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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.
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.
(2) If you look at the two licenses, they really are compatible.
I'd learn how to count first.
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.
So now Linux users can baske themselves in the glow of online dating too?
That's what I call progress!
It also says that versions 1.0 and 1.1 of the ASF License are incompatible... why are we only hearing about this with version 2.0?
libertarianswag.com
Wow, that (the actual linked article) is a very stinging reply to the comment on FSF's site. It hits home (lambasting people on Slashdot for bitching before getting their facts straight) and was way overdue.
According to the article, the comment that caused such a ruckus has not been attributed to any official at FSF and not been communicated to Apache by the FSF.
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.
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!
One of the major advantages of the ASL 2.0 is that it is now easier for non-ASF projects to use the ASL. Previously you had to use an ASL-like license because unless you wanted to assign your copyright to the ASF you needed to adjust the wording of the license to include your name and your organization. The new license removes that information from the license itself and instead places it in a NOTICE file. This allows other open source projects to take advantage of the ASL and use it for their own organization.
While the ASL 2.0 is longer than the ASL 1.1, it's worth a read. A lot of effort was made to make this an easy license to adopt and use. If you're currently using a MIT or BSD style license, you may want to consider the new ASL 2.0.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
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!
"_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.
How about looking at it in terms of economic motivation? For certain types of people (arguably, most people), the GPL provides incentive to create free software where otherwise one wouldn't have bothered. Without the GPL, some of them might begrudgingly release code under a public domain-ish license, but most these people would either be coding proprietary software or not at all.
Which world would you rather have? A world with the GPL as a licensing option, or a world without it? The first world has more free software available, software that respects the rights of the user instead of trying to control the user through EULAs and insidious distribution terms. Regardless of the moaning of anti-GPL types like yourself I'll take the first world where I have more choice as a user and as a creative producer. Begrudging others of their choices when it comes at no cost to you is simply ridiculous. Nobody is going to be sympathetic to your whining because you can't have others' work on YOUR terms.
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
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.
SCO apparently beleives the GPL is SCO License compatible... which just goes to show what somebody thinks doesn't mean jack until you test it in court.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Here's what Linux Torvalds said when asked if he wished he'd chosen a different license the GPL:
Absolutely not. I personally think that the BSD license is a dead end for serious projects, since it inevitably results in forking with no way to re-join if it becomes commercially viable.
Forking a project is in my opinion hugely important, since forks are how all real development gets done, and the ability to fork keeps everybody honest (i.e. if you don't do a good job and keep your users happy, they can always fork the project and go on their own). But equally important is the ability to join back forks, when/if some group finds the right solution to a problem. And that's where the GPL comes in: you can really think of the whole license as nothing more than a requirement to be able to re-join a forked project from either side.
Certainly they're right that the text of the licence, not the opinion of the FSF, is what matters. However, they seem to not understand their own licence:
Actually, the Apache License says more than that. It says "any patent licenses granted to You under this License for that Work shall terminate" if you file certain lawsuits. Without patent licenses, in theory you can't even run the software. (Which is why software patents are evil, stupid, and must be destroyed.)
The Apache License can take away your right to use the software by revoking patent licenses (admittedly, only if you behave like a scumbag, but that's beside the point).This is what is not permitted under the GPL. The GPL states "You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein"; a license that says "you can't use this software if you behave like a scumbag and file patent lawsuits" is not compatible with this requirement.
Again, it's not necessarily a bad idea (as the FSF page notes). But it is not GPL-compatible.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
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.
If you took the time to read Apache Licenses, you'd find that License version 2.0 is not significantly different than previous versions, except that it aimed to be more compatible with GPL.
Not "more conservative" at all!
...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
Have you, erm, looked at the Apache Software Foundation project list lately?
This isn't just about a license for the Apache HTTP server. In fact, it isn't even just about ASF projects either, since it offers independent developers a new choice of license to easily release their code under.
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.