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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
It would be nice if people stuck to LGPL 2+, GPL 2+, Old X11/New BSD or multi-licenses that included them. This would allow for compatibility for the most part. Other licenses that are compatible but not multi-license are OK too, but really should just be one of those IMO (based solely on momentum, not quality).
CC is not a Free or Open license (as it is used for the most part anyway). So I think your post is just further muddying the waters.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
But the fragmentation of licensing agreements (LGPL, GPL, CC, CC2.5, ETC) is just going to confuse people
Different licences for different purposes. And remember that before these licences came along, individuals would often release software under their own (often poorly worded) licences, or sometimes not at all. Sometimes the licences are ambiguous, or the authors feel compelled to add in all sorts of arbitrary restrictions (I guess that's their right, but it's annoying when there's no logical reason). Indeed some people still do that. When I see something that's licenced under "GPL" or "CC", I know exactly what I'm getting, and don't have to worry if I can or can't do something, or if even though it's advertised supposedly "free" I'm going to download it and find it's crippleware, trialware, or has all sorts of licence restrictions.
Recently I was looking for free graphics to use for writing games, and I came across one from years ago that had some licence saying it was free, but only for Windows because he wanted to be the one to "port" it to another platform. Huh? I thought, why should the graphics need to be changed for a different platform? Thankfully I then found a later version of the graphics which he'd sensibly released under CC.
I'm not sure that comparing to Linux distributions makes sense. You might as well complain that having thousands of pieces of software available is "confusing", and this is comparable to Linux distributions. If people just choose the first licence they come across because the rest are too confusing, that's fine.
Let it go... Sun released ZFS on open source license. It already got integrated in few systems. Open source != GPL. Free software != GPL.
We, linux guys, want ZFS features. But we are not center of the universe. Let's just wait for btrfs to mature and Daniel Phillip's ddlink to take off.
:wq
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.
As you point out, at least with open-source licenses, there are only a handful of major ones that cover the vast majority of software. Once you know about them, you can very quickly know how much control you'll have over the code, and can confidently download/install/use/modify as required.
There is no proprietary equivalent to this kind of well-organized and relatively homogeneous licensing landscape. (Of course not! Having "named" proprietary licenses would make it too easy for a customer to compare different product licenses and select the less onerous ones.)
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.
Yawn, Solaris is probably the most capable server OS on the planet and it contains a number of technologies that even the most passionate Linux advocate would give their eye teeth to have in Linux. dtrace, ZFS, SMF etc etc.
Sun also developed Java still the most widely used application development and deployment platform for enterprise applications. It is also the largest single platform for Mobile Phones, way ahead of Symbian, Windows Mobile etc.
They have also developed the only credible alternative to MS's cash cow Office.
Not bad for a company apparently rubbish at Software development.
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