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.

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: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: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.