Slashdot Mirror
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
It's nice to see geeks tripping over each other's fantasy rules for releasing code. Open source fighting open source over trivialities is a beautiful thing.
And people probably wonder why commercial software still owns the world's computers.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
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.
...I couldn't give two shits what it's licensed under, or if the licenses are incompatible or whatever it is. It doesn't affect how the software works, does it? Why should I (the consumer) suffer because somebody wants the moral highground in a piffling little matter?
Anybody want to explain to me why I (as a user only) should care?
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
Can't we all just get along?
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.
I guess I'll just have to install Vista. [sigh]
not!
I am desperate to get Gentoo all going again... this halt sucks.
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.
This Gentoo/FreeBSD idea would have perfect for me. I always wanted to use FreeBSD, if it only had ports.
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.
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.
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/
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.
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 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.
The damn FUD
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.
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.
...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!
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.
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
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 ----
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.
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.