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Global File System (GFS) Relicensed under SPL
thk writes "Sistina, the main developer of the Global File System, has changed its license from GPL to SPL (Sistina Public License). SPL is basically a free-for-non-profit-use license. Interestingly, the change came just after beta testing, leaving some users a bit miffed. The GFS is an important component of some GPL clustering projects, such as Compaq's SSIC project. The Sistina press release is here."
http://www.opengfs.org/
So, get the latest GPL'd version and let's branch off and finish it ourselves. They can't legally take an existing codebase and un-GPL it. If so, then the GPL is worthless, because a company can just release a free codebase, wait until everyone uses it, and then commercialize it. Hogwash!
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Q: Exactly how is the new SPL structured? Who has to pay under the SPL? A: You are free to download and use the software for free under the SPL, and like the GPL you have access to source code. We encourage input and modification to the source code. Under the SPL we do expect to get back any changes that are made to the code. If you intend on building a product offering and reselling it for revenues in the market, you then owe Sistina a license fee for the use of GFS. Also if you build infrastructure that supports an outsourcing service - you also owe us a license fee on that infrastructure. We think the Sistina Public License strikes a happy medium. Our users are free to download, use our technology, and alter the source code as before with the GPL. or service offerings with our technology will owe us a license fee.
So in other words, if your're going to use our hard work to make a buck, we want some of that money. Doesn't sound like a bad licensing scheme to me at all. If your going to use it and put it in freely available software, then go ahead.if you use their product in a product that makes money, you have to pay them a tax.
this discriminates against business.
but that's okay. I have a similar clause in my software that says
all brown-skinned people, and all jews, must pay a license fee.
I think that "levels the playing field."
Seriously, people will just take the GPL version and build off that, and leave the other version to rot.
No, it is the commercial version that Sistina supports that is the "fork". The true, GFS, the free one, is the one that lives on in OpenGFS. I wholeheartedly endourse OpenGFS and will purge my systems of the Sistina infection.
With many companies unable to come up with a decent business model that allows them to be profitable while licensing their software under gpl, its not surprising that Sistina is taking an 'easier way out'. This allows us to still play with clustering projects if we feel like it, but if we ever want to sell out services based upon they get a cut of the action.
If we're profiting from their work I see this as only fair.
Of course I'd prefer if they'd just develop a better business model rather than a different license, but I still understand their position
Ice Cream has no bones.
In addition, like Ghostscript, GFS is a technology that has a clear OEM market. GFS has attracted OEM vendors who are embedding the technology into their storage appliances and their commercial software offerings. Under the GPL, these commercial vendors are less likely to provide funding for GFS development and maintenance because of the free-rider problem; competitors who don't pay will directly benefit from those who do. The Sistina Public License solves the free-rider problem by creating a level playing field for all OEMs.
OK, the above partially makes sense if the OEMs have given them this feedback and have shown that this is a way for the company to generate revenue. I'd much rather that Sistina stayed alive and was Open Source instead of Free Software instead of them sticking to their ideological guns and ending up teetering on the brink of death like Caldera, Loki and VA Linux.
On the other hand some of the conditions of the Sistina Public License strike me as excessive. Specifically I point to the section below:
Code Red III on GFS doesn't bear thinking about.
GFS is like Free Love, a good idea in principle, but leading to all sorts of nasty infections and jealousies. Do you want your computer to be the neighbourhood slut?
This may seem controversial, but people said the same of Gate's 640kb prediction, and look at where he is now.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
How many of you have read the GPL? If you have read it, I think you'll see that Sistina have clearly violated it; I think we should be quick to report this violation to the FSF enforcement team. Sistina has truly betrayed the trust of the community. Now that they've strayed from the GNU path, they must be dealt with in a swift and severe manner.
We're at a precarious stage in the Free-Software revolution. Stallman, the Lenin to our revolution, is slowly fading into the background as senility and decripitude encroach on his ruling abilities. A Stalin, so to speak, must rise up to fill the power vacuum. There are simply too many enemies-of-GNU about these days, most of them within our own midst (e.g. Sinista; or, for that matter, ESR, the Trotsky of our scenario). There is no place in the Free Software movement for backstabbers and counter-revolutionaries.
If you have a problem with my views, REPLY, don't moderate!
Unlike previous releases of GFS that were available under the GNU General Public License, GFS 4.2 will be available only under the terms of the newly created Sistina Public License. This license is similar to the Aladdin Public License used for Ghostscript, a program developed by L. Peter Deutsch to interpret PostScript documents. Like Ghostscript, GFS was developed by a single entity (originally a research group at the University of Minnesota and later by Sistina Software), rather than a disparate community of free developers.
In addition, like Ghostscript, GFS is a technology that has a clear OEM market. GFS has attracted OEM vendors who are embedding the technology into their storage appliances and their commercial software offerings. Under the GPL, these commercial vendors are less likely to provide funding for GFS development and maintenance because of the free-rider problem; competitors who don't pay will directly benefit from those who do. The Sistina Public License solves the free-rider problem by creating a level playing field for all OEMs. The SPL provides Sistina with a means to attain a sustainable revenue stream to continue to develop and support GFS and other software.
Sistina is also currently certifying hardware to be supplied by a network of qualified re-sellers. For this reason, it is important that Sistina's licensing policies enforce standards for hardware certification, user support, and important customer service issues.
This is sort of like those stem cells which are free to researchers but have a fee tacked on to any profitability. Unlike the beer-free and speech-free GPL, the nonprofit only, and hence only speech-free, SPL will remove profitability incentives for developers.
Both of these aspects of freedom, in capitalism, are twined together; the right to utter information is negligible, in the mainstream world of research and development, if there is no profit incentive. Neither the programmers who develop for political reasons nor they who develop for profit reasons will touch this one.
If a company has a 10 percent chance of duplicating the success of a GPL tool with a closed source and licensed replacement product, it will try. Instead of using the free knowledge base and extending for-profit development from there, a company will pour development dollars into re-inventing the wheel.
Sistina's new GFS release is the worst of both worlds. It's open source to university geeks, but anyone who wants to spend the money and time making a product good enough for commercial release will be scared off.
Global warming is good for you!
Well, the 'All GPL All the Time' approach _can_ work but only in situations where a 'Support Based' business model can survive. Admittedly this has its problems, since you gotta wait for your product to become fairly widely used before you start making money off the small percentage that wants support, but its still viable.
Ice Cream has no bones.
It doesn't sound too good to me. If you try to see it from the point of view of third-parties who contributed code to this project in anticipation of being able to use the finished product, then it starts to look like Sistina is telling these people that they have acquired precisely nothing for their contribution.
In other words, Sistina has (actually, I should say may have, because I have no idea how much of the code base was developed by the community) leveraged the benefit of the community's contribution fully, then reneged on the long-term benefit to the community side of the equation.
Heck, even quality testing and bug reporting has great value, and many of these users were probably working under the impression that they would be entitled to make use of the end result as they see fit.
If companies keep doing this kind of end-run around the GPL, extracting maximum value for themselves and then refusing to let the community extract all the benefit it can derive, this may lead to restrictions against these practices being written into the GPL. It's already a tough sell as it is!
I hope companies will exercise great care with how they use the community resources. I know open source software has made a big difference in my life, and I don't want the well to run dry.
Bankruptcy or GPL'ed code? If it were my company, I would be choosing the former.
I mean, really, given how many other companies releasing software under the GPL have croaked, can you blame them?
It is one thing to fund the development of something that is already or making you money, or has a plainly obvious market (ie IPTables, PERL 6.), but to try and build a company on GPL'ed software is pretty much idiotic. I could never put the jobs of all my coworkers at risk by making the assumption that businesses would pay for free software enough to keep me in business, and I can't honestly oppose this decision.
So... Is it OK for me to use the software if my company is losing gobs of money?
The ______ Agenda
why shouldn't WE be reimbursed by them if they use OUR GPLed input?
I don't understand why the beta testing done by people under the assumption that they were testing GPLed software is considered worthless. We helped them make their product and now they want us to pay to use it. Sure they need to make money as a company, but not on the back of our free labor.
The version affected is 4.2 and later, and that means, versions BEFORE 4.2 are (legally) protected under GPL, and whatever "new features" incorporated into version 4.2 can always have it's open-source counterparts.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Demand what your time and energy is worth. If you are prepared to work for free, don't be surprised if you're frequently taken advantage of.
Once again, people are confusing the concept of ownership versus licensening.
Any code Sistina wrote is owned by Sistina.They can license it any way they want. The license indicates how you're allowed to use the code that they own.
IF Sistina wrote all the code, (I don't know if they did or didn't) then they can choose to relicense future versions any way they choose.
Users have to submit "substantial" patches for Sistina to lose their ownership. Substantial is defined by the courts. Sistina could choose to rewtite those parts and regain complete ownership.
Because their previous code was licensed with the GPL, it remains free. People are free to work on that code in a separate repository, as they have done with OpenGFS.
It sounds like no one broke any rules. You may not like that outcome, but it is legal. I do understand it from a business perspective. It is really tough to keep a business running if you don't find some way to protect your IP. I've spent the last year and half trying with XFree86/3D and we weren't particularly successful.
The license seems like a fairly square deal(after a surface skim anyway). In fact, as far as "commerical" licenses go, it's a damned good one. The thing that irritates me is that they should have made their intentions clear from the begining.
If this type of crap becomes common, you can kiss this free testers time good bye, as I simply will not give it anymore(I didn't test GFS, but I do actively test for 3 other projects). I see no profit in me doing free work for commerical ventures, no matter how nice the license is.
7 top-level replies and 7 moderations is my guess. I like '7'.
Sistina deserves this.. If they used some company to find out first how the community would react, they probably would have gone about this completely different. Probably Ximian could have helped, or Wildebeest. (www.ximian.com and www.wildebeest.se)
A GNU challenge in court. Why? A small defendent is easier to beat. If you beat a bunch of small defendants, then you tend to have a defacto case against a better funded opponent. Fighting the first GPL case against Microsoft would be unaffordable.
I would expect that RMS is considering a lawsuit, because this is a clear violation of the terms of the GPL. If not, then people and companies (possibly including the Evil Empire itself) will start walking all over the GPL. Is this what we want?
Remember, just because a company can't make money doesn't mean they can steal source code. If it did, my next business plan would be to steal the Windows source and start selling boxed copies of Windows XP!
To me this reads, if you're going to use your work (that you had to give to us) to make a buck, we want some of that money.
Not if that free software is also commercial software. Linux distributions are definitely a "product offered and resold for revenues", so they'd have to pay a license fee, too.
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
God damn moderation system....
;) )
This is an obvious troll people.
GFS has NOTHING to do with internet wide filesystem ala distributed sharing clients..
And EVERYTHING to do with a shared file system between servers ala AFS/CODA.
Example (a).
I just setup 3 node GFS setup ( fibre array storage, and three servers connected via fibre ) to have three database servers share the same file system ( one read write server, two read only servers ).
So please, when you get some moderation points,
and have NO IDEA of what's being posted, keep the point to yourself...
damn
( yes on rare ocasions, even this hardcore FreeBSD user has been know to use linux... but the keyword is rare
It seems that a checklist of warning signs is in order to help guard againt commercial entities acting in bad faith:
- Does the company insist on copyright assignment of all contributed code?
- Is the current codebase not available via anonymous CVS?
- Are all of the key developers employees of a single company?
- Does the company not state up front whether the code is available for commercial re-licensing?
- Does the company not have a clear service-based business model?
- Is the codebase in question the company's only form of intellectual property?
- Are the company's developers participating in the public mailing lists and newsgroups, or is it just a 'community liason'?
- Is this the first open source project this company has done?
- Is this the first open source project the company's developers have done?
- Does the project share its name with the company?
- Is the company self hosting the project, or are they using Sourceforge?
I can't think of any more just now, feel free to add to the list.I should also point out that I don't think that this company in particular exhibited all of these warning signs, nor are all of these signs necessarily bad (failure to request copyright assignment for contributed code could be considered a warning sign of inexperience, for example).
The real Webmaven is user ID 27463. I don't rate an imposter, because my ID is such a lame-ass high number.
I think you tried to say ActiveX
MOD THE CHILD UP!
I was wondering why Sistina haven't raised they voice when all those articles compared "The four (ext3, reiserfs, xfs, jfs) journalized file systems for Linux" to say "There is another one"... Now I understand.
- April/006686.html if lvm would not be under SPL as well now.
And I still wonder if Jes Sorensen, Andreas Dilger et al. whould not have started this thread http://lists.sistina.com/pipermail/linux-lvm/2001
I don't know what to say. A lot of people contributed feedback and patches to those projects. They have developed inside the community, under the assumption that they will be GPL.
Oh well, I guess the community will stick with the four jurnalized filesystems and leave Sistina carry it's cross...
The problem is that the SPL is a discriminatory license. Even though this license is pointed directly at those who try to take GFS work and make a product for profit around it, it is no better than saying "Those who are left handed must pay the licensing fee". If it is silly to require "left handed license fees", then why should people pay for "nearly free softare" because they aren't using it in a "free" manner?
What do they mean by "building a product from GFS"? If you looked at the code, gain some insight into networking from GFS, and use this knowledge to make a telnet client do you owe Sistina money? What happens if you are a contractor making a software solution internal to a private company that uses parts or all of GFS to do some of the work? Did the contractor just make a product they sold to the hiring company? Who is responsible for paying the license fee?
I really have a distaste for software that is "nearly free". The spirit of giving away software freely is that you give it to everyone not just a certain segement of the population.
yes you can fork it
.......... right
how much work will get done it and which version will people ship their products with ?
my guess is someone will tinker with it (the GPL version)
then the sinistra version will gain features that people want so they will use that one and wont care about the licence
its funny you all thought that you could make money from IPO or something like that
sinistra thinks that its products will be used in some grand scheme and they wont get a cent because they published under GPL
come on what matters is customers !!!
the customer is
most software is written at the behest of a customer, has sinistra got ANY ?
yes belive it or not they would get funded I am sure from IBM/Compaq SUN any large hardware seller beacuse software is complementry to hardware
the problem is that these people thought that they would get rich like the VA linux, the Redhat and the Caldera
that time is over and now they learn that they are giveing away stuff and have no customers no sponsors and well they had nice jobs at the uni and now they ask themselves "why did we do this wheres all my work going ?"
and they see the GPL as preventing people from paying them
really
go out and find money research grants sponsors and guvemenst are tripping over themselevs trying to give away money for good causes why dont you try for these ?
regards
john jones
Odd, I could have sworn that John Gilmore sold Cygnus for a sum approaching $700 million. That would make your statement, um, wrong, n'est pas?
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
So is GFS 4.1 available anywhere?
Just because you license something under the GPL, does not mean you loose rights to it.
Sistina is Free to do whatever they please with their code, even relicensing it.
Now what they cannot do is retroactively license any previous works, but going forward they can do as they please.
AFAIK, GFS, and even LVM ( although am not so sure about LVM ), was solely developed by Sistina. Most of the patches submitted where bugfixes... and there were not many of those. So whats the queryl?
That a company/individual decides to relicense THEIR code, that THEY developed under THEIR license? maybe am missing something here? or do these screaming gpl violation gpl violation don't have a clue?
YOU might not like it, and some would say it's unfair,s ince they did benefit from the community's bug testing.. but it's NOT for YOU to decide.
It's a company tryign to do what companies should do, make money... maybe you people forgot that point.
Kinda reminds you of the whole ipf fiasco.... where he develops all the code, never gets any substabtial help from anyoen in 10 years, then when he relicenses to cover hsi ass, people scream and whine, about something they had not right to.
Some of the opinions expressed in this article are jus plain obvious and even from time to time, right.
You've managed to be a Karma Whore and a troll all in one post! I am simply amazed, and in awe, at your accomplishment.
I mean, I've seen good trolls before, but your alluding to the Communists is superb. A lesser troll would have blown his wad and turned the post into a anti-RMS rant that would have been modded through the floor, but you walk the knife edge just so as to leave the moderators reeling.
I really thought slashdot trolling had decended to the level of twelve year olds posting penis birds and goatse.cx links, but you've proved me wrong.
So you're still a troll, and a karma whore, but you deserve all the karma you're going to get from this just because of your outstanding style.
I salute you sir.
Jordan Bettis
``Wherever you go, there's another stupid sigfile quote.''If it does, if it is, then I don't see the "taking advantage of". The code is there if anyone wants to develope it.
If it doesn't, if it isn't, then they were just wasting their time working on it instead of something real.
Think of it as a work in progress. They have forked away from the original source, and taken the name with them. As the "author", this is their acknowledged right. It may be unfriendly, but it's their right. If people are interested, then they can pick up from the beta, and it will be guaranteed to be GPL, because nobody else will have any choice about the license. Only the original author has that choice. And since the contributions will be GPL'd, they won't be able to be reincorporated into the GFS product. Their loss, if anyone runs with it. If nobody does, then perhaps that's why they changed the license.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The tough economic times have created a curious tension in the Open Source world... on the one hand Open Source is becoming more interesting to everyone because enterprises are trying to keep their costs down, on the other hand companies trying to make money off Open Source feel greater pressure to find ways to ensure revenues, thus being pushed away from Open Source!
My feeling is that the public would be more tolerant of "free for non-commercial use" licenses if those had a built in time-horizon after which they reverted to pure Open Source (like ghostscript). It seems to me that this gives us the best of both worlds... the company has a greater assurance that they'll be able to make money, and the community would be more willing to contribute because they'd know that eventually it would be "public" property.
I'm kind of puzzled why more people don't see this. Any thoughts on that?
--jurgen
They GPL'ed some stuff and won an award at LWCE and now this?. They waited to get paid first and pull a switch-a-roo.
Oh how Linus must feel....imagine Linux kernel - free for individual use, but if you make money off Linux, you owe LT (and presumably AC) big time.
Do you expect us to take your word for that?
I really don't believe a great visionary like Richard Stallman would make that kind of oversight when composing the GPL.
For all the people sitting here complaining about how Sistina is violating the GPL and how they're evil and all that sort of nonsense, how many of you have actually used GFS in a way where it directly brings you profit? 2? 3? Get real people, the SPL doesn't prevent you from using it in a commercial environment, it doesn't take away any of your rights, it simply requires you to pay royalties in the event that you're using GFS as a native part of a solution that's being used _directly_ to generate revenue. Most people that are using it are either a) standard commercial environments where GFS is used in the company, but isn't being used directly to generate revenue, b) academic/research usage where a distributed fs becomes necessary to deal with load balancing and overall availability, or c) bored user with some scsi devices and a few machines that feels like playing with something new. None of these kinds of situations are those where Sistina requires royalties.
And for all you people complaining about how Sistina is "taking from the community", have any of you ever so much as looked at / used GFS or read the mailing lists? The majority of community involvement has been testing, which is completely uneffected by the SPL. As far as Sistina's requirement that all copyrights and such be signed over to them, this is nothing new. That requirement has been around just about since the dawn of time, and isn't anything the SPL added. Speaking as one who's written patches against GFS, and use it in a commercial environment, this requirement has been somewhat of a nuisance, especially since my employer doesn't want to give up copyright control. And thus, my code isn't part of the native distribution. This is nothing but a minor inconvenience, and certainly nothing life-threatening.
Sistina makes a great product, requiring royalties from people using GFS to make money is perfectly acceptable, and I'm surprised they didn't do it earlier. I for one welcome the SPL.
It's very, very, very bad for making money. Kinda hard to make money when it's free, you know? Well, instead, you can sell hardware, right? D'oh!
It wouldn't have been a bad licensing scheme if they had used it from the beginning. But changing terms after benefitting from bug reports and suggestions for enhancements from end users who thought they were contributing to a GPL'ed project is wrong.
So is it legal for company X to buy a license to GPS, and distribute a patched linux kernel?
My feeling would be no, because it's not legal to distribute GPLed binaries without distributing (or offering) all the sources. Which company X can't do.
If GFS is built using standard exported kernel-module interfaces, it _might_ be legal (though some kernel heavyweights disagree), but if the GFS patch touches kernel internals, anybody distributing Linux+GFS is in violation of their GPL agreement with Linus Torvalds (and others).
And this is somehow going to make Sistina money? By inviting their customers to pay up for the possibility of getting sued by anyone holding Linux kernel copyrights? I'm not impressed.
314-15-9265
The SPL removes most of the incentive to contribute. Why would I want to contribute software to a company, just to be forced to pay for my own contribution forever more? Sure, it may give me the functionality I need in the short term, but in the long term, I would have been better off at contributing to an open source project.
The original owner of the work can grant multiple licenses, including GPL, SPL, whatever.
Botton line, the original owner can do anything, other people are "infected" by the GPL. So any public forks of 4.1.1 (say) will has to stay GPL.
But note that if Sinistra merged into the new stuff any bug-fix or feature enhancement code submitted under the GPL, the owner of the copyright on THAT part is the author of the submitted code.
So if Sinistra included any outside code, such as patches or feature additions, they need to have been squeaky-clean about getting rights assignments and documenting them. The authors of such code are the copyright owners on that code, and in the absense of an assignment the only license Sinistra would have from the author is the GPL. THAT would infect the Sinistra distribution, and the author could assert this in a legal proceeding.
With the revised code open to public inspection under Sinistra's "SPL", the author could easily identify his code, too.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Take the GPL'd beta and write you're own forked version.
Great post, but I don't think most people understood the spirit in which it was written.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
... given how many other companies releasing software under the GPL have croaked, can you blame them?
GPLing code allows the code to survive the death of the corporation, rather than go down with it. This keeps the customers from being totally unsupported. So a company may chose to GPL the code when it encounters financial difficulty (or to escrow it to be released GPL in the event of cessation of operation), to give potential customers less reason to resist purchase.
Provided the investors are OK with it, it also allows the former employees to do spinoff works later without legal hangups from the IP being tied up as an asset of a bankrupt company.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
to the project under the assumption it was GPL?
Do they also get some compensation?
I am not familiar with the project, but if there has been someone who made a sizeable contribution shouldn't he or she be compensated? I am not talking about small bugfixes, although those can also take a lot of time and effort.
I would say that if such a case exists they would have to take that part of the code out of the commercial product or compensate the author.
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
I think this change is fair enough.
Under the GPL anyone can resell the code for profit. They are still providing the source code under SPL so they arn't voilating the GPL
This is one step up from the GPL service business model, in that any changes from the code that the company had written, they will get paid for if someone else profits from it.
I think it is too high of the OSS comunity to think that if the single developer released the code under GPL before they thought they could make money from it, then it should be GPL for ever.
OSS developers also have to earn money somehow, and if this software is made by the one person, it is ovious that they have spent lots of time on it.
The original source code could still be released under GPL, and any additions made by the company could be licienced under SPL.
This would mean that they would have to release the source code for the GPL stuff, which they do.
Pretty much waht they are doing is making companies pay for the new changes, not the whole thing.
Eg, if I took mozilla say, and added a new option somewhere in the program, then I could resell the program for $1000 per copy, provided that I can find a buyer.. and I will only find a buyer if the option I added is worth the money
Under the GPL I don't have to release the source to my modifications, rather just the original code
While the AFPL is a non-DFSG license designed in large part to support an OEM licensing business, it also has three important freedoms that appear to be missing from the SPL:
1. Fork rights. You are perfectly free to take AFPL code, make your own modifications, and release that code under the AFPL. This distinguishes the AFPL from most other "almost free" licenses.
2. Commercial use. AFPL code is free for commercial use. An example is ps2pdf.com, which is an advertiser supported site using AFPL Ghostscript.
3. No grantback. If you make custom modifications for in-house use, you are not obligated to grant those modifications to the original author. Further, if you release a forked version under the AFPL, you are not obligated to license that code back to the original author so they can OEM license it.
In my opinion, the only significant right lacking from the AFPL is commercial redistribution without compensation. While people obviously disagree with this, my personal opinion is that it is not anywhere nearly as important as the other free software rights, especially now that free distribution over the Internet is ubiquitous. I frankly don't see why it's so important for Red Hat to make money from selling our code without compensating us in any way for our work.
Ghostscript has a fourth freedom guarantee, which is that major AFPL releases are re-released under the GPL a year later. Thus, the extra rights granted to us as commercial Ghostscript developers is fairly small and definitely time-limited. As long as we continue to improve Ghostscript actively, the AFPL version is valuable. As soon as we stop doing our job, it falls into the hands of the community.
The lack of funding for core development is a serious pragmatic weakness of the free software movement. Peter Deutsch, with Ghostscript and the AFPL license he authored, made a very good attempt to address that problem, and it's actually been working out pretty well for us.
Even so, freedom is very important to the Ghostscript project. Thus, I feel called to respond to comparisons between less-free licensing arrangements and Ghostscript.
LILO boot: linux init=/usr/bin/emacs
Sistina has not broken the law but has violated a trust. They released code under GPL and got a lot of free testing of that code. They then took the improved version and changed the license. How many of the testers would have contributed that effort if they knew of the impending license change? Perhaps all - but perhaps not. The point is that Sistina should have started with a license that better met their needs and not the GPL. By switching in mid-stream, they are inviting ridicule (or worse). And if they accepted any substantial code without getting assignment of rights signed by developers who were expecting the code to stay GPL, they are inviting lawsuits.
What bothers me is, if they do get away with it, doesn't that kinda cut the legal guts out of the GPL, precedent-wise?
dito
I use the KISS formula...
It is a no-brainer to realize you cannot sell or "license" for any significant amount of cash an app that has been developed under the GPL No one will pay cash for something they can get for free by merely downloading it from the web. So, how do you 'forward finance' a development project? That is, how do you get good coders to work for you for free? Start your project under the GPL, but when it is mature enough to market take a branch which is esentially a plagerized or actual version of the GPL code and release it under a propriatary license, source code not available. Without a court ordered disclosure who will be the wiser? Who in the community is willing to invest the money in a legal team to persue the matter? Sistina is betting that no one will. Do they expect lots of moaning, groaning and hand-wringing, but no court appearances?
Did they bet right? If they did indeed exploit the Linux community this way, does it represent the new business model of the future?
Maybe we need a GPL addendem which will cut off this avenue of exploitation by requiring GPL users to sign an affidavit that they have no intention of taking the exiting code base propriatary, or something along that line. Have something like that in writing, in advance, before volunteers begin working on the code.
I've assigned copyrights to the FSF several times. Their assignment contract specifically promises that the FSF will never change the license to make the code unfree (including source, etc. etc.)
Generally I wouldn't sign copyright assignments for free software unless the contract had a clause like that, or I was getting some other kind of compensation.
Reading through the comments Ive seen a lot of people saying that Sistina owns the code to GFS, theyre the primary author/developer, etc., so they have a right to change the license at will. Iff this is all true, they do. But, has Sistina borrowed any code from other projects that were already GPLed and used it in GFS? If they did, they cannot change the license. Or am I misunderstanding the viral nature of the GPL?
Liberty in your lifetime
Well, Sistina can relicense it if they want to, and as I understand it, the new license is absolutely incompatible with the GPL. A major part of their software is a patch to the Linux kernel, which is of course GPL. While they are free to relicense their software, I think they have some serious problems. People would be allowed to privately patch their kernels, producing a private modification to a GPLed codebase, which is explicitly allowed by the GPL. Nobody could redistribute a completely patched kernel, though, or distribute precompiled kernels, such as that installed by distributions, without being in total violation of the GPL, as the SPL is not GPL-compatible.
But they have a far serious problem, as many people have already pointed out. The previous versions that have already been released cannot be retroactively relicensed, so all we need to do is take that already existing codebase and use it with all the inalienable rights that the GPL grants.
We don't need to sue them. We can easily make them irrelevant anyway.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
just 'cause your spell checker thinks it's "journalized" doesn't make it right.
for at least some sanity in slashdot.
To the extent you do not distribute the Modifications in Source Code form, You hereby grant Sistina an unrestricted, nonexclusive, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free right, to fuck, probe, burst, display, perform, stretch and play-with and otherwise exploit your asshole. So bend over now!
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
At this time, when companies such as VA Linux and Caldera are retreating from the GPL because it makes it impossible for them to be profitable, the SPL is a move in the wrong direction. We must shift the balance so that companies which create open source software can survive -- not so as to disadvantage them more. We must opt for more freedom -- as is provided by the Apache and MIT X licenses -- rather than less. When we see that businesses that sell products based on collaboratively developed code for which source is available are surviving and thriving, we will know that the balance is right. This hasn't been the case with the GPL, and certainly could not be with a license such as the SPL.
--Brett Glass
And there was much rejoicing.
hurrah....
"bla bla bla...They should sell service and support.... bla bla bla"
"bla bla bla...We should be free man...bla bla bla"
Haven't you people noticed the stock massacre that have taken place the last couple of years? It's NOT because those companies makes to much money.
This is a good altenative license to the GPL I think. I don't know what the codebase is for the software really, I was just interested in what type of licensing this is.
This is a good license to me, some parts may be a bit excessive and monopolistic. But otherwise this is a good license.It has what I'd like to see of more software licenses.
To me this is what this licenses says. Or rather this is the type of license I can build from it. Unfortunately I'd have to consult a lawyer to be really specific.
Basically from what I see, you are free to use and distribute the software as long as you don't derive any revenue from said software.
Any modifications you make, and I will assume, make and distribute (private you do want you want), you have to let them know before you do it and submit them the changes. I think this is fair because it's their software though you've modified it. (I'm not talking about this software in specific but just what the license can imply to any software.) If a change is made and released I as a developer would want to know about it. I would want to make sure that I agree with said changes and that if I didn't then that software isn't associated with my software other than it being a derivative work. Not every company will do this but some will, with a good enough change, may include you with the developers of the project and you may get something,whether revenue or another sort of agreement from said project. Whether that's their motive or not it's one to build off.
Now granted the part of receiving anything is purely in the hands of the holder of the original license. But you get to have software that you can use for free and spread around. If you make a modification then the party that originally made said software wants to know. (This is what I add.)If it's a significant enough modification and I don't accept it into the source then you are free to fork it as you please. Provided that you don't try to market or distribute it as another version of said software but present it as something different with reference that it derived from said software.
Sounds kinda contradictory but it's not. If I don't want to agree to the modification but you feel it's necessary then you can fork it and it becomes something different. Under copyright law with enough modification, it should be easy to prove that you've modified it enough that I feel it's a satisfactory enough of a modification for me to reject it. (Otherwise we would have come to some agreement that wasn't just purely monatary in nature.) Thus it's has been forked and you are free to distribute the forked version that includes your modification inclusively but not exclusively. Some may not, but I would maintain that if you at anytime disband, disable or nullify, your modification and there are no other modifications dependent upon your modification, then the said software reverts back to original license since it is now compatible with the original software you originally licensed. This includes if they're were further modifications that were incoporated after it was forked. And if the modifications are dependent upon modification made to the said forked software but not dependant upon the modifications that caused it to be forked. If a modification has been made to the forked software and the modification is not dependent upon the modification of the forked software, and the modification can exist within the original software then it is a modification to the original software. It is then incumbent upon the modifier to submit the modification to the submitter of the original software.
This is fair because it allows you and others as developers to do as you please and enter under agreements with the orginal developer, to do what you want with software. If you want to modify and not charge that's fine as long as it meets the distribution rules. Namely not claiming to be or be confused with the original other than a derivative. If the original developer wants to do what they want with the software that's fine becuase you'll have entered an agreement satisfactory to you with the software if they accepted and kept your modification. Two way street, you have to agree to the developer having accepted your modification and they have to abide by the agreement or not use the modification upon which you're free fork and distribute because they rejected you.
That's what I want out of a license. A license that gives me the right chose what I want by an agreement with the licensor (is that a word?) and not be forced to do because it's been licensed in a way that I don't agree what I want.
Looking over their website I found out that the founder of Sistina used to be an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Minnesota, and if I recall correctly I also read about it first on some .edu website when I was pissed off about NFS ;). So it looks to me that some people decided yet again to get rich with a codebase payed in parts by tax money (although not mine since I'm German).
This IMHO is bad style although the comunity might be able to persuade them to something like like the duallicensing with Qt.
--Ulrich
On no accounts allow a Vogon to read poetry at you
"To me this reads, if you're going to use your work (that you had to give to us) to make a buck, we want some of that money."
How does this differ from Trolltech's QPL?!
If someone forked off the beta into opengfs, that's fine, but consider that you can fork off whatever you want, you'll never get the (c) of the forked off code. This seems legal due to the GPL, but is it? Sistina still owns the (c) of the code in OpenGFS. And because they own it, what will stop them to go to court and ask the judge to stop the opengfs project, since Sistina is the owner of the code in that project and can do whatever they want with it, GPL or not.
I'm saying this because in the Netherlands there are cases where a programmer worked on project A, left the company, company sold project A to another company which made a huge profit. Because the programmer didn't sign a copyright traversal agreement with his original company, he still was the owner. He went to court and asked for a lot of money or the termination of the project A. The judge agreed that he still was the owner and had every right on the money earned by the second company.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
What does this mean?
If you are trying to say that the SPL is an Open Source (or Free Software) license, then you're wrong, it is not.
It fails to meet clause 6 of the The Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG), or if you prefer, Clause 6 of the Open Source Definition.
Don't expect to see any SPL covered code in Debian.
Debian: GNU/Linux done the Linux way
I hope your sig is a joke. If you believe that stuff, you've got problems.
adequacy.org is just one big troll.
Try telling the millions of people living on low-lying islands and/or next to the coast that rising water levels are a good thing. Try telling the millions of people that will die of skin cancer (and already have much higher skin cancer rates in some parts of the world) that global warming is a good thing. Try telling the millions of people (often already poor people) who lose their homes to increased floodings and tropical storms that global warming is a good thing.
Its easy for americans to sit and say "global warming is a good thing" (someone around here even posted that its good because "they like wearing tank tops") when it hardly affects them. If even one tenth of the symptoms of global warming directly affected the USA, they'd be the ones making the loudest noise about solving the problem.
Sorry!
Speak thy mind!
This would have to be done like back in the old days when you could reverse engineer programs;
This project is all ways going to be 'tainted' anyone who uses it commercialy will be looking over their shoulder for a law suit. Its just not appropriate to place programs with commercial potential under the GPL, there are other liciences
more appropriate.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
According to the RIAA and MPAA, people choosing to use the GFS are likely using it to distribute copyright information, therefore they are disobeying the laws of the DCMA :-) </sarcasm>
That may be true of your example because, by the sounds of it, the programmer neither assigned copyright, nor granted the right to use/sell/redistribute (in the form of a license).
This is not relevant in the case of code released under the GPL, because they have already granted permision to fork when they released the code under the GPL, so they have no right to revoke that license.
IANAL but then, clearly, neither are you.
Debian: GNU/Linux done the Linux way
Anyone know how to get this working on my Linux box? What's the benefits over ext2?
:P
Anything that makes Linux faster is kewl with me!
Linux Rulez!!!!!!!!!!!
That's the point I'm making. Just because you see something I did doesn't mean I've signed copyright over to you. It's common-sense to assume if I'm submitting additions to GPL'd code to an OSS project, that I'm letting it be used, but only under the terms of the GPL.
Sure, applying this to bug-fixes is one thing.... like fixing a typecast or something, but if the patch is 100 lines of code, or a new handler routine for something... it's a different story.
If I gave them a large patch of fixes, don't they have to get a release from me to change the license?
That is why RMS will not incorporate some of emacs.org changes.
Mike
I didn't use the preview button, so get over it!!!!
Mike
Since the argument here isn't in regards to free software, debian guidelines are useless for this discussion. As far as violating clause 6 of the OSS definition, that's really a matter of perception. You aren't restricted by using SPLed code in a commercial environment, the only limitation is that you have to pay Sistina royalties in the event that it's used in a place where it's directly involved with generating revenue (which there are hardly any instances of).
What debian decides to package is its own decision. I prefer functional software over politics.
But you're forgetting the actual text of the GPL -- Sistina has essentially given the world-at-large permission to do whatever they want with the beta code, and the GPL license is not revocable once given.
I'm saying this because in the Netherlands there are cases where a programmer worked on project A, left the company, company sold project A to another company which made a huge profit. Because the programmer didn't sign a copyright traversal agreement with his original company, he still was the owner. He went to court and asked for a lot of money or the termination of the project A. The judge agreed that he still was the owner and had every right on the money earned by the second company.
That's an entirely different argument. In these cases, the company is technicially distributing code without ownership or permission, an outright violation of copyright law. Had the programmer given the company permission to sublicense, distribute, and sell the code [all of which are not granted by normal copyright law but are by ther GPL], there would have been no case.
"Evil company X is threatening to restrict our rights! Let's all get together to stop--OOOH! SHINEY!!!" -- AC
Hey! while your at it, why don't you put in the SPL a clause stating we'll sue you under DCMA... Then you've covered all the bases and made everyone *very* happy: including MSoft!
People who are driven by a profit motive have no moral leg to stand on. Why not screw them over a bit with the SPL license? After all, they are trying to screw us too (charge more than the product is worth, advertising propaganda so that people will buy who don't need the product etc.).
If you are not doing it for the love of doing it, you are not good at it anyway.
Disclaimer: IANAL...
It seems under the GPL you have a few options to actually make a bit of money in the distribution of the source, if you so wish. Let me outline the basics of what the GPL says in regards to this (and please, don't trust this or me, read the GPL first, instead):
1. If you distribute the source code only, "you may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee" (from the GPL, section 1).
2. If you distribute the code "in object code or executable form" (from the GPL, section 3), you must:
"a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange" (from the GPL, section 3)
OR,
"b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange." (from the GPL, section 3)
There is also a subsection "c" to section 3, but it isn't of interest to this discussion, since "This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution". (from the GPL, section 3)
So, it seems you must provide the source, in a machine-readable format, on a medium customarily used for software interchange.
Since "customarily" doesn't have any definition in the scope of this license (in fact, the word only appears twice), unless it has specific legal means (which it may, IANAL), then in theory, you could output the code on punch cards, for all the license cares!
But let us say that "customarily" alludes to the time of distribution - that is, the source code must be on a medium "of the times" - for today, that could be an FTP site, a web site - or a floppy, or CD-ROM.
You just have to provide access - it doesn't say you "must make it downloadable to the world" - just that if someone comes calling for it, you must provide it to them, on a medium "customarily" used for software interchange. So if you only wanted to distribute CD-ROMs - that would be PERFECTLY IN LINE WITH THE LICENSE.
Plus you may charge a fee for making this copy. This fee is never specified, or enumerated, within the GPL, other than to say "for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution" (from the GPL, section 3).
Now, who is to say that it doesn't cost you $100.00 (US) to create that copy? How much is you or your company's time worth? Maybe the fee might be $500.00 for the source. There is nothing in the GPL to prohibit this.
So, let's say you are selling your office productivity suite of software to Joe and Jane Public. You sell it for $50.00 (thereby undercutting the competition). In the package, on a paper license agreement (and maybe a clickthrough), you state you will provide the source code to any individual or company, for the product, via CD-ROM through the mail, for a fee of only $500.00, should they request so within 3 years from the time of purchase (require a receipt to prove time-frame). Furthermore, state someplace that the software will only receive support if purchased from you, otherwise the purchaser is "on his own" for support.
Should Joe or Jane Public see this, most of them will simply shrug their shoulders, and continue to play with great software. Those that do pay would probably be reluctant to simply give the code away (though they could, and your company could do nothing about it!). Those looking for a free version of the product might be able to get it, but Joe and Jane Public are unlikely to use it, since there wouldn't be any support from your company.
A company that might pay in order to have the source to correct flaws in the software (and hopefully give you or the community back those corrections), probably wouldn't distribute the code for free, or a fee - since anyone downloading it wouldn't be able to get support, other than from the secondary distributor, at best - and most companies would want to avoid that headache. However, those that wanted to could make a better version, and distribute it and provide support, if they want - that would be the purchaser's decision, once more.
There is the business plan and rational to sell Free, GPL'd software. The code still gets out, mods could still be made and re-incorporated back into the base product, you will probably make money off of it, and should your company go under or something, the code will still exist, for others to continue on with.
Now, once again, I am not a lawyer, but I don't see where any of this would violate the GPL - indeed, the GPL seems to allow this. So why hasn't any company done this?
Actually, in a way, they have: RedHat is the perfect example.
This is a company that sells a GPL'd product. Companies and individuals are willing to buy it, and RedHat provides support. The source code is out there, and a few other companies have rolled their own distros to compete with RedHat (Mandrake), using the base RedHat distro.
But RedHat made one mistake - they provided source with their distribution, and via FTP - for anyone at anytime to download. What would their company be doing now if they had only provided source via CD-ROM through mail, on request, for a fee? Who knows - maybe it wouldn't have worked, and everyone would be using Debian or Slackware more.
Maybe this method could only be used for software packages. Games could easily be done this way, and I would think that a lot of money could be made, and the GPL wouldn't be violated.
If I am wrong about all of this, please, somebody (especially lawyers!) point out the flaws in my argument. It would be interesting to see what I missed, etc...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Uminn --> Gopher --> Open Source --> Biz-vs-Acad License --> Web supercedes Gopher
Uminn --> Sistina --> Open Source --> Biz-vs-Acad License --> ?
Some people never learn!
So I am curious - just how many companies/organizations are using such a dual license AND succeeding? What about the alternative of releasing GPL and also commercial versions of software? In particular, how are companies such as Sendmail Inc. doing? Any others? (Maybe Sendmail is the exception to the rule ...)
My impression is that the alternative income stream to licensing your code is to sell support. I just have never read much that suggests this is all that viable an option for a small company although maybe it might work for the IBMs of the world (to be seen) with their large coporate base of customers (and mix of proprietary software).
None. In every case on record, the GPLed version has undermined the commercial success of versions licensed any other way. Hans Reiser, Peter Deutsch... the list of people who have attempted this and failed to sell commercial licenses is quite long. It's sad, but it's reality: the effect of the GPL is to destroy commercial opportunities in the markets it enters.
As far as violating clause 6 of the OSS definition, that's really a matter of perception
Um.. no... as I read the OSD, the SPL meets neither clause 1 nor clause 6. And I don't see where it comes into being a matter of perception.
Not open source. Therefore closed source.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.