I know this is an overused argument but a license should merely say what you can do and can't do with the software the license cover. The GPL is much more a political manifest that a license: it don't only say WHAT it permits/forbid but also WHY. The text is bloated and that make it obscure.

2- The GPL claims it can be recursively modified by the FSF on the back of the copyright holder of a GPLed software. The GPL says:

"9. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns.

Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation"

Imagine this scenario: You wrote a great piece of code. As you wanted to share it with the community, you made it GPLed. Then the FSF create a new version of the GPL but you don't agree with it. What can you do? Nothing. Your software is now *free*. You must live with the new GPL no matter what.

You said: "If the GPL does change to define, say, execution of programs via CGI interface, as distribution, it's hard to fully imagine what the repercussions will be". I don't agree with you. It's easy to imagine the main repercussion. If the GPL do such a change, many people will feel betrayed and stop GPLing their software and they will stop using GPLed software too.

I think most of your questions are answered, or at least touched on, in the Halloween memos. Some are now pretty dated, but one can assume that they see Linux as at least as much of a threat today, and probably more of one.

I think Creative Commons is a better approach, and I think it's even a better approach than GPL/LGPL. The licenses are worded in a very common sense fashion, written by a team of IP experts, and give *you* the flexibility in determining what features you do and do not want in a license.

What you've got to remember is that software developers already have a plethora of licenses to choose from, based on what freedoms and flexibilities they want to keep/grant/whatever. A good summary of the "licensing ecosystem" is this table, although I'm sure there are better onces out there.

The "open content" licensing scene never had the choice between a good number of licenses all worked on by professional IP lawyers. CC provides the creative equivalent of the BSD, Apache, LGPL and GPL licenses, and maybe one or two more.

So they compared the source code of an open-source project with what ? the disassembled code of a closed-source project ? how would they know if the source code of the latter has better quality than the former's, since by definition, you can't get the source code of the latter ?

If you have the cash, you can get source to a lot of things. That doesn't mean it's open-source though, just "with-source". Check out the open-source definition.

RTFL: BSD License.

The BSD license stipulates nothing other than a copyright notice (required), mention of UC in endorsements (prohibited), and warranties and liabilities (disclaimed).

Don't post FUD.

The fundamental difference between the two movements is in their values, their ways of looking at the world. For the Open Source movement, the issue of whether software should be open source is a practical question, not an ethical one. As one person put it, ``Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement.'' For the Open Source movement, non-free software is a suboptimal solution. For the Free Software movement, non-free software is a social problem and free software is the solution.

Funny, seeing as Free Software and Open Source are two entirely different things. They each have their own foundations. The Free Software Foundation, and the Open Source Initiative.

FSF, GNU, GPL and all that was started by Richard Stallman, RMS from here on. Open Source, OSI and the Open Source Definition was first drafted by Bruce Perens. They are very similar in nature but have a lot of differences in the details. There FSF focuses primarily on GNU GPL and LGPL, The OSI and OSD are more broad, and do include the GPL under its terms, but also a variety of other licenses. The OSD sets up a moral standard, with 10 (originally 9) Sections to define a set of common guidelines a license must have to be considered Open Source.

The philosphies of these two men differ slightly. Where as RMS believes ALL software should be free and no commercial software should exist, Bruce Perens believes both can co-exist and co-mingle for the greater benefit of both. If you've ever seen the movie Revolution OS, they talk a good amount about the differences between FSF and OSI and GPL and OSD. Bruce Perens is even quoted as saying that the major difference is RMS believes all software should be GPL, and anything that isn't hurts the GPL. RMS doesn't seem such a 'great leader' after you get into the details. Granted, he's done a lot of good things, I hear the non-jews had a good life in Nazi Germany too.

So, yes, RTFM indeed.

-- Yes I know I could have picked better links, but I'm trying to work. :)

"The dashed red arrow from 4.2BSD to System V represents stolen property. AT&T, SCO/Caldera's predecessor in interest, took code from BSD Unix into System V, removing copyright notices and attributions in violation of the Berkeley license."

No offense, but anyone who thinks it was a mistake or leak doesn't understand marketing. :)

Oooh, now thanks to Michael, I understand those devious marketdroids. Silly me, I thought the halloween document was a real leak, or at least a fake, but now I understand why Microsoft's image and sales have sky-rocketed since its release : it's because their marketing department released it on purpose !

Hell, the Open Source Initiative website lists 42 others that aren't the GPL (though they may be derivatives...).

So find one that isn't as "restrictive" as either the GPL or the proprietary ones that give no access to the code...

Hell, the Open Source Initiative website lists 42 others that aren't the GPL (though they may be derivatives...).

So find one that isn't as "restrictive" as either the GPL or the proprietary ones that give no access to the code...

Well, SCO at least can't claim "trade secret" about anything (including algorithms!) in "Ancient UNIX". The OpenSource.Org examination points out that SCO is not stating which protections have been violated: patent, copyright, trade secret...

is it possible to release something under a GPL license that states:

everything the GPL currently states PLUS "except SCO, which has no right to even breath on said bits"

I am not "punishing" SCO users, just refraining from spending my free time supporting a platform whose vendor has taken Linux hostage as part of their scorched-earth greenmail campaign. Why should I? Also note that I have not (as of now) intentionally broken Nmap on that platform. I just won't spend my time providing free support. Nmap is Open Source, so SCO users can support/maintain it themselves if they care enough.

Like many Slashdot readers, I have been following the SCO updates, their press releases, SEC filings such as their latest 10Q, etc. The more I read, the more absurd their case seems. Yet despite the utter lack of evidence from SCO and their increasing signs of desperation, Wall Street is still believes in them(!). Why? Now I realize the market isn't always rational, and certainly has no conscience. But the disconnect is still surprising. Many people obviously still believe SCO has a case. For this reason, I believe continued publicity and research is called for. Removing Nmap support for SCO systems is just one of my tiny efforts in this area.

-Fyodor
Concerned about your network security? Try the free Nmap Security Scanner

IBM knows how to handle public relations, they have some experience in the matter. Slashot (especially Slahdot) shouldn't be trying to play with the big boys by printing every story they see.

If SCO wants to claim Linus was behind the WTC terrorist attack, let them. If they want to sue Alan Cox for 98 billion dollars, let them. Whether or not they have a case is irrelevent (and for any mis-quoters out there in SCO-land, you don't). You do not ever argue with a fool or a drunk.

Leave them shout from the hill-tops that the entire world is against them, let them buy the senators if they want to/can afford to, if you ignore them, they'll have nothing left to do except go to court and show IBM's big hairy lawyer their ass.

If and when this does go to court, OSS doesn't need SCO to be able to say "look at these terrorists, they saying stealing is ok".

Whilst the tech-news sites keep reporting this as the story, SCO has no reason to go to court because having their name in the NYTimes is what they want, it doesn't matter if their in the cookery section with a recipe for SCO-nuts (Tm) or whether they have a fifteen page expose on Linus and his law-breaking dog (does Linus have a dog, I don't know, geeks seem to like cars more..go figure).

While everybody is running around like headless chickens talking about how SCO is evil,SCO is wrong, no way can SCO be right.... the SCO-board are sitting in their office laughing at your comments. They set up the fire and you are stoking it for them.

They know their going to lose a court-case against IBM, whether by fair or patent-foul. They don't want the court-case, they can't have the court case. What they want is "IBM" to appear next to "owe 3 billion" or "can't be trusted" in the Post or Times so the Big Blue has no choice but to make it go away.

If the tech-savy readers start talking about this to their friends, their friends become interested and so will the Post and Times, suddenly the headlines appear...(yes, more often and wilder than at present)

Ignore the lunatics, ignore the fools and the drunks, this will go away if you let it go away, it very likely doesn't involve you, don't demand retribution, don't demand countersuits. If you must do something find a nice OSS-hackers email address and express your support, email IBM and tell them you love them (all they really want is love :). If you want to be more substantial, donate to the EFF, donate to Linus, donate to the FSF or the OSI.

You can't win by shouting louder, you only lose your voice.

Eric Raymond's paper effectively dismantles SCO's argument point by point. It's long but good reading. He specifically mentions that IBM's contribution to the kernel was minimal.

My name is Mike, and I thank you for having the courage to come forward with your problem.

The concept of having access to source code was very appealing to us, as we'd be able to modify the kernel to meet our exacting standards which we're unable to do with Microsoft's products.

Bravo! [clapping]

Although we met several technical challenges along the way (specifically, Linux's lack of Token Ring support and the fact that we were unable to defrag its ext2 file system)

I'm sensing anger here, but I feel it is a bit misplaced. Linux does support Token Ring generally. Unlike FAT32, ext2 does not need defragmentation. Perhaps you should confer with a support group that discusses your distro?

Although we had planned for no one outside of this company to ever use, let alone see the source code, we were now put in a difficult position.

Hold on a second, if I understand you correctly, you are concerned that under the GPL which states that you have to release the source code of your modifications if you plan to distribute the binaries of your code, you will have to release your source code. But at the same time, you don't plan on distributing any code outside of the company. I don't understand your confusion, my son, but if you never plan on releasing anything outside of your company, you never need to worry about releasing the source code.

I think the biggest thing keeping Linux from being truly competitive with Microsoft is this GPL. Its draconian requirements virtually guarentee that no business will ever be able to use it.

Damn it! You were doing so well. Why did you fall off the wagon. Was it me? Did the community not do enough to support you?

I may reconsider if Linux switches its license to something a little more fair, such as Microsoft's "Shared Source". Until then its attempts to socialize the software market will insure it remains only a bit player.

INTERVENTION! Here's some reading material for you. Open source principles,GPL, and where you can find help. Please read them and when you're ready, you can rejoin the group.

(b) access to expensive and sophisticated design and testing equipment;

In making this claim, SCO/Caldera blithely ignores the existence of facilities such as the Open Source Development Lab[41], an organization funded by twenty-one companies including technology giants such as Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems, NEC, Dell, and Hitachi â" and IBM. OSDL has lab facilities in Beaverton, Oregon, and Yokohama, Japan. OSDL opened its first lab in January 2001, four months before IBM's withdrawal from Project Monterey. From October 2000 to October 2002, one of its sponsors was Caldera Systems International!

All of SCOs claims are non-sequiters. I would debunk them here, but OSI already did!

More to the point, as noted in the OSI position paper on the lawsuit (about half way down - search for SMP and you will eventually find the correct segment), Linux had working SMP before UNIX did, so this is a null claim.

I'm getting bored now, and $3Billion? Who are they kidding. Anyway, so far as I can tell, the arguement goes 'IBM wrote some code and put it into both UNIX and Linux'. So far as I can tell, there is no legal bar on them from doing so. Sure, they can't later take any modifications done to the Linux Kernel and put it into Unix, but as the originator of the code that is in Unix, they can do what the hell they like with it (and later putting it into Linux does NOT GPL the version of Unix, it just prevents them from later copying Linux changes back over)

The OSI Position Paper on the SCO-vs.-IBM Complaint suggests why IBM seems so confident.

(I'm sure it's been posted here before, but it's required reading)

CousinDave

Not to mention that, as has been pointed out numerous times all over the place, that was a different SCO.

Pay attention now... class is about to begin.

First read this: OSI Position Paper on the SCO-vs.-IBM Complaint. Whether or not you like esr, Eric has the facts straight. SCaldera has made many outright lies in their 'complaint' against IBM.

MozillaQuest has been covering this from the very beginning. The timeline you request can be easily determined from their articles.

No, Resin is no longer Open Source (it used to be in effect donation-based Open Source, way back when I was using it, but is no longer).

Open Source does not just mean "the source is available". It has a specific definition which is very close to Free Software. The main difference is that the Free Software movement promotes Free Software as an ethical choice to be made whenever reasonably possible, whereas Open Source promotes it as a pragmatic choice. It's basically one set of software, with two movements representing it (and I don't think they are so divided as RMS makes out, even!)

That's still not quite the full picture.

Caldera was (is?) funded by The Canopy Group, which was founded by Ray Noorda, preferences former Novell CEO. Caldera purchased the Santa Cruz Operation, owners of some UNIX (exactly which bits is a matter of some debate). FWIW, Caldera has now officially changed its name to The SCO Group.

The Canopy Group is the majority stockholder in Caldera Corp, dba (that's "doing business as") "The SCO Group".

What Caldera bought was not "SCO" (the company formerly known as The Santa Cruz Operation), but that company's "Unix Business". While I haven't seen the documents, there's basically a bundle of rights, contracts, and licenses (the 30,000 contracts, though most are quite historical, we've heard so much about). The original SCO continues as a going concern under the name Tarentella. Rather quietly, I might add.

Though Caldera voted at its stockholder's meeting this past May to officially change its name to "The SCO Group", the name change has not yet taken legal effect.

Oh, and Caldera is the company which co-developed the RPM packaging format with Red Hat, distributed GNU/Linux (under the GNU GPL) for nine years, and which, for the past three years, has distributed the very 2.4 Linux Kernel (downloaded my own copy last week). Um. Under the GPL, last I checked.

I'd recommend The OSI's Position Paper and a compilation site I've had some involvment with, SCOvsIBM.

SCO

SCO Sucks

SCO

SCO Sucks

It points out why SCO has no real claim that they can support. It's a lengthy but well worth reading.

Unix has become a generic term. Removing trademark status would benefit not only Apple, but the free Unixes, Linux and the BSDs.

I think there might be a little more to it than that. Just got done reading ESR's OSI Position on the SCO-vs-IBM suit paper, and it looks like the right to use the Unix trademark is conferred upon vendors who go through a certification process to confirm compliance to Unix standards.

So it's sort of like if somebody slaps the famous "compact disc" logo on a copy-protected disc - you're advertising conformance to a standard that you don't conform to. That's not to say that apple is necessarily out of compliance with the standard, the point is that the "Unix" trademark is the TOG's "seal of approval".

I borrowed the term "genetic Unix" (that was not I typo -- I did not mean "generic Unix") from ESR, which he coined in the OSI Position Paper on the SCO-vs-IBM Complaint.

If one takes a look at the insider trading at SCO one can find out that the last insider trader was Bawa Opwinder, Senior Vice President, Engineering and Global Services, who sold 23k shares on 6/5/2003.

Maybe there's a relationship between the moves of this individual, but jumping to conclusions about the motivations of the entire executive team seems jumpy to me.

I personally think they blundered quiet a lot, but they probably guess this suit can have the same effect on them as the antitrust case.

Anyway, the responsible lawer(s) did a lucrative thing by selling this to some individuals who really didn't have a clue what else to do.

I would recommend to wait for IBM to countersue. Any 'cease and decist' letter from SCO would have lead to compliance within minutes or hours, in the case code was actually copied from SCO to Linux.

As all the source code in the Linux kernel states who is the Copyright owner, one or several individuals (or companies) can be held responsible for those 80 (or more to come?) lines. The patents remained with Novel according to their statement, so this is purely a copyright case...
No judge will believe 80 lines of code can be vital for a 'program' this size (linux kernel), and lots of points raised by ERS (and more) come into play as well - in the assumption that SCO really had these lines first.
If SCO thinks IBM wins the most from Linux, why not wait for their reaction on this FUD?

Sorry, but the term Open Source has a very well defined meaning. Microsoft Shared Source Licencing does not fit the OSI definition. Therefore, it is not "Open Source". Have a nice day.

read Eric S. Raymond's OSI Position Paper on the SCO-vs.-IBM Complaint, I suggest to read it. It is very interesting and shows that we have nothing at all to worry about. Great job, ESR!

SCO/Caldera misrepresents the efforts of the open-source community

When SCO/Caldera asserts (Paragraph 75): "The name âoeLinusâ(sic) was taken from the person who introduced Linux to the computing world, Linus Torvalds." its use of the verb âoeintroducedâ appears to be an attempt to insinuate that Linux was in some way copied or pre-existent rather than an invention that Linus Torvalds originated.

Similarly, when SCO/Caldera asserts (Paragraph 78): âoeThe primary purpose of the GNU organization is to create free software based on valuable commercial software.â it portrays the GNU organization's original works as being mere derivatives or clones. In doing so, it flatly contradicts the evidence of major GNU projects such as the Emacs editor that is shipped by SCO/Caldera itself not merely on its Linux but on its Unix product as well. The Emacs editor predated every commercial product with even roughly comparable features.

Both implied claims cannot but be characterized as false, self-serving attempts to denigrate the work of others in order to magnify SCO/Caldera's imputed importance as the present owner of the historical Bell Labs code. Furthermore, they are offensive to the tens (perhaps hundreds) of thousands of skilled programmers who have collaborated in the invention of modern open-source Unixes.

SCO/Caldera misrepresents the state of Linux now

In paragraph 85, SCO/Caldera claims: âoeFor example, Linux is currently capable of coordinating the simultaneous performance of 4 computer processors. UNIX, on the other hand, commonly links 16 processors and can successfully link up to 32 processors for simultaneous operation.â

32-processor SMP was already implemented under Linux in 2000.[44] 24-processor operation, three times the 8-processor limit of UnixWare, was demonstrated in 1998 on a Sun E10000[45].

Today, SGI is shipping Altix 3000 cluster computers that run Linux over 64 processors[46].

SCO/Caldera grossly misrepresents the state of Linux before IBM

A major part of SCO/Caldera's complaint turns on (a) representing pre-IBM Linux as a primitive makeshift being slapped together by garage-band amateurs. Their implied narrative is that (b) only the corporate intervention of IBM made Linux a competitive product, and that (c) IBM's intervention was in turn only efficacious due to the ineffable superiority of the primal Bell Labs code base.

All three of these assertions are not merely false, they are profoundly disrespectful to the many, many developers worldwide who labored with sweat and brilliance to craft Linux into a

ESR is Eric S. Raymond, author of "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", the essay which was cited as a prime reason for Netscape's decision to release their browser source, and many other essays on Open Source. He was a co-founder of the OSI, and is the long-time maintainer of .

His website is here.

Of course, a google search would have told you all of this.

> pwd
/usr/src/linux-2.4.20
> ls -F
COPYING Makefile arch/ include/ lib/
CREDITS README count.txt init/ mm/
Documentation/ REPORTING-BUGS drivers/ ipc/ net/
MAINTAINERS Rules.make fs/ kernel/ scripts/

wc `find drivers` | grep total>>count.txt
wc `find fs` | grep total>>count.txt
wc `find include` | grep total>>count.txt
wc `find init` | grep total>>count.txt
wc `find ipc` | grep total>>count.txt
wc `find kernel` | grep total>>count.txt
wc `find lib` | grep total>>count.txt
wc `find mm` | grep total>>count.txt
wc `find net` | grep total>>count.txt
wc `find scripts` | grep total>>count.txt
> cat count.txt
2536224 8901774 75504253 total
318544 1344003 10463709 total
539341 2073426 17956222 total
1643 5032 38571 total
3289 9680 74527 total
14262 44543 349883 total
8456 36302 259818 total
15428 51466 387165 total
233962 700480 5920826 total
12201 45061 320402 total

However, this needs to be clearly defined in your original NDA. If you are considering commencing work that might be useful to the open source community, you might want to get your current NDA re-negotiated so that you can get sign-off from your company to release "authorised" components on a per-case basis.

The main thing that companies will be afraid of is liability and losing face if the product/code/etc is found to be faulty. Most of the boiler-plate open source licenses out there cater to this, by stating that the product is not guaranteed to be fit for any purpose, and that by usage the customer/user takes on all liability themselves:

(Example, BSD license)

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

As a developer you also can make this easier by separating components of your software, making them modular. So that one library that does one thing in a useful way (but nothing especially proprietary) can be distributed, but another library that does some funky stuff on their proprietary application/database remains closed.

NOTE: I am not a lawyer! ;-)

BSD would be an example of a less restrictive license . Such licenses are discussed in the memo prior to discussing the GPL. Since the GPL is rather unique, it's no wonder that it was mentioned specifically. You don't really expect them to enumerate the licenses on OSI do you?

Someone has called SCO's bluff. You can read all about it here.

Note: The advertising clause in the license appearing on BSD Unix files was officially rescinded by the Director of the Office of Technology Licensing of the University of California on July 22 1999. He states that clause 3 is "hereby deleted in its entirety."

Can we get a German-to-English translation that doesn't suck, please? I've tried google to no avail, and feel that Babblefish won't be any better.

I still wonder how many people have read this by Eric Raymond.