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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."
Really, what is the point of Gentoo/FreeBSD anyway?
I cannot think of a single reason why this would be a good thing. Mixing BSD and GPL licensed code is just asking for trouble. Is a blend of these two systems really going to be better than the sum of its parts?
Somehow I think this whole idea is doomed to fail.
Elegy For *BSD
I am a *BSD user
and I try hard to be brave
That is a tall order
*BSD's foot is in the grave.
I tap at my toy keyboard
and whistle a happy tune
but keeping happy's so hard,
*BSD died so soon.
Each day I wake and softly sob,
Nightfall finds me crying
Not only am I a zit faced slob
but *BSD is dying.
Fag.
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
You are an idiot. His "troll" has much more truth to it than your post. I fucking love the Slashdot groupthink. If anyone posts anything even SLIGHTLY against OSS, or even SLIGHTLY not anti-commercial software it's somehow magically a "troll." Even if it's entirely true. Sorry guys, sometimes the truth isn't what you want to hear, but that does not make it a fucking troll.