Slashdot Mirror
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 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.
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>
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.
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