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NASM Public License Not GPL-compatible?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the 101010101 dept.

Palisade writes "NASM (The Netwide Assembler) is an open source assembler that can generate code for many platforms/operating systems and is portable to many operating systems. There have been debates in the past over the NASM licence to which NASM itself and all code contributed to the NASM effort is licensed under. The original authors created a license which claims to be compatible with the GPL [?] , but which requires unusual restrictions making it incompatible. For developers to continue developing on NASM would mean they would be contributing to a "black hole". A full synopsis can be found on the NASM website at SourceForge." Update: 09/05 04:57 PM by S :It seems the problem is resolved.

9 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. That's precisely WHY we have OSI approval by Russ+Nelson · · Score: 4

    I'm a programmer, now a lawyer... TO hell with your 'license' crap.

    That's exactly WHY I bother to be on the OSI board: so that programmers can look for the OSI Certified Open Source certification mark, and be comfortable developing and redistributing their improvements.
    -russ

    --
    Don't piss off The Angry Economist
  2. Licensing by Datafage · · Score: 5
    The whole attitude of much of the open source movement gets to me. The use of the term "black hole" to refer to code not under the GPL is troubling. Other licenses have valid uses, and it should be up to the author which to use. If a person is only willing to code under the GPL, then he is as nonsensical as a person who refuses to drive anything except a Ford Explorer. You're using their compiler; they have the right to say what you can use it for just as much as the GPL says what you can do with code released under it.

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    Nicotine free Amish .sig.

  3. It needs some language clean-up by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 3
    I think it's meant to be dual-licensing, either NASM or GPL. But he doesn't really say that unambiguously. A few sentences worded differently would fix it. I'd suggest starting the license with "You may choose one of two licenses to apply to this software: the NASM license, below, or the GNU General Public License in the file GPL in this directory."

    Bruce

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  4. Re:dammit jim by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 4
    Is my license really any less credible than the GPL or any other license slapped on any piece of software?

    Would you let a lawyer do your programming? :-)

    Licenses written by programmers who have no idea how to write valid licenses end up being harmful to other programmers who have no valid way to apply them.

    You really have two choices: use one of the existing ones, or run it by an attorney.

    Thanks

    Bruce

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  5. bah by nomadic · · Score: 4

    Hey, why isn't anyone complaining how the GPL license isn't compatible with the NASM license, and demanding the FSF change it?
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    1. Re:bah by Arandir · · Score: 3

      The reason that no one complaining the reverse is that it is the NASM license which claims compatibility. The GPL never claimed compatibility with NASM.

      Go take a look at the NASM license. It isn't that bad, and counts as OSS/FS. However, it has this bizarre clause in it that says NASM is GPL compatible. This is Palisade's point, I believe, that a lot of people are using NASM licensed code believing it to be compatible with their own GPL code when in fact it is not.

      --
      A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
  6. Who fscking cares? by SecretAsianMan · · Score: 4

    Are we not programmers? The endless license quarreling is making us lose touch with our souls. Let's shut up and write some code!

    Honestly, I think the best license is this: "Do whatever the hell you want to do with this. I don't really care."

    --

    Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.

  7. Re:To !GPL by Arandir · · Score: 4

    Ditto. Choose the license that fits your needs, not the license that someone else tells you to use. The GPL, especially dual-licensed with a proprietary license, is great for commercial work (free for free, nonfree for nonfree). But for simple hobbyist stuff like what I make, even the BSD license is getting a bit restrictive :-)

    --
    A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
  8. Original NASM Primary Author Speaks by Simon+Tatham · · Score: 5

    I always wanted to appear on Slashdot, but I never thought I'd do it by having years of my life slagged off in a front-page story. <kyle>You bastards!</kyle>

    There's been a lot of dispute as to whether the intent of the GPL clause was to dual-license or to create a strange hybrid thing. I can answer that very simply: it was to dual-license.

    We created the original NASM licence (which didn't even have the GPL clause) back in 1995 when understanding of the issues wasn't widespread like it is now. Nobody seemed to care that it wasn't GPL-compatible at the time - it was free enough for people's purposes.

    After a while, Debian found NASM and packaged it up, and pointed out to us that it would have to go in "non-free" unless we were willing to dual-license with the GPL. We agreed to that, and I sent an email to the Debian package maintainer granting our permission for Debian to distribute their NASM package under the GPL, until such time as we got round to making it explicit in the real licence.

    When we did make it explicit, we clearly didn't do it very well. But the intention has always been to dual-license.

    Therefore, I don't see that there's a serious problem here, at least as far as intentions go. We wanted any user of NASM to have accepted (at least) one of the NASM half of the licence and the GPL. If you want to link NASM code with GPL code, you accept the GPL, and then you have no problem.