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Apple Public Source License Now FSF Approved
BWJones writes "Apple has now made their public source license 2.0 free.
From the release "The Darwin team at Apple is pleased to announce that version 2.0 of the Apple Public Source License has been certified as a 'Free Software License.' APSL 2.0 includes numerous changes and simplifications to make it even easier to use Apple Open Source software as part of your programs. To indicate acceptance of APSL 2.0, you can now use your new or existing "Apple ID", rather than having a separate Darwin account.""
proclus adds "This
is great news for Darwin-based free software projects like
The GNU-Darwin Distribution
and
Fink.
GNU-Darwin has had an
ongoing discussion
about this development, and annouced and end to our
'Free Darwin
Campaign,' so long as Apple avoids DMCA-based legal action."
The Kernel and the utilities can be FSF approved, but until glibc is ported to Darwin (and I suspect it never will) it should still be called Darwin.
Apple is trying to please both crowds and is doing a pretty good job of it.
They are giving end-users the software and hardware that fits their needs, such as the iMusic software and the introduction of the G5. at the same time, they are not forgetting the *NIX and open source base of their current OS. Actions such as this one and the continued "giving back" of code to OSS projects exemplify this trend.
Apple seems to have its head on straight and although I don't use their products, I support them and their continued sucess. A computer monoculture is a bad thing.
Now, I might actually buy a Mac laptop if they didn't cost so damn much!
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Doesn't this mean that Apple 'Free Software' can mix with GNU 'Free Software' provided the proper attributions and such are given? I could see this as being a tremendous win for the Apple platform, assuming this really does mean that it gets access to the wealth of free code out there.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
DRM is good. Without it, there would be no iTunes Music Store.
Patents are good. Without them, there would be no innovation.
What does this mean? Could one restrict who is allowed to use the code and thereby restrict who may view the source? In a commercial application this means that one could produce a program and then sell it and only allow purchasers to view the source, correct?
From what I read in the license, it seems like the end-users won't have their rights restricted, just like with the GPL. They may if they like distribute the files to the general public.
Maybe one of these days RMS will learn to appreciate the jumps and hoops companies who sell software for a living go through to do these types of things, instead of just dismissing them with "they're evil, proprietary and you shouldn't use them". Life is so much simpler when you don't have shareholders, boards of directors, lawyers and... well, money.
If you mean GPL'd software, no. According to this page, the FSF still considers APSLv2 incompatible with the GPL. Though they don't explain why. At some point, I really like to see a comprehensive listing of why each of the free-but-not-GPL-compatible licenses are designated such. I mean, it's all well an good for the GPL to say "It's not ok to use this license", but I find such a statement annoying without at least a brief note along the lines of "it's incompatible because it prevents you from doing $foo, which is allowed under the GPL" Or something.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
No; it's still GPL-incompatible. I am not convinced, however, that GPL-incompatibility is in any stretch a black mark on any license.
GPL compatibility is like a one-way gift. You bow to the "all-GPL" crowd by allowing them to use your code on their terms, but they don't reciprocate by giving you the right to use their code on your terms.
Probably because PowerPC architecture is vastly superior to x86. In addition to that, Apple has very strict engineering standards. They do things that make a lot of sense. If you've ever actually sat down and tinkered with or owned a Mac, you'd understand.
Even when I was looking at buying my 15" Ti Powerbook, I decided that if I hated MacOS X, I'd just run Linux or FreeBSD on it. I bought it beacuse the hardware is of exceptional quality. Offerings from most vendors in the PC market are mostly crap. There's very little money spent into engineering things well, but a lot of money invested in engineering them cheaply. I'll never lay a dime down on another piece of x86 hardware again--it's just not worth it.
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I read that. Is it possible for an organization to be more full of itself than the FSF?
A quotation:
"... we must remember that only part of Mac OS X is being released under the APSL. Even though the fatal flaws of the APSL were fixed, and even if the practical problems were addressed, that does no good for the other parts of Mac OS X whose source code is not being released at all. We must not judge all of a company by just part of what they do."
The FSF reminds me more and more of a religion than of a software organization. I can't think of any other organization that, on the one hand, makes a big deal about freedom and liberty, and on the other hand is so moralistic about orthodoxy and monolithic thinking.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Do you honestly think the world revolves around the type of open source license that people use, and that this news merits a place on Apple's home page? Of course Apple won't make a big splash about this -- it's simply isn't relevant to the vast, vast majority of people who go to the Apple web site looking for information about the company and their products. It's interesting only to programming geeks like us, and even then only to a limited subset of Apple interested geeks.
This is an overstatement. There was much innovation in the world before patent was even a concept.
So, preventing people from copying a song is irrational. Encrypting a personal e-mail is not. DRM, as I see, has basically come to mean the "evil" side of encryption.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
>GNU thinks its better than the first, they still dont like it
>(they are quite picky).
My experience from reading GNU's work is that they aren't terribly fond of anything that isn't GNU.
From that webpage:
-------------
The FSF now considers the APSL to be a free software license with three major practical problems, reminiscent of the NPL:
*It is not a true copyleft, because it allows linking with other files which may be entirely proprietary.
*It is unfair, since it requires you to give Apple rights to your changes which Apple will not give you for its code.
*It is incompatible with the GPL.
-------------
Let's go over these point by point.
>*It is not a true copyleft, because it allows linking with
>other files which may be entirely proprietary.
So does BSD. This does not, in my book, qualify as a "major practical problem."
>It is unfair, since it requires you to give Apple rights to
>your changes which Apple will not give you for its code.
Yes, it requires this. I'm not sure why this makes it "unfair" though: this seems like more of a "legal cover our asses" clause on Apple's part so that they can use the changes elsewhere.
>It is incompatible with the GPL.
Would someone look up the definition of "circular reasoning"?
It seems, from everything I've seen come out of GNU, that they fit every definition of "Zealots". They almost seem to be *reaching* for something bad to say about the license simply because a proprietary software company is behind it.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
>What about the DRM (even though it's silly) on iTunes?
Is there something instrinsically bad about Apple's FairPlay DRM?
Seriously, is there anything *fundamentally* wrong with it, specifically?
> How about the patents?
This may come as a surprise, but Apple is a "company" in a "neoliberal economy" trying to turn something called a "profit."
I know that *is* shocking, isn't it?
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
Personally I find most of Apple stuff a bit pricey but like where they are going. This FSF move is another step in the right direction.
Hopefully some of these players can continue allying themselves to take down the many-headed hydra that is Micro$loth. Novell adopted some Java angles with Netware 5, and recently added Linux services to their support suite. Maybe Apple can be added to the picture to cover desktop OS, server OS, desktop hardware, desktop software, *NIX services, etc.
I know Apple hasn't been a collaboration proponent in the past but the sum of all parts could be a force to be reckoned with.
Darwin is great and all, but many of us already have a kernel to use. Apple may say they embrace open source but when are they going to release code to some of the various software that makes OSX unique? When they decided to use KHTML for Safari, I thought they would at least release the source code for Safari and not just the changes to KHTML.. Its not like Safari is innovative or anything, we already have better open source browsers, but releasing the source code would of been a nice gesture.
That's why it's called the FREE software foundation and not the Somewhat-Free, Mostly-Free, Free-This-One-Time, Momentarily-Free, or Free-Enough-So-Take-It-Or-Leave-It Foundation.
One interesting thing about the GPL, is that it protects the software itself, not necessarily the authors. The FSF has come up with a unique and powerful mechanism for insuring that code and/or an application will *always* be freely distributable over its entire lifetime.
It's perfectly reasonable for them to stand up for this important principle. Many times RMS and the FSF have pointed out flaws in only slightly more compromising licenses, and many times their warnings have turned out to be farsighted.
We should all be thanking them for selflessly taking on the role of a watchdog. They serve the public good and have an excellent track record. You should really pick up a membership
They released their webcore library, man. That's pretty much everything safari is, save for a lot of boring user interface code. Since webcore is just a ObjC wrapper to KHTML, this is no big deal.
However, it's interesting to note that Apple did relase somehthing to the community, and I have yet to see anyone pick up on it. Apple'a "snapback" mode... This is a really useful, I daresay innovative, feature for a web browser. I use it all the time on slashdot. Especially when you have gestural input, either via a keyboard like mine (see my sig) or the cocoa gestures framework, it really makes site naviagation a breeze.
Also, Apple's method of handling bookmarks is significantly different from most. If only they'd incorperate the Omniweb (check for updates) features Safari would be one of the best browsers out there.
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This is hardly a whine, I'm simply stating that Apple uses Open source for PR, and does not have commitment to open source software or ideology. Your post is a typical defensive, brainless mac zealot comeback, packed in the "translator fashion" for easy mod points. Instead of replying to my actual post, you decide to resort to stereotypical assertions and personal attacks.
You just have to keep in mind that the GNU people have their own goals, which you may or may not agree with, and they are looking at these new licenses from the perspective of their own goals.
Your goals are obviously different from their goals. The practical problems they list are problems in achieving their goals. If you had practical problems achieving your own goals, you would be less likely to use their license and software too.
You have to also remember that the GNU people are not just looking at this license from the perspective of people using APSL software. They are looking at the APSL as a competitor to the GPL. If lots of people begin using the APSL to license their software just as lots of people have already licensed their software under the GPL, you are going to have a lot of software in the free software community that isn't compatible with each other. This will end up dividing the free software community and programmers are going to have to worry even more than they do now about from what software they can borrow code from and put into what programs. And Microsoft and other competitors can say publicly to the press about how distributing Linux distributions may be illegal. It would be like throwing a wrench into open source development.
What you have to understand, which the anti-GNU zealots simply can't, is that for open source software to continue and prosper is in GNU's interest. That is their major goal. All three "practical problems" relate directly to this major goal. They have been with us from the beginning and they have been looking out for us. Its because of them that the mucky and uninteresting problems of licensing has been paid attention to so carefully. They have been the ones enforcing open source licenses behind the scenes (most of them never get to court). When an open source developer has legal problems or questions, they can often turn to the GNU people for help or advice.
Are they zealots? Depends on how compatible your goals are with theirs. So, yeah, maybe a little. But don't forget that in the end they are on our side.
What's more sad is that anything more free than the GPL is also not good for them.
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
the GNU project and the FSFoundation are organizations which try to disseminate that for some reasons, proprietary (not commercial) software is a social problem, and one that can be viably dealt with, by making free sofware. nothing else.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
"Actually most of the newer BSD-style licenses are GPL compatible."
This may be true, but please note that the vice versa is not true. GPL licensed software is not BSD compatible, due to the restrictions of the GPL. BSD focuses on code deployment and use, regardless of use--you can close the source, release a binary only, etc. (but the released code cannot be pulled back). GPL focuses more on continual code openness--you can't feasibly close the source. (btw, it's not a matter of which license is better generally, but which is best for what you want to do.)
The problem with OSSing QuickTime is that you've lost *any* credibility for DRM with the movie studios. Regardless of the actual ability (or inability) of OSS programs to effectively implement DRM, and regardless of the merits of DRM itself, the movie industry, and big-name professional content creators in general, are going to walk away from anything that looks to them as insecure. An open source QuickTime would be seen as insecure.
I think Apple is stuck here. I don't blame them for not releasing QuickTime in OSS (besides the fact that it would remove yet *another* reason to switch to mac, because OSS QuickTime would see a Linux port faster than you can say "Linus Torvalds"), and I don't think that it's going to happen any time soon.
Anyway, there are *tons* of perfectly good OSS media handlers out there, and, if they use standard codecs (as most of them do), its generally not too complex to convert. If streaming is what you are interested, I'd see the other post (about Darwin Streaming) and try to reverse-engineer a client. It shouldn't be too hard for an ambitious programmer, as far as I can see...
Statistically speaking, there's a 99.998% chance that my IQ is higher than yours. Get over it.