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OpenOffice.Org Now Under LGPLv3
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Sun has moved OpenOffice.org to the LGPLv3 license. In his blog Sun's Simon Phipps cites worry over software patents as being one of their main reasons for this move: 'Upgrading to the LGPLv3 brings important new protections to the OpenOffice.org community, most notably through the new language concerning software patents. You may know that I am personally an opponent of software patents, and that Sun has already taken steps in this area with a patent non-assert covenant for ODF. But the most important protection for developers comes from creating mutual patent grants between developers. LGPLv3 does this.'"
You may know that I am personally an opponent of software patents
Software is the only thing you can have both a patent AND a copyright on.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
The LGPL is in no way "lesser" than its hideously deformed cousin the GPL. Where the second one takes and takes, the first one gives and gives. It promotes community through sharing rather than through vigorously tilting at windmills.
If the LGPL were a presidential candidate, it would be Barack Obama -- "Yes we can." The GPL would be Ron Paul -- "We need the gold standard and protectionist trade."
I've always claimed that whenever Sun wrote a strange license, it was because their lawyers told them to.
You may recollect a small war between Sun and MS over the MS effort to "embrace and extend" Java.
I suspect we'll see more GPL3 and LGPS3 as it is shown in practice to provide the same patent potection as CDDL.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
... Now, I don't know MUCH about GPL, etc. But the fragmentation of licensing agreements (LGPL, GPL, CC, CC2.5, ETC) is just going to confuse people
... but most people don't care. It is too confusing choosing a distro, and a lot of people will just stick with the first or second distro they find, because they don't care about all the variations.
... okay, well most end users, anyways.
It is the SAME problem that most people have with linux - Linux is GREAT
On the other hand, most people don't care about these things (GPL et al. doesn't mean much, people just ignore it anyways).
This article about copyright backed licence restrictions was brought to you by "I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property"
Sun Refuses LGPL for OpenOffice; Novell forks ... One is starting to wonder what is happening...
Sun still has an on-again, off-again relationship with open source. If they truly want to show that they are committed to open source, they would release ZFS under the GPL so that it can be integrated into Linux.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
I'm happy that Sun is taking the FLOSS movement seriously. I'm a Java developer working with Netbeans on Linux and OOo has been my main office suite since the StarOffice days. Sun seems to 'get' FLOSS, but I'm wondering how that's helping their bottom line? Are they doing this because it's helping them sell servers (or something else), or out of desperation?
In other words, I hope that they are doing this because they realize (and reap) a distinct business value and not just because they're desperate. Should the former be the case, I hope that it continues to send waves down the IT marketplace and continues to encourage organizations to provide free (libre) software.
Goodbye Slashdot. You've changed.
Oh wait, no MS has several, off the top of my head, the OS, directX, media player. Office offcourse as well, but that is a seperate product. Does IE still come with one? Silverlight?
In fact most windows software comes with a EULA all written differently.
So you claim that people have no problem understanding all these different EULA's but would be confused by the far simpler opensources licences of which only about a dozen are in actuall use?
Bad troll, no cookie for you! This is 2008, we expect more nowadays. Go on, mention soundcard drivers, why don't you.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
With these changes in licensing and governance, can we expect to see a merger of the NeoOffice guys back into OpenOffice?
Welcome to the land of the free...pay toll ahead...no photography...please open your bag...
not true. It's been possible for a long time to have both a design patent and a copyright on the same item. It's uncommon I'll grant you, but definitely possible.
Almost any story can be glibly described in a few sentences. What makes a story good, or even great is in the telling, that's why a talented author would copyright his particular expression.
The only possible use of a "plot patent" is strictly to troll and whine "wah, he stole my idea, but made it better than I could!"
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
That patent non-assert covenant is almost identical (and the differences are in the parts that aren't important) to Microsoft's patent no- assert covenant for its XML formats. Many have said that the latter is unacceptable for use with free software. It's also interesting to compare those two non-assert covenants against the one IBM provides for their patents that cover OpenOffice, and for Microsoft's OSP. I've made a little page that lists all four of these non-assertion covenants, side-by-side, with corresponding sections highlighted in matching colors.
- WHOIS search for endsoftpatents.org
- Google search for Ben Klemens
OK, that's the guy.No, but Linux==GPL. Sun could release ZFS under a Linux-compatible license without affecting anything else (they could triple-license it).
... perhaps one calling itself Linux ... except that it will be license incompatible, and the GPL V2 so hopelessly outdated with current law and legal precedents as to be nearly useless.
The only reason Sun isn't releasing ZFS under the GPL or a GPL-compatible license is to prevent Linux from using it. And that tells you that Sun is lying when they are saying that they are supporting Linux; they are trying to hurt Linux and replace it with their shit.
While I think you have a point, and I share (to a degree) your suspicion with regards to Sun's motivations, I would point out that Linus brought this upon himself in no small part as a result of "not trusting" the Free Software Foundation (or Richard Stallman personally, I suppose), and not licensing the Linux kernel under the GPL V2 "or any later version." As a direct result of this, it is impossible for Sun to release their product under a Linux kernel compatible license that also protects them from Software patent claims, as the GPL V3 and Sun's own open source licenses do.
I have been a Linux advocate since the mid nineteen-nineties, and remain so today, but Linus' stubbornness on the licensing issue may well have condemned Linux to the annals of history sooner than it otherwise might have been. Sun may be trying the accelerate this, but in point of fact, I supsect it will be Linux's incompatibility with GPL V3, V4, V5... that will push it away from the center of the Free Software and Open Source world in the coming decades, far more than any political maneuverings by Sun, Microsoft, SCO, or anyone else.
Why does this matter, when we're talking timeframes greater than any software's life cycle? Because free software, unlike proprietary products, tends to change, morph, fork, and become incorporated into new products. Emacs has reinvented itself numerous times. So too has the Linux kernel and a dozen other free software projects. But now, as the legal copyright/patent landscape changes and much of the world is forced to move to protective licenses such as GPL V3 as a matter of self-preservation, Linux will be left out. More and more code will be license-incompatible with the kernel, which over time may well become an insurmountable problem. There is no reason that fragments of Linux code wouldn't have been included in an operating system in 2050
It is this kind of entropy that the Free Software Foundation's recommendation of "GPL V or any later version" was designed to address. Unfortunately, Linux doesn't have that option, so instead (most ironically) it will likely be a bit of FreeBSD, or perhaps GNU Hurd code, that we see floating around in the codebase of whatever free OS we're running forty-odd years from now, and much of that will be down to licensing as much as technical merit.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Actually, Sun said that they are going to GPL ZFS. Of course, they're in the middle of a patent lawsuit over ZFS right now, so it's probably not the best time.
From what they have released, I'm rather hopeful that they will release ZFS, given time. And I think you can already use it with FUSE (although I'm not sure how stable that is just yet).
True, Sun can be funny at times about these things, but I really hope that ZFS catches on, because the ideas behind it are great.
I wanted to use OpenOffice to control the DRM for my DVR... Damnit! Perhaps I should get IBM to do it for me. Then it is not against the GPL.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Andrew Knight is the inventor of Storyline Patents.
The connection between patent law and unique fictional storylines necessary to conceive of Storyline Patents may never have been made if Andrew Knight did not occasionally dabble in fiction... Recognizing that fierce competition for publication and financial reward focused on the quality of storytelling, as opposed to the quality of the underlying storyline itself, and further recognizing that even the world's most skilled storytellers (of which he is clearly not) rarely turn a profit, his unique fictional storylines have matured into pending patent applications instead of novels or screenplays. He thus seeks reward on the true value of his innovations--the underlying storylines--instead of forced, sub-par expressions of these underlying storylines.
Hallelujah. Legal protection for the vague ideas of no-talent artists (cf. "storylines recognizing").
Isn't the form-and-function "expression," as opposed to an ill-defined goal, what patents are for? Say, the Salad Spinner, versus the true innovation of dry lettuce.
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Prime UID Club
Look the GPL is "free" in that you can not catch a unicorn [GPL program]. The most you can do is feed it [add code] and take rides [use it].
Now would you stop playing the stupid "not free" game.
the vocal majority of Slashdot will do what ever they please because they equate access to ownership. Your silly ruled don't mean anything!
P.S.: From your comments I feel that we read very different MS patent pledges about OOXML. (Do you have any reason to believe that they only made one that became public?) The alternative is that we understood certain sentences as having very different implications. Admittedly, IANAL, and I tend to put the darkest reasonable interpretation on words that are represented as coming from MS. If they guarantee a right to do something, I tend to take the narrowest reasonable interpretation of what that covers. I'm told that this is the appropriate method of understanding what is meant by a legal guarantee.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Nor does putting OO under LGPLv3 protect those downstream, since Sun cannot give away any patent rights that MSFT has.
So a significant effect of adopting the LGPLv3 seems to be that downstream users will now find it impossible to protect themselves by entering into NOVL-style deals with MSFT, because a major purpose of the patent provisions of GPLv3/LGPLv3 was to outlaw such arrangements, even though MSFT-NOVL itself was grandfathered in.
Extending this line of thought -- how does using v3 for OO affect its interaction with Linux? Torvalds does not intend to move to v3, so now there is the possiblity of an OO under v3 operating with Linux on v2. This raises all the problems of coupling incompatible licenses (FSF: "When we say that GPLv2 and GPLv3 are incompatible, it means there is no legal way to combine code under GPLv2 with code under GPLv3 in a single program"). Not impossible, but perhaps troublesome.
A cynic might think that Sun wants the downstream users to be precluded from working with either MSFT or Linux -- perhaps forced to move to Solaris.