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."

Comments

so it was forked

[foo]

http://www.opengfs.org/

Re:so it was forked

[einhverfr]

You beat me too it. But this deserves some commentary anyway.

Manufacturers who think that they can pull this sort of trick and get away with it even if they are not challenged in court have the wool pulled over their eyes. All the OSS community has to do is go back to the last OSS release and work from there. Don't license your stuff under OSS licenses if you want to sell it because you will be undersold. Instead use proprietary licenses from the beginning.

If you want to be an OSS company, stick to those guns too. Focus on services, not products, and make your operation work! Why is this so hard to understand?

Re:so it was forked

[Alan Cox]

I've also explained to the Sistina people that even if they own all the code and can happily relicense it (which may be the case) it requires a huge patch to the kernel so cannot be conceivably consider entirely a "seperate work" nor part of Linus binary modules using existing exported symbols exception.

We will see what happens in our discussion, and if need be I will be sending them notice recorded delivery that I believe they are violating my copyrights.

In the mean time I hope IBM who provided the GPL DLM used for some GFS setups and Compaq who are doing all the great cluster work will adopt and support OpenGFS instead.

The OpenGFS folks would also like to hear from anyone who contributed patches to GFS while it was GPL licensed that are still in the non-free one without their permission.

Alan

With many....

[Adambomb]

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

Question...

[supabeast!]

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.

Non-GPL filesystem + GPL kernel = ???

[Eric Seppanen]

So here we have a bunch of filesystem code, distributed as a patch to a GPLed kernel. And the filesystem code is not GPLed, and not GPL-compatible.

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.

Ghostscript comparison

[raph]

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.