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Samba Adopts GPLv3 For Future Releases
Jeremy Allison - Sam writes with news that the Samba Team has decided to adopt the GPLv3 and LGPLv3 licenses for all future releases of Samba. Follow the link for a FAQ addressed to Samba developers and contributors. "To allow people to distinguish which Samba version is released with the new GPLv3 license, we are updating our next version release number. The next planned version release was to be 3.0.26, this will now be renumbered so the GPLv3 version release will be 3.2.0. To be clear, all versions of Samba numbered 3.2 and later will be under the GPLv3, all versions of Samba numbered 3.0.x and before remain under the GPLv2."
smbfs has been dead for a while. The replacement is CIFSFS. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on your point of view :-) this isn't a Samba project, it's developed by Steve French of IBM, and I think it's under GPLv2 or later.
Jeremy.
"When it's done" - sorry, don't know when that'll be. You'll have to ask Novell if they'll include it in SuSE, but I don't see why not.
Jeremy.
I doubt that. Why would NAS vendors need to fork ? It's not like dealing with GPLv3 is harder than dealing with GPLv2. I expect our vendors to just roll along with us, as will and vendor that doesn't have "discriminatory" patent agreements.
Jeremy.
Nothing. That code doesn't link to Samba and so the license change has no effect. Apple are perfectly free to keep shipping Samba, as are all other vendors who obey the GPLv3.
Jeremy.
That's called the BSD license.
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.ph
The troll with karma.
That's funny, according to this page :
:-).
http://freshmeat.net/stats/
fully 65.74% are under the GPL with an additional 6.53% under the LGPL. If anyone is cutting themselves off from the mainstream it would be BSD and other types of license, it seems
Jeremy.
Bzzt. Wrong. Linus Torvaldis explains this pretty often The "or later" clause is optional, and was never in the License that the linux kernel was released under.
-Bucky
The problem is legally there is no such thing as a "public domain" work created by an individual. If you created it, it is copyright automatically, period. No one can use it without your permission (AKA a license). The BSD license is basically a license that says "do whatever you want with this code, and I take no legal responsibility for it's use". That is pretty much as "public domain" as a license can be. And it's 3 simple letters so it's simple to apply :P
"Public domain" only really applies to works with expired copyright, or works created by public institutions like the U.S. Government.
See, but that doesn't break any of the Freedoms that FSF espouses. I can still update, modify, recompile, or remove whichever version of Samba Apple ships. I could even write my own SMB-compatibility app. In the worst case scenario, I can't use that preference pane if I "break" Samba. But that's my problem, not Apple's.
Apple is actually really modular with its code. You can replace a lot of components, and as long as they're compatible, there's no issue. I've upgraded several of the installed OSS programs, and I've even replaced Apple's Finder (I literally do not even have the old one on this computer). I'm perfectly allowed to do that. Occasionally that borks updates when Apple tries to update the Finder or Apache in a 10.4.y patch, but that's my problem (and easily worked around) and not a GPL violation.
This just in: "Idealism less effective than pragmatism. Film at 11."
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Also, just looking at 3.0.25 here they have the "any later version" option. so even if you retained copyright to your patch you submitted it under the "any later version" clause so they are presumably free to invoke that (as would anyone else who wanted to fork the project).
The real question is, what, exactly, do people think is going to happen? MS is going to buy the FSF and create a GPLv4 which is just an MS license? Do they think that somehow this means that the FSF will be able to steal your code away from you? None of these things are remotely likely, or in the case of the second, even reasonably possible.
The biggest concern is the FSF really screwing up, inadvertently, a new license. *That's* the only reasonable concern. The FSF has shown great care in the past, and present, in drafting their licenses, and it seems highly reasonable to assume they'll do so in the future. Of course, if it were as easy as you (and others) seem to think to relicense a project from GPLv2 to GPLv3 (or any other earlier-later transition), then there really wouldn't be an issue. But it *is* difficult, unless you are the sole programmer for a project, and you don't die or pass on stewardship of the project to someone else without granting them full copyright of your code. And if you do accept patches or other collaboration, then you'll have to be sure to consolidate fully copyrights from everyone who contributes code (which is the exact thing you are arguing *against* people doing).
On the other hand, just adding "or later" (not adding, actually, just not removing), you avoid all those problems. All those real problems which actually exist. You do leave yourself vulnerable to potential problems, primarily the FSF botching a subsequent license. But if your code is GPLvX or later, if GPLvX+1 is botched, you can still just use GPLvX. Of course, you can't stop others from switching over to a newer license, but your code will remain under the "GPLvX or later" license, if that's what you wish. And even if GPLvX+1 (or later) is botched, it's probably not botched all that much.
So the risk is small, the potential problems are small and fairly limited, and the potential for avoiding non-small, non-low risk problems is great. How is this foolish again?
If you're about to say that this only applies to tivoized devices, you should take a look at the market and see that the majority of corporate uptake of OSS has been in internet-connected appliances.
Internet connected does not mean "tivoized".
For example, Linksys used the Linux kernel on its routers, got forced to publish the source and now you have 3rd party firmware for those devices. So, they did participate and they did use Linux. This deal would still be valid under GPLv3. The only thing you are not allowed to do is FORBID anyone else to put modified code on your device by signing the code.
You can be networked all you want and allow 3rd party code. Those are different issues.