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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/
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.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:
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.
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.
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.
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Do you have any idea what GFS is? Or are you just basing your comment on its name. It is most certainly not intended to be an internet file system. It is intended to be a very high performance filesystem for clusters and linux supercomputers. It doesn't even work with IDE harddisk drives. If your are dumb enough to not firewall or completely isolate a super computer or cluster then you get what you deserve. Much like NFS, SMB/CIFS, NWFS, and Appletalk filesharing, it is not designed to be used across the internet. It is much better suited for gigabit ethernet, fibrechannel, or Miranet LANs. Runing it across even a T3 would mostly be a waste of the GFS (and your expensive Fibrechanel and SCSCI RAID systems).
NOTE/DISCLAIMER:
I used to work for Dr. O'Keefe (the CTO and founder of Sistina) when I was a student at the University of MN. I did not work on the GFS project, and had little contact with it, as it had mostly become Sistina at that point and had it's own offices outside of the Univesity.
I worked on the Secure Filesystem Project which was financed soley by StorageTek.
My opinions do not reflect those of Sistina, the UofMN, or StorageTek.
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.
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... 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
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.
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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...
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