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Apple Remove Samba From OS X 10.7 Because of GPLv3
recoiledsnake writes "The upcoming release of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Server will remove the formerly bundled open source Samba software and replace it with Apple's own tools for Windows file sharing and network directory services. In both Mac OS X Server and client editions, Samba enables Macs to share files with Windows clients on the network and access Windows file servers. It has also later allowed Mac OS X Server to work as an NT Domain Controller to manage network accounts and make roaming profiles and home directories available to Windows PC users. However, the Samba team has moved active development of the project to the more strict GPLv3 license, which prevents Apple from using the software commercially. Apple is now said to be recommending Active Directory to users who are still dependent upon the older NT Domain Controller network directory services. Apple has previously stopped contributing code to GCC and started looking at other options like LLVM because of GCC's switch to GPLv3."
Apple has been moving away from the GPL in all it's forms for a while now. They just got around to us (I'm guessing we were pretty high on the list once they got rid of gcc :-).
Jeremy.
This is a gross mis-representation of GPLv3, and obfuscates the real basis of argument that Apple may have in conforming to the licensing terms.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
The more strict GPLv3 license, which prevents Apple from using the software commercially
Uhhh...no it doesn't. Read the license. If you don't want to read the license, just read GNU's handy GPL FAQ, which includes a section on whether or not you can sell GPL software commercially.
I'll give you a hint: the answer is yes, you can.
That said, Apple may have perfectly legitimate reasons for not wanting to use the GPLv3, but an imaginary prohibition on commercial software isn't one of them!
woops, OK. It appears GPLv3 allows commercial use. The summary got it wrong? (surprise!)
Yeah, that was my first reaction as well. The summary is flat out wrong the way it is worded, but there are legitimate licensing issues.
The problem is with the iPhone, not OS X (yet). If you distribute binaries covered by the GPLv3 on a device, the license requires you to provide any signing keys, or other information/tools required to run modified versions of the software on the device. The iPhone requires all applications to be signed, and does not provide signing keys to it's users, thus they can't use GPLv3 software (like samba) on iOS.
They probably figure it is easier to maintain a single SMB/CIFS implementation rather than two, so they are ditching it on OS X as well (or they have other plans for OS X that we are not aware of yet).
No, they have the liberty to disagree. They are then subject to copyright which by default disallows them to distribute copies of the software.
There is nothing "jacked up" about this.
The GLv3 doesn't say that you can't use the software commercially. This article looks like just another shot in the whole "Open Source = BAD" war, from yet another FUD-packer (in this case, the member of the AppleInsider staff who wrote the original article).
What I want is the ability to use it and not be told my customers can't.
So long as you pass on to your customers the benefits that you gained by adopting GPL'd software, no problem. They can use it. If you want to pass on a version with additional restrictions on what they can do with the software, then no, you can't do that. And that's the entire point of the GPL. Is it so hard to understand?
Samba isn't owned by one entity, and so re-licensing under special terms isn't possible. It's one of the advantages (or disadvantages, depending on your point of view :-) of having distributed copyright ownership.
I won't say who offered, but tridge was once offered a multi-million deal to "sell" Samba to a networking company (a long time ago, before people understood what Free Software/Open Source really meant :-).
Jeremy.
The BSD license is free as in beer.
I don't think you understand what "free in as beer" means. When something is free as in beer, you are welcome to drink as much of it as you want for no charge. You don't get the recipe to the beer, you aren't given the ingredients, you don't get a say in how the beer should taste or could be tweaked for the better.
Closed source software that doesn't doesn't have licensing costs is the analogy described by "free as in beer."
The GPL license is free as in liberty.
Both the GPL and the BSD are free as in liberty, because you are given the code and permission and customize it to do what you want.
In my opinion, the GPL is less free than the BSD license because my liberty becomes limited when I want to distribute my changes in the application to others. With BSD, I'm given the liberty to license the software how I want and I'm given the liberty of not having to provide my source code to others. For a lot of the work that I do, that becomes a big deal -- I can provide software or a service without having to worry about the extra effort required to release something as GPL.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
Either way, Apple wasn't planning on letting people modify the version of CIFS they shipped, or contribute fixes back to the Samba tree, so no real loss there. Long story short, we learned something about Apple's ideology and nothing more.
Wrong : "Apple has been updating and hardening a branch of the Open Group's DCE/RPC library. We'd decided to share
these changes with the community at large and will continue to invest in modernizing and advancing this
code base. The goal is to establish a common, authoritative DCE/RPC codebase that everyone can leverage
or contribute to, under very liberal terms.
We have published Apple's contributions at http://www.dcerpc.org./ Please check out the web site for any
more details. We are looking for someone to port it to the various Linux SMB implementations.
Regards,
James Peach and George Colley
Apple"
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.