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Apache says ASL2.0 is GPL-compatible
Steve Loughran writes "The ASF board have put up on the Apache Web site, a page
rebutting claims that the new ASL2.0 license is incompatible with the GPL, claims made by on an
FSF page and covered in
Slashdot last week.The key points are (1) The interpretation of the GPL license is not just the opinions of individuals in the FSF, it is designed to be rigorously defendable in a court of law.
(2) Rather than look at opinions about compatibility, people should look at the
ASF2.0 and GPL licenses to see if they really are compatible.
(3) If you look at the two licenses, they really are compatible.
This means there is nothing to stop you linking your [L]GPL apps against apache libraries, shipping them with apache applications, and the like." Of course, this is still up to debate.
If there's a debate at all, it's not worth wasting your time thinking about it.
This is why people like the BSD license.
This is why OpenBSD forks code when others play stupid license tricks. If anyone has to think about what a license might mean, then they're not busy fixing bugs. Pseudo-Clever-Licensing keeps lawyers happy and programmers unproductive.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
A most excellent point.
The owls are not what they seem
In the hypothetical situation in which the APL is determined to be incompatible with the GPL, you could still link (L)GPL apps to Apache project code, because the Apache code would effectively be distributed under two licenses--the APL, and a slightly modified APL to make it GPL-compatible. They say as much by admitting that you can use Apache project code in GPL'd projects.
I suppose it is dangerous to assume that the FSF has the final word on the GPL. But until the dust settles on this, I don't think anyone should link the new Apache code. I'm waiting to see if this turns ugly. I hope it doesn't, because it doesn't need to. The last thing the GPL needs is to have it's primary defender fighting it's most well-known user.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
IANAL, but why can't the Apache people add a clause to their license that explicitly proclaims compatibility with some rev of GPL? If the compatiblity clause supercedes other clauses in Apache's license, then there really is no legal grounds for anyone later proclaiming that they are incompatible.
I never trust people that say "trust me, the contract can be interpreted in the way that you want it to." If someone wants a legal document to have a particular property, then the document should explicitly state that it has that property. But again, IANAL.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Is the GPL APL-compatible? Is the GPL compatible with /any/ other license? No. However, the FSF makes a big deal whenever they think that an open source license isn't GPL-compatible.
You just know that the author of the Apache rebuttal page wanted to end his analysis with: "So get bent."
Apache is a pretty good piece of software and if folks don't like the new license, well that's just tough. They have a right to license their code however they choose to. The people who write to them and tell them otherwise really do need to drop off the planet.
-sirket
... Is an ignorant statement. Some authors decide to release their code under a certain license, and people bitch. If ASL doesn't play nice with the GPL, that is unfortunate... and we might have to look at something else. Then again, Apache 1.x is working great as far as I can tell. But these license zealots whining about how the "BSD/ASL/XFree/GPL sucks" are really just ignorant. If I write some code, and don't want it to be sucked up by a profit-making corporation without my consent, and without recieving any credit, that's my own fucking business! By the same token, if I want my code to be able to be used by whomever wants it, again, that's my own fucking business!
what do care what licenses other people choose?
True, everyone chooses the license they want, the one they are comfortable with. In the OSS world, there are a lot of licenses and the GPL is probably the less free of all, that's all the parent is saying.
fuck them all - i am coding for fun and _no_one_ will tell me which license to choose or which feature to add
There is a time to code for fun, and - as you will see when you will be a little more mature - there is a time for reward, or some form of retribution. If you "fuck all" your users, you will get no reward. You don't even need to get a license because you probably don't care about any distribution in the first place.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Looks like point 2 is repeated with two different phrasings.
Perhaps the following summary is more clear.
2- Rather then listen to opinions, see for yourself. If you look at the two licenses they really are compatible.
"_Your_ code will always remain free, what do you care if someone else adds to it?"
Because some people DO care. If they want to share their code but only with people who will share their modifications (non-internal use only), that is their right.
The different licenses support different developmental methodologies and agendas.
S/He who writes the code chooses the license and if you don't like that, then write your own code.
Unfortunately distributing non-GPLd software with Linux is asking for trouble. Linux is the best-selling open software product and choosing any other license than GPL means an extra hurdle for your software.
But I guess that's exactly the kind of "freedom" RMS likes. Even in Soviet Russia you did not have to be a member of the Communist Party. However, that meant settling for low-level jobs and general discrimination.
The owls are not what they seem
Programmers get irritated with management, sales, supervisors, and especially users when they can't write a specification for us to write programs. We bitch because they're vague and contradictory. They change their minds, can't decide what they want, and try to please all the wrong people with all of the wrong features.
As someone who empathises with users trying to get a workable program, these kinds of license wars crack me up. The next time you complain about the spec being inadaquate or changing: remember that programmers too are mostly incapable of expressing what they want in English and pleasing all of their masters.
Get off my lawn.
The GPL isn't about the freedom of the people who use it, it's about the freedom of the *software*.
Of course, 'free' isn't probably the best word here; the Creative Commons licenses hit the nail on the head with "share alike".
"Some asshole" is perfectly capable of selling you your own code under the GPL, he just has to make the source available. What do you think commercial Linux distributions do?
Now, I usually don't get this annoyed, but we've gone through a bunch of these recently, and I'm sick of it.
The GPL is not Holy Scripture
The GPL is nice. It works for a large amount of stuff. However, it very much does NOT work for many other things, even in the Open Source world. I don't (and you shouldn't) want everything to be GPL'd. The GPL has a LOT of problems, freedom to copy aside. It is definitely not suitable for every purpose, given our current legal framework.
We should measure a license by how obnoxious and restrictive it is, not some idiot litmus test of GPL-compatibility. I prefer that we gravitate to a small number of general licenses for simplicity's sake, but there is no real good reason that they all HAVE to be GPL-compatible, any more than they all HAVE to be BSD-compatible.
The various ASL versions are all very benign and nice BSD-ish licenses, that may or may not be GPL compatible. They have very liberal code reuse and copying provisions, and very few restrictions. If they are GPL-incompatible, well, then, that's life. I'm not going to get angry over this, any more than I get upset because I can't use GPL libraries with my proprietary code.
Please quite focusing on the idiotic minutia, and pay attention to the hard issues of license lock-in and IP coralling prevelant in software licensing today.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
>Even in Soviet Russia you did not have to be a member of the Communist Party. However, that meant settling for low-level jobs and general discrimination.
yes, whereas in America your political opinion had no effect on the jobs you could have did.. oh, er....
The Free Software Foundation has the "four freedoms" by which you can judge the freedom of something, the OSI have their (derived) "open source definition".
The GPL is merely the embodiment of these values, but not the only one by any means.
"Elmo knows where you live!" - The Simpsons
The ASF statement actually is really useful, because in essence they are saying they think its GPL compatible, so there are no issues on their side.
Its irrelevant however because Apache is built upon a set of non GPL compliant libraries like OpenSSL and always has been. "Apache 2.0 not GPL", well big deal: Apache 1.0 not GPL either.
You can probably build a non https:// Apache without a few other modules that is GPLable but everyone I've dealt with seems quite happy with the state of apache and the license it uses right now.
This is very different to the XFree 4.4 case where the rules got changed on people.
Its very much like "Windows 98 not GPL".. not news.
...than that of either the FSF or the ASF: the opinion of the copyright holder of the software. Granted, the copyrights to alot of important softwore have been deeded to the FSF, and thus, their opinion matters with regard to that software.
however, the key to all of this is that only the copyright holder to a piece of software can decide to bring a lawsuit. Thus, if the copyright holder thinks the licenses are compatible, then they damn well are (in that case only).
Bottom line: contact whoever owns the copyright to the software you want to use if you have any questions about your rights under the ASL or GPL.
cleetus
(a soon to be lawyer)
Unfortunately distributing non-GPLd software with Linux is asking for trouble. Linux is the best-selling open software product and choosing any other license than GPL means an extra hurdle for your software.
... so that more people, including those who chose to release their software under the GPL, can make use of their code (which is the primary interest of the BSD folks).
What a load of absolute crap.
There is absolutely no problem distributing non-GPLed software (even proprietary software) with Linux. Just because the kernel is GPLed doesn't mean the software which runs under it must also be GPLed. glibc is LGPLed (ie. you can link non-GPLed and proprietary software against it), asn are nearly all of the core libraries.
Oracle ships with Linux, and it is proprietary. XFree (pre 4.4) ships with Linux, and has (had) a BSD-ish (but GPL compatible) license. Openssh ships with Linux and has a BSD license. And this list goes on.
There is absolutely no issue whatsoever in distributing non-GPLed software with a GPLed operating system.
There is an issue with combining code from non-GPLed products and GPLed products into a new product, which is why XFree 4.4 is going the way of the Dodo, with virtually every distribution under the sun sticking with 4.3 or going with one of the forks (freedesktop.org or what have you), but that is a result of the amount of GPLed software linked to X libraries no one is willing to give up, not a result of the Linux operating system.
This is why Apache is working toward a GPL-compatable license, and why the FreeBSD folks went through the effort they did to make their license GPL compatible
And yes, this is the kind of Freedom RMS and others, such as myself, like: the freedom to chose the license we prefer for our code, which for many of us is a "share-alike" license such as the GPL.
And the results speak for themselves: the first viable competitor to go up against Microsoft in a generation (Linux), thousands of free software projects where the code is guaranteed to remain free in perpetuity, and widespread cooperation between two philosophical camps despite differing opinions on where to emphasize the freedom (developers a la the BSD, vs. users a la the GPL), rabblerousing from the proprietary sidelines via agent provocateurs, and their less intelligent cousins, trolls such as yourself, notwithstanding.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Which no one was doing anyway, since all the of the earlier Apache licenses were clearly and uncontroversially non-GPL-compatible.
The Apache Foundation does not and has never used the GPL on any of their work.
I'm rolling on the floor laughing at the mods that fell for this.
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GPL Projects. There's about 16,000 listed on Freshmeat, and some of them include some good code which should be reused in other projects if possible.
If the new Apache license is GPL compatible, then source code released under that license can be redistributed linked to GPL code. If not, then to redistribute such a combined work you have to have either special permission from the authors of any GPLed components to put additional restrictions on their code or special permission from the authors of the non-GPLed components to rerelease their code with fewer restrictions. Since that's enough of a PITA that it will make code reuse less common, it would be very nice if it wasn't necessary.
Email message from Eben Moglen on license-discuss
But why do they do this through public statements on their webpages and/or public mailinglists. Can't these people lookup each other phone number? Really, if I honestly needed an opinion on something which seems so important as this from either the FSF or the Apache Foundation I would call them up (or send a private email) asking to discuss this in person to clear up any confusion that might result from random statements on some website and/or mailinglist. Neither the FSF or Apache did the community as a whole a service by not trying to talk this out first before publishing all these statements about each other.
In this particular instance I agree with Linus. However, it is very annoying that whenever there is an argument some one always posts Linus' opinion and presents it as THE ANSWER. He's just one famous nerd. Nothing more. You know what the buddists say.. If you meet Buddha waking down the road Kill Him. He will only be a distraction on your road to enlightement.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
You also have the FREEDOM to not use or contribute to GPL software source code. The 'proper' way is to have the contributors assign their copyright on the code to the organization/person managing the GPL product. Quite often this is the FSF as they will defend the license better than most others. If you are giving it to them then they are not stealing it.
--jeff++
ipv6 is my vpn
It sounds like there is a notion that there is something wrong with the new license for not being GPL compatible and that it should be changed. To some degree, it sounds like the new Apache license in safer and if anything, GPL should try to be more like it.
Sure, there's history and momentum to deal with, but are we going to be as inflexible and lethargic about improving our licenses as proprietary companies are with improving their code? The licensing issue needs to be dealt with, but lets try not to kill the better license. The patent clause ought to be added GPL, not removed from ASL.
The OSS/FS movements really need to get their licensing 'ducks' in a row...
Could you elaborate on this point with an example and an explanation? I fail to see how the GPL makes distributing non-GPL'd software with Linux any different than distributing non-GPL'd software with Windows or OS X. Indeed, the demo of UT2K3 was actually integrated into Gentoo Live CDs. I haven't heard of any OS release from Apple or Microsoft that has integrated major 3rd party software products into the install media itself beyond trivial OEM branding in icons and explorer enhancements.
Even in Soviet Russia you did not have to be a member of the Communist Party. However, that meant settling for low-level jobs and general discrimination.
Wow. The other day I was reading about the anti-gay marriage protesters in San Francisco. One apparently brandished a sign that read "I hate faggots, but love AIDS." I felt bad for those couples that have had to face that kind of hateful public censure until I read your post. Everything is in perspective now. It must really suck to be as oppressed as you.
As Mr Slippery quoted, "You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein". Note the emphasis I added.
As Joshua states, the GPL doesn't give you any patent rights, so any restrictions around patent rights do not interfere with the GPL.
No, no, no, you cannot relicence other people's software! If you could relicence BSD software as GPL, you would equally be able to take Microsoft Word and relicence it as BSD.
Compatibility is *exactly* that: software under one licence can be brought together with software from another. Yes, you need to obey both licences when you have such a derivative. No, this doesn't mean any software is relicensed.
If you still don't understand, tell me this: by what right may I take a piece of BSD software, and relicence it, given I am not the owner of the copyright? What legal right do I have to do that?
"Elmo knows where you live!" - The Simpsons
That's pretty much accurate.
This is not exactly correct - although I see where you get it. The GPL requires that if you use the code, you must allow anyone you distribute to to have the same freedoms you were given.
As to the slavery analogy, I think it's quite accurate. Some folk argue that if you can't sell yourself into slavery, you're not really free. This makes a very close analogy to the argument that says that if you can't close the code, it's not really free.
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