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Gentoo/FreeBSD On Hold Due To Licensing Issues
Alan Trick writes "Flameeyes (a Gentoo/FreeBSD developer) recently came up with some serious problems among the various *BSD projects who use BSD-4 licensed code (which is all of them). Even other projects like Open Darwin may be affected.
The saga started when he discovered the license problems with libkvm and start-stop-daemon. "libkvm is a userspace interface to FreeBSD kernel, and it's licensed under the original BSD license, BSD-4 if you want, the one with the nasty advertising clause." start-stop-daemon links to libkvm, but it's licensed under the GPL which is incompatible with the advertising clause. The good new is that the University of California/Berkley has given people permission to drop the advertising clause. The bad news is that libkvm has code from many other sources and each of them needs to give their permission for the license to be changed.
At the moment, development on the Gentoo/FreeBSD is on hold and the downloads have been removed from the Gentoo mirrors."
The saga started when he discovered the license problems with libkvm and start-stop-daemon. "libkvm is a userspace interface to FreeBSD kernel, and it's licensed under the original BSD license, BSD-4 if you want, the one with the nasty advertising clause." start-stop-daemon links to libkvm, but it's licensed under the GPL which is incompatible with the advertising clause. The good new is that the University of California/Berkley has given people permission to drop the advertising clause. The bad news is that libkvm has code from many other sources and each of them needs to give their permission for the license to be changed.
At the moment, development on the Gentoo/FreeBSD is on hold and the downloads have been removed from the Gentoo mirrors."
At the moment, development on the Gentoo/FreeBSD is on hold and the downloads have been removed from the Gentoo mirrors.
It's almost as if... BSD were dying, or something.
Push Button, Receive Bacon
This is better than getting the lawyers involved. What a great case of the community policing itself and making sure it is following its own rules. It may take a while, but I think this issue will be resolved and the project(s) will move forward.
Space for rent, inquire within
Similar rules exist in the commercial world as well, y'know. Only it's a lot harder to spot breaches of them when all you have available is pre-compiled code.
Basically, because if you don't give two shits about what the license says, you're better off warezing a copy of Vista and being done with the whole nonsense. It's obeying the license restrictions that makes what you're doing legal.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
I wouldn't be surprised if other distributions took this opportunity to take some of the spotlight during Gentoo's/FreeBSD's downtime...
Wow, this is more common then you think, i have a feeling this will be resolved very soon
WulframII - Free Online Mutiplayer 3D Tank Shooting Game
But wait--wasn't the decision to link to libkvm made by the authors of the start-stop-daemon? And aren't they the same ones who decided to release it under the GPL? It would seem to me that people are looking at things the wrong way 'round. Instead of getting wavers for libkvm they should be looking at the start-stop-daemon which has either effectively been dual licensed or has been misused by whoever decided to use libkvm (idf it wasn't the original author(s)).
--MarkusQ
Anybody want to explain to me why I (as a user only) should care?
Um, because if stuff like this doesn't get ironed out, then projects like this never get going, and you (the consumer) don't get the product/service. If you don't care about whether it's there as an option, then, right... you shouldn't care.
Caring about it, philosophically/academically isn't the same as having the wherewithal to be a nuts-and-bolts part of resolving the problem. But if you pretend that this stuff doesn't in any way matter, then you're betraying a pretty simplistic understanding of how "free" stuff comes to exist in the first place. No question that many arguments in the F/OSS universe are of the "how many angels can dance on the head of pin" variety. But whether something is, or isn't within the bounds of the licensing model under which much of this entire area is built - well, that actually does matter. One is reminded, sometimes, though, about the old saying about why intra-staff disputes at colleges are so wicked: the drama is so big because the stakes are so small.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Can't we all just get along?
The difference being that Linux and *BSD are, you know, good? The same sort of questions arise with the Firefox/IceWeasel issue over at Debian, so are you suggesting I just warez IE7 and run it on my Ubuntu box simply because I don't see what their issue is?
Gentoo/FreeBSD: license problems require a development pause
.
Edit: Timothy (drizzt) found us the escape route. Applying ftp://ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/pub/4bsd/README.Impt.Lic ense.Change we can legally drop the clause 3 of 4-clause BSD license, and be done with it. I'm writing in this moment the code to do this, but it might require a new stage to come out. Anyway, the problem is solved, and I think I'll mail FSF for them to actually put that note somewhere, as it doesn't seem to be that documented around here.
This is a very sad blog by my side, although I hope this can be cleared up soon so that I don't have to be this sad anymore in the future.
Basically, the public Gentoo/FreeBSD development is officially halted starting tonight, as there are some license issues between libkvm and start-stop-daemon
libkvm is a userspace interface to FreeBSD kernel, and it's licensed under the original BSD license, BSD-4 if you want, the one with the nasty advertising clause . For this reason, until I can clear this problem up, the stages are pulled off from the mirrors, and won't be put there in the mean time.
s-s-d is not the only GPL-released package that links to libkvm actually, GDB does it, too, but I think that on the GPL part, we're fine with the license, as it's a library that comes with the operating system, the problem is that we don't abide to the advertising clause (and we'll probably never be able to do so) and thus I don't think we're allowed to redistribute binaries.
I've mailed David O'Brien, who maintains the devel/gdb6 port for FreeBSD, hoping that he knows more than me about these interactions, in the mean time, I consider the public development of Gentoo/FreeBSD halted. This does not mean that I won't continue working on it, but we cannot currently redistribute it.
Bear with us until we can find a solution. If we cannot link libkvm, I'm ready to try cleanrooming it into a MIT-licensed library.
A shadow lies upon all BSD distributions
Posted by Diego "Flameeyes" Pettenò 15 hours ago
Or so it seems. I've written yesterday about the troubles that forced me to get the Gentoo/FreeBSD stages out of the mirrors, to feel safer and to avoid issues to the Gentoo Foundation that would get bit if there was a problem; today I was invited to join #gnu by mattl on Freenode (who was in turn invited to join #gentoo-dev by christel), and there I talked with ams (Alfred M. Szmidt), who agreed with me that the clause is way too vague (what would be considered "advertising material"? a poster? a booth at an expo? a website? a document explaining the installation procedure? an article on a magazine?), and to be safe we'd have either to get the permission from all the entities involved there, or list all the acknowledgements for all the entities (at least 110 if I have to depend on the quick'n'dirty grep I posted yesterday, but probably a lot more after seeing the files directly, see later on in this post). Both strategies are difficult to apply on both short and long terms.
But this is not just a problem for us, as the title of this post already made you suspect. All of the *BSD-derived projects took some way or another code licensed 4-BSD that is not under copyright of UCB, that would then require them to provide the acknowledgements on all the "advertising material", whatever that is. And I'm pretty sure most of the *BSD projects have something that can be considered advertisement even to the stricter of the meaning.
So even if the situation is nasty, and not easy to cope with, and not even quick to deal with, we have one advantage: the same situation is true for other projects, and thus it's well possible that we'll be able to find all the 4-BSD licensers and get them to change to 3-BSD, or replace the code with cleanroom implementations that would be licensed under a saner license.
Javer is taking care to contacting FreeBSD Foundation, while Timot
This is a prime example of how stupid politics ruin good things. The Gentoo/FreeBSD project has its downloads pulled from the "mirrors" what about the people who depend on that project? What about the people who need those downloads?
"Oh well its free software so they shouldn't expect it." well if its so free then set the software free, let the mirrors live until its sorted out. I call this utter BS, its more of a case of a Gentoo Dev who has his/her panties in a knot.
FOSS developers need to know that making snap moves like that can have some devastating effects on some people and businesses. Migrating to something else can't be done over night in most situations, so for a short window they are "exposed" to problems.
Looks like we can toss a new one on our stack of freedoms:
Free as in "speech".
Free as in "beer".
Free as in "stolen".
And, yes, I understand nothing's been really stolen, and I really meant it mostly in jest. But this is one of the reasons that the community needs to understand that "open source" is not just "open source". It comprises a variety of licenses, some incompatible with each other. Developers need to be educated as to the ramifications of making bad decisions regarding software licensing.
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Well, thankyou for at least answering my question without assuming I'm trying to flame FOSS or promote warezing or what-have-you.
I guess I have a lot of respect for dictatorial attitudes toward things; if something needs doing, then it should be done. No ifs, buts, or maybes, Dictators get things done.
Yes, I know, they also kill lots of people in the process, but let's just ignore that for now, shall we?
I guess I'll just have to install Vista. [sigh]
not!
I am desperate to get Gentoo all going again... this halt sucks.
This Gentoo/FreeBSD idea would have perfect for me. I always wanted to use FreeBSD, if it only had ports.
More interesting is the Nexenta project, which is porting Ubuntu to OpenSolaris (and has usable releases out already).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Hey, I'm not trying to troll here - I asked a serious question, and I'd like a serious answer, without being accused of trying to incite a flamewar.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Hopefully it will be stable soon. It's be great to have a GNU system with a kernel that has a stable ABI. That actually has a chance of getting drivers written for it.
What "moral highground"? When you use other people's software, you are expected to comply with the license it's released under. With a lot of redistribution and integration of products with different licenses it can get a bit tricky sometimes.
If you are only a user you would obviously care only if you are a user of that particular product, and licensing issues would prevent you from using it. Seems pretty obvious.
Although mostly this is of interest to developers who might run into similar issues themselves.
sic transit gloria mundi
I'm sure this will blow over as nothing soon enough, but it's EXACTLY this kind of stuff that scares the crap out of corporations and prevents Open Source(TM) from making much headway.
The current reality is that your code is either public domain (new BSD is also allowable, GPL is _NOT_) and people will use it, or it's under one of the 7,867 Open Source(TM) licenses with 10 times that many cryptic and probably incompatible clauses that nobody really knows what to make of. The _applications_ will be used of course, but the code is dead.
The sooner people figure that out the sooner we can all stop having to rewrite everything.
Don't worry, we'll still all have work rewriting everything in the language flavor of the month. This year everyone is getting paid to rewrite all their code in Ruby I hear.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Much of it is free. Much of it is not free. All generalizations are false. :-)
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Here's a link explaining the problem.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html
I'll explain how this might affect a user like you, because at first it doesn't seem like much of a restriction: just mention UC Berkley in any advertisements featuring BSD.
What could be simpler!
And then seventy five other shmoes copied the provision.
So now my voluteer website saying, "I'll help anyone, anywhere install BSD for free!!!!" needs to say:
"I'll help anyone, anywhere install BSD* for free!!!!
This product includes software developed by the University of California, Berkeley and its contributors.
This product includes software developed by the alteran, who considers himself extremely l33t.
This product includes software developed by the University of Utah and its contributors.
This product includes software developed by Inman Software Corp, and its employees, to be used freely as long as this statement is attached. Inman Software Corp acknowledges the work of many of its contractors, who may have also contributed code to this product.
This product includes software developed by the Grossman Progammers and Associates. Use of this software is fully authorized for all purposes as long as this statement is enclosed.
This product includes software developed by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and its contributors.
This product includes software developed by the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and its contributors.
This product includes software developed by the University of North Carolina at Tweetsie and its contributors.
etc., etc.
You get the idea, but pretend I make this list TEN TIMES longer.
Of course, when you got your copy of this software, you saw something like what I showed you above, right? Because if you didn't, well, you're running your software illegally. If you didn't, please erase it. (See, that's an effect right there!)
And that's just the beginning. Anyone advertising/distributing BSD needs to READ EVERY DAGGUM LICENSE and figure out which shmoes need to be credited on every scrap of paper or HTML mentioning BSD. Or just be illegal-- their choice. And because there are so many contributors, any one of which could insert a new program and provision at any time, which means every update needs to be rechecked.
No one is going to do this. They are just going to give up, or ignore the law-- both of which ultimately hurt free software.
And, of course, its users.
Who is RTFM and when will he help me with Unix?
Though I may not have put it that way, in many ways you are correct. And licenseing should be considered trivial (ie:nonexistant) The factional infighting is exposing OSS's similarities to the commercial world more than its differences (Watch the movie "Network" (1976) and note how the radicals negociate the renewal of their show). And most of the time will spent on licensing issues instead of actual developement. I've already downloaded some programs that consume less space than the license. There is only one suitable "license". That's public domain. Make it open to anybody for anything. Let the commercial companies have it. Who cares if they make money from it? They don't have any exclusivity over it. They still can't stop you from using it. As far as I'm concerned, use of public domain material in a program puts that program into the public domain also. *sigh* I guess the lawyers have found another pot of gold at the end of the OSS rainbow now. If there's anything that will prevent its widespread use, this would be it.
What?
I just had to remove all dependencies on libkvm for a project I work on, since we recently had our first users try to use it on OS X x86. It is software used on HPC clusters and SMPs, so there hadn't been much interest in OS X x86 until the Xeon XServes. I had been trying to get a hold of an x86 system to test on for months, and then this problem hit us.
Obviously this could affect OS X/Darwin until they completely phase this out and remove libkvm objects and headers from the software distribution.
1. The clause that's being referred to is clause three which states: 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software must display the following acknowledgement: The operative phrase being, "mentioning features or use of this software." Somehow I doubt there's so much with mentioning the features or use of libkvm no matter what the actual meaning of the word advertising is.
2. I've gone through all 15 of the
The two files are copyright Wolfgang Solfrank and TooLs GmbH. I would submit that there is probably a clause three waiver from these folks; it's just that we haven't found it yet. Also, removing the two effected files would have no effect on functionality. Neither the ARM or PPC ports are functional.
The FUD here may not have been intentional, but it is FUD none the less.
Well, the way I see it is this: if I can stick it all together for myself without anybody caring too much, then what's the problem with somebody else doing it for me? ...and lots of other people as well?
I guess what it all boils down to is I just really can't see the point of the billion-and-one different FOSS licenses out there. Even more so when you consider that you can seemingly change from one to another on a whim, or even distribute the same thing under different licenses for different platforms. As other posts have revealed in this discussion you can even (seemingly, I only skim-read it) arbitrarily change the conditions of somebody else's licensing terms... why bother?
How about just a mass free-for-all with these conditions:
1) All FOS produce is to remain credited to its author/s
2) All FOS produce is to remain FOS
3) All FOS produce shall be able to be intermingled with other FOS and non-FOS produce without legal issue.
Ahhh yeah, software communism FTW!
In case you haven't noticed, the current Apple OS is BSD. "Commercial" isn't the opposite of "open source". The opposite of open source is closed source, and the opposite of commercial is non-commercial. You can have "commercial open source" software and you can have "non-commercial closed source" software.
Think about how goofy this is. Berkeley originally wants ads to include a mention of them. Joe Schmoe contributes code with the understanding that his code is licensed this way (ad must mention Berkeley), and later Berkeley decides they don't care about the ads anymore.
Now there's concern Joe Schmoe might sue if an ad doesn't mention Berkeley?!?
(Could something like that be thrown out for lack of "standing"?)
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
It's copyright infringement. ;)
If the makers of Autocad and Photoshop had "widespread use" as their top priority, they'd also put their programs in the public domain rather than charging hundreds of dollars per copy.
Likewise, many of the people who license their programs under the GPL have other priorities higher than "widespread use". That may be annoying to those of us who didn't write the programs, but it's not our place to decide any more than it's our place to dictate the pricing on other peoples' commercial software.
As far as I'm concerned, use of public domain material in a program puts that program into the public domain also.
The lawyers would disagree. This is why we have copyleft in the form of the GNU GPL.
Care about privacy? Read this!
not to mention it's the worst of both worlds...
I've used several versions of Linux as well as FreeBSD...
In my experience, although it requires a lot of typing and less GUI, FreeBSD has been, by far, the easiest to administrate.
Linux has had much better driver support however.
So... It's a system with the base (and hence driver support) of BSD, and the administrative tools of Linux?
That just sounds painful and unnecessary.
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
You get the idea, but pretend I make this list TEN TIMES longer.
And it would still be way shorter than the entire text of the GPL.
Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai
directly:
it doesn't affect you, at all
indirectly:
Technically, they are supposed to follow the license of software that they use. Now, if someone wanted to be a jerk and say "You aren't following the license for my software!" it could cause trouble. This could seriously kill development and apps. By working it out before hand, it makes sure your software has a longer and happier development lifespan.
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
And be done, something undoubtedly is. My guess is that if nobody can find a nice solution to this soon someone will just declare the module in question to be in need of a rewrite and they'll code it from scratch with a friendlier license. Rewrites of existing code are often much faster and more stable anyways so it's not like it'd be a total loss.
But the entire text of the GPL doesn't have to appear on every piece of advertising for the product, so that's completely irrelevant.
If I had my druthers, I'd have an OS where all the code had one copyright and one license.
... one license.
Failing that
And I'd rather that be BSD than GPL personally. Which is why I'm trying to come up with a way to replace the whole userland on my system with one that's BSD licensed, but in Linuxland (I don't really feel like replacing my whole system right now as I have too much invested in it! Next machine though, I'll prolly put NetBSD on) it's easier said than done.
I'd like to see a BSD userland with autotools, even (compare xorg 7). Make things a hell of a lot easier on us.
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
If people program for their own ego advantage, they demand (forced) recognition.
If they program for the user and the community, they easily drop such mandatory clauses.
Exactly my thought. There should be a system with the Linux kernel and the FreeBSD userland (ports mainly, but rc.conf and init scripts would be nice as well). I've heard that pkgsrc is a ports look-alike, designed to be portable across many operating systems, including Linux, but I haven't seen any Linux distro using it. The closest seems to be ArchLinux (which uses BSD-style init), but they have their own, incompatible, package management tools.
Gentoo's portage would be nice if it weren't so damn slow...
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
The damn FUD
Believe it or not, I understand what you are saying and where you are coming from. I understood it before you said it. Now try to understand the other side of the coin. Because I did *NOT* state anything worth such a respons. I may have been a bit emphatic in my wondering about the purpose of such a project, but I did not say that it should be abandoned.
My biggest problem with so much of open source is that there are a large number of "half-done" quality projects, and so few "fully done" quality projects. I do think that the effort spent on this project could instead be spent on improving the shortcomings of one system or the other, rather than combining the shorcomings into one system.
I'm sure they have a logic for what they are doing, but I just don't see it.
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
Well, the way I see it is this: if I can stick it all together for myself without anybody caring too much, then what's the problem with somebody else doing it for me? ...and lots of other people as well?
Well, that's the difference between end-use and redistribution, I think you'll find this distinction is made in many circumstances, not just with software.
I guess what it all boils down to is I just really can't see the point of the billion-and-one different FOSS licenses out there. Even more so when you consider that you can seemingly change from one to another on a whim, or even distribute the same thing under different licenses for different platforms.
Keeping software Free after you distribute it is a difficult problem, as with most difficult problems several different (and non-optimal) solutions exist. And while there might be a huge number of F/OS licenses, less than half a dozen are widely used - it's not all that difficult to keep track of their differences.
Of course you can change the license your release under (why wouldn't you be able to?), but the previous versions already released keep their original license. Oh, and you can release products under different licenses even on the same platform, but the users are still required to fully comply with whichever one they are using.
As other posts have revealed in this discussion you can even (seemingly, I only skim-read it) arbitrarily change the conditions of somebody else's licensing terms...
That's simply not the case, I'm pretty sure they are talking about a specific provision of that license.
How about just a mass free-for-all with these conditions:
1) All FOS produce is to remain credited to its author/s
2) All FOS produce is to remain FOS
3) All FOS produce shall be able to be intermingled with other FOS and non-FOS produce without legal issue.
Well, (1) is the (fairly non-standard) clause in BSD4 that's causing the issue in this case. Many developers feels that places undue burden on large projects with many contributors (and prevents future license changes). (2) what is FOS? People have very different definitions, hence the proliferation of licenses. (3) easier said than done, and certainly conflicts with (2) more often than not.
sic transit gloria mundi
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/cvs-src/2007-Ja nuary/073415.html
All this painful discussion over what is probably a non-issue? Don't you just love this brave new world of 30 blogs linking to each other creating an artificial buzz/panic? Is this a case of premature eblogulation?
One example given was start-stop-daemon, which is just a useful little tool for init scripts. Would be absolutely mindlessly easy to replicate, but would still be annoying as hell if there were licensing issues -- practically every Gentoo init script (even on Linux) uses it.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
With a small, basically incompetent company, I am *FORCED* to include the follwing list of prestigious research institutions on my advertising? Yeah, this hurts me a LOT. WHERE DO I SIGN UP?
signed
idiot
This product includes software developed by the University of California, Berkeley and its contributors.
This product includes software developed by the alteran, who considers himself extremely l33t.
This product includes software developed by the University of Utah and its contributors.
This product includes software developed by Inman Software Corp, and its employees, to be used freely as long as this statement is attached. Inman Software Corp acknowledges the work of many of its contractors, who may have also contributed code to this product.
This product includes software developed by the Grossman Progammers and Associates. Use of this software is fully authorized for all purposes as long as this statement is enclosed.
This product includes software developed by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and its contributors.
This product includes software developed by the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and its contributors.
This product includes software developed by the University of North Carolina at Tweetsie and its contributors.
etc., etc.
You get the idea, but pretend I make this list TEN TIMES longer.
Your argument, in general, is correct. Closed source licenses are overall more strict in their allowances than open source. However, another important advantage that closed source licenses have is that they usually have one entity that is in control of the copyright. This allows one point of contact for re-negotiating the license, and possibly paying the owner for personal or business license. If there are many copyright owners for a software project, this is unfeasible.
Some open source software tries to follow the same route, mandating that all copyright be turned over, but even if this does happen, there is an assumption on the part of contributors that their software will remain open source, and not be taken closed; this can generate ill-will if it occurs. This makes it so even though there is a copyright transfer, the primary copyright owner will be unwilling to wield this power to relicense the product.
I had what you were referring to ~6 years ago. Slackware with /usr/ports from freebsd (there was a sourceforge project for /usr/ports that worked on linux. Slashdot ran a story on it, way back when).
Having said that.. It really wasn't worth it. Compared to my current Debian machines, I'd take apt hands down. Scripted source base distros are pointless unless you're modifying the sourcecode-- The optimizations are negligible (or lost due to the compile time exceeding the saved execution time) and as far as ease of use... Apt wins hands down. Want to go ahead and customize something? Apt-get source.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
How about you go drag up a single instance where the UC Regents actually tried to enforce Clause 3 when someone merely mentioned BSD? Just one.
The FSF successfully FUD'ed it out of existence.
As far as I'm concerned, use of public domain material in a program puts that program into the public domain also.
You'd be wrong. In any case, the proper response to Microsoft or whoever "stealing" public domain code is, "Good! I hope it works well for them." It doesn't cost you anything if they use your public domain code (now THAT's an oxymoron), so you really shouldn't expect anything in return.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Really, what is the point of Gentoo/FreeBSD anyway?
Fun?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
figures my mod points expired yesterday.
This is just about the best explanation of why Open Source much more the sow's ear than the silk purse it pretends to be.
Anybody want to explain to me why I (as a user only) should care?
Because if the people who develop your software get sued for license violations, they won't develop your software any more. And that's some seriously unfunky shit right there.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
...I don't know when, but it is going to happen, a court precedent will be set that allows inspection of closed source to check for copyright and patent violations,much easier than it is now, THEN joe corporate users and their lawyers are going to be hosed. Right now, they are RELYING on "legality through obscurity" to stay in their dreamland of legality.
In other words, I wouldn't bet one penny against the odds of a boatload of closed source projects, large and small, having illegal snagged code in them. As the tools for auditing keep getting better, and more and more court cases are being brought over licensing issues, eventually we'll be able to check the for-sale closed source code in a legal manner. TS is gonna HTF then.
At least in the FOSS world it is out in the open and people try to fix it when they see it, as in this example. In the closed source world they hide deeper in their bunkers and hope no one finds out.
C'mon ACs, now is your chance! Admit you have snagged code in your closed source binaries you ship!
EVERY BSD has GPL and LGPL code in it. What do I mean? What system compiler do we use? Trust me, there are GNU userland components. Obviously, with the goal of my project I take offense to this GPL + BSD = EVIL philosophy. I much prefer BSD licensed code, but there is not much choice when you get to window managers, toolkits and things for x11 nor with system compilers. There are also benefits to gcc (or some)compiler as a standard across platforms.
So just remember that OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, DragonFlyBSD and MidnightBSD all contain source under several different licenses. If you count various clause BSD licenses its even more strange. PHK has released parts under the beerware license as well. PHKMalloc for instance...
Regardless of the camp you're on, software licenses prohibit the use of code across open source projects. This is yet another example. The only solution for them is to either 1. get permission or 2. rewrite it just as bsd 4.4 lite had to be done. At which point, it will cease to be FreeBSD unless they also adopt the code which they can't since it will probably be GPL.
If you think userland is bad, try to figure out what you can distribute in ports on cd, ftp, etc. (packages)
Someone please write a good x11 toolkit with a BSD license so we can build our own stuff! There are a few if you google it, but they are not very good or recent.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
If the makers of Autocad and Photoshop had "widespread use" as their top priority, they'd also put their programs in the public domain rather than charging hundreds of dollars per copy.
...it's not our place to decide any more than it's our place to dictate the pricing on other peoples' commercial software.
Well, they do allow it to be pirated very easily. And that's because they want maintain "mindshare". If they didn't want this, they would require things like hardware dongles like Avid and Pro Tools do (or did).
Nobody has the right to deny me the use of divulged information. The law notwithstanding, once it's out, it belongs to everybody, just like a stray dog. It is absurd to put information on a leash. And I consider that to be theft.
What?
That's precisely the response I would offer up. What I'm claiming is the right to use the program that contains public domain code.
What?
Well, it turns out that you have the exact same position on the issue as people like RMS. It's just that he came up with one strategy to move towards that goal within the current system of laws (which isn't going away any time soon), and you're just making irrelevant noises about how you'd like to pretend that the system doesn't exist.
Yes he is, and now, like every other movement, it's starting to fragment because, like everything else, everybody thinks "my way or the highway". It may settle out in a while, but only for a short time before licensing or other legal stupidities will raise its ugly head again and again. His strategy is a short term one. Only the complete abolishment of IP law can and will possibly bring a lasting solution. And I'm not sure if I would want him to have any real power over how information is distributed any more than anybody else in such a position. Nobody should have that kind of power. So far now, while he's the underdog, he's serving us all a great purpose. But I don't want to see crap like "compulsory licensing" and such. All distribution methods must be completely voluntary in every fashion. My "strategy" to bring all this about is to simply neutralize the weapons being used to enforce IP law :-) EMP will take out the electronic stuff. The mechanical weapons are a bit more difficult. Maybe a giant Telsa coil to eletricify and melt them down right on the spot, or make it rain thermite. Whatever it takes without having to kill people.
...and you're just making irrelevant noises about how you'd like to pretend that the system doesn't exist.
You mean the same way people pretend that their money has real value? Our whole system is completely dependent on what we believe. Our faith is the only thing that keeps it running. So it can all change the instant we want it to. The system is easy to change. The people running it(all of us) are another story.
What?
Nonsense.
I don't give a damn what the license says as long as it doesn't restrict my use of the OS.
What I DO give a damn about is that the OS runs well on my hardware, and does what I want it to do. At the moment, for most of my daily applications, that means I run linux or BSD.
If all I cared about was the license, I'd go back to pen and paper, which puts no artificial usage restrictions on me at all. Your comment shouldn't have been modded insightful: it should have been modded "-1; elitist jackass."
If it's against the license, distributing it is illegal. If you don't care about illegal distribution, you might as well be using pirated software.
By all means use Linux or BSD because they suit the job better. I kinda leapt to the conclusion that Vista would do just as well if you're claiming to be an archetypal "End User" who doesn't have to do anything serious with the box, as that's what I thought the initial post was implying.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
FreeBSD already corrected the license:
imp 2007-01-08 17:35:36 UTC
FreeBSD src repository
Modified files:
lib/libkvm kvm.3 kvm.c kvm.h kvm_amd64.c kvm_file.c kvm_geterr.3 kvm_getfiles.3 kvm_getloadavg.3 kvm_getloadavg.c kvm_getprocs.3 kvm_i386.c kvm_nlist.3 kvm_open.3 kvm_private.h kvm_proc.c kvm_read.3 kvm_sparc.c kvm_sparc64.c
Log:
Remove the advertising clause. UCB did this some time ago, but these files were never updated to reflect that.
MFC After: 2 days
Revision Changes Path
1.15 +0 -4 src/lib/libkvm/kvm.3
1.30 +0 -4 src/lib/libkvm/kvm.c...
I think everyone has got their panties in a knot over this!!
Just stick w/ 6.1 and then field upgrade w/ a make world.
Problem solved...
There's a little devil inside all of us.
I haven't actually tried this distro out, but there's voltalinux:
Voltalinux is a GNU/Linux distribution based on Slackware Linux and the pkgsrc package system from NetBSD. The project offers a pre-built distribution where the user can enjoy the clean design of Slackware Linux with the availability of over 5,000 NetBSD ports ready to be installed.
Exactly the point I was about to make, I really came to understand this when XFree86 went the way of the dodo by taking on this provision in its license, It was a really good thing that freedesktop.org picked up the pieces and kept X from stagnating in the BSD attribution mess that would have followed.
I am an avid free software supporter and I completely agree with you. Instead of everyone forking projects or creating five different beta quality solutions that all aim to accomplish the same thing, everyone should be pooling their resources together to perfect the projects that are already out there. We should have a handful of mainstream distributions. Ideally, we'd only have one base "meta-distribution" with other special-purpose distributions building off of the base, and everyone working on a distribution would be combining all of their efforts into one big massive distribution effort.
...
GNOME / KDE? It seems like they're going in the same directions. Why not just merge the two and create a very, very good desktop environment instead of two good ones? They do the same things, just a little bit differently. With all of the advances in i18n and the like, I'm sure the developers could add extra customization "switches" in the meta-environment to make it behave the way people expect. The same thing with Enlightenment. Or Amarok / Rhythmbox. Or Xine / Mplayer. Or Galeon / Konqueror. Or HURD / Linux. Or
Instead of starting all new projects and being counterproductive, why don't we all "just get along"? Think of all the work and all the progress made with "rival" free software applications. Now just imagine how much further along / stable / more advanced they'd be if all of that work were done on one project instead of two, three, four...
Have you driven a fnord... lately?
You must wait a little bit before using this resource; please try again later.
One thing I really like about "Keep my name in your code" and related kinds of license variants is it gives you some kind of crude mandatory source control - if you have to indicate that you've modified the code, that makes it easier to track and fix things, or at least if you don't put your name in the code, nobody should have to track you down and get permission for later license changes or whatever.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I wish I had mod points for you.
I pretend to know more than I really do by mooching off google and wikipedia.
It is official. Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
Even assuming that the worst-case interpretation of the original BSDL holds (and, remember, it only requires acknowledgment when you mention features of the product... you do NOT have to include every copyright notice in every document), it's the GPL that deliberately restricts what clauses other licenses can include, and in this case it's a fruitless attempt... trademark law can be used to impose the same requirements on a package.
For example, Linux is trademarked and requires attribution.
Personally im sick and tired of this 'IP' garbage.
The next person that threatens a suit should be shot on sight.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Hoorah, the first time I've actually seen a post by someone else who understands the BSD-license way of thinking.
Commercial use of my BSD code does not remove my BSD code from distribution. If someone paid coders to improve it, they deserve the right to sell their improved version.
The difference between GPL and BSD is that GPL is a politically motivated license bent on taking over the software industry. BSD is a license in the interests if improving the quality of software in all segments of the market (by stopping wheel re-invention).
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
>> >> As far as I'm concerned, use of public domain material in a program puts that program into the public domain
/*
>> >> also.
>> The lawyers would disagree. This is why we have copyleft in the form of the GNU GPL.
Where, oh where did the days go where you could write something like this in the header of your code and it would suffice? :
* Program to dominate the world.
* If your cat goes psycotic and slits your throat while you sleep, or gets your fish pregnant,
* I'm not responsible. This comes with no warranty.
* Hereby donated to the public domain in hopes that someone finds it useful
* If you use this, I'd appreciate an e-mail at blah@blahblah.blah
*
* Revision notes :
* blah blah blah
*/
That system worked so well for so long. Can someone, please tell me why someone can't release code freely, without copyright or any obligation for anything on the user's end? I mean you can, but unless you slap a well accepted license (thats prone to be incompatable with some other license) on it, nobody uses it for fear of it not having a license.
For free software I think this is just completely absurd. Is this a result of ego-vating instead of innovating, or did we just leave the lawyers alone in a room together a few minutes too long?
Better yet folks , here's a more down to the (real) world example and question.
// /* ... program code
.. I simply link to it in my blog (say its just a single .c file) and give instructions in the header on how to compile it.
.. because there is no clear license for it.
.. explain to me why something *must* be licensed and copyrighted to be included in free OS distributions? Or am I completely misunderstanding the current hype and debate over licensing? This isn't flamebait, I don't want to start an argument, I honestly want to know what license is compatable with what , what licenses don't allow for uncopyrighted or unlicensed code, and a general indication of why not.
Lets say, I write something trivial.. lets say its a backup utility similar to something else thats included in open source distros, however I decided that the world could use a version with less bloat and better loggging. So I wrote one from scratch with this header :
* Backup Utility Version 1.0
* By John Q Public, Written January 2007
* This program is not copyrighted in any way, and is hereby donated to the public domain without warranty
* of any kind, in hopes someone finds it useful.
* Bug reports : john@qpublic.com
*/
Now, to distribute this, I don't zip it, or tar it
If XYZ Linux distro , that is distributed under the xyz license wanted to pick it up, it couldn't
Can someone, please
Link to something useful on the matter, anyone? Preferably one not riddled with legal-ese? I'm really trying to understand this, and I think the absurdity of it is preventing me from doing so.
Thanks to anyone in advance who can answer here, or give a link.. and I don't think I'm the only one who is thoroughly confused.
Dude, you're dumpster diving in KERNEL MEMORY without any locking whatsoever. The data structures are changing as you examine them. A location holding a pointer to a process structure can suddenly change to hold a pointer to the read port of a hardware device FIFO, with any read you do being destructive by stealing the data. Even a page of memory can get remapped at any moment.
Also, this ties you to a specific version of the kernel. It ties you to a specific patch level. If ever Apple changes the layout of a kernel data structure, you're screwed.
You call this clean??? Uh...
In your mind, what exactly does it take for an interface to be dirty? I'd love to see a few examples.
Thanks for the hint! It must be a new distro, I've never heard about it before. For those who want to try it out, here is the link. I'll install it over the next weekend (although I'm a little old [25, but I've seen quite a lot distros] to test new Linux distros, I've got a brand new 250 gig HDD just screaming to be ext3fsed (heh... English is a nice language to make new verbs...)
Thanks again from Brazil!
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
Maybe I misunderstood, but doesn't this mean that BSD has no protection against being killed? If someone takes a BSD program and changes it to be incompatible with the original code, the new version can drive the code-available version out of existence (the closed being so prevalent that without 'political motivation' no one will maintain the original, free version)?
English is easier said than done.
>> Perhaps it is because in the U.S. there is no statutory definition of how to dedicate works to the public
.. (for lack of a better word) .. nuts? Is there one precedent that started it?
:)
>> domain.
I, like many people first found C through snippets and skeletal code on the network that predicated usenet, all of them were 'public domain'..
Where did it go? I don't mean to sound like a dinosaur with a bad memory, but could someone shed some light on exactly where, at what point things got
Thanks
The assumption here is that reproducing the 3-clause BSD license goes under the first clause of the GPL: 1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program. However, the BSD license includes more than just the disclaimer and copyright, specifically (for a 3-clause variant): 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission. Reproducing the license in documentation can in practice be a significant restriction, something a coorporation I've worked for has noticed when we were working on an embedded device based on BSD source code. Reproduction of all these disclaimers (as opposed to keeping them just in the source code) is an additional restriction compared to the GPL, which is in violation of the GPL section 6: 6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License.
To me, this sums up to "GPL and BSD licenses are not compatible, period."
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
t's the GPL that deliberately restricts what clauses other licenses can include
All licenses do that (apart from 3-claus BSD). Otherwise, you would see people including the "this software can freely be put on any FTP-server, as long as this FTP-server is not run by Microsoft"-clause in their "Windows Warez edition" license.
For example, Linux is trademarked and requires attribution.
The trademark may require attribution, but the code does not. And since the trademark isn't GPL'en in the first place, the two thing don't even have anything to do with eachother.
If you want a date, it would probably be March 1, 1989, when the U.S. adopted the Berne Convention. They were actually a little late, as it was first adopted by many European nations in 1886. In fact, the U.S. was once in some respects a sort of haven for piracy like China is today.
English is easier said than done.