Slashdot Mirror
XFree86 Alters License
kinema writes "According to the XFree86 announcement starting with XFree86 v4.4.0-RC3 there will be a new license. There are some worries that these changes might be incompatible with the GPL." The FSF has a good page about the problems with BSD-style advertising clauses, which ironically uses XFree86's old license as an example of one to emulate.
the source is still out there, worst case scenario - the license isn't gpl, and they don't change it to be so - some of the developers split off and recruit noobs, and we end up with a renamed X that everyone uses - that takes a little while to ramp back up to full speed.
It's not the end of the world, but it (could) be annoying, that's for sure. I think thorough investigation is needed (e.g. try reading the license)
cyn, free software and *nix operating systems enthusiast.
This isn't a troll, but seriously, why should it be GPL compatable? The only way to be GPL compatable is to have a licence where the software can re-licensed under the GPL. The GPL states it can only be linked with other software under the GPL (or under a licence which basically means the same thing)
If the GPL is unwilling to be compatable with anyone else, why should anyone be too worried about being compatable with the GPL.
Remember. Open source =\= GPL.
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
Here's the original BSD clause:
And here's the new XFree86 clause:
The problem with the original clause 3 of the BSD license is that it could lead to massive lists of acknowledgements tacked on to an advertisement meant to be fairly compact (e.g. a leaflette, banner ad, sign, billboard, whatever). This isn't the case with the new XFree86 license clause 3, where it only requires acknowledgement in the documentation or the software itself. While keeping track of those acknowledgements might prove difficult at times, it has nowhere NEAR the practical problems that the original BSD license had.
The new XFree86 license requires a statement in end user documentation, which is completely different. You can't really argue that adding a bunch of disclosures about where the modules you're using to your documentation is a huge burden. It doesn't add a substantial cost to your documentation, even if it's distributed in a printed form, unlike the cost of adding a page of disclosures to an ad.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
No, remember that in X the 'server' is local and the 'client' is the app, so the X server sends a request to the client for a foot shooting event, and the client then returns the gun to the server.
Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
If the GPL is unwilling to be compatable with anyone else, why should anyone be too worried about being compatable with the GPL.
... unless you are someone who feels threatened by free software in general, or people who differ from your vision of free software in particular, and therefor prefer fragmentation over cooperation.
The GPL has been THE reference license since probably before you were born (tongue in cheek).
BSD and GPL are the two original free software licenses. The BSD folks have made an effort to insure that the BSD license is compatible with the GPL not because they share the GNU philosophy (they don't), but to avoid fragmenting the free software world through stupid licensing incompatibilities. FreeBSD changed their license to make it GPL compatible, and GPL v. 2 was changed likewise to be compatible with a wider range of interests (including commercial interests that are shared with the BSD community).
The GPL is the only license many enterprises will consider releasing their erstwhile proprietary code under, as it protects them from having competitors snatch up their code and incorporate it into a competing proprietary product (in their view, competing GPLed products are not an issue, as they can reincorporate the best improvement into their GPLed product). Many of us who write code will not consider a BSD style license because we do not want our code used by freeloaders who incorporate it into non-free, proprietary products.
There are enough (perhaps a majority, even) free software and open source developers who feel this way that the GPL is, if not the majority license, a sufficiently large piece of the OSS / FSS pie that being incompatible with it means losing a huge portion of the community's input and integration.
FreeBSD, as vehement as their disagreement with the GPL is, chose to deliberately modify their license to make it compatible with the GPL for exactly these reasons: because there is room in the community for both views, but no reason whatsoever to fragment the community over those views.
After all, if one licenses under a *BSD style license, and if therefor one doesn't mind having their code placed into a proprietary product, why should one mind having it incorporated into a GPLed product (unless one's goal is simply to fragment the free software world and undermine the cooperation that makes it so effective).
Which makes one wonder about the motives of someone who would post such an inane comment actively encouraging such small minded thinking ("we don't use their license, we don't like them, so why should we cooperate!")
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Any good copy left license will require sublicensing by that license as a requirement for compatibility. It is too hard to capture the concept of copy left in any other way.
... but lots of people like that aspect, and there is plenty of worthwhile GPL software out there some of which even the XFree developers use. It is the choice to suddenly change to an incompatible which needs the justification IMO.
GPL keeps source open, that might not be everyone's definition of open source
Moderate me off-topic or flamebait if you must, but if you're a computer professional or want to be one it seems to me that the ability to read a little bit of French or German comes with the territory, and a little written Chinese and Japanese probably wouldn't keep you down either. Perhaps asking for some icon which denotes language after a link would be reasonable, but this "hayull, billybob, if English was good enough for jaysus..." attitude is just childish.
Of course you could have also just looked at the link, seen it was in Germany, and not clicked on it. Or would that have been too much work?
Open source is actually a lot easier, at least if you see an "OSI approved" label, you have some guarantees about what you are allowed to do. And in practice, most projects use one of the GPL, LGPL, BSD/MIT-style or Apache license anyway.
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
Imagine if a software system required 75 different sentences, each one naming a different author or group of authors. To advertise that, you would need a full-page ad.
Christ. And I was worried about Iraq, gun control and third-world starvation for a moment there.
Bow, nigger. h
BSD type licenses are like BSD derived OSs ... they fork all over the place :) Copyleft by its very nature seeks to consolidate though, I dont see that changing.
Why doesn't everyone use the BSD license?
Because it includes "the freedom to abuse". Companies say the GPL is anti-commercial, but the free OS with the most commercial interest is GNU/Linux.
Would Sun contribute to GNOME if the GNOME license allowed IBM to take Suns work, modify it and not give back? GPL makes a level playing field, everyone has to play by the rules, and history has proved that companies prefer that situation to the BSD situation.
In an ideal world, yes we would all use the BSD license, but while were in this world, copyleft seems to be preferable.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
...Write your own code.
Ive heard that said so many times to people who have expressed a desire to use GPL code but dislike the GPL license. Why doesnt that apply here? It doesnt have to be GPL compatable, and if anyone dislikes that, they are free to extend the GPL compatable version, or write their own implementation.
Actually the GPL section 1 requires you to: publish on each copy an approriate copyright notice
This applies to both source and binary distribution. While this is not a real a advertising clause it does require you to acknowledge the original author of the program. So even with the GPL you have the problem of many copyright sentences in combined programs.
Trying not to bite on what might be flamebait, but the GPL does not restrict how you licence your code. It only restricts how others licence it.
Using the GPL allows me to say "here you go, use the code however you like but don't ever stop others from doing the same". If you make a change to my code then you are welcome to keep it to yourself or, more usefully, to redistribute it but you can never change the conditions under which I originally released my code. If you don't like that condition then go away and recode it yourself, duplicate the effort, and miss out on the community effort but don't think you can use my code in whatever way you want.
In my book that isn't virulent.
Really, I don't see the point of proposing new licenses every day. The more licenses we have, the less people will be able to take code from one FOSS project and use it in another. That results in a quagmire of redundant and slowly moving projects that the "open source" mindset was supposed to be a solution to, not a cause of.
If you want anyone to use it, make it (original) X11 licensed. If you want it to stay free but would like to keep control so you can release your own proprietary extensions, GPL it (and ask code donators reassign copyrights to you.) And if you want to make it stay free and easily defended and have no intention of releasing proprietary versions, GPL it and donate the copyrights to the FSF.
XFree86's decision to adopt yet another license ultimately causes confusion and may harm both itself and free and open source software, depending on exactly what the consequences of the license are.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Technically I see a difference, as there's nothing forcing you to call it GNU/Linux. But morally it's the same thing.
I'm glad there's no "morality" clause in the GPL. Such a thing would lead to developers taking liberties with the software so licensed and arguing their case on moral grounds.
The GPL is very clear: In order for another license to be compatible, it must not place restrictions on users or developers above or beyond those of the GPL. The advertising clause does so. Regardless of how you judge it to be moral or immoral, convenient or inconvenient, additional restrictions/requirements are just that, and are not compatible with the GPL.
Mozilla is dual licensed and is a good example of a project realising, a little late in the game, that there's hassles associated with customized, incompatable, licenses. The Mozilla team released they needed to support the GPL, but had problems tracing all the copyright holders so that every single element of the code could be dual licensed. I don't know if they eventually succeeded or not.
The advantages of picking the GPL are numerous: It's entirely neutral, it does not preclude the original copyright holder from taking their own code (and code whose copyrights have been assigned to them) and releasing a proprietary version, and it's been affective legally - no company, with the exception of SCO which so far seems to be ludicrous - has ever challenged it. At the very least, it makes sense to pick a GPL-compatable license if only because it ensures your projects can interoperate with other projects with GPL-compatable licenses without a lot of bureaucracy.
I'm not arguing incidentally that anyone shouldn't use a license that fits their needs. But there's a good argument for suggesting that most organizations that created hand-rolled copyleft licenses would have found the GPL suited their needs better. There's so much hostility directed at the GPL and so much that just seems right about doing your own thing, I think a lot of people are blinded to the idea that the GPL is a good thing.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
It seems to me like the main reason for BSD advocates to dislike the GPL is that it essentially says "We're writing free software, but your software is too free, so you can't use our code. But we'll take plenty of your code." The GPL is supposed to keep proprietary software from taking from free software and not giving back their work, but the GPL doesn't allow work under it to be given back to the non-GPL open source community.
Feel free to mod me "-1 - Angry Jerk".
And, frankly, I can understand why some people are a little pissed of, even if I don't share their feelings. From the point of view of a developer using a BSD-style, permissive license, GPLed code is just as impossible to integrate as proprietary code is, so there already is a schism in "the community". Cooperation between GPL and BSD (or rather, copyleft and permissive) projects is effectively a one-way street.
I, frankly, do not understand why the BSD-License zealots (which are a tiny fraction of the BSD folks) get so pissed off.
They have made a conscious choice in the working of their license to allow their code to be arbitrarilly relicensed, even with draconian, proprietary restrictions and have taken the stance that by doing so, they have maximized the freedom of the downstream (derivative) developer. Which, by definition, must also include other free software developers whose specific views a freedom differ slightly, or even a great deal, as well as those who do not believe in freedom at all (ie. proprietary developers). Then, with the next breath, the zealously anti-GPL crowd would add "but not another FREE license we happen to disagree with."
It is hypocracy in the extreme to make a claim to freedom, then with the next breath to decry those who practice freedom differently than oneself while claiming it is perfectly okay to remove that freedom completely. Thankfully, that is a form of hypocracy the vast majority of the FreeBSD folks, including the leadership, do not engage in at all (and in fact, have purposly avoided by making their license GPL compatible).
It is not a hypocracy certain BSD-License zealots have avoided at all, or those who enter the community as agent provocatuers seeking to stir up conflict where none really exists, quite probably at the behest (and paid for) by certain interests who feel threatened by free software of whatever variety.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
That's a good reason for the GPL. That's the place the GPL makes sense.
But, what if your first priority is widest possible influence? For instance, you are trying to propagate a new protocol far and wide. In that case, I believe, that you would be wise to BSD the reference implementation.
Absolutely! The Ogg-Vorbis folks did this very thing.
Perhaps I didn't make it as clear as I intended. Both licenses have their place, both are good, and fragmenting the community through incompatabilities because one doesn't like the GPL would be a disservice to both the GPL and *BSD communities (as both do cross-polinate one another, with ideas and code).
Dual licensing is appropriate in some cases. BSD licensing is appropriate in some cases, and GPL is apporpriate in some cases.
What isn't appropriate is to advocate allowing folks to make free software proprietary, and with the next breath decrying folks who wish to take the same software and relicense it with vastly less draconian restrictions, but nevertheless more restrictions than it had originally (i.e. the GPL).
Choice is important, and the best way to maximize people's choices is to keep our free licenses as compatible as possible, and compatability withh the GPL, as one of the two fundamental reference licenses of the free software community (FreeBSD being the other), and as the license under which a large portion of the free software in the world is licensed under, is a very important part of that.
The FreeBSD folks, much to their credit, recognized that a long time ago. Alas, some of the more zealos folks in their ranks (along with some of the more zealous folks in the GPL ranks, and certainly the numerous agents provocateurs folks like Microsoft have seeded our ranks with), will probably never recognize (or at least never admit) as much.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Maybe because some developers who believe in open-source as a development-methodology think the the FSF is so bound by mind-numbing ideology as to not represent the true beliefs of some of us in the community?
I've got nothing against the GPL, its a fine license if you want your code to to be bound to a particular belief system. But it sickens me when Stallman et-al trots out the concept of 'Free-as-in-Freedom' in reference to the GPL. I'll thank them to STOP abusing the notion of Freedom in advertising their ideology, it's becoming trite.
The GPL is NOT a poster child for Freedom(with a capital F) - in its own way, it has as many restrictions as the next commercial license - its just that the obligations you agree to are philosophical, rather than monetary.
In the end, true freedom means that certain persons or entities will have the right to do things you don't believe in. At least in the USA, freedom-of-religion does not come with the caveat that the religion must be christian, nor does freedom of speech come with the caveat that the speech must be 'politically correct'.
The closest thing we have to a open-source license that is actually 'Free-as-in-Freedom' is the BSD license.
"That naive cube! How long must I suffer this!" --Sheldon J. Plankton
If all you read was the Slashdot intro article, then you can't possibly debate this issue.
The XFree86 license did NOT add an "obnoxious advertising clause".
According to the LINKED Stallman article, the "obnoxious advertising clause" is one that says that the author of the software must be ACKNOWLEDGED IN PRODUCT ADVERTISING.
Naturally, I can understand that you wouldn't want to have 100 attributions to different software authors in your magazine or televsion ADVERTISEMENT.
BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT THE NEW XFREE86 LICENSE REQUIRES!!!
The new XFree86 clause only says that XFree86 must be given acknowledgement in the product DOCUMENTATION.
There'ss a BIG FUCKING DIFFERENCE, PEOPLE.
THIS ENTIRE SLASHDOT ARTICLE AND ALL THE DISCUSSION IS NEXT TO WORTHLESS SINCE NOBODY KNOWS WHAT THE FUCK THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT.
It seems pretty reasonable to me for a software author, especially one WHO IS NOT REQUIRING THE SOURCE OR MODIFICATIONS TO BE REDISTRIBUTED, to at least ask for acknowledgement in the product documentation!!
Just because the old BSD license required acknowledgement in product ADVERTISEMENT does not mean that the new XFree86 one does. Just because the two licenses look simiar at first glance DOES NOT MAKE THE NEW ONE GPL INCOMPATIBLE.
Read it for yourself, folks, it's VERY fucking reasonable. The XFree86 license specifically says:
The end-user documentation included with the redistribution, if any, must include the following acknowledgment: "This product includes software developed by The XFree86 Project, Inc (http://www.xfree86.org/) and its contributors", in the same place and form as other third-party acknowledgments. Alternately, this acknowledgment may appear in the software itself, in the same form and location as other such third-party acknowledgments.
In any case, it has little to do with the license. What you do, if you are running a project, and you want the right to release a proprietary version, is be up-front about it. You say "If you want to contribute to my project, I ask that you reassign copyrights to your contributions to me". The GPL allows this, and this is just as flexible for someone who wants to create a large project and release it but retain rights to release proprietary versions as the APSL and MPL, but unlike the original version of the latter and all versions of the former, others can continue to interoperate with it. If you want to use code that's not a part of the original project and is also GPL'd, you can use that code in a free fork of the project without fear of breaking obscure license conditions.
I'd be tempted to suggest that the real reason why there's such a FUD campaign against the GPL is not that Microsoft's worried about any supposed "viral" aspects, it's that a unified license that doesn't allow proprietary use is far more useful to open source and free software than a fragmented license base. A fragmented license base destroys the ability of seperate projects to cooperate and efficiently share code. By pretending the GPL has these flaws, you encourage the creation of a fragmented license base for those who want copylefted software.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.