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Glibc Is Finally Free Software
WebMink writes "Despite the fervour of some, the dark secret of every GNU/Linux distribution is that, until August 18 this year, it depended on software that was under a non-Free license — incompatible with the Open Source Definition and non-Free according to Debian and the FSF. A long tale of tenacity and software archeology has finally led to that software appearing under the 3-clause BSD license — ironically, at the behest of an Oracle VP. The result is that glibc, portmap and NFS are no longer tainted."
I've got an idea! What we really need is some kind of license that's like BSD, but requires people distributing derived works to do so under the same license. I can't believe nobody's thought of this yet!
You're looking for the Sleepycat license used by Oracle's Berkeley DB. It's a new-style BSD license with one additional clause that implements a copyleft.
http://spot.livejournal.com/315383.html
This actually gives details.
Seriously, based on the article Oracle probably could have chosen to go all copyright infringement lawsuit-happy on every Linux vendor known to man. But instead they relicensed the old code under a free license...*checks the temperature in Hell*
After years of not using a signature, I am going to make one to say the following: Fuck Beta
I can't fucking upload shit to my NAS without my desktop freezing
A computer is not a toilet.
Try uploading files instead.
The original license text was:
/*
* Sun RPC is a product of Sun Microsystems, Inc. and is provided for
* unrestricted use provided that this legend is included on all tape
* media and as a part of the software program in whole or part. Users
* may copy or modify Sun RPC without charge, but are not authorized
* to license or distribute it to anyone else except as part of a product or
* program developed by the user.
*
* SUN RPC IS PROVIDED AS IS WITH NO WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND INCLUDING THE
* WARRANTIES OF DESIGN, MERCHANTIBILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
* PURPOSE, OR ARISING FROM A COURSE OF DEALING, USAGE OR TRADE PRACTICE.
*
* Sun RPC is provided with no support and without any obligation on the
* part of Sun Microsystems, Inc. to assist in its use, correction,
* modification or enhancement.
*
* SUN MICROSYSTEMS, INC. SHALL HAVE NO LIABILITY WITH RESPECT TO THE
* INFRINGEMENT OF COPYRIGHTS, TRADE SECRETS OR ANY PATENTS BY SUN RPC
* OR ANY PART THEREOF.
*
* In no event will Sun Microsystems, Inc. be liable for any lost revenue
* or profits or other special, indirect and consequential damages, even if
* Sun has been advised of the possibility of such damages.
*
* Sun Microsystems, Inc.
* 2550 Garcia Avenue
* Mountain View, California 94043
*/
The new one is:
/*
* Copyright (c) 2010, Oracle America, Inc.
*
* Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
* modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are
* met:
*
* * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
* notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
* * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above
* copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following
* disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials
* provided with the distribution.
* * Neither the name of the "Oracle America, Inc." nor the names of its
* contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived
* from this software without specific prior written permission.
*
* THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS
* LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS
* FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
* COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT,
* INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
* DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE
* GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS
* INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY,
* WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING
* NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE
* OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
*/
How exactly do you put something into public domain legally, such that you can legally protect them to be in public domain? Really, serious question.
Now that Glibc is free we can finally have the year of the Linux desktop we've been waiting for since 2001. I know tons of my friends who would always say "I wanted to use Linux but Glibc isn't free!"
Now with that glaring hole in Linux's offering solved we can move on continuing to ignore the terrible User Experience.
The best way to put something as close to public domain as possible is the Creative Commons CC-Zero license. Anything less that that leaves too many legal uncertainties.
What do you mean by, "legally protect them to be in public domain?" When something is in the public domain, absolutely anyone can use it in any way they want. Including using it as part of a non-free, non-public domain product. They can do whatever they want with it, just as everyone else can.
Perhaps you're asking about copyfraud, where someone falsely claims to have exclusive rights to a work in the public domain? For example, publishing a copy of Shakespeare's plays and putting a notice on it that says, "No part of this may be reproduced without permission from the publisher." That's just lying. A license like GPL wouldn't prevent that either. Licenses only apply to people who are honest or who get caught. If someone intentionally lies about what rights they have, the only thing you can do is call them on it (and sue them if you're sufficiently motivated).
Or maybe you're just asking what the mechanism is? In most countries, all you need to do is stick a notice on it saying, "This work is in the public domain."
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
Interesting. But how is this "more free"? It's not quite a BSD license if they require the source and binaries contain that notice. Further, what I see is this re-branding of everything from Sun to Oracle all over the place. The latest updates for VirtualBox, OpenOffice and Java did little to patch or improve but most significantly changes everything to containing Oracle branding. I see this as no different.
Calling this more free while also including requirements such as the ones illustrated above it s bit of a mixed message.
It's not quite a BSD license if they require the source and binaries contain that notice.
That's a pretty vanilla 3-clause BSD licence just like you'd see anywhere else, I don't see a problem with it.
In most countries, yes it's irrevocable. Once you voluntarily place something in the public domain, that's that. I believe there are a few countries (Germany?) where things are more ambiguous and the law doesn't recognize the concept of public domain in the same way it does elsewhere. The Creative Commons folks have been developing a "public domain equivalent" license which is supposed to be somehow more reliable in those countries.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
The original license said:
"Users may copy or modify Sun RPC without charge, but are not authorized to license or distribute it to anyone else except as part of a product or program developed by the user."
which breaks most definitions of "free software". You can't give it to someone else without having used it in something, or wrapped it up with something. The new license is a 3-part BSD standard.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
I've been living a lie all these years??? Fuk!
The article goes into some detail. To change a license you need the agreement of the authors. Over time the authors become hard to track down.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Seriously, that's aggravating as hell. I just kind of assumed that GNU would have released all of their flagship software under the L?GPL and had no idea that they were distributing non-Free software. They were the one distributor I figured I'd never have to audit the licenses from. Are there any other hidden gems? Is there some shareware in Emacs? Maybe a bit of Shared Source in binutils?
People have laughed at the BSDs for replacing a lot of common software with locally-developed, BSD-licensed equivalents. That's starting to seem like a much saner alternative.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I still don't understand why someone didn't just rewrite the code from scratch, using the original as a spec. The original code was released 25 years ago, and is not that huge an amount of code.
It is a very good question, and the answer is to use the GPL.
Um, WTF? GPL is absolutely not similar to public domain; the gpl-violations people repeatedly make this very clear.
A better answer is, "that's not very clear, could you give an example of what you mean?". About the only thing I think it can sanely mean, is how to prevent other people from claiming it as their work (ie, plagiarism) and suing people (kinda like SCO suing people over Novell's copyrighted code). Maybe something like CC-zero is the answer (you keep a copyright, so you can sue them for... I think it was "slander of title" that Novell used), maybe just make sure your copy with the non-copyright notice gets well indexed by the search engines so any potential victims can find it when they need to defend themselves, maybe plagiarism can be a suable offence separately from copyright violation (I don't think that's the case here in the US, but I hear it might be in much of Europe).
How exactly is this code "copyright 2010", if it was written in the 1980s?
You keep saying "public domain", but you are using it to define nearly the opposite concept.
I like to think of it this way. Least free to most free: GPL, BSD/MIT, Public Domain. GPL is very restrictive as to what the licensee can or cannot do with the work. BSD/MIT both allow nearly any use/modification/extension, but requires the licensee to retain copyright notices. Public Domain requires neither; anyone can use and abuse it without retaining copyright notices.
So is GPL more or less free than a commercial license? Usually less free, but it depends on what you want. The GPL is more restrictive in that source code must be provided, no charge, to anyone who gets a binary copy. Typical mega-corporation commercial licenses prevent modification or extension, and many times even use and reverse-engineering, but I'd say that smaller companies tend to be less restrictive in their licenses than the GPL (barring, of course, redistribution of the original source code).
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Sleepycat isn't NEARLY as comprehensive, but simplicity is usually well worth that loss.
When dealing with normal, reasonable people I agree because your audience is trying their best to understand the information you are trying to impart. When dealing with the law your audience is deliberately trying to misinterpret everything you have said to their advantage so you need everything specified absolutely precisely so that there is no possible way they can do that.
What? All this time and SCO never found this?
Good suggestion, but keep in mind that CC licenses are not designed to be used with software. As they say on their FAQ:
Can I use a Creative Commons license for software?
We do not recommend it. Creative Commons licenses should not be used for software. We strongly encourage you to use one of the very good software licenses which are already available. We recommend considering licenses made available by the Free Software Foundation or listed at the Open Source Initiative. Unlike our licenses, which do not make mention of source or object code, these existing licenses were designed specifically for use with software.
CC is a great set of licenses, but as they say, if you're dealing with software you're probably better off using one of the licenses designed with it in mind.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
You don't need to. That's the whole point. At the top of the code, when it was written, it says, PD, date, author. There's your starting point. That chunk is PD. What you do with it is up to you. You can make a chunk exactly like it and make it proprietary; that's fine. The original is still PD, though, and there's nothing you can do to change that. Nothing at all.
It's PD. You can be sued (you can be sued for anything) but all you need to win is "Here's this thing, it's PD, by so and so, date whatever, and I used it as such. Thank you, I'll be leaving now, and by the way, I'll have court costs, too."
Nothing stops you in the first place. That's the idea, see, the code is FREE. So there's nothing to worry about. Absorb away. (Though it is traditional to eat pizza while you do so, no one will force you.)
It's whatever you say it is. Once you change it, it isn't the original code. So you're free (get that, FREE) to do anything you want. Call it proprietary, send it back to the author with a thank you note, charge huge amounts of money for it, etc. Anything you want. The only thing you can't do is take the original chunk out of the public domain. That's a done deal, and anyone can use that original chunk any way they want and there isn't squat you can do about that.
The original PD code stays public and available. But the author doesn't claim that changes you make are owned by him, or that he has a right to tell you what to do with them. He respects your freedom. The GPL does not. The GPL says there IS a cost for this, and it is that you will do as we say, or you are subject to these limitations. PD says, here it is, have a party, bye.
And that, my friend, is why all the FREE software I write is PD. Not GPL.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Is this just a troll or are there people who seriously get this upset over a software license? If so can I get a link to a description of the controversy please?
Serious question.
That's probably a troll but yes there are people who seriously get this upset over a software license. Well, they don't precisely get upset over the license itself. They get upset that anyone else would use a license that they would not use. The fact that your choice to use whatever license you like for what you create does not prevent them from using any license they like for what they create won't give them a moment's pause.
It's like the people who will get upset that you might drink alcohol, because they don't drink. Prohibition never could have gotten off the ground without folks like them. Or the people who think it's a good idea to arrest you if you smoke marijuana, because they wouldn't smoke marijuana. Or the people who think you should go to hell, or at least that they certainly shouldn't associate with you and treat you with respect, because their religion is not your religion. Or the people who think that all adults should have porn banned/censored for them because they themselves do not wish to see pornography. Or the people who think that anything which offends them is inherently evil and must be stopped at all costs, rather than viewing that as the way they have chosen to react to something that is otherwise harmless.
I like the term Bill Hicks used, which was "fevered egos". Just be glad that when people like this make new laws, they have largely overlooked the realm of software development.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
That's a pretty vanilla 3-clause BSD licence just like you'd see anywhere else, I don't see a problem with it.
Yup. The only thing different about it is that somebody actually bothered to change "The Regents of the University of California" to something else, and put in a date and so on.
That's actually fairly rare to see. Most people who license code under BSD do so very poorly, just copying the boilerplate and never filling in the blanks.
The usual reason for this is that most software licenses are designed to distinguish between source code and binary/object code. However, if you intend to put both in the public domain, I see no reason why you couldn't use cc0, hypothetically.
IANAL.
$ make available
Usually less free than a commercial license? I'm curious about your definition of less.
You can copy GPL software to any and all machines you want without restrictions. (commercial software doesn't usually let you do that)
You can give or sell GPL software to anyone, as long as you provide them the source code. (commercial software doesn't usually allow that)
You can modify it and use it anywhere (commercial software doesn't usually allow that)
You can incorporate it into your own code, provided that you license your code as GPL (commercial software doesn't usually allow that)
You can pay for the rights to do all of these things with commercial software, subject to the copyright holders predilection for selling those rights.
The only thing you cannot do is incorporate GPL software into your own NON-GPL code without paying the copyright holder for those additional rights, subject to their willingness to license those rights, but you can't do that with commercial software either.
As I see it you are never more restricted by the GPL than a commercial license. There exist commercial licenses that allow unlimited use and distribution and modification and distribution of the modified code, but they are extremely rare big $$$$ licenses - Sun's license for Unix and Microsofts license for SQL Server are good examples.
If you are a developer and want to sell binary only copies of a modified version of something, then you may be better off starting from something that isn't GPL licensed. But that doesn't make it more free, just better suited to your particular purposes, and describing it as more free is inaccurate. It is simply more convenient to license the particular rights you are interested in. A software USER always has more freedom under the GPL than a commercial license because the only right constrained by the GPL is one that does not impact them, and commercial software nearly always constrains usage rights in some way. Users can even legally use GPL'd software without agreeing to the license!
It all comes down to what one means by "stays in the public domain."
If they mean that mere duplication stays in the public domain, then the PD satisfies that already so there is no question apart from what is called "copyfraud" elsewhere in thread. I am not sure whether PD blocks copyfraud (claiming authorship of material verbatim); I suspect it depends on whether the country has a concept of moral rights apart from intellectual property rights.
So, the alternative is that if by "stays in the public domain," they mean that derived works stay in the domain declared for the original work. OK, now strictly speaking we've reached a contradiction since the public domain does not allow this. However, we may consider a quasi-public domain in which this property holds. It is obvious that there is no way whatsoever to do this for an open release, without something GPL-like (feel free to prove me wrong). Specifics may differ, but that part of GPL which is called "viral" by its detractors and called "spider plant-like" by rms exactly identifies what is necessary for derived works to stay in the original domain.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Did you even read my post? That was my whole point, that you can't create a license to mandate that something stay in the public domain after someone else takes a hold of it because inherent in the definition of public domain is the ability for anyone to do whatever they want with it, including the ability to make their version not public domain. I was suggesting to the OP that if what he meant by "public domain" (notice the ironic quotes there and in my original post) was that the work would stay available for everyone even after someone else takes it and releases it as their own, then "public domain" is not the proper release strategy for him, and that he's probably looking for something like the GPL.
We always knew Comcast was corrupt, here's the proof: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1909890&cid=34545432
Guthrie presumably sold that right; that's pretty typical for the publishing industry. They don't produce anything, they're just middlemen, and so rights are their handle on the material.
You'll notice that Woody did *not* say that the song was public domain; he said it was copyrighted. That's like the GPL: You see it, you should make sure you understand the terms, because whatever else they may be, they are not grants of freedom. More of a license to employ a lawyer.
I own a literary agency, and we deal in precisely those kinds of contracts. We try - very hard - to protect the author's rights, one as distinct from the next, so that, for instance, having sold a book to print, the author retains the rights to make a movie, an e-book, etc. Publishers, on the other hand, come at it the other way. The typical contract tries to vacuum up every right known, and any that might not be specified.
This is one of the reasons that I *really* welcome e-books; the main reason publishers were able to maintain their position is because it was expensive, very, to print a book. An e-book... no longer true. A good literary agency can provide the editing an author needs, or the author and a few beta readers can get it handled my themselves, and that's a *much* better model for both authors and readers.
The author removes a middle entity, and that raises compensation; that encourages the author; that's good for everyone. Borrowing is reduced, and pass-along is as well. This tends to mean that you'll actually get your income on a per-reader basis. Shops are never "out" of your book; books never have to be out of print. A book can become a hit years after it is released. Advances are not required and earnings are no longer encumbered. Release times are vastly reduced. Whole libraries can be carried in your palm. You can read anywhere. It's not perfect, but man, is it ever better.
Bit of a digression there, sorry. :) The subject is very much on my mind right now.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Not true. In this case, it'd be a work for hire, and the copyright would rest with the company that paid the authors, not the authors itself. (As a side note, you can also assign the copyrights to another party, the FSF requires people working on stuff like gcc and other GNU software to assign their copyrights to the FSF). Thus, the entity, in this case Sun/Oracle could change the license at will.
The tricky part was determining if the work was derived from something else, under a restrictive copyright. The copyright still belongs to Sun but they could be bound by contractual terms to other parties because of the way the works originated. Incidentally, this is the reason NVidia always gives for not open sourcing their 3D drivers for Linux.