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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.
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?
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?
Sure, it would be great if all these licenses were innately compatible. However, since they're not, it would be a disservice to the entire free software community if we were to start ignoring the provisions of each license in a spirit of universal brotherhood. As much as we all worry about challenges to the GPL, etc., in courts by open source opponents, we should not dilute open source licenses' credibility within the free software community. How seriously could the legality of these licenses be considered then?
I think it's great that a developer took the time to notice a problem and begin the due diligence required to come to a legal, mutually-acceptable conclusion. That's the mark of a true community.
More interesting is the Nexenta project, which is porting Ubuntu to OpenSolaris (and has usable releases out already).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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.
This is a prime example of how stupid politics ruin good things.
Actually this is a prime example of how people behave no matter what the endeavor. It's that desire to prevail. There's no reason to expect OSS to be any different from anything else. Many civil rights groups suffer the same fate also. So they remain on the side lines, or simply get swallowed up. It's the Gaza Strip without the guns. OSS will have its day when licensing issues can be thrown aside, and all time spent on developement. Until then, I don't expect much.
What?
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.
Don't upset the OpenSolaris fanboys, they might set Jörg Schilling on you.
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.
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"
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
For the record, I went through the source code for my FOX project's coreutils (48 programs)...
2 programs have a 4th clause for NetBSD
6 programs have a 4th clause for Caldera
1 program (uname) has a 4th clause for Winning Strategies, Inc.
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
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!
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
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!
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!
WTF are you talking about? Yeah, Linux is only a kernel. That's a problem the various distros take care of. What's your point?
http://outcampaign.org/
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
but yet, through the sheer mass of momentum and the number of devs supporting it, linux still has better driver support than opensolaris. just look at network card support - linux support beats solaris hands down. there are even entire categories solaris does not support (usb wifi).
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?
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...
Yup. And after you make the list ten times longer, what space is left for you to include the advertising that you intended to do for your product/company?
You have to purchase a full-page ad in the paper just to mention " Eat at Joe's! And by the way, we use the following software to assemble your sandwich..."
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
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.
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.
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.
The GPL is incompatible with all other licenses. Deliberately and by design. When people talk about GPL compatibility, what they really mean is a license that allows relicensing under the GPL.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
>> >> 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
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.
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.