Legal Summits to Tackle Linux

An anonymous reader writes "BuilderAU has the story that the Linux Foundation, custodians of the Linux trademark, have announced that they will host two summits to deal with legal issues surrounding Linux and open-source software. Attendance at the first summit will be restricted to members of the Linux Foundation and their legal counsel. The second summit — an open meeting — will be held in Autumn 2008 where legal experts from any background will be able to attend."

Comments

Against the spirit...

[Enderandrew]

...the spirit of the GPL was to keep software free so that the source code can't be made proprietary (such as what happened with Microsoft swallowing pieces of BSD like you stated). Linus very much supports that clause, and has always spoken in favor of the GPLv2. I'm curious why you suggest he is against the spirit of the GPLv2. The only anti-GPL statements I've seen him make are in regards to GPLv3, in that he doesn't think a software license should govern or have anything to do with hardware.

Re:Against the spirit...

[TheRaven64]

Google : Has made full use of the community built code and made proprietary extensions; without contributing a single bit; since they aren't distributing it. This is not against the spirit of the GPL. The GPL is designed to ensure that the code remains free, and that no one receives a derived work of the original without the accompanying rights. Not distributing changes is entirely allowed under the GPL, and endorsed by the FSF. Google has contributed a huge amount to Free Software. The Summer of Code alone accounts for an incredible amount of time spent on Free Software, and a lot of Google employees use their 20% time to work on Free Software projects (the Mac port of FUSE, for example, was one of these).

HP : The company which kicked Bruce Perens out, built winprinters and winmodems on their Windows PCs, kindly took over Compaq and destroyed their Unix offerings. Compaq had UNIX offerings? HP have made a lot of mistakes in recent years (killing the Alpha, marginalising VMS, etc). Perhaps you are thinking of Digital; they pretty much killed of Tru64. They still offer HP-UX and Linux machines, however, and fund development on a number of Free Software projects (Xen, for example).

IBM: Despite the SCO fiasco, they still maintain both AIX and Linux offerings, and have not clearly indicated which way they will go. Also, they are behind TCPA, TPM chips and DRM as well. They employ a number of developers to work full time on Linux, Xen, and recently OpenOffice.org, as well as a few other projects. But, I suppose, since they still sell a proprietary UNIX as well, they are evil.

Novell : Need I say more? They provoked a version upgrade to the GPL2 by their sleazy dealings and destroyed a decent distro, namely SuSE. After kindly enacting a suicide of their own Novell Netware. Bought SuSE and open sourced YaST, employ a few kernel devs, a lot of GNOME devs, and are the second largest contributor to OpenOffice.org. Definitely evil.

Re:Against the spirit...

[Aladrin]

If that were the case, I'd say 'Fuck the GPL!' then. Any time 1 entity has sole ability to declare something 'free', something is seriously fucked up.

Luckily, it's not the case.

http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesFreeSoftwareMeanUsingTheGPL

Re:The foundation owns only the trademark

[jkrise]

How exactly did MS swallow "the BSD"? Last time I checked, BSD projects and communities were as strong as ever.

How dd they swallow BSD? Simple:
1.First they drank the BSD licensed code, like Kerberos from MIT and the BSD TCP-IP stack.
2. As it descended down their oesophagus, they added proprietary extensions to it, and bundled it with their inferior monopoly Windows OS.
3. The corporate types were then fed with choice quotes and reviews, and Active (Craptive) Directory got deployed.
4. The market leading authentication mechanism is now incompatible with the original BSD Kerberos; thus it has been effectively swallowed.
Clear?

Re:The foundation owns only the trademark

[bytesex]

You seem to be trolling a bit but no, there is an alternative; keep the kernel GPLv2 and fork the GNU userland just before they go to GPLv3. That isn't such a herculean task as it at first might seem: much of the GNU stuff is at an end, so to speak; textutils, binutils, the shells and compilers are all pretty much finished works. Even Linus said that there may not be a Linux v3, because it's 'done'. Much of the applications that otherwise play on top of Linux are either windowed (which is a whole story onto itself - the quality of Gnome is debatable to put it friendlily) or services (most of those aren't made by the FSF at all). And there exist good alternatives for the GNU userland, as well - shells, compilers, you name it. The FSF may think they're holding Linux by the ears, but they're not.

Re:The foundation owns only the trademark

[_merlin]

And RMS and the FSF made the GPL in the first place, and also wrote lots of code under that license and made it popular. It's their baby, and the FSF have stated their goals and aims very clearly in the text of the GPL, which even a baby can understand.

And if they want to release future versions under the GPL v3, fair enough. They're free to do that, and I won't complain. If I don't like the terms of GPL v3, I don't have to use new versions released under it. However, I can fork older GPL v2 versions and keep them under GPL v2 if I like the idea of that any better - that's one of the freedoms afforded by the GPL v2.

The cry-baby corporate goons who are trying to steal the thunder of the GPL have been checkmated by the FSF which has upgraded the license.

No-one has been checkmated. Making a new version of the GPL that may not be as easy to build a business around does not in any way affect the large volume of software already under GPL v2, and anyone is free to fork it and keep it under the GPL v2.

Linus' reluctance to adopt the GPL3 shows him as a true hypocrite, enemy of freedom, enemy of the GPL, and accomplice of the corporate interests in the Linux Foundation.

No it doesn't. It just shows that his goals are not the same as those of the FSF, and that distributing code under GPL v2 still suits his goals, while the FSF believes their goals are better served by releasing code under GPL v3. Enemy of freedom? Now you're starting to sound a bit like George Dubbya. The GPL v3 is more restrictive than the GPL v2 which is more restrictive than a BSD license. What about the freedom to use code in a commercial, closed-source product? You might not like the idea of that freedom being available to recipients of your code, but it's still a freedom you're denying people by releasing code under GPL. But once again, it's your code - if you don't want it to end up in closed-source software, fair enough - I can't complain.

If not the GPL3, Linus should re-release the kernel in BSD then, if he hates what the GPL stands for.

Why? Whether Linus agrees with what the FSF and their GPLs stand for is irrelevant. The fact is, the GPL v2 happens to suit his goals quite nicely, so he can release code under it if he sees fit.

So, if you don't like the laws of your home country will you flee or build one? What planet are you on?

If I don't like the laws enough, I will flee. I'll choose a country with laws I like. But I need to think about feeding my family, too. I have to weigh up opportunities for employment, health care, etc. as well as whether I like the law when choosing where to live. And the situation is the same with an OS - if you don't like Linux's license, go and use HURD, but remember it's like living in Siberia. Now Siberia is a perfectly good place to live if you want to live in Siberia. But the thing is, most people don't want to live in Siberia. So you end up feeling a bit isolated, and you don't get a great deal of infrastructure out there.

Linux is licensed under the GPL and violations of the spirit of the GPL are more harmful to it's continued growth than trademark violations which this Foundation governs.

Linux is licensed under the GPL v2, and Linus doesn't see the GPL v3 as serving his purposes. He sees no problem with violations of what the FSF sees as the spirit of the GPL. If you don't agree with that, you can stop supporting Linux: don't contribute to Linux, don't release software for Linux and don't use Linux. And you know what will harm Linux's continued growth even more than violations of the GPL? Placing undue restrictions on its use, like those in the GPL v3. All the commercial vendors, who are largely responsible for driving Linux, would either be scared off, or fork it and keep it under GPL v2. I actually agree with Linus on this one - GPL v2 seems to strike the necessary balance.

Re:The foundation owns only the trademark

[suranyip]

The OP was suggesting that BSD licensing is bad because it allows embrace-and-extend. My point was that this is not something that can be solved by licensing, and that actually with BSD licensed code there are better chances of compatible implementations (as shown by the TCP/IP example) than with the GPL for example. In fact, even RMS agreed that a less restrictive license (compared to the GPL) is suitable for reference implementation of a standard to gain wider adoptation. Thus the OGG Vorbis reference implementation library was licensed BSD.

Re:The foundation owns only the trademark

[TheRaven64]

It's worth noting that a lot of contributors offer their code under different licenses. Some files are MIT or BSD licensed. Some are public domain. Some are GPLv2 or later. Linus uses GPLv2-only, but it is not the only license used. I'd be interested to see how much of the kernel code is under the GPLv2-only license.