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DJB Releases All Source to Public Domain

Posted by Zonk on from the play-freebird dept.

A Sage Developer writes "During a recent conference, Sage Days 6, Dan Bernstein (who has recently come under attack for his licensing policy) was among the invited speakers. During a panel discussion on the future of open source mathematics software, Bernstein declared that all of his past and future code would be released to the public domain. This includes qmail, primegen, and a number of other projects. Given the headache that incompatibility between GPLv3 and GPLv2 is causing developers, will we see more of this?"

4 of 330 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Don't be an "indian giver" by McDutchie · · Score: 4, Informative

    The GPL pushes that one step further by making sharing a requirement. Now receiving obliges you to give in return (if copyright wasn't the basis for the GPL, would Stallman have required distribution too?).

    Sigh. No, it doesn't. The GPL sets forth rules you need to follow if you choose to share (i.e. distribute) the software. But nothing in the GPL obliges you to share anything.

  2. Re:Don't be an "indian giver" by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 5, Informative

    It all got so confusing

    How is it confusing?

    and now with GPL3 putting further restrictions on sharers

    The restrictions are essentially closing loopholes whereby people could either avoid sharing or share something useless.

    Under GPLv2, you could create a derivative work and run a website based on it, but not share the changes since you weren't technically distributing the software. Or you could create a signed binary, and hardware that won't run it unless that binary is exactly the same. Or you could patent some procedure used, so that people can see the source code, but if they do anything with it, they violate your patent.

    All GPLv3 does is enforce the spirit of GPLv2. Specifically: Everyone has to be able to get the source code, make any change they want, recompile, and run the modified binary.

    greater restrictions are a smack in the face to the original reason anyone wanted to get involved in the first place, i.e. to share.

    If you're getting hit with these restrictions, chances are, you, yourself, are an "indian giver" -- you want to pretend to share, except, not really.

    Public domain remains the last safe haven for shareable code.

    Or GPLv2... or BSD... or Apache... or MIT...

    You're suggesting that GPLv3 somehow "infected" GPLv2, or every other license out there. That's simply not true. While public domain is perhaps the only way to ensure your code can be included in any kind of project, I see nothing wrong with share alike, and I see no reason why closing the loopholes is "going too far".

    --
    Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
  3. Re:OK so when exactly? by N7DR · · Score: 4, Informative
    Already.

    From http://cr.yp.to/qmail/dist.html:

    I hereby place the qmail package (in particular, qmail-1.03.tar.gz, with MD5 checksum 622f65f982e380dbe86e6574f3abcb7c) into the public domain. You are free to modify the package, distribute modified versions, etc.

  4. Re:In a word... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Well, Public Domain is a heck of a lot better than DJB's original license. For DJB's code, Public domain is a completely unqualified improvement.

    (DJB's license forbade distribution of modified source - you can only distribute patches. You man not distribute binary files that result from any modification from the distribution source. I argue that it isn't open source at all.)

    This might mean that qmail's glaring deficienies will get fixed. That's if qmail is still relevant. Plus, it might be secure on muliti-gigabyte ram 64 bit machines (which, frankly, are run of the mill linux boxes these days.)

    Now, arguing a swap from GPL or BSD to/from Public Domain is another thing entirely IMHO.