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."

Comments

Re:Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.

[AuMatar]

For the major ones, yes. Especially early adopters. And Samba is definitely a major FOSS project, their switching is a win for the GPL3.

More like, who re-packages it.

[khasim]

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.

Re:More like, who re-packages it.

[alexgieg]

Now, they could modify the kernel to implement the DRM, and release an unmodified Samba >=3.2. Since you could implement pretty much any DRM system in the kernel (and it's probably the best way to do it, short of hardware measures), Samba doing this stops very little.

No, no, no! Quite the opposite in fact! If they provide a DRM'ed device with GLPv3 Samba installed, the GLPv3 license says that they MUST provide you all information you need to be able to replace that pre-packaged Samba with any GPLv3 Samba you, or anyone else, provide.

So, it doesn't matter whether the DRM scheme is on the kernel, on the firmware, or wherever. If it's blocking you, the end-user, from updating, upgrading, recompiling, downgrading, replacing etc. etc. etc. a piece of GPLv3 software, they are in violation of the license and must either: a) stop distributing those pieces of GPLv3 software; or b) comply with the license by providing you, the end user, all the required codes to mess with it as you see fit; or c) deal with the problem in the court when they're sued, and with the fact they're are going to lose. Furthermore, if they're wise and follow "b", there's nothing stopping you, the end user, from installing anything where Samba formerly was, what renders any DRM over the remaining pieces of software pretty much useless.

So, Samba doing this doesn't stop it very little. Samba doing this stops it entirely. Once you add holes in your DRM to accommodate the pieces of GPLv3 software you must add to it, there's in fact no DRM left in the device.

Re:More like, who re-packages it.

[MightyMartian]

And that's fine. They can support the full weight of patches and development for the pre-GPL3 code bases. They won't have the open source community lending them a hand with things like Samba and the Linux kernel. Can you see the vendors building NASs with Samba getting together to pool their resources to keep GPL2 versions up and running? Either these vendors will give up the lock-in and play nice, or their products will increasingly become dated and substandard.

Excellent work

[raahul_da_man]

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.

Re:Not dead yet.

[Jeremy Allison - Sam]

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.

Re:In other news...

[QuantumG]

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.

Re:Branch of Samba?

[jimicus]

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.

Re:Free software my ass

[the not-troll]

Write code you love and let it go free. If someone else makes money from it, BFD. "RMS" can go shove it.

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.