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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.
This makes quite a bit of sense in terms of acceptance as if the root classes of the implementation are GPL that pretty much forces every application built to use Mono to be GPL. You can debate whether the classes would have been better off XFree-ish or LGPL, but they shouldn't be GPL (IMO), just as the gnu libc isn't GPL.
so what this means is that companies can leech more talent and code from the open source community in a profitable way? a bad decision for open source in my opinion.
Just as glibc and gtk are LGPL and not GPL, switching the license for the class libraries to a license that allows commercial software to be used with Mono is a good move.
.Net may fizzle or end up being a bridge for viruses from Windows, which will make the choice of license less important, as no one will be using it. If it does work out, it might mean that you can finally buy Linux software at CompUSA.
;)
I would have preferred the LGPL, but an X-style license is better than a lot of alternatives.
Of course,
I'm not sold on the whole clone-MS thing. On the one hand, it could lessen MSFT's grip on the market. On the other, MSFT will probably maintain incompatibilities with Mono, making Mono much less relevant. For instance, I doubt that they will ship a ".Net clean" version of Office that would run on Mono. Ditto for other cash-cow programs. However, I'll bet that Minesweeper.NET will be one of the first successes for Mono.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
The GNU-Nazi will have to start his own
He already has, its called DotGNU
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
- All your code module licensing are belong to us!
Whew.Actually, since they are changing the licensing for their modules only to the XFree86 license and not the entire Mono, I don't think we will see too much trouble. Besides, it's not like the X license is all that bad now, is it?
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
OK, I know that I'll get flamed to death for it (well if I provided an email). But, I really had a revelation reading Stallman's last GPL style rant about Word attachments. He really makes it difficult for reasonable people who agree with him on many fundamental things (I agree that Word attachments are bad).
It is clear that Stallman and the GPL are not really about freedom. I want the right to view, port, and tweak code. We agree there. But, I do not want the right to force others to let me view, port and tweak their code. Stallman disagree's there. At one time I had the deluded notion that the GPL was all about making certain that those who contributed to Open Source didn't try to just steal from it outright and wanted to provide more protection than the BSD license. But, it is quite clear that the agenda is bigger than that. It is that there be no closed code at all. The viral nature of the GPL isn't there as a side effect of trying to protect Open Source. It is there to deliberately attempt to eliminate closed source. That is a foolish endeavor in and event.
Please folks, don't be paranoid. BSD licenses represent true freedom. So what if someone tries to rip off your BSD software and do a closed modification. It is more likely, you will get credited in that instance whereas a GPL stealer will attempt to hide from GPL responsibilities. I fail to see a single incidence the BSD code modified and closed the has hurt the BSD community.
Maybe some people's feelings got hurt when MS used the BSD code for their networking implementation. But, looking at the big picture it got networking more standardized and interoperable. BSD was not directly hurt at all. With the desktop monopoly of closed software it is almost impossible for one to make headway with a low level GPL innovation. At best a corrupted twisted half assed version will be released by microcrap and everyone will suffer. OTOH, a BSD innovation can easily become a standard in both closed and open source communities.
Please, down with the GPL...
Miguel.
is that Intel and HP are contributing to Mono.
I find it somewhat amazing that these two would risk the wrath of Bill. HP I can almost understand, since they're in the Unix business (for now anyway), but Intel would be in big trouble if MS dropped support for Itanic in favour of AMD's Hammer.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
http://www.go-mono.com/faq.html#licensing
I'm not to up-to-date on the details of the Mono project, but it sounds like a huge undertaking, and if getting Intel on board to lend a hand is what it's going to take to get the job done (and within reasonable time) then this is a Good Thing(tm), especially as this is a project which is taking a direct competitive stance against Micro$oft.
Sure, OSS purists (read: RMS) will get a bee under their bonnet about this, but the source remains open... you can still take the source code, make changes, release it. You also then get the additional choice of whether to open (or close) source your project.
In a perfect world we could GPL everything, but this is just not the case.
The revolution will not be televised. It won't be on a friggin blog either
I don't think it was so much as money "floating around" as it was "money not floating in" ... as in sufficient to keep the company's efforts going.
That's just a hunch, though
So, let's see here, and think for a moment. Well, let me think (or some semblance thereof). You read.
.NET. One thing that helped Mono keep any sort of competitiveness was the GPL--Microsoft couldn't nab some of the code if it was superior to theirs, add it to their own, and include Mono's featureset in their own product, thus ensuring their superiority. (Mono+.Net > Mono).
Mono was designed to specifically compete with Microsoft's
Now they can steal a chunk of Mono at will and include it in their own software whenever they choose. Ideas, concepts, and whatever else is included in those classes might as well be written for Microsoft, for free. Great job guys! Just do Microsoft a favour and virtually work for them for free while you're at it! This isn't XFree! This is a direct competitor to Microsoft!
And by the way, isn't the spirit of the rest of the components' licensing, which hopefully will remain GPL, that improvements be available to the original author? That's the whole point! Now just because they are looking for some coders from Intel to help them out suddenly GPL isn't good enough?
de Icaza, what are you doing?!
Doh!
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.
The only way that Mono has a chance to avoid the old standard extension trick that Microsoft always plays is to get a critical mass of corporate partners to back their implementation. This license switch seems like a small price to play to get some heavy-weights onboard.
If the slashdot readership has any questions they'd like to ask Miguel de Icaza, we can ask the highly-moderated ones during the Q&A session and report the answers back here.
Phil Gross, Columbia ACM
I'd rather see pragmatism than evangelism at this point. Some form of .NET style framework is going to become a standard in the next few years, and I'd rather it were an open source one than an MS one. 50 volunteers and 5 Ximian developers simply don't stand a chance against MS. If it takes a BSD-style license to get Intel and HP on board, then so be it. Evangelize later, once you've got the leverage and mindshare.
for those of you who are going to be in new york for linuxworld, miguel is going to be giving at a talk at Columbia University this Wed.
see http://acm.cs.columbia.edu for more info
I just had an online argument with a GNUbite and a GNOMEite about his/her (don't know which) "boycott" of KDE, because its mere existence had somehow put the Free desktop in jeopardy.
Well, here's the thing.
When I first started using Free systems (I used Linux for years, then went to FreeBSD, and back to Linux) the best I could come up with was TkDesk, and RMS didn't even like that because of Tcl licensing. At that point, GNUstep was little more than a pipe dream ('96) but now ('02) it's getting closer.
I look at it like this: the KDE project was based on Qt due to it being a nice toolkit and due to the naivete of the core team. They just weren't aware of the implications, and couldn't understand it because, let's face it, programmers aren't lawyers. Later on, some of the KDE project people worked to make Qt GPL-friendly, a fact that was completely ignored by the GNUbite crowd, and largely ignored during RMS's crowing after Qt was dual-licensed under the GPL/QPL. To admit that both sides wanted the same thing would be to admit that the GNUbites were a bit wrong to spew so much venom at the KDE crowd.
Doggone it, news items like this just show how harmful having GNOME around is for the Free desktop. Nowadays, to be free-from-cost in the KDE world, one has to release their code under a Free license. To do otherwise is to pay a princely sum to Troll Tech, which most people don't want to do. The GNOME project, however, has wanted to get into bed with commercial projects since the beginning, and this is a great example. Such a license is bad for the Free world, though they'll not admit that their darling environment would be so.
If anyone's been harmful to the Free desktop, it's GNOME, not KDE.
sorry to get on the KDE vs. GNOME tangent again; it just bothers me that GNOME, the GNU darling, is getting so darned commercial-friendly. Seems a tad contradictory. I'm not really a Free zealot at all.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
If this mono thing is supposed to make vs.net code portable, then my question is would you be able to develop in all of the languages that MS has placed onto that, and possibly have it run on linux? That would be interesting to see, being able to use microsoft ultra-proprietary IDE and being able to use it on *NIX with ease. Too bad MS can now steal any part of it if it is better than the original implementation.
-Intel officially supports 2 OSes, Win and Lin.
-Intel writes the fastest C/C++ and Fortran compilers and parallelization tools for Linux
-Intel is a founder of the Open Source Development Lab
-Intel is working on dozens of Linux projects including OSCAR cluster, ethernet, gig E and embedded StrongARM work.
-Itanium has over 500 applications for 3+ OSes while Hammer doesn't even have a finished OS yet.
(Just don't tell Microsoft...)
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.
... or perhaps flamebait?
How can a professional journalist be so irresponsible as to write things like:
Ximian, a company working to improve the Linux operating system for ordinary computer users, has made a philosophical shift in a key new open-source software project that now will be governed by a less restrictive license [emphasis added].
and:
Mono would allow Linux and Unix systems to host Web services and to tap into Web services on other servers.
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. Their network stack owes a lot to BSD, but has any of it been passed back? No.
See my journal, I write things there
True enough. I knew about most of those, although not all. But this is a little different. It's one thing to support an alternative technology, but Mono is a direct frontal attack. If MS is really reorganising itself around .Net, then contributing to a clone is roughly equivalent to contribuing to Wine.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
If MS is really reorganising itself around .Net, then contributing to a clone is roughly equivalent to contribuing to Wine.
.NET, not the actual .NET framework per se.
.NET, that's just more potential customers for MS. Who cares if the client programs may be written by someone else, the service still links back to MS.
Except when they're charging for the service provided by
If there's OpenSource clients for
What idiots mismoderated this "Insightful"?
It's INFORMATIVE, dammit! Maybe even "Interesting", if you swing that way, but "Insightful"?
Apparently some moderators wouldn't know "Insightful" if it bit them in the ass!
/rant
You're making the assumtion that there is much/any improvement on MS's part to the BSD TCP/IP stack code.
What do you want "passed back"? Windows itself? If you're a GPL advocate, the answer of course is, "YES! A small fragement of Windows used our code so now we should by RIGHT have full and complete access to everything that is Windows!".
But that's an even sillier argument then it sounds out loud...
If possibilities like MS using the BSD network stack kept BSD developers up at night, they wouldn't be developing BSD licensed code. If such things do keep you up at night, then you shouldn't consider writing free software, and thus probably use the GPL.
My
Actually, the Tcl licensing has always been fine (Tcl uses the "Ousterhout" BSD license, which is in essence the X11 license: BSD without the advertisement clause, so it is the best of both worlds).
I know that Richard was never particularly fond of Tcl as a programming language. Maybe this is what you are refering to?
Miguel.
... and in other news, RMS renounces the use of XML as a standard as not all parsers are free...
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
However, Microsoft did not hurt BSD by using their network stack. If MS had not told anyone that they used the BSD network stack, the situation today would be exactly the same.
They that quote Benjamin Franklin on liberty and safety deserve neither.
no-one complains, as a matter of fact, hundreds of thousands of developers have downloaded the .NET SDK and/or the VS.NET RTM release.
.NET and Mono instead of political crap as to which license is 'true Open Source' and 'because it's now XFree I won't touch it'.
.NET platform equivalent on Linux, support Mono, otherwise BECAUSE Linux won't have a .NET equivalent, the platform will die.
Perhaps people should focus more on what you can DO with
You can all crawl towards DotGNU, but it is in the early stages of development and will come too late. If you want a
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Ideas, concepts, and whatever else is included in those classes might as well be written for Microsoft, for free.
Yeah, so what? I mean seriously, so what?
Just do Microsoft a favour and virtually work for them for free while you're at it!
Since I don't have to pay to get Mono, Miguel is working for me for free. I like that. It's cool. I don't have to pay Miguel a damn thing to get Mono. So if Miguel is working for me for free, why can't he work for Bill Gates for free at the same time?
Or is Free Software not the issue here, and you could care less what the software is as long as someone you don't like gets screwed?
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
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.
Clearly, what is needed here is a MIT-style license that specificly excludes Microsoft, since that's what everybody is worried about. I'm not quite sure whether I'm saying this is jest, since I suspect it might appeal to many people in this forum. Here's a first stab at it, taken from the MIT license.
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person, other than an employee or agent of Microsoft Corporation, obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
Disclaimer...
(Mono+.Net > Mono). A more disturbing thought, discussed on DotGNU list, about Mono bringing out a proprietary version (anybody remember "Exchange Connector ")
DotGNU mailing List Archive -- the stupid lameness filter is not allowing me to post the actual mail. Search for Ximian there and read Martin Coxall's comments on our reaction
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
So they might be shooting intel, but shooting through their own foot!
My answer: None of the above. The very fact that all these different licenses exist--including the GPL--that represents true freedom.
Yeah, this is just another statement of the O'Reilly "freedom to choose your license" statement. So what.
Yes, the GPL has an agenda. Stuff that my friends have been telling me I'm paranoid... it's being confirmed. Come to think of it, since 9-11, the paranoids have been vindicated to a degree. I must say though, publishing software under the GPL is nowhere near as bad as say... marketing fuel-grade ethanol as a beverage or selling "herbal remedies" that are in fact potent medicines with potentially fatal side effects from long term usage.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Should that be Mono + .net >= Mono? I have seen no real evidence that .net is non-zero.
I know mono is real (i can *download* it), but .net seems a bit more complex. I think the real part of .net is the developers toolkit, while the imaginary part is the passport stuff that no-one will ever use.
Complex numbers have no intrinsic order, but the inequality could be |Mono+.net|>|mono|. Fortunately this means that if they are a disaster, then the magnitude of microsofts disaster will be bigger than mono's!
Free Java games for your phone: Tontie, Sokoban
But how many Linux applications do you see at CompUSA? Maybe a couple: WordPerfect for Linux, CodeWarrior, etc.; but the idea is that if and when major software vendors start shipping .NET apps, there will at least be a fighting chance that an application that was only intended to run on Windows will actually run on the Linux .NET runtime.
...err, and in what way does that article refute the 'myth' that the NT TCP/IP stack is derived from the BSD stack? It admits that certain chunks of code are definately the same, that most of the related utilities are the same, and that the author can't state how much code has changed.
Pretty thorough debunking eh?
I know that you read /. from time to time, as I got an e-mail from you in response to a posting. Perhaps you can enlighten us here, because I'm really confused.
In discussing the LGPL vs GPL for libraries, you mention the idea that if the ability doesn't exist outside of the library (ie readline) you should GPL it. Then, if someone wants to use your library, they need to GPL it, and this advanced free software.
However, if you are reimplementing a standard (i.e. glibc) then you should use the LGPL so that others can build on your work.
So, assuming we shared your goals of using licensing to advance free software, I still don't see how this hurts.
Right now, in the pragmatic marketplace, the Unix vendors are retreating up the ladder. Linux and GNU based systems are replacing the low-end UNIX system. Proprietary UNIX is slowly being confined to areas where Free Unix-like OSes can't perform. I think that worrying about liberating Unix users is quite silly. At this point, any markets that Unix competes in will belong to GNU when it matures to that level. UNIX isn't the enemy, its the advanced team. Crippling the commercial UNIXes in a Unix vs. MS fight really hurts free software, as we have a Free Unix, but not a free Windows. The Free Unix will displace the non-Free Unixes, but if the service runs on Windows, you won't liberate those users.
From this view point, I fail to see how this licensing change hurts thing? These classes are duplicates of the Microsoft classes. As they are based upon compatibility, you can't really do much with them directly. I don't see the leverage that even GPL'd versions give you.
If your goal is to prevent Sun from using this work to sell Solaris in this market, I think you are missing the situation here. The first choice that is made is Unix vs. WinNT. If WinNT wins, then your free tools are ignored. If Unix wins, then GNU systems get the job if they can handle it, otherwise a Unix is chosen. When the server is replaced in 2-3 years, it will likely be replaced by a GNU system.
We can't offer things that Sun and HP can. If they do the job, GNU systems kick in when they can handle it. If Win32 gets the job, you are unlikely to liberate them.
Please, explain how crippling the development efforts advanced free software?
GNUstep could have done wonders had the project been nearly completed 3-4 years ago. It is just coming to maturity now, and will likely me 2 years from true usefulness.
This industry moves quickly, and GNU is making it move faster. Any space gets eaten by Free Software within 5 years of existance now, with good prototypes in 2-3 years. Isn't it simply enough to speed up the Free Software Goliath? Why attack the Unix vendors, they're adopting the GNU way slowly as they can.
Alex
Here's a link to the license for those interested in reading it:
mit-license [opensource.org]
How can a professional journalist be so irresponsible as to write things like:
Well, the same way a pro journalist can call a semiauto rifle an assualt weapon, but that's really beside the point.
Journalists are dumb, this fact is proven nearly every day.
Ximian, a company working to improve the Linux operating system for ordinary computer users, has made a philosophical shift in a key new open-source software project that now will be governed by a less restrictive license [emphasis added].
Umm...Maybe you haven't read it lately, but the GPL *is* as restrictive license.
A restriction is still a restriction, no matter if it's ultimate goal is openness or profit.
C-X C-S
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
Mono is a direct frontal attack.
Stop. Please. Now. Ami, you seem like the nicest person from your posts, and I know I tend to have an itchy trigger finger around here, and I really am trying to be a good boy tonight, so please bear with me...
This is not a direct frontal attack. Microsoft is pleased about Mono. Last month they even had a front page interview with Miguel at the MSDN site about his opinions on .NET and Mono. Microsoft wants .NET to spread, which is why they standardized it with ECMA to begin with (along with the not-so-subtle jab at Sun's own Java standardization foibles). The more interest there is in .NET, the less there is in Java, and consequently the more Sun is put over a barrel with regards to Java, especially at a time in Sun's history in which they been losing money for a few quarters now, and especially when Sun already has rocky relations with the open source community as it is.
I know most people at Slashdot love to think that Microsoft is a company of bumblers and that every move they make is some fatal step that will spell their downfall, but well, we've been hearing that for years now, and frankly all the marketshare numbers, server and desktop, show the opposite has been happening. Slashdot might never admit it, but there's some decent evidence out there that *gasp* Microsoft actually knows what it's doing. HP and Intel were the two biggest contributors with Microsoft in the .NET standardization process, and Microsoft actually expects them to help spread the word that .NET is A Good Thing. The Mono classes getting out from under the GPL is icing on the cake.
You are right. Only a nuclear bomb dropped on redmond could stop MS right now and I am not too sure about that.
MS just has too much power, money, political clout etc. They pretty much can do whatever they want, whenever they want, to whomever they want. Even the DOJ is afraid to punish them when they break the law.
War is necrophilia.
True enough. I knew about most of those, although not all. But this is a little different. It's one thing to support an alternative technology, but Mono is a direct frontal attack.
Considering Microsoft is helping Ximian port
If MS is really reorganising itself around
Maybe for some parts of
Microsoft stands to gain the most from this. Now they can write closed libraries and charge for them.
.NET-developers)?
.NET and Mono. MS will use .NET in illegal ways to further their monopoly, that is their way. A less-capable Mono will just draw people into the Web (you advocate Mono, .NET can do more, the company you work for decides to switch to .NET, bingo).
Of course they will do so (for extra services probably). But that will certainly not depend on the BSD-style license of Mono. At most a GPL license can make Mono no longer an option. But do you really believe that MS would change their ways to cater to the few Mono-dev'ers (which will probably be far, far fewer than
Personally I believe that we should forgo both
The Drowned and the Saved - Primo Levi
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.
KDE/GNOME is a bit off-topic for a discussion of the license of Mono's class libraries, but what the heck, I'm game.
the KDE project was based on Qt due to it being a nice toolkit and due to the naivete of the core team. They just weren't aware of the implications, and couldn't understand it because, let's face it, programmers aren't lawyers.
This excuse does not fly. Perhaps it could have been true for a short time, but lots of people pointed out that KDE was depending on non-free software. KDE could have adopted the Harmony project (free library compatible with Qt) but they chose not to do so.
(There was an essay about this, with a title something like "Why KDE still isn't a good idea". I've searched the web for a long time and I couldn't find it. I think I read it on Slashdot, but I can't find it here either. Can anyone help me out?)
It seems clear to me that we have GNOME to thank for Troll Tech freeing up their license on the Qt library.
By the way, read this:
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/qtcontroversy.html
To admit that both sides wanted the same thing would be to admit that the GNUbites were a bit wrong to spew so much venom at the KDE crowd.
I'd prefer that no one spew venom at anyone, least of all at fellow free-software developers. But I must say that I have seen about as much anti-GNOME venom as anti-KDE venom. Both desktops have lots of rabid supporters.
Doggone it, news items like this just show how harmful having GNOME around is for the Free desktop. Nowadays, to be free-from-cost in the KDE world, one has to release their code under a Free license. To do otherwise is to pay a princely sum to Troll Tech, which most people don't want to do. The GNOME project, however, has wanted to get into bed with commercial projects since the beginning, and this is a great example. Such a license is bad for the Free world, though they'll not admit that their darling environment would be so.
Let me get this straight. It is better for the free software world to depend on a commercial product, one you must sometimes pay for the right to use, than to depend on a completely free library? Nonsense. To believe that, you would have to believe that contributions by business to free software are tainted and bad. I don't believe that. If IBM wants to donate a journaling file system, big iron patches, or anything else to the free community, I'm all for it.
I also note your implication: if we didn't have GNOME we would have more free apps. Let's think about this. If some company wanted to make and sell a product to run under Linux, and they didn't want to pay for a Qt license, you think that they would then go ahead and write the product and give it away for free? Not in this world. They would just forget about writing the product. The people who want to release their software free will do it, whether they are developing for GNOME or KDE. Lack of a free alternative will not cause more people to give stuff away.
If anyone's been harmful to the Free desktop, it's GNOME, not KDE.
Utter nonsense. The competition between the two desktops has made both of them better. The KDE guys are doing a great job, but so are the GNOME guys. The big difference is that companies like Sun and HP are going to ship GNOME on their computers, not KDE. But you have totally failed to make any case that it's a bad thing when more computers are running a free desktop.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
There was an essay about this... I couldn't find it.
Found it.
Why KDE is Still a Bad Idea
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Does this mean I now owe royalties?
Thanks.. I think. But really you don't need to be a good boy on my account. Being a good boy does earn you a response, however. Bad boys get ignored :-).
Indeed, they definately know what they're doing. Thats why I dont buy that they really want to see Mono succeed.
Microsoft makes it's money from Windows and Office. Two monopolies who's days are numbered. They won't go down tomorrow, or even next year, but it is happening. The only way they can survive is to use the next few years to establish themselves in other markets. Even doing that won't give them the same kinds of margins they have now unless they can establish a monopoly.
If Microsoft appears to be pushing Mono then there are few possibilities: 1) it's a PR ploy because they believe that they can pull the rug out later (perhaps using software patents), 2) they really think that they can dominate the market for software services if there's level playing field, 3) they've resigned themselves to becoming just another computer company, comparable to Oracle or Computer Associates, 4) they're idiots.
We've already agreed they're not idiots, so that eliminates #4. #3 seems unlikely, given that it's really to early for them to give up on world domination. They might as well give a shot since they've come this far. That leaves only "PR" and "extreme confidence". Given that they've got $40 billion in the bank, I suppose they have reasons to be confident, but knowing what we do about the level of paranoia within Microsoft I'd say PR is much more likely.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
I agree at first. Open Source is about functionality and empowering the user. When you think about it, pitting platforms and user communities against each other is really a byproduct of marketing. And that's the source of "evil" that leads to a lack of interoperability and removal of user choice... but I digress.
If the BSD license is somehow superior to the GPL because it has fewer restrictions which allows more people to use BSD code... then why bother with a license? Obviously, releasing code to the public domain would be superior to both the BSD and GPL. Why bother with the BSD license at all?
Simple. Credit where credit is due. Fame. Recognition. The one universal currency within the Open Source landscape.
All licenses involve a price. And while that price affects end users, it is really about developers and the IT industry. Licenses exist to limit or serve that industry.
Sure - Open Source takes the user in account. They may even be about enabling the user. But as soon as a developer is considering which license best suits his/her requirements... it is no longer about the end user.
Does anyone know what happens to previously released code that then experiences a license change? To use a hypothetical for my question: what happens if you write a program and release it under the GPL. I come along and make modifications of the program and release my new code under the GPL to comply with the GPL from your code. Then you decide to change the license for the original program to something different - say for the sake of being extreme, you close source it. Does that mean that my derivative code is now in violation of your new license change?
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 isn't an example of someone or something being hurt. Lack of gain doesn't equal injury. Nothing has been gained from MS not releasing their code, but nothing has been lost. Just because they didn't help you by releasing their code, that doesn't mean they have hurt you.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
The X11 and the BSD licenses are a mixed bag. On one hand there are amazing success stories like well, XFree86 and the BSDs. On the other hand there are less successful scenarios like WINE where you see lots of proprietary forks, all closed from each other, all providing a disincentive for someone to redundantly code a free version.
The future of Mono as free software appears to be troubled (even more than it already was). It may make Ximian and Intel a buck or two, but I wonder if it will bring any benefit to the free sofware community.
I would have preferred an LGPL license. Dropping the LGPL, which is really quite tame, makes me suspicious of Ximian/Intel's motives.
Mozilla tried to go down a path with different licenses as well. Ultimately, so many contributed GPL only contributions it became hard to seperate the GPL stuff from the non-GPL stuff. Today, Mozilla has transistioned to a GPL license.
If enough people contribute to the Mono exercise with GPL code, there really won't be a distinction. If you contribute, just GPL your stuff. If it's important enough, there really won't be much choice.
Has anything come out of Sun about this yet? Last I heard they were going to replace CDE with GNOME in the next Solaris. GNOME is principly developed by Ximian people, and Miguel begins his article in Dr Dobbs Journal this month by implying that he would have prefered to have been able to implement Evolution in C#/.NET/Mono. It seems clear that he would like to eventually port GNOME to Mono. That would be a very anti-Sun move.
But I haven't seen anything about this around. Has anyone seen anything?
Let's see,
various programming tools,
games (from board to 3D hardware accelerated),
a couple of PIMs with handheld sync. support as well as a dozen email programs,
various Internet and network tools (from serious to trivial),
commercial software demos,
graphics packages,
personal finance,
...and a few office suites and assorted 'office' applications.
The only problem is that after a while, they start to run out of room on the box.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
http://www.go-mono.com/faq.html#licensing
The C# Compiler is released under the terms of the GNU GPL. The runtime libraries are under the GNU Library GPL. And the class libraries are released under the terms of the MIT X11 license.
I don't know how much better that is, but at least it's better then changing the license to all of Mono.
I think a more apt analogy would be this: I build a fancy egg timer which consists of a core software device, along with a bunch of really attractive features such as a bunch of LEDs that blink "I LOVE U" in alternating colors, and an exterior subtly designed to look like a spaceship, or a rooster, or whatever, along with a plug-in module that calculates the time it takes to cook ac thighs on a grill. I release this whole thing under the GPL, and put it out there.
Now imagine an investor comes out there and says, "Nice egg timer. We're ok with the core software being GPLed, but we want to have more control over the LEDs and the shell." So anyone who wants can still develop their own features to hang off the core software device - that still hasn't changed. But to please the investor, who will lend my egg timer a great deal of credibility and exposure, the LEDs and the rooster skin are now proprietary.
What do I do? Again, a question I am glad that I personally didn't have to answer.
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
If Microsoft wants to take advantage of the Mono project by incorporating code from it in .Net, then that benefits Mono too.
If MS is really reorganising itself around .Net, then contributing to a clone is roughly equivalent to contribuing to Wine.
.NET architecture (ie. WinNET) that people CAN'T port to because it's closed. So big deal if your programs are executable on Windows from Linux (because the Linux libraries are open and ported), you won't be able to use the closed WinNET libraries on Linux because THEY are proprietary and closed - that is, until a year or two later when someone does a Wine-like port ... but we'll still be playing catch-up.
I wouldn't really say Mono is a "clone". It's more like an implementation. MS releases the specs for a new software architecture and/or compliler fully expecting people to port it. Their motivations behind this are probably many, but we can only speculate. The truth is, MS could care less if people implement the spec, otherwise they wouldn't have released it.
Win32 (Wine) on the other hand is closed source. It is completely possible that MS could have another layer equivalent to Win32 on top of the
Ah ha! Now THERE'S a strategy.
----- rL
All that is possible is to release derived work without a Free license. It's not as if the original Free code would go away. You do not lose anything - you just do not get more. That's quite a difference.
The danger is always that the derived work becomes more extensively supported than the free parts of it.
So, why would badly supported source code deserve to win over well-supported binaries?
If in the marketplace, the code in the GPL is ignored in favor of completely closed original code, how does this benefit anyone? The GPL project then becomes an academic exercise while the closed original code becomes a market force.
Instead, if open BSD code is "stolen" (hah), closed, and even distorted, then this means that everyone has access to an implementation that is very similar to the de facto standard, and can even track or dismiss observable differences if the closed source dominates the market (as BSD TCP/IP has done). Everyone benefits.
The GPL is about rights and control. A patent tries to spur innovation by forcing people out of the copy-me-too rut. The GPL "spurs" innovation by forcing market leaders to ignore valuable code and write their own closed standards (or steal the valuable code and erase the fingerprints).
Personally, the BSD or Artistic licenses make more sense to me. If I write something cool, I want the massive market leaders to leverage it and turn my ideas into market standards. I let everyone else play with the source code, so everyone can play with the market standards.
[
The GPL is designed to generate a common wealth of software, an
expanding base that does drive competition in the commercial market,
regardless of the licenses being used in the market.
On one end of the spectrum of licenses you have the growth of this base of
Common Wealth code.
On the other end you have the extream of closed down tight proprietary
code that is done so as a matter of milking it for every penny you can get
out of it, profits focused to a few.
If all code was proprietary, you can be certain that we would not be
anywhere near as advanced in this technology as we are today.
The BSD License doesn't help the Common Wealth code base as much as GPL
does. But the GPL doesn't help the proprietary code base any more than
vice versa.
So, do you build upon Common Wealth or slow it's advancement thru such
licenses support some other point in the spectrum?
In time it will become clear that compromises such as what the BSD license
allows, will act counter productive to the GPL objective/goal. In time,
thru the compromise, the GPL will become heavely constrained by those who
use the compromise to place barriers to advancement in front of the GPL.
Consider a piece of BSD licensed code, open to be improved until someone
comes along and pulls it behind the curtain and slaps patented piece of
software on it, effectively preventing anyone else from advancing that
software in that direction in an open source manner.
It should be worth noting that IBM is the Leading US patent holder, being
granted more patents a year than any other company or party, in the US.
This particular story regarding Mono is a good indication of....Ok it's ok
to make the engines available for free but we are gonna own all the tires
and gas.....and these engines won't be able to go anywhere without our
permission, and that's for sale.
RMS sees possibilities and then applies human greed to the equasion to
determine what to expect. I now this because I do it too, and it's always
right.
So Sure RMS seems to be extream, because when dealing with the devil,
there is no such thing as compromise. Only an illusion to lead you to
think so, untill it's to late for you to do anything about it.
NetBSD runs on the Hammer already.
See the NetBSD/x86_64 port page.
Well, a few thousand dollars and say a free laptop each for the developers of that particular 'fragment' of code wouldn't have gone amiss, and that would have been a drop in the ocean compared to the money that MS have made from Windows - and the ongoing success of Windows must have be in no small way due to it being properly TCP/IP 'enabled'.
Of course MS were under no obligation to do so, but its pretty sad that they never even gave proper credit. Most end users wouldn't even understand what the credit meant, and those who did would think more favourably of MS in future: everyone wins.
"allow applications to communicate and share data over the Internet, regardless of operating system, device, or programming language,"
Sounds like Antitrust.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Portability portability portability. Try to fix gcc's speed woes and your patch will be ignored. Post to the gcc mailing list and you will not get a single response from a core developer. This is the state of gcc development. It takes a significant investment to get your head into the gcc source tree and generating good code is something you're not likely to have a lot of fun with. Stuff like vectorization instructions is just not easy to hack onto the lisp like internal syntax of gcc.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I don't find any of them conclusive. Both are certainly an improvement over closed source.
My preference is that all API's, interfaces, etc. should be under a BSD style (i.e., non-restrictive) license.
For libraries I prefer LGPL.
For programs I prefer GPL (possibly with dual -licensed commercial option, but that does require complete ownership of the code, and thus is often infeasible).
But this is my preference. I see no reason to believe that everyone else should make the same decisions. And it seems to me unreasonable when someone claims that someone else should make the same decisions that they make.
Still, it is a pity that such a basic tool as a compiler is under a bsd-style license. And (as I indicated above) in my mind the libraries should be LGPL. But perhaps the Mono project is getting funding from some of the mentioned companies. That could certainly be enough to change one's mind, at least as far as BSD.
.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
LGPL doesnt work well for .NET or Java Apps; because they are mostly all 'libraries'; any app can usually be loaded as a library and its classes and methods called directly. So LGPL==GPL for these systems.
Maybe the FSF need to issue an LLGPL for these platforms, which says 'any changes you make to this set of classes, or new classes you add to same packages (java) and assemblies (.NET) have to be GPL, but if you include this stuff inside another library, what you do with the rest is up to you.
I agree with you. I was thinking about this the other day as I was in CompUSA staring at the one little shelf of Linux OS offerings. I wondered why they didn't have any applications. Then I suddenly realized that nobody wants to pay anything for the application software. We all expect to download it free from the 'net. I include myself in "we." Maybe if we actually started BUYING some applications for Linux, they would start appearing more in stores.
Of course, we can always start the age old "Dreamweaver" thread again....
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
The entire reason to have a strong license like the GPL is for situations like the one the Ximian is in. The are up against a very powerful, well-funded, entrenched proprietary vendor. I predict the downfall will happen like this:
As soon as anyone starts to use Mono instead of MS's stuff, MS will just steal Mono's code, put it in their proprietary stuff and then tell their customers there is no reason to change because they just appropriated the feature that the customer was seeking. This is not so important in itself, but after this happens a few times Mono will likely be orphaned by the developer community. People don't like having their donated code sold for profit.
What is sad is that the "other companies" that want this license change do not understand that it will be the dowfall of the project.
It sounds like Ximian has decided that vendor support is worth sacrificing the viabiblity of a large section of their project. That's their decision, I just have the impression that it might be short-sighted.
Interesting how all the highly moderated comments are anti-GPL. This is slashdot, somethings wrong.
Not a bad read, however this is fairly amusing:
"I'm pretty confident now that before a Free Qt can be done, GNOME will be in 1.0 or some higher release and will have established itself as the standard GUI of Linux. KDE will stay around as a good desktop with a faithful, though slowly diminishing, user community, but it won't grab the brass ring. "
One of the points of Mono is to make a fully compatible version of the .NET implementation for non Windows platforms.
.NET. That doesn't seem to be happing, and so there's Mono instead. If anything this helps MS so they don't have to do it themselves. I helps Linux in they get an implementation which is also Open Source. It helps developers, especially large propietary vendors in that they can develop without GPL concerns which will attract more people to use it. This then helps everyone in that they can have more software available to them that can be run of the OS of there choice and (hopefully) maintain compatiblity between them. This'll also help in which there won't have to be completely different code bases to be maintained for software so once it's written on one platform very little will have to be done to port it to another.
I don't really see this as competing directly with MS. Remember at first there was hinting that Corel would write a Linux version of
The problems with the licensing were pointed out in what quickly became a huge flamewar within hours of the initial KDE Call For Developers on Usenet (yes, this was long enough ago that serious developers still used Usenet).
So, the core KDE team knew about the problems before they had one line of code written!
(Frankly, I don't give a crap about KDE or GNOME -- they both suck, IMO -- but revisionist history annoys me.)
Way too old to be of any discussion value.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Actually if this really works, MicroSoft may eventually be forced to copy the open-source version. This is because that source code may be used as the "reference implementation" that everybody tries to debug their .net problems to. Customers may actually complain if the MicroSoft solution seems to conflict with the only usable documentation they have, which is the open-source code.
* Doggone it, news items like this just show how harmful having GNOME around is for the Free desktop. Nowadays, to be free-from-cost in the KDE world, one has to release their code under a Free license. To do otherwise is to pay a princely sum to Troll Tech, which most people don't want to do. The GNOME project, however, has wanted to get into bed with commercial projects since the beginning, and this is a great example. Such a license is bad for the Free world, though they'll not admit that their darling environment would be so.
Having proprietary software written on top of free libraries running on free platforms is certainly better than having proprietary software written on proprietary libraries on proprietary platforms -- which is much of what would happen if all Free Software were GPLd. Those who use Free libraries to write proprietary software still contribute to the development of the libraries, and by becoming accustomed to Free software (and ceasing to fear it), they're more likely to start or fund purely Free software development in the future.
I say this as a fellow who has not infrequently written proprietary software as a consultant, but who makes regular use of Free software (ie. gtk+) as a base. Making gtk+ GPL-only wouldn't convince my clients to free their proprietary software -- rather, it would convince them to insist that I use a different widget set, or perhaps even a different platform. (Incidentally, I'm no longer consulting -- rather, I work for MontaVista Software, where the software I write and work on really is Free, though not always free).
Strongarm tactics such as GPLing libraries do nobody any good.
You may want to look into the history of this all. Intel was porting to BSD with MS's blessing. According to people from Corel they were thrown cash to port to linux originally until MS decided the GPL was the enemy. I really think the whole shift by MS is due to diminishing returns on their OS's. What are the key parts of Windows? Media Player and IE as delivery mechanisms for media. Why do you think AOL and MS are recent enemies. .NET (the strategy not the framework) is about owning the delivery mechanisms. AOL is afraid of MS moving in. AOL doesn't have control of a browser that has any market share. .NET can't really succeed by forcing anyone to a particular OS. MS envisions the world as a "pay as you go" service. MS is moving away from the desktop. XBox was jsut the start of it. The technologies will converge. Telephone companies are starting to sell digitial cable services, cable companies are selling telephone services. Its all the same now.
Mono is not about competing with MS in the slightest. .NET (the framework) is a superior technology. Ximian values it. Intel's angle i am as of now a little unsure. Think about this. MS lets whoever port .NET. They save themselves the time and money by letting someone else do it. THey have a huge headstart and in the end they get to have all the technology they develop able to run on at least 50% of all the servers out there. If Mono is poorly implemented when its released MS could gain more server market share. "We do .NET better".
"...you can't have five wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for supper." -L. Flynt
So who decides--the sheep? Then the five wolves go hungry cause they can't eat grass.
Microsoft also makes its money from MSN and Windows Media Player -- they're getting paid alot to develop secure & proprietary music and video formats -- and killing off mp3 is one of the recording companies' biggest wishes
Yes, and it's copyright 1998.
Way too old to be of any discussion value.
I claimed that the KDE developers, when given a choice between Qt and a free clone of Qt, chose Qt... despite the non-free status of Qt at the time. Then I introduced that article to support my claim.
The 1998 copyright date doesn't matter, all that matters is whether the reference is accurate and supports my claim.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
If you're a GPL advocate, the answer of course is, "YES! A small fragement of Windows used our code so now we should by RIGHT have full and complete access to everything that is Windows!".
A large part of the GPL's point is to encourage development of "Free Software" by making it more expensive to develop proprietary software (by making quality libraries/tools available for users of the GPL but not for those who use libraries granting the user less flexibility). The intent is not to force proprietary software companies to open their software when they mistakenly use GPL'd code; rather, the intent is to prevent closed-source companies from using these "Free" tools in their proprietary software in the first case.
Thus, a GPL advocate's argument (presuming that the source in question were under the GPL) would be closer to "Microsoft used a small fragment of our code in their large proprietary operating system; because we only want our tools and code to ease Free software development, they need to write their own implementation unless they make their product Free" -- a much more reasonable position. There's no expected right of the GPL advocate to access to the infringing codebase, except as a threat used to encourage that the code be rewritten (unless the infringing party decides to abide by the license of the hitherto "stolen" GPLed code, rather than eliminating that code from his/her app). If anything, it's the infringer who is mistaken in thinking he or she has the "right" to use the GPLed code without abiding by its license.
However, I'm not a GPL advocate per se -- I far prefer the LGPL, even in situations where the FSF considers it deprecated.