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For OpenBSD, "No More Apache Updates"
joshmccormack writes "On June 6th Henning Brauer, an OpenBSD developer announced on one of the OpenBSD mailing lists that the version of Apache shipped with OpenBSD will stay with 1.3.29, due to Apache's license changes. There will be bug fixes, but no more updates. Discussion on blogs, websites and mailing lists on what's next bring up some interesting ideas and strong opinions. Difference of opinion and control have been catalysts to the growth of OpenBSD in the past. Will this be like the birth of pf in OpenBSD, or even the start of OpenBSD itself?"
Direct links: fail.
More info to read up on: fail.
Reference to the relevant list / list archive: fail.
Perhaps this story could be fleshed out a little ?
I'll google it or use some other news source to find more about this, but...
life+universe+everything=42
The only way this is even close to what happend with ipf/pf would be if the OpenBSD folks decided to write their own web server and release it under the BSD license, which isn't going to happen because they're OS folks, not web server folks.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
I disagree, one of OpenBSD's goals has always been to provide a base system that is as unrestricted as possible. It sounds to me like they are just taking steps to ensure they don't introduce a more restrictive license to the base system.
The policy of the United States is worse than bad---it is insane. -- Ludwig von Mises, Economic Policy(1959)
Theo makes his living by selling packaged OpenBSD install disks (with CVS checkouts of the source, precompiled packages, etc.). The fact that he sells OpenBSD to pay his bills doesn't make it any less free then RedHat selling Linux.
Also if you want to use a CD based install, try here.
Don't count on it, son.
i tutes "community support" for their license fiasco. Maybe Apache is next.
Every time something like this comes up...he turns it into something good. His reputation grows, and the idea of quality software over Every Imaginable Feature spreads.
I doubt there will be an OpenBSD replacement for Apache. However, Theo knows one thing most people forget: you can whine and moan all you want, but when you accept the product, they win. However, if a few teams stand up and say, "This is NOT acceptable, we will NOT tollerate it", maybe something can change. XFree86 has managed to marginalize themselves, and convinced themselves that a whole lot of nothing:
http://www.xfree86.org/distro-support.html
const
de Raadt's stance on licensing is the proper road to take, and commendable. From my observations, Debian is the only other operating system group that is as dedicated to free software as OpenBSD is.
What are other OS vendors doing? It's clear that the new license isn't GNU compatible, and I think that Debian is also going into a direction similar to OpenBSD on this matter.
Anyone care to elaborate on this?
Utinam logica falsa tuam philosophiam totam suffodiant!
Oh... hmm... it appears there isn't an FA to R.
It sounds to me like they are just taking steps to ensure they don't introduce a more restrictive license to the base system.
Reading through the Apache 2.0 license, I cannot find anything that is more restrictive than before. It's actually less restrictive in some areas, in an attempt to be compatible with the GPL. The two major differences are:
1) Legalese. The original BSD-like Apache license was quite loose in its wording. This scares the crap out of most corporate lawyers ("OMG, there's no clause imdemnifying us against jaywalking!"). So the new license has been tightened up with lawyer-friendly language.
2) Patent license. The old license was a copyright license. It didn't cover patents. The new one does. You're gaining rights as a user with this.
I really don't understand what OpenBSD's problem is with this. It's a free license. It's a "copycenter" license. It's unrestricted and unencumbered. I suspect this is about politics more than any actual license terms.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
From the OpenBSD perspective, you are completely missing the point:
GPL: OpenBSD does not consider the GPL to be a "free" license. Becoming more "GPL compatable" may be viewed as a benefit to the GNU and Linux people, but it is VERY much against the goal of the BSD projects. Restricting ANYONE'S use of a product is not a good thing in our mind.
1) "Legalese" is a bad thing. If you gotta get lawyers involved to understand it, it is bad. BY ITSELF, that's grounds for rejection.
2) When did software patents or anything regarding patents and software become a good thing (at least as commonly used)?
The new license is much longer and more complex. This is a bad thing (in a BSD advocate's view).
The BSD license is very simple: Start with the basic rights of a copyright holder, and release ALL of them except the right to identified as the author, giving the USER FULL RIGHTS TO DO BASICLY ANYTHING WITH THE CODE other than claim/change authorship or sue for dammages.
Use it. Imbed it. Give it away. Sell it. With or without source code. WHATEVER. Now...add extra words to the license: HOW CAN IT POSSIBLY GET MORE FREE? Anything you add is "taking away" rights. Anything you do to "protect" yourself is again, taking away from the potential userbase of a product.
The point of the GPL seems to be to keep Open Source software from getting utilized by commercial software vendors. That's a noble goal -- you work for free, you want others to be able to enjoy your work for free. But, you are saying the CODE is free, not the useage of it.
The Point of the BSD license is to get the software USED in any sense of the word. BSD authors would prefer that their good software be USED in commercial products, rather than having the commercial vendors writing more flawed, or incompatable, or alternative protocols.
Do you think Cicso would have put a GPL'd SSH into their products? Probably not: they'd have done their own management application, which would only run on Windows machines or a few Unixes, or stuck with telnet. GPL advocates would probably say that was a "victory for freedom of the code", as the (hypothetical) GPL-SSH code wasn't used to make a profit by the evil Cisco. BSD advocates would prefer that the code be FREELY USED by ANYONE, including Cicso, Microsoft, Sun, HP, Intel, Motorola, IBM, and anyone else. Restricting ANYONE, no matter how "evil" they are perceived to be by someone is very much against the point of the BSD license.
This is a bad thing (in a BSD advocate's view)
I am a BSD advocate. The license is certainly longer, and in a way, that's bad because fewer people can understand it. But my understanding is that it is necessary. In the past we used licenses to tell other hackers that they had permission to use our software. But we are no longer a community of hackers, we now have lawsuit happy lawyers among us. When you have major lawyer-bound organization using (and contributing) to Apache, you can't hold on to the pollyanna licenses of the past.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Actually, it's quite the opposite. OpenBSD's creed of "Security first" condemns it to a sort of "media obscurity" (nothing kills a story like "It doesn't do anything fancy, and just works") yet Theo's colourful disagreements with practically everyone under the sun keeps the mindshare of OpenBSD alive and well.
Couple that with their habit of doing things differently from everyone else just once in a while to keep track of who's watching, and you have a winner.
Reading the comments at undeadly.org, it seems the big beef is with a clause that covers patent issues of any code as well as copyright issues.
Basically, the clause says that if you have any patent claims to the code that you contribute (or is it just use? I'm not sure.) then you irrevocably grant license to others for those patents and if you sue , then you can't use Apache.
I'm unsure as to how this is a bad thing. Most "free" software licences were written before software patents were a big issue, and therefore only deal with software as a copyrightable, and not a patentable entity. Just as software code must be updated to deal with new operating enviroments, so legal licensing code must be updated to deal with a changing legal enviroment.
The new clause forces patent holders to play nice as well as copyright holders.
Would it be better to encourage lawsuits over patent issues?
evanchik.net
I don't think this will be a real problem. If Apache is no longer allowed in the OpenBSD base system it can simply be moved to ports/packages, and it will be just a pkg_add away - just as is now the case with Apache 2.0.
JP
FOOL. The GPL does not restrict anyone from using GPL licensed code. It restricts the ability to hinder or encumber the code and that is the choice that users must make. BSD is free beer, certainly--no wonder corporations love to suck it up. GPL is free code--the code itself is free from the whims of its users. What is the difference? BSD derived code (which may be FAR more useful than the original sources) can disappear while GPL derived code can not. You're right about one thing: the GPL is *NOT* about user freedom while the BSD is. I suggest that the GPL is far more important to software as a result. I don't care whether CISCO or whomever makes money--I care that quality code remains in the community. (AND note, they can equally well make money with GPL'd code--they only have to share back their modifications. Is that really asking too much?)
I hope he means the US and EU governments here. Had there been no software pattents under incredibly lax oversight with the subsequent abuse thereof, the Apache Software Foundaton wouldn't be forced to write this clause into the license.
Back around 1995, development of the NCSA sort-of-free web server was starting to die out, and developers who had been producing a set of patches to the NCSA project decided to "fork" their development branch.
After the fork, the majority of development effort concentrated in the new "Apache" project, and the NCSA HTTPd died out about a year later.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
they only have to share back their modifications
Well, if I understand the GPL accurately, you can't use a GPL lib without sharing your entire codebase. That's a bit restrictive to me. As a result, we don't use any GPL code in my company, because we would have to integrate it within our app, and our app would become GPL by that action.
See how it is restrictive now?
LGPL, that is a much less restrictive license.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Well, first, I would like to apologize for the AC asshole that replied to your post. Clearly brainless.
Second, I didn't say anything that contradict your post. BSD and GPL are different licenses. I totally understand the different approaches.
One difference, though, is that you tend to discard BSD against GPL which is - to you - better. You have to understand that different people may think differently.
Las of all, one of your last statements: "Now do you see how restrictive BSD licenses are?".
On that I will disagree. GPL is more restrictive than BSD: I don't think you can find one situatons where someone would be impeached or forced to do something with BSD and not with GPL. The opposite trivially doesn't stand.
Don't be mistaken. This doesn't mean that a developper of BSD code will get more reward than a developper of GPL code. It means that whoever you are (integrator, developer, user), you have less restrictions with a piece of code under the BSD license than with a GPL code.
No flame intended, not quality judgement, just a fair statement: Less restrictions.
You want to use GPL code, everything has to be GPL
You want to use BSD code, go ahead
You want to write GPL code. All of it has to be that way
You want to write BSD code, go ahead.
The list could go on and on, proving one point: BSD is less restrictive than GPL. Nothing else.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
I think this is where the problems come in. From what I can tell (be warned: legal-speak confuses me immensely) it seems to be a necessary change because of the recent furore about software patents. It seems to be merely a restriction to prevent patent-holders from contributing their ideas to the codebase and then down the line trying to charge for use.
The problem then appears to stem from the fact that said restriction is a restriction - and is incompatible with the majority of current free/open licenses.
Or something, anyway. but basically it looks like changes which are a good idea in theory are incompatible with the letter of a lot of F/OSS licenses. And, like it or not, this means that it can cause problems unless/until the GPL/BSD/WTF licenses catch up with the changes.
I'm not so sure it's that the changes are nevessarily a "bad thing", more that the various F/OSS groups are showing that they take licensing seriously. And with the current anti-free FUD going around, showing that they will take serious steps to avoid breaking licenses can only be a positive step.
TiggsSadly, the drawback is that to Play By The Rules sometimes they have to make unpopular decisions. But the flipside is that, if necessary, they can still fork from earlier versions.
Tiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
Then don't fsking use other people's code, write your own!
The essence of GPL is this:
Yes, you can use other people's work, but then you'll have to contribute some work yourself.
If you just take other people's work without giving something bakc, you're just a THIEF!
Well, if I understand the GPL accurately, you can't use a GPL lib without sharing your entire codebase.
This is false. Much like the BSD-licensed code, you may GPL'ed code for anything you wish.
What you cannot do is to distribute GPL code without offering the same rights as you were given under the GPL.
So, if the app is just some random internal-use-only app, then using GPL code is perfectly reasonable and legal. However, if it is a product the company distributes, then yes, your code will need to be GPL compatible. There is more than one way to do so, some which would not mean disclosing the source of your code.
I always get the shakes before a drop.
What you cannot do is to distribute GPL code without offering the same rights as you were given under the GPL.
For all practical purposes, this is the SAME THING!
If I am writing an application for the purposes of distributing it, then a GPL library is restricting my ability to distribute it. Even if I distribute it within embedded hardware. This is radically different from the LGPL.
your code will need to be GPL compatible.
You've got it backwards. Any code that is considered to be "derivative" by license must be released under the GPL. The "compatibility" refers to linkage/derivation in the other direction.
Since this is frequently misunderstood, let me offer an example. You can distribute an application that links to a BSD licensed library under the GPL, but you may not distribute an application that links to a GPL library under the BSD license.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
I also suspect that available BSD licensed software will stagnate
You mean like the stagnating Apache the topic is about? The old Apache license was merely the BSD license with a trademark/advert clause.
Prepubescent Slashdot trolls like to joke about BSD dying, but the fact of the matter is that for the thirty year history of BSD licensed code, it has never once stagnated. FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD, all under the BSD license, are growing at a tremendous rate.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Time to de-lurk, as other ACs are resorting to name calling, and don't want to be confused with them. I wasn't being so much an Anonymous Coward as a "Lazy Bum", too lazy to look up my old slashdot name and PW. :)
... can disappear while GPL derived code can not" This is not true (at least for my definition of "dissappear"). Once a work is released with a license, that license can not be revoked on that particular version of the source. The project may fork at that point, with someone taking a BSD'd project in a non-BSD direction (i.e., Apache or XFree86 or SSH), but the OLD VERSIONS remain with their old license. Believe me, if SSH.com could revoke the old v1 ssh code's BSD license, they would in a heartbeat. They took their app closed source, OpenSSH took the old BSD code and extended it (and a side note: I have no doubt that both OpenSSH and SSH.com's products are better because of the existance of the other, which means the users win).
:)
Most of our disagreement here appears to over terms and usage. I think we've made our respective meanings clear...now readers get to decide for themselves which they prefer 8).
Hopefully we can also agree with this point: there are benefits and downsides to both BSD and GPL licenses -- the choice of license should always be up to the coder. I would also think that the acceptability of each should always be left to the person using the software in question.
HOWEVER, I do want to pick on this statement of yours: "BSD derived code
Now, if by "can disapear", you mean developement can take place that is not fed back to the open source community, sure, but that's not what I would call "disappearing". XFree86, Apache and SSH didn't "disappear" from the world, just got "less free" development. If the open source community cares enough to continue "free" development of BSD licensed code, they can.
As for is sharing back modifications "really asking too much?", the idea sounds great...however, it gets messy. Making a three line change in a GPL program? Sure, easy. Incorporating a small 100 line GPL'ed routine into a 10,000 line application forcing the entire app GPL? That doesn't seem "fair" to me. Things get ugly if you start trying to draw a line here...lawyers get involved. The BSD philosophy is "just use it. Feed back your contributions if you wish to, but you are 'free' do to as you wish in that regard". Personally, I prefer that acts of generosity be voluntary...but that's me.
AC> This is a common misperception for GPL advocates, when they argue for GPL against BSD. The GPL code can "disappear" as described above, if the code and changes aren't in distribution.
AC> Generosity is about giving without expecting any return. The BSD license has higher deference in this regard.
That's a bullshit counter-point. I'm specifically talking about programs that are distributed and not private sole-use creations which couldn't be controlled anyhow. (I don't care what you do in your own bedroom, you know?)
Generosity is about giving without expecting return, but greediness is about taking without giving back. I will be generous, but not to the greedy. That is my choice.
There's a lyric in a song that goes like this:
we don't mind
we've been doing it all the time
but if you want us to sacrifice
you got to give something back to life
The GPL encourages expansion of the GPL body of work.
The BSD licence encourages use of the code by everyone.
That's an excellent way to put it, though I would rather put it as:
The GPL ensures expansion of the GPL body of work for everyone.
The BSD licence permits use of the code by anyone.
OpenBSD doesn't like the GPL, it is infact replacing all the GPL code in the base system with BSD varients (diff, gzip, awk and others).
Your comment is out of place here, Apache being GPL incompatible had nothing to do with OpenBSD rejecting it, it was that the license is OpenBSD incompatible. Free as in free.
I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.