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Ximian to Change License for Mono
A Commentor writes: "According to news.com Ximian is changing the license to Mono from GPL to a variant of the XFree license. Apparently this is due to a partnership with Intel." Update: 01/28 15:03 GMT by T : There's a story at NewsForge as well, where RMS weighs in firsthand on the license choice.
Do whatever it takes to get a foothold now, instead of trying to play catch-up when it's too late. "About 50 people are working on Mono, five of them full-time Ximian employees, de Icaza said." Several more than 50 are working on .NET at Microsoft, I imagine. If it takes a switch to a BSD-style license to get big companies like Intel and HP on board, then hell yes, do it.
It is clear that Stallman and the GPL are not really about freedom.
Please, do not make the mistake of assuming that the GPL and RMS are inseparable. The GPL is about sharing code, and protecting it. RMS may have an agenda that's beyond that, probably, in fact. But, the GPL itself is not viral beyond code already under the GPL.
I really wish that RMS would retire at this point and allow some more reasonable and personable people to further the Free Software cause. I think he may be doing more harm than good at this point.
I have no beef with the BSD-style licenses, but I wouldn't use one for a project if my life depended on it. If I decide to release code as Free Software, with no real expectation to make money off of it or whatever, then I expect others that want to build on it or redistribute it to give others the same benefits that I've given them. That's the price for using GPL'ed code. If that price isn't acceptible, then they shouldn't look to building on Free Software.
The viral nature of the GPL isn't there as a side effect of trying to protect Open Source.
Right and wrong. The viral nature isn't a side effect -- it's a feature. The GPL's primary goal is to protect the software from being closed, but it is not in and of itself a means to kill off closed-source software. Nothing about the GPL prevents companies from releasing closed-source software, it only prevents them from using the GPL'ed software in those products. Sure, I bet many developers hope that the GPL would be the dominant license, but using the GPL only harms closed source software by providing an alternative and giving people a choice. If closed source software can't compete, oh well.
So what if someone tries to rip off your BSD software and do a closed modification.
Just lay back and take it, I suppose. Gee, I didn't know Billy G. read Slashdot. This isn't a trivial matter, so don't trivialize it. Most folks that use a BSD license intentionally use it so that businesses can have the option of using it in proprietary software. If they're comfortable with that, so be it. They're not being ripped off if they intentionally allow this.
However, I see nothing that serves the Greater Good in allowing companies to embrace and extend Free Software and having no obligation to contribute. If a company wants to play the proprietary licensing game, then let them pay for 100% of the code that they use, just as they expect their customers to do. They can either pay up to the original developers and convince them to dual-license the software, or write it from scratch. If you went to one of these companies and said "hey, my small business is just getting started and I need 20 licenses for your software to seed my business" they'd tell you "no free lunch. Pay up or fsck off." You should tell them the same.
They seem to be focusing on staying two steps behind Microsoft (Evolution, Mono, Gnumeric...)
Slam me if you like, but Gnumeric means I can keep my gradebook and track my business P/L on a free software application instead of dual-booting Windows. People need good spreadsheets and groupware to do real work.
Oh, and "apt-get install evolution-ssl" works just fine here... installing good software for Linux doesn't have to be hard, you know.
My Blog. Sela Ward can sell me long distanc
It has been stated before that Mono does appear on the MSFT radar, but at the moment, it is seen as benign. Maybe this will change, but so what for the moment.
A BSD or MIT license is appropriate to encourage adoption. Yes, I'm certain if MSFT see good ideas then they will steal them, but please remember that they have already implemented all of their classes and they are extremely proprietary. However, what everyone is interested in is Mono being adopted on Unix platforms. Once it has been adopted, then it woud be possible to improve it using GPL'ed software.
See my journal, I write things there
This leaves DotGNU Portable.NET as the only true Free Software project tackling the implementation of the CLR, C# compiler, C# class library, etc.
http://www.southern-storm.com.au/portable_net.html .
We are looking for developers to help us build our system into a truly-Free implementation. Portable.NET has been around longer than Mono, and remains true to the principles of Free Software.
Two steps behind a leader is much better place to be than right in front of the last man running :-) What Ximian makes is needed not to geeks but to common folk (a.k.a. lusers). That's who wants Evolution. Without Windows-like apps Linux will see much more resistance everywhere. I am personally very glad that Ximian works on all that unneeded fluff and eye candy, so I can focus on some serious work.
Myself, I am very happy with Mutt, and though I tried Evolution and I have it installed... it crashes sometimes, and it is not as flexible as Mutt is. Evolution also has some codepage-related quirks which Mutt (and iconv that it uses) doesn't have.
Well if we talk about software being taken from BSD, used, and the source dissappears for ever, there is probably no better example than Microsoft [microsoft.com]. Their network stack owes a lot to BSD, but has any of it been passed back? No.
This claim is one of those internet myths that has festered on Slashdot that has never been conclusively proved.
However this myth has been debunked in an article by a former Microsoft employee that explains with really happened?
Secondly, unlike most of the zealots on Slashdot I don't think the purpose of Free Software is a battle between prospective platforms and user communities but instead is the optimal way to provide utility to users of software. Even if MSFT uses a BSD-derived TCP/IP stack, this would mean that improved networking has benefitted millions of computer users who use MSFT Windows and couldn't handle BSD boxen. The BSD license is about getting as many people as possible to benefit from your software and not an attempt to bend the software industry to the world view of a dissaffected MIT computer science professor.
.NET isn't just a new development platform. It's a delivery vehicle (to use the cigarette industry's term) for subscription-based web services. What is open source's answer to this? All Mono does is provide a way for Microsoft to sell its services to non-Windows users. While the open source community worries about building a free telephone, Microsoft is setting itself up to own the phone network.
This space unintentionally left unblank.
The Wine developers recently debated whether to change the licence to LGPL from an X11 style license. They decided against it. One of the original reasons to go with the X11 license is worth keeping in mind: There's already a proprietary implementation of Win32. Microsoft sells it.
.NET and Mono. The danger in a company making a proprietary version of Mono is in the proprietary version becoming more popular than the free version, and eventually incompatible with it. If this doesn't happen, users always have the choice between paying for a proprietary product, or getting the open source version. Microsoft's proprietary version of Mono pretty much makes this a non-issue.
The same is true for
What, would you have preferred "that now will be governed by a less blessed and pure license"?
The statement was wholly appropriate, and this is coming from someone who happens to like the GPL in most cases.
I mean, some zealotry is expected from time to time, but this frothing at the mouth over a statement that was logically sound and not at all inaccurate just lends people to think all people who are pro-GPL are a bunch of dogmatic cultists. And what the hell is up with the second statement? It boggles the mind to even try and guess what the hell you found wrong with that.
Thanks a bunch. I'll remember you the next time I mention Linux to someone and they look at me like I'm a scientologist.
"We obviously need a new moderation category: (-1, Woo-fucking-hoo)" --Mr. AC
This seems very disturbing to me. Personally I believe rather strongly that GPL-ing your code is very important to protect it from abuse and perversion. But the trend nowadays seems to be:
We watched this happen with the tux racer game, and now with mono. What scares me is that OpenOffice is the same way -- you have to sign your copyright over to Sun to contribute. The sad thing is that these projects are large enough that a particular developer has no real alternative if they don't want to release their rights. What I mean is -- you'd have a hard time convincing people to fork the project just because someone might play dirty in the future.
Has the "Open Source" focus on pragmatic, short-term benefits blinded us to the philosophy and goals of the Free Software movement? This philosophy is what has propelled us this far -- we should not be so quick to abandon it so that commercial code will have a better chance of coexisting with us. Do we really want adware and spyware running on GNU systems?
Collectively contributed code should not be able to change licenses without the approval of all who have contributed. I think it's a shame that these sorts of things are allowed to happen.
Personally, I think you're right.
I think that, providing Mono is a success, we'll see ".NET clean" versions of Office, etc running on Linux under Mono.
I'd be surprised if there weren't the odd little "foible", a la Office for Mac - sure, it worked, mostly, but it just wasn't as good as the "real" version. What it was, however, was a little extra incentive to Mac users to make their next purchase a PC + Windows, rather than a Mac. I think we'll see the same thing with Mono, ie Microsoft using it to tempt people "back to the fold".
Failing that, it will be another sale of Office, and Microsoft makes far more money from that than they do from selling their OS, especially as most people get Windows "free" with their PC and never actually buy it at full retail.
Cheers,
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
I fail to see how preventing private companies from using open source helps the greater good.
Many people are more willing to share the valuable things that they have (code) if they feel that it will not be sold back to them at a high price. This is self defense.
The GPL is about a selfish kind of freedom...
Possibly. But for whatever reason GPL based projects have had a tendency to develop (or fail) more rapidly than BSD based projects. This seems to be systematic, so one might consider that it ties into acutal, as opposed to idealized, human nature.
Billy's not sharing with Sally is not excuse for Johnny not sharing with Billy.
It isn't? If I thought your stand were admirable, I would congratulate you. As it is I can only suggest that you donate all your funds to Billy Gates. I'm sure he would appreciate them. You won't? How selfish of you! And how reasonable. People practice reciprocal altruism based on expectations. The GPL attempts to recognize this, though imperfectly successful.
Recent studies demonstrate that people are more willing to contribute to common benefit if they feel that nobody is benefiting unfairly, and that they are even willing to pay extra if that will punish the "freeloaders". I've seen several variations of this study recently (check the recent issues of Science News and New Scientist). Now intuitively, this seems one of those "How obviously true, why did they bother" results. But this thread is an example of why they needed to bother.
Bear in mind that people are frequently quite willing to argue that you should sacrifice for the common good, without themselves being willing to perform the same sacrifice. This is quite understandable, but I find that it is on the same moral level as a stereotypical used-car salesman.
If people want to use the BSD license, it's ok with me. I just don't want them preaching to me that I should use it. (If they want to pay me to use it, that's quite different.)
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I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.