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.

So, let me summerize

[mergy]

the

*.2.* indicates GPLv3
*.0.* indicates GPLv2

So, to easily remember this kids 2 equals 3 and 0 equals 2.

All set now?

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

[goarilla]

samba is a biggy and pretty vital to Novel and their deal since most interoperatiblity between windows machines
and *Nix machines is provided through this service, so iirc Novel will have to fork samba

smbfs?

[man_of_mr_e]

So doesn't this mean that smbfs is now dead? Or stuck at 3.0.x? Since the Linux kernel will not be going GPLv3, from my understanding of what Linus has said.

Re:smbfs?

[Jeremy Allison - Sam]

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.

Re:Why not v3.3.x?

[Jeremy Allison - Sam]

'Cos odd numbered releases mean "development" releases. People have been trained by the Linux kernel to think that. It's like odd numbered Star Trek movies, everyone knows they suck :-).
Jeremy.

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:More like, who re-packages it.

[Jeremy Allison - Sam]

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.

Re:More like, who re-packages it.

[alexgieg]

So what? Does switching to GPLv3 change anything about [LOTS of vendors re-packaging Samba and selling it as NAS's and such]? There's nothing those vendors do with Samba that will have to change because of the new restrictions under GPLv3. So who cares?

There is one thing: if a NAS manufacturer has put DRM on the device blocking its owner from changing the underlying software, that manufacturer either won't use the GLPv3 Samba, or to be allowed to use it he will have to at least disclose in full the instructions needed for one to change the underlying software (or more probably, remove the DRM "feature" entirely).

So, yes, this is major news for everyone developing/manufacturing/deploying/using/etc. anything Samba-related.

GPL3 not practical for Linux kernel

[EmbeddedJanitor]

The limitation is not because Linus is some asshole, but a practical realisation that GPL3 cannot be retro-fitted to existing kernel code.

Only the owner of the code is allowed to assign the license and people made submissions to Linux under the GPL2-flavored license. Linus has no authority to release all the Linux code under a new license since he only owns a small percentage of the code. There have been thousands of people submitting to Linus under the GPL2-flavored license and it is impractical, if not impossible, to track those submittors down and secure a GPL3 agreement from them.

Sure, Linux could adopt the SMB strategy of committing to make future release of Linux GPL3 (eg, say Linux 3.0). Then all submissions into that new version would have to be GPL3. Practically though, many of the big players in Linux might prefer GPL2 over GPL3 and that could force a fork.

Re:Free software my ass

[WaXHeLL]

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

That's called the BSD license.
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php

Re:More like, who re-packages it.

[frogstar_robot]

Technically speaking, wouldn't this manufacturer only have to make it possible to run modified Sambas and other modified GPLv3 bits they might of used? Say the rest of the userland was some modified BSD code, that could still stay shut?

In practice, I imagine such DRM would be done by signing an entire firmware image. Future practitioners of such DRM would just have to isolate the bits that really need to be sooper-sekrit if they want to use GPLv3 code.

Re:More like, who re-packages it.

[drix]

G'luck with that, is all I have to say. Having once waded into the Samba codebase trying to ferret out a bug, I can't see them getting very far unless they manage to snipe one of the core developers. Samba is giant and the amount of resources needed to backport every bugfix (to say nothing of feature additions) and be at all subtle about it has got to exceed just accommodating the new license. And don't forget Samba 4 is on the way, so you lose ADS too if you want to fork 3. No, I think they'll either put up or shut up.

Re:In other news...

[Jeremy Allison - Sam]

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.

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.