Can an Open Source Project Be Acquired?

prostoalex writes "Can an open source project be acquired? ZDNet's Between The Lines says yes, one just did. Software startup JasperSoft acquired Sourceforge-based project JasperReports, which involved acquiring the copyrights and hiring the lead developer for the project." I guess the point he tries to make is that the new corporate overloads can essentially have a free and non-free version of the code, and more or less orphan the free version. The problem of course is that if the non-free version gets good, others will simply fork.

Comments

Easy to do and quite legal

[Anonymous Coward]

the evil overlords at sun can just buy any decent java tools open source project that competes with sun's for profit tools

Re:Easy to do and quite legal

[tomhudson]

the evil overlords at sun can just buy any decent java tools open source project that competes with sun's for profit tools decent java tools - sort of an oxymoron, methinks, what with the bloat that Java 1.5 is. Then again, time will tell.

Not possible in the EU

[Anonymous Coward]

At least in some large parts of the EU, for example Germany and Austria: You cannot sell the copyright to the work you did or give it away in some other way. It's just not possible. But of course you can sell exploitation rights.

Re:Not possible in the EU

[Anonymous Coward]

So, aside from having a permanent record of the "original" creator (which is a cool idea imho), is there an actual difference between selling ALL of the exploitation rights and selling the copyright?

Re:Not possible in the EU

[Cow Jones]

There is no such thing as a "copyright" in Germany and Austria. You're probably referring to the "Urheberrecht", which is a very different concept. It can't be registered, it can't be sold, but it can be passed on to your heirs.

Re:Not possible in the EU

[JoeBuck]

Any European lawyers in the audience can correct me, but here's my understanding of the issue:

In the US, you can buy the copyright to an artwork, and then vandalize it in any way you like and sell the vandalized copies (the classic example is painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa). In most of Europe, this would infringe the creator's moral rights, and moral rights cannot be sold. The exploitation rights cover the rights to make money from the work in a way that does not damage the integrity of the work.

Re:Not possible in the EU

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't believe that for a second. You're probably confusing the EU laws concerning the author's moral rights with copyright law. Related but different concepts.

Re:Not possible in the EU

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true.

Under US law, several distinct rights exist as part of copyright law:

- reproduction (the right to make copies)
- distribution (the right to sell or otherwise distribute copies)
- adapation (the right to create derivative works)
- performance and display rights

The owner can sell or license any of these rights separately. So you can sell a right to copy without selling the right to make modifications (derivative works). Just because someone can sell prints of the Mona Lisa doesn't mean they can create a painting with a moustache on the Mona Lisa and sell prints of that, too.

Section 106A of the US Copyright Act of 1976 covers rights of attribution and integrity, which are sometimes called "moral rights", and are probably what you are thinking of. In addition to their presence in the Copyright Act of 1976, these rights are also required by the Berne Convention.

Authors of works of visual art have the rights to:
- claim authorship of a work
- prevent use of his name as the author of any work he didn't create
- prevent use of his name as author in the event of "distortion, mutilation, or other modification of the work which would be prejudicial to his or her honor or reputation"
- prevent any intentional distortion, mutilation, etc.
- prevent any destruction of a work of recognized stature, and any intentional or grossly negligent destruction of that work

The next to last right prohibits "vandalizing" a painting in the sense of the original post; the last point covered literally vandalizing it. These rights always belong to the original creator and cannot be transferred, but may be waived.

The biggest missing piece here is the language that restrictions the rights of attribution and integrity to "works of visual art", as opposed to say written works.

Re:Not possible in the EU

[Basje]

Well, IANALYet, but both Germany and Austria are bound by international treaties to implement copyright:

a. there's the WIPO Copyright Treaty, to which Germany is a party
b. there's the Berne Convention, to which both Austria and Germany are party
c. there's the European Copyright Directive, for which the deadline of 2002-12-02 has passed, and thus should be implemented in Germany. As for the last one: European Law was determined in the "Van Gend en Loos Case" to have preference over local laws. So where there's a conflict of European copyright law and German copyright law, the German law is considered lower law.

Re:Not possible in the EU

[1u3hr]

example is painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa). In most of Europe, this would infringe the creator's moral rights

Da Vinci dies almost 500 years ago. He still has rights? I thought the US had the record for incredibly long rights periods.

Perhaps try a more recent, even living, artist as an example. Eg, David Hockney.

Re:Not possible in the EU

[cgrand]

That's right (for the EU side at least): for example it appears that censored DVDs of famous movies are created and sold in some puritan parts of the US, the directors have nothing to said about it. In the EU this can't be achieved without the former consent of the directors.

Re:Not possible in the EU

[pommiekiwifruit]

Computer programs are explicitly excluded from certain moral rights.

Re:Not possible in the EU

[kauttapiste]

Any copyrights expire in 70 years after the death of the copyright holder. Thus, paintings by Da Vinci are "free game", as it were.

What comes to selling copyrights, you can license all the rights to your copyright material, including rights to resell and relicense your works. You can even make a license that forbids yourself from selling your work! (this has happened many a time before!)

In Europe, copyrights are considered "moral rights"(droit d'auteur); the right to claim something was made by you; in U.S. the rights protect your privilege to economically profit from your work.

As such, it's possible to acquire an open source project - you just need to hire everyone who has worked on the project and change the license of all future versions.

Re:Not possible in the EU

[mce]

Fortunately these treaties apply! The GPL is nothing but clever use of Copyright.

Re:Not possible in the EU

[Ryosen]

>>Computer programs are explicitly excluded from certain moral rights.

That would explain Windows....

/sorry
//not really

What's the problem

[javamann]

The original source is still available. Another company is just going to continue on their own line and sell it. If you don't like it you can code to the original.

Re:What's the problem

[SolusSD]

but.. if the project is governed by the GPL the company selling the non-free version is obligated to contribute all code they develop on top of the original open source project back to the community. lets not forget the entire point.

Re:What's the problem

[jp10558]

I'm assuming the company could buy the code under a different license by negotiating with any contributers for said alternate license.

In this case, it sounds like there was one developer, who sold the code under a different license to this company.

Remember, even if you license your code initially under the GPL, no one can prevent you from *also* licensing that code under different terms, ones that don't require opening changes to the code.

Re:What's the problem

[klegan]

Not if the original copyright owner sold the new owners the code under a different licence (which ONLY the copyright holder is able to do). The new owner would have the rights to the code without the GPL license. Then they can make their version closed source and wouldn't have to contribute back any updates they make. The original GPL version still exists and can be modified by others but the new owners would have a copy of the source code under a different license and can make their version closed source.

Re:What's the problem

[yesteraeon]

No they're not! I can do anything I want my MY IP. If I write a piece of software, I have copyright and I can release or not release it. If I release it under the GPL, anyone who gets a copy is bound by the terms of the GPL, but I'm not! Of course, I can't close the source that I've already released to the world (from a practical OR legal POV). However, I can produce version 2.0 of MY software, that has much of the same code, and release it under the Evil Closed Licence that requires anyone obtaining a copy to give me their first born.

So, if I sell the copyright to someone else (corporation or individual) they acquire all the rights I previously held, including the right to produce a new closed version of the software. (Or even, I suppose, an identical version of the software that doesn't come with source or the GPL, to sell to idiots...)

Re:What's the problem

[SolusSD]

wow.. US IP law really does support "indian giving".

Re:What's the problem

[John Hurliman]

This is definitely possible. Four years ago I jumped on a SourceForge project that was creating a P2P network on top of the Freenet network layer. Basically adding metadata/searching/gui to the existing platform. While the project was still in the planning stage a dot-com startup called ESP came in and offered the four of us that were getting things done full-time positions to write the same code we were already going to write for free, and we still got to release under the GPL license. The exchange was ESP would own the copyright to the code and would direct what we coded on a day to day basis, but we were free to fork on our own spare time and go a different direction as was anyone else. Eventually the venture capitalists figured out ESP's business plan looked something like:

1) Pay OSS developers to write GPL code
2) ...
3) Profit?

And the plug was pulled as soon as the dot-com crash was starting. After being laid off we all lost interest in the project and Espra (as the project was called) was effectively dead in the water. The code mostly disappeared as the server lights went off, and we had local copies and the project COULD have been saved, but all the developers had lost interest at this point. The community formed around the project at that point just dissolved and that was the end of a project that might have lived on had that company never taken it over. But the four of us would have been much poorer, so no regrets here.

Re:What's the problem

[yerM)M]

The problem is that if the original source contains contributions from anyone but the original author, without a lot of leg work they cannot change the license on the code and release a non-free version.

Now, this might not be the case here but it does show you to be careful if you accept contributions and bug-patches and want to pull a similar deal in the future.

Re:What's the problem

[caseydk]

I've said for years that if someone wanted to discredit the Open Source movement, they'd do this.

Assign a team - undercover of course - to a project like Apache. Once the various team members establish themselves as part of the community, they can quickly take the drivers' seat since the most active people normally make those decisions.

Once this happens, they direct the code where ever they want... including a fork into their company.

Simultaneously they get the codebase and they shipwreck the project.

Re:What's the problem

[jbolden]

If you still have a local copy archive it somewhere. Sourceforge or something. A decade from now someone you never think about doing a project you never considered might grab your code.

Re:What's the problem

[jbolden]

And for a few years the Apache project has something like triple the productivity it would have had. Which means Apache is now far far ahead of anything else on the market and even if it takes years to recover from the sudden loss of developers.....

Re:What's the problem

[einstienbc]

if the person who innovated on top of the code was wanting a closed-source project, they should have started from scratch.

it's most likely that without having the open code to build upon, their project wouldnt have gotten off the ground

This isn't the first project to have this happen..

[drunkennewfiemidget]

Many other projects have had large corporations buy them up, fork them, and ignore the free version.

But as the article plainly says -- and where the real beauty in open-source lies -- if the free version is good ENOUGH, someone else will come along, pick up the pieces, and continue making a better product out of it.

I'm sorry, what?

[Dancin_Santa]

You're going to have to give some concrete examples of dually licensed projects where the closed one is worse off than the open one.

That's a pretty big claim.

As for open source projects getting bought up, I think that's great for everyone. The open source stuff still remains open and the programmers who worked on the project get some real (read monetary) appreciation for their work.

Re:I'm sorry, what?

[swv3752]

Netscape.

Re:I'm sorry, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you'd be hard pressed to argue that Netscape is worse than Mozilla. While it may be larger in size and possibly slower than Moz, it also handles plugins much better than either Mozilla or Firefox. In addtion, the integration in Netscape is much better done than in the default Mozilla release.

On top of that, that's only one example (a bad one). How about another example or two?

Re:I'm sorry, what?

[dfghjk]

Well, it's not great for RMS. Of course he's never had to work for a living.

Re:I'm sorry, what?

[sylvandb]

Sometimes the code for an open source project pretty much just disappears. I'd say that makes the open version much worse off than the closed version.

http://dvarchive.sf.net/ or http://www.sf.net/projects/dvarchive/

It was GPL licensed, but the original author changed the license terms and managed to get sourceforge to delete everything that had once been available from the SF page. For a year or more he had claimed that he had lost the sources and was going to upload when the new version worked. Obviously that didn't happen.

I think this happened because the project's primary user base was not open source fans, so very few copies of the source were ever archived elsewhere. Apparently, open source developers were never interested enough to create a fork or even keep a copy of the source while the source was available.

Now the source simply is not available for the current version (3.x), nor even the last versions which were ostensibly GPL'd (2.1 or 3.0). (The license for the current version is not GPL.)

It has happened with other projects, and will undoubtedly continue to happen. It won't happen any time soon with Linux kernels or emacs, but when something isn't incredibly popular, it can and does happen.

My lesson leared from this, is to keep a copy of the source for anything and everything in which I am even a little bit interested. Still get burned sometimes though.

sdb

Re:I'm sorry, what?

[Redfriar]

I think if you take a look at the TOra project, you'll see an example of the closed fork doing worse than the open one. TOra stands for Toolkit for Oracle, it is a feature competitor to Quest Software's TOAD toolkit.

I was thrilled when I found TORa, and when I found the project had a windows port. It's DDL/Data extraction is by far the best feature for my day-to-day work.

At some point, Quest Software hires the TOra developer, and closes the source on the Windows port. I was still so enamoured with TOra that I pestered the Quest sales staff monthly to find out when it will hit the price sheet, so I can buy the now closed version. I don't think they ever intended to sell a competing product, though.

So, 9-12 months later, the Windows port is defunct, with Quest claiming that all features of TOra are now available in Toad.

I wouldn't call this a successful acquisition, unless you count Quest Software (for squishing a competing product) or the original developer of TOra (which, I admit, has to make a living some how). Perhaps you could count Mac and Linux users as winners here, as they still enjoy an open-licensed version, whose developer is now on a steady payroll related to the project.

Had they kept TOra intact for Windows users, and priced it competitively with TOAD, I would have been happy to be a paying customer.

Re:I'm sorry, what?

[kentmartin]

Sun's sendmail as opposed to the version offered on http://sendmail.org/

Re:I'm sorry, what?

[homer_ca]

SSH vs. OpenSSH

Re:I'm sorry, what?

[swv3752]

Netscape does not handle plugins better. It is also significantly behind on security updates.

Re:I'm sorry, what?

[swv3752]

Netscape. Worse in Security and worse in bloat.

Re:I'm sorry, what?

[TheBigBezona]

A Windows build of TOra has recently resurfaced: http://tora.sourceforge.net/ It is so far a bit buggier than I recall from pre-Quest Windows versions (I am getting some weird text display glitches in the editor), but it's a hopeful sign.

Re:I'm sorry, what?

[Ectospheno]

On my FreeBSD box I solved this problem by not deleting files from /usr/ports/distfiles unless I have a newer working source archive. Then I archive that directory during my monthly full backup.

Source files for applications not installed using the ports tree have their own subdirectory in my home directory which is also part of the monthly backup.

So anytime I need the source for something on my machine its either still there or on one of my backups.

Re:I'm sorry, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Quanta Gold (closed) Vs Quanta + (open), the later is muhc more mature, feature rich and is still havily developed, while the former is laging way behind in features & stability

Re:I'm sorry, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really dually licensed, but competing free and closed products where both share common (free but closable) ancestry seem to result in the free alternative winning.

XFree86/Xorg vs. all of the proprietary alternatives.

Free/Net/OpenBSD vs. BSD/OS.

Re:I'm sorry, what?

[M1FCJ]

I was just about to mention TORA as well. On the other hand Tora in sourceforge is GPL'ed code. If you can get it compiled on Windows I can'see where the problem would be (apart from QT libraries problem).

Re:I'm sorry, what?

[joeytsai]

If I had mod points, I would definitely give them to you right now; I was a happy user of dvarchive for some time, and tried to be patient with author and his claims of forthcoming source. He totally used the resources of the opensource community (sourceforge) to promote his own program and reneged on his only obligation - to provide source code.

Re:I'm sorry, what?

[Redfriar]

Thanks for the info. Here's something that might indicate a brighter future for TOra/Win32:

I was perusing the CVS archives, and it appears that there is an effort underway to port windows TOra to either QT/Free or QT/GPL:
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/tor a/tora/RE ADME.LICENSE?rev=1.1&view=markup

I guess I spoke too soon about the community interest in keeping a Windows port alive.

Re:I'm sorry, what?

[Goo.cc]

How about OpenSSH vs SSH?

Re:I'm sorry, what?

[argent]

Isn't this 2.1?

http://www.swapdv.net/dvarchive/source/

Re:I'm sorry, what?

[sylvandb]

That is sort-of source for 2.1. It is actually just the output of a java decompiler (jad). Better than nothing. But still not very good. Reverse engineering is not a very good way to make a slight change to something, and is supposedly not needed with open source.

sdb

Re:I'm sorry, what?

[argent]

It is actually just the output of a java decompiler (jad).

Oh. <emilylatella>nevermind</>

Re:I'm sorry, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

It won't happen any time soon with Linux kernels or emacs, but when something isn't incredibly popular, it can and does happen.

Well, 'incredibly popular' is a bit of an overstatement, all it takes is one developer who isn't interested in closing the sources. You can trust most developers to have a copy of the sources.
(Personally I typically have at least three; the last release, CVS, and one copy to work on)

So we're really talking about any project which moderately popular even.

Re:I'm sorry, what?

[kasperd]

Interesting story. I started searching for more information on google and archive. And what I found made me start wondering if the source was ever available. Some .tgz files were made available for download from sourceforge, and you can in fact still download them. They do however not contain any source code, just a jar file full of class files. It looks like there was never any possibility to download a tarball with the source code. If the source was ever available, that was only through CVS. And the CVS repository have been wiped pretty thoroughly, even the history of what has happened in the repository is gone. So what was in this CVS repository? Did it contain source code or only jar files? If the source was available I find it strange, that nobody kept a copy. I have not found any evidence the source was ever really available to the public.

Re:I'm sorry, what?

[kasperd]

all it takes is one developer who isn't interested in closing the sources.

True. Looking on archived versions of the sourceforge pages, it looks like there were once three developers. Few enough that they might have agreed on closing the sources. But still enough for a disagreement leading to publicing full sources.

Yes

[kevin_conaway]

The author answers his own question in the first sentence of the article (emphasis mine):

Here's a wrinkle that many devotees of open source either don't know about or don't talk about: Open source projects can get acquired by commercial software companies.

Re:Yes

[Qzukk]

either don't know about or don't talk about

Or don't care about. If you're a user of open source, you're free to continue using the open source version you received before they were acquired. If you're a developer of open source, it's your source to sell or not to sell, depending on how idealistic you are versus how hungry you are.

Re:Yes

[maxwell demon]

And if you are a developer using other OSS for your development, you're also secure because OSS licenses cannot be terminated, except by violating them.

Re:Yes

[birge]

Yeah, great point out, given that the author also acknowledged that he answered his own question. Maybe you've got another one for your list...

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh, the sweet act of posting a seemingly insightful comment that provides no value at all, merely to garner attention to my (err the posters) sig. :)

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect I'll be modded down for this, but, what the hey:

Actually all it shows is someone tried. The real sign of whether they've succeeded is whether they're able to lock down the code - if you like, put it in a safe that we can't crack by some kind of "key" which I'd guess would be some loophole in copyright law.

IANAL (I Am Not A Lawyer...), but if they succeed, then I expect MSFT and others to be interested because of the legal ramifications. This provides them with a way to destroy open source as they can essentially "buy up" critical parts of the infrastructure, Linux, various shells, etc, from people who are willing to compromise a little in exchange for $10,000,000 (and, yeah, the Slashdot groupthink might mean the vast majority of slashbots think they wouldn't do this, but I assure you, most of us would.)

I remember coding a Java app which, despite its slow speed, got bought up by a company that was interested that I'd have released as open source if it hadn't been. By itself, that tells you that money can count and prevent projects from even being licensed under the GPL. Who knows what would have happened to it had it been open source, perhaps ported to Mono or something so it could run at a decent speed rather than Java's chronic plodding style. Who knows. It reminds me of ESR's "Shut up and show them the code" essay, which I must submit to Slashdot at some point - true, you can defend your morals, but ultimately it's more important to get the code out under any license.

I can imagine what the responses to this will be, "You suck, I'd never sell out my morals", "Software should be freeeee!", plus, "1. Sell software. 2. ????. 3. Profit!", etc. But leaving aside the trolls and the sheeple, I think it's fairly obvious that it's mostly a matter of money. Everyone has their price.

So until we find out what this company intends to do, and see if they really can find a way of invalidating the licenses (so they never applied to begin with), I think I have to say "Move along citizen, nothing to see here".

Time will tell.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

That made my day, thanks!

Re:Yes

[Digital11]

Best. Post. Ever.

Re:Yes

[booch]

And if you are a developer using other OSS for your development, you're also secure because OSS licenses cannot be terminated, except by violating them.

To be more specific, if you violate the terms, it only terminates YOUR license. Everyone else's license still remains valid. So the original developer cannot revoke everyone's license by violating the license himself.

Re:Yes

[jbolden]

Actually there is serious question whether they can be terminated even if violated, in a practical sense. The FSF has asserted they can be but there is a ton of caselaw regarding commercial licenses that a new copy carries a new license (the cleanflix case being the best example). So probably (IMHO) the courts will rule that if you download a new copy from someone who is not in violation that gives you a new license and until you violate that one....

There is a PearPC's developer that terminated rights for CherryOS. If he actually sues this will get tested.

You -Really- Don't Get This?

[American AC in Paris]

I guess the point he tries to make is that the new corporate overloads can essentially have a free and non-free version of the code, and more or less orphan the free version. The problem of course is that if the non-free version gets good, others will simply fork.

Taco, please tell me you're not really having trouble wrapping your head around this one, and that you're just pretending to be staggeringly obtuse for the sake of, well, whatever reason you'd want people to think that you're staggeringly obtuse.

If I own a piece of code, I can do whatever the hell I want with it--including sell it to somebody else. It doesn't matter whether or not I've licensed it out under the GPL or other such Open Source license. Unless I surrender it to the public domain, I own that code, and I can license a GPL version, sell a closed version, offer a crippled demo, auction off a signed copy of the source code for a million dollars, and build an extra-shiny-and-nifty-for-my-eyes-only version--or whatever else I'd like to do with it.

Re:You -Really- Don't Get This?

[coyote-san]

How much of the code was contributed by others?

Re:You -Really- Don't Get This?

[Fjornir]

Don't bother replying to Taco (or any other /. admin ) in the threads. They don't read slashdot. (Or there email, but that's another story).

Re:You -Really- Don't Get This?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, according to the article, the company obtained permission from ALL of the developers, in addition to hiring the lead developer, so it looks like they have their bases covered. Of course, with some niche project nobody's heard of unless you deal with exactly what the software does, that may have been like what, 3-5 main developers and 20-30 people who submitted a patch?

You'd be hard pressed to get all the developers of something significant like GCC or Linux to agree to such an action, and refusal from anyone with a significant contribution pretty much stops the acquisition.

Re:You -Really- Don't Get This?

[photon317]

There are some subtleties that most people don't realize, however.

For the sake of example, assume a given project has only a single author. Said author owns the copyright to the code, and distributes it to the public in an unrestricted fashion under the terms of the GPL.

If a random member of the public wanted to fork/commercialize his code, they are bound by the GPL to keep re-releasing their changes under the GPL. However if the original Author wanted to fork his own work and make a commercial effort out of it, he can do that and make his future contributions proprietary, as the GPL doesn't apply to the Author himself (he didn't license it to himself, he owns the copyright to begin with).

Therefore, it is entirely possible for an individual author to write and maintain a peice of free software for years, and then fork his own work into a proprietary commercial derivative that nobody has any future rights to the code of except him. What he cannot do, of course, is revoke any code he already published under the GPL. This leaves his user community able to pick up the work from the last GPL version the Author released and continue the effort under the terms of the GPL.

However, most significant projects have multiple Authors, and all of the Authors would have to agree on this course of action in order to do it. That's why such a thing can't really happen to a body of work like glibc, gcc, or the linux kernel: there are far too many authors with the copyrights in the code all over the place, and you could never get them to all agree to come under one commercial roof together and make a proprietary fork.

Re:You -Really- Don't Get This?

[MrLint]

Agreed,

It looks like these guys followed the proper channels. Bought the rights and hired the author. This is the same procedure as any other SW project (like a shareware author).

Re:You -Really- Don't Get This?

[maxwell demon]

Well, actually for code in the GNU project (GCC, glibc, etc.), you have to assign copyright to the FSF in order to contribute your code to the official version. Therefore from a copyright perspective, the FSF could actually make any such code proprietary. Of course actually it cannot anyway, because part of the copyright assignment contract is AFAIK that the FSF contracts not to do that, so if they did it anyway, it would be breach of contract (which is unrelated to copyright). Not that I'd suspect the FSF of a desire to do so. ;-)

Re:You -Really- Don't Get This?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why such a thing can't really happen to a body of work like glibc, gcc, or the linux kernel: there are far too many authors with the copyrights in the code all over the place, and you could never get them to all agree to come under one commercial roof together and make a proprietary fork.

Actually GCC has all its copyrights in one place: The FSF. But good luck on convincing them :)

Re:You -Really- Don't Get This?

[Mr Bill]

That's why such a thing can't really happen to a body of work like glibc, gcc, or the linux kernel

Are you sure about that? I was under the impression that the FSF requires you to sign over copyright when contributing to these projects (Linux excluded from your list of course). I am not implying that they are going to fork a commercial version, but your reasoning is off, since one entity does own the copyrights to the entire codebase.

There are many other projects that require you to sign over your contributions. MySQL being one of them, since they dual license their code.

Re:You -Really- Don't Get This?

[PhilHibbs]

There is nothing factually inaccurate in the article, and the finer points that you list are listed in the article itself. So what are you ranting about? I know, no-one reads the article, so mod me down for not repeating the /.-basher's mantra.

Re:You -Really- Don't Get This?

[Chmarr]

Yep... if they DID read slashdot, we wouldn't see so many dupes... especially ones within 2 days of the original article :)

Re:You -Really- Don't Get This?

[American AC in Paris]

There is nothing factually inaccurate in the article, and the finer points that you list are listed in the article itself. So what are you ranting about?

There's nothing wrong with the article. It's the writeup that irks me. I'm ranting about the fact that Taco is either:

1. Truly incapable of comprehending a very basic tenet of ownership rights, or
2. Putting on airs of befuddlement to make a perfectly innocuous transaction seem byzantine and threatening.

Either Taco has a dullard's grasp of one of the most important issues facing the geek community today, or he's trying to gin up a non-news item with a little fear, uncertainty and doubt. Which do you prefer?

That is what I'm ranting about. Slashdot has enough cheerleaders as it is; it'd be a much better news site if the editors constrained their opinions to op-ed pieces and the comments section.

Re:You -Really- Don't Get This?

[Total_Wimp]

However, most significant projects have multiple Authors, and all of the Authors would have to agree on this course of action in order to do it.

I'm very curious about this.

If I'm a developer for a comercial, proprietary software vendor then all the code I write become property of the company. That's pretty straight forward.

If I did volunteer coding on the library web site, I would assume (but don't know for a fact) that my work would become the property of the library unless other specific arrangements were made.

It's clear in the first case and at least plausible in the second case that the entity that owns copyright of the code is not the individual coder, but the larger legal entity. But if I do free coding for an open source project how clear is it?

If I 'contribute' my code to a 'project' doesnt' the project becomes a legal entity itself and therefor own the copyright of the code? I would assume this is the case because the project itself licenses the work under the GPL. You don't see individual contributors attaching GPL license to every modification they check in to the source tree.

I realise this is probably all very fuzzy for most projects. Are there bylaws, incorporation or non-profit staus on most GPL projects? Most are probably like informal clubs with very little thought given to legal status, but that in and of itself, probably doesn't mean they have no legal status.

I'm definately not a lawyer and most of this is question more than statement. Feel very free to pick it appart. I'm just very curious how this would actually work in a court of law.

TW

Re:You -Really- Don't Get This?

[EvilArchitect]

FreeMercator did this already.

Re:You -Really- Don't Get This?

[bowronch]

[b]You'd be hard pressed to get all the developers of something significant like GCC or Linux to agree to such an action, and refusal from anyone with a significant contribution pretty much stops the acquisition.[/b]

I'm not positive about this, but I believe that when you submit a patch to gcc in order to get it accepted you must sign over the copyright to the FSF so that they actually own the IP...

Re:You -Really- Don't Get This?

[Short Circuit]

(Or there email, but that's another story)

I used to post as mmol_6453. For some reason or another, I'd stopped getting mod points. I thought I'd done something that pissed off an admin.

A few months after I stopped posting as mmol_6453, I resumed posting as Short Circuit. I sent Taco an email asking if he wanted to drop mods on this account, too. He said they didn't have anything to do with my not getting mod points, that my usage stats were probably out of range of what was required to receive mod points.

Which is probably true. I spend my free time at work reading Slashdot.

Re:You -Really- Don't Get This?

[cpt kangarooski]

If I'm a developer for a comercial, proprietary software vendor then all the code I write become property of the company. That's pretty straight forward.

It's not guaranteed, but it's likely enough. You might want to look at 17 USC 201(a) and (b), the definition of a Work Made for Hire in 101, and the CCNV v. Reid case for factors that play into whether or not someone is an employee for 101 purposes.

If I did volunteer coding on the library web site, I would assume (but don't know for a fact) that my work would become the property of the library unless other specific arrangements were made.

No, again it might be a work for hire as described above. If not, then per 201(d) and 204(a) an assignment would be possible, but it'd have to be in writing. And if not that, then a license is possible without a writing of course, but there'd be a good chance that it would be nonexclusive. The only ways for the library to own the copyright (the work is unownable by anyone) would be to be the author under work for hire or to have the copyright assigned to them.

If I 'contribute' my code to a 'project' doesnt' the project becomes a legal entity itself and therefor own the copyright of the code? I would assume this is the case because the project itself licenses the work under the GPL. You don't see individual contributors attaching GPL license to every modification they check in to the source tree.

Again, there's only two ways to get ownership of a copyright, and that's unlikely to qualify for either. More likely contributions are licensed, possibly under the GPL despite not attaching it every time. I suppose a partnership could arise automatically, but that's not a separate entity, that's just shared authority and liability amongst the partners. (And is almost never desirable)

Re:You -Really- Don't Get This?

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

I for one welcome our new Corporate Overloads.. (does that mean we get Corporate Inheritance as well?)

Re:You -Really- Don't Get This?

[robslimo]

Not sure of the answer for you question, but whenever I have problems with Corporate Overloads, I move some Corporate Loads to another circuit, then reset the Corporate Breaker.

Re:You -Really- Don't Get This?

[mark-t]

Kinda O.T... but you raise a good point on why Linux _shouldn't_ be called GNU/Linux. The copyrights on it have remained the property of its authors, and have not been assigned to the FSF.

Re:You -Really- Don't Get This?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody has suggested that Linux, the kernel, should be called GNU/Linux.

The whole system, being based on GNU (gcc, bash, binutils, etc. etc.) and Linux (the kernel), is what RMS calls GNU/Linux. The copyrights on the GNU parts are of course assigned to the FSF.

Re:You -Really- Don't Get This?

[mindaktiviti]

"there are far too many authors with the copyrights in the code all over the place, and you could never get them to all agree to come under one commercial roof together and make a proprietary fork."

See, that's where the borg come in.

Burnin' Karma, one day at a time.

Re:You -Really- Don't Get This?

[Basje]

It's argued that it should be called GNU/Linux because the system is partly GNU software, and only partly (but important part) Linux.

Nobody is arguing that it should be called GNU Linux.

Re:You -Really- Don't Get This?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, actually for code in the GNU project (GCC, glibc, etc.), you have to assign copyright to the FSF in order to contribute your code to the official version.

Which is impossible in various EU countries such as Germany and the EU, where you cannot assign the rights to your work to somebody else. You cannot even give away free restribution rights to your work (more precisely, it would not be legally binding, and you can revoke that any time, even if at the very beginning you deviously planned to do so). See, e.g. 32a UrhG or 42 UrhG for the details.

Thomas

Re:You -Really- Don't Get This?

[jbolden]

If I 'contribute' my code to a 'project' doesnt' the project becomes a legal entity itself and therefor own the copyright of the code?

Nope. That's what incorporation refers to. Getting the paperwork to create an artificial person that has right of contract. Without incorporation a project can't have rights in particular it can't own anything.

Re:You -Really- Don't Get This?

[Brandybuck]

The FSF could, and probably will, relicense a lot of their code under the GPLv3. That probably won't make much of a difference, but if there's stuff in the v3 that contributors don't like, they're screwed.

This isn't that farfetched. Imagine you assigned over some documentation under the assumption that the FSF would keep it Free(tm), and then the FSF slapped the not-free-unless-you-squint GFDL on top of it. I'm sure somewhere some guy got shafted that that one.

Re:You -Really- Don't Get This?

[Anonymous Coward]

What he cannot do, of course, is revoke any code he already published under the GPL.

You absolutely can revoke your license. (Or at least try). And depending on a number of factors, the revocation can be upheld. This is one reason why it is recommended that copyright to GPLed software be assigned to the FSF. (You trust the FSF to not revoke those rights.)

Don't believe me? Trying finding anywhere in the GPL where it states that the rights granted to you under the GPL are perpetual or cannot be revoked or anything similar to that. You won't find it, because its an acknowledge hole in the license.

The waters muddy significantly on a previous licensee's right to use the software (not covered by the GPL at all). IANAL, but anyone that believes the GPL gives a perpetual license better revisit that belief.

Re:You -Really- Don't Get This?

[Kanasta]

If this happens, does said author own the rights to outside bugfix etc during the GPL years?

Nothing wrong with that

[Anonymous Coward]

We've always known that an author can remove the license on software they wrote. Of course, that doesn't change YOUR license, and they do still need to provide access to the source if it was under the GPL, specifically, when you got it. However, they're under no obligation to give you updates or changes from future versions of their own code.

So, the corporate buyout angle is a red herring. This is no different from any developer taking their ball and going home.

Re:Nothing wrong with that

[karmatic]

Actually, they don't have to provide the code at all, unless they distributed 3rd party code along with it. You cannot violate a copyright license on your own works; authors don't need a license from themselves to distribute their own works.

Re:Nothing wrong with that

[mindstrm]

In this situation, they are under no obligation to distribut code either... as the author of the software which I released under the GPL, I myself am NOT bound by the GPL.. I'm the author, I can do whatever I want.

Re:Nothing wrong with that

[Chirs]

I think you misread. The original poster was discussing the following scenario:

1) I obtain a GPL'd binary from author A.
2) Author A then stops distributing under the GPL

At this point I am still entitled to the source code for the specific version of the binary that I received under the GPL, even though *new* customers are not entitled to the source code for *their* versions.

Re:Nothing wrong with that

[stg]

The problem with your logic is that he isn't bound by the GPL. What the GPL says is that if you don't follow it, you can't distribute the software because you don't have the copyright - but the original author still does.

Relevant quote from the GPL, v2:

You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License.


For the original author, something else grants permission to distribute - the copyright. Thus, the GPL is null for the original author.

Re:Nothing wrong with that

[whoever57]

1) I obtain a GPL'd binary from author A.
2) Author A then stops distributing under the GPL
At this point I am still entitled to the source code for the specific version of the binary that I received under the GPL

Actually, you may not be -- if the code was written without the use of any GPL code from other authors, then the author, when distributing under the GPL is not bound by the GPL.

Re:Nothing wrong with that

[Royster]

they do still need to provide access to the source if it was under the GPL, specifically, when you got it

Assuming that the company owns all of the copyrights in the software, that's a completely unenforcable promise. If the company ceases to provide source code, you don't have standing to sue them in court for specific performance because they haven't promised anyhting. All they have done is require that third party distributors distribute code, they haven't required that they themselves distribute source code.

Furthermore, the GPL is likely prospectively revocable. The new owner could revoke the license grant and you couldn't compel them to continue it because you don't have a contract all you have is a license grant. And the law is pretty well settled that license grants without compensation are revocable.

If you invite someone into your backyard, you have granted them a license to enter your property. If you don't like what they are doing, you can revoke the license and tell them to leave. Your license is revocable at will.

Re:Nothing wrong with that

[Basje]

Of course the author bound to the GPL. So s/he'll have to provide the code (which clause is a weakness in the current GPL, as it's not limited whatsoever).

A license is nothing but an agreement between you and the copyright holder. If the copyright holder stops offering the software under a certain license (GPL in case), older agreements do not mysteriously vanish. Parties are still bound to an agreement they entered, even if in the current circumstances they would never enter into the same agreement again.

Re:Nothing wrong with that

[whoever57]

Either you did not read my post properly or you don't understand the GPL

My point is that if the author and the copyright holder are one and the same person, there is nothing that binds the author to the GPL.

The GPL binds people or entities that receive GPL code. If you receive GPL code and want to modify and redistribute it, then you have requirements. However, if what you ship under the GPL is entirely your own work then you are not bound by the GPL.

Think about it for a moment: who could sue? Only the copyright holder -- would he sue himself?

Re:Nothing wrong with that

[Anonymous Coward]

A license is nothing but an agreement between you and the copyright holder.

No, it isn't. A license is just a permission to do something you're otherwise prohibited from doing. It's not a contract.

If I give you software to which I hold copyright, and I license it to you under the terms of the GPL, I'm giving you permission to do things that copyright would otherwise prohibit you from doing: like, distribute my work or make derivate works from it.

It is not a contract between you and I -- in large part because there's no consideration -- so I'm not compelled to act in any particular way toward you. I owe you nothing, in other words, and this is so because the GPL is a merely a license and not a contract.

I the copyright holder can do whatever I want with my work. Let's say I give you binaries, license them to you under the GPL, and never give you the source. I'm perfectly within my rights.

Looks good to me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I agree, as there is no way they can stop people from using the open source code as a base to continue with a free version then you don't have any problems. What happens if the author removes all the links to the sourcecode though, are you legally entitled to ask for it?

Re:Looks good to me...

[tomhudson]

What happens if the author removes all the links to the sourcecode though, are you legally entitled to ask for it?

for 3 years only copy of the gpl

Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

Of course, after 3 years the code is pretty stale anyway, so the only people who would want it would be litigious bastards so that they could incorporate it into their trailing-edge products.

And there's always the wayback machine, the internet archive, etc ...

Re:Looks good to me...

[WPIDalamar]

Not quite...

The Author doesn't EVER have to give you the code.

The user is bound to the license, not him. So if you distribute the program, you need to provide source, but the author doesn't.

Weird, but I can release a program under the GPL, and not give code. Then you try to redistribute the program, the person you give it to asks for code, and you can't provide it. Things get sticky.

Re:Looks good to me...

[tomhudson]

Interesting, except that when the AUTHOR distributes it under the GPL, he then falls under the provisions for distributing the code. He's free to NOT distribute it under the GPL, or as both GPL and another license, but when he does a distribution under the GPL, he has to conform to the provisions of the GPL wrt distribution.

Besides, why wouldn't the author who wants his works covered by the GPl not offer the source?

Re:Looks good to me...

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

No s/he doesn't!

GPL only gives one rights to do things that would otherwise be copyright infringement.

How can one infringe one's own copyright?!

Even with EULAs the author wouldn't be bound.

How can one break a contract with oneself?

The author can't sue themself!

Re:Looks good to me...

[tomhudson]

The author isn't infringing his own copyright, but he is infringing the GPL if he claims to be distributing under the GPL and doesn't make the source available.

He can still distribute, just not under the GPL.

I don't get it.

[ciroknight]

Is this anything like a company buying another? Like how Novell bought SuSE?

Technically, all that makes a "project" a "project", is the fact someone's coding on it. Hire the coder, have him sign something to turn the license for the software over to the company, and poof, ownership is transfered.

So what's the whoop here?

Re:I don't get it.

[Tassach]

So what's the whoop here?

None at all. Taco's trying to drum up ad impressions by posting an intentionally inflamatory article. Push the GPL Violation hot-button around here and people get more worked up than a bunch of Southern Baptists do over gay marriage.

Can we moderate an entire story as "Flamebait"?

Re:I don't get it.

[bsd4me]

Can we moderate an entire story as "Flamebait"?

No, but people with mod points can refrain from moderating any posts in the story. It may not do much, but it's something.

Re:I don't get it.

[Scuff]

Seriously, who mods up a post that says don't mod any posts in this story?

Re:I don't get it.

[tepples]

Can we moderate an entire story as "Flamebait"?

On K5 or other Scoop sites, you can.

Re:I don't get it.

[SimpsonsQuoter]

Alcoholics, the unemployable, angry loaners.

GPL not retractable

[redelm]

Once out, the licensor of GPL code has no way of withdrawing the licence.

Sure, the corp can buy the original copyright (and maybe some important later contributions) but that only gives them the ability to relicence the code.

Practically speaking, they'd have to make substantial improvements/service (ala sendmail) or market to the uninformed before the product would be saleable. And any improvement likely could be added into the free tree.

Re:GPL not retractable

[coyote-san]

The owner can't withdraw the license of previously published code, but they can certainly change the license on subsequent releases.

(This assumes that the code has a single owner. Code with many significant contributors will need to have all of the contributed code rewritten before it can be relicensed.)

Re:GPL not retractable

[gellenburg]

But wouldn't any subsequent releases be in fact based on--let's say for argument--the GPL, and therefore must have the resulting (subsequent) source code released under it as well?

Wouldn't the same apply if a company decided for fork a commercial version?

Is this what the pundits call the virality of the GPL? Personally, i feel it's the virility of the GPL that matters anyway. ;-)

Re:GPL not retractable

[tgd]

The point is the original author's possession of the code isn't under the GPL. It doesn't apply to the copyright holder.

Re:GPL not retractable

[mindstrm]

No.. as the original author of some code, I am not bound by the GPL.. it's MY code, I can do whatever i want with it, including license it to whoever I want under whatever terms I want. The GPL is irrelevant to me.

The only thing I can't do is revoke the GPL from code I've already released.. you are still free to distribute that code as long as you follow the terms. I myself, however, have no obligations towards you.

Re:GPL not retractable

[SquadBoy]

No. Because they bought it from the guy who wrote it. He *owns* it and then licenses it to you. Since he *owns* it there is no license for him. Becuase he *owns* it and did not license it from himself. The General Public *License* clearly only applies to code that you license from someone else and not code that you *own*.

Now he can't take away your license but he can do whatever he wants with code that he *owns*. As others have pointed out there might be problems with code that other people have put into the project but one has to assume that as the *owner* he has sorted those.

Clear enough?

Re:GPL not retractable

[Have Blue]

Or just have all contributors consent to relicensing.

Re:GPL not retractable

[Royster]

Why do you say that the GPL is irrevocable? Is there some langauge in it which makes it irrevocable? Do you have standing to sue to fight a purportive revocation?

In general, gratis license grants are prospectively revocable. If the owner informs the person who has received the grant that it is revoked as of today, that person loses the license to redistribute. They don't have standing to sue to maintain the license because it is not a contract.

There's nothing which stops the sole author of a GPLed piece of software from revoking their license. They may have to spend a lot of time tracking down and giving C&D notices to subsequent redistributors (and likely no court will grant damages until notice of the revocation has been received.) but that dosn't stop the grantor from revoking their grant.

Re:GPL not retractable

[ultranova]

No.. as the original author of some code, I am not bound by the GPL..

No one is bound by the GPL, since they haven't signed it or otherwise confirmed their acceptance of it, expect perhaps by the implications of their actions (redistribution of GPL'd code).

You, as well as anyone else, is free to refuse to abide by the GPL anytime you want. However, if you do so, it is invalidated by that refusal; and this means that normal copyright law applies. If you own the copyrights to the GPL'd code, the law gives you all rights to it; if you don't, the law forbids you from redistributing it in either as-is or compiled forms.

The GPL doesn't bound anyone, it is just a permission from the copyright owner to redistribute the code under certain conditions. It isn't a contract of any kind, and thus can't enforce anyone's actions. You are free to ignore it anytime, but that will result in it being no longer in force for you, and that is usually the stupidest thing you could possibly do.

Profit..

[PurpleXanathar]

>> The problem of course is that if the non-free version gets good, others will simply fork.

This is the reason why you can profit off big open source projects, where support, maintanance, services, non free components, etc. have an importance.

Profit from small, simple applications is not feasible as now.

Re:Profit..

[2short]

Well, big projects tend to have lots of developers, so selling someone the code under a different license is probably infeasible.

But I myself have paid someone for a non-GPL license to otherwise GPL code. Because they were the only copyright holder, it was easy for them to do this.

Depends who wrote the code...

[Evro]

If Bob writes a program (owns the copyright on 100% of the code) and releases it under the GPL, and then later decides to sell his project to some random guy, he is free to do so, but the people who have the GPL'd version would still have full rights to do with it everything specified under the GPL.

If Bob writes a program, releases it under the GPL, and incorporates contributed code into the project, that's another can of worms. I would think if he wanted to "go private" with the code base at that point he would need to get the permission of everyone who contributed any code, much like Mozilla did. If he couldn't get their permission he would have to rewrite those chunks of code.

Of course, IANAL, but that's what logic would seem to dictate; though logic has little to do with most software licensing schemes...

Re:Depends who wrote the code...

[Nasarius]

If Bob writes a program, releases it under the GPL, and incorporates contributed code into the project, that's another can of worms. I would think if he wanted to "go private" with the code base at that point he would need to get the permission of everyone who contributed any code, much like Mozilla did. If he couldn't get their permission he would have to rewrite those chunks of code.

This isn't necessary if all contributors assign copyright to one entity. That's the FSF's policy, for example.

Re:Depends who wrote the code...

[Ryan Stortz]

XChat did this a few monthes ago with their Window's version. I seem to recall there being a Slashdot article on it.

Re:Depends who wrote the code...

[justins]

If Bob writes a program, releases it under the GPL, and incorporates contributed code into the project, that's another can of worms. I would think if he wanted to "go private" with the code base at that point he would need to get the permission of everyone who contributed any code, much like Mozilla did. If he couldn't get their permission he would have to rewrite those chunks of code.

If you can, you should have contributors confirm that they are assigning copyright to the owner of the project. Just via email is fine. That is pretty much what is necessary to make sure confusion doesn't occur down the road.

Another way to do it is for the author of the project, and all contributors, to assign copyright to the Free Software Foundation. This is one way of signifying to the contributors that you won't abscond with their work, and at the same time have a nice, consolidated ownership.

I imagine if you do that you're stuck with the GPL, though.

JasperReport announcement text

[Anonymous Coward]

Open Source Company JasperSoft to Advance JasperReports

A new company called JasperSoft (http://www.jaspersoft.com) has formed to invest in JasperReports and offer support, services and complimentary commercial products for JasperReports. I will be joining JasperSoft as Founder and Architect for JasperReports. This will allow me to work full-time on JasperReports enhancements, and direct a new team of professional open source developers to accelerate the JasperReports roadmap.

JasperReports has become more popular than I ever imagined it would. And the community has been demanding a higher level of investment and advancement in JasperReports than I alone can deliver, even working full-time. JasperSoft will help to increase the investment in JasperReports by adding full-time professional open source developers to the project.

JasperReports will stay open source forever, and its advancement will accelerate with the additional resources now being applied to it. JasperSoft and I are committed to investing in, and building the best open source reporting products available.

JasperSoft will also offer Support and Services for JasperReports, which a number of JasperReports customers have been requesting. See http://www.jaspersoft.com/services_tech_support.ph p for more information.

JasperSoft is a new company, headquartered in San Francisco that was formed by a combination of open source and commercial reporting domain experts. We have some of the brightest minds in the world now working on JasperReports. JasperSoft also has a commercial product line, JasperDecisions that will offer complimentary capabilities for advanced functionality to the JasperReports community. The JasperDecisions product line consists of:

Scope Server: a java server-based operational reporting solution for interactive, self-serve reporting and analytics.

Scope Designer: a swing-based report designer for Scope Server report development.

JasperDecisions is currently deployed in over 50 leading corporations and ISV's including IBM, British Telecom, Informatica and the US Department of Defense.

Today, JasperDecisions is based on its own XML report definition, called RDL (Report Definition Language) and does not support JRXML at this time. However, future versions of Scope Server will have support for JasperReports. For more information on JasperDecisions, see http://www.jaspersoft.com/products_jsps.php

This is a significant day for JasperReports, which has graduated from an open source project developed and supported by me when I could find time, to an open source product supported by a community of developers around the world, and now backed by a company and a team of professional open source developers who are committed to building the best available open source solution. I hope you will continue to work with me to make JasperReports better than ever.

Teodor

Re:JasperReport announcement text

[hey!]

JasperReports will stay open source forever, and its advancement will accelerate with the additional resources now being applied to it.

Well, then it's a good thing.

As a JasperReports user, I can say the system is fundamentally sound and well designed, but squirrely to use. The big picture stuff is great, but it needs a major dose of attention to detail (like documentation for example). It also needs a decent set of design tools. Out of a half dozen people working with this product at my work place, I'm the only one able to have consistent success with it.

There's no reason this product can't take out crystal reports -- it's basically sound and very powerful, it just lacks polish.

Re:JasperReport announcement text

[KutuluWare]

JasperReports will stay open source forever, and its advancement will accelerate with the additional resources now being applied to it. JasperSoft and I are committed to investing in, and building the best open source reporting products available.

Wait. You mean the SUMMARY WAS WRONG?

*faint*

Re:JasperReport announcement text

[StarsAreAlsoFire]

There's no reason this product can't take out crystal reports

Thats an insult!!!

Crystal reports could be replaced by crack addicted squirrels with pencils. Actually, I think I like this idea. My life would be so much easier...

Sorry. Anyone that codes to CR will understand.

Re:Old Version?

[Professor_UNIX]

If a company buys out an OSS, you can often still get the older, free version somewheres on the internet. It may not be as updated, but at least it is free.

But would you begin using a piece of software if you knew it was a dead end? Think about it, the authors will never produce another update for that version and if you want to continue using it you'll either have to hope someone else will come along and fork it (unlikely) or you need to buy the commercial version. Why bother using it in the first place in that case?

if your code is GPL it can

[Naikrovek]

... actually probably for BSD licensed code also, but my point is that even though the code is GPL, the copyright still belongs to the author. the GPL only allows anyone to copy/modify the code as if the copyright were their own. That is, the GPL gives non-copyright holders permissions that they would otherwise not have.

The copyright remains and the author can sell his copyright to someone who can then close the source. Whatever was already released will always be GPL, but the copyright holder always gets to determine the future openness.

the GPL does not apply to the copyright holder, remember. The author of the software does not have to obey the GPL - derivative works written by the copyright holder do not have to be licensed under the GPL because he actually owns the code. He can release a version under the GPL then turn around and close it if he wants to.

Re:if your code is GPL it can

[Secrity]

With BSD licensed code, ANYBODY can make a proprietary fork of the software. This is probably why Bill Gates loves having other people release their code under a BSD license but hates it when they release their code under the GPL license.

No Problem

[mfh]

He's talking about the problem that exists when a company acquires an open source project to close it -- but it can't ever truly be closed now can it.

The problem of course is that if the non-free version gets good, others will simply fork.

That's only the problem for the company that bought it. It's no problem for any of us to take the open source version and de-orphan it. Having a deep pocket benefactor is actually a positive for open source. Look at IBM. They haven't acquired rights to anything yet, but in the future they may start buying up Open Source projects... you never know.

But acquiring an open source project can be a solid benefit for any business. This is good when companies take an open source project and fully fund it. That's part of the Open Source dream, IMHO. Money can still be made on services!

Who cares if it's forked into a closed area? There still is the old source to build on!

Re:No Problem

[KarmaMB84]

And what happens when the lead developer only works on the closed version? Realisticly, most open source projects will die off if the core dev(s) stop working on it. The forking idea is a fantasy for anything other than the most important/popular projects like X.org/XFree86.

Re:No Problem

[Total_Wimp]

Who cares if it's forked into a closed area? There still is the old source to build on!

I think this breaks down somewhat when you consider the importance of the developers. In this particular case, the purchasing company not only got the code, but the lead guy who created and/or managed the code.

The FOSS community would not have a huge problem on it's hands if some company acquired and closed a branch of the Linux kernel, but there would be much wringing of hands if Linus went to the closed branch and stopped managing the free one.

TW

Re:No Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

This is good when companies take an open source project and fully fund it. That's part of the Open Source dream, IMHO. That is the dream. It's too bad reality is something completely different.

Re:No Problem

[kfg]

That's part of the Open Source dream, IMHO.

The American Dream(tm) has been a bit perverted of late. It has come to mean getting a Good Job and acquiring lots on money and stuff so that you may hire people to wipe your ass for you.

This isn't The American Dream. The American Dream was becoming independant, unbeholden to anybody, on one's own property no matter how poor one was, because land and independence is the greatest wealth. The mortgage burning party used to be a big deal. It meant you had bought your freedom. Now everyone will take you for a financial idiot if you aren't indebted to the maximum your creditors will allow, simply because you can't acquire the most money and stuff otherwise.

Free software is The American Dream applied to "intellectual property." Its dream is to insure that the code remains independent, no matter how poor.

But you may be right in that the dream of Open Source(tm) is more akin to The American Dream(tm) and that this is the primary division between rms and esr.

The GPL is still squarely aimed at independence, however.

KFG

Re:No Problem

[jacem]

Yes and no.

To deal with the second issue first. (and no offence to Linus) But if he stepped down someone else would just have to step up and take over.
There are so many people involved that although there would be a major disruption I don't think that it would kill linux.

I do have a question about the closed branch.
Isn't the open code still have to remain open in the closed branch. I haven't read the GPL in a while but doesn't it have a clause about derivative works remaining open as well?

JACEM

Re:No Problem

[Ogerman]

I think this breaks down somewhat when you consider the importance of the developers. In this particular case, the purchasing company not only got the code, but the lead guy who created and/or managed the code.

Remember that the lead guy could always leave the company and maintain the fork if things went south. And if not, well, what's to say that he would have continued working on the old code (without pay) otherwise? What I'm saying is that it's a necessary risk to take. All major OSS projects need to have commercial backing so that the core developers can work full time on them. Ideally, the core developers run the show as well. Ideally, there are no proprietary "add-on" products necessary to sustain the free project. Ideally, all resources go towards developing and supporting 100% open code. So this particular example is not "ideal." However, as a user of JasperReports, I would much rather see this happen then for it to remain just a hobby project of one man. As long as JasperReports continues to be developed at least at the previous rate, this is a clear win for the Java OSS community.

Re:No Problem

[Total_Wimp]

Isn't the open code still have to remain open in the closed branch. I haven't read the GPL in a while but doesn't it have a clause about derivative works remaining open as well?

For the sake of this discussion I'm assuming whatever legal entity owns the Linux kernel in the copyright sense suddenly sells out to the highest bidder and everyone else has to work from the already distributed GPLed code.

No, I don't expect this would ever happen, but it is the question on the table.

TW

Re:No Problem

[SnapShot]

And what happens when the lead developer becomes a luddite, moves to the Northwest Territories, and dies in a horrific dog sled accident?

Life goes on and, if it's important to someone else, maybe they will pick it up. If it's important to you maybe you'll be the one to pick up the torch!

Re:No Problem

[dfeist]

That's not a single entity, but thousands of individual copyright holders. The closed branch could only use the code from the developers who accept that, so it is highly improbable that this would ever happen, as even if just a few of them refuse to, major parts of the code would have to be rewritten (which would also be hard, as the code has to exactly fit in some structures and you have to expect some people to go to court to stop the closed source version)

Re:No Problem

[pantherace]

And therein lies the problem for your whole idea.

"whatever legal entity owns the Linux kernel in the copyright sense"

There is no one, in fact, you've got hundreds, if not thousands of different people's code, all owned by them. Most simply like working on it. Some have rather 'Free or die' mentalities. Some (IBM) have cash, and no reason to want it to be closed.

So the Linux Kernel is a very very bad example.

Now, take for example a 1 person OS project. If it were bought, the person would likely be hired to work on it. The project would likely get more time devoted to it. As long as it remained open, there is no loss. (Of course, that's a big issue to many OS developers I know, they wouldn't mind being paid to do what they like to do for fun. However, they don't want it closed.)

Re:No Problem

[mrchaotica]

If no one else is interested enough to fork the project, is it any real loss if it dies?

Re:No Problem

[ScottEllsworth]

This is how it should be.

Open source has two benefits: customers of the product have access to the source, and a wider community can read, change, and improve the source. Announcements like the Jasper ones force the community to decide where they stand.

Put another way: if the lead devs decide to move, and get paid for their work, then we find out whether the project was robust or fragile. If the community does not step up to the plate, then they did not care enough.

To me, that is just fine. It makes it clear where we put our time and treasure. Projects that fail for this reason were fragile, depending on the good will of one person.

Scott

Re:No Problem

[shayne321]

If no one else is interested enough to fork the project, is it any real loss if it dies?

I'd say it is.. For example I *LOVE* the mozilla suite, I love the integration between the browser, email, calendar, and address book. I see no need to have 4 apps running on my desktop when I can just run one that covers what I need. However Mofo is going to drop new development on the suite in favor of the stand alone apps. The problem is, I have neither the time, knowledge, money, or resources to take over moz suite development. So it's a real loss to me that it's going to die, but there's nothing REALISTICALLY I can do about it.

This is a lot of why companies (my employer included) are scared of open source.. What if your company invests time and money deploying app XYZ in their enterprise, and the lead developer either takes off or has a tiff with other devs on the project? Then the company either is up a creek with no paddle, or has to hire developers to take over dev on a project they know little about.

Re:No Problem

[jbolden]

Or a funded fork. There were a lot of open source projects in the 1980s that got forked by another group that wanted to take the ideas in a different direction or add something specific. Knuth had stopped working on TeX but the AMS (American Mathematical Society) forked off TeX to create AMS-TeX and Lamport forked off to create LaTeX. Modern tetex has both sets of improvements (what used to be called AMS-LaTeX).

Re:No Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

The exact problem exists with proprietary software. What if you deploy Macromedia Freehand and Macromedia gets bought by Adobe? How much longer will Freehand be around? What if you deploy OLE and Microsoft dumps it for COM? What if you deploy COM and Microsoft dumps it for .NET?

In the case of Microsoft, backwards compatibility stays around for a long time. With other, smaller companies you might not be so lucky. So just as you might choose only to deploy products from companies you think you can trust to be around, you might want to only select OSS products in the enterprise that have large foundations backing them; Apache is a safe bet, but some kid's latest Sourceforge-hosted product might not be.

Fortunately code quality is usually proportional to trustworthiness of the backing organization, but not always.

Frankly, if you're a small company, you have to take risks (which can yield great profits) or you have to go with the industry. Large companies CAN afford to take over OSS projects that die. They also have clout with proprietary vendors to keep their closed source software available. Small companies have no such clout.

Re:No Problem

[1u3hr]

This is a lot of why companies (my employer included) are scared of open source.. What if your company invests time and money deploying app XYZ in their enterprise, and the lead developer either takes off or has a tiff with other devs on the project? Then the company either is up a creek with no paddle, or has to hire developers to take over dev on a project they know little about.

Exactly the same can happen with closed source, except then you don't even have the option of paying someone to keep working on it. Or, consider when MS or Adobe buy a company to get some key technology, or just to remove competition, chances are several product lines are going to be EOLd. How long can Macromedia Freehand last in the same company as Adobe Illustrator? The whole point of Open Source is that software can live forever if anyone wants to use it.

Re:No Problem

[2short]

The whole point of it being open source is you don't need the original developer. If someone else cares about it enough, they'll become the new lead developer on the open version. The alternative becomes a pretty silly question: If no one cares, who cares?

If someone develops something cool, and makes it open source, I say good for them. If someone else thinks it's cool enough to buy the copyright and hire them, I'm not going to criticise them for taking the money.

Normally I hate the open source argument that says, don't complain about something you don't like, shut up and code it yourself. But, if you don't like that some developer no longer wants to work on an open version of something he wrote, feel free to work on it yourself. That's why open is cool after all.

Re:No Problem

[jbolden]

How is this any different than when a company shuts down an unsuccesful closed source projec?. With closed source project they can often get shut down for reasons that have very little to do with success for failure. Ask the facilities guys what a PIA it is when the shade of paint that is all over the office gets discontinued.

Re:No Problem

[jacem]

Yes the kernel is a terrible example. it's to big and to popular.
But I am asuming (maybe falsely) that (checks /etc/release) kernel-2.6.11 is licenced to me and that I have access to the source in perpetuity{sp}

So I may not get the source for for kernel-3.0.x but I still have all of kernel-2.6.z to work from. And that hold for everything that has been released as opensource.

JACEM

Re:No Problem

[jbolden]

You are picking a bad example here for the reasons indicated below. Lets take another project, where your example would work, Evolution. Here Novell owns the copyright but releases everything under GPL. Individuals need to assign rights to Novell (not to Evolution).

So Novell is definitely in the driver's seat and if you read the gome groups there has been discussion of how to handle Novell decided to offer less support for Evolution. Its likely Evolution as a free product dies without Novell. OTOH you might see another project which uses chunks of code from the old Evolution Novell and since the name Evolution isn't protected....

Re:No Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent post. Insightful doesn't quite cut it. This deserves a '+5 Inspired' moderation.

Re:No Problem

[mrchaotica]

Seamonkey won't die. The Mozilla foundation will drop it, but it's popular enough that somebody else will pick it up (even if it's not you). And that's my point -- worthwhile stuff will be saved even if their original developer leaves (for whatever reason).

Re:No Problem

[Total_Wimp]

I guess that is the better example. I've been getting quite the education today on how different projects manage copyright. I always assumed people didn't know what they were talking about when they said things like the previous couple of posters (Linux copyright is owned by hundreds or thousands of individuals) but it appears (happily?) that I was wrong.

TW

Re:No Problem

[jbolden]

The plus side of this style of management is that it will be very hard for anyone to ever release a commercial version and enforce their copyright on the commercial version. The downside is that it would be very easy for someone to release a commercial version and not contribute source back. Proving standing to sue them is going to be a mess.

Re:No Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't the open code still have to remain open in the closed branch. I haven't read the GPL in a while but doesn't it have a clause about derivative works remaining open as well?

Remember - the GPL is a license from the copyright holders that grants rights not provided by copyright law. The copyright holders themselves aren't affected by that license, since it's their code to begin with - they're free to do whatever they like with it, including closing it or otherwise changing the license.

Of course, that assumes one copyright holder, since if different people hold copyright over different files, it's difficult to apply any concept of ownership to the project as a whole. For that reason, some projects require contributors to assign the copyright to a governing body for the project (e.g a GNU project might require that copyright be assigned to the FSF).

Re:No Problem

[peachpuff]

"[T]here would be much wringing of hands if Linus went to the closed branch and stopped managing the free one."

There'd be even more if he was hit by a truck and died. Somewhat less if he quit to become a painter. There's always a chance that the lead developer will stop being the lead developer.

Re:No Problem

[jasonjacks0n]

I think this breaks down somewhat when you consider the importance of the developers.

Definitely, the developers are important. Which is how I prefer it. =) And it is important to recognize that, in many ways, any project (FOSS or otherwise) is in a real sense "orphaned" when the original developer(s) -- its parent(s) -- move on.

But, at least with FOSS, there's mostly no difference between someone getting bored and stopping work on a project, and someone getting hired up and transferring a project's copyrights to a company -- the open version is still out there, and if it's worth it to someone, will get "adopted" and continue to be maintained or even grow.

I say "mostly no difference" because sometimes the open version has to compete with the New And Improved closed version .. in your example of Linus & Linux, the really tough problem would not be losing Linus -- although that would suck, there are others who could, over time, step into his role, or at least something like it. No, the really hassly thing for the FOSS codebase would be that it would need to compete with the closed version that Linus had moved to. It would be a fragmentation/standards problem, kind of -- which version of the kernel (FOSS or "official") would your distro use? or your hosting company support, or nVidia develop for, etc.

In the case of Linux, though, it's actually not realistically possible to close the source, AFAIK; because Linus has never required copyright assignments from contributors, he cannot transfer them. Thousands of people would need to individually agree to transfer the copyright for their individual contributions.

Size of the Project / Consent

[Inkieminstrel]

Doesn't it also depend on the size of the project and consent of contributors?

I mean sure for a handful of developers on a small project it'd be pretty easy to acquire the project, assuming none of them were OS zealots. However, good luck trying to acquire something as big as, say, the Linux kernel.

No, the sky is not falling.

[dutchd00d]

According to http://jasperreports.sourceforge.net/message.html:

JasperReports will stay open source forever

So it's probably premature to cry wolf.

Re:No, the sky is not falling.

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the best-before-end on opened sauce was about a week..?

Author relicenses work! News At 11...

[dominator]

If you are a copyright holder, you've always been able to reassign copyright or relicense your work. This is not earth-shattering news just because it's a FOSS work being relicensed. Relicensing FOSS code is far more common than you'd think.

The good thing here is that the original work is still covered under the TOCs of its original FOSS license, so the original author and others can continue making improvements and otherwise maintain the software.

Otherwise, move along. Nothing to see here.

Someone please, acquire Debian!

[Anonymous Coward]

Would someone *please* acquire Debian now that they are "broke" with only $40,000 in cash and start releasing more often?

Re:Someone please, acquire Debian!

[McGiraf]

Debian does not own the copyrights on most the code in debian, they are juste repackaging it.

So what?

[spiritraveller]

Yes, like any software project, someone can come along, acquire the copyrights and rerelease it under whatever license they want.

The difference with open source is that you have to track down individual contributors. With any popular open source project, it's going to be very difficult to find and get all those contributors to sell you their copyrights.

Even still, versions released prior to the buyout would still be subject to the GPL (for example) and only new versions could be made non-free.

Yes, it can happen. No it isn't anything to worry about.

I'm not sure this is entirely evil

[Noctrnl]

Ok, so, a company bought up an open source project and put the lead developer on the payroll... How is this an inherently bad thing? Yes, I'm fundamentally pro-OSS, but one of the basic ideas is that it makes for better code. It just seems like the purchasing company in this case is taking a step in that direction by buying up a good project and paying a good developer.

Having said all that; I really hope it's not a continuing trend.

Re:I'm not sure this is entirely evil

[Bluesy21]

Having said all that; I really hope it's not a continuing trend.

If own a company and I produce Product A and someone has figured out how to produce a version of Product A that is better than mine; I'm going to buy that company/product. If it happens to be from the Open Source community all the better. Then there are less people to buy off. Unfortunately, this is simply how business operates. It isn't usually a financially sound investment to try and copy an idea without violating copyright laws. It is much easier to just buy said product and try to "reinvent the wheel."

So if Open Source developers are making better products than commercial developers this will be a continuing trend. Especially when it's easier to hire the lead programmer, or buy the rights to their product than to develop your own version.

Re:I'm not sure this is entirely evil

[BraceletWinner]

It isn't usually a financially sound investment to try and copy an idea without violating copyright laws

You can't copyright an idea. If you make a product that reads JPEGs and displays them, I can copy that idea as long as I don't copy the name of your program, exact look and feel, etc...

OSS Biz Model

[korekrash]

Before I get flamed, let me just say I have nothing against open source, I just don't understand how it works financially. Could someone explain how "Open Source" software makes any money? I know that corps use services to make there money, but what about smaller companies and independants? How would software development be profitable? I'm just a hobbiest coder and don't do this for a living, so I don't know all the ins and outs. Can someone explain this to me?

Re:OSS Biz Model

[BraceletWinner]

My company uses an OS library to read a certain file format. We wrote a GUI for it and now sell the whole package. We are also paying the company that owns the copyright to the code to modify it to fit our needs. Both of us are making money off of an Open Source project.

Re:OSS Biz Model

[Otto]

Before I get flamed, let me just say I have nothing against open source, I just don't understand how it works financially. Could someone explain how "Open Source" software makes any money? I know that corps use services to make there money, but what about smaller companies and independants? How would software development be profitable? I'm just a hobbiest coder and don't do this for a living, so I don't know all the ins and outs. Can someone explain this to me?

Well, there's several ways, but all ways of making money are essentially identical: Convince somebody to give you money for services or products rendered. Not really all that complex here.

Maybe some company will hire the guy and pay him to write code for them, and aren't too finicky about releasing that code. They use the code the guy writes, and that's really what they're concerned about.

Or, perhaps the guy writes some software which he gives away, and then sells support for it (ala Red Hat) or sells books on how to use it or something.

Or maybe he just writes Open Source when he's at home as a hobby and gets paid for writing closed source at work (probably the most common situation).

Point being that you can sell anything if you can find somebody to buy it. :)

Re:OSS Biz Model

[korekrash]

Great example, thanks. I didn't even think about "extending" the project for profit. Makes more sense. I shouldn't be too concerned anyway, since my job as an net eng. is the "implementation" part, I don't really care who writes it as long as it isn't $1000 a copy and doesn't put me over budget! Hence my support for OSS! MS just charges too much....

Re:OSS Biz Model

[grumpyman]

I think there's no business model, i.e. pretty much no money involvement (can they accept donation?). It's all about quality software, sharing that fruit, and maybe some fame. I thought the open source idea evolves around:

1. "Gees, these tools sux, let me build my own, in which I can really make good use of"
2. "Hmm... lemme put it on ftp/web. Hmm... others actually find good use of it too"
3. "I may as well release the source coz there're people who's willing to make it even better and put more features..etc."

Re:OSS Biz Model

[releppes]

No, you're not missing anything. I too don't see the financial benifit to Open Source other than companies that use it don't have to pay for it.

I see nothing wrong with the process of someone starting an Open Source project, then deciding to use that very project to make a living. The initially released Open Source code is always availible for all to see and use. The only catch is if someone uses the GPL and others contribute to that project. I don't think the author can then market the final product without consent from ALL the authors.

For the situation stated above, if the plan was for someone to start open then go closed, I think they would be better off with a BSD style license. Using a BSD license means giving up more of your control by letting someone else completely rip off your code, however it also allows you to do the same to others that contribute. It's one of the things that GPL zealots completely hate. However, that's the pros and cons of GPL or BSD.

Getting back to your initial question, I too can't see the financial benifit of being an Open Source author. That doesn't mean I won't contribute to Open Source. It just means I won't kid myself about making a living writing code for free. I think Open Source is a great place for people to like to give. It's also a great place for programmers to cut their teeth. Ironically, many Open Source projects are run much more professionally than in house company projects (my experience only). I also like using Open Source to skirt the problem of having a company claim rights to all work I've ever done. That way, I can still touch the code after I leave said company. Maybe that's a little dishonest, but I also find those company disclaimers to be a bit dishonest too. To each their own.

Re:OSS Biz Model

[The Bubble]

This is closed source development:

Image there were ten companies each with ten software developers. Each company needs the same functionality from a piece of software, so each company has their ten software developers start working on the software. After ten years, the ten companies have produced ten different pieces of software, each with its own strengths and weaknessess. After ten years the ten companies each use their own software to make money.

This is open source development:

Image there were ten companies each with ten software developers. Each company needs the same functionality from a piece of software, so each company has their ten software developers start working on the software. One of the companies decides to license their project-in-progress as F/OSS. Four of the other companies see this, and check it out. Realizing that the first company did a lot of things right, they decide to use the development that the first company did, and all begin working on the same piece of software. After ten years, the ten companies have produced six different pieces of software. Five of them have had ten developers working on them for ten years, one of them has had fifty developers working on them for ten years.

The F/OSS software logically accumulated development at five times the rate of the other projects; thus it reached the same level of production in one-fifth the time. Thus the five companies who worked on the F/OSS project started making money using their software in two years, as opposed to the other five companies that worked on their own software for ten years.

What's more, the F/OSS project accumulated both these fifty _paid_ developers and hobbyist developers, developers from _other_ companies, etc. Thus production rates increase, functionality improves more quickly, and the software can be used earlier for more functions to make more money.

What you have to understand is that F/OSS finds value (whether it be intrinsic or monetary) in the _use_ of software, rather than in the _sale_ of software. The theory is that if developers work together they can produce better software, with software being a tool that each can use to make more money.

~ In service of the Root.

Re:OSS Biz Model

[The Bubble]

Yes, F/OSS projects accept donations all the time. In fact, I'd be really surprised to see a major project that _didn't_ have a "click here to donate" paypal button. ~in service of the Root

Re:OSS Biz Model

[yerM)M]

Here is a financial benefit for you, I (as an Open Source author), can take my code with me. Sure someone else can use it as well if they happen to have a copy or ask me for one. A lot of coding these days is in a service-based economy. Having IP I produce for one client/business translatable to the next earns me more money quicker.

The nice thing about this is once you are in the door there is a snow ball effect. "Hey, I've can solve your problem and I can do it in X days at the cost of Y using this GPL'd piece of code (that you will be given at the end) or I can make a new implementation which you will own that will take 10X days and cost 15Y." Which one would you choose as a business?

Re:Corporate Overloads = Insightful Freudian Slip

[plopez]

"Too much work demanded of too little infrastructure"

sounds like a typical IT department to me :)

It can be tricky...

[Spoke]

It can be tricky to acquire the Copyright an open source project if there are multiple developers involved, as each one will need to agree to the aquisition.

Unless each developer who submits code to the project also turns over the copyright to a single entity, it can only take 1 developer to dissent and prevent the aquisition from happening except under the terms of the original license.

Re:It can be tricky...

[JahToasted]

That's always been a question of mine about the GPL. If someone makes a contribution, do they share copyright with the person who originated the project? If I say fix a typo in some comment somewhere would I have to give permission for any change in the copyright status?

Re:It can be tricky...

[Spoke]

I would think that a type-o or other small one-liners would not get you any copyright sharing.

Writing whole functions or adding new files to the application would give you copyright over those sections.

Re:It can be tricky...

[JahToasted]

but where do you draw the line? ok, fixing one typo doesn't get me copyright sharing, but what if I rename some variables? or optimise just one non-critical function? Kind of a grey area, isn't it?

Indeed

[PsychicX]

Yep, just like Ximian got acquired by Novell and now ships free and non free versions. Or perhaps like Sun's StarOffice and OpenOffice. But nobody seems particularly miffed about StarOffice. It's supposed to be better than OpenOffice so that people will use it instead, right? Come to think of it, SuSE got 'acquired' by Novell too. Where's their non free version? Stop screaming wolf slashdot. It's not "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." anymore. None of this matters, and real nerds, who are supposedly smart people, can hopefully see through the massive ongoing FUD machine that is Slashdot.

Look at Borland and Firebird

[JThaddeus]

This is essentially what Borland did with Interbase. Check the Firebird web site, especially the project history and you'll see how Borland changed their mind but only after the cat was out of the bag.

forking is not the issue, dude

[karmaflux]

They bought the copyright. The GPL is just a license to use copyrighted work. They own the copyright now, and they can license it however the hell they want. Including using a Microsoft-style EULA.

The point is that this is probably the last Free version of this software -- and is the source of the last available code to fork, ever. If the company so decides, nobody will ever get to see source to the newer versions.

Re:forking is not the issue, dude

[Anonymous Coward]

It's GPL, so release your own new free version of the software if you want. What right do you have for this guy to code for you for free?

Re:This isn't the first project to have this happe

[Anonymous Coward]

It DID NOT happen. Ziff Davis was wrong AGAIN.

MySql

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

Does that ring a bell? How about PhP? This was news a few years ago.

Multiple contributors

[aaarrrgggh]

If Bob writes a program, releases it under the GPL, and incorporates contributed code into the project, that's another can of worms. I would think if he wanted to "go private" with the code base at that point he would need to get the permission of everyone who contributed any code, much like Mozilla did. If he couldn't get their permission he would have to rewrite those chunks of code.

No. One person owns the copyright to the overall body of code. Your contributions are just that... gifts. The alternative is to only contribute to projects where the EFF owns the copyright, so a "rogue owner" can't take advantage of your work.

Nature of the beast. The real check and balance is that if a project has a significant portion of outside contributors it doesn't make a very good canidate for "sale," as the maintenance of the package is outside the realm of hte primary contributor...

Re:Multiple contributors

[mindstrm]

It's not that cut & dried. A small bugfix may be a gift, but larger submissions of code are not necessarily so. Unless you can show some kind of transfer of rights from the submitting author, they still retain copyright on their own code. This is an issue that should be addressed by more projects, and is often left untouched.

Also, regarding the EFF... they insist on copyright asignment for contributions.. this also means the EFF could re-license all their code any way they see fit, and nobody can do anything about it.

Re:Multiple contributors

[Anonymous Coward]

No. One person owns the copyright to the overall body of code. Your contributions are just that... gifts.

/me thinks you are incorrect. If I contribute code to Linux (for example), I still own that copyright to that code. If you look any major GPLed project, like Linux (again for example), you see many, many copyright holders to sections of the code.

Re:Multiple contributors

[Anonymous Custard]

No. One person owns the copyright to the overall body of code. Your contributions are just that... gifts.

Wrong. You might have given them as gifts.

But if you didn't, and you released the code under the GPL, then the other guy must have agreed to your licensing terms in order to use your code. You own the copyright to your own portions of the code unless you transfer it.

If the person who owns the copyright to the rest of the code wants to release a non-GPL'd version, he either needs to get your approval, or he needs to remove your portion.

Re:Multiple contributors

[Evro]

No. One person owns the copyright to the overall body of code. Your contributions are just that... gifts. The alternative is to only contribute to projects where the EFF owns the copyright, so a "rogue owner" can't take advantage of your work.

You sure about that? When I said "contribute" I didn't mean "donate," I meant "license to the original author under the terms of the GPL." If the author incorporates my GPL code into his project, his project is GPL from that point forward as long as my GPL code exists in his project. If he wants to license his code under something other than the GPL to someone, he either needs to license my code from me under a non-GPL license (and I have to do the same recursively on down to any contributors I may have had), or rewrite the contributed code. OpenOffice and a few other major projects ask or require you to sign joint-copyright so that they can "defend the copyright" on the entire project. If your "contribution" was a 'donation' as you seemed to suggest, they wouldn't need this waiver.

As for copyright, I own the copyright on code I write until I specifically sign it over to someone else.

Re:Multiple contributors

[mindstrm]

Yes, however, if you simply checked your code into his CVS repository, which is usually teh case, you can't really say you "licensed" your code to him uder the GPL, can you.

Re:Multiple contributors

[cduffy]

If you agreed that your code may be used under the terms of the GPL, yes, you provided him a license.

Now, you check your code into $SOME_GUY's CVS repository with the intent that it become part of a GPLed work. One of two things in happening: An implicit license (for your patch to be covered by the GPL), or an implicit transfer of copyright.

Thing is, copyright transfers in the US must be explicit to be valid -- so what that leaves is Door A.

This is also why folks like the FSF, Digium, etc. require copyright transfer forms from folks who contribute patches.

Re:Multiple contributors

[slavemowgli]

If the author incorporates my GPL code into his project, his project is GPL from that point forward as long as my GPL code exists in his project.

That's a misconception - a common one, admittedly, but it still is not true. If the author incorporates your GPL'ed code into his project, then that means that, if he is not releasing his code under the GPL, he's in violation of the GPL. This, in turn, means that he has to either a) comply with the terms of the GPL by making his code available under the GPL, too, or b) stop using your code; however, the choice is his, and his own code does NOT automatically become GPL'ed. End of story. :)

Re:Multiple contributors

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, however, if you simply checked your code into his CVS repository, which is usually teh case, you can't really say you "licensed" your code to him uder the GPL, can you.

That doesn't make it a gift either. Just like this comment is not a gift to Slashdot. I still "own" the copyright to it.

Re:Multiple contributors

[dr_pump95]

If Bob writes a program, releases it under the GPL, and incorporates contributed code into the project, that's another can of worms. I would think if he wanted to "go private" with the code base at that point he would need to get the permission of everyone who contributed any code, much like Mozilla did. If he couldn't get their permission he would have to rewrite those chunks of code.

This is also how I understand it. One of the ideas I have had recently is to create a company to own the copyright for an open source product, license it under the GPL, and give shares to contributors in exchange for rights to their contributions. If a commercial entity wants to embed the product and be free of GPL restrictions, they pay a license fee to the company and this is distributed to the shareholders (contributors) through dividends.

This approach is primarily intended for 'engine' or network protocol software, where commercial entities might want to use the open source version to ensure compatibility with others.

Thoughts anyone?

Re:Multiple contributors

[cpt kangarooski]

Yes you can. Implied licenses are nothing new. But the law doesn't allow you to assign a copyright -- necessary if you were to gift it in this fashion -- without a written, signed instrument to that effect. 17 USC 204(a) is the relevant provision.

Re:Multiple contributors

[greggman]

Wrong! By default your contributions to a GPLed project are GPLed and the original author cannot distribute your contributions in a non-GPLed manner.

They way companies get around this is to tell you "If you want your contribution to be part of our distribution you have to assign your rights to us, otherwise start your own fork".

As for a high-profile project that works this way see MySQL

Re:Multiple contributors

[Anonymous Coward]

Any project with a CVS repository giving multiple parties write access will certainly have decided some licensing terms for the project and unless stated otherwise, anyone checking non-trivial changes into CVS will be assumed to have licensed them to the project under the terms used by that project.

Trivial changes obviously aren't sufficient to warrant copyright.

Go Read the guys page, you know the link

[big-giant-head]

he says it will remain open source and they will sell enhancements. This seems similar to JBoss. It is open source, BUT if you want consultants, training, or 24x7 support it costs. This is really not a bad way to develop business around open source. For the folks that will read the free docs and figure stuff out on thier own great. For the Corp types that must have training and 24hr support thats there as well.

Re:Go Read the guys page, you know the link

[Anonymous Coward]

If you wrote an impressive program, would you rather get paid to do development or tech support and training? Anyone can train people to use a program or do tech support. The software developer's value is in the development... which you don't want to get paid for? You'd really rather get paid to do tech support and training than software development?

Re:Go Read the guys page, you know the link

[big-giant-head]

The company hires and trains people as consultants, Trainers and tech support. The developers still develop the software, again just like JBoss. The Jboss development guys seldom (at least now a days) do stints as travelling consultants. They manage and develop the software. It's just that now they have the money to pay themselves and hire other folks to do the 'dirty' work.

mono project

[Tbone123]

Speaking of open source... what's with www.mono.net??? Does this mean that Novell's mono project has hit the wall??

Re:mono project

[the_germ]

http://www.mono-project.com/ is the official homepage of the Mono project.

Re:mono project

[Tbone123]

Phew.. thanks for the info. I wonder how much the site is selling for. I'm guessing about $50k. Any higher offers?? hehe

OT

[Anonymous Coward]

From link in your sig:
- You use an IANAx acronym (and spell out what it means in parentheses next to it.) If you have to spell out the acryonym, why even bother?

That has to be one of the dumbest things on Slashdot. IANACTATWPPOS (I am not a complainer talking about the way people post on slashdot) but this kind of stuff just gets ridiculus!

I agree with you 100%

Re:Old Version?

[m50d]

If you're a developer, you can pick it up and work on it, and make it more of what you want than the commercial version is.

Re:All Slashdot morons, attention

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you can't change its license to something else.
Wrong. As the copyright holder you can change the license. What you can't do is change the license of already released versions.

Hrm, there's a wrinkle here, I think

[shatfield]

If a company hires the developer (whether "lead developer" or not) of a project and that developer takes the GPL'd source code and creates a new closed source project out of it for this new company he works for, he can't distribute the new program without also adhering to the GPL... his program is based off of an older version of itself that contains GPL'd code.

Isn't that correct?

Re:Hrm, there's a wrinkle here, I think

[the_germ]

No, he ows the copyright, so he can do with it whatever he wants - including to start a commercial fork.

Others could not do that, but the copyright owner can!

Re:Hrm, there's a wrinkle here, I think

[slcdb]

IANAL, but I though I'd add to the other poster's comments, just to clarify.

The creator (aka "lead developer") owns the copyright to the software. The GPL does not transfer ownership of the copyright. All it does is license the software for others to use. GPL or no GPL, the copyright stays firmly in the hands of the creator.

The creator, of course, does not need to license the software to himself. That would be silly. So the creator, unlike everyone else, is NOT obligated to abide by the "licensee" terms of the GPL. The creator must still uphold his end of the GPL, which is to ensure that the software AS IT WAS when it was licensed to the licensee remains licensed to the licensee as long as the licensee abides by the terms of the GPL.

However, the creator can re-license NEW versions of the software under any license he chooses.

In theory, I imagine you could create a license which could restrict the creator's rights to license future versions of the software. This would be akin to a "promise" to not license the software EVER under anything but, say, the GPL. The GPL as it stands, however, has no such clause, and I can't imagine that most creators would want to tie their hands in such a way.

Re:Hrm, there's a wrinkle here, I think

[shatfield]

I knew something didn't smell right about what I was saying, but to my sleep deprived, caffeine riddled mind, it made perfect sense ;-)

Thanks for the clarification!
-Steven

Re:Hrm, there's a wrinkle here, I think

[natmsincome.com]

There is no way you'd be able to add a clause to a license so that they can't license it as something else if they are the original owner. After all they own the copyright and are able to liceense it to anyone else under any license they like (the GPL being one of them)

What you can do is get a contract signed in writting. This is similar to what FSF does when copyright is signed over to it. While it gets the copyright it enters into a contract with the original owner basically saying that it can't be relicensed.

Realse that this is contract law not a license.

No problem! The new products are "complimentary"

[14erCleaner]

According to the JasperReports page:

A new company called JasperSoft (http://www.jaspersoft.com) has formed to invest in JasperReports and offer support, services and complimentary commercial products for JasperReports.

Unless, of course, he meant "complementary"...

Seriously, the above statement seems to be saying that they will be offering mostly support and add-ons, not taking the core product private. The JasperReports software is currently under the LGPL, so there is some assurance that the original will still be available in the future, if anybody cares enough to fork the project.

Turck

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone remember what happened to Turck Mmcache when Zend hired the lead developer? ....

Good example

[Dancin_Santa]

That is a good example. But it's also a case of a company purposefully killing off the project (which is a feat in itself). I doubt that most project acquisitions are done specifically for that purpose, though.

Re:Good example

[BobPaul]

I doubt that most project acquisitions are done specifically for that purpose, though.

They are when you buy a competitor. Look at Oracle's origional statements when it announced they were buying PeopleSoft. They intended to kill off the project.

I fully expect a lot of the current macromedia software to disappear as well. Definately Fireworks will completely disappear, perhaps with whatever features it has that Adobe ImageReady doesn't will be rolled in, but Fireworks is gone, guarenteed.

Re:Good example

[Dancin_Santa]

That is true. However, in the case of an Open Source project, it is very difficult to kill off the original project. After all, the original source is still out there and still open. I guess you could have a situation where no one has a copy of the original opened source, but how many of those projects are popular/useful enough to be acquired?

In the end, for the most part, open source projects are not acquired. The licensing issues are pretty onerous and there really isn't a significant benefit to having a private closed source version of it.

Not very good recommendation

[Spy der Mann]

Take a look at SourceForge. The project was acquired by some company and abandoned.

Another company forked, and brought us GForge, which incorporates SVN and other improvements. Too bad GForge isn't used by the SourceForge site itself.

Food for thought.

Re:Not very good recommendation

[slavemowgli]

Abandoned? Hmm, I always thought that SourceForge was still being developed (as "SourceForge Enterprise Edition") and sold by VA Software; the sourceforge.net site is still running on a pretty old version (2.8, IIRC, whereas the current EE is 4.1 or so), but the product is being developed and sold - only that it's not free software anymore (the version used to run sourceforge.net was the last that was GPL'ed).

I'm not sure anymore about the details, though, so... by all means, correct me if I'm wrong.

Re:Not very good recommendation

[Spy der Mann]

http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=6 87783&forum_id=21304

Read, and behold.

Hibernate

[aclute]

The O/R mapping tool Hibernate was essentialy acquired by JBoss.

They hired the lead developer Gavin King, and now pay him, and part of his team, salaries to help further the product, under the guise of helping JBoss's business objectives.

They don't even have to distribute it.

[Anonymous Coward]

"and they do still need to provide access to the source if it was under the GPL"

The author's right to use the code does not depend on the GPL. Therefore, the author does not even have to continue to distribute the code in any manner and does not have to distribute the source code. (Of course, he can't continue to use the GPL unless he does distribute the source code.)

The fly in the ointment is that if anyone else has made a contribution to the code, the main developer has to remove the contributed code before taking his own code private.

MOD UP

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent is pretty much exploding the myth that simply because something is OSS now, doesn't mean it always will be. A mere loophole in the original license, or a problem with the original license that makes it technically illegal, could undermine the whole thing.

Uhm, what's new?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this different from, say, when Sun bought the company that created JXTA?

Relicencing happens

[Anonymous Coward]

This sort of thing happens from time to time. If you "own" all the copyrights then you do what you like with a project. Plenty of projects have started open and gone closed. That doesn't tend to stop the last free version being open source - it just means that *new* versions won't be. If something is popular AND has savvy developer users they can fork off from the last free version.

Was the ZDnet author's memory so short as to forget that SSH communications closed SSH when they produced their commericial version of SSH2 - History of SSH? Another project that this has "happened" to is TuxRacer but I don't think that had many outside contributions. I don't see the big deal - people should be allowed to change their mind if they are the copyright owners!

Palm Usenet newsreader "Yanoff" did this, too!

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out my story (fuller details in the "manul" section):
http://www.PalmYanoff.com

GCC?

[Anonymous Coward]

This could happen to GCC!! The FSF owns copyrights to all of the code (every contributor has to assign them their copyright). RMS could have been tricking us all along!!!

Quality

[lisaparratt]

The problem of course is that if the non-free version gets good, others will simply fork.

This assumes that a company that dedicates full time resources to a product is unable to produce anything that would beat the part time input of volunteers.

Re:Quality

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like Windows and Linux? *rimshot*

Re:Quality

[Anonymous Coward]

"This assumes that a company that dedicates full time resources to a product is unable to produce anything that would beat the part time input of volunteers."

You mean like MS (windows) vs. volunteers (linux?)

~;-)

all the best,

drew

( zotz )

Re:Quality

[lisaparratt]

Actually, I was thinking OS X 8;P

Tora anyone

[IvanHo]

Quest basically acquired Tora to kill-off one of the biggest "competitors" to their Toad product.

A GPL version is still available from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/tora/

But, for how long? Will development continue?

Re:Tora anyone

[Anonymous Coward]

It'll continue for as long as people want to work on it.

This is something being presented as radical when it isn't.

-- ac

This isn't the first time

[EvilStein]

Remember that little piece of software called SpamAssassin? And Vipul's Razor?

Both "bought up" by corporations, but the free versions are still very much alive and kicking.

At least these JasperSoft folks have tried to answer the obvious questions and they'd continue with the free version.

How is this news?

[internic]

How is this news to anyone? I must be missing something. Yes, an open source project can be acquired if every contributor agrees (licensing the their contributions to the company under a different license). And even then, the last free version is still around to be used and improved. I don't think this is some big "threat" to open source, given that it would only be feasible in a project where there weren't any major contributors to the project devoted to keeping it open. Sure it's possible, and it may happen now and again, but it doesn't seem like such a big deal to me.

I guess I thought the point of GPL and similar licenses was that no one would be able to profit off your code without your consent. This article doesn't seem to really challenge that. I guess you could make a small contribution to a project, and then it could be privatized without your portion (with replacement code written by someone else). But that doesn't seem like a very significant loss, given that you'd still have access to the last free version, and they'd have to redo your work. Not to mention that I'd think this would be risky ground for a company due to possible copyright infringement suits over the replacement code.

Re:How is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

guess I thought the point of GPL and similar licenses was that no one would be able to profit off your code without your consent.
You can still profit from OSS software (GPLed or not) with out consent of the devs.

Re:How is this news?

[internic]

Sorry, I didn't make myself clear. I meant profit off of a closed-source derivative of your code. Yes, of course you can profit using open source software. The point is that the GPL ensures you give back (in code) to people who helped create the software.

Re:Corporate Overloads = Insightful Freudian Slip

[50m31sl4sh.]

It is a typo -- sure, he meant corporate overlords.

I, for one... Oh, wait.

Has happened before, nothing new

[linuxtelephony]

OpenH323 is an open source project that was acquired by a company in CA, Quicknet. For a while, the lead developers from Australia also worked for Quicknet. Quicknet also open sourced their telephony driver, getting it into the Linux kernel. Though, they are not the shining example they started out as; however, this forum is not the place for that discussion.

One thing to be wary of -- when a corporate entity takes over an open source project, the health of the project may become linked with the health of the corporate entity. One of the reasons I feel these entities also hire the primary project developer or developers is to keep them from forking the project (depending on the terms of the sale and the license of the project). However, for most open source projects, I would say it is possible for the community to fork the project, should they desire. My personal opinion is that regular code snap shots of the acquired project should be archived (assuming the license doesn't change to a proprietary one after acquisition) by someone in the project's or open source community should things not work out with the new "owner" of the project. That way, should something happen to the company, there would be "offsite" backups to allow the project to continue (or be easily forked).

Re:Old Version?

[$1uck]

Because it does what you want it to do. Old code isn't necessarily broken code.

So what you're saying is ...

[NixLuver]

that the developer will have to keep improving the product in order to keep making money? Woo. Color me sad; I have to work every day to make money. Most people do.

I don't want to sound like a Stallman clone; I certainly believe software authors (in fact, media creators of all types) deserve reasonable remuneration when their creations produce value in a commercial sense, but by the same token, I'm not feeling sorry for someone who has to work to maintain his or her income stream.

Re:This isn't the first project to have this happe

[Mynister]

didn't this happen to Big Brother the network monitoring tool. www.bb4.org is the noncomerical version and www.bb4.com is the commercial version. Isnt this the same thing?

Re:This isn't the first project to have this happe

[Enrico Pulatzo]

So long as the code's easy to get involved with. Look at the Mozilla project, it's been fairly successful, but how many of its developers are non-Netscape people?

for 5 easy payments...

[l4m3z0r]

Send me 5 easy payments of 29.99 and you too can be making big bucks with open source. In my open source training program you will hear how individuals like yourself have increased there net worth by millions of dollars. And whats more is that it requires a minimal amount of time invested. Just listen to the testimony:

I spend about 15 hours a week on my open source business and last month I cleared 34,000 dollars in profit. And its all thanks to Lamer's open source training program. - seanz0r

Act today and I'll knock off one of the 5 payments. My program covers all aspects of open source development, services, support and training. You will have the tools you need to build a successful future.

Don't wait another minute... ACT NOW!!!

Sincerely,
Lamer Sheets

LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

AMD is German!

Re:LOL

[jusdisgi]

AMD is German!

Um, no.

AMD is and always has been a U.S. corporation, headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA from the very first year of its existence. They do have a fab in Dresden, but that makes them German about as much as Nike's sweatshops make them Chinese.

Re:LOL

[hawk]

Leading, of course, to that Disney classic, The Computer That Wore Tennis Shoes.

:)

hawk, dating himself

Re:LOL

[B'Trey]

Haven't you heard? That's been modernized, renamed and re-released. It's now called The Dell Desktop With Intel Inside Running Windows XP That Wore Levis and Air Nikes, Brought To You By PepsiCo, Available at Amazon.Com.

Re:LOL

[MyLongNickName]

hawk, dating himself

Okay... I know most Slashdotters have trouble finding a woman.... But this is a new low.

Re:LOL

[pommiekiwifruit]

Intel

You forgot...

Ding! bong bing bong bing!

Scare Mongering

[Concern]

It's essentially why this sounds like scare mongering to me.

I take these finer points about the GPL to be good things.

"Acquiring" an open source project and "orphaning" free code are just inappropriate adjectives for the everyday, ordinary activities of developers coming and going from a FS/OS project.

Add to this, as you point out, the difficulty of developing a consensus among copyright owners and although the article is basically correct, this journalist is starting to sound especially desperate to be "controvertial."

At the end of the day, there will always be problems the market will solve that the FS/OS community can't or won't. Both models are here to stay, and the two have an interaction that is (taking a longer view) basically healthy, in no small part because of the generally good design of the GPL.

Copyright Assignment at FSF

[cheesedog]

The FSF describes, generally, how assignment of copyright to the FSF works for GNU projects, but I am having a devil of a time finding a copy of the assignment questionnaire that they mention.

Does anyone know what this thing looks like? Surely it involves more than emailing the maintainer and saying "I assign the copyright of my contribution to the FSF?"

Re:Copyright Assignment at FSF

[cheesedog]

Found it. Here's an example.

So why is this not easily accessible at www.fsf.org?

Re:Copyright Assignment at FSF

[k98sven]

The FSF describes, generally, how assignment of copyright to the FSF works for GNU projects, but I am having a devil of a time finding a copy of the assignment questionnaire that they mention.

Yes, that's because the FSF purposefully doesn't have them available online. The reason is that the FSF has several different assignment forms depending on what kind project you are contributing to (e.g. original work or an implemenatation of something else), on what kind of contribution you're making (new original code or old code) and depending on whether your employer (if any) possibly has claims to your work.

Too many people were filing the wrong forms, and it was wasting time.

Does anyone know what this thing looks like? Surely it involves more than emailing the maintainer and saying "I assign the copyright of my contribution to the FSF?"

Yes, they want a paper form, signed and mailed. Typically it'll require you to confirm that all your contributions are your own original work and that your employer does not have claims to your work.
(This being the form for original contributions where the employer has no claim. If you have an employer who might have a claim they want a different form where the employer waives all claims.)

Re:For-profit open source?

[digitaldc]

Didn't mean to sound like a troll here, honestly was trying to get a response from current Linux users about their experiences.
Sorry about that!

No trademark license = danger

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

You are not secure. You can get nabbed for trademark infringement.

Let's say Linux gets acquired (bad example because of the number of copyright holders, but I'll use it because it is familiar).

Let's say you've been making a distribution of Linux.

They can't take away the license to the code, but the GPL, etc doesn't give you a trademark license, so you are now infringing unless you rename everything in your product from Linux to something else.

And I have heard of a linux company telling people they can't use their trademark recently.

Re:No trademark license = danger

[Fulcrum of Evil]

They can't take away the license to the code, but the GPL, etc doesn't give you a trademark license, so you are now infringing unless you rename everything in your product from Linux to something else.

I would dispute that - the product you're distributing is in fact Linux. therefore, calling it Linux is not going to dilute anybody's trademark. It'd be different if you made another unix clone and called that Linux.

And I have heard of a linux company telling people they can't use their trademark recently.

I would imagine that this claim centered around that company's trademark and not the Linux name.

Re:No trademark license = danger

[cpt kangarooski]

No, trademarks require that the mark identify a particular source of goods. A trademark absolutely cannot identify the good itself, without becoming generic and therefore unprotectable.

This is why trademarks on patented and copyrighted materials are not in an ideal position. Once the patent or copyright expires, everyone can use the name by which the good is publicly identified to continue to identify that good.

This is why it's a good idea to use the trademark as an adjective on the generic name. For example, let's say that the book 'Foo' had been copyrighted. Setting aside that you can't trademark the name of a single work anyway (since it unavoidably indicates the work, not the source), it would be best for you to say 'FT Lofaro Jr.'s 'Foo,'' since once that book hits the public domain, I have a perfect right to reprint it and use its name, but not your source-identifying name. Thus my copy could be 'Foo,' or 'cpt kangarooski's 'Foo.''

You might want to look over the Shredded Wheat case, which is well known. It dealt with a patent, rather than a copyright, but the analysis is the same either way, since we're not talking about functionality here.

Re:No trademark license = danger

[timmyf2371]

How different are the two situations in reality though?

You say:
the product you're distributing is in fact Linux. therefore, calling it Linux is not going to dilute anybody's trademark.

The same could be said for Redhat Linux - the product being distributed is Redhat Linux just as the product being distributed in the first case is Linux. And yes, Linux is a trademark registered to Linus himself.

A non-free version of software? On SOURCEFORGE?

[sulli]

I have never heard of anything like this before.

I, For One, Welcome Our New Overloads

[JamieKitson]

Oh wait...

Article missleading: project not exactly bought!

[Arkan]

The article author should have checked the relevant URL: http://jasperreports.sourceforge.net/message.html

It says, black on white, that the company "(...)called JasperSoft (http://www.jaspersoft.com) has formed to invest in JasperReports(...)". "Has formed to invest in". Not "has bought the project". The project has spawned a company, that it.

Again, a wannabee journalist spinning some "news" on the basis that its brainwashed readers won't read the original announcement.

Could some please teach those guys how to read, and how to report unpartially?

--
Arkan

ZDNet and others are mis-representing this

[jwd-oh]

If people read what actually is happening is that the lead developer is now Founder and Chief Architect of JasperSoft.

That is very different that someone buying the code and hiring the lead developer.

Firebird and Mis-interpretation

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say that you've got the wrong end of the wrong end of the script. Teodore says that they will keep supporting both and open and advanced (closed) version of his software. This reminds me of the whole borland / firebird mess.

At the end of the day, if the software arose out of necessity for an open application in a given domain, and bacame popular for the same reason. The original code base will simply get forked and maintained by a group of people who need it as much and are not lured into a commercial version.

The software happend to fill a need and with, or without, the original instigator, the beauty is that there is nothing to stop some other developers from taking over. Looking at firebird, you can even expect Teodore to start contributing to the open effort if he finds his idea too corrupted.

my 0.02 eur cents.

Three examples:

[Anonymous Coward]

Firebird vs Interbase.
Mozilla vs Netscape.
OpenSSH vs SSH2.

Access to source

[Phong]

I believe that the original poster meant that, if they had distributed some binaries based on GPL-software to some folks before the code when private, there is still an obligation to provide that old version of the source code (not any new code) as per the licence it was distributed under. In other words, a buy-out to make the code proprietary doesn't affect access to prior Open Source distributions of the code.

Re:Access to source

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that's not true.

The owner of the copyright in a piece of software has exclusive rights. When we say he licenses the work to others, what he does is grant permission to others to use the work in ways which otherwise violate his excusive rights.

So, if I write a book, and I tell you: "You can perform my book publically any Saturday," what I've done is grant you permission to do something which the law prohibits you from doing (public performance of my work).

Now, in my example license, there's a condition: not just any public performance is allowed! Only public performance on Saturdays. So, on Monday, you violate my copyright by performing my book. But not on Saturdays.

It's important to note, however, that this condition does not create a contract. For a contract to exist there must be, among other things, consideration. When you agree to my license, you give up nothing: you never had the right to perform the work at all, much less on non-Saturdays, so "agreeing" to perform only on Saturdays in exchange for the right to perform is not an exchange for anything. Ergo, we have no contract. This means, incidentally, that I owe you nothing under the license. It's charity.

I can make up all kinds of conditions for my licenses. No derivative works unless you give everyone who reads your derivation a lollipop. So, now you can, say, translate my work into French, but only if you give everyone who reads it a lollipop. Again, if you "accept" this license, and translate my work into French, you're obligated to give its readers lollipops or you're violating my exclusive right to make derivative works. I, however, am not obligated to give you a lollipop if I derive my work. We have no contract that compels me, and I don't need a license from myself, obviously, since the exclusive rights that require you to have a license in the first place are vested in me.

(And, as a corollary, the requirement that you hand out lollipops for permission to translate my work does not create a contract between your readers and you, eg to give them lollipops. But, your failure to do so gives me cause of action against you under copyright law. So, if you distribute GPL'd binaries and refuse to distribute source, the people to whom you distribute binaries have no cause against you, but the owner of the GPL'd work does.)

Now, let's bring this outlandishness home:

If I license software to you under the GPL, you have no other basis to commit acts that violate my exclusive rights -- such as distribute or modify my work. You must "accept" the GPL in order to get permission to do these things. But, your acceptance is not a contract between you and I, and it does not compel me to do anything for you. I can do whatever I want with my software because I own the copyright in it.

In other words, I think neither you nor the OP have any idea what you're talking about.

cpt. kangarooski, come correct me ;)

Re:Access to source

[Phong]

What you've said is true, it just misses some of the subtleties (which, admittedly, were not fleshed out in my comment). For instance:

Let's first assume that the GPLed code for project XYZZY has multiple owners, since multiple people had been contributing to it. Let's further assume that the majority owner of the software, Plugh, had made binary distributions that did not include source (the GPL provides a license to do this even though the code is not 100% owned by Plugh). Finally, let's assume that Plugh has now purchased some of these copyrighted chunks and replaced the rest with their own code so that they can take the remaining source for XYZZY private. The GPL states that for the prior binary distributions to be in compliance with the GPL that the source for that distribution must be made available on request for a certain number of years. This obligation would still be in effect or the minority copyright holders would be able to claim that the conditions of the GPL had not been met, and thus the prior distribution of a binary was in violation of their copyright. Remember this is just the old code as used to make old binaries, not anything that was added after the code went private.

Of course, if there were no minority copyright holders in the GPLed source, then the full owner of the source didn't need the GPL for their prior binary distributions, so they are not obligated to provide the old source code on request. Alternately, if they never made binary distributions (just released the source), their obligations to any minority copyright holders would have already been fullfilled by the fact that they had been providing the source all along.

Nessus doing this too

[ASP]

Tenable is basically doing this to Nessus. They've made most of the scripts non-GPL. The engine might remain GPL, but all the scripts (where the real value is) aren't. They've effectively made a GPL product proprietary by making what it depends on proprietary.

Re:Old Version?

[ThosLives]

I second that!

I actually hate upgrading certain things - software (especially MS Office apps - where the heck did they move that setting? What's with help trying to connect to the Web?), cell phones (mine's still from 2001 - and no I don't need a camera, wireless, GPS, web-browsing, virus-catching phone thank you!), and automobiles.

Just because they make new cars every year doesn't mean mine doesn't do its job...

Berlin Wall all over again...

[BrainSurgeon]

Looks like Communism is falling to Capitalism once more....

Urheberrecht translated.

[infonography]

For clarification purposes here is the full text translated In Germany one proceeds from a uniform copyright, with which the protection of the material as well as the economic interests are closely with each other connected (so-called monistische theory). Copyright is therefore explained for in principle untransferable. Copyright is by the copyright law and used patent rights ( copyright law - UrhG) of 1965 regulated, last extends by the law for the regulation of the copyright in the information society of 2003 , which particularly with Multimedia applications is concerned. It belongs to the commercial legal protection and thus to private law .

Re:This isn't the first project to have this happe

[jarich]

didn't this happen to Big Brother the network monitoring tool

Sure, it doesn't always happen.. you didn't do it.

You could have though, right? In my department at work, we needed a Java coverage tool and I prefer open source. JCoverage was largely dead, so Mark (a co-worker) forked it. Now Cobertura has lots of involved folks and is growing well.

http://cobertura.sourceforge.net/faq.html

If your favorite open source project is dying, fork it, announce it on Freshmeat and see if you can get the community behind it. You don't have to do all the work, but you do have to get the ball rolling.

Am I the only one...?

[metamechanical]

Am I the only one who had to read this twice? "Can an open source project be acquired? ZDNet's Between The Lines says yes, one just did." Just did what? Just did be acquired? How about "one just was," as in "one just was acquired". Makes a lot more sense, no?

Same thing just happened to Netjuke.

[/dev/trash]

of course there was no talk of getting all the contributors permission.

Re:Same thing just happened to Netjuke.

[Anonymous Coward]

And who's permission would that be? The entire open source community? It's really up to the project admins to do this, as the projects for all practical purposes are there's. I applaud what they did, they didn't commercialize, they merged...

Doesn't GPL binary equal access to sources?

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm. Don't you still have the binary somewhere? Shouldn't you be able to obtain sources to that binary according to the GPL?

I don't see how much this could be a problem in an GPL software as long as someone still wants to use it and has the binary.

Re:Doesn't GPL binary equal access to sources?

[sylvandb]

Umm. Don't you still have the binary somewhere? Shouldn't you be able to obtain sources to that binary according to the GPL?

I don't see how much this could be a problem in an GPL software as long as someone still wants to use it and has the binary.

From where will you acquire the sources? The original author will not provide sources (has said "they are lost").

Legally the GPL would only require someone that is distributing the binary to distribute sources. However if that is not possible, there is no recourse other than to prevent them from distributing the binary.

sdb

Re:Doesn't GPL binary equal access to sources?

[kasperd]

Shouldn't you be able to obtain sources to that binary according to the GPL?

Not necesarilly. If binary and sources are made available for download in the same place, it is your own responsibility to remember to download both. If you download only the binary and only too late realize, that you wanted the source as well, it is though luck. Besides even if someone did not provide the source as required only the authors of the binary code being distributed can sue him about it.

As long as the project has only a single author, he can basically do what he wants. (The same applies if all the authors agree).

Yawn...

[soupdevil]

This is only one of a million different reasons a one-person project can be orphaned from an OSS viewpoint...
1. Girlfriend demands more of author's time
2. That new Role-playing game
3. New, more exciting projects
4. Author dies
5. Etc.

Re:Yawn...

[drinkypoo]

the same things can happen to a closed software project - but then you don't have source and there is nothing you can do to save the product, no matter how expensive... except of course buy it from the author, but I'm talking about long-forgotten software projects here.

This is the FOSS equivalent of an IPO

[Un pobre guey]

This is yet another way to make money from FOSS. A rather attractive one, I might add.

What's the point of your sig?

[Some Random Username]

It seems pretty dumb.

Re:What's the point of your sig?

[MarkByers]

I am guessing that it's part of a Google Bomb. But it doesn't work yet.

Happened to SSH...

[BookRead]

IIRC this happened to the original version of SSH. It was originally an Open Source project, then later versions were progressively closed down until SSH Communications took it proprietary. The BSD folks picked up the last version that was truly open and made OpenSSH. Of course, one of the things that allowed it to work was that it became a standard that could be written to.

Did any read the JasperReports Website?

[Stone316]

"JasperSoft will help to increase the investment in JasperReports by adding full-time professional open source developers to the project. JasperReports will stay open source forever, and its advancement will accelerate with the additional resources now being applied to it. JasperSoft and I are committed to investing in, and building the best open source reporting products available. "

Basically they hired the lead the developer, going to build a team around him and sell support and additional services...

This whole article and thread are misleading and just more anti-OSS FUD!

Re:Did any read the JasperReports Website?

[grozzie2]

The problem with a lot of software developers today, is they are still stuck in the mindset of 'sell the box to make the money'. They days of selling shrink-wrap are numbered, the big companies have seen this coming for a long time. The real revenue from software, is after sale service and support.

The oss model provides a fundamental shift in mindset that a lot of folks just 'dont get'. It takes the 'sale' out of the equation, and dumps all of the revenue into the 'service and support' category. For those who dont believe this is a viable business model, I advise you to take a look at the books over at Redhat, they are a matter of public record.

Mysql is probably the best known enterprise operating on this philosophy to deliver an application (vs rh delivering the os and associated apps). Some would say they are successful based on deployment, others would say based on revenues, and yet more will say it's not really a 'viable business'. All the analyst and sideline talk is cheap, the bottom line is the product, and i haven't heard horror stories of starving/overworked developers over at Mysql. I've heard lots of these stories coming out of EA.

For JasperSoft the real issue will be 'what is the value add they have for the product, and will the corporate world see enough value, to step up and purchase the value add?' If the answer to that question is yes, they will prosper, if it's not, they will wither and die, the market will choose.

Can this business model work? ofc it can. Just ask IBM how they do with a rebadged and value added apache based web system. Check out Redhat while you are at it. Then again, can the model fail? Sure can, take a look at SCO (formerly Caldera).

The question in this case is NOT wether or not JasperSoft started with an open source base, or a proprietary base. It's how they manage thier resources (capital, developers, sales, etc) after they start, and can they leverage those resources into a revenue stream that surpasses the burn rate. If they succeed in developing revenues that surpass the burn rate, the company will prosper, otherwise it'll wither and die. Actual development is but a small part of a successful company, and wether or not the starting foundation was open or closed source, is an even smaller part of the entire picture.

IP Darwinism

[ScrappyLaptop]

...you really can't get much more Free than that. Somewhat in reference to the "American Dream" thread: Freedom includes the right to die, to fail, and to not have a safety net. In fact, it requires that those possibilities exist and therefore happen from time to time, given a limited set of resources.

Just like an OSS project will spring forth if the need arises, once that need is gone there is no necessity for the project to exist, let alone continue growing. However, as long as one OSS developer still exists that has a need for the project (see "ecological niche"), the project will live. If it dies and then someday the need arises, a project very similar will arise in an example of parallel evolution.

What the GPL actually says

[jtotheh]

Section 2b of the GPL is below:

You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.

Doesn't this make it definite that you cannot fork a GPLed project into a closed source one, you would have to rewrite it first?

Re:What the GPL actually says

[tweek]

The original license holder can do whatever he wants with it. Take a look at mozilla or any other hybrid license product. The original license holder can make a commercial version of his own GPL project at the same time as GPL version.

If he has approval of the committers, he can actually import all the changes to the opensource version into the commercial product. He can even add proprietary features to his commercial version at will without adding them to the GPL version.

Again, he's the original license holder.

Bah, assumptions.

[Jahf]

The problem of course is that if the non-free version gets good, others will simply fork.

"Of course" ... one of the biggest assumptions around. And it almost always shows bias.

Besides, even if a GPL'ed project were to release later versions under a different license (and that is what you are talking about here ... even GPL programs are copywritten, but they have a very different license than most software) and later the open source version was forked an improved chances are good that 9[0-9]% of the people interested in that software would still only hear about the commercial version. EVEN if the open source version were markedly better.

The reasons:

1) There isn't much incentive to aquire a piece of code and the author's time unless it has demonstrable fiscal value to do so.

2) If the company has seen the potential and aquired something like this then chances are good that they are either: ... A) Marketing it significantly (and if properly, to the right audience)

or ... B) Have a niche market or OEM-style market that is going to be specifically interested in either closed-source value adds, support, or something else that that market doesn't feel they can get from open source (meaning even IF a customer had heard of the open source project, they would still have a tendency to the closed).

3) Few projects are small enough that a single author owns all the code in it. Projects like Mozilla or Linux will never (never say never, but still) have true privately owned closed source forks (they may ADD things but the main code will still be out there and alive). Therefore the big projects people tend to think of are not applicable here.

4) Unless there is a giant clamor for it in the open source community, chances are only a handful (or fingerful in some cases) of people will be working on it. If the commercial venture has even middlin resources, they'll be able to out do or -redo- anything the open source version can. ...

Besides, a simple name change can do wonders for something like this ... take the project, enhance it with commercial resources the original never had, change the name (Mosaic, Netscape ... Mozilla, Netscape ... Netscape, Iplanet/AOLServer) and go market it. If you're successful and have a good product, when your competition hears about the open source version they'll likely think the open source project was an imitation. ...

(NOTE: I work for a company who creates, contributes and distributes both open source and closed source projects with a tendency to the former ... I am not anti-open source ... far from it ... but biased comments like the one at the beginning of this show an overly simplistic view of a very complex market and if open source is to thrive people need to understand the mechanics better).

one contributor vs. more than one

[theonlyholle]

Where it gets interesting when it comes to "acquiring" an OSS project is when we think about a hypothetical situation where there is not just one main programmer or a few programmers who are willing to be hired to produce a closed-source version (and yes, I know this is not even the case with JasperReport), but a whole bunch of contributors who have made enhancements to the code in various places over the years. Each one of them owns the rights to hisn modifications, so I would think that once a project had reached a certain popularity not just among users, but also among contributors, it might become too difficult to produce a closed source version without having to rewrite most of the code to avoid problems with former contributors. So I guess we all just need to contribute more to our favourite projects... ;)

happened with Sendmail and Bind

[emptybody]

Sendmail has a commercial product with a bunch of features for people who like that sort of thing.

Course their pricing is off the wall.
I couldnt believe the FUD their sales skunks were telling the windows fools in my previous job.

I convinced the company to save the $Kash and we went with the standby from sendmail.org.

NOOBIE...

[Famatra]

...question I have from your quote:

"My lesson leared from this, is to keep a copy of the source for anything and everything in which I am even a little bit interested."

Is it enough to download the file called 'source' at sourceforge, if it is there, or is it better to get the source code via CVS? Are there drawbacks to either way?

I love free / open source software but I haven't really compiled anything from the source code. After reading what you said I believe I will, at the minimum, start download the source as well from now on.

Re:NOOBIE...

[sylvandb]

Is it enough to download the file called 'source' at sourceforge, if it is there, or is it better to get the source code via CVS? Are there drawbacks to either way?

Usually downloading the "source" release would be sufficient. Some projects do not make a source release, and CVS is the only alternative. Some do not use CVS but do provide a source release. I usually grab the source release if it is available, unless I know that CVS is more current.

sdb

This is new?

[Anonymous Coward]

Openh323 was sold a number of years ago under similar conditions... then reality hit.

Re:Old Version?

[Anonymous Coward]

I also agree. Some applications (especially security ones) require active development. However, there are many, many applications I use that I don't want to upgrade. If a new version never comes out, I really don't care. They do exactly what I need them to do. I don't always need more features (bloat).

Comments from the horses mouth

[bearklaw]

Hi all, I'm an employee at JasperSoft, and I would like to take some time to clear up some misconceptions going around in this discussion about JasperReports and JasperSoft. First off, nobody ever said anything about JasperReports becoming closed source. JasperReports will always remain open source, and the open source projectwill continue to be enhanced. We are helping Teodor Danciu (the author of JasperReports) devote more time to JasperReports and bring on more contributers. Frankly, to acquire all the rights to a successful open source project and then close the source would be insane - what's the point? Take a look as JBoss as an example of a company doing similar work. They have "acquired" Hibernate, Nukes, jBPM, etc in a manner very similar to what we have done with JasperReports. I think there is concern here because JBoss is an open source company, and the ZD story calls us "a commercial software company". We (and JBoss) are both - a commercial company that offers open source software. The commercial side makes its profit by selling support and services, and possibly add-on functionality. Personally I think a lot of the discussion here is ignoring the real question - "what does the acquisition mean to current users of JasperReports?" The heart and soul of an open source project consist of the developers AND the community using and enhancing the project. What does JasperSoft mean to the JasperReports users? It means that JasperReports development will continue, and that Teodor Danciu will spend more time working on it than he could previously. It means people who want to use JasperReports but require support will have a place to go to. -Barry Klawans

Re:All Slashdot morons, attention

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no point to Slashdot. Why not lets go watch TV instead?

tuxracer

[lahvak]

Nothing new here. The same thing happened with tuxracer. Including the fork.

not the case here, and even if it were, it's OK

[cahiha]

The guy seems to be forming a company to support the code while planning to continue an open source version. If he hasn't accepted significant third party contributions to the project in the past, he owns the copyright, and that is both legal and does not violate the spirit of open source. I think it's not a good business model, but that's another question.

But let's assume that he really tried to make the project proprietary--so what? If nobody has contributed to it in the past and he still holds the copyright to the entire work (or has removed anybody else's code), that's a perfectly legitimate thing to do. I don't think it's a particularly smart thing to do, since he'll be competing with an open source version (he can't take back what he has already distributed under an open source license in the past), but anybody is free to screw themselves in whatever way they want.

I did this two years ago

[hpj]

I was the main developer and copyright holder to the open source project TOra (Still on sourceforge at tora.sf.net) and it was acquired and I was hired by the company Quest Software.

One important aspect was that all code (I was carefull about getting copyright to any patches I applied at the time) was owned by me and I was the only person with CVS write access. Otherwise it probably wouldn't have been posible.

Also, at the time I lived in Sweden (Which is part of the EU) so the talk about this not being posible in the EU is simply not true since I've done it.

What happened with the purchase was that Quest forked the code and the designs and in some parts the code was used in Quests own projects. The original project is still very much alive and active though.

"A license from themselves"

[tepples]

You cannot violate a copyright license on your own works; authors don't need a license from themselves to distribute their own works.

This may well be true of computer programs, where it is easy to avoid copying other programs simply by avoiding reading any source code under licenses that are incompatible with your preferred licenses. On the other hand, music copyright case law has an unfortunate precedent of strict liability for subconscious copying; songwriters who had a good faith belief that their works were original have been found liable for copyright infringement through subconscious copying of songs that they had heard on the radio a decade ago. This may apply to an open source project that includes musical works, such as a video game or the clip art in presentation software.

Zebra

[jd]

Zebra was sold in a commercial version and the Open Source version was left to rot. I don't know if Big Brother was always commercial, but I do know that it is when they put emphasis on the commercial version that the Open Source version died. GateD was mostly open, but also went commercial and also died a death.

So, here you have three projects of a fairly decent size, with a good userbase, which went commercial and where the Open sourcecode was NOT forked or picked up by anyone.

Conclusion: It's not inevitable, and past experience suggests it is not even likely.

Re:Zebra

[versus]

Zebra was sold [...] So, here you have three projects [...] where the Open sourcecode was NOT forked or picked up by anyone.

Quagga is a fork of Zebra. We use it heavily in our 100+ Bering PC routers.

Overloads?

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF?

Not only buy but control

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I've actually personally experienced this. I worked on a Open Source project which was taken over by a local OSL which proceeded to kick me off the project and even put significient pressure on me when I attempted to Fork it and continue development. Open Source may be open, but that doesn't mean just anyone can work on it......

what about camstudio?

[michaelbuddy]

I'm not sure what happened, but there was this open source program called camstudio, which was a decent windows screen apturing program. It was open source, then just disappeared. After some time, all the sourcecode mirrors links starting linking back to the original site, which then started jumping to RoboDemo. Then Macromedia bought Robodemo. Now Adobe is buying Macromedia. who knows where it is now, but it was a really cool little utility.

I'd love to have it right now. It was like Camtasia studio. It must have got bought, and now, good luck finding it.

Re:Corporate Overloads = Insightful Freudian Slip

[rewinn]

Why is pointing out a glaring typo offtopic?

Tuxracer was first!

[Xtifr]

The game Tuxracer did this quite a while ago. In that case, it was the original author who switched to a proprietary model and began selling binary-only versions of the program, but the principle is exactly the same, and, as parent comments, the original source is still available for anyone to use and extend.

Don't know if this is redundant...

[ta bu shi da yu]

... but isn't JasperSoft touting themselves as an open-source company? What's wrong with that? Open source doesn't necessarily mean that they can't charge money for their product! They just have to provide the code. They still have the rights to it.

Already been done: glGo

[Anonymous Coward]

There once was a GPL program called glGo.

The FAQ even said: "I believe that open source is the better and more productive way to develop software. gGo [glGo's predecessor] has been made closed-source for a couple of ugly reasons and troubles I encountered. I plan to steer clear of these troubles [...]".

Then in late 2003, he must have been hired by the guys who run the "Panda" Internet Go Server. The webpage's last news item (December 2003) says "please visit the glGo webpage on IGS". At least initially, that webpage was identical, except for the FAQ, and the absense of the "open source" logo. New releases of glGo have appeared on that webpage, without source, or any mention of "open-source".

(There's a "sourcecode" link, but it's for the libraries they use, to comply with the LGPL, and a tarball of .o files. It's not glGo source.)

I don't know what incentive they had (Panda IGS or the programmer) to not release source. It's not as if it helps security -- there are a dozen open-source IGS clients, including glGo prior to 0.7. There are open-source IGS-like servers. And the protocol is pretty trivial to read.

All they did was alienate some of their x86 Linux users, and probably all of their BSD and non-x86 Linux users. Oh, and prevent me from helping out, because it looked like a neat project that I wanted to hack on. (I could still work on the old GPL glGo, but it hasn't been touched in a couple years, so I'd basically have to take over the project.)

source code disappearing

[falconwolf]

Sometimes the code for an open source project pretty much just disappears. I'd say that makes the open version much worse off than the closed version.

Closed source code can also disappear. At least with open sauce if someone is interested they can work on it themself, try that with proprietary code, and you may find yourself slapped with a lawsuit.

Falcon

GPL Licenses are revocable

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do people keep insisting that a GPL license cannot be revoked? Or that if revoked, a project would simply fork? A copyright holder can revoke a license. Depending on a host of factors, including the jurisdiction you are under, this impacts all versions of the code.

A fork doesn't help. Forked code bases still need to honour the parent license. At issue is the fact that no-where in the GPL does it state that the license is perpetual. This is a well known hole. This is why it is encouraged that copyright holders assign their rights to the FSF. It is assumed that the FSF will never revoke your rights to distribute and modify software under the terms of the GPL.

The reason you don't see this happening often, is that in order for a project to go proprietary, ALL copyright holders must agree to the new license. Usually this doesn't happen. But if there is only one contributor, the project absolutely can be taken private, distributed under a different license, and all existing license holders can have their rights to copy and distribute the original code under the terms of the GPL terminated.

For an eye opener, consider reading Problems in Oopen Source Licensing (Australian perspective, but interesting issues none-the-less).

From the JR forums

[EvilArchitect]

My question on the JR forums, answered very nicely, I think.

https://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id= 1273463&forum_id=113529

I am guess you don't know how sigs work.

[Some Random Username]

I know what a google bomb is. That's why I asked what the point of his sig is, since google doesn't see sigs on slashdot.

Uhmm... Section 107!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhmm.... You missed section 107 Fair Use- Won't hold it against you as the RIAA, MPAA, BSA, and several prosecutors and oficials in the pocket of said orginizations also miss it.

If you were to make a critism of a work by painting a mustache or make other changes which express critical speech in particular paradoies the work it falls under fair use.

Most Consumers however mistake section 107 with section 1008 which allow US COnsumers to make copies of digital recordings and many Conumers also mistake section 107 with section 117 which explicitly allows the user to both make archive copies of software and adapt said softwre to other platforms.

The problem in the use is Section 1201 is that it allows copyright holders to deny access to the work. It isn't anti-copy restrictions but rather anti-access restrictions. It also doesn't matter if the restriction is used for copyrighted materials or non-copyrighted materials- IN MGM v 321 studios the court ruled that public domain materials can be locked up with DRM, In the DeCSS cases the courts have actually ruled in the US that copyright holders can prevent the user from playing DVDs that they own!! This is why the DMCA should be revoked now. It makes a mockery of the copyright system.