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Debian DPL Threatens to Leave SPI Over Sun Java
An anonymous reader writes "A three-week-long flame war in debian-devel over the new Java Distribution License has culminated in Anthony Towns, the newly elected Debian Project Lead, offering to separate Debian from its legal representative, SPI. This came as a response to SPI member John Goerzen's objections to the Debian project's interaction with Sun's legal team around the new JDL license without review from SPI's lawyers."
That's why my wife left me!
SPI wasn't trying to take the place of Debian's "governing body", it was simply trying to act as their legal representative.
So that would be the Debian Debian Project Leader?
This post brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department.
I've got a fever and the only prescription is more COBOL.
Thats unpossible!
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Hmm ok I'm kind of surprised that the anti-Debian folks haven't jumped on this already. So....anyway, I guess that I'll inject my opinion anyway
Personally, I'm really glad we do have Debian. They don't shy away from politics, and I think that's a good thing. Why? Well, the Free Software/Open Source ideals are inherently political things. To shut up and just allow stuff to happen is almost completely opposite to the movements themselves.
Sure, you can claim that discussions like this hamper development. Maybe they do (although I doubt it). You can claim Debian is behind the times compared to Ubuntu or Gentoo or even Slackware depending on what you value. But these things do need to be discussed.
It might seem like a cop-out, but the following quote really stands out in my mind: "Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics; you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.". RMS said that. I think it sums up the situation rather well.
One the one hand, SPI works for Debian. So they should go along with whatever Debian says. On the other hand, how can Debian expect SPI to do its job right if they are not included in legal discussions. Both sides have merit. Wow, and I haven't even read the article yet!
Bet they're regretting not running stable on Andy Towns now.
"Sure there's porn and piracy on the Web but there's probably a downside too."
Let me get this straight, the programmers behind Debian are threatening to give their legal team the boot? So it could be good, because sometimes lawyers suck, or it could be bad, because it implies Debian is about to make a huge legal mistake. Does anyone have a link to what the actual dispute is about, because the summary is lacking in details? (although it does have more than its fair share of alphabet soup: DPL, SPI, JDL)
Philosophy.
You mean unlike the non-fundamentalist distros like Fedora, Gentoo and Ubunto who have decided thatSUNs Java is not free enough to distribute and hence won't do it at all?
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
First, without Debian, Ubuntu would be nothing. More importantly, as long as Debian exists, we know that we have access to an unencumbered, workable, and complete operating system / userspace. Should everything else hit the fan, we know there's still Debian.
Plus, stable's great for servers.
These are the problems:3 70245
3 70295
3 70296
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=
The US places export restrictions on certain types of software (mostly encryption related stuff), which Sun has reflected in it's license. Since Debian can't/won't control which country has access to US-based mirrors then that means that they can't fuffill the obligation to screen out illegal downloads from certain countries and such. According to this license the work around Debian has used in the past is to have non-US for exported restricted software. Which is basicly you can only have the software on non-US based mirrors.
Debian has gotten rid of non-US for Sarge due to the relaxation of export controls by the U.S. government. But it would still violate Sun's licensing.
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=
This is Sun's obnoxiousness showing with this one:
""" (c) you do not combine, configure or distribute the Software to
run in conjunction with any additional software that implements
the same or similar functionality or APIs as the Software;"""
The bug author mentions the Java version of Python, but basicly it would make things like a distro shipping GCJ and Sun's java would be a licensing violation.
Obviously (in My eyes) Sun chooses this for two reasons:
A. To keep it's java runtime pure and functional. Avoids bug-inducing conflicts.
B. Help kill off Free software java implimentation.
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=
In Sun's License states that you can't modify any sort of copyright notices and whatnot. But by splitting the package up like Debian does they can't avoid modifying this stuff. Thusly Debian is violating Sun's distribution license.
Debian can ship non-free stuff in non-free obviously according to their bylaws.. but Debian doesn't have the authority to break OTHER people's licenses.
Sun says that this is OK and it's legal mumbo jumbo they can ignore. Debian's lawyer are basicly saying we can't violate Sun's licenses... ESPECIALLY without a discussion and you should pull the package from non-free until Sun fixes it's licensing so that Debian can use it legally.
This has happenned before with other software. Sun's license is shit and should be avoided by any sort of sane Linux distribution.
You are a target user of the software authors, such as Sun in this case. Debian is, correctly, noticing that the licensing of Sun does not permit them to distribute software they way they normally do it, with intact and compilable source and automatic compilation as needed.
These are not small matters: supporting such packages is a security and software management problem for Debian and other distributions, who often haven't included the Java packages for exactly this reason. Fedora Core 5, for example, seems to have discarded the jdk and jre (or whatever they're called this week) that they included in older OS releases. And Sun has been doing weirdness like slapping their installable RPM inside an executable binary, then renaming the basic packages, then insisiting on jumping through licensing agreement hoops simply to download the software. It's not appropriate in Linux or other open source systems, and is a compelling reason for extensive development of genuinely open source Java software, such as the gcc/Java projects.
Sun is duplicating, badly, what Adobe attempted to do with Postscript in creating a "public" but heavily licensed standard that only they can control the standards for. It's understandable, but is helping actually sideline Sun's particular Java version in favor of more robust ones such as IBM's, and fostering the same sort of open source replacement that ghostscript became for Postscript, and with gaining popularity of the open source version to the point where Sun will want to come up with a new software to license, much as Adobe is dumping Postscript and proceeding to PDF wherever feasible.
They should hire you to write the summaries instead.
Philosophy.
Towns is turning this into a control issue when the Goerzen is just saying "Hey, it's not that tough to just run it buy our lawyers. Forewarned is forearmed."
I was part of a project that ended up blowing up. I was in SPI's position, just trying to keep everyone on the same page and help the person in control acheive goals. The person in control turned it into a control issue. It never was and I made every effort to make that clear. There was never any history to even suggest control issues. Finally, after much abuse, I left and so did several other people important to the project who knew what was going on. It turned out there were ideological problems, with the controller essentially wanting things one way while telling people things were to be another way in order to keep those people around.
Towns reminds me of the control freak of our own project. That was how it began - an irrational unwillingness to even hear what was being said and attributing everything as an attempt to control the project. Towns needs to step back and take a break. He needs some perspective. If there is anything he's not telling folks, he needs to come out with it. Because until that happens, anything he does is probably going to be to the detriment of Debian.
It matters to the ideologues to set forth the definitions of Open Source. It matters to the people to called their OS Debian GNU/Linux rather than just Linux. It matters to the people who continue to call their OS Debian GNU/Linux.
Ideology may not be practical, but practicality without ideology has no direction.
Where would OpenBSD be without the likes of Theo de Raadt?
Where would open source be without the FSF?
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
I've simply got tired of all this ideologic stuff.
Folks, this is coming from a guy who wrote:
Just imagine that if every application and every game were coded cross-platform everybody just could go into any shop and buy any computer they like.
Tired of ideologic stuff indeed.
There are two types of OSS developers out there:
- the Linus type "have fun and cooperate" and
- the RMS type "OSS is religion"
The group of the relgious people however manages to silence the more pragmatic ones in the name of "higher ideals". But what is worse is that the concept of meritocracy fails too. Most of the people on debian-legal are no lawyers at all but amidst the blind the one eyed is king - even if color blind and short sighted.Example from debian-legal of a discussion about postgres: How could the situation be better exposed: "people (without any merits) looking for problems". That's what they are. All developers would reject a mailing list "debian-techadvice" where clueless people could make binding technical decisions, i.e. whether to use gcc 4.0 or 4.1.
One has to go through a notorious process to become a developer but it just needs an email client and a subscription to debian-legal in order to strangle 1500 developers. Time to change Debian back from a supermarket thing to one of the leaders of technology. Congrats Anthony!
It's pretty obvious that discussing java's license was going to be slow and painful and so it's also obviously why people would want to short circuit the whole process. But once you think about it for 5 seconds that's a really stupid plan. People are still going to discuss it but now they're going to be more pissed off.
Also this email is stupid. Debian needs SPI and when people start suggesting otherwise that means they are taking a vacation in retardo-land.
Here's the other thing. When I heard Debian had included java into their distro, I was like, "Wow. That must be a really improved license. Debian doesn't just include any old license into the distro." But a week later, I learned that 3 debian leaders had rammed java through without any discussion and really the license was very questionable. Debian is basically going off the informal Sun FAQ when they included. Does anyone even know that the FAQ was written by a lawyer or was it written by an intern in the PR dept?
You have to make nice to anyone doing you a favor for free, that includes lawyers.
As much as I dislike these legal discussions, I see the point. Debian is a kind of afraid of all the DRM, IP lawsuit, patent law and other bullshit and tries to stear well clear of it. Debian people realize that these things don't hit you in isolated spots - they're like dum-dum bullets, they expand inside the body.
Look at SCO or any patent claim. There's maybe 1% or less of your code that is possibly in violation of someone else's thing. And yet it threatens your entire product.
The following scenario is unlikely - but if it ever does come to pass, we will all thank whatever gods we believe in for Debian to be there and for having been as strict as they are:
Imagine MS or possibly a small group of likewise evil, selfish companies whose only way of "winning" in the marketplace is to destroy their opponents. Imagine them banding together and using a combination of software patents, DRM and DMCA lawsuits and a couple copyright disputes to drag Linux into an endless legal battle. Imagine that different from the SCO they can somehow construct a case that at least appears solid enough to a judge that Redhat and SuSE and whoever you have get slapped with a preliminary injunction. Maybe it's just 2 packages that are a problem, but the judge orders a stop to the distribution until the entire thing can be resolved. You don't think MS would have much haste in getting it resolved, would you?
This or any other scenario like it wouldn't mean the end of Linux - you'd still be able to get your copy from some FTP in Sweden or China, but it would bring Linux progress into the enterprise market to a halt.
Unless there is a Debian that can point to documentation and lawyer papers and to the fact that they always acted with so much dilligence that it is very certain none of their stuff ever got tainted.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
SPI is Debian, not the "legal representative". Debian, as a legal entity, Does Not Exist. When aj and the ftpmasters initiated distribution of the JDK, SPI was being contracted to the indemnification clause. If there is something to indemnify, SPI will have to shell out the dollars -- or sell out Debian's server farms, domain names and other assets, including copyrights and trademarks: all assets are SPI's, not Debian's.
That's the beauty of aj's bluff: hell yeah, Debian can detach itself from SPI (after some constitution change) but, oh, it cannot be called Debian anymore (the trademark belongs to SPI), nor use the twirl mark (ah-ha), huh, and it cannot use SPI's servers and other equipment either. This would amount to the separatist cabal being exiled from Debian, really.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
There's a riot in the bazaar!
Quick! Let's hide in the cathedral!
But Sun doesn't even publish source
That's FUD, pure and simple - the source is available for download right on the same page as the rest of the JDK download links. You have to agree to one of two licences and have a (free) Sun Download Center account to get it, but it *is* available.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
I think the other point of view is that Debian isn't a legal entity, it's just a bunch of cooperating people, and SPI exists to handle some formalities like owning servers and whatnot.
There seems to be an assumption that being amorphous, legally speaking, is some kind of shield. It's not. It's an invitation to drop the shit-bomb and cover everybody in sight. The way this works is that when the legal successors to Sun in owneship of Java (see below) have a legal hissy fit, their lawyers sue everybody in sight. The the judge dismisses the suits against every tom dick and harry and makes them go after the legal entity, unless somebody has made a very bad mistake. That's why corporations exist. They're the equivalent of legal fortesses for the individuals in an enterprise.
What should happen then is if SPI wins, great, if it loses, the individuals can continue on under a new corporation because of the open source licenses. The problem is that this is very close to legal chicanery. You're not supposed to protect yourself with legal fictions. Thus for the protection to work, people have to cooperate -- which sometimes means not doing what they want right away. If they don't then they expose everybody directly involved with the project, and everybody transitively involved for good measure. That's what lawyers do when they're looking to make money for their clients: they throw shit on everything and see what is allowed to stick. Even if it doesn't stick, it's an unpleasant experience.
Success in any enterprise depends on predicting the future, which is a dicey proposition at best. The main reason you need to consult lawyers is to avoid what other people's lawyers will do to you if your prediction turns out false.
In this case, take Sun. They are not doing so well as a business for the last several years. They're losing money. Let's hope they'll turn it around. But one thing that happens if this keeps going is that the stockholders decide they'd better cash out; the large stockholders can't do this because they own too much. So they start looking at selling the whole company, or liquidating its assets to turn them into cash. Java is currently the property of Sun. Next year it could be the legal property of another company, and one thing that company buys is the right to sue over uses of that property.
Now imagine a company that has a lot of cash that would have a strategic interest in gaining a hold over Java licensees. It's not hard. Imagine what they could do with their power to sue licensees and copyright infringers, not just for the immediate cash value but for the strategic value. Are they going to be reaonable and just go after the ftp maintainers?
I've been through this kind of thing before. Without consulting me, my business associate, who had a majority interest, entered into a casual legal relationship with an outside party. The arrangment seems reasonable and we're all reasonable likable folks. Then the outside party got into some trouble of his own not related to us at all. Suddenly he becomes less reasonable and likable. Next thing his lawyers were suing everybody in sight. We are getting hit with lawsuits from people we have no relationship with, who are really going after him, but since their lawyer's already working on the case the marginal cost of a second third and fourth lawsuit is nil. At that point I was very glad to have a corporation between me and them to take the liability.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Gentoo doesn't actually distribute Sun Java. It's not hosted on any of the servers. The users must download and place the files themselves.
Just because an ebuild is in the tree, doesn't mean that Gentoo distribute it. Gentoo simply allows the user to use it, much like any other distribution.
As soon as GLEP 23 gets put into place, this kind of confusion will disappear.
Let's be honest - most developers don't give a white sh@$#%t about what clauses and doubtful legal situations can arise of use of software, so Debian-legal thoughts are usually have been taken with lot of anger and confusion. Devs just want to work with software and apps, but D-L is full of idealists and clever individuals in legal field, who see things quite differently (and it is NOTHING bad about that), and so conflict is in full force.
But in this case, I *think* it is totally overblown and feels like that Debian-legal just want to say big f12#$%k off to Java usage in Debian - non-legal arguments like "I don't use non-free", "there are ALMOST working free software implementation in main", etc says almost everything about discusssion - it is not about LEGAL situation, but about fears that if Java will be aviable in non-free and will be supported by DD, CLASSPATH and other Java projects will slowly loose momentum they achieved so far now (Again, it is just my thougts after reading almost half of thread).
I can understand both sides, but thinking "We will get free implementation, we don't need stinkin Sun official implementation" sounds like too much dreaming. Let's be honest - it is simply not possible. Oracle won't use CLASSPATH, they will insist to use JRE. Other software will too. Yes, there will be desktop apps which will run on Free Software versions just fine - like Eclipse, lot of different small aps, but for enterprise it will be big NO-NO.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Here's a hint:
A lawyer should be consulted on a license- NOT a developer. It's a legal matter, not a coding matter.
There's a legal gotcha on the Java license that SPI, being the legal interface for the Debian
project, that if things go wrong, they'd have to absorb and deal with. Without SPI, each of
the devs involved with the project would be held individually liable for potentially millions
of dollars each (And that is exactly what is possible with the new licensing from Sun on Java).
Do you now see WHY devs shouldn't be the final call on a license?
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Maybe (probably) I'm missing some subtlety specific to Debian/SPI, but when I compare this situation to what I encounter in my professional life, it appears that SPI is in the wrong.
I work for a corporation. In my position, I frequently negotiate deals with software vendors, and this includes negotiating the contract terms. I am not a lawyer, however, so I work with our corporate attorneys in negotiating these contracts. They are responsible for understanding and explaining the legal ramifications of the contract terms, and I am responsible for understanding and explaining the business objectives of why we are trying to license the software.
Indemnification in particular is often a sticky subject in these negotiations. We usually get the indemnification clause that makes our lawyers happy, but in rare cases we do not.
In the end, however, it is notthe lawyer's job to decide whether or not we accept the terms of any contract. It is their job to advise me (and my managers) what risk we are taking with any given contract. It is then up to management to decide of that risk outweighs the business benefits we are trying to seek.
If somehow the Debian developers have gotten themselves in the position of needing permission from their attorney to sign a contract, then something has gotten seriously screwed up in their relationship. That would be like the CEO of McDonalds needing permission from some random fry cook to enter into a legal agreement. The attorney is to be an advisor, not a decision maker.
You espouse the political ideals as your own yet claim that your should not be dragged in to them. The very idea that a programmer could choose to distribute Free Software is in political danger (dmca/eucd, idea patents) and non-free software is being threatened at a political level (government purchasing rules primarily). If you
then you should consider how your vote might change the future of these "business models".In most areas of politics there are no Free Software implications. In fact never forget that things like the Debian Free Software Guidelines make absolutely explicit that the community can never try to cut out any group of people, even terrorists. Free Software is free for all whatever your political ideals, but do not think that this means Free Software is not political, it just limits it's politics to a few key areas which are required for it's continued existence.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
NT itself stood for "Net Technology"
I think you are a bit confused. At the time NT was release, most people didn't really know what a network was. My recollection was that NT stood for "New Technology". There are various other explanations for the NT designation, of course, some of which do not result in the redundant "technology"; see this article in Wikipedia for details.
Upon re-reading the post, I think I'm being sucked in by a troll. But since I've put so much effort (almost 10 minutes) into writing my reply, I'll post it anyway:
With all due respect, that's a load of crap.
Before white people and black people walked on the same land, one clan of white people killed and enslaved another group of white people in one land, and one tribe of black people killed and enslaved another tribe of black people in a different land. Race (or tribe, family, clan, gender) discrimination has existed for as long as there have been people and weapons that people could use on each other.
Before computers existed, there was copyright law, because people who made a living creating "intellectual property" had a right to control how the fruits of their mental labour were distributed, in order to ensure that they could benefit from their work.
Why should you have the right to enjoy? If I put a year's work into creating a beautiful garden, why should you automatically have the right to enjoy it? If I want to charge $10 per head admission, what's wrong with that? I deserve to be rewarded for my effort in creating the garden that you are enjoying.
Why should you have the right to inspect or study? If I spend years of my life trying to solve a problem, and during that year I manage to create a solution that nobody else has thought of, why should you get the benefit of that? Why can't I ask (or require) you to pay me to use that solution which I have worked so hard to create? And the only way I can be sure that people are fairly paying me for the use of my solution is for me to keep it secret.
Why should you have the right to share? That's got to be the silliest "right" I've heard of. If I spend a year of my time creating something, I'd like to be rewarded for that year of effort. Ideally, I'd like to be rewarded somewhere around $100,000 for that year of my life. I could try to sell one copy of my work for $100,000, but nobody wants it that much. So I want to sell 10,000 copies for $10. That way, I get rewarded, and 6000 people get to benefit from my work. Everyone's happy. But if you pay $10 for my work and then "share" it with the 9999 other people, I only get $10 for a year's work. That's good for your and your friends, but not good for me.
We live in a society where we exchange "money" for "things of value". As long as software is a "thing of value", people have a right to want to have "money" exchanged for it.
I hate it when I make a joke and I get modded "+5 insightful". Mod the stupid comments "funny", not "insightful", pleas
Before computers existed, there was copyright law, because people who made a living creating "intellectual property" had a right to control how the fruits of their mental labour were distributed, in order to ensure that they could benefit from their work.
Stop right here, because the rest of your post is based on this assumption, and it's wrong.
Modern copyright (I use the adjective "modern" to distinguish it from the original formulation of copyright, whose primary purpose was censorship by the British Crown) was not created because people have any implicit or explicit right to benefit financially from their intellectual creations. In fact, the reason we have copyright law today is because enlightened government leaders felt that the *public* has a right to benefit culturally and intellectually from the work of authors, painters, composers, etc.
Let me say that again: The purpose of copyright law is to benefit the public, not the copyright holder.
The reason society invests in granting and enforcing the inherently artificial monopoly that is copyright is to ensure that creations are distributed far and wide, so that they can spark other creations and enrich the public domain. Any benefits that accrue to the creator are incidental. All human intellectual creations are presumed to ultimately belong to the entire human race, which is why copyrights must expire and why the granted monopoly is full of holes (fair use, compulsory licensing, etc.).
That's the theory underlying US copyright law. The fact that the law on the books no longer reflects the theory very well is a problem we need to fix, not reinforce.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.