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Python 1.6 Incompatible w/ GPL
WillSmith sent in a bit running over at LinuxToday addressing the fact that RMS thinks that Python 1.6 is incompatible w/ the GPL. The article is basically how to resolve this within Debian.
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What 'protection' does it offer? None. It offers up a way for a judge to make a ruling that MIGHT allow for compensation, but that is not protection, that is compensation AFTER the 'damage' has been done.
It is at least better than just handing it over (as public domain and some licenses do).
By extension of your logic, dumping toxic waste into drinking water should be legal because corperations usually get away with it anyway. (I know, nobody dies when GPL is abused, but the point is there).
I have a hard time stomaching RMS bitching about the GPL...so what if it's not "vanilla" GPL anymore. As an end user, I dont care and until they someone reuses the code, no one will.
I don't! I release software under the GPL because that's the way I want to share my code. I don't want to see it in a year or 2 with Sun's or MS's name on it. If someone wants to use my code in a less free package, I expect a percentage (be it monetary if they're selling it or publicity if they're giving it away).
That will not be the case if violating the GPL becomes common practice.
What I DO have a hard time stomaching is the many 'Joe Blows sorta kinda free for now license for Monday, Sept. 4, 2000 at 12:05 and 13 seconds' followed by Joe Blow complaining that his project is being left out of a GPL distro. Jow Blow then inevitably goes on to explain that his license is EXACTLY LIKE GPL, but can't explain why then he prefers his version.
I have no doubt that you as an end user don't care about the difference, you got your free (as in beer) software. You'll never hear about the great free (as in beer) software you MIGHT have gotten next year if someone could have reused Joe Blow's sorta kinda free source. Besides, it's not your work that is being protected by the GPL, so what do you care. Your not the one who might otherwise see your work commercially benefiting the very same corperation that spends many times your income trying to make sure that thousands of PHBs who can't even find the power switch will make your job harder by demanding that you use crappy bloatware instead of the best choice.
If you had seen, first hand, the software world going from a freely shared group effort to a proprietary hell of software that almost works but makes the suits rich, and then spent another couple of decades swimming upstream to revitalize the old system (as RMS and others have successfully done), you might be a bit touchy about slippery slopes yourself.
If you have a novel way of implementation, what is stopping anyone from taking your code, creating a spec of it, passing that spec over the cube wall and having another implement the spec?
No copyright can protect from that. Your confusing copyright and patent. I HAVE considered the idea of 'Patent-left'
How about this: They just cut and paste your code into their product. Do you have the money to track down all the different people who might have done this cut-n-paste job? Do you have the money to take them to court?
Of course I don't, but do they want to take the risk that a dis-gruntled employee might tip me off? That I might transfer my copyright to the FSF and get RMS on their case?
*IF* your modivation is "to stop theft of my code", I wish to remind you that 'locks keep honest people honest'.
That IS my motivation for releasing under the GPL. I prefer to risk having someone cheat on the license rather than lock up the source.
Then there's the fact that a great deal of GPL code is out there, and there have been reletivly few incidents thus far.
IMHO, even though the risk for a large company is small, the consequences are big if it actually happens. Smart companies don't take the chance.
And, well, your code may not worth taking :-(
That's always possable, but then the whole point is moot.
Specifically, CNRI wants to resolve all disputes in Virginia which has passed UTICA.
Think about it.
--
Ben Kosse
--
Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
RMS and the other Free Software advocates have felt strongly about this issue for a long time. They have a long history of not bending. They simply get more press nowadays because more people are using their software.
Like it or not there are a great deal of talented people that believe strongly in the GPL. Because of this there is a huge body of source code that becomes off limits if your software is not compatible with the GPL. That is why groups like Sun, TrollTech and now the CNRI want their licenses to be considered GPL compatible. Unfortunately for those of us caught in the middle, the people creating these new licenses also have their own agendas. They want RMS to give in on his principles so that they can have their license the way they want it, and still be able to use GPLed code.
Fortunately for all of us RMS is not going to budge unless it is in all our best interests.
This is not going to happen. The FSF has spent a lot of time and effort creating a body of software that is only available to people who don't object to sharing code. Since sharing code is what RMS is all about, he isn't about to give ground. After years of struggling he finally has the upper hand. Plus, he's on a roll. QT, StarOffice, and MySQL are just some of the recent examples of major software products that have succumbed to his pressure. BSD style license advocates are up in arms because GPLed software is more damaging to their cause than commercial software, but that's another story...
Bingo! give the man a prize. This is the root of the problem. Instead of sticking to one of the licenses that is already well accepted in the community each and every major non FSF project seems to want to create their own license. There is a long list of acceptable GPL compatible licenses. In fact, the old Python license is one of them. Yet, for some reason, people keep thinking that they need a license of their very own. In this case the CNRI added a clause that specified the jurisdiction for any disputes. Since that is an extra restriction on the rights of us that don't live in Virginia, then RMS is technically right. The license is not GPL compatible.
Now, if the CNRI was smart, it would have simply slapped a standard BSD style license on Python and called it good. But instead they have screwed it up for Pythonistas everywhere. Now every single GPLed program that embeds Python will either have to 1) stay at version 1.5.2, or 2) pick another scripting language.
Since I happen to be one of the Pythonistas affected, I am quite upset, but then again, I probably should have stuck with a language that guaranteed my freedoms. Something nice and LGPLed would be perfect (as I could then also use it in my commercial projects). I suppose I could go back to Perl, as it's dual license is both safe (it's GPLed) and commercial software friendly (the Artistic License).
Hopefully this will get sorted out post haste, but I don't plan on testing the new versions until they do, and if they take too long, I will find some other language. If there is one thing that has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt it is that Open Source software projects that end up with licensing problems have a hard time gaining mindshare. KDE should have been the undisputed desktop leader. They had a years head start, and the Gnome guys had to create nearly their entire framework from scratch. And yet despite all of KDE's advantages it wasn't until after StarOffice was pledged to become a part of Gnome that they finally relented.
There are enough good truly Free scripting languages that Python can ill afford to have problems of this sort. Perhaps now would be a good time to take a look at Ruby...
I don't see why Debian cares whether the Python licence is compatible with the GPL, though. The licence certainly seems to be DFSG-free, and I'm not aware of any GPLed software that has ever incorporated Python bodily. (People have written GPLed software in Python, of course, but that's a different thing; there's no requirement GPLed software be written using a GPLed system or platform.)
It seems you're claiming that a script written in Python is derivative of the Python interpreter. But that's wrong, because it would mean you can't write a GPLed Delphi program (because Delphi isn't GPLed) or a GPLed set of Excel macros, which is silly; the fact that you're using a non-GPLed development environment doesn't mean you can't write a GPLed program for that environment. Otherwise, how could you legally run the GNU tools on a non-GPLed OS like Solaris?
The consultations will go on, and there's still hope that a settlement between RMS and CNRI will be found that produces a license that's compatible with the GPL.
Sorry to point this out, but to RMS, the only license that is compatible with the GPL is the GPL.
Woz
I'm with you, man. I am dumbfounded at the hostility displayed here on Slashdot to a man that has done more than any other person on the planet to bring us these wonderful Free Linux systems (including Linus, there's a bit more to your average distro than just /vmlinuz).
I just don't get it... it's truly sad.
"Free your mind and your ass will follow"
I just read that interview, and I think he came out of it OK - he is very focused on a single idea, i.e. a zealot (he almost has to be, by definition), and that's one big reason why the GNU movement has succeeded.
The interviewer was either playing devil's advocate or rather clueless about free software - RMS did OK in handling this, only occasionally letting rip...
I am not a huge fan of RMS and I tend to ignore the demands to refer to GNU/Linux not Linux (there are many other types of software in the typical Linux distro, e.g. Perl Artistic licensed, BSD and X11) - however, without RMS I would not now be typing this message on a Linux system compiled by GCC and running Gnome, so I think we all owe him a huge thank you, even if we don't agree with everything he says.
Courage in your convictions may sometimes be hard to distinguish from arrogance...
#1: You convert Python into an OS so that it can have all of the system resources to itself and your Python programs can run faster
#2: instead of using `ls', in unix, you use:
python -c "map(lambda x: __import__('sys').stdout.write(x+'\n'), __import__('os').listdir('.'))"
-rozzin.
Other people have mentioned this before, but I guess it should be repeated. No one cares what you license your own code with except you. But if you use an "almost" GPL license, then don't whine if you find that you can't get your code accepted in a GPL distro.
-BrentSecond of all, I seriously doubt RMS has a list of software vendors that he consults and then goes out to badger them into using the GPL (or a compatible license). More likely, Python went to him to see if they were GPL-compat. He said "no" which is entirely his choice. Furthermore, Python acknowledged that it was his choice by the very act of asking.
It is certainly RMS's choice to say "The Python License is not compatible with the GPL". However, his saying so does not necessarily make it true. The issue is whether a GPL program can be linked with Python, and whether the requirement of the Python License that disputes are governed under the laws of Virginia prevents such use.
If you write a program which you want to GPL, and it uses Python, there is a way out; RMS explains how in a section on the Qt license in his article Various Licenses and Comments about Them. If you are creating a Linux distribution, or even a large software collection which includes Python and GPL software, you're ok:
Third, this causes no problems to the FSF, the Python people or the general public. It's only a problem for groups like Debian that want to distribute A) only GPL and GPL-compatible software and B) Python.
This isn't quite true - if I write a program which incorporates the Python interpreter, or pieces of it, and want to (or have to) use the GPL, then I have that problem. I'm not sure if I can legally distribute a work under the GPL plus the statement:
I understand why CNRI included that statement; I'm not clear on why that becomes a significant problem with respect to the GPL, or if it indeed is.I'm not quite sure how you can say that he's never been about self-promotion. To me, his whole GNU/Linux crusade has been about himself. And I'm sorry, but I see no reason to give someone style points just for being consistent, when it's clear to a lot of people (not all, but many) that he's being an ass. ("Yeah, but he's consistently an ass!" ?) As a much better writer than me said:
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Cheers,
Perhaps he will announce the incompatibilty of the hydrogen atom with the GPL, therefore refusing to wash. Then again, considering his photo he may already have.
The real problem isn't that they couldn't package Python for inclusion. The real problem is that it's questionably legal to embed Python in a GPL'd package. I'm doing some of that, but I'm not particularly worried.
CNRI, the previous employers of GvR, own the code; they were guaranteed a Python 1.6 release by Guido. BeOpen will do the 2.0 release. That's why the two are so close together. CNRI is being a bit difficult about the licensing issues (claiming that the previous Python license doesn't count as a real license, etc.)
In the best case, all of this will be worked out and people can distribute binaries of this package with Python linked in. In the worst case, none of this gets sorted out until Python 2.0 (BeOpen wants GPL compatibility) and no one can distribute said binaries with Python2.0.
Humm... I wonder if RMS will ask them to beg for forgivness?? It's funny how some people in the open source community select their reaction depending on the targets. KDE moves to the GPL and they get flamed, now Pyhton is not compatible with the GPL and people try to work a way to make them fit in.
By the way, this was not flamebait this was just sad irony...
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear"
Since the GPL is silent on endorsements and promotions, this is an additional restriction. But lest you think I'm making this up, RMS has already decreed the new Apache license incompatible for its clauses 4 and 5, and Apache clause 4 is the same as BSD condition 3!
Face it, nothing is compatible with the GPL.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Emacs.
(I wonder if the entire Free Software Movement has just been a Illumnati plot to position emacs ahead of vi in the eternal One True Editor Jihad?)
(K)
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
My understanding is that the freedom is not of the programers so much as of the software itself. The idea is that the GPL prevents people from incroaching on the freedom of the code, not the other way around.
--Ben
--Ben
So that's what GNU-Latin looks like.
One of Python's strengths is its license, which is very BSD-like. It allows people to redistribute modified Python as part of their project, embed Python as a built-in language and extend it with their own C-based modules. I have been trying to convince my own employer to use Python for some products, and the license is a big plus in that fight --let's face it; businesses are more amenable to the BSD-family of licensing than the GPL.
If the Python people follow TrollTech onto the GPL bandwagon it will probably hurt Python in the long run... Before you know it, RMS will be arguing that products using Python as a scripting language or based on Python extensions (and there are quite a few) will have to switch to GPL...
INo copyright can protect from that. Your confusing copyright and patent. I HAVE considered the idea of 'Patent-left'
Indeed, many of us have done so. although I prefer the term "Latent," for "left-patent," to the awkward "patent-left."
There are many interesting issues that make Latents a much harder thing to accomplish. And the OSS community seems unwilling to consider Latents (because it is about software patents) sufficiently politically correct to get behind it. However, Latents offer the single best chance, IMHO, to protect the future of OSS against monied interests abusing OSS with software patents.
it's not splitting hairs. The GPL says (and I'm guessing that this is the reason) "no extra restrictions" and this is an extra restriction.
Oh, if only that were the case, then this would be easy. The issue is not that any extra restriction makes things incompatible, but that some restrictions do and others do not. The arbiter of what are improper restrictions, at the end of the day, is RMS, in his view.
And the law is on his side -- at least technically. The language is clear that any addtiional restriction would violate. Thus, at the end of the day, the enforcing party can be the arbiter -- if only by deciding which violation to enforce, and which not to enforce.
So, I would agree the author is correct that its probably not "splitting hairs" to claim ANY non-GPL license is incompatible if it has any word not in the GPL or any provision not expressly a subset of a GPL restriction.
It is, however, arbitrary and capricious in practice. To pretend that some licenses are clearly naughty and others are clearly nice, and that this distinction is somehow embodied consistently in the GPL itself, or in the corpus commentary at FSF's web site is to engage in fantasy.
So for those of us who actually do care about, or are fiduciarily responsible to others, about license compliance concerning, GPL, we must take the view that only GPL is clearly compatible with anything that is not GPL, lest our clients find ourselves at the business end of that caprice.
So for those of us who actually do care about, or are fiduciarily responsible to others, about license compliance concerning, GPL, we must take the view that only GPL is clearly compatible with anything that is not GPL, lest our clients find ourselves at the business end of that caprice.
Sorry about the syntactic instability. I meant to write something different, but clicked the wrong key. The sentence should have read:
Some of us actually care about avoiding license violations, or are responsible as advisors to those who want to avoid the same. For us, we must take the conservative view, that only GPL, and a very few other licenses, is compatible with GPL. Any other view exposes them to the caprice of the copyright holder.
This, IMHO, is the primary difficulty with the GPL.
Please cite what you believe to the relevant provision of UCITA which permits a licensee to unilaterally change a license in this manner.
What if mathematicians create the Algebra of Licensing - formal science for calculating license compatibility. The licenses will have much more compact formulations. And it will be possible to use OBJECTIVE means to figure out if software is composed legally and what is the resulting license or, on the contrary, is illegal and uses bad license mix
Not likely. Mathematicians have already proved it is impossible to create a general process determine whether two non-identical programs have the same input/output characteristics.
Far more likely, either the language will be too limiting to support most desirable license constructs, or it will be too expressively robust, implicating Godel-like or Halting-problem-like self-reference issues, to permit the existence of a general algorithm for determining equivalence or violations.
arguments?
Nonsense. As a lawyer well-versed in computer law issues, two things are apparent: (1) these issues are not beyond the ken of the Slashdot audience, who on both sides have manifest a fair understanding of the legal questions; and (2) one should never blindly accept the conclusions of a lawyer, such as Eben, who is acting in his capacity as an advocate for a client, in this case RMS and FSF.
Surely, when a lawyer makes cogent remarks, complete with reference to authority, one should take notice. But guess what? The folks on the "other side" are represented by counsel as well -- indeed, the lawyers who advised them to include the "offending provisions." They might take a different view. Thus, we as laypeople must make these calls on the merits, informed by the ARGUMENTS, not the assertions, of learned counsel.
This is why we have juries.
Bottom line: don't pretend this is beyond the ken of anyone here. The issues are fairly clear, and there is nothing deeply obcure from a legal position. In short, I see no reason a non-lawyer should feel shy about chiming in about these general policy questions.
The only objection of RMS is against clause 7, the "State of Virginia"-clause. The strange thing is, this clause may not be applicable outside the US, so the license may be GPL-compatible outside the US after all. (Only lawyers can sort this out).
Nah, actually, once you have formation of contract under applicable law, remaining choice of law clauses are generally enforced, even in international scenarios. There are exceptions, but I don't see one here.
In this sense, the choice of law clause actually seems like a good idea. I think that RMS is troubled not by the idea of a choice of law clause per se, but by an ideological opposition to laws passed in some jurisdictions. The problem is, that he is not arguing his underlying opposition -- he is pretending that this is a clause inconsistent with free software -- I disagree.
And is Stallman crazy? Or crazy like a fox?
Just crazy. (Actually, I don't think he is crazy -- merely unnecessarily dogmatic, and to the detriment of his stated cause and philosophy.)
But I just LOVE the anti-UCITA arguments made by folks who don't understand the law. While UCITA does have some provisions offensive to me, if these provisions are your lead concerns, well LOL. UCITA is no better or worse in this regard than the
This particular argument is one of the weakest reeds on which I have seen an anti-UCITA advocate lean.
For centuries, violations of fundamental public policies, and more recently, but for decades, unconscionability have been grounds for courts to void provisions of contracts. This is true not only of the common law, but also the fifty-year-old UCC, which is the statutory law most likely to apply in its absence.
Indeed, UCITA's provisions are somewhat better than prior law, in that they LIMIT the scope of discretion a court will have by more rigorously defining the notions and their application.
Your bio says you are an intellectual property lawyer. It may be easy for an IP lawyer to fall in love with UCITA...though there are plenty of lawyers who haven't.
I wrote computer games long before becoming a lawyer, and have since left the law to make internet security appliances. You seem to think my background disqualifies me, and I'd like to think these combined credentials give me a fair perspective on things. Let's lose the ad hominems on either side and discuss these issues on the merits, OK?
None of your remarks address the point I made. While there may be sound arguments against UCITA -- and there are many points of UCITA with which I disagree -- none of them were raised by the ridiculous propositions that UCITA, and not present law, permits unenforceability of unconcionable and counter-policy laws; or even that such provisions are bad things.
You might be interested to know that it was precisely these grounds with which the only Circuit Court cases not enforcing a shrink-wrap agreement based their judgment. Leave those cases out, and you are stuck with Zeidenberg's 7th Circuit shrink-wrap-uber-alles opinion, and all that under the common law and the UCC!
Except, of course, to release it under a more restrictive license, or distribute binaries without making the source available, or using it in proprietary software.
Did I miss any?
A bit of searching should find you an .au clip of RMS singing "Cooperation with RMS is impossible" or something like that. It was a long time ago and I'm too lazy to find it again.
>I don't want to see it in a year or 2 with Sun's or MS's name on it.
:-(
If you have a novel way of implementation, what is stopping anyone from taking your code, creating a spec of it, passing that spec over the cube wall and having another implement the spec?
The GPL protected your intellectual property how?
How about this: They take your code, move the indentations about, change some var names, add one or two new vars...the GPL protects you how?
How about this: They just cut and paste your code into their product. Do you have the money to track down all the different people who might have done this cut-n-paste job? Do you have the money to take them to court?
*IF* your modivation is "to stop theft of my code", I wish to remind you that 'locks keep honest people honest'. People who are going to take things they should not, will take things they should not. Given the risk of you comming out of the woodwork and suing is miminal, taking your code and making a closed source project from it is a minimal risk.
And, well, your code may not worth taking
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
The bad news is that there's still no agreement from Stallman that the CNRI open source license is GPL-compatible. See my previous post here. (Re: Conflict with the GPL.) Given that we still don't know that dual licensing will be necessary and sufficient to make the 2.0 license GPL-compatible, we decided not to go for dual licensing just yet -- if it transpires later that it is necessary, we'll add it to the 2.0 final license
So, they're considering it, at least for 2.0. But they hope to avoid it, and they are not sure it is enough.
Ciao
----
FB
What I mean is, the comments are usually made by people who don't know or understand the history of GNU, Unix, BSD, gcc, Linux, and all the other little stories that created our current environment. It would take too long to go into this history here, but I'd strongly encourage people who think that RMS is a whiner to read up on how all these threads began.
It's anachronistic in the same sense that folks in countries with a history of democracy and political liberalism (in the technical sense) don't understand why people get so worked up about voting and free speech. They've benefited from that history, but have also been blinded by it.
Disclaimer: I'm not blind to the attempts by both governments and corporations to marginalize the democratic process and civil liberties in the US and other countries--I'm being somewhat simplistic in these comments to make a larger point.
--
--
We have fought the AC's, and they have won.
I'm not privy to any inside story, but this one seems plausible and deserves to be moderated up. On the other hand, the RMS-bashing and utter nonsense from non-lawyers in other postings on this topic is excessive even by /. standards.
I respect Eben Moglen, the FSF attorney who is trying to help out here upon request of CNRI and the others involved. I think we should leave this matter to the expert lawyers and not feel afraid that somehow our interests as users or programmers will be hurt.
For example, one legal concern that has not been mentioned is that some U.S. states don't allow unconditional restriction of user rights in warranty disclaimers. You have probably seen such a statement on your cereal box in all capital letters, but failed to understand it. Maybe some CNRI attorneys are trying to suggest that either they should put such a statement into their disclaimer of warranty, or else restrict the contract enforcement to a state such as Virginia that doesn't void such disclaimers. Such a warranty concern might not have anything to do with UCITA at all!
The GPL has wisely adapted to new concerns by evolving the text of its license. One such concern has been the question raised by some distinguished legal experts that the contract might not be valid without some consideration exchange--at least a dollar bill. This was raised and never answered satisfactorily a few months ago on /. during the CyberPatrol fiasco.
Eben Moglen has been looking into such matters for the FSF. We ought to support such work financially, since at the moment it is done on a shoestring and with overworked volunteers. But instead of that, what do we see here but a bunch of opinionated crusaders pitching in with free legal advice on how others ought to do it for them. Is that what the Free Software movement is all about?
Have RMS's complaints about different liscences ever done a damn thing for open source?!
Although I think RMS is a bit much, he has never said he supports the open source movement; he supports the Free Software movement. Free software is a bit more than open source... it involves true freedom to do whatever you want with it once you have it. Open source is just a side effect of his vision of free software. RMS and the FSF don't care at all about pragmatics, just principals.
"Evil beware: I'm armed to the teeth and packing a hampster!"
Lex orandi, lex credendi.
All statements like this accomplish is stir up conflict in the community. (And endless liscense flamewars on slashdot.) There's no point in expecting him to stop this sort of thing, but we can hope.
Eye of Argon at +1 LIVES!
Anybody missing interesting diploma project?
SOme kind of Licode (~ geekcode of licensing) is needed, sure! And Freeware community could set this standard.
Maybe this way people will look at the licenses and understand them at one glance, like E = mc^2 ;-)
I hope my idea will not be forgotten and somebody will take notion of it and realise it.Thanks for your attention! Roman
First of all, I'm just a Python user. For official infomation look in comp.lang.python or on the beopen.com Python website. Here is what Guido and others have described:
:-)) to work on Python at BeOpen.com. This caused a looonnngggg discussion between CNRI and BeOpen.com about a new Python license. The discussion took place largely at CNRI's insistence, IMHO.
Guido spend the last several years working at CNRI. During this time, the only Python license was the original CWI one however CNRI says that they have copyright to versions of Python produced while Guido worked for them.
Guido and others left CNRI (and other places
CNRI and BeOpen.com (lawyers) agreed on what they thought was a GPL compatible license and asked RMS about it. They made several changes at his request. This eventually became the current license which CNRI agreed to release Python 1.6 under. BeOpen.com agreed that Python 2.0 was/is a derivative work of Python 1.6 so they have to live with the Python 1.6 license terms. This does not mean that they have to release Python 2.0 or any later version under the CNRI license though.
CNRI lawyers insist that the license contain a jurisdiction clause because of fear that someone will abuse the license (hard to do) and bring suit in some strange jurisdicion with laws or court rulings that would pervert the license (or some such -- I have trouble thinking like a paranoid lawyer). RMS objects to this clause. It is unclear whether the fact that the jurisdiction in question is the state of Virginia is relevant to either party. At last word, discussions were continuing...
The main Python developers are now at BeOpen.com where they have no control and little influence on either side of this disagreement. They'd really like to see a fully GPL compatible resolution but there is nothing they can do about it.
Until the GPL is tested in court, people cannot risk violating it, even over petty things. Who knows what anti-GPL court tactics have already been thought up in the legal departments of Microsoft and Corel?
If some code in Python violates the GPL in some way then you might think "so what?" but if someone then re-uses this code in another project (X) and inadvertently releases this code under the GPL, he could land into big trouble.
If someone takes code out of X and violates its GPL licence, he could take it to court and find that the license was invalid anyway due to the fact that the original sourcecode (from Python) was breaching the GPL!
In other words, in order to release something under the GPL, ALL code within it has to be either GPL or upwardly compatible with the GPL.
Is the title of an op-ed at Dr. Dobb's.
Best Slashdot Co
In breaking news today, Free software advocate Rischard Stallman noticed his Webster's included the clause As this conflicts with the key GPL clause, "Richard should always get his way," RMS has called for an immediate boycott of this evil corporate entity.
"one treats others with courtesy not because they are gentlemen or gentlewomen, but because you are" --G. Henrichs
RMS is a zealot. His latest tirade has left me with the feeling that he is just one step seperated from a Catholic Priest.
Priest: You must beg god for forgiveness.
RMS: You must beg the creator for forgiveness.
Priest: You shall have no other god before my god.
RMS: You shall have no other license before the GPL.
Priest: You must admit to the possibility of one true god.
RMS: You must admit that no license is open source except for the GPL.
Is anyone else sick of this diatribe?
Bite my yammer.
compatible with RMS?
Some information is missing here. A license doen't need to be compatible with the GPL for debian to software covered by it. It just has to be free. Debian includes lots of free software covered by licenses that are not compatible with the GPL.
Will some Debian comment what the real issue is?
PS: I predict we will see lots of flames here (condemning RMS, Debian, Python or the GPL) from people who haven't bothered to find out what the issue really is.
Have RMS's complaints about different liscences (anything other than pure 100% GPL) ever done a damn thing for open source?!
Why would RMS care about Open Source? He is interested in Free Software. And several people talk about RMS as if he's getting in the way of OS. WTF? OS is just a watered down form of Free Software that people like ESR approach businesses with. If you think the two are the same movement, then you are sadly mistaken.
it really doesn't encourage the adoption of open source to insist on a particular liscense scheme
Again, you are missing the point. Open Source is the watered down, pragmatic movement that doesn't address user freedoms. That's not what RMS wants, so why would he help in it's acceptance? RMS is seeking to educate people about their freedoms, and at the same time write enough quality software that people have a viable free choice. He has a higher goal than just "better code", and is not interested in compromising on his ideals.
There's no point in expecting him to stop this sort of thing, but we can hope.
I sure hope he never stops. The man may not be someone you want to take home to mom but, then again, he is a freedom fighter: radical, unkempt, and fighting the good fight.
I'm amazed at the number of people who don't understand RMS. Have you never read the GNU Manifesto?
--Lenny
People seem under the impression that RMS pronounced a verdict ex cathedra about the new license. That's wrong; the Pythoneers explicitly went and asked him for an opinion on the new license's GPL compatibility. RMS has not said you should not use Python; RMS has not said that Python's license is bad. He was asked if it's GPL compatible, and his legal advisors don't think it is, that's all. If you blame anyone, blame GvR and BeOpen for considering GPL compatibility an important criterion. I think they're right, and expect the situation to be resolved somehow by the time Python 2.0final arrives.
First IANAGE (I Am Not A GPL Expert).
We are seeing more and more GPL incompatibilities these days. Now I am not sure but here might be some reasons why :
1) People defending the GPL are becoming more and more fanatic about it because they feel "threatened" by all these incompatible licenses
2) Maybe the GPL is just a bit too strict and should be loosened to help people develop under some other license withouth having to bother thinking too much about pissing off other developpers
3) People are writing other licenses not caring about the GPL and it's compatibilities and only realise later when they are threatened to not be distributed that they have to modify it??
Whatever the reason I definitly think something should be done quckly... After all the goal of open source is to develop good software working all together in the same way and not against each other...
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear"
Who cares? I don't even see why they're "negotiating" with RMS. The man won't be happy until the software is used his license or a license that is just the GPL with another man. He's a zealot. You can't negotiate with that.
The fact is that the current license is an Open Source license. RMS just tries to use his fame to denegrate any OSS software project that doesn't agree with his radical "software wants to be Free" ideals. Witness the latest KDE & Qt nonsense. I think he's quite frankly power mad with his fame.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
If you really think it's splitting hairs, why don't you accuse CNRI of the hair-splitting... they could easily take it out if it's so insignificant as to be hair-splitting...
RMS is most emphatically NOT an advocate of "open source". His cause is "free software" and there are many examples of software which meets the Open Source definition without being Free (the latest, apparently, being Python 1.6). Whether you agree with some of the stands he has taken in the past, honesty requires that you acknowledge he has never misled people about what his goals are and he has never cared what others thought of his methods.
The recent high-profile licensing flamewars have come about in part because of the success of RMS's cause. After many years trapped in universities and corporate basements, free software has become quite popular and its quality is recognized. ESR's "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" provided a stimulus in the form of demonstrating how users will improve software faster when they can provide more than just bug reports. As a result, the world has become fixed on the idea that releasing source means better software. There are two big problems with this success, though:
The first problem comes about through licensing schemes that provide source but little else to the user, the most egregious example I can think of being the SCSL abomination delivered by Sun. Licenses like these are little more than an attempt to get users to do your work for you while reserving all rights to that work to yourself. Stallman's attack on this particular license generated little flame because the Open Source crowd was also condemning it.
The second problem is a little more subtle and is best exemplified by the unending GPL vs. BSD bickering. A BSD-style license provides source and nearly unlimited rights to the user, but is little better than an SCSL in Stallman's view because it permits unscrupulous users to "take the code private", that is, to benefit from others' work without sharing their own. If you truly understand RMS's definition of free software as "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" then you will see how such a license is also unacceptable to Free Software advocates.
These second category licenses have enjoyed increasing popularity as an opportunity by developers to get their product in wider use. Many people misunderstand the requirements of a GPL-compatible license and think that anything they do using a GPL-comptaible product must be released -- don't laugh, I know one guy who refuses to write anything in Python because "then I'd have to give my code away." The question of people asking if they can release binaries compiled by GCC without having to release source demonstrates the prevalence of this miunderstanding. A quick way around that is to allow people to take the code private. Some like that, some don't. It's unfair to attack RMS for being just as insistent on free software now as he was before the great Open Source Revolution of the 1990s.
Learn to spell: nickel, missile, lose, solely, amendment, speech, kernel, probably, ridiculous, deity, hierarchy, versus
Perl has been doing this for many years with GPL and Artistic, easy to do, no possible problems.
You offer the code under a choice of licenses, refuse all patches that don't fit both licenses, and call it a day. If you wish to use Perl with some drivers or some packages, you may need to use the Artistic license. If you need to use it in others you may need to accept the GPL. Most people don't ever bother deciding...
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
GNU/I GNU/just GNU/Dont GNU/see GNU/what GNU/everyone's GNU/problem GNU/is GNU/with GNU/RMS. GNU/Maybe GNU/I'm GNU/just GNU/biased.
-GNU/Rich
Something else which I'll bring up that hasn't been is that this is about leverage. Don't confuse it with anything else. It is about positive leverage for change. As the GPLed code base grows, being able to use it becomes more and more desirable. To use it you need to contribute to it, that's the leverage. It's reaching a critical point now, there is a lot of good software that is GPLed. That is how and why RMS designed it. It's also a good thing, the leverage is controlled by us, there isn't an IBM or Microsoft on the other end, it's us. The community, the programmers and the users. It's not an RMS thing either, ESR brings it up at the end of Magic Cauldron and in his eyes it is much much more than that because he believes that opensource has already won and that in 3 to 5 years when just about everything is opensourced that leverage can be applied outside of software; applied to laws? social causes? all sorts of things, we're talking about wholesale social change! This isn't a communism or socialism thing, it's about restoring power to the people, the people own GPLed software and the people need to police it and protect it.
KDE not complying is damn important, it undermines everything that does. Python doesn't? Well it should and it will. There will be countless others, as the GPL's importance grows so will the amount of attention given to products which go against it and I'm betting that there is a pretty fair number of them.
I don't know if Bruce Perens or ESR are reading but I suggest that an ammendment be made to the opensource definition. There needs to be a level of license interop that is supported. We've already seen the NPL fail to comply with GPL, the QPL fail to comply with the GPL, the CNRI license fail to comply with the GPL, interoperability is critical. I want to use KDE code in GPLed GNOME code! I want to use GPLed GNOME code within KDE! I want to use mozilla code with both! If the interop can't be worked out then what is the point really? It seems like a lot of the ideas and theories about opensource go out the window if interop isn't part of the deal.
This is my signature. There are many signatures like it but this one is mine..
First of all, licenses matter. To programmers they matter directly--which code can you reuse and who can reuse your code. To non-programmers they matter indirectly--which products get which features, when and how compatible.
Second of all, I seriously doubt RMS has a list of software vendors that he consults and then goes out to badger them into using the GPL (or a compatible license). More likely, Python went to him to see if they were GPL-compat. He said "no" which is entirely his choice. Furthermore, Python acknowledged that it was his choice by the very act of asking.
Third, this causes no problems to the FSF, the Python people or the general public. It's only a problem for groups like Debian that want to distribute A) only GPL and GPL-compatible software and B) Python.
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