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HP Calls For Sun and IBM to Remove OS Licenses
Rob writes "Computer Business Review is reporting that in order to help nudge Linux and open source
software further into the enterprise, a vice president at Hewlett-Packard Co yesterday
called on rivals IBM Corp and Sun Microsystems Inc to invalidate their open-source
software licenses in favor of a free licensing model. During his keynote at the LinuxWorld
Conference in San Francisco yesterday, HP's vice president of open source and NonStop
Enterprise Martin Fink commended the Open
Source Initiative on setting up new rules to limit the growth of open-source licenses." From the article: "He asked IBM to deprecate its open-source license and instead put it under the General Public License, the most popular license for free software that gives users the freedom run the program for any purpose, to study how it works, to modify and improve it and distribute copies. In contrast, an open-source license, like IBM's, is copyrighted. Fink also called on Sun Microsystems to deprecate its Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL), which applies to OpenSolaris, GlassFish and JWSDP, and to re-license Solaris 10 under the General Public License, which drew the crowd's applause."
HP is moving more and more towards the consumer desktop market. Is this guy even going to have a job next week?
(first post?)
Reducing the license count is good, but put those apps under the BSD license instead. That way folks can use your program without their hands being tied. They can even make a product out of it, make some money, and feed changes/improvements back into the program. I've had folks send in contributions to PMD and say that if it was GPL'd they wouldn't be contributing their code.
And the fact that Compuware wraps PMD and calls it OptimalAdvisor? More power to them! Maybe they'll contribute a bug fix or two, and maybe I'll sell a couple more copies of the book. A rising tide, as it were...
The Army reading list
"IBM and SUN then asked HP to price printer supplies at a reasonable cost which drew and even bigger round of applause..."
I'm working on a good joke about your mom being
Why? The article doesn't explain WHY it would be good for IBM and Sun to switch their licenses. To me, it seems like Fink is just trying to garner some positive attention to HP, which has been looked upon negatively for some time in the technical community.
On another note, did anyone else find it ironic that he is trying to push the ideals of software freedom of creativty and expression...by locking everyone under the same license?
This seems like meaningless posturing for positive HP market spin. I don't see why two other companies would listen to the head of HP, when they haven't really been listening to the community itself for years.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
please sir, make your product less effective then mine. please?
Why not the poor old LGPL? Everyone forgets about this little guy when the GPL vs BSD flamewars erupt. With LGPL you can make sure that no one leeches your code while allowing others to build commercial apps around it ands feed their children or whatever...
In contrast? The GPL and works released undef GPL are Copyrighted too. GPL doesn't work without Copyright.
I guess this means that HP will distribute HPUX under the GPL from now on! Wooo Hooo!
(NOT!)
-Matt
I don't get this one though. I write open source software so people can use it. "leaching" is what they're doing by nature.
;-)]
I mean how many Linux users really contribute back to the Kernel?
People used to be afraid of companies running off and locking people buying HW to a given OS.
Now because most OSS is written by kids [e.g. 25] they're just afraid of being left behind and not noticed.
The actual motives for a GPL or BSD or whatever license rarely has to do with the original goals.
Becase, really, if you want code to be just out there for folk to use you could make it public domain [like I do
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Join moola.com, play games to earn money.
There is a lot of confusion around there about what exactly is open source, free, copyrighted and/or proprietary software.
I suggest to everyone to read the Free Software Definition and the FAQs about the GNU GPL.
Yeah, even if you don't like RMS read them: they are very informative!
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
My company that just purchased 3 computers from HP. There was a total of 5 dual core CPUs. We had to purchase 10 licences for HP-UX 11.11. Utilities that were an extra charge had to be purchased on a per CPU basis as well. A utility that cost $300 ended up costing $3000 even if it was only used on one machine. And they have the nerve to tell other companies to make their licences free???
HP, if you want others to change their licences, lead by example.
Great civilizations have lived and died on false theories. Don't mess up mine with a few facts.
What they're trying to do is make it so that the term "open source" doesn't just become another marketing term that has no actual meaning. I've seen a lot of closed source, proprietary vendors referring in their marketing to "open standards" or "open systems" trying to leech off of the open source term and get credit where they don't deserve it (and it works all too often). If you have to back up your "open source" claim with an OSI-approved license, it's harder to pull that crap.
I do agree with you though that their statement that there should be fewer OS licenses is outside of the scope of what they should be doing. Approve them or don't, realizing that they're talking about other peoples' copyrighted material that they can license however they want, but leave philosophical discussions to some other group. I agree with that stance, they just shouldn't be the ones pushing it.
Can we please refer to Open Source either using the phrase "Open Source" or with the abbreviation "OSS"?? The "OS" usually stands for "Operating System".
So the headline of this article read to me like "HP calls for Sun and IBM to remove Operating System licenses" which is completely different from what the article was about.
</soapbox>
I guess the hardest part of journalism school is learning to talk out of ones ass.
For those who, like this reporter, don't know: Any material must be under copyright for the GPL to apply.
J.T.F.C.
-Peter
But does NOTHING to prohibit proprietarization. People can USE your programs under the GPL all they want- they don't have their hands tied. It's when they modify it that they might, and I say MIGHT have their hands tied. As far as I'm concerned, they can have their hands tied in that regard- namely if you use this as the base for your stuff, you need to be able to give your stuff back. That's the price of admission- pure and simple.
Sadly so many BSD advocates just don't get this concept. It's not that your hands are tied per se, it's that you can't just arbitrarily go and reuse the code without paying up by way of your sharing. In my book this is just fine- and it's how most of the work I do in the FOSS world is licensed- either GPL or LGPL.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Well, it happens that not everyone is convinced that they should give up as much control as Our Fatherly Leader Richard Stallman thinks they should. That's why many people choose a BSD or MIT style Open Source license. In many ways, the GPL cuts its own throat by not recognizing that not everyone is a diehard socialist. In other words, the GPL has too much ideology in it for some people. Thus, they can maintain some control over their code while allowing others to benefit from its openness, by using a BSD type license. In other news, HP would like Sun and IBM to GPL their intellectual property because HP no longer does R and D...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Ok, now we have HP taking pot shots at SUN and IBM.
/has/ given to the community, but in no way as much as IBM and SUN. NFS? SUN OpenOffice? SUN, Solaris 10? SUN (let's see HP open-source HPUX).
Yes, HP
Before HP opens its yap, I want to see the source for HPUX, and CDE.
You know, that OS where you can't use local variables named "u" in kernel code (just like 30 year old Unix).
But NOOO - HP feels they must shoot at IBM and SUN for the (Open Source approved) LICENSE -- AND PEOPLE ACTUALLY CLAPPED?!?!?
Ratboy
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
Wow, these kind of sentiments, and your User ID is 707389? What time frame do you believe constitutes the "Good Old Days" of Slashdot, last week?
Asking Sun to GPL SOlaris will never fly. Why? Even if they wanted to, they couldn't, as Solaris is basically an System V release, and we know how SCO feels about GPL, Linux, and so called leaking of SVRx code into Linux. Sun is a licencee, and if they did release the kernel code, they would be hooped. Same goes for HP with HP-UX, and IBM with AIX. Until the SVR code is GPL'd, no Unix based on SVR will every be GPL'd, regardless of who actually owns the copyright to the code.
I have no idea how Sun ended up hated by Slashdot. They sell Linux, they open-sourced the Solaris kernel, they have cooperated with OSS operating systems to get them running on their hardware. Lets not forget a huge donation in the form of buying StarOffice and immediately open-sourcing it. The completely open and royalty-free SPARC architecture (as opposed to the far-from-open PPC). Few companies have done more.
There have been some back and forth on how they perceive Linux, but considering that Linux has been eating Sun's marketshare quickly the last decade they sure seem to have a very good relationship with Linux and related technologies.
A much more reasonable request of IBM and Sun might be to ask them (note: not DEMAND!) to consider dual licensing. Obviously they see some advantage to their licences, and presumably they thnk their users do too, so lets see which license people adopt. Its not unreasonable to require that users of their code state at the time of aquiring the code which license they are aquiring under -- no picking the license to match the circumstances -- make people think about what they are doing.
As to the question of which is the world's most wonderful OSS license, well, I have some personal reservations about GPL -- which doen't mean that I don't think that the GPL does not have its place, and that it couldn't be improved.
That said, I also have a lot of sympathy for the point of view expressed by Pamela Jones when she says that it is the GPL and only the GPL that has destroyed the pirate raids of SCO and put them into a defensive mode, trying to defend the indefensible. She is right. The GPL did the world a huge favor here.
Does that mean the GPL could not be made somewhat more flexible? Well, we will see when GPL 3.0 sees the light of day.
When I write code, I want as many people as possible to be able to use it, so I choose the BSD license[1]. If someone makes a closed-source product out of it then their customers will benefit from using my code (which will be tested by both my users and the company in question, so should be more stable than if the company had re-invented the wheel) at the expense of freedom (largely from vendor lock-in. I don't consider this trade-off to be worthwhile (I live more in the Free Software than the Open Source camp), but if other people do then that's up to them.
[1] I'm also egocentric, so I pick a license which requires attribution.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The APSL has a huge advantage over the GPL - it is per-file. You can APSL a source file and this has no effect whatever on the license of your entire work (unless you use a restrictive license like the GPL).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Next thing you know, Apple will be insiting Windows Vista be licensed under the GPL.
Yeah, under the GPL we only see something called GNU/forking, which is just great.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
If a company is going to open source some code, why would they choose a BSD-style license? Well, that'd be if they're actually selling the code they're open sourcing.
But another aspect of open source is to have a pool of shared code, usually infrastructure-type stuff -- this is what the GPL is good for. In this case, a company's main product isn't this code -- this code just helps prop up their main product. Here is where the GPL shines in business: it enforces a "neutral zone" between companies, so that all infrastructural changes be open to everyone and uncooptable.
Ironically, the rise of this common infrastructure (mostly in the form of GNU/Linux and its related operating system software) probably wouldn't have happened had it not been for Microsoft. As they have spread and assimilated company after company, taking advantage of the real need for integation in the computer world, the only real way for the rest of the industry to stay competitive with them has been to pool resources.
The GPL just protects that treaty. But like I said, I suspect that it will only remain neccessary if either the GPL pool becomes a Microsoft-like force unto itself, or else Microsoft itself stays strong enough to require the GPL pool to counterbalance it.
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
I don't know what's worse, the fact that a vice president of HP can be so stupid, or the fact that he got applauded for his stupidity. The former doesn't know what Free Software but insists on making a speech about it, and the latter are willing to applaud any praise of the GPL no matter how erroneous that praise might be.
It's one thing to want to limit the number of approved Open Source licenses. I may disagree with it, but I understand the motive. I can also understand his urging his competitors to use the more popular Open Source licenses instead of their own (even though HP still insists on proprietary for most of its software).
But when he says that the GPL is not copyrighted, he is being stupid. EVERY Free Software and Open Source license is copyrighted! Even the sacred and immaculately conceived GPL! For a LWCE keynote speaker to make such a fundamental blunder on the nature of Free Software is scandalous.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
He has a good point. It seems like every big company going into OSS make up their own license for no particular reason. Incompatible with every other OSS license out there of course.
Okay, companies which have released as much OSS software as IBM and Sun should listen to HP because... why?
I'm sure the Eclipse people and the OpenSolaris project, among many others, have been waiting with great anxiety for HP's opinion of what they are doing. "Hey guys, stop everything! Martin Fink says we're using the wrong license!"
Even if the guy has a point, it takes some gall for HP to tell these other companies much of anything about how to conduct their OSS business.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
Disclaimer: I work for IBM in the hardware side, so I am biased. IMHO the best thing HP did was buy Compaq and destroy a worthy competitor. This is not a troll, and not flaimbait for folks with moderator points that are discussion adverse. To comply with IBM rules for identifying myself I also need to point out the following comment is my own personal opinion and isn't sanctioned/dictated by IBM
To me, at rough glance, this is typical HP tactics. Instead of touting what they're doing, they point the finger at everyone else and go 'see, they suck so we're OK' but don't tell you why they're OK.
The hard part about the GPL (from the way I understand it, which could be flawed) is you in effect give up any IP claims you have on something when it's submitted if you should choose to change the way you do things later. I think what you're seeing by a lot of companies that are opening the kimono a bit but in case this turns out to be a wild fad or something they can close it back up should they want too.
Personally I think the genie is out of the bottle and it is only a matter of time. But monster companies by nature are conservative, and won't jump whole heartedly into something right away.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.