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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."

4 of 200 comments (clear)

  1. Someone didn't read his next email... by Zaurus · · Score: 5, Informative
    Um, hello? Whoever submitted this basically took the original email that Flameeyes sent, but ignored the next one that came a few minutes later:

    On Sunday 07 January 2007 02:47, Diego 'Flameeyes' Pettenò wrote:
    > 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.
    Edit: Timothy (drizzt) found us the escape route. Applying
    ftp://ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/pub/4bsd/READM E.Impt.License.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 *should* cover our asses about the problem, although I'm still looking if
    there are sources that are redistributed under 4-clause BSD license, and for
    which the license change is not effective (i.e.: they are not under UCB
    copyright).
  2. Re:hmmm by First+Person · · Score: 4, Informative

    For those who need the (admittedly weak) joke explained, try this.

    --
    Given one hour to live, the student replied: "I'd spend it with professor FP who can make an hour seem like a lifetime."
  3. FUD by brass1 · · Score: 4, Informative
    FUD, plain and simple.

    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 .c files in my FreeBSD tree, exactly 2 of them have what *may* be a non-waived clause three: kvm_arm.c, and kvm_powerpc.c. The rest of the files are either copyright the Regents, don't have clause three, or use the CMU license.

    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.
  4. Re:But wait a minute... by drmerope · · Score: 4, Informative

    Just so. The anti-4 clause movement began with the FSF. Let me stake out the position that they are not entirely objective on this point. The imfamous clause 3 problem was and has always been a canard.

    What's amazing is that people cite to the FSF propoganda and conclude they've prove their point.

    Well here is the truth of the matter: Clause 3 relates particularly to advertising that discusses the features implemented by the code given in clause 3. What this means is you want to brag about softupdates and softupdates were covered by this imfamous third clause, you would have to say 'as implemented by Kirk...'

    Anyways, this only applies to advertising with sufficient specificity to implicate particular code. Basically if you can trace a feature to 100s of contributors the clause is self-invalidating. No one contribution was responsible for the feature discussed in the advertising, therefore no mention is required.

    The whole topic has been FUD for twenty years. That said, it has been such good FUD that people have actually taken extensive effort to purge the clause from the standard license. Only a few small files retain it today.

    I think DragonflyBSD which is forked from FreeBSD 4.x is 4-clause free.