xMach GPL Free

Anonymous Coward writes "I just downloaded xmach from xmach.org and it appears that they are now completely gpl free. I emailed one of the developers and he tells me that they have someone working on adding BSD drivers to it, and that he (the guy I emailed) is integrating ufs+ffs+softupdates from freebsd. Sounds like they're going to be producing something usable in the near future. Oh, and the full source tarball is less than 3megabytes. I guess they meant it when they said proactively not bloated."

Comments

Re:Pro GPL people are delusional.

[flimflam]

If the GPL is so well understood, then why did Corel have 2 brushes with GPL violations? How about the Virgin Webplayer? Or AMD's latest hammer emulator?

Because these are companies whose business in is proprietary software, and the whole concept of free software is new to them.

At any rate, the GPL is, for the most part, internally consistent and complete, and can therefor be fully understood without referring to very much external documentation. The concept is really not very complicated at all. Really, it only gets complicated if you are looking for some loophole to break the spirit of it, without breaking the letter.

Re:Pro GPL people with mod points are delusional.

[mr]

Ok, facts (per Micorsoft word) that the GPL is *NOT* easy to understand, compared to other options.

The GPL with preamble/postable/all the babble
Counts:
7 pages
words 2946
characters 14538
paragraphs 171
sentences 93
Averages:
Sentences per paragraph 0.5
Words per sentence 31.7
characters per word 4.8
Readability
Bormuth Grade Level 11.6

The 4.4BSD-Lite with clause #3 removed.
Counts:
1 page
words 254
characters 1422
paragraphs 26
sentences 6
Averages:
Sentences per paragraph 0.2
Words per sentence 42.3
characters per word 5.2
Readability
Bormuth Grade Level 10.7

And the simplest license:
"I hereby place this software in the public domain" (given how Berkely didn't go after Microsoft and others for the use of BSD code in an improper way, or how no one has sued over GPL violations, it might as well be public domain)
Counts:
1 page
words 9
characters 42
paragraphs 1
sentences 1
Averages:
Sentences per paragraph 1
Words per sentence 9
characters per word 4.6
Readability
Bormuth Grade Level 8.5

The GPL is more complex compared to the BSD license. And, it is that complexity that causes issues for Corel and others.

Readability formulas

After Word completes a grammar check, readability statistics are displayed, including the following readability formula:

Bormuth Grade Level

This index determines a readability grade level based on characters per word and words per sentences.

Oh and once again, the /. moderation system mods up pro-GPL comments and mods down anything critical of the GPL.