Will GPLv3 Drive Users from Linux to FreeBSD?

An anonymous reader writes "Last week ZDNet put up an article asking a simple question: will GPL3 drive Linux users to FreeBSD? It's based on issues raised in the August FreeBSD Foundation Newsletter. That publication features a letter by the vice president of the FreeBSD Foundation, Justin Gibbs, arguing that the GPLv3 restricts the rights of commercial users of open source software, and is just the FSF's first step in changing the GPL in ways that authors of GPL software may not have intended. He suggests that commercial users should seriously consider BSD-licensed software as an alternative if they want to be able to safely ship products in the future. This is especially in light of requirements from the FCC that software running on devices (such as software-defined radios) be end-user replaceable. Gibbs states that the FreeBSD Foundation will provide an alternative to GPLv3'd software, especially in light of Stallman's statement that further GPL revisions are due in the near future. Is this likely to cause discontent among Linux users, or will they mostly ignore it?"

Comments

Um

[MightyMartian]

So I take it there's a BSD licensed fork of Samba out there, right?

Re:Um

[notamisfit]

No, but there's a GPLv2 one...

Re:Um

[luciofm]

And whats the point to move to BSD if there are a GPLv2 Version?

Re:Um

[ajs]

Yeah, I always find this debate pointless on its face. BSD uses huge amounts of GPL-licensed software, so there's no substantial difference. In fact, BSD will be using GPLv3-licensed software, unless they intend on taking over their own fork of GCC (a monumental task which would substantially harm their ability to support BSD itself).

I also suspect that you'll see a fair amount of Gnome and KDE packages (though I don't know about the core of those two projects, and how they'll proceed) use the GPLv3.

Linux and BSD OSes will continue to use much of each other's code, and things like the file utilities will become less and less important. Eventually, I expect that you'll find Linux and BSD essentially differing on nothing more than how their distributions are structured and their kernels. The idea that their different licenses have a substantial impact on the end-user OS is rather myopic at best.

Re:Um

[Anonymous Coward]

Eventually, I expect that you'll find Linux and BSD essentially differing on nothing more than how their distributions are structured and their kernels.

BSD's don't have 'distributions'.

The OS (the kernel and the userland utilities) are written by the same folks. They don't slap together bits and pieces from all over the place like Linux. That gives them a much more consistent feel.

The BSDs do use a good number GNU utils, but they are working to write BSD versions of everything. It's a large task so it will take quite a while, but the work IS being done.

Re:Um

[theshowmecanuck]

I believe GCC is under the LGPL so your point about it is moot. (In Slashdot tradition, please slag the living crap out of me if you think I am wrong.) Unless Stallman moves to change the nature of the LGPL which is entirely possible.

Re:Um

[YU Nicks NE Way]

Actually, the FreeBSD team is committed to building a truly free set of binutils, and they already have a number of high quality truly free compilers. It just hasn't been as convenient to use them as gcc recently. AFAIK, the FreeBSD kernel still builds with pcc, though.

Re:Um

[mrslacker]

Guess it was too much effort to check for yourself, Sherlock.

Look at e.g. /usr/share/doc/gcc-4.2-base/copyright (Debian).

GCC is GPLv2 with some special exceptions for its libraries (libgcc, libstdc++). The prerelease 4.3 is also GPLv2; I can't comment on future plans of the GCC developers.

glibc is LGPL, but that's a whole other project.

Re:Um

[Jerry]

Yeah, I always find this debate pointless on its face.

Exactly.

It's only a wedge issue when ZNet attempts to make it so. Wonder why they act as a surrogate for Microsoft? Consider where ZDNet's ad money comes from.

Re:Um

[init100]

That gives them a much more consistent feel.

Yeah, the feel that nothing works. At least, that was what I went into when trying to do some minor tasks on a NetBSD box we have at work. When I get time, it'll definitely be switched to Linux (more specifically CentOS, as that is what we standardize on anyway).

Re:Um

[laffer1]

Technically your statement is correct. However, PC-BSD and DesktopBSD fall very close into the concept of a distribution. They aren't stand alone operating systems, just FreeBSD + some extras. (KDE, package install stuff, etc)

Re:Um

[theshowmecanuck]

So what do you link to? The compiler or the libraries?

Re:Um

[mrslacker]

The libraries, hence the exception to allow linking with arbitrary programs.

But before you try and change the goal posts, the point you replied to was a reimplementation of GCC/new compiler which wasn't GPLv3 (assuming GCC becomes so), not about any code which might happen to be processed by GCC or linked with parts of it, which is entirely irrelevant to the discussion, and not affected by any proposed license changes.

Re:Um

[hxdmp]

AFAIK, the FreeBSD kernel still builds with pcc, though.

The portable C compiler?? No, not in the least. FreeBSD's upcoming 7.0 kernel is only compilable with GCC 4.2.

Re:Um

[Sancho]

Just because it works differently from what you're expecting, doesn't mean that it doesn't work. Admittedly, I haven't used NetBSD much at all, but FreeBSD works quite well and it works consistently.

Maybe you're confused because GNU has added features over the years, and BSD has added different ones?

Re:Um

[theshowmecanuck]

The point is being made on your original comment... and my first reply referencing the LGPL was perhaps worded sloppily. Your comment:

BSD uses huge amounts of GPL-licensed software, so there's no substantial difference. In fact, BSD will be using GPLv3-licensed software, unless they intend on taking over their own fork of GCC (a monumental task which would substantially harm their ability to support BSD itself)..

I took it you were implying that the compiled code they produce with the GCC would be have to be compliant with GPLv3 because GCC is GPLv3. Perhaps I misread you. I was trying to say since the compiled code is linked to LGPL'd implementations of the C and C++ libraries (using GCC) this isn't necessarily so. And yes BSD and many others use the GCC (and variants), even some programming stuff for Windows (say in a Cygwin environment) but they are not always producing GPLv3 licensed software. Unless the license on those standard libraries changes, I don't see how this would affect BSD anyway. :)

Re:Um

[mrslacker]

Sloppy indeed. I made no such quote. End of story.

Linux != GPLv3

[Anonymous Coward]

Seeing how Linus doesn't plan to us GPLv3 for Linux, but rather stay with GPLv2, I'd have to say no.

Re:Linux != GPLv3

[NReitzel]

It's kind of amusing to look at the history of FOSS, and a recurring theme has been that developers think that just because they have developed a complex piece of software over a long period of time (gcc comes to mind) that it's not open to being reimplimented in the future. If GPL3 becomes a thorn in would-be commercial users, there will be money available to replace it with something that's not so obnoxious.

In 1977, we (SWTPc) reimplimented libc for exactly that reason: Western Electric licensing provisions were obnoxious and restrictive. This is the very same reason that RMS and others undertook to reimpliment the Unix toolkit. It's not magic; it's just code, and like employees, there is no piece of code that can't be replaced.

Re:Linux != GPLv3

[savuporo]

de-facto GCC and GLIBC replacement that does not weigh in with minimum 500KB statically linked binaries would be hailed as a Good Thing across the globe too.
Newlib, dietlibc and a couple of others are a good start and actually crossplatform as well, whats missing is a good compiler.

Re:Linux != GPLv3

[Tim C]

It's kind of amusing to look at the history of FOSS, and a recurring theme has been that developers think that just because they have developed a complex piece of software over a long period of time (gcc comes to mind) that it's not open to being reimplimented in the future.

That's particularly amusing given how many of those pieces of software are themselves essentially reimplementations of other complex pieces of software.

Re:Linux != GPLv3

[einhverfr]

Right.

Furthermore, why are we even discussing this question? It is not as if Linux is about to switch licenses or anything. Furthermore Linus has actually said he doesn't support the anti-Tivoization efforts, so....

I wrote a post in my journal about my hesitation to upgrade LedgerSMB's license to the GPL3, which has some *really* nasty provisions in it that go *way* beyond a software copyright license. These are *not* apparent in a first reading of the license.

Re:Linux != GPLv3

[kwikrick]

But then, there are patents to worry about. Any piece of GPLv3 software can indeed be reimplemented, because the licence sort of forbids the original author to patent his software and go after you (assuming the software was patent free already) But under all other licences that I know off, there are no such provisions, so you may not legally be able to reimplement and relicense any software.

This could be a good thing.

[nurb432]

More users and more developers would be a good thing.

But please, leave the attitude that i see too often in the linux world community. We don't need it on this side of the street.

( attitude is one reason i left the linux camp long ago. And i was there in the very beginning.)

Re:This could be a good thing.

[vindex]

You mean you needed more elitism? Phew. I almost abandoned FreeBSD for that reason years ago, and I still am afraid to return to some BSD forums, where Linux users are treated as fanboys. No such thing on Linux forums (yet).

Re:This could be a good thing.

[urbanriot]

Where are these elitist forums? I was accepted at many with open arms and, in retrospect, treated respectfully in light of really dumb questions while learning.

You mean you needed more elitism? Phew. I almost abandoned FreeBSD for that reason years ago, and I still am afraid to return to some BSD forums, where Linux users are treated as fanboys. No such thing on Linux forums (yet).

Re:This could be a good thing.

[TheRaven64]

Same here. I never had a found the BSD communities anything other than helpful (although FreeBSD is the least helpful of the four I've come into contact with). There is much less of the 'everything else sucks' attitude than I find from Linux people; if FreeBSD isn't the right tool for the job, FreeBSD people will often recommend OpenBSD, Solaris, or whatever. If Linux isn't the right tool for the job, Linux people tend to just shout that it is very loudly.

If anything's going to drive people away from Linux to FreeBSD, it's things like changing the VM subsystem or scheduler in the middle of a 'stable' series. I've been running FreeBSD 7-CURRENT (the unstable branch) on my ThinkPad for the last few months, and I've had far fewer problems with it than trying to run even a stable release of Linux.

Re:This could be a good thing.

[everphilski]

so if someone wanted to start digging into BSD, which one would you recommend?

I've been using Linux for 8 years off and on and use it daily at work, I consider myself pretty knowledgeable although no superuser.

Re:This could be a good thing.

[TheRaven64]

Depends on what you need. I wouldn't really recommend NetBSD for a finished system, but it's probably the best if you want to build an embedded system. I find OpenBSD to be the nicest to use. The userland is incredibly clean and well thought out, and the documentation is absolutely first rate. FreeBSD has a few more features. The big one is DRI support (it's the only BSD with 3D acceleration), but it also has a very nice volume manager, and (in 7) ZFS support. FreeBSD also has much better SMP support (fine grained locking in the kernel, SMP-aware scheduler). For desktop use, I've heard good things about PC-BSD, but I've not used it.

Re:This could be a good thing.

[David_W]

so if someone wanted to start digging into BSD, which one would you recommend?

All three are rather approachable. FreeBSD is generally regarded as having the most "mass market" appeal, while NetBSD and OpenBSD are felt to aim for particular niches ("run everywhere" and "be really really secure," respectively).

I'm a FreeBSD user myself, but I've dabbled with OpenBSD a bit. No NetBSD experience to speak of.

Re:This could be a good thing.

[Slashcrap]

so if someone wanted to start digging into BSD, which one would you recommend?

Well, you've already been told how friendly and non-elitist all the BSDs are, so it won't matter that much. However, I think you'll find that OpenBSD is the best of the lot.

Simply send an e-mail to the development list asking where you can download the install CD and for some help installing it (the OpenBSD developers are so friendly and willing to help newbies that they don't bother writing any documentation). Make sure you CC: Theo on the e-mail, as he likes to keep track of new users and personally welcome them.

Re:This could be a good thing.

[tetlowgm]

Hahaha, that would be a good one. Please cc me on all messages of this sort.

Re:This could be a good thing.

[synthespian]

What are these "Linux forums" (Ok, pedandicts, it's "fora"). The Ubuntu PHP "forums?"

Re:This could be a good thing.

[synthespian]

Right now, for someone who wants a desktop system, I would recomend that you look at PC-BSD (see: http://www.pcbsd.org/). It is not a fork of FreeBSD. It's FreeBSD with nice end-user add ons, such as a graphical installer and PIBs. PIBs are apps packaged and easily installed (much like on Macs or Windows). PC-BSD got a lot of positive reviews.

FreeBSD has more software than the other BSDs and has more commercial products being developed for it, such as some IDEs, back-up products, VMs (see: http://www.win4bsd.com/, http://serenityvirtual.com/), anti-virus (although geared toward corporate users, but see: http://www.kaspersky.com/kaspersky_security_mail_server?chapter=207716294) even an excelent Microsoft-Word commpatible Word Processor (see: http://www.softmaker.com/english/). Plus, Java certified by Sun.

Also, a nice feature of BSDs is the ability to run software for Linux on them. I have Maple 8 runing on my FreeBSD and I did it after the thing just broke with the Debian upgrades.

Re:This could be a good thing.

[ashSlash]

although no superuser.

Ah, this is simple - no need to change to a different operating system, simply log in to your computer with the username 'root'

As a Linux user . . .

[div_2n]

No. That was easy. Next troll post please dear editors.

Re:As a Linux user . . .

[nadamsieee]

Zonk's trolling and flame baiting is almost as bad as John C. Dvorak.

Re:As a Linux user . . .

[LWATCDR]

How useless of a comment.
The answer is in some cases yes. I think you will see BSD used in more Embedded systems now. After RMS went after Tivo other manufactures will be less willing to risk the wraith of RMS.
I really hate how GPL forces only some equipment manufactures to allow the end user replacement of software. It should be all or nothing.

Re:As a Linux user . . .

[fsmunoz]

Actually, the answer is almost always "no". You see, the question was about *users* (in your example, it would drive manufacturers), and apparently whomever made the question assumes that "some dislike from someone in the BSD community" == "great concern in the heards of ordinary users of the software". This kind of apocalytic stories about millions of poor users being death scared about their poor software being GPLv3 is a projection of the concerns of a specific group of developers (in this case, BSD) upon the wider world, without any kind of argument about the validity of that extrapolation.

By no we already know that many people in the BSD community dislike the GPLv3, a bit more than they disliked to GPLv2. Ok, I get it, but it is wishful thinking to paint this doom scenarios, reads like some kind of improptu soap opera with an ahppy ending: "BSD, long the best and REALLY REALLY free Unix OS available, finally gets a chance after millions of users find out that the GPLv3 is pure evil, retract from their old ways and find the true light in good, pure BSD!!! Vindication, AT LAST". It's understandable, but,again, merely whishful thinking.

Re:As a Linux user . . .

[Znork]

"I think you will see BSD used in more Embedded systems now."

I really doubt it; things seem to be moving the other way around, with more and more modifiable linux-based devices appearing all the time.

For many embedded devels these days, keeping things proprietary is pointless, the systems are built on cheapo COTS reference implementations anyway, and it'd take the competition longer to copy/clone the software than the product cycle.

The gain from having a common reference source where everyone plays fair and pays their dues, and then competing in per-product-cycle added value is simply larger than the pain of keeping your own inhouse tree and/or constantly merging against an outside moving target. The GPL enforces the level playing field, so the various players dont have to engage in a constant game of prisoners dilemma.

Re:As a Linux user . . .

[init100]

This kind of apocalytic stories about millions of poor users being death scared about their poor software being GPLv3 is a projection of the *concerns* of a specific group of developers (in this case, BSD) upon the wider world

I'd rather say that it is a projection of the wishes of a certain group of developers. Many times I've seen BSD guys hoping that the Linux community will crash and burn, so that they can step in and take over the show.

I guess this is the BSD inferiority complex that shows its ugly rear.

Re:As a Linux user . . .

[fsmunoz]

Yes, that is also my view. I must however note that every community has its own set of flaws, and furthermore the actions or whishes of some do not bind the entire community. I find it unfortunate that so much air time is consumed in this.

Re:As a Linux user . . .

[WNight]

Exactly. The GPL'd GNU/Linux environment is a far more stable and and corruption-proof than any proprietary environment. As wacky as a GPL'd spec may be, the reference implementation is free to use when writing a converter. Whatever you may think of OOXML, you can't say that about it.

The IBM PC with MS-DOS won because it was the most open standard.

Re:As a Linux user . . .

[ClosedSource]

"For many embedded devels these days, keeping things proprietary is pointless, the systems are built on cheapo COTS reference implementations anyway, and it'd take the competition longer to copy/clone the software than the product cycle."

Obviously the length of the product cycle is not a constant, but varies with the category and product. Not everyone develops "me too" products, BTW. It would help your potential competitors a lot if you GPL'd your software for an innovative product they hadn't thought of yet.

Re:As a Linux user . . .

[ClosedSource]

"The GPL'd GNU/Linux environment is a far more stable and and corruption-proof than any proprietary environment."

For embedded systems? You're joking right? If you're really building a custom PC rather than a true embedded system and need all the functionality of a general purpose computer, than you may be right. In may cases, an embedded OS will do that is a fraction of the size of the smallest Linux kernel, is as least as stable and is 100% corruption-proof (unless you start removing chips).

As usual, it's a matter of using the right tool for the right job and no tool is right for everything.

Re:As a Linux user . . .

[Brandybuck]

As a FreeBSD user, I have to second the motion of "troll".

Re:As a Linux user . . .

[WNight]

I meant, corrupt like Mexican police. Like the OOXML standards process.

And thus, 'stable' was in the sense of no forced upgrade treadmill, ill-conceived standards, etc.

Re:As a Linux user . . .

[ClosedSource]

I not aware of any real embedded OS that has anything to do with the kind of corruption you refer to. As far as the kind of "stability" you refer to, that seems to be quite irrelevant to most embedded systems as well. Embedded system makers aren't usually in the OS business, so they have little motivation to arbitrarily replace the OS.

Re:As a Linux user . . .

[WNight]

Considering that WinCE is available in the range of embedded devices I'm talking about, I'll have to disagree.

Certainly, if you're writing an OS for a heart-monitor it's likely not relevant. However, if you're building a PDA or a phone...

so to sumarize..

[Anonymous Coward]

Vice president of FreeBSD says FreeBSD is superior?

well i would never have guessed he thought that way

Re:so to sumarize..

[tehSpork]

I don't think he is so much claiming that FreeBSD is superior but that it's license is superior and folks may have to cope with the rest in order to escape GPLv3.

Good thing too, I would have had to cry BS if he was really claiming that it's better as an OS. :)

I can answer that...

[tgatliff]

Let me be the one to answer that.... "NO".. It wont... :-)

Smells like FUD.

[Anonymous Coward]

So the FreeBSD folks want more attention, and they've decided to FUD the GPL to get it?

How is GPLv3 suppposed to prevent software from being end-user replaceable? If anything, TiVo showed that GPLv2 didn't even do that, and BSD licenses won't even try to stop TiVo-like antics.

Besides, Linux is staying with GPLv2, so nothing changed anyway. Nothing to see, please move along.

Re:Smells like FUD.

[glop]

I believe the description is a bit wrong. The FCC probably mandates that it be impossible for the end-user to change the application. This is meant to avoid people changing the software to use spectrum that they are not supposed too. Example : a WIFI transmitter might be able to transmit at 2.5GHz, outside of the WIFI band. The only thing that prevents that might be a software check. So if you can update the software, you can do something that the FCC does not allow you to.

So they are arguing that it might be impossible to legally make a software radio with GPL V3 software (unless you enforce the mandatory checks at a hardware level so that the modified software is safe from an FCC perspective).

Re:Smells like FUD.

[Some Pig!]

So the FreeBSD folks want more attention, and they've decided to FUD the GPL to get it?

No, I believe it is ZDNet that wants more attention. As other readers have documented, there has been a flood of such "news" items on Slashdot recently, that amount to little more than ads for various such sites.

Re:Smells like FUD.

[Zancarius]

If anything, TiVo showed that GPLv2 didn't even do that, and BSD licenses won't even try to stop TiVo-like antics.

BSD licenses won't stop TiVo-like antics because they can't.

The GPL versus BSD is something akin to Free Speech versus Free Beer. In the case of the latter, you're free to consume it (or distribute it) as you see fit--or just keep it to yourself. In the case of the former, speech is freely available and any modifications to it can (and must) be shared freely. It isn't a great analogy but it fits.

The premise of BSD-licensed distributions is to allow anyone to modify the source while keeping their modifications private. It's a bit misleading to suggest that such licenses could stop privatized alterations like this when their entire premise allows that activity to be encouraged.

Re:Smells like FUD.

[blackest_k]

Actually wifi software seems to be stuck with American limitations, as a European Linux user I should be able to use channels 12 and 13 (if I was in Japan channel 14 as well) but the wifi software in ubuntu at least will not allow me too. I don't know if any other distro's have this limitation. It's especially annoying since in home TV repeaters use the same spectrum and the two systems interfere badly with each other.

Not a chance.

[Miltazar]

GPLv3 may have some contraversy around it, but some of those reasons stated seem like FUD to me. For instance, they mention that software is required by the FCC to be end-user replaceable in devices such as software driven radios. Last I checked one of the main purposes of GPLv3 was to allow end-user replacement of software. Isn't that why they changed parts of it, so that no tivoization happens again? That alone makes me want to ignore the rest of their reasons. If they can't get that simple part correct, most likely everything else is a load of bull.

Re:Not a chance.

[jrumney]

they mention that software is required by the FCC to be end-user replaceable in devices such as software driven radios.

I'm pretty sure that the above statement was missing a not there somewhere, otherwise it isn't really making the point that the BSD folks think it is, and the wireless card vendors are being dishonest about the reasons for their binary blobs.

I Doubt It...

[Necrotica]

Most users don't care about the license. Users give far more weight to driver support and performance than licensing details.

Re:I Doubt It...

[porkThreeWays]

Exactly. I use open source programs all day and have no clue the exact license, just that they are open source. Only zealots and those redistributing care about the nitty gritty of open source licenses. For me, all I care is that it's open source (within reason).

Re:I Doubt It...

[mseidl]

I bet they do. 2008 is the year of the FreeBSD desktop!

Re:I Doubt It...

[n6kuy]

Heh. Well as a user, all I care about is that I can use the program for free (as in beer). Who cares whether it's even open source or not?

Re:I Doubt It...

[jacoby]

I agree. In the short term, say 5 years, there's nothing coming up that's GPL3 and crucial to desktop/workstation users. You can run nearly anything you want in userspace.

But, you can put together 1TB systems today for under $300, with more storage just getting cheaper. Once you hit 12TB, RAID5 becomes useless because chance of unrecoverable read error approaches guaranteed. So, ZFS. Which is GPL3. And that's kernel, not userspace. (Yes, there's FUSE, but would you tie your enterprise to that yet?)

I know people who have moved to 64-bit architecture and FreeBSD, only because of ZFS and GPL3 issues. Granted, they're big cluster geeks who work with terabytes of data and petabytes of disk, but they're there.

No.

[Vexorian]

Hah, why would it?

calling them "users" confuses the issue

[Al Al Cool J]

s/users/distributors/g

no.

[zsouthboy]

Will douchebags everywhere create apparent conflicts where there aren't any?

NO!

[Anonymous Coward]

I like GPLv3. The thing that may drive me to FreeBSD is crap like Mono and AppArmor shipping by default with linux distros. I've long had a preference for BSD style inits.

Re:NO!

[Obsidian Butterfly]

I'd consider switching if their package management wasn't so immoderately deficient (IOW it sucks whale dick through a garden hose).

Let me see if I have this straight... you don't upgrade packages, you manually remove them, then manually install the newer version. Sheesh.

Spoiled, whiny APT user

Re:NO!

[vrmlguy]

Actually, crap like Mono and AppArmor should just push you to use non-f'ed-up distros, and Slaskware uses BSD-style inits. BTW, I can't think of why BSD-style inits are so great. Both use rc.d. Is it the run-levels that you object to? Personally, I'd like initng, upstart, or Sun's Service Management Facility to get more use by various distros.

Re:NO!

[Mantaar]

You might want to try Gentoo then. They have a FreeBSD branch. Chances are, you won't get a production system, but it's surely worth a try.

If my craptop's hardware was supported by FreeBSD, I would certainly give it a try. My server's vanilla FreeBSD for obvious reasons...

And by the way: I was a spoiled whiny apt-user myself - until I tried portage! Really a nice system, though apt is not that bad either.

No, because its the same boat for both...

[nweaver]

For FreeBSD, the kernel is BSD liscenced but pretty much all the tools are a mix of BSD and GNU v2 or later (and all from the FSF are GPLv3 soon), which is "hello GPLv3" for a lot of what you care about.

For Linux, the kernel is GPLv2 only but pretty much all the tools are the same mix of BSD and GNU v2 or later (and all from the FSF are GPLv3 soon), which is "hello GPLv3" for a lot of what you care about.

Thus there is no way GPLv3 will drive people from Linux to BSD for business use, as it really is the same impact for both.

Re:No, because its the same boat for both...

[man_of_mr_e]

I think it's unlikely that GPL3'd toolchains will be much of a concern for anyone, since these tools are seldom extended or modified by commercial users. Kernels are a big one. Many Linux kernel developers appear to be pushing a move to GPL3, and while Linux seems to be still in the GPL2 camp, he also seems open to moving to GPL3 under the right conditions.

will GPL3 drive Linux users to FreeBSD?

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Short answer: no.

Why? Simple. The users of both GPLv3 and BSD licensed software really do not see a difference at all. They usually load the software in binary form and it does whatever it does in both cases. But the GPL vs. BSD differences affect mostly programmers and distributors, i.e. the provisions of the license control changes to and distribution of the software.

And in the case of programmers, nothing has really changed. Those who believe in the ideology behind GPL (ideology which was never hidden by RMS or FSF) will continue to do so, and are pleased with the direction in which v3 is headed. Those who loathe that idology in favour of another, BSD centered, which is just as ideologically motivated as the GPL, except covertly and implicitly, will continue to use BSD and bemoan the "evil" and "anti-profit" nature of the GPL.

What will change is that various large corporate leechers, who sought to abuse the GPL to their own ends, will see it harder to achieve their aims. They indeed might consider BSD ... or simply return to closed-source proprietary crud whence they came from in the first place.

Re:will GPL3 drive Linux users to FreeBSD?

[mwvdlee]

It may just be me, but do I smell a bit of dislike for BSD?

Re:will GPL3 drive Linux users to FreeBSD?

[IgnoramusMaximus]

It may just be me, but do I smell a bit of dislike for BSD?

I really do not care about BSD one way or another, nor do I care about X11, MIT and a whole bunch of other licenses out there. And I do believe that it is the absolute right of the creator of whatever open software to put whatever licence he/she wants on it (although I do have deep misgivings about the whole notion of "licensing" information in the first place - but that is another discussion).

What I do dislike is the propensity of the BSD crowd to paint themselves as ideology-free, impartial and objective defenders of "individual freedoms" while at the same time excusing outright profiteering by many individuals and corporations by simply close-sourcing other people's work. That sort of thing gets my proverbial goat. Their idea of "freedom" is pretty much defined as "freedom to profit from other people's work" and their main objection to GPL is that "restricts" their "freedom" to simply take GPL code, modify it and distribute it in some commercial venture of theirs without any sort of recompense.

The difference is of course ideological, and it originates with an understanding that "freedoms" can be both positive and negative and that allowing some "indivdual freedoms" is far too disastrous for the society to even contemplate. Such as "freedom to murder whomever you dislike" etc.

But again, that is another, non-software licensing related discussion although it has direct bearing on the topic.

Re:will GPL3 drive Linux users to FreeBSD?

[samkass]

Those who believe in the ideology behind GPL (ideology which was never hidden by RMS or FSF) will continue to do so, and are pleased with the direction in which v3 is headed.

That's a pretty bold statement that has many outspoken counter-examples. A lot of people believe in GPLv2's software sharing principles but think GPLv3's dictation of hardware usage crossed the line into the realm of DRM and other evils ("You must use your software how we say or you're in violation of our license"). I suspect, if nothing else, GPLv3 will drive a lot of software to remove the "and later" provision from their licenses, since they now realize that including it is essentially handing all control of their software's future to one man who seems to have gotten more extreme in recent years.

Re:will GPL3 drive Linux users to FreeBSD?

[IgnoramusMaximus]

That's a pretty bold statement that has many outspoken counter-examples. A lot of people believe in GPLv2's software sharing principles but think GPLv3's dictation of hardware usage crossed the line into the realm of DRM and other evils ("You must use your software how we say or you're in violation of our license").

You probably mean the "accidental" GPL users, chief amongst them Linus, who never really bothered to understand the ideology behind the GPL and simply used it out of "convenience". This "whatever works", "convenience-first" crowd is rather amusing since their success is pretty much dependant on a far greater number of contributors to their projects who do subscribe to the GPL ideology. Speaking of Linus, for an example of the consequences of his short-sighted, "technocratic" approach, witness the the Bitkeeper fiasco, amongst many other such examples.

I suspect, if nothing else, GPLv3 will drive a lot of software to remove the "and later" provision from their licenses, since they now realize that including it is essentially handing all control of their software's future to one man who seems to have gotten more extreme in recent years.

Again, that depends on if you actually subscribe to GPL ideology, or are merely using GPL because it is "convenient" or for some other such mis-guided reason. As to how many people are in this camp, I cannot even try to estimate. I would venture however to say that many of them do instinctively understand that GPL protects their work from being simply appropriated by some business for commercial use and that is what keeps them away from BSD.

Re:will GPL3 drive Linux users to FreeBSD?

[roscivs]

I think there are still some (at least one--me) who agree with Stallman's original "four freedoms", but believe the GPLv2 is sufficient for protecting those freedoms, and the GPLv3 adds too much complexity to be worth it. I personally contribute to GPLv2 projects (and write my own), but I will not contribute to GPLv3 projects. I don't know if I'm the only one in the world--certainly on Slashdot I appear to be the minority--but I do think there are others.

Re:will GPL3 drive Linux users to FreeBSD?

[Timothy Brownawell]

You probably mean the "accidental" GPL users, chief amongst them Linus, who never really bothered to understand the ideology behind the GPL and simply used it out of "convenience".

The ideology expressed in the GPL is not quite the same as the ideology of the FSF.

Speaking of Linus, for an example of the consequences of his short-sighted, "technocratic" approach, witness the the Bitkeeper fiasco, amongst many other such examples.

So what exactly was lost in this "fiasco"? If you pick a crooked landlord because the rent is $100/mo less, and they make up a reason to keep your $500 deposit at the end of the year, what overall have you "lost" here by not choosing the other landlord?

Again, that depends on if you actually subscribe to GPL ideology, or are merely using GPL because it is "convenient" or for some other such mis-guided reason.

How is it "misguided" to use a license that you like the effects of, simply because the license's authors happen to be raving lunatics?

As to how many people are in this camp, I cannot even try to estimate. I would venture however to say that many of them do instinctively understand that GPL protects their work from being simply appropriated by some business for commercial use and that is what keeps them away from BSD.

I'm starting to think that any such instincts are somewhat misguided. If you don't actively look for your code, infringements probably won't get noticed. If you actively maintain your code, companies have an incentive to minimize the size of their patchset.

Re:will GPL3 drive Linux users to FreeBSD?

[Timothy Brownawell]

I think there are still some (at least one--me) who agree with Stallman's original "four freedoms", but believe the GPLv2 is sufficient for protecting those freedoms, and the GPLv3 adds too much complexity to be worth it.

It doesn't just add complexity, it adds restrictions that I think can semi-reasonably be considered to abridge some of those freedoms.

I personally contribute to GPLv2 projects (and write my own), but I will not contribute to GPLv3 projects. I don't know if I'm the only one in the world--certainly on Slashdot I appear to be the minority--but I do think there are others.

Yeah, there's at least a few more.

Re:will GPL3 drive Linux users to FreeBSD?

[Cutterman]

You're not the only one in the world by any means. I also believe that GPL2 is "good enough" - the "dangers" that GPL3 protects us from are not worth the increased complexity and the fragmentation of the GPL codebase. I really don't see "tivoisation" as being either a major crime or a significant danger to free software.

GPL4 will be an even more convoluted expression of RMS socio-political views, some of which I share but many of which I don't.

Re:will GPL3 drive Linux users to FreeBSD?

[at_slashdot]

"who never really bothered to understand the ideology behind the GPL" I beg to differ, he understood the idiology because he's not stupid, he just doesn't care for it.

Re:will GPL3 drive Linux users to FreeBSD?

[sentientbrendan]

>This "whatever works", "convenience-first" crowd is rather amusing since their success is
>pretty much dependant on a far greater number of contributors to their projects who do
>subscribe to the GPL ideology.

I really don't buy this argument. It seems like FSF has been riding linux's coattails ever since Linus made the mistake of choosing the GPL over a *good* open source license.

Anyway, last time I checked the parts of "GPL ideology" that weren't contained in open source software were just RMS hero worship and some communist abhorrence towards the idea of making money.

Viva la open source!

Re:will GPL3 drive Linux users to FreeBSD?

[IgnoramusMaximus]

I really don't buy this argument. It seems like FSF has been riding linux's coattails ever since Linus made the mistake of choosing the GPL over a *good* open source license.

But of course! Had he done so, Linux would be now where BSD is .... oh wait.

You see, your silly argument is exceptionally so because someone very much like Linus did precisely that and so there is actual empirical evidence to marvel at!

Anyway, last time I checked the parts of "GPL ideology" that weren't contained in open source software were just RMS hero worship and some communist abhorrence towards the idea of making money.

You haven't been checking too closely, obviously. RMS could disappear from the face of the planet tommorrow and the FSF ideology of granting freedom to all users of software would remain. And of course the "communist abhorrence towards money" is a figment of your feverish imagination. GPL crowd only opposes "making money" if it conflicts with the freedoms of the users of the software. Many a GPL distro charges very good money (see RedHat for example) for their stuff and you won't hear a peep about this from RMS or anyone else in the GPL community.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[Ash Vince]

What Linux software is currently used that would be licensed for the purposes mentioned in the article which would go under the GPLv3? I can't think of any. Wow, you must have thought about for a long time. The whole reason for the GPL3 is to stop companies like TiVO. Some people object to TiVO being able to base a product on Linux but then not let the Linux community pull it apart and play with it.

GPL2 is bad enough for embedded developers?

[e4liberty]

The "killer" clause in the GPL2 is:

You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License. IANAL, but it seems clear to me that a device (the "work that you distribute") run by software with embedded Linux "contains ... the Program," and therefore must "be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License."

The GPL http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html goes on to say:

If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it. How can anyone use Linux in an embedded device and not open all of their code?

--e

Re:GPL2 is bad enough for embedded developers?

[Chirs]

Sorry, you've got it wrong. The "work" is the software, not the physical device as a whole. You can have multiple software "works" (potentially with different licensing) that are aggregated on the physical device as a whole. This is why the whole "mere aggregation" clause exists in the GPL.

Re:GPL2 is bad enough for embedded developers?

[e4liberty]

To me, a "mere aggregation" is putting two (or more) programs on the same CD, or web site. In the case of an embedded device, the application software critically depends on the OS in order to provide its intended functions. It cannot operate separately. If this is "mere aggregation" in legalese then this is an egregious abuse of the English language.

Re:GPL2 is bad enough for embedded developers?

[e4liberty]

Does Toyota have to license their car under Apple's EULA just because you carry an iPod in it? No, Even if Toyota bundled an iPod in a car Apple's EULA doesn't say that doing do requires "any work that you distribute" containing it "to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License."

if one piece can't run without the other Precisely my point, in an embedded system, all the parts depend on each other to provide the intended function.

generally accepted that if the program is a binary that just links in In an embedded device, nothing is distributed separately to "just link in." It's all there, in the device; the device (and the program in the device) "contains [...] the Program."

--e

Excuse me?

[mdm-adph]

I just now got Ubuntu working fine with my wireless card. I'll be damned if I'm moving to another bloody OS after all that. :P

Re:Excuse me?

[hawk]

But we will gloat about how it would have been easier to do under FreeBSD :)

[ok, n=2, but it was *substantially* easier in both caes. But I need one of them running linux for flash, and still have to get it going in Kubuntu . . .]

hawk

linux user here

[FudRucker]

i do like FreeBSD, PCBSD & DesktopBSD, but PCBSD & DesktopBSD needs a feature during install to allow the person doing the install to allow selecting multiple mount points for / and /usr and /usr/home during the install, seems like with both PCBSD & DesktopBSD i could only select one partition to install everything in, i like to use a small / and a larger /usr and a /usr/home, as a long time slackware user i found FreeBSD's installer to be not much different and did allow selecting multiple mount points, i am looking forward to FreeBSD's next release (6.3? or 7?)

i welcome the competition the *BSDs will bring to the Linux world, and if Ian Murdock can get Solaris in the mix that will be good also...

Re:linux user here

[kad77]

I installed PC-BSD the other day, and you can do that. Click the checkbox labelled advanced partition options and create whatever...

Why was that comment modded insightful?

Re:linux user here

[FudRucker]

you are saying that with PCBSD i can set separate disk partitions for / and /usr and /usr/home (actual separate disk partitions are not slices within a single partition) this is correct?

Is it okay not to care about the politics?

[mjcb]

I don't know about the rest of you, but I've been following this whole GPLv3 debate for a while, and I don't really see what the big deal about it is. I've read and I understand the differences between the three versions of the license, and I really don't see how that is going to really affect me. I've been using Red Hat/Fedora and Gentoo since 2000, and I can't think of a single instance of a software license ever really affecting me. Maybe its because I'm not a software developer, but does the regular user really care about any of this? I can't speak for everyone else, but I know I don't care. Maybe I just don't care about the politics of the whole thing, I have better things to do with my time. Am I going to jump ship on GNU/Linux because of an updated license? No. Would I ever? Probably not. Will this license ever affect me? Doubtful. Do I really care? No. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but if you don't like GPLv3, then you don't have to use it. Problem solved, next FUD article.

Re:Is it okay not to care about the politics?

[Timothy Brownawell]

I've read and I understand the differences between the three versions of the license, and I really don't see how that is going to really affect me. I've been using Red Hat/Fedora and Gentoo since 2000, and I can't think of a single instance of a software license ever really affecting me. Maybe its because I'm not a software developer, but does the regular user really care about any of this?

Not directly. Indirectly, however, it will affect what is available to you.

Parts of GPLv3 were specifically designed to attack Tivo -- so if you have a TV it should eventually affect what choices you have for that sort of product. It will probably (indirectly) affect you even if you don't have a TV, since it affects anyone who wants to sell you something that's locked down (even things that *have* to be locked down, say to guarantee standards compliance for something).

There are some things that GPLv3 software simply cannot be used for. So if lots of people move to GPLv3, there are some things that become harder to make, and therefore less available to you.

Re:Is it okay not to care about the politics?

[quintesse]

Which is of course only speculation, unless you have a crystal ball. It could very well happen that TiVo sees the light and will open up their hardware so it can run user-modded software. Or maybe they won't and will have to spend money re-implementing their system using proprietary code opening up the market for a competitor who _does_ agree with the GPLv3 and is therefore able to deliver a cheaper product.

Look what is happening now with AMD saying it will provide information and help to make an open source driver for their ATI graphics cards. Would that have happened if everybody would just have rolled over and accepted proprietary binary blobs in their Linux distros?

So we'll just have to wait and see and hope for the best :-)

GPLv3 does hurt, however...

[nweaver]

I was visiting an academic CS research group, which is doing some networking protocol work they want widely adopted (eg, in Windows would be a good start).

Their release of the prototype code was "whatever", so they did it under GPL (well, dual liscence, GPL for everyone, and a free liscence for funders). They were kind of shocked when the link on their web page was now pointing to a GPLv3 description, and I explained the implications.

They may very well change to BSD liscencing.

Re:GPLv3 does hurt, however...

[rubycodez]

bah, they only had to say it was released under gpl2 and put a copy of the license right there in their own web page. You're basically telling a story of a group being lazy and stupid and careless.

Re:GPLv3 does hurt, however...

[Jeremiah Stoddard]

I wouldn't make the general statement that the "GPLv3 does hurt," but that it hurts in some specific cases. This has always been the case: there is no "one license fits all" claim going on here. Some things are better off with GPLv2 or BSD, heck even the GNU project came up with LGPL and uses yet other licenses on certain pieces of software. Yet despite these cases, GPLv3 is still probably a good fit for many (perhaps most) open source developers out there...

Re:GPLv3 does hurt, however...

[FromellaSlob]

I was visiting an academic CS research group, which is doing some networking protocol work they want widely adopted (eg, in Windows would be a good start).

So they should have chosen BSD in the first place, or maybe even just placed it in the public domain. The GPL V2/V3 distinction makes absolutely no difference here, you can't use V2 code in proprietry software either.

This isn't GPL3 "hurting", it's clueless people choosing the wrong license for their aims.

Re:GPLv3 does hurt, however...

[fsmunoz]

No offense, but this reads like one of those Evangelical conversion stories.

Why were they shocked?
What implications did you explain (I s'pose it was something along the lines "GPLv3 allows RMS to rape your puppies")?
Why did they release code under licenses they apparently didn't understand?
Did you told them about the "implications" of dual licensed code, as exposed by Theo?
And, furthermore, if their goal was a reference implementation of something they want widely adopted (ad, say, a media format), why did they chose the GPL, given that the FSF itself suggests non-copyleft licenses when one has that kind of objective?
Why are they considering changing to a BSD license?
Have you explained to them the "implications" of that, and that Public Domain code is "more free" and that the BSD license places restrictions that prevent the sharing with developers that use the freer PD code?

Re:GPLv3 does hurt, however...

[hawk]

>"GPLv3 allows RMS to rape your puppies")?

*whew*

Fortunately, I only have kittens . . .

hawk

Re:GPLv3 does hurt, however...

[fsmunoz]

Fortunately, I only have kittens . . ./quote> That's the line they'll use against GPLv4, so don't get to comfortable...

Re:GPLv3 does hurt, however...

[JoeBuck]

If someone wants a networking protocol widely adopted, the GPL isn't a wise license; the LGPL might be better to encourange users to send changes back.

There isn't any issue raised by GPLv3 that isn't already an issue on GPLv2, despite the FUD. The final GPLv3 anti-DRM language is quite weak in practice, for example.

No

[Corporate Troll]

I'm an OpenBSD fan myself, but mentioning anything BSD in any job interview has never done me good. Decision makers (aka, those that hire you), have perhaps heard from Linux, but most certainly not of BSD. So, by now if I mention free software at all, I mention Linux and nothing else at all. Saying GNU/Linux makes you look even worse.

Linux will stay, just by name recognition.... Hey, honestly, I only got to know the BSDs after I got into Linux and I do prefer the BSDs, just on technical merit.

Re:No

[multipartmixed]

If you are talking to suits and mean *BSD, just pronounce it UNIX.

For all intents and purposes, it is anyhow.

Re:No

[Corporate Troll]

Well, yes, but they might understand AIX or something similar ;-)

Commercial Users

[Aladrin]

TFS says 'commercial users', which would be businesses. If I were a business, and the GPL looked like it might be starting to impact me, I'd definitely start looking at BSD, the license of which is known for how 'free' it is to the user, rather than the developer. So far, it hasn't started to do that to anyone but Tivo and other hardware manufacturers, but the moment it starts looking like just using the software for any commercial purpose will be a problem, you can bet there'll be a ton of companies jump ship.

Why would they stick around and try to fight it instead of just picking an already-existing alternative? At the moment Linux isn't scary (to a business) and it is more popular. But let the boss get wind of imminent problems with it, and he'll ORDER a switch. That switch may even be to Windows Server, as the liabilities and costs are well known.

This is a very very hypothetical situation, since it would be absolutely insane for the GPL to further limit the freedom of users/distributors (beyond the v3 limits)... But it's possible.

Re:Commercial Users

[Danathar]

The question is, why didn't they choose to go that route to begin with?

Why?

Because the LINUX world is developed more and has more support for the things they need? The BSD world moves slower and does not have the software they need to make their products. Quite frankly it's STILL not that way in the BSD world.

Until/unless that changes you will not see BSD uptake that fast.

And I might add one reason it does not change so much is because people DON'T have to give back anything if they don't want to. I've often wondered how much BSD code has been closed up and made proprietary never to see the light of public again that might have moved BSD much closer to where LINUX is today.

Re:Commercial Users

[Aladrin]

It's a vicious circle. Most companies don't contribute to BSD because most companies don't contribute to BSD. Most companies choose Linux for their 'free' OS because most companies choose Linux for the 'free' OS. Until something breaks those circles, nothing will change. The idea I was trying to get across (and the article hinted at) was that the GPL may be the thing to break those circles.

I, and the company I work for, use Linux. A lot. But if I saw that some new GPL changes were going to impact our business, I'd start pushing for BSD immediately, rather than have to do a massive changeover at the last second. For what we do, the massive support and cutting-edge technology in Linux is not useful. We can do everything we want (server-wise) with BSD-licensed stuff. Desktop wise, that's not quite there.

But that's assuming the GPL will be changed to affect users instead of just distributors. As far as I know, that'll never happen. But then, I didn't see the GPL v3 coming, either, so I'm not a real good judge of these things.

GPLv3 Hardware?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Wow, you must have thought about for a long time. The whole reason for the GPL3 is to stop companies like TiVO. "

Wow! Someone must have forgotten about the Google clause, which was latter taken out when it's downsides were pointed out. Today it's Google and Tivo. Who next, and doesn't your argument just reinforce what the newsletter's saying?

"Some people object to TiVO being able to base a product on Linux but then not let the Linux community pull it apart and play with it."

No, they objected to the fact that they couldn't run their mods on Tivo hardware. The source code has always been available. The GPL moved from being a software license to a hardware license.

Re:GPLv3 Hardware?

[Lacrymology]

I don't really get this... yhis whole thing is bullshit, Linux is *not* going under GPLv3 any time soon, Linus doesn't care to, and if he did he does *NOT* have the right, legally, to change the licensing of all the parts of the kernel he didn't write.

There might be a point where GPLv3 licensed software FOR linux is launched, but even nowadays parts that are areguably vital to any fully working Linux system aren't GPLv2 licensed (Perl, Python), so I don't see the connection, really.

Re:GPLv3 Hardware?

[bogado]

"What good is a phone call when you're not able to talk."

GPL is there to give user the freedom to tinker, and if the box forbids you to run the newly compiled code the source code is in fact useless. Tivo is breaking the idea behind GPL, it may be completely legal but it is immoral because it uses technicalities to go against the idea behind the license.

No, USABILITY will move people from Linux to BSD

[Theovon]

For practical reasons, people often find they have to use Windows. There are a lot of practical people out there, trying to actually GET STUFF DONE, so they make choices based on need.

In a similar vein, it is frustration with the out-dated UNIX system of spreading bits of applications around inconsistent places in /bin, /usr, /etc, /usr/local and who knows where else that has pushed me away from most Linux distros towards using BogoLinux, PC-BSD, and MacOS X.

Don't know what to think...

[Junta]

Until Netcraft confirms it...

But seriously, a good deal of the health of the Linux community has been due to the GPL. It has also been the reason why companies are so fearful, yes, but once in, they generally end up doing the right thing because of the licensing terms.

There are no shortage of commercial products with their roots in a BSD. The problem is they most often don't bother to contribute work back. There is some mindshare that letting upstream maintain non-specific stuff for you is inherently better, but at the same time it takes effort to decide where that boundary is, and many companies don't bother. The BSD projects that have code contributed by companies back are largely in the context of using them under Linux, and as such they are already in the habit of doing that.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[quanticle]

The whole reason for the GPL3 is to stop companies like TiVO. Some people object to TiVO being able to base a product on Linux but then not let the Linux community pull it apart and play with it.

Oddly enough though, they GPL v3 may not stop TiVO. The GPL doesn't say anything about hypervisors, so its quite possible for TiVO to run their UI in a virtualized environment, with the hypervisor monitoring the application and locking out the user if any modifications are made.

BSD: providing unencumbered software for 30 years

[Kartoffel]

Long ago in a galaxy far far away, Marshall Kirk McKusick wrote:

"You had copyright, which is what the big companies use to lock everything up; you had copyleft, which is free software's way of making sure you can't lock it up; and then Berkeley had what we called 'copycenter,' which is 'take it down to the copy center and make as make as many copies as you want.' You want to go off and do proprietary things with it? Fine, you can do that. You want to keep it out in the Open Source domain? You're welcome to do that as well. In fact, in the end, Richard Stallman had to agree that we had a less restrictive license than he did, although it took pulling some teeth to get him to admit to that."

Re:GPLv3 software?

[Ash-Fox]

Wow, you must have thought about for a long time. The whole reason for the GPL3 is to stop companies like TiVO. Some people object to TiVO being able to base a product on Linux but then not let the Linux community pull it apart and play with it.

Linus has no intention of licensing the kernel under GPLv3. TiVO doesn't have a problem.

I am interested in finding out software that is used for such purposes which will be licensed under the new GPLv3 and which companies are effected.

I am looking forward to your reply.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[DragonWriter]

Wow, you must have thought about for a long time. The whole reason for the GPL3 is to stop companies like TiVO. Some people object to TiVO being able to base a product on Linux but then not let the Linux community pull it apart and play with it.

Yes, but so what? Linux doesn't use the GPLv3 now, and there is really no concrete threat of the kind articulated here by the GPLv3 anyhow. The main threat is future changes to the GPL, buts its shear FUD to think that anyone using the GPL -- v2 or v3 -- now is at risk of not being able to distribute software because of future GPL changes. At worst, if they use "or any later version", other people might distribute their software under terms they didn't anticipate, but that doesn't restrict the original distributors ability to distribute software.

However, if the FSF is serious about "anti-TiVoization" the GPLv4 is going to be a radical change and have to be an intrusive, use-affecting license contract, since its possible to build a TiVo-like locked-down product that uses GPL software without ever becoming bound by the GPL: you just enter into an exclusive contract with the actual provider of the GPL-covered software who provides it to you on a component that is not inherently locked down, incorporate it into your device that simply verifies the appropriate signatures, etc., to assure that it is the right software, and sell the device. Since you are neither making copies and distributing them or making derivative works, you don't need the GPL to distribute: you are just exercising your right to dispose of your own physical copy under the doctrine of first sale. A pure copyright license that doesn't affect use rights can't prevent this, you need a contract that regulates use.

OTOH, the FSF recognized that business users might actually want locked-down products, so its not really clear what the future direction is. Maybe they'll realize that the same considerations that lead business to want that actually may apply to consumer uses, too,

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

well

[thatskinnyguy]

I recall someone saying on here that those who hate M$ use Linux and those who love Linux use BSD. I don't know if there is any truth to that. I enjoy what M$, Linux, BSD and Mac all bring to the table.

Re:well

[hansivers]

I think the exact quote is : "Linux is for people who hates MS, BSD is for people who loves UNIX" H.

A tissue please!

[Tentacle_Rape]

For all the poor commercial developers who can no longer reap a huge profit off of free open source software, and then defecate on the faces of the volunteers who made it possible.

Microsoft screws people and they beg for more

[OwlWhacker]

Even after all these years people eagerly line up to get screwed by Microsoft, so it's highly unlikely that something as tame as GPL v 3 is going to bring about a mass exodus from Linux.

Re:Microsoft screws people and they beg for more

[DragonWriter]

Even after all these years people eagerly line up to get screwed by Microsoft, so it's highly unlikely that something as tame as GPL v 3 is going to bring about a mass exodus from Linux.

That people who don't care about license terms are lining up to get screwed by Microsoft is not grounds for confidence that people who do care about license terms—like people who currently actively chose Linux—might not care enough about the GPLv3 to look for a less burdensome license if Linux were to be offered under the GPLv3 exclusively.

That's not to say there might not be other valid bases for that conclusion, though.

Users?

[leuk_he]

Users care only a very little bit about the license. They want working software. Developers do care only a little bit since they cannot randomly mix & match code uder different licenses. GPL by definition gives them the most choice of source. Creators of disitibutions and hardware vendor (should) care a lot about the license. But they do not care about the freedom of the suers, they care about the number of copies they can distribute.

The vice president of bsd foundation cares for hardware vendor, who want to restrict hardware, which he calls the users/ freebsd community. However that are not users you and me who buy/use the end result.

PS..
-- BSD is dead. ;)

Re:Users?

[Zmee]

they [Creators of distributions and hardware vendors] do not care about the freedom of the suers (sic) They do care once the users become suers...

Re:Users?

[ajs]

Users care only a very little bit about the license. They want working software. Developers do care only a little bit since they cannot randomly mix & match code uder different licenses. GPL by definition gives them the most choice of source. I'm not sure I agree. The GPL has only one real benefit, and that's the fact that companies that want to modify the software must become part of the community, and not just leeches. The primary benefit of THAT is that these companies often find themselves becoming more a part of the community than they had intended.

I find this to be a benefit. Those who don't tend to either not care, or use BSD or proprietary software. That's cool too.

GNU & GPL

[TehZorroness]

Anyone who beleives in the ideology behind the GNU project would have no problems at all adopting the GPLv3. It adds additional copyleft restrictions to promote the freedom to hack - in addition to making a few important clarifications. If you feel uneasy with GPLv3, ask yourself if your ideals match those of the GNU project. If they don't, there are other copyleft and non-copyleft licenses available - including the BSD licence.

Re:GNU & GPL

[Timothy Brownawell]

Anyone who beleives in the ideology behind the GNU project would have no problems at all adopting the GPLv3. It adds additional copyleft restrictions to promote the freedom to hack - in addition to making a few important clarifications. If you feel uneasy with GPLv3, ask yourself if your ideals match those of the GNU project. If they don't, there are other copyleft and non-copyleft licenses available - including the BSD licence.

That ideology is approximately "not sharing is wrong". Their licenses are approximately "we refuse to share with you, unless you share with others". It is very possible to agree with the former and have serious problems with the latter.

Re:GNU & GPL

[chromatic]

Their licenses are approximately "we refuse to share with you, unless you share with others".

More accurately perhaps it's "If you share with others, you must allow them to share in the same way."

Re:will ideology drive pragmatics to FreeBSD?

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Remember when Red Hat left out various codecs due to licenses?

This usually happens with proprietary, restrictive licenses, which is another discussion.

The ideology for both is out there for everyone who cares to look. I'm more worried about the GPL because basically one person controls the license, while the BSD has the community. Something about absolute power and all that.

The FSF is not a one man show and the process of crafting of GPLv3 involved public participation.

If you want to build an ideological fence around yourself? Be my guest. Just don't complain that the world isn't dumping what works for them and using your solution. Or complaining that hardware makers aren't cooperating with the GPL community.

Err... isn't the whole article about the supposed defectors from GPL to BSD, i.e. whining about something along the lines of as to why "the world" isn't "dumping what works for them and using your (BSD) solution"? Pot, kettle and all that jazz.

Or complaining that hardware makers aren't cooperating with the GPL community.

What hardware makers have to do with this, I cannot fathom. Neither GPL or BSD affects hardware in any way whatsoever.

Not quite.

[Anonymous Coward]

The only GNU tools in any of the BSDs are the compiler toolchain. None of the standard unix utilities are the GNU versions like they are in most (all?) linux distros. Everything from ls, to grep to diff/patch to inetd is BSD licensed in the BSDs.

Re:Not quite.

[quantum bit]

Actually grep is GNU grep, but there have been some discussions on the lists recently about replacing it with a BSD rewrite. GNU tar was replaced not too long ago with a new BSD version that uses libarchive and is supposedly more efficient. Haven't noticed any performance difference personally, just new features like not having to specify 'z' and using tar to extract ZIP files and ISO9660 images.

Here's a list of some stuff that comes with FreeBSD which is probably GPL (it's in /usr/src/gnu/usr.bin)

bc
binutils
cc
cpio
cvs
dc
dialog
diff
diff3
gdb
gperf
grep
groff
man
patch
rcs
sdiff
send-pr
sort
texinfo

Re:Not quite.

[JoeBuck]

Most of the commands you list are GNU on FreeBSD, other than "man" (a BSD version is used).

Also, of course the desktop BSDs now coming out put a mostly-GPL GUI environment (KDE or Gnome) on top of BSD.

Re:Not quite.

[Eivind Eklund]

Given that he gave a list of what GNU commands are in FreeBSD, it's not that weird that most of them are GNU commands.

Eivind.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[mrball_cb]

The whole reason for the GPL3 is to stop companies like TiVO. Some people object to TiVO being able to base a product on Linux but then not let the Linux community pull it apart and play with it.

The source code for the Tivo IS freely available. The hardware does a check for validity of the kernel and refuses to run it if it doesn't match expected values, but that's hardware. That hardware is not and never has been covered by the GPL. The GPLv3 is an attempt by RMS to expand the scope of control and legislate hardware interaction with the software. I can see that the reason they need a new GPL is because this is contradictory to what the GPLv2 stood for and stood against. So where does it stop? Your refrigerator will be turned off because you use a brand of orange juice that RMS is against?

timing

[syrinx]

I just last week switched my home server from FreeBSD to Debian... mainly just to learn something new, and get some hands-on experience. I last tried any Linux flavor about 7 years ago, and have been on FreeBSD since then, so I figured I'd try something else.

In any case, I really don't care about licensing as a user. As a developer, I'd prefer the BSD license, but that doesn't mean I care what my OS and other programs are licensed under... I just want something that works.

Re:No, USABILITY will move people from Linux to BS

[Obsidian Butterfly]

You're so right! We should be more innovative like Microsoft and just dump everything under C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM.

Why are you so worried about where everything's installed anyway? I don't see how you "GET STUFF DONE" if you're so caught up with that kind of thing.

Re:BSD is still alive?

[TheRaven64]

Sure, if there was a BSD that recognized my graphics card, sound card, and all my other goodies,

Graphics card? FreeBSD has support for DRI, so works nicely with Intel and older ATi cards. It's also supported by the nVidia blob drivers.

Sound card? Never had a problem with sound support on FreeBSD. It was supporting multi-channel output with software mixing years before Linux. I was playing BZFlag with xmms playing in the background and IM and mail clients giving me notifications when messages were received back in 2003. This was with a sound card that didn't do hardware mixing. At the time, Linux only allowed a single program to have the sound device open at once, requiring ugly work-arounds like GNOME and KDE sound daemons (and good luck getting programs that use one playing sound at the same time as programs playing using the other). With the latest versions, you have volume controls per virtual channel.

Other goodies? Not sure what you mean here, but OpenBSD tends to have better WiFi support than Linux, and FreeBSD tends to get drivers ported pretty quickly. How about a decent scheduler? On SMP systems, the new Linux scheduler has similar performance characteristics to the old 4BSD scheduler which is being retired in favour of the newer ULE scheduler in FreeBSD, which has much better scalability.

When will they learn?

[misleb]

The vast majority of Linux users simply don't give a crap about the license beyond the question of whether or not it is free for them to download and install. And why would anyone move to FreeBSD to get away from the GPL license anyway? Probably about 80% of your average FreeBSD desktop is GPL'd or some other non-BSD license. FreeBSD itself is actually a relatively small core of software. Almost everything of use to a user on a *BSD system comes from ports... not the FreeBSD installation.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[flyingfsck]

One word: Samba

That is probably the largest project already under the GPLv3.

Re:BSD: providing unencumbered software for 30 yea

[mrbobjoe]

BSD is less restrictive, sure, by the simple fact that is has fewer restrictions. Stallman only would argue that GPL is "More free", and by his definition of "free" he is correct (although that is a somewhat meaningless statement...)

Why would we care if GPLed software isn't used?

[cowbutt]

Why would we care if GPLed software isn't used in embedded devices? If the full source for the software shipped in the device isn't available, it might as well be BSD- or proprietarily licensed for practical purposes anyway.

Presumably, there might be some Linux fanboys out there who buy a device primarily because 'it runs Linux', but I think most people buy a device based on how useful it is (which may or may not be related to it running Linux!). This even applies to hackers, who'll buy a device based on how open it is, or how functional the hardware is compared with its price.

MOD PARENT UP - factual error in summary

[Kadin2048]

I think this is correct. Much as I'd like it if the FCC did require the software in SDRs to be user-replaceable, in reality I think they want the opposite. They want to eliminate the ability for users to tinker with anything, and that's exactly what the GPL is designed to protect.

Get Real

[theshowmecanuck]

I guess no one if they wanted to could write a Samba-like app for BSD? And please refrain from the juvenile "well if you think it is so easy, you do it" kind of crap. The point is, if someone wants to, they can. Complacency and pride has killed more than one software project/product. Ask Novell and maybe Corel about that.

Really, the only reason Linux/GNU software is where it is at today is because of commercial software and hardware companies. You can wear rose coloured glasses and talk 'lovey-dovey' about the hoards of volunteers, but Linus himself would have to work on predominantly 'commercial' software projects if his employer didn't think it was in their interest to have him work on kernel projects. The much vaunted open source alternative to MS Office is financed mostly by Sun and other companies. Even Ubuntu, everyone's darling of Linux distros right now would be nothing if commercial money weren't behind it to help in its financing. Shuttleworth wouldn't be able to keep the thing financed for a long time if he didn't form a company to provide commercial support options to it. Ubuntu wouldn't have the look and direction without him. And we have all seen how well he fits in with Stallman's thinking vis a vie mp3 support etc. and all the other GPL purists out there.

As much as the idealogues don't want to admit, people need to put food on the table and to pay the rent. Much (not all) of the most useful contributions to Linux/Gnu wouldn't be possible without commercial companies paying people to create the code for it. E.g. Sun, IBM, Redhat, Novell, and scores of others. Look at all the promising software projects that have died out because the original and most inspired stakeholders/developers have eventually realized that they have to spend their time elsewhere to have a family life as well as to make a living. The database tool Tora is a good example (the latest release is a year and a half old). If you can't program for your Linux/Gnu project during working hours you have to do it during 'non-working hours'... and you can't have a life outside that since it is time consuming. Most people want a 'life' and a family. The Linux/Gnu project is then tossed aside (maybe not happily, but it is still tossed)... Except if you are paid to do it during the daytime by the 'evil' commercial companies. Yes, the projects are open source. But the only ones that don't eventually die are the ones that companies help pay people to continue.

Stallman has hinted that there are more changes to GPL coming. Times have changed, and people playing with this license should be careful not to bite the hand that feeds GNU/Linux. Apple has shown that it is very possible to make some very good things from BSD.

Re:Get Real

[MightyMartian]

I guess no one if they wanted to could write a Samba-like app for BSD? And please refrain from the juvenile "well if you think it is so easy, you do it" kind of crap. The point is, if someone wants to, they can. Complacency and pride has killed more than one software project/product. Ask Novell and maybe Corel about that.

What precisely is juvenile abort that retort? If BSD license fans find GPLv3 stuff so horrific, then let them write their own damn Lanserver clone. Oddly enough the world didn't stop rotating and the Big Bang didn't reverse itself when the Samba team announced they were going with GPLv3.

Re:Get Real

[NoOneInParticular]

And your point is? There is a reason that companies are backing GPL more than they do BSD. Companies hate it when their efforts are taken, a different logo put onto it, closed up and resold without them seeing a penny. With GPL this is not possible, with BSD it is. How much has Apple contributed back to BSD after taking the kernel and making money off it? Do they allow that anybody takes Mac OsX and compiles it for their own platform? The answer is a resounding no. Apple has contributed back to kde (via Safari), simply because it is GPL-ed, and they have to. They've not done a thing for BSD. Why should they? Apple is not interested in open source. That's why they use BSD.

GPL will survive as long as there is an interest in working at open source for companies. It is the only license out there that allows companies to use open source and protect their investment in it by disallowing their competitors to close-source it and run. More stringent controls on that scheme will not deter these companies. More likely it will encourage them. BSD is not such a beast. Companies love it because they can take what they want. These are not open source companies.

Re:Get Real

[NoOneInParticular]

Me again,

Just for fun, the following argument. I work at a software company. We live off license sales from the software we create, we don't live of services like IBM. So, the GPL is not for us as we don't open source our code (even though we do give it to our customers, for their eyes only). We love BSD/Apache style licenses and use it all over the place. This saves us lots of work, and cuts down on the number of developers required to get stuff off the ground immensely. It helps our bottom line to have as few developers as possible on the job. In other words, BSD style licenses help our companies to hire fewer developers! So is BSD hurting your changes to be employed in IT?

Re:Get Real

[hawk]

>They've not done a thing for BSD.

Go check the commit logs. This just isn't true. Apple has returned many patches for bugfixes in BSD. Apple has a vested interest in returning bugfixes to FreeBSD in particular (though the early flood was actually to NetBSD, iirc), because the closer Darwin and FreeBSD remain, the less Apple effort it takes to maintain Darwin.

hawk

Re:Get Real

[theshowmecanuck]

I think no. More companies can be formed like yours. Therefore even though there are fewer employees, there are more companies...

Re:Get Real

[theshowmecanuck]

This is sophomoric reasoning at best. With the GPL, code contributed by a commercial company can be taken and sold by anyone anyways. It doesn't matter whether the end result leads to contributed code being used by someone else and the source closed or left open; the code can still be used by someone else, including their competitors, reducing potential profits by the commercial company. So this argument is moot. It holds no water. Companies will work and contribute to open source and GPL open source projects as long as there is incentive to do so. And I am just pointing out that I don't think GPL open source is a necessary requirement to support open source.

Other have pointed out that with respect to Apple, they have indeed contributed back to BSD. So I will assume that you are misinformed on that front.

By the way, I own several boxes, none of which run BSD or Apple. Licensed Windows XP Pro and Kubuntu Linux, thank you very much. I would like to see Linux flourish. I am just concerned that outdated ideology may threaten that.

Re:Get Real

[synthespian]

ow much has Apple contributed back to BSD after taking the kernel and making money off it?

Stop trolling. It's clear you know nothing about Apple's contributions. Go read.

Re:Get Real

[synthespian]

With the GPL, code contributed by a commercial company can be taken and sold by anyone anyways. It doesn't matter whether the end result leads to contributed code being used by someone else and the source closed or left open; the code can still be used by someone else, including their competitors, reducing potential profits by the commercial company. So this argument is moot. It holds no water.

Mod this guy up! A user of Logic!

Another one of their favorite argument goes something like this: a company that, say, has patents and sells exclusive hardware will take GPL code and "contribute back to the community", because the GPL enforces that. The problem with that: patches and patches of code that turns out to be irrelevant to anyone else. How many companies, by the way, use the TiVo code?

Re:Get Real

[NoOneInParticular]

I think the point of forcing competitors to follow your lead and open source what they are doing makes a whole lot of sense when you are adding features. Yes, others can still sell it, but if they themselves add value to their offering, you get access to their work. This levels the playing field, making freeloading is more difficult. With BSD license this is not the case. If you add features to BSD, there is no guarantee that others that add features to the offering will let you have access. No tit-for-tat.

Take for example IBM. They have added a whole lot of features to the linux offering in the hope that the services around linux would more than make up for their efforts. If they would have done this on BSD (and why wouldn't they have, you wonder. Didn't they think this through? BSD is so much more business friendly?), any other company could use their enhancements, add their own code, pack it up and sell the enhanced offering with exclusive services around it. IBM would have a reduced offering compared to their competition as the competition has everything IBM has done (and is still doing), but have kept their enhancements private. IBM would always have a worse offering than this competition, forcing it instantly to adding features. tit for tat.

As for Apple's BSD contributions. Apologies (also to the other siblings of this post pointing that out). I was not clear: I was thinking about features, not bugfixes. It of course makes a whole lot of sense that when building upon something, you would contribute bugfixes back to the upstream to minimize maintainance. However, how many actual features have been added by Apple to BSD? How many drivers? Does FreeBSD now runs flawless on Mac hardware due to the presence of up-to-date drivers to all hardware Apple is selling? Is OpenGL support at an all time high? Does the videocam work under freeBSD? Can I get Aqua for FreeBSD, without running Os-X? How much of Apple's 'intellectual property' can now be found in BSD? I don't really know, and it could be that Apple has transformed FreeBSD in the desktop unix of choice (at the expense of OSX), but color me a bit sceptical.

Re:Get Real

[NoOneInParticular]

For a business, it is not interesting if somebody contributes back to the community. What is important is that if a competitor's contribution is relevant to their business, they contribute it to them!

Re:Get Real

[NoOneInParticular]

Possibly, though there's a finite demand for the products in any particular market. But yes, there are definite gains in commodity libraries (especially free ones) for a macroscopic economy, as it enables new markets to form more rapidly. How that exactly levels out is uncertain though.

But in any case, I was just trying to be obnoxious.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[putaro]

Well, there's a lot of different reasoning behind the GPL. One reason for the GPL is that to have you return to the community modifications and improvements that you make to code you receive from the community. Another reason behind the GPL, though, is to allow people who receive code from you (that you based on code received from the community) to *modify* the code. When the GPLv2 was written, the thinking was that requiring you to share the code would automatically allow people to make modifications to it.

Tivo found a way around it that stuck to the letter of the GPL but violated the spirit of the agreement. Certainly if you read what RMS has written about his philosophy about software the ability to change and modify software that you get is a keep part of his philosophy.

Rightly or wrongly the Free Software Foundation is not about making software that businesses can use to make money. It's about making software that people can share and modify freely. If you're a business and you want to use code that comes under the GPL you should be prepared to go along with what the community expects. If not, go find code that is licensed differently, like under BSD, or hey, consider *investing* some money in the software so that you can do whatever you like with it and license it however you like.

Can't speak for everyone else ...

[Syncerus]

But if the BSD organizations make a serious attempt to re-implement GPL3 apps with BSD licenses, and the Linux organizations stick with GPL3, then I'll switch to BSD and away from Linux (used since 1995 ...).

The BSD license is my idea of free software. But that's just me; as they say, ymmv.

Re:Can't speak for everyone else ...

[fsmunoz]

Er.... why don't you use BSD then? What's holding you? Most of the applications run just as fine on any BSD as in Linux (especially the properly made ones). You are waiting for Linux to become BSD licensed, or for people that develop GPL software to suddenly stop doing it and start using BSD?

RE: Will GPLv3 Drive Users from Linux to FreeBSD?

[tannhaus]

You act like bsd is comparable to linux for the average end user. It's not. Ok...so say I wanted to run BSD instead of linux. Can I pop in an install dvd, have all of my hardware recognized and configured, and be dropped into kde or gnome, depending on what I chose?

Do I have nice programs available from the default install like SuSE or Fedora give me...so I don't have to use the command line and can take care of my machine from the GUI?

Your average non-geek user doesn't want to spend a large portion of his time using his computer working with config files trying to get things working right. They just want it to work. The free BSDs lose those people to Mac OS or linux.....not the other way around, no matter what developer issues are out there. You have to remember, the average user is not a developer.

Re:the GPL is now toxic

[Timothy Brownawell]

We need a new license -- the Linux license -- that has GPLv2 features and perhaps the patent provision but not the anti-tivoization clause.

Eh, I actually don't think the patent provisions are very good. They seem stupidly specific to one particular case that annoyed people, rather than cleanly holding a particular position. Which is really rather odd, since RMS and the FSF like to diss "pragmatism" in favor of "idealism".

Well, yes the GPL restricts certain rights

[Todd Knarr]

Yes, the GPL (all versions) restrict certain of the user's rights. Specifically, they restrict the right of a user to restrict other user's rights under the GPL. If I grant you through the GPL a right to modify and distribute my code and you include my code in your product, the GPL takes away your right to not grant the same rights to my code to recipients of your product that I granted you. Yes, this makes life hard for commercial users. They can't benefit from my code and then turn around and deny those same benefits to their own users. This is what I intended, and why I chose the GPL. I'm not going to choose the BSD license specifically because it doesn't restrict recipients' rights in that specific way. Part of the payment I get is "pay it forward": you benefit from my work, you "pay" for that in part by letting others benefit from your work in turn. And I'd note that commercial users who don't want to pay in kind like that have an option: go to the original creator and negotiate a license just like they would with any commercial software. They'll probably have to pay in some other form, but that's hardly unexpected.

I seriously doubt many creators of GPL'd software will move to a BSD license. If they were inclined that way they wouldn't have chosen the GPL in the first place, they'd've gone with a BSD license from the start.

Re:BSD is still alive?

[Dan Ost]

What you've said is true of OpenBSD and (I think) NetBSD. FreeBSD doesn't seem to care about blobs.

The problems of looking at the wrong "users"...

[argent]

You're half-right. Most users don't care about licenses. Most users who even think about licenses don't care about the differences between the BSDL, GPL2, GPL3, or even some random shareware license that lets them use a program for 30 days before they start getting nag dialogs... there's basically two licenses, ones they have to pay money for, and those they don't.

Hell, a lot of *developers* don't care about licenses, and release their code using whatever license they run across first.

On the other hand, "Probably about 80% of your average FreeBSD desktop is GPL'd or some other non-BSD license." is misleading. You could build a Debian GNU/BSD and it would still have a BSD kernel, even if virtually all the userland was GPL. What FreeBSD gets you isn't a GPL-free system... heck, even Microsoft's shipped GPLed software on occasion... what it gets you is a system that doesn't need to be GPLed as a whole. The GPL components are roped off in /usr/src/gnu and /usr/src/contrib, and there's no GPL code in the kernel.

On the gripping hand, no, this won't drive "the vast majority of Linux users" from Linux to BSD. But the article wasn't about end-users, it was about companies that use Linux in their embedded systems, in set-top boxes and routers and mysterious gray boxes on street corners. These are the "users" Justin was writing about. And this is something that the FSF should be concerned about: the GPL has been used to extract the source code to a number of embedded systems, and the GPL3 is an attempt to bring more systems into the fold. But if companies making embedded systems switch from Linux to BSD it could end up having the opposite effect.

Re:Why would it?

[MightyMartian]

Why the hell was this modded flamebait? Fuck, but there are some real evil moderators out there.

At any rate, your point is quite right. We use Apache, which isn't GPL, alongside Postfix which is under IBM Public License, alongside Samba, which is GPLv2 (going on GPLv3). Don't want to use GPLv3, then don't use it. The Linux kernel will very likely never be licensed under GPLv3.

This is yet again one of those Stallmanesque pseudo wars, where if you don't advocate and stick to one kind of license your anti-software, anti-corporate, anti-free software, or anti-something. It's all bullshit. It's a bunch of self-important pricks like Stallman waging their little battles. And yet gigabytes are wasted here and elsewhere on the whole damn thing.

Does anybody seriously believe that Samba will shrivel up and die because it's moving to GPLv3? And even if someone forks the older GPLv2 code, is that even a bad thing? Software is (supposed to be) survival of the fittest. I guarantee you, if GPLv3 Samba doesn't work as well as some (as yet fictitious) strain of GLPv2 Samba, then it isn't the license that's going to bring it down, but simply the quality of the software.

(YASAS) Uh, no.

[joe_n_bloe]

Has anything else ever driven anyone to FreeBSD? For every dozen people I know who use some form of Linux, I know zero people who use FreeBSD. If Linux were completely vaporized overnight, more people would switch to MacOS or Windows than to FreeBSD.

Re:Why would it?

[fsmunoz]

Another point is the commercial friendliness of the BSD/MIT/ISC license. As I - and many people - said before, BSD is friendly when a company needs to use some code done by someone else. But why, in a purely commercial perspective, would a company realease a product under the BSD license? I mean, if it isn't proprietary then the GPL makes more sense since it effectively stops any competitors from gaining an edge using the code they released, while releasing it under a BSD license could potentially give competitors the ability to improve their offerings using code released by another company, while at the same time keeping it closed. Just don't see it happening (unfortunately, btw).

Re:Moderation

[ak3ldama]

Some Linux user either flamed through moderation or merely read him wrong.

They don't slap together bits and pieces from all over the place like Linux. That gives them a much more consistent feel.

He shouldn't have been moderated troll, but yet I personally feel what he said is wrong. Not completely, just a mis-representation. Sure, the BSD folks maybe be under the same banner and all have email accounts on the same server; but the Linux people are united in their goals and work together even if not with such a united appearance. The Linux "community" is amazingly healthy and there is little chaos even with so many working for different employers (whether IBM, Redhat, Novell or otherwise, or even flying solo.)

Beyond the write spelling ...

[joe_n_bloe]

I agree, if it's heavy metals we're talking about, we don't need any "leaching." But I think asking people to "wizen" up is a little drastic.

Question to the Slashdotters

[ardor]

My understanding of the GPL is this: if I want a program's source code to be freely available as well as any modifications to said source, I use the GPL. People are not allowed to extend my stuff without GPLing the result. They also cannot include it in their projects without GPLing the whole thing. Thats all I understand about it.

Now, GPL 2 vs. GPL 3: what exactly changes from a programmer's point of view? Googling this is hopeless, its full of blogs FUDing around, and I dont think the FSF is an unbiased source. So, anyone here with a clue?

Re:Question to the Slashdotters

[Timothy Brownawell]

My understanding of the GPL is this: if I want a program's source code to be freely available as well as any modifications to said source, I use the GPL. People are not allowed to extend my stuff without GPLing the result. They also cannot include it in their projects without GPLing the whole thing. Thats all I understand about it.

It becomes slightly more complicated if you consider that not everything that uses your program is necessarily a derivative work (The obvious case is including it as a separate executable, and communicating with it over stdin/stdout.).

Now, GPL 2 vs. GPL 3: what exactly changes from a programmer's point of view? Googling this is hopeless, its full of blogs FUDing around, and I dont think the FSF is an unbiased source. So, anyone here with a clue?

GPLv2 says that dependencies have to be redistributable and modifiable. GPLv3 says that dependencies must be provided under the complete terms of GPLv3. Since one of the terms of GPLv3 is that "additional permissions" can be removed, I would expect this to be problematic WRT dependencies under more permissive licenses that don't let themselves be removed.

GPLv3 talks more about patents. If you happen to have any relevant patents, GPLv3 makes more demands about licensing them to everyone for free.

There are a few things you can't use GPLv3 code for, although you probably only care if you want to make something that's locked down.

Re: Will GPLv3 Drive Users from Linux to FreeBSD?

[Valafar]

"Can I pop in an install dvd, have all of my hardware recognized and configured, and be dropped into kde or gnome, depending on what I chose?"

As a matter of fact, yes you can. See: PC-BSD

"Do I have nice programs available from the default install like SuSE or Fedora give me...so I don't have to use the command line and can take care of my machine from the GUI?"

Why, yes you do. The exact same programs, in fact.

"Your average non-geek user doesn't want to spend a large portion of his time using his computer working with config files trying to get things working right. They just want it to work. "

This is usually the argument that is used when people talk about Linux. Who wants to spend hours editing conf files, build and rebuilding the kernel, etc.? It's awesome to see that Linux has crossed that threshold!

FUD

[drwho]

What a bunch of FUD. This is what I'd expect from Microsoft or similar. It's already clear that the Linux kernel cannot ever adopt any new license, and it the keystone for all Linux distributions. Many, many other projects have already said they will not adopt the GPLv3. I am sure that many Linux distributions will be wary of it as well, making it very prominent wherever a package is provided with said license. ("warning: module rmsgnu.o taints the kernel").

It's a shame to see such FUD perpetrated under the BSD banner, when there is actually so much more that the communities of Linux and BSD have in common than that which separates them. The only thing I have as bad is this is that NetBSD spinoff company that promotes their own embedded BSD version (Wasabi).

We don't care about that.

[SanityInAnarchy]

The point is that they don't get to take our code, not that we prevent them from making the product in the first place.

Read my signature.

Of course, part of the point is the hope that sometimes, companies will actually decide it's worth it to go GPL simply to use GPL'd libraries. And I believe this has happened.

Regarding GCC, I'm not sure how it could be a problem. At least for now, GCC explicitly allows you to compile programs with it that are not necessarily released under the GPL, even though GCC itself is GPL'd. This is true of just about any F/OSS programming language/environment.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[raddan]

TiVO may be safe with regard to the Linux kernel itself, but "Linux" tends to be a bit more than that. Unlike BSD, Linux userland utilities come from all over the place. If people start licensing these things as GPLv3, then TiVO has a problem. I don't know how TiVO assembles their distribution (I don't own one myself), but things like mplayer/mencoder/transcode, shell utilities, cron daemon, logging daemon, database utlities, etc. come to mind.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[Anonymous Coward]

What did Tivo try to get around to "spiritually" violate GPL? Linus has defended Tivo time and time again because they've exceeded the demands of GPLv2. The only issue is whether firmware -- which is a hardware issue, not in kernel space or user space -- is the purview of the FSF. Tivo says no. Linus says no. Goofy ideologues running FSF say it is, so they've encumbered their license with their goofy beliefs.

GPL *never* addressed firmware before v3, whether it was in a product that uses an open or proprietary operating system. Tivo's firmware is theirs; they spent their own money developing it, it's in their hardware, and it's not part of the operating system (kernel/utilities) or an application in user space.

It's ironic, therefore, that you bring up the issue of creating software when that's not even the issue. Tivo shouldn't have to open their *firmware* just to satisfy the unrealistic demands of anti-capitalists at FSF and thereby (1) offer it freely to their competitors who didn't invest either time or money into its development, (2) provide criminals an open view of their firmware's digital security processes so they can trick Tivo units into accepting malware, (3) otherwise increase risks to their end users by opening their systems to those who find vulnerabilities in the firmware that bypass other system checks, and (4) devalue the investment people have made in their company. Tivo did precisely what you suggest. You should defend them against FSF loonies.

Re:Moderation

[Anonymous Coward]

He was probably modded troll because his statement that

The OS (the kernel and the userland utilities) are written by the same folks. They don't slap together bits and pieces from all over the place like Linux. is blatantly false. A lot of the userland stuff in FreeBSD is just that, code written by another project.

For example, I don't see the FreeBSD project writing their own secure remote shell (like everyone else, they use OpenBSD's), window system (x.org and XFree86 before it), desktop environment (I believe Novell-sponsored GNOME is still the default?), or *cough*a decent C compiler*cough*.

Those are just a few examples of software included with the base distribution that aren't written by the FreeBSD project, it's by no means an inclusive list. I'm not going to even start with the Ports tree (hint, it's called "Ports" for a reason).

A better reason to use BSD

[Something Witty Here]

One thing (perhaps the only thing?) Linus got right is using the GPL.
The end-user needs the ability to get bugs fixed. If the manufacturer
refuses to fix a bug, the end-user needs the source code to be able to
fix the bug. Closed source products are simply unacceptable.

One constantly reads the argument that the BSD license is better than
the GPL for commercial interests because it lets them create closed
source products. If so, then explain why Linux gets so much more
commercial use and support than the BSDs?

The reason to use BSD (whether FreeBSD, NetBSD, or OpenBSD) rather
than Linux is not because of the license. The reason to use BSD
rather than Linux is because BSD works better than Linux. BSD
is a mature operating system written by people that care about
quality. Linux is, even after all these years, and all the
thousands of eyeballs looking at it, not ready for prime time.
Not even close. Linux is getting better, but very slowly. At the
rate improvement is happening, I expect it to take several decades
longer before Linux is good enough.

Re:A better reason to use BSD

[freedom_surfer]

Works better how? Very broad statement... Linux works fine for me and all my customers for all our needs. Don't you really think it depends on WHAT you are using it for? Jeez....lol

Just curious, how does FreeBSD do with 64 procs and 64 gigs of memory?

Re:A better reason to use BSD

[BitZtream]

> If so, then explain why Linux gets so much more commercial use and support than the BSDs?

Considering every copy of windows on the planet has bsd code (BSDs network stack formed the basis for TCP/IP support in Windows, and the BSD license can still be found in the windows header files.) in it, then I think its hard to argue that linux gets more commercial use.

Re:A better reason to use BSD

[SwashbucklingCowboy]

If so, then explain why Linux gets so much more commercial use and support than the BSDs?

Momentum.

After all, if what you wrote just above that:

The end-user needs the ability to get bugs fixed. If the manufacturer refuses to fix a bug, the end-user needs the source code to be able to fix the bug. Closed source products are simply unacceptable.

If so, then why does Windows get so much more commercial use and support than Linux? ;-)

Re:GPLv3 software?

[arevos]

Linus has no intention of licensing the kernel under GPLv3. TiVO doesn't have a problem. That's not what TiVO thinks.

TiVO likely uses some utilities and libraries from the GNU Project, such as glibc and coreutils, and when GNU switches to GPL3, they won't be able to make use of future versions or patches from that source.

Somehow I don't think...

[Kjella]

...patent trolls, DRM pushers or tivoizers are any big contributors of GPL code. Perhaps some will go proprietary, perhaps some will grab what they can from BSD or the last GPLv2 versions, but I don't think you'll get any serious contributions to BSD. Here's the brief options:

1) Spend money developing a proprietary branch and earn money exclusively selling/supporting that product
2) Spend money developing code you'll give away, then try to make it back on support with competition
3) Forego the business altogether

Given the choice, I think any business would choose 1) every day. Think IBM wanted to give away all that code instead of creating a proprietary Linux? Think Red Hat wouldn't love to kill off CentOS? They didn't choose to release that code, the GPL left them either that or not at all. Ask Theo how much support he's gotten writing OpenSSH some day, code or money.

Users want to contribute to GPL software because they're improving their own software, businesses because they have to. The GPLv3 is pushing the balance more in direction of users, less of some businesses. But I don't think they'll contribute anything because you had to drag them to do it kicking and screaming in the first place. Maybe they contribute a pittance to low-level systems but that's like sending something upstream to a vendor "Hey we got this bug/limitation in your component causing trouble for us, care to fix it?" and only based in self-interest.

As a developer

[codepunk]

Not on your life would I ever pick a BSD license over any version of the GPL.

What user cares what license any of it runs under?

Yes/No/WhoCares

[huckamania]

The answer to all questions is Yes, No and Who Cares.

YES:
The GPL3 will drive Tivo type producers away from GPL3 code and thus drive Tivo type users away from GPL3 code.

NO:
Most users are completely ignorant about the existence of GPL3.

WHO CARES:
Companies in countries without strong copyright laws will use whatever suits their interests.

So there you have it. Next week we'll be showing how the answers to "Does a bear shiet in the woods" and "Does the Pope wear a funny hat" are both Yes, No and Who Cares.

driven to BSD

[Skapare]

If I were driven to BSD ... GPLv3 itself won't, but it might for my customers ... it would be NetBSD. The reason is the wider support for a variety of embedded and small system architectures.

Yay! Fork GCC!!!

[Medievalist]

In fact, BSD will be using GPLv3-licensed software, unless they intend on taking over their own fork of GCC (a monumental task which would substantially harm their ability to support BSD itself). Although I disagree with you about the "substantial harm" bit, I certainly would love to see GCC fork, and fork cleanly into (at least) two well supported versions. How about a fork that doesn't try to be a compiler for every frickin' language under the sun, under a BSD license - wouldn't that be spiffy?

The computing industries are too dependent on a single compiler code base at this point. The sooner we get some significant divergence the better.

GCC Replacement

[landonf]

It's kind of amusing to look at the history of FOSS, and a recurring theme has been that developers think that just because they have developed a complex piece of software over a long period of time (gcc comes to mind) that it's not open to being reimplimented in the future. If GPL3 becomes a thorn in would-be commercial users, there will be money available to replace it with something that's not so obnoxious.

This is occurring -- see LLVM and LLVM-GCC. Several corporations are contributing to LLVM -- including Apple

The open source iPhone development tools currently use LLVM with the GCC front-end. In this case, the gcc driver is used to interface with LLVM, and output LLVM byte-code. LLVM handles the assembly/linking of this byte code as a native executable. The GCC driver simply provides a fully GCC-compatible front-end -- it can (and has been) forked from GPLv2 licensed gcc, and in theory, could be maintained in perpetuity as a fork -- or potentially replaced outright.

Re:GCC Replacement

[ajs]

It's kind of amusing to look at the history of FOSS, and a recurring theme has been that developers think that just because they have developed a complex piece of software over a long period of time (gcc comes to mind) that it's not open to being reimplimented in the future. If GPL3 becomes a thorn in would-be commercial users, there will be money available to replace it with something that's not so obnoxious.

This is occurring

No, it's really not.

see LLVM and LLVM-GCC. Several corporations are contributing to LLVM -- including Apple First a point: I'm a huge fan of LLVM and everything that it stands for. I think it's a wonderful project, and the goal of having high-performance, portable bytecode is excellent.

Now an out: If you just misunderstood the topic, and were only talking about forking, and not re-implementation, then this reply is somewhat moot.

That said, they've kind of made the point that you don't run out and re-implement GCC. Fork it? Perhaps, but that gets unwieldy fast unless you chop off support for several of its front-end languages and deny any future development of the sort.

GCC was written because compilers at the time were either fairly primitive or highly proprietary (trade secrets in many cases). GCC today would be monstrous to re-implement, and the benefit of doing so would be essentially nil.

Now, LLVM may never sync back up with GCC's mainline, or they may. Who knows. That's a fair line to draw in the sand, but the BSD folks have talked about re-implementing GCC for years now, and have always come to the same conclusion. They could stand on their high horse and say that all licenses should give businesses the right to refuse to share their changes or they can move forward with their excellent operating system. They chose the latter, proving that they're developers, not politicians.

Re:GCC Replacement

[landonf]

This is occurring

No, it's really not.

see LLVM and LLVM-GCC. Several corporations are contributing to LLVM -- including Apple First a point: I'm a huge fan of LLVM and everything that it stands for. I think it's a wonderful project, and the goal of having high-performance, portable bytecode is excellent.

Now an out: If you just misunderstood the topic, and were only talking about forking, and not re-implementation, then this reply is somewhat moot.

I'm going to take that out. My point here is that the fork has occurred at the GPLv2 point. If the GPLv3 is considered too onerous, it is entirely possible that the GPLv3 code could never be merged.

I'm also not going to argue that the compiler front-end isn't complex and difficult to replace -- of course it is. I don't personally think there's much value in a re-implementation. That said, I do believe that LLVM provides a potential migration path away from the GPL, if corporations with sufficient resources deemed such a migration to be worthwhile.

Re:GCC Replacement

[ajs]

I'm also not going to argue that the compiler front-end isn't complex and difficult to replace -- of course it is. I don't personally think there's much value in a re-implementation. That said, I do believe that LLVM provides a potential migration path away from the GPL, if corporations with sufficient resources deemed such a migration to be worthwhile. Fair and reasonable. Thanks for the considered reply.

Re:GCC Replacement

[Eivind Eklund]

NOTE: The below is based on some assumptions that things are about the same as they were 4-5 years ago when I last checked the respective architectural issues etc. I've not seen any sign of GCC doing massive leaps in architecture in the meantime, so I believe the analysis is still valid - but take it with the caveat that my knowledge may be dated.

GCC today would be monstrous to re-implement, and the benefit of doing so would be essentially nil. A pure reimplementation from scratch of the GCC architecture would have essentially zero benefits. Upgrading some of the alternative architectures - e.g. TenDRA to support enough to be able to compile the BSDs and then switching the compiler (or making the source tree possible to compile with several compilers) may be reasonable. There's benefits in different compilers than GCC; other compilers often have better error messages, other compilers can often compile faster (the GCC architecture result in fairly slow compilation, and TenDRA is usually way faster), and e.g. the Intel compiler will usually generate better code than GCC. That may be "would usually", I'm not up to date in the area.

Also, supporting different compilers at the source tree level will also usually make it easier to support source checkers (lints), which makes it easier to create correct code.

Having done part of this work some years ago (as I was doing linting of the FreeBSD kernel), I would guess the amount of work for fixing the FreeBSD kernel to be compilable with TenDRA at about one month's work. That assumes that TenDRA has gotten the asm extensions that was promised about 5-6 years ago; supposedly, these were really little work - less than a day, as I remember my understanding from the TenDRA developers.

Eivind.

But I thought...

[dwiget001]

... BSD was dead....

Re:BSD: providing unencumbered software for 30 yea

[perlchild]

Anything can be more "free" "only for certain values of free".

Re:GPLv3 software?

[Znork]

"The GPLv3 is an attempt by RMS to expand the scope of control and legislate hardware interaction with the software."

No. The hardware can do whatever it want, the question is wether Tivo should be allowed to use GPL software that cannot be changed _on_ that hardware.

Tivo is as free as ever to do what they want with their hardware, but that doesnt mean GPL authors have to let anyone use their code to gain control over others. If Tivo wants to use GPL software then they're free to do so, as long as they do not try to restrict anyone elses freedom.

To comply they dont have to change any hardware, they just have to provide the means for anyone else to generate the same valid kernel they can build.

"So where does it stop?"

It stops when people stop trying to use GPL software to take power over others and restrict their freedom.

"Your refrigerator will be turned off because you use a brand of orange juice that RMS is against?"

A more appropriate scenario would be that the refrigerator maker made a refrigerator that would turn itself off if you put unapproved orange juice in it, in which case you'd find the GPL protecting your right to modify your refrigerator software to accept any orange juice.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

The GPL doesn't say anything about hypervisors, so its quite possible for TiVO to run their UI in a virtualized environment, with the hypervisor monitoring the application and locking out the user if any modifications are made.

From GPLv3:

"Installation Information" for a User Product means any methods, procedures, authorization keys, or other information required to install and execute modified versions of a covered work in that User Product from a modified version of its Corresponding Source. The information must suffice to ensure that the continued functioning of the modified object code is in no case prevented or interfered with solely because modification has been made.

Why would a hypervisor be excluded from this?

Re:GPLv3 software?

[Ash-Fox]

TiVO may be safe with regard to the Linux kernel itself, but "Linux" tends to be a bit more than that. Unlike BSD, Linux userland utilities come from all over the place. If people start licensing these things as GPLv3, then TiVO has a problem.

Tivo essentially built their entire own userland. Again, I can't think of any software packages in particular that would effect them.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[Ash-Fox]

That's not what TiVO thinks.

Yes, the kernel being licensed under the GPLv3 could harm them, but Linus has stated that he's not interested. The only time he considered doing so was for ZFS support. But then FUSE came along and ended up providing the support for the filesystem under Linux.

TiVO likely uses some utilities and libraries from the GNU Project, such as glibc and coreutils, and when GNU switches to GPL3, they won't be able to make use of future versions or patches from that source.

Actually glibc and coreutils are released under the LGPL, which are far less restrictive on what you can do with them.

Most FUD's are at least internally logical ...

[slashdotlurker]

This one isn't even that.
FCC requires that software be end-user replaceable. Tivo, and some other companies using GPLv2 code have been doing precisely the opposite.
One of the more prominent things that GPLv3 does is to force companies to make their software end-user replaceable (the anti-Tivoization clause). And this *BSD "genius" thinks that that is somehow going to contravene FCC's requirement ?
What is next ? "People should move away from implementing neighborhood watch programs because they might contravene / impede the application of laws against sexual predators targeting kids" ?
Was the slashdot editor high at the time when he / she let it through ? Or was he just a frustrated *BSD distributor ?

I fully intend to ignore GPLv3

[Paracelcus]

As I ignored GPLv2

And the Apache and BSD license!

I ignore ALL licenses.

If I make changes to code I very rarely release them to anybody, and then only if I'm collaborating with a developer (then compliance and code inclusion is theirs to decide).

Re:Yay! Fork GCC!!!

[chromatic]

How about a fork that doesn't try to be a compiler for every frickin' language under the sun, under a BSD license - wouldn't that be spiffy?

I don't know about spiffy, but it would be a license violation.

Free Software and Intellectual Freedom

[mhackarbie]

Here's a simple analogy to clarify the argument. The complaints of FreeBSD people about the GPL are like slave-owners complaining to abolitionists: "You're not really a supporter of freedom because you're trying to take away my freedom to own slaves!"

People might dismiss this as an inadequate analogy, saying that free software is not as important as human liberty. However, I would argue that a lot of these people are not considering the long-term importance of free software. As our world becomes enmeshed with software, the right to free software will merge indistinguisably with the more general rights of intellectual inquiry and the free exchange of ideas.

A lot of the freedoms that we now take for granted, such as free speech and the right to vote, were not respected as rights in the past (and not even considered as necessary by some!). These rights only came into being after they were proposed and vigorously defended by truly enlightened visionaries, not just by people interested in immediate, short-term practical benefits.

mhack

Re:Moderation

[Anonymous Coward]

What I believe he meant was that the BSD camps do not simple /include/ software, but will actively maintain it. OpenBSD is known to code review the projects that are in their base install. FreeBSD actively maintains the port collection and resolves compatability issues. If an important set of functionality has stopped being maintained by the author, one of the BSD camps will pick it up. This mentality of willing to own all of the code, versus a distribution with simply packages it up and refuses to own any, is what the OP was refering to.

Re:Yay! Fork GCC!!!

[init100]

I certainly would love to see GCC fork, and fork cleanly into (at least) two well supported versions. How about a fork that doesn't try to be a compiler for every frickin' language under the sun, under a BSD license - wouldn't that be spiffy?

It would also be impossible. Last time I checked, the copyrights of GCC are held by the FSF. They'll hardly allow a fork under a BSD license.

If you want a BSD licensed compiler, you'll have to write one yourself.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[I!heartU]

Off topic, but I could see them doing this and the FSF probably wouldn't care. They'd just separate out the Tivo proprietary chunk and run it in another vm (on bsd or something) that is locked down, and communicate over shared mem, guess they could use TCP/IP too. The normal system side would just run some version of linux and users could probably modify to their hearts content. Its a win win in my book.

ZFS

[rubicon7]

It's not [directly] the GPL that's causing me to eventually give FreeBSD a go instead of Debian on my servers - it's FreeBSD's [in-progress] support for ZFS. There might be an awful lot of hype about it, but ZFS seems like a really nice thing for a homebrew SAN.

Of course, licensing issues are the reason why ZFS won't be in the Linux kernel anytime soon.

ZFS on FUSE - and, indeed, FUSE in general - is neat, but not something I'd want to rely upon in a server environment.

I would love to see Ubuntu based on FreeBSD

[John Sokol]

That all really.

  FreeBSD GUI/desktop is really lacking. So much so, that I used freebsd all the time, but just stick to command lines,
then use Ubuntu as my desktop.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[WNight]

People invent so many doom and gloom scenarios around not being allowed to use your code (in something they release)... like 99% of everything else they see on the net.

The more you give people, the more they whine when it's less than absolutely 100%.

Non Issue

[YetAnotherBob]

The BSD people have been beating this drum for over 10 years now. 'More Free' 'soon be massive defections from Linux'. Failure of these prophecies doesn't seem to deter these people from repeating them. Don't they ever learn?

Ever since Linux passed up the BSD's in popularity, we've been hearing this. It's not new, just another excuse to say it again.

If it hasn't happened in the last 12 years, it'll never happen.

Why do they still report this garbage?

Thanks for nothing RMS

[PenguinBoyDave]

Being a long time professional Linux and Open Source guy, I am SO tired of Richard Stallman and his "take my football and go home" politics. The GPL wasn't broken in GPL 2 according to many, yet bring the MS / Novell deal along, and all of a sudden, we need to alter GPL 3 to make it unfriendly to the Linux community. I'd say that's a "cutting off your nose to spite your face" reaction.

I don't know if it will drive people to FreeBSD for the license, but I know I'm going to start downloading it right now.

Re:No, USABILITY will move people from Linux to BS

[FromellaSlob]

In a similar vein, it is frustration with the out-dated UNIX system of spreading bits of applications around inconsistent places in /bin, /usr, /etc, /usr/local and who knows where else that has pushed me away from most Linux distros towards using BogoLinux, PC-BSD, and MacOS X.

As others have pointed out, with package management systems available, this makes no difference to usability.

More to the point, just because you don't understand the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, don't knock it. Contrary to your beliefs, it's not just some disorganised relic of past Unix. It is designed to allow system files with different characteristics to be separated from each other so they can be spread across different filesystems and mounted in different ways. This is very useful for things like network booting, backup plans and security models.

Intent Determines Liscense

[YetAnotherBob]

If they want improvements to be donated back, keeping the system as a whole unified, then GPL is the proper choice. If they just want it out there, and don't care that someone else (or several someones) will soon own it, locking them out, then BSD might be the best choice.

The differences between GPL2 and GPL3 are minor. They should pick the license based on what results they want.

They can even dual liscense, with both a BSD and a GPL trunk. That way, they can see which one works best for them.

BSD licensing is for forking. In this case, the group really doesn't want to continue being bothered with the work. BSD/MIT is probably the best choice.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[Anonymous Coward]

Another reason behind the GPL, though, is to allow people who receive code from you (that you based on code received from the community) to *modify* the code. When the GPLv2 was written, the thinking was that requiring you to share the code would automatically allow people to make modifications to it.

You can modify the code.

You just can't execute the modified code on the TiVO.

The "correctness" of that depends on ownership and support. If you own the TiVO box, then they should not be permitted to restrict you in any way, even if it means you can brick the device or break the law.

If you do not own the box, but merely rent (or "license") it, or if you want the vendor/manufacturer to support it, you should not be able to make modifications to the box.

I don't understand why this is such a hard concept.

-M

Re:BSD: providing unencumbered software for 30 yea

[fsmunoz]

BSD: providing unencumbered software for 30 years Really? Tell me how do you did the math on that. I think you are confusing BSD Unix with the BSD license. Linux predated the first fully unemcumbered BSD distribution, heck tone of the most important reasons for Linux to caught on was exactly that. Furthermore the usage of the BSD license for BSD Unix was something that, imagine that, was in no small part due to the lobbying of people close to the FSF near the BSD developers of the time.

I can give references for everything in the preceding paragraph, btw.

Re:BSD: providing unencumbered software for 30 yea

[fsmunoz]

Sorry, jumped the gun to soon, you said "software" and not "OS". In that regard you are probably right.

Nice try but....

[starnix]

No it won't...

Re:GPLv3 software?

[concord]

The GPL License is a /user/ license. It was intended to preserve the freedom of the /user/ of GPL software. It did so fabulously until TiVO found a way to stick to the letter of the GPL while violating the spirit of the license (ie they removed /user/ freedom by locking down the hardware that the free software is running on). TiVO has taken work which people have created in good faith, believing that their work would always ensure /user/ freedom, and hijacked it for commercial gain. They have perverted the spirit of the license while adhering to the letter of the license. TiVO is legally correct but ethically wrong.

Some of the people who've worked on GPL software in the past and some of the people who continue to donate their time and effort in the hope that /user/ freedom will be maintained are not going to get what they've agreed to unless the license can ensure that /user/ freedom will continue to be respected. GPL has never been about commercial interests. GPL has never been about money. GPL is about /user/ freedom.

If you are not about /user/ freedom perhaps you might like to reconsider what type of software you donate your time to. Remeber, the GPL is about /user/ freedom. It is not about developer freedom.

Re:Yay! Fork GCC!!!

[Medievalist]

If you want a BSD licensed compiler, you'll have to write one yourself. Yeah, that's the whole damn problem. Those GNU guys are making it nearly impossible for me to get rich freeloading off the work of others (that's why I said BSD license, after all).

Bah, humbug. Why, I'd have to do something nearly as hard as... making a functional clone of unix from scratch. Those bastards! Somebody call Theo.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[FreakboyJones]

Tivo found a way around it that stuck to the letter of the GPL but violated the spirit of the agreement. Certainly if you read what RMS has written about his philosophy about software the ability to change and modify software that you get is a keep part of his philosophy.

That isn't true; you can modify the software that comes with your Tivo, you just can't run it on their machine. All the GPL v2 requires is you can get the software and modify it.

Re:Moderation

[McDutchie]

What I believe he meant was that the BSD camps do not simple /include/ software, but will actively maintain it.

Funny, that sounds a lot like Debian (and Ubuntu) to me. Just look at the changelog file of any debian package.

Re:No, USABILITY will move people from Linux to BS

[Theovon]

Because it seems like a total waste and a potential point of failure to have a package manager when a better system design would eliminate the need for it entirely. Seems straight forward to me. It's always a win if you can make a system simpler, more reliable, and more intuitive all in one fell swoop.

You should consider studying a bit of cognitive engineering.

Re:Yay! Fork GCC!!!

[Medievalist]

How about a fork that doesn't try to be a compiler for every frickin' language under the sun, under a BSD license - wouldn't that be spiffy? I don't know about spiffy, but it would be a license violation. Yeah, sadly so. At least until Congress finally gets around to outlawing the GPL (just kidding, the US Congress almost certainly isn't capable of anything that decisive).

OK, how about a GCC fork that only compiles C, and has a GPLv2 license?

It would be even better if it printed out abuse whenever somebody tried to compile C++. You know, like sudo's insult mode.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[glacote02]

Samba will switch and is certainly used in many low-end NAS/multimedia-routers. That's for future revisions of Samba obviously - current code is and will stay GPL2 obviously.

GPLv3

[jonasj]

Now, GPL 2 vs. GPL 3: what exactly changes from a programmer's point of view?

Some ways were found to get around the intent of GPLv2 without violating the letter of it; version 3 attempts to close those loopholes. For example, where version 2 said that you had to distribute the modified source along with your binaries to allow the recipient to modify the software, version 3 adds that you cannot try to get around that by putting in a hardware check to prevent running those modified versions. Think of GPLv3 as a bugfix update to v2.

FreeBSD is better anyhow

[Coolhand2120]

Linux is like FreeBSD with a dose of Microsoft. That is to say, it's freeBSD with about 2GB of bullshit sprinkled in every corner of the bloated hog.

Re:Yay! Fork GCC!!!

[ajs]

I certainly would love to see GCC fork, and fork cleanly into (at least) two well supported versions. How about a fork that doesn't try to be a compiler for every frickin' language under the sun, under a BSD license - wouldn't that be spiffy? It would make no difference.

GCC's language front-ends are just that. Front-ends. Their development affects the back-end only insofar as it must be improved to resolve limitations and problems discovered by the front-ends. Deleting the various front-ends would not change the back-end or the C or C++ front-ends (assuming those are the languages that you consider core) at all.

If you feel that support of multiple languages somehow hurts GCC, then I welcome you to fork it and see how it works out.

My FOSS longs to be free...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your statement, right there, is the majority of the problem with GPLv3. The GPL was never intended to attack specific companies, but now all the radical elements of the open source movement have gained control. With GPLv3, the entire intent was to attack commercial and business interests, and to further force FOSS-only upon users of Teh Lunix.

Their goal is to become a monopoly in the mold of Apple: whereas Apple has a brutal lock upon all things Apple, FOSSies are seeking to have a brutal monopoly upon all things Lunix, and then to continue expanding (via the GPL), into every other application until nobody will be able to make money from software except for IBM and Sun. And those two will be laughing at the FOSS zealots all the way to the bank, thanking them for being good little sheep (and unpaid sheep at that).

As we see, time and time again, FOSSies proclaim their aims being "all about choice"... but then we see their real aims when people DARE to choose Microsoft. It isn't about choice, it's about dictating what choices you have. Years and years have proven they can't compete in either the marketplace OR the marketplace of ideas, so rather than trying to beat Microsoft via quality software, instead they are attempting to remove competition from Microsoft via litigation. And the GPLv3 is the cornerstone of the FOSSie's coup attempt on the software industry.

Try to imagine a world in which ALL software HAS to be FOSS. It's an Orwellian nightmare: nobody is going to program, since there is no money in it... and those who do are essentially slave labor. Either that... or it's going to force programming into the realm of high-paid consulting services, and the only companies who can afford programmers are the mega-corporations who can afford to hire their own staff of programmers... which will be protected from FOSS "corruption" via a rigorous review process, lest the organization be forced to forfeit all the investments they made into their own, custom and (due to legal and IP requirements) proprietary, software.

And ALL software which does not fit that mold will have to comply to the whims of the FOSSies. It will be like the Republican party took over the software industry: a hell created in the mold of Nazi Germany.

I keep reading things like this

[G00F]

"Once you hit 12TB, RAID5 becomes useless because chance of unrecoverable read error approaches guaranteed"

I keep reading random things about a max size you want for raid 5 because of the chance for errors. But I can't find anywhere with any authority on it, nor can I find what limit one should place on raid.

one of the things I read states what you state http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=162

Is there a place I can get more information? I got 4 320g HD's, and I want to replace it soon with 500-1t drives.

Re:I keep reading things like this

[jacoby]

Yeah, that's where I got it.

Beyond the DVR, I don't think I have more than 150GB in the whole house, which keeps me well under that limit, I know.

Re:I keep reading things like this

[hhw]

That ZDNet article is completely flawed, and should be ignored. It's rated -15 for a reason.

For one, it assumes that a RAID 5 array will become corrupt due to bad sectors. Only the files that are on those sectors will be corrupted, and since they are on multiple drives, the parity drive will allow you to recover that data.

In addition, it ignores the fact that the hard disks will simply mark those sectors as bad and will no longer use them. Not to mention, drives these days come with spare sectors that automatically replace bad ones.

Drive capacity and the probability of a RAID 5 array becoming corrupted have no correlation whatsoever.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[Yaztromo]

Why would a hypervisor be excluded from this?

Because the hypervisor runs above the OS running it, and not benieth it. This was dealt with here on /. a month or so ago IIRC. The idea is that basically you run the FOSS software portion under a hypervisor, parallel to any code you don't want users to screw around with (also running under the hypervisor), and have the two communicate via a socket in a client-server model. In this way you could conceptually allow the user to replace the software within the hypervisor, without giving them any access to any of the "secret code" running parallel to it, and indeed the parallel closed source code could (conceptually) stop processing commands if it's detected a change in the hypervisor. In this theoretical situation, the hypervisor is assumed to be closed source software, and not licensed under the GPL v3.

That's the idea at least. IANAL, and don't play one on the Internet, so I don't know if this sort of technical work-around would be seen to be violating the spirit of the license in a court of law or not.

Yaz.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[hswerdfe]

I think your analogy is backwards...
better analogy
Your TIVOFridge will turn off because you put apple juice in the orange juice container.

RMS, is saying if the Fridge manufacturer includes an Orange juice container (RMS built) with the fridge purchase.
The manufacturer is not allowed to turn off the fridge, just because the consumer decided to put Apple juice in the container clearly marked orange juice.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[quantum bit]

They'd just separate out the Tivo proprietary chunk and run it in another vm (on bsd or something) that is locked down, and communicate over shared mem, guess they could use TCP/IP too. The normal system side would just run some version of linux and users could probably modify to their hearts content. Its a win win in my book. So, "just" port your code to another kernel (or custom microkernel), write or license a VM hypervisor, and devise a method of communicating between the different parts of the system. Your system is now 3 times as complex and that makes maintenance on it harder, too. What would be the purpose of the Linux-based part if all your proprietary code runs elsewhere?

I think the point that Justin is trying to make is that if you have to go through the trouble to do that anyway, it's probably easier to just drop Linux altogether and either write your own custom kernel or use a BSD-derived one. Linux's only advantages in the embedded space are being free (of cost), and simplicity -- a lot of the work is already done for you. GPLv3 is threatening to take away the latter.

Fortunately Linus at least realizes this and is standing his ground.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[quantum bit]

Yes, the kernel being licensed under the GPLv3 could harm them, but Linus has stated that he's not interested. The only time he considered doing so was for ZFS support. But then FUSE came along and ended up providing the support for the filesystem under Linux. Do you have a link to a post on that by chance? I'm curious as to what changes in GPLv3 might make it more CDDL-friendly.

It's too bad there's so many individual contributors or he could just write a custom license that's mostly GPL but with a few tweaks. I can see why some projects require contributors to assign copyright to a central foundation -- though that has potential for abuse so you have to really trust who's in charge of it.

Re:the GPL is now toxic

[david_thornley]

Has anyone noticed that the GPLv3 went through very, very quietly?

No, I noticed a great deal of fuss and publicity about it, and several ways of soliciting comments from the community. (If you're keeping score, I made two. One was dealt with in the next draft, one I wound up thinking an unimportant edge case.) If you think it went through quietly, there's two possibilities: you don't notice enough to comment intelligently on license issues, or you're too dishonest to comment usefully on license issues. I don't know which.

Despite Bruce Perens' predictions, Linus has not been forced to "go with the crowd"

Isn't it a bit early to say any such thing? Changing the Linux license is going to take a lot of time and work. Maybe it'll happen, maybe not. It really doesn't matter much.

We need a new license -- the Linux license -- that has GPLv2 features and perhaps the patent provision but not the anti-tivoization clause. That clause has limited GPL software to hobbyist applications and web serving. There's no way you'd propose GPLv3 software for a gas pump or an Airbus at this point.

Translation: we need yet another incompatible license. GPLv3 is incompatible with GPLv2, but it moved towards compatibility with other free software licenses, so I'm willing to cut it some slack there. A new copyleft license that is incompatible with GPLv2 and GPLv3 is exactly what the free software community doesn't need.

Not to mention that if you read the thing before commenting on it, you'd notice that there's essentially no difference between GPLv2 and GPLv3 for gas pumps or Airbusses. The anti-Tivoization clause specifically applies only to consumer products (a result of the long discussion process and the FSF's willingness to work with people). Neither a gas pump nor an Airbus will be found in the typical home, so neither is subject to the anti-Tivoization clause.

And I'm sure big aircraft companies are terrified of the prospect of people buying airliners for a hobby and then changing the software on them. Right.

Sadly, this will slow down open source. Just because people aren't being vocal about it doesn't mean they're for it. In business, when the other side is quiet, it means they're planning to go with a second supplier so they don't have to put up with crap.

Sorry, wrong community. The free software/open source community is notorious for public disputes (note that there's no actual agreement on what to call the community). If people were upset about GPLv3, they'd say so. A few actually are, but most aren't. In this community, if people are quiet, they don't care. If the other side is quiet, it means that there essentially is no other side.

You obviously have us confused with a community that is used to paying through the nose for expensive crap, and having to upgrade it on somebody else's schedule. And, no, the GPLv3 is not good for that particular community. Or at least their suppliers.

Or ...

[mxs]

... you know, continue using the GPLv2 for your software. Nobody is forcing anybody to use the GPLv3.

Much ado about nothing. Come on, be a little more creative with your FUD.

Re:BSD is still alive?

[quantum bit]

In my experience anyway, the FreeBSD VM subsystem has always seemed to manage memory / swap better than Linux under tight memory conditions, staying responsive longer so I can get in and kill the offending processes. YMMV.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[larry bagina]

Sun has mentioned the possibility of licensing OpenSolaris under GPL v3 (conspiracy theorists claim this is to intentionally be non compatible with Linux). Linus responded by saying he would consider trying to move Linux to v3 if Solaris was GPL v3.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[brouski]

Hence, "stuck to the letter of the GPL but violated the spirit of the agreement"

Read what you're quoting, for chrissakes.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[quantum bit]

Oh, okay. Thanks harry. I mean larry.

Re:Yay! Fork GCC!!!

[chromatic]

You might like clang from the LLVM project.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[FreakboyJones]

Hence, "stuck to the letter of the GPL but violated the spirit of the agreement"

I disagree; from reading RMSs comments over the years, it seem to me the spirit evolved after the fact to include the hardware.

Most users could not care less

[ChrisA90278]

All most users care about is "free" as in "free beer". Few understand are have read any license.

Re:Most users could not care less

[Plekto]

I smell FUD.

Want to do stuff commercially? use BSD. Want to use stuff for free - well, GPL version 3 or 4 or whatever won't change that - commercial profiteers have long ago ditched Linux for this reason.

How a hypervisor could work

[einhverfr]

The GPL3 says you can't interfere with the object code. It doesn't say you have to provide every piece to get the *same functionality.*

So, if you require that the firmware be upgraded as a unit, who says you have to give a different vm that *actually* talks to the [insert hardware component here]. The object code can run all it wants, but there is nothing to talk to.

Re:How a hypervisor could work

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

I don't buy it. GPLv3 5c says:

c) You must license the entire work, as a whole, under this License to anyone who comes into possession of a copy. This License will therefore apply, along with any applicable section 7 additional terms, to the whole of the work, and all its parts, regardless of how they are packaged. This License gives no permission to license the work in any other way, but it does not invalidate such permission if you have separately received it.

So you'd need to provide Complete Corresponding Source Code for the hypervisor and the codec, including any keys you need to make a modified hypervisor/codec work on the hardware.

Section 5 further says:

A compilation of a covered work with other separate and independent works, which are not by their nature extensions of the covered work, and which are not combined with it such as to form a larger program, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an "aggregate" if the compilation and its resulting copyright are not used to limit the access or legal rights of the compilation's users beyond what the individual works permit.

Why mightn't the courts look at the entire chunk of hypervisor-TiVo "firmware" as a single "larger program"?

As Cindy Cohn allegedly said, "you can't hack the law".

Re:How a hypervisor could work

[einhverfr]

Why mightn't the courts look at the entire chunk of hypervisor-TiVo "firmware" as a single "larger program"? IANAL, but....

I would think that in this case, the same issue would apply with communicating with a different program through pipes and sockets (since this is essentially what one is doing). I have a hard time seeing the FSF reverse their earlier logic on such communications (even though I think that dynamic linking is usually safe) to do this.

Furthermore, even if you see the hypervisor as a possible issue, the fact is that it is just an emulator for a processor and set of hardware. I have a hard time imagining that this would be any less mere aggregation than would the inclusion of proprietary software on SLES.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[Jason Earl]

I suppose that you could stick with the old versions of Samba, but the stuff that they currently have in beta is pretty impressive, and if one thing is certain it is that Microsoft will find ways to break Samba. Samba is one of the few projects where running a relatively recent version is *always* going to be a good idea.

I was

[hawk]

I'd been interested in FreeBSD for some time, and then one morning, a routine upgrade of Debian left my system dead in the water. In a fit of ideological license purity, someone pulled a critical package out of unstable. I don't believe it was libc, but it was something upon which just about everything else depended.

At that point, FreeBSD was able to successfully use my hardware, and it stayed there. I'm currently using license on the home machines again, but only because flash9 on FreeBSD can't handle some of the kids websites.

Oh, and as for another question on autodetecting hardware--since the incident above (1997?), I've had somewhat better luck with FreeBSD than linux in detecting and automatically configuring hardware. Linux has generally had more of the absolute bleeding edge, where FreeBSD has had broader coverage of "recent".

hawk

Re:GPLv3 software?

[Workaphobia]

> "However, if the FSF is serious about "anti-TiVoization" the GPLv4 is going to be a radical change and have to be an intrusive, use-affecting license contract,"

First of all, I'm a little disturbed to see the name "GPLv4" spelled out in writing without any form of sarcasm attached. Next, making the GPL use-affecting like a EULA (essentially a contract) is absurd, as that infringes on Freedom number zero, the right to use software as one wishes.

> "its possible to build a TiVo-like locked-down product that uses GPL software without ever becoming bound by the GPL: you just enter into an exclusive contract with the actual provider of the GPL-covered software"

When we speak of using GPL software, we assume that the user or company is receiving the software under the terms of the GPL and not another license or contract. It is not a flaw in the GPL that it can be bypassed by the copyright holder's permission.

I think what you meant though was a situation where locking down the software and distributing it is disjoint from copying it, and I'm not sure what the proper GPL rebuttal for that is.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[Workaphobia]

> "So where does it stop? Your refrigerator will be turned off because you use a brand of orange juice that RMS is against?"

No, you simply will be prohibited from redistributing Free refrigerators under additional conditions that impair the recipients' freedom to choose what orange juice brand they drink.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[ClosedSource]

"The GPL License is a /user/ license. It was intended to preserve the freedom of the /user/ of GPL software."

As a practical matter, this really isn't true. Unless a "user" is really a developer or wishes to employ one to make changes, the GPL'd software might as well be freeware. This type of user represents a tiny minority now and will get even smaller as GPL'd software becomes more mainstream.

Of course the GPL doesn't protect against your contributions from being exploited without "
giving back" because non-distributed derived works don't require distribution of source.

Re:The Linux kernel will stay GPL v2

[turbidostato]

"anyone who wants to distribute the kernel under GPL v3 would have to ask all authors to relicense their code or remove/replace the code."

Or make a very public advise of his intent and wait for a reasonable time period. Then, just release under GPLv3. If down the river someone appears that claims his software was not intended to be relased under GPLv3, then they will be able to reach a deal, retire the offending code or go for a trial under aprehended-by-fact rights (sorry, I don't know how to properly translate this into English) and see what happens.

After all, the only provisions under GPLv2 itself about distribution violations are "just stop distributing the code, please", and that only *once* the copyright holder itself appears asking so (paragraph #7 from GPLv2; p.#10 is even meagrer: if you want to distribute under GPLv3, just write the author -not even the copyright holder! but not provisions about what the answer should be, or even if you have to wait for an answer).

Re:GPLv3 software?

[ClosedSource]

Funny how the spirit of the agreement as defined by RMS is the only intrepretation that counts. Isn't the other party allowed to have an opinion?

Re:GPLv3 software?

[DragonWriter]

First of all, I'm a little disturbed to see the name "GPLv4" spelled out in writing without any form of sarcasm attached.

Why? Do you expect that the v3 is the end of time for the GPL?

Next, making the GPL use-affecting like a EULA (essentially a contract) is absurd, as that infringes on Freedom number zero, the right to use software as one wishes.

First, there is no "essentially" there, it would have to be a contract. Second, of course it would infringe on Freedom Zero. Whether that's "absurd" or not is subjective, of course, I wasn't arguing that it would be reasonable or desirable for the FSF to do, but that it would be necessary if they were serious about fighting TiVo-ization.

When we speak of using GPL software, we assume that the user or company is receiving the software under the terms of the GPL and not another license or contract. It is not a flaw in the GPL that it can be bypassed by the copyright holder's permission.

There is no reason that the "actual provider" of the GPL-software-containing modules in the scenario I propose has to be the copyright holder of the software, the only thing that is required is that (1) the modules they supply are not "locked down", and (2) they are incorporated by the recipient into a hardware product that verifies that is locked down. The key to circumventing the anti-TiVoization provision isn't that the software module vendor is the copyright holder of the GPL software contained in the module, it is that the hardware vendor that is buying the software module never does anything with the modules that would require a copyright license, and thus is never subject to the GPL.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[DragonWriter]

Rightly or wrongly the Free Software Foundation is not about making software that businesses can use to make money.

Really? Can you posit any other possible explanation for the non-consumer device exception to the anti-TiVoization clause?

Re:GPLv3 software?

[DragonWriter]

A hypervisor is needless technical complexity in the implementation, just separate out the legal entity that supplies the hardware module with the GPL software from the legal entity which incorporates that hardware module into a device that, as a whole, is locked down even though the individual module isn't. The latter entity does nothing that requires a copyright license to the GPL software, and thus is never restricted by the GPL; the former entity never distributes locked-down hardware, and so doesn't run afoul of the anti-TiVoization rules.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[that_itch_kid]

GNU Coreutils is released under the full GPL, not the LGPL. In fact, the latest version is already released under the GPLv3.

http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/coreutils/

Re:GPLv3 software?

[Danathar]

You know you are wrong on the Linus part. He's said that if Solaris went GPLv3 he would consider it.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[Danathar]

Not true...direct quote from Linus. It's not just ZFS.

"Btw, if Sun really _is_ going to release OpenSolaris under GPLv3, that _may_ be a good reason. I don't think the GPLv3 is as good a license as v2, but on the other hand, I'm pragmatic, and if we can avoid having two kernels with two different licenses and the friction that causes, I at least see the _reason_ for GPLv3. As it is, I don't really see a reason at all."

He's left the door open, he does not believe it now but he's not ANTI GPLv3, just he likes GPLv2 better. If there were a reason that would supersede using GPLv2 he would

Re:GPLv3 software?

[fabs64]

Well, no, because it's his/FSF's license and software. If the people who develop the software that you are using for free decide they don't like RMS's interpretation of the spirit of the agreement, they can always license the software differently.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[Ash-Fox]

See this

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:BSD is still alive?

[pionzypher]

snip.. rather than depending on binary blobs that Linux users seem to accept.

Fixed that for you.
Seriously though, how hard is it to understand that some companies don't release open source drivers? The purists will claim the hardware isn't worth using if it requires blobs. Back in the real world, users like their hardware to work.

BitKeeper yowlers

[epine]

Refering to it as the "BitKeeper fiasco" merely serves to reveal your biases. At the time Linus chose to adopt BitKeeper, Linus had become a choke point on patch integration. He claimed the use of BitKeeper greatly improved his efficiency and coordination.

As I understand it, a lot of work was going on behind the scenes in parallel with the adoption of BitKeeper to improve the social dynamics of patch flow among the kernel hacker cabal. Yes, there was a loud and sustained polemical outcry, but show me solid evidence that kernel evolution, growth, maturity, or stability was compromised during this period as a result of all that background noise. Background noise is a fact of life in most open source projects.

When McVoy finally did have his predicted rug-pulling two-year-old temper tantrum, Linus had come to a good understanding of exactly what he needed in a collaborative source code control system and git was not long in arriving. Would it have been possible to implement git correctly three years earlier without the basis of that experience? Would the social systems have been ready for it? These are important questions the BitKeeper yowlers are rarely seen to seriously consider.

What fiasco? Perhaps tempest in a teapot is a better description. If a crappy SCM had been adopted instead of BitKeeper, Linux would have had two camps of yowlers: the hardest working cogs at the center whose work process integrating patches was poorly supported, and the peripheral yowlers with nothing better to do than posit social conspiracy theories about why their patch submissions were so consistently falling through the cracks. Without BitKeeper, Linus insists that less code would have been integrated.

I'll agree with fiasco if you can explain how having two camps of yowlers is better than one. At roughly the same point in time we had the Debian non-fiasco, where all potential yowlers were given their due, and nothing was released for three years. But thank the gods they weren't using BitKeeper. That would have been a real fiasco. Yes certainly, score -1 for Linus foresight, and +1 for Debian foresight on the basis of yowler management, rather than progress achieved.

Repeat after me: THE GPL DOES NOT AFFECT USERS

[FromellaSlob]

Commercial or not, the restrictions in the GPL only affect those who distribute to third parties.

Re:Repeat after me: THE GPL DOES NOT AFFECT USERS

[Aladrin]

Repeat after me: YET.

Richard Stallman and the GPLv3

[Enderandrew]

I respect the contributions that Richard Stallman has made. Really I do. But please consider the following quotes:

Stallman proclaimed that "the prospect of charging money for software was a crime against humanity."

The Linux desktop (and I will call it Linux as opposed to GNU/Linux, because we don't append the name of every software package installed to placate anyone's ego, but rather call the desktop by the one name that unifies all Linux desktops, the kernel. Beyond that, many of us are running very different software packages) has proven that volunteer communities can produce some great software for free, but the vast majority of software in the world still comes from the commercial sector. And I have this crazy idea that a person deserves the right to paid for their work.

If commercial software didn't exist, and programming wasn't a valid career field, then far fewer people would learn it in the first place, further decreasing the free software market. And last time I checked, several of the main programmers who develop GNU software, are paid to do so by companies who charge money for software, like Novell.

Here is the kicker. From Richard Stallman:

"I cannot in good conscience sign a nondisclosure agreement or a software license agreement."

He once spoke of how all software should be completely free, with no restrictions, yet his licenses have become more complicated, and more restricted.

Will the GPLv3 drive me away from Linux? Only if it becomes the prevailing license across most Linux software and the kernel. Certain programs like Samba that went GPLv3 will likely have a GPLv2 fork. However, I do believe that GPLv3 is approaching hypocrisy and lunacy. If the trend continues, I very much will consider moving to BSD.

Re:Richard Stallman and the GPLv3

[Jeremy Allison - Sam]

Enderandrew wrote :

> Certain programs like Samba that went GPLv3 will likely have a GPLv2 fork.

People keep saying this. There's no evidence for it. All commercial Samba OEMs are contributing patches and code to 3.2 (the GPLv3 licensed version) as normal. No one has even mentioned the license change as an issue. Novell employees are still committing changes to GPLv3 version.

Stop getting steamed up about a minor license revision, you only end up looking really silly.

Jeremy.

Re:Richard Stallman and the GPLv3

[Enderandrew]

> Stop getting steamed up about a minor license revision, you only end up looking really silly.

As opposed to everyone who pushed for the license in the first place, because they couldn't pirate Tivo.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[Workaphobia]

> "Why? Do you expect that the v3 is the end of time for the GPL?"

No, but I'd like to give it many more months before I start worrying about another couple years of slashdot articles on the subject of its progress. I don't think I can argue with your other points.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[synthespian]

Oh, boo hoo...

Look...The source code for TiVo is there. See: http://dynamic.tivo.com/linux/linux.asp

You wanna legislate on how someone builds their product? If you don't like, don't buy a TiVo. Flex that consumer muscle.

This really is a childish world view. Yadda yadda yadda as rhetoric.

You are the next on the License is Right!

[socz]

I'm not going to mess around and say i really know what's going on with this subject or it's implications, but "welcome to FreeBSD" my friends!

Re:GPLv3 software?

[einhverfr]

My big problem with the GPLv3 is that there are clauses which seem to either conflict or reach too far for my comfort. For example, compare sections 2, 7, and 10.

Section 2 says one is *not* allowed to sublicense the code.

Section 10 says you get all permissions from the original author.

Section 7 conflicts with both of these by giving someone an ability to change licensing terms without adding any copyrighted components of their own. In short either this is a third party manipulating a contract between offer and acceptance (!) or else it is sublicensing in violation of section 2.

Embedded and Distros

[maz2331]

Really, this only has application to companies in the business of selling devices with embedded Linux and to distribution providers. It really doesn't hit the end user, as they don't participate in the act of "distribution" that the GPL restricts. Oh - as I am wont to say, the BSD license is "libertarian" in its general outlook whereas the GPL is "socialist" in its outlook, and of course proprietary EULAs are almost exclusively "fascist" in theirs.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[synthespian]

Consider this: what would the benefits be of having a project like Samba, under a BSD license, so that the code could be easily integrated to code done by software houses that revolved around the Microsoft galaxy, to the point that this code starts showing up in more and more products? Would that help integration or hinder it?

Re:GPLv3 software?

[Jeremy Allison - Sam]

No one is going to do this. If they do they'll be rapidly left behind. Recent developments in 3.2 (the GPLv3 version) include large stack reductions for increased scalability of smbd's, along with many many other things.

I haven't heard anything from our OEMs to suggest the GPLv3 is a problem for anyone. And if they didn't like it I'd be the one they'd moan to :-).

Jeremy.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[ClosedSource]

"Well, no, because it's his/FSF's license and software."

Well, that's fine if RMS and the FSF are the only parties to the license and the software. If however, other parties are involved with an agreement, than it matters equally what both parties see as the "spirit" of the agreement. Otherwise RMS could be making up what the "spirit" means as fast as Bush is adding Presidential powers.

Of course, with respect to the "letter" of the agreement, it doesn't ultimately matter what either party thinks, just what the courts think.

Well....

[einhverfr]

There really isn't much of a point to spending a lot of time to lock people out of using BSDL code. The code is free and if you are competing with free you have already lost. The key for a BSDL project is to understand that and to make the most of it. You can drive *way* up the asshat's costs while improving your own value. Eventually you can force them to go their own way or give back. It isn't rocket science.

I could see using the GPL2. If I built a large project, I would probably choose the BSDL though because I am now more comfortable with that license. However, it would take a serious and existential threat to the project for me to go to the GPL3.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[weicco]

I've written a couple of times about this but it seems that I'm lacking credibility :)

It doesn't matter if Tivo violates "the spirit of GPL" if that spirit isn't written clearly in the license. GPL is not the law. Laws are to be interpreted by a judge and the spirit of the law is to be taken in context (a lot of times laws aren't clear and strict but they leave some wiggle space, allthough I'm not sure if this is the case in USA). In other words, you can't have a license and afterward change it's meaning with some text written in some FAQ file in some internet site.

Of course you can be angry about Tivo and you could say they found a loop hole. But to me, who doesn't care much about the idology behind licenses, that wasn't a loop hole, it was permitted by the license.

Rightly or wrongly the Free Software Foundation is not about making software that businesses can use to make money.

Where an earth did you get this? Making money of GPL code is perfectly fine. Or did you meant that FSF is not making money out of GPL code? Well, that is correct, but FSF isn't prohibiting others from making money. I think Redhat is doing just fine with their Linux distribution.

And your last sentence is somewhat curious. If a Big (Evil) Company take GPL code, modify it, use it in their product and give back the changed source, what's wrong with that? GPL allows this. In fact this is the basic point in GPL license: you can change (and hopefully improve) the code but you have to give your changes to the rest of the world. On the other hand if the Big (Evil) Company makes their own in-house implementation, no-one but the company benefits from that.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[sumdumass]

They wouldn't have to re-implement that. All they would need to do is maintain the older code enough to continue to work with their hardware and the parts of the kernel that are using. This takes that 1.5 millions of lines of code and shrinks it down quite a substantial bit. Maybe even to the point of nothing in the first few years.

I'm not sure...

[MadJo]

I'm not even sure if Linus Thorvalds has already OK'ed a move to GPLv3. As far as I know, (GNU/)Linux is still released under GPLv2, and there has been no indication that that is going to change anytime soon. Unless I've missed a report on Slashdot on how Linus suddenly thought that the GPLv3 was the bee's knees.

As far as I'm concerned this is a misguided post. Someone heard a bell toll, but have no idea where the clapper is hanging.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[sumdumass]

They wouldn't have to go through all that trouble. I have heard this hypervisor stuff before but people are seriously over analyzing it.

Keep in ming that the GPL only covers GPL covered works. So all tivo has to do is create a bios that locks the tuner card, video and network cards out if a certain proprietary program isn't sending the correct signals. They make sure the video, tuner, and network drivers aren't GPLv3 then all the program has to do is check in with Tivo when it does it's updates and retrieve a series of hashes and maybe a signing key that would change with every update. It would then apply these in a combination or series of combinations against the installed binaries to determine the legitimacy of them concerning if it is modified or not.

They then create a script that compiles the programs and puts it in the right place when the customer does the first boot. They could include a USB key with a code on it that resets the system to factory defaults and initializes the installation of th aggregated program included in the Tivo distribution. They could use the GPLv3 covered works all day long and fully comply with it. They wouldn't have to rewrite much, they already control the hardware and assuming they control the bios too, all they would really have to do is check to make sure a few drivers aren't GPLv3 (they would have to anyways because of GPLv2 problems), maintain an extra program and Bios section and create a random key rotation. They could distribute their signing keys, scripts and everything in accordance with the GPLv3. If the hashes change on the files, it could do the factory restore automatically or it could just check the proprietary app itself for tampering then do the factory reset.

It's not too complicated. Well, it is in practice but the steps wouldn't be too complicated to establish. But they (Tivo) are already doing similar things so it would be a lot less complicated for Tivo then it would be for me. It would seem to be only a dew extra steps and a few initial modifications.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[sumdumass]

Samba cannot switch and stay alive for long. They are really dependent on MS by the nature of the project. MS could do some licensing things, Namely add something that makes a poisoned patent deal to kick the GPL's anti Novell clause in and create a world of no relevance for Samba.

Basically, all MS would have to do is wait for the switch, let the code base go long enough to make it a bother and troublesome to duplicate any improvements (lets say 6 months after the switch,) Then weasel a simple statement into the license of every product and update that says MS won't sue you over patents or ip they own or control in connection with any third party software use or distribute as long as you didn't put it in it and don't continue to distribute or use the software after it has been known to violate a patent. They would also say that this offer isn't extended to anyone you might give the software to.

Then after that, all they need to do is offer a version of everything at 20 times the normal cost without the discriminatory patent license and they will have successfully turned everyone who uses there product into a mini-Novell that could no longer convey a GPLv3 covered work unless they pay out the ass for the MS products.

Some people would say they just wouldn't use MS software ever again. That is a valid response to this, but it also takes the Samba project out in the process. Linux has some better file sharing devices then Samba if you aren't using MS software. And this would also create issue for the Samba team come development time. They would have to test against new MS products and that cost just jumped 20 times if they wish to be able to convey a GPLv3 covered work.

It is still up in the air if they could actually use the GPLv3 license if they didn't pay. I know the copyright owner can do whatever they want but the license strictly forbids conveying the covered works so as soon as they license it with the GPLv3, they couldn't convey it according to the license. The thing is, the copyright holder would be the ones who would have to go after them for the GPL violations. So the Samba team would have to go after the Samba team if they were ever in this positions. While that sounds insane, think about the FUD and controversy that could come from it. If they didn't protect their license, it might give someone else a way out. It might encourage others to violate the GPL, "the GPL projects don't even follow it". It opens a can of worms that doesn't need to be open.

Anyways, I don't think the Samba team would want to go into this. It would be a gamble that MS wouldn't pull a stunt like this but they wouldn't really be loosing anything. The conditions of If you didn't put the patent into the product or continue to distribute gives everyone a free pass until the are aware that they are doing something wrong and it stops the wrong from continuing. In the mean time, most everyone who has to use MS software because of something or another will be forbidden by the GPLv3 to convey GPLv3 covered works.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[Ash Vince]

Linus has no intention of licensing the kernel under GPLv3. TiVO doesn't have a problem. I had heard he would consider it based purely on trying to keep the Kernel and Userspace tools under the same licence, but I do take your point that he much prefers the GPL2 and thinks that GPL3 is a step backwards.

I am interested in finding out software that is used for such purposes which will be licensed under the new GPLv3 and which companies are effected. Hopefully none, but I would say that as I am worried that the GPL3 will make Linux less attractive to commercial endeavours. Since I have worked with Linux as a sysadmin and developer for about 4 or 5 years and would like to carry on working I hope this does not happen. I would like more companies to adopt Linux and base products around it as it will improve the Job market for people like me and then we can earn more money.

I also realise that being able to play with those products and change the way they work is not always appreciated (or legally permitted in some cases) buy the companies that produce them. Now some people will answer that then they should not use Linux but since that is one less company looking for highly skilled linux users to start receiving paychecks I realise that will directly effect my earning potential.

I have posted many similar contributions to slashdot stateing why I think the GPL3 is trash so tried to keep it out of my original post. Hopefully this is now an old enough topic that fewer Richard M Stallman groupies will come along and mod my post down than usually do.

I am looking forward to your reply. I hope you were not too disapointed.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[Ash-Fox]

I stand corrected. libc however is still LGPL. Additionally the older releases of coreutils are still under the GPLv2, so it's not like the 'right' of using the ones they're currently using has been taken away.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[bob.appleyard]

LGPL version 2.1 (chosen because it happens to be in a file I'm working on at the moment)

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

Note that it is up to the person distributing the code which license they choose to distribute it under, not the person writing the code.

Is this why you posted A/C?

Re:GPLv3 software?

[putaro]

It's not *their* machine. It's *your* machine. You purchased it from them. It isn't rented or leased to you. Having the freedom to modify the software (that they based on GPL'd code) is pretty moot if you can't run it. It's a loophole in GPLv2 that they can do this to you. Closing that loophole is entirely in line with the stated goals of the FSF.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[putaro]

It doesn't matter if Tivo violates "the spirit of GPL" if that spirit isn't written clearly in the license. You're absolutely correct. That's why GPLv3 was introduced to close the loophole. It's up to the authors of the code to decide whether they will license their code under GPLv2 or move to GPLv3 (many, of course, already made the decision by promising to license their code under any future versions of the GPL).

Whining about the GPL being changed to close a loophole is in the same category as whining about people taking advantage of the loophole.

Rightly or wrongly the Free Software Foundation is not about making software that businesses can use to make money. Where an earth did you get this? Making money of GPL code is perfectly fine. Yes, it's fine to make money off of it. That, however, is not the reason why the FSF exists.

If you're a business and you want to use code that comes under the GPL you should be prepared to go along with what the community expects. If not, go find code that is licensed differently, like under BSD, or hey, consider *investing* some money in the software so that you can do whatever you like with it and license it however you like. And your last sentence is somewhat curious. If a Big (Evil) Company take GPL code, modify it, use it in their product and give back the changed source, what's wrong with that? GPL allows this. In fact this is the basic point in GPL license: you can change (and hopefully improve) the code but you have to give your changes to the rest of the world. On the other hand if the Big (Evil) Company makes their own in-house implementation, no-one but the company benefits from that. That's great. And if the community that created the code wants to change the license they distribute the code under to promote certain behavior, those who benefit from the community's work should be prepared to accept that or not benefit from that work. I don't know what's so hard about that concept.

I haven't looked at Tivo's modifications to the Linux kernel but I would wager that the majority of them are not useful unless you're running on top of Tivo hardware. Opening the source but not allowing you to modify and run it on the hardware you purchased runs contrary to the spirit of the GPL. I don't see why that's so hard to understand. Yes, it's legal. It's also legal to change the license to close the loophole and it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, especially those exploiting the loophole, that that was done.

Re:GPLv3 software?-We own you!

[putaro]

Well since I OWN the hardware. I should be able to make copies of it and sell bootleg Tivo's on the blackmarket. Who said that? In any case, anyone capable of copying Tivo's hardware designs and making bootleg's could easily remove the circuits that restrict what software runs on the box.

I would guess that Tivo's decision to lock out unauthorized software was made to prevent people from making versions of the Tivo code that don't need to talk to their (pay-to-use) service.

Re:Yay! Fork GCC!!!

[Medievalist]

Really? I don't have a BSD system handy, but I thought their cc was just a link to gcc. Hmm... I don't see a separate cc on the FreeBSD doc site but that doesn't necessarily prove anything.

HP-UX ships three compilers - the K&R compiler that they need to compile their crusty old kernel code, the GNU gcc (so they can build stuff like perl or gawk easily) and their expensive flagship HP C Compiler.

I was under the impression that all the free OSes were dependent on gcc... but I'd love to be wrong! :)

Re:GPLv3 software?

[putaro]

I'd say that the letter (the GPL) evolved after the fact to include the hardware. Come on, the right to modify the code is pretty useless if you can't *run* the code.

Re:Yay! Fork GCC!!!

[Medievalist]

If you feel that support of multiple languages somehow hurts GCC, then I welcome you to fork it and see how it works out. I don't think it hurts gcc, I think it hurts my brain. Trying to decipher the inner workings of complex software that's been written in multiple languages is fairly painful, especially when it's C, C++, Objective-C, and a million pre-processing directives.

On the other claw, you can't really blame a hammer for bad carpentry.

Don't you love how a totally whack comment on slashdot can provoke informative, insightful responses? (Unfortunately it works the other way too.)

Re:GPLv3 software?

[concord]

GPL is *NOT* about user freedom because it restricts user freedom; GPLv3 added further restrictions, not new freedoms. Again, GPL is a /user/ license, not a developer license. It is changing to ensure that /user/ freedom continues to be protected.

Why should anyone or any company put money into developing hardware if GPLv3 will force them to give the fruits of their research freely to their competitors? GPL v3 does not do this. Companies are free to keep the fruits of their research. No one is forcing them to use GNU/Linux. In a free market society corporations are free to use whatever software they like. They can even produce their own completely new and proprietary software if they wish. If they have an issue with transferring to others the same freedom they were given then they should probably do this.

Look, it's very simple really. I and hundreds of others have written software which you are free to use. The only requirement we place on you is that you use the software freely and anyone else you give the software to has the same freedom you do. That's all.

If there's any hijacking, it's on the FSF side of things and their demands that hardware running GPL'ed software become GPL'ed itself. GPL is a software license. It dictates what conditions software may be used under. Hardware can not be released under the GPL.

Tivo is just a scapegoat and with GPLv3 the FSF has only demonstrated contempt for capitalism. Capitalism is a political and economic system. The GPL license is about end user software freedom.

There are plenty of lemmings who can't -- or won't -- bother to learn the difference. This is not productive discourse.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[SpacePunk]

Originally the whole free software movement was so that programmers whouldn't have to re-invent the wheel over and over again. Since those old days (yes, I remember those days so GET OFF MY LAWN!) the free software movement was bastardized into an ultimately free as in beer movement with RMS as the great prophet. It was a good thing at first, a "use it if you want, there's no warranty, and if you change it, send those changes back" into a "use it if you want, there's no warranty, if you change it send it back, and send us the source code to everything it touches". The GPLv3 is the movements cup of hemlock. It's designed to infect everything it touches even in the smallest way like a superstrain of ebola.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[weicco]

Opening the source but not allowing you to modify and run it on the hardware you purchased runs contrary to the spirit of the GPL.

But again, GPL doesn't concern hardware. You can take Tivo kernel, modify it and run it if you have hardware which runs it (which you propably must do your self but at least it's perfectly open then). Totally different question is that is who-ever-manufactures-tivo allowed to lock their hardware and prevent consumers from modifying it. I'm not familiar enough with US law to comment on this though. But you could say that software is free, hardware isn't. GPLv3 closes this loop-hole or at least should make it clearer but Linux kernel isn't going v3 any time soon.

And I thought that Linus doesn't care Tivo(ization)? If he or any other kernel copyright holder doesn't care what's the big deal? They are the copyright holders and they take necessary actions if they like, not FSF nor common Linux user.

Bah! I know this concerns me even less that average Linux user. I'm just bored at work with nothing to do :)

Re:BSD: providing unencumbered software for 30 yea

[TheoMurpse]

Well, not to do insinuate anything but merely point out the pointlessness of that argument: you might say that a country which has not illegalized murder is more free than the US, but that doesn't mean the country with legal murder is better. In fact, you might say the US citizen is more free, because he doesn't have to worry about someone murdering him with impunity.

The "wraith" of RMS

[mr_death]

What a joke. Aside from several hydrophobic rantings, the actions of RMS didn't amount to a hill of beans for Tivo or anyone else. They'll continue on, perhaps inconvenienced by GPL3, but they won't live in fear of the Unshowered One. All GPL3 does is marginally increase their software development costs.

Yes, PC-BSD can do that

[sslo]

With PC-BSD, you can mount separate partitions on as many separate physical drives as you have. But you do have to mark the Advanced checkbox on the drives/partitions installation screen. The default is to install everything on one drive without requiring the user to know anything at all about the whole subject. But the installation screens do put this in small type. Maybe it should be made more obvious to people not wearing their glasses.

The developers are very amenable to usability suggestions. Go to pcbsd.org and mention it. It isn't some huge corporation doing this, you know, where your voice will never be heard. There are only a few developers and they frequently improve such things at user request. You sound like you're in a "too bad, it can't be changed, I'll have to stop using the software" mindset after dealing with other systems. Not so with this one. There are few enough testers that everyone's voice counts.

Version 1.4 will be out shortly. People are bashing away at RC2 at the moment.

Go to pcbsd.org and click on Download|Snapshots if you'd like to test it.

You were prescient, that's what.

[Medievalist]

You just posted a day or two early, my friend.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[concord]

Maybe you're not paying attention? Publishing the source code is how TiVO followed the letter of the law. Locking down the hardware is how they've gotten away with using GPL software (other peoples works) for their own financial gain while ensuring that their hardware can continue to data mine and phone home. Individuals cannot modify the free software to stop this behavior on TiVO products. Free software is being used to erode privacy and freedom on TiVO products.

Products do this every day, there's no new news there. We don't have to purchase them if we don't like it, that's true. Many consumers are not aware of these factor though and will continue to purchase products that harm them. That's okay as long as these products don't misuse /our/ (yours and mine) software! This is not what was intended. We are pro-consumer, pro-freedom, pro-people.

TiVO has turned /your/ software against you. I understand you, you love freedom so much and you think you're defending it.

Mull it over a little longer - you'll get there.

Re:GPLv3 software?

[concord]

As a practical matter, this really isn't true. Unless a "user" is really a developer or wishes to employ one to make changes, the GPL'd software might as well be freeware. This type of user represents a tiny minority now and will get even smaller as GPL'd software becomes more mainstream. Practical or not, the /user/ of software is the one who clicks the little buttons and enters data. Not the person who writes the code that makes the little buttons work. It is the person who uses the printer to print a report that relies on the software to do its job. Not the developer who writes the sometimes buggy code. The developer is only *sometimes* the user. The user is *always* the user.

Of course the GPL doesn't protect against your contributions from being exploited without "giving back" because non-distributed derived works don't require distribution of source. This is true, if the works are enhanced and not distributed improvements don't have to be shared. This is another form of freedom extended to the /user/. However, if the software is distributed, the changes must be too.

Who said GPL is anti-commercial?

[concord]

Firstly, GPL is not anti-commercial. It is only a software licence that dictates under what circumstances (conditions) the software may be used.

Secondly, commercial companies are welcome to employ people to write GPL code, contribute, modify and enhance GPL software. If they distribute modified works then they are required to distribute the modifications in source form. Just like everyone else.

Thirdly, if Tora is incomplete and GPL anyone is welcome to pick up the project and continue on. That is if there is a need for it. Also, if it's any good.

The commercial companies have embraced GPL software because it is good quality. They are making a profit on the sale of support. RedHat, Novel, Ubuntu, etc.. are contributing to the development but they are also profiting from it. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing "lovey dovey" either.

Like it or not some of the world's most talented coders are thiking individuals too. Many of them are concerned with individual freedom and like the idea of being a part of something bigger than themselves. Not all contributions to GPL software are made by individuals employed by corporations either. It doesn't matter though whether they are or not. Their code is still going to follow the rules of the GPL license if it is GPL licensed software.

Nothing anti-commercial going on here. Better look elsewhere for conspiracies and zealots. Just good 'ol common sense happenin'. Sorry.