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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."
Indeed. A lot of projects are going to be switching to GPLv3 from GPLv2 in the coming weeks and months, are we going to get an article for each one of these projects that change their status? Why is this news?
Yep, Samba is a major project.
But more to the point, LOTS of vendors re-package Samba and sell it as NAS's and such.
They are already boosting it by a non integral value, 3.0->3.2 does not appear to be intuitively obvious to the casual observer, why not aim for a mnemonic association with 3.3.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
Not necessarily, if smbfs needs code from the Samba project, its authors can of course give it to smbfs under GPLv2, or whatever other license they choose.
There was a lot of doomsaying as to how the GPL V 3 would never be adopted, most unexpectedly by Linus, and also by the normal suspects in spreading FUD. It is good to see that
the FSF and Stallman have finally addressed patent issues and prevented tivoization. As a major project like Samba has adopted this, many other projects will probably also follow suit. It becomes harder and harder to stay GPL v 2 if the entire body of software is V3. Linus may have stated that the kernel won't have V3, but increasingly that will lead to the kernel being unable to incorporate the latest patches from others.
No it isn't in error. "GPLv2-only" licenses are incompatible with both GPLv3 and LGPLv3, as they add additional conditions which are incompatible with GPLv2. It isn't the LGPLv3 code that is the problem, it's the "GPLv2 only". Thus the advice to relicense to "GPLv2 or later". See the FSF comments on this.
Jeremy.
Rubbish. That would be granting far too much significance to legal fictions like licensing over technical realities. Each time you take licensing too seriously, you increase the grey stranglehold the lawyerocracy has on society.
Death to copyrightists and patentists. Death to the demoness Allegra Geller!
Absolutely. I've tried to explain this before, but it always gets muddled up. Ideally I'd like to release my code with the least restrictions possible, because I want the users of my software to be free, but in practice if I don't put some copyleft like restrictions on my code then it will end up that some of the users of my software will not be free. If my goal is to maximize the freedom of the users of my software then, paradoxically, I must restrict them - specifically, from taking freedom away from others.
As such, I believe the BSD style licenses are more idealistic than copyleft licenses, but less effective.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Heh heh, 73% *GPL to 6% BSD*. I believe one of the main reasons for this is because when you use the BSD license you are doomed from the start. If you start a project with a BSD license then someone like Microsoft can come along and take a copy of the code, close their copy of the code, modify it slightly so it doesn't work with the original code, then make their copy the defacto standard because they have the monopoly numbers. The original project becomes obsolete and disappears into oblivion (or at least drops off the list at freshmeat). This can't happen with the GPL and it's probably why "most" programmers prefer it.
""Public domain" only really applies to works with expired copyright, or works created by public institutions like the U.S. Government."
Not always. Plus a copyright holder can release their works into the public domain. Further detail here.
You obviously don't write code...
It isn't the LGPLv3 code that is the problem, it's the "GPLv2 only". Thus the advice to relicense to "GPLv2 or later".
It takes two to have a problem. "GPLv2 or later" is essentially handing all your rights over to FSF. I don't sign blank checks, I don't sign contracts before they're written, and I'd be a fool to write "GPLv2 or later" on any piece of code I wrote.
E pluribus unum
I'm a not an expert on GPLv2, buy can't someone simply juust take the existing Samba CVS code and create a "new" Samba and stay with the GPLv2?
Yes. And Samba has forked in the past.
But it's a big, complex project with a few people behind it and they're pretty good at what they do. Unless you can poach one of them to work on your fork, it'll probably be a good 6 months before anyone on your fork even understands what's going on under the hood, let alone is able to substantially improve on it. Once Samba 4 is declared stable, version 3 will suddenly appear very dated because 4 adds all sorts of goodies - AIUI the plan is to basically bring Samba up to the level of "able to act natively as a DC in an ADS domain" - and a fork will likely die on the vine or exist purely in commercial projects.
How eloquently you trash the GPL when you obviously never read it. "RMS" and we who understand what he wants have absolutely no problems with people making money of software. What we have a problem with is getting software and then being at the mercy of its creator: If we get software, we want to be able to improve it, should the need arise; otherwise, if the company who distributed the non-free software goes under or just doesn't want to deal with us, we won't get the bugs fixed or new features introduced.
Of course, a company who offers no value when redistributing GPL'd software won't make money: They have to migrate from a sense of entitlement ("intellectual property") to facing the fact that they have to offer some additional value instead of intangible, nearly cost-free reproducible data streams. If they manage that and make money of it, all the better. If they don't, good riddance. But that's their problem, it shouldn't be ours.
Indeed, both as a private person and in any position in a commercial or governmental entity, I'd choose GPL3'd software (or, at the very least, demand contractually that the code is handed over to me so I can fix it and the devices won't stop me from doing that - which pretty much amounts to the same), because I don't want to be dependent on some (other) company when there's no need to be.
Or would you like it if Gates (or Jobs or whoever) decides to take over the world and you can't stop him because he revoked the key for the DRM of the devices of your police, military and any other agency which could stop him? Or how about having a bug in medical software but being unable to fix it because of not having the code and, even if you had the code, updating the software being impossible because of the DRM, thus the hospital equipment randomly killing people by switching off life support or overdosing the IV?
Also, you can still release your own code under any license you like, unless you used GPL'd code in the first case. And you also should think of how much more hassle it is with non-free software where one needs first to ask and pay billions for some "intellectual property" before one can get a bug fixed.
In Soviet Russia, government controls corporations.
In Capitalist America, corporations control government.