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Sun Looks To GPL3 For Java, Solaris
daria42 writes "Sun is leaning toward changing the license for Java and Solaris to the GNU GPL version 3. The article has some insightful comments from Sun boss Jonathan Schwartz. '"Will we GPL Solaris? We want to ensure we can interact with the GPL community and the Mozilla community and the BSD community," he says.'"
GPL'ing stuff will make it difficult to "interact" with the BSD and Moz communities, unless by interact they mean "take stuff and put it in Solaris/Java"...
Both are now in Microsoft Windows with nothing more than a credit line to the original developers buried somewhere.
So what? Given that a network stack is a fundamental part of a modern operating system, and that poorly written, incompatible and vulnerable network stacks would degrade the entire network for everyone on it, surely it's better that MS used a tried and tested stack rather than going it alone and producing a buggy, not quite compatible version of their own?
Besides which, it was clearly the intention of the authors in using the licence that it could be used in closed-source products, and MS are complying with the letter and the spirit of the licence; "use it as you see fit, just credit us".
It's official. Most of you are morons.
I wonder,
Now that Java is OpenSource, and that it has bindings to both GTK (as in SWT) and QT (as in Jambi), will we see it on more desktop applications? I'm asking because I feel that Java is a better choice than C#, because of its extensive libraries and frameworks.
Also, Java is already a major player on the server side, if KDE and Gnome had a better integration with it than Windows... it would be a major push for the adoption of a FOSS Desktop...
---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
As an end-user, I'm rather interested to see the first Java packages included in Linux distros... well maybe there already is, but not in the distro I use. I want to see an RPM added to the respositories and the horrible GNU/Java implementation removed forever.
An alternative for this is the type of dual licensing used by Trolltech
1) Free for not for profit use
2) Want to sell something based upon my software? Here is the license and its cost.
The GPL3 is not the same license as the majority because it hasn't been released yet. There is no other reason. Nobody has rejected it because there is nothing to reject.
The entire process is being driven by consensus. The DRM stuff is in there because regardless of the views of a vocal minority, most people interested in Free Software are well aware that software is not free if someone can simply define it as an "Access Control Mechanism" and then use the DMCA to tear apart anyone who changes that code in a way they don't like. The "signatures" thing is in there because regardless of the views of a vocal minority, most people interested in Free Software are well aware that software you cannot use in any modified form except those signed-off by a hardware manufacturer is not free.
And I might hazard a guess that the primary reason why Torvalds is being to vocal in winging about both of the above has to do with the amount of work he'd need to do to change the license in the first place, given his lack of forethought in neither adopting the "or later version" clause, or any alternative that would make it easy to upgrade the license to one similar in spirit without the active support of every single person who has ever made a "contribution", no matter how small, to the Linux kernel.
Either way, I'm not seeing much evidence that, outside of the Linux kernel, there's much rejection of GPL3 at all. And I am seeing much of the Free Software community who rejected GPL2 seeing GPL3 as a much better alternative. That's the aim, after all, to try to get a license that suits almost everyone who believes in Copyleft, and to end the current, insane, license forking that causes so much damage.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I said he was whining, not that he merely had an opinion and that any opinion constitutes whining. There is nothing in my comment that constitutes calling "having an opinion" whining, and if you read that, then you need glasses.
As for whining, that's what he's doing. He's making up excuse after excuse, complaining that GPLv3 is somehow overbearing compared to its predecessor when, in reality, it is cut from exactly the same cloth and merely closes a few loopholes. His complaint that, in some way, TiVo using signatures to close its hardware and its code is in some way what he wanted all along is a completely ridiculous position - if you want that, you don't make your code copyleft. His complaints about DRM have no basis in anything the draft license says.
Torvald's inability to posit a position consistant with the aims and effects of the license he chose, claiming GPL2 is somehow not the copyleft license it is intended to be, shows me that his positions are completely insincere, and this realistically is more excuse making, presumably because of his shortsighted decision not to ensure there was a process for upgrading the license in the future.
Yes, it's whining. If he had a strong legitimate point, I'd say it was merely having an opinion. But he doesn't. He's saying his choice of a strict copyleft was right, yet complaining that the loopholes within it that completely undermine the entire point of making it copyleft are, in some way, desirable. He's full of shit, and not for the first time.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
The biggest problem I find with the BSD license is that derivative works covered under it can end up being rendered non-free.
For example, say a person puts software X under the BSD license, and then some other person comes along, makes a few changes and additions (perhaps adding in a whiz-bang feature or two, but leaving most of the other code intact), decides to make his derivative work closed-source, and also decides to limit people's freedoms on the work so that they can't further pass on the program nor have access to the modified source code without explicit permission. This is particularly nasty for the author if the other party happens to possess a larger distribution bandwidth than the author does -- where the original author of the software may end up completely forgotten... even if he did most of the work on the project.
It's that scenario that the GPL is designed to prevent (and not coincidentally probably why MS was at least at one time so pissed off about the GPL -- it prohibited them from assimilating GPL'd software into their own property and basically taking it over without violating copyright).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'