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Gentoo/FreeBSD On Hold Due To Licensing Issues

Posted by Hemos on from the the-hangover-of-license-versions dept.

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."

6 of 200 comments (clear)

  1. hmmm by macadamia_harold · · Score: 4, Funny

    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
    1. Re:hmmm by baldass_newbie · · Score: 2, Funny

      Fucking hippies.

      --
      The opposite of progress is congress
    2. Re:hmmm by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 1, Funny
      Who the heck modded that as flamebait? Tired old in-joke, yes, but hardly flamebait. Sheesh.


      The pool of moderators consistently has a large number of BSD and Mac OS X users, all of whom reflexively mod down any post containing both the words 'BSD' and 'dying'.

      Which brings me to my next conclusion: the Slashdot moderators are DYING! Netcraft confirms it! Since the moderators run BSD and, clearly, BSD is dying, therefore, the moderators are dying, too!

      *ducking*

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      My blog
  2. Ah, freedom... by Erwos · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.
  3. Re:Someone didn't read his next email... by robyannetta · · Score: 2, Funny

    Shhh, don't let SCO hear about this as they'll probably assert some claim to the code just to have it disproven in 3 to 5 years.

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    - Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
  4. Re:That's awesome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Don't upset the OpenSolaris fanboys, they might set Jörg Schilling on you.