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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."
Yay! now we have another license to rant about and compare with GPL/BSD!! But seriously, why does apple need a new free software license? Aren't the ones being used now sufficient?
Licensees will now have the choice of providing source code to either just the users of the code or (as before) to the general public (Section 2.2(c)).
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?
Visualize the world of wine
This is one more feather in our collective cap. This means that in very recent history (less than a year) open source was significantly impacted every major player. Microsoft is keeping a close eye on us and implementing an open source lab. Big business companies like IBM and Oracle have jumped onboard. And now Apple is realizing that its better to go with it than fight it. This is great news. I could have dreamed of this five years ago, but I never would have bet on it.
We are making history and leaving a big footprint. Little people influencing very large companies.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
Does this mean that it's possible(legal) to transplant Darwin's SMP capabilities into OpenBSD's PowerPC port? Firewire support? Cheapass-iBook-winmodem support?
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Well, I actually I wonder like a previous poster WHY every company needs to have their own license when GPL and BSD (or Apache perhaps) seem to cover the bases and you can always say "modified GPL", i.e. GPL + trademark restriction.
But on the whole this is great to hear, because I consider the FSF stamp of approval to mean "this license has no hidden traps". I.e., no weird venue change clauses, or ejection seats (if you get sued, your license terminates, if you have patents your license terminates, if you "use" the software the wrong way your license terminates) or other stupidity.
Sometimes free software folks think that these little details don't matter, but of course if you ever have to go to court, EVERY detail matters, and you agree to them!
I really don't have time to read all these stupid licenses, but when I see FSF-approved I feel a little more at ease.
check out the ibooks, they are much less expensive than you think. start at $1000 with dvd rom drive, cost around $1400 with dvd rom & cdrw. I agree the powerbooks are expensive, but I think that feature-for-feature, the ibooks can price compete with any x86 laptop, and will generally have longer battery life.
Licensees will only be required to release source code of Modifications they "Externally Deploy" (new Section 1.4, and Sections 2.1, 2.2). "External Deployment" is defined to cover the external distribution of APSL'ed code or use of APSL'ed code to provide a service (including content delivery) to a third party through electronic communication with that party.
Don't know how I feel about this one...
You can't run an application service provider program without releasing changes to all your clients, and possibly the public if your clients deal with the public?
You can't run a b2b service without releasing all your changes to your distributors that use it and your clients that use it?
This is very different from the "no black box public distribution" that I previously considered the GPL to represent.
If I had a client who sold widgets, and he had to release all his source to clients who connected to his b2b setup, allowing them to leave him and then give all his internal systems to his competitor, even though he never distributed his software, I don't think he'd be wanting to buy anything I built.
Could you insulate against this by putting a "dumb layer" between your apps? You could argue that ANY system that was interacted with by the public, however indirectly, required publication... in most businesses, this would eliminate the "internal deployment" angle almost totally, unless you had a typist carrying out your data-syncronisation work
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Ask this question to all people who has their Macs running Linux/PPC (Gentoo, YDL, Debian, etc - there thousands and thousands of Linux/PPC users), Mac OS 9 (or even 8 - "classic" application still run better in the original OS *AND* there are still tons of such application not ported yet to OSX *AND* there are still millions of users of Mac OS 8/9 around the world who has own reasons of not migrating to OSX), and even BSD (not OSX - original *BSD, although, there are not many Mac/BSD users).
I think that overall there are millions of Mac users who are running something different than OSX. How do you think they have got their Macs? I understand that some of them have bought their old Macs before OSX was stable/available. But I am sure that there are many of them who bough Macs *AFTER* OSX was around. I personally know many such individuals and some companies. And that makes you quoted sentence WRONG. Think about it.
Less is more !
That is indeed true, and John Carmack ported X11 to Darwin a while back.
Uh, I don't see what's the point in complaining about that.
Deal with it, RMS is an idealist. A quite awesome one in fact. Seriously, how many people have whatever got him to practically replace Unix with something better (excluding the kernel) because of a printer driver?
You may complain all you want, but FSF matches RMS' ideals. If you don't agree with such extreme idealism you can always start your own movement, although I doubt you're one of the very few capable of that.
Yes, RMS sometimes looks too fanatical. But it's quite possible that all this wouldn't have started if he wasn't.