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Microsoft Joins Group Working To 'Cure' Open-Source Licensing Issues (zdnet.com)
Microsoft is joining Red Hat, Facebook, Google and IBM in committing to extending right to "cure" open source licensing noncompliance before taking legal measures. From a report: On March 19, officials from Microsoft -- along with CA Technologies, Cisco, HPE, SAP and SUSE -- said they'd work with open together with the already-committed vendors to provide more "predictability" for users of open source software. "The large ecosystems of projects using the GPLv2 and LGPLv2.x licenses will benefit from adoption of this more balanced approach to termination derived from GPLv3," explained Red Hat in a press release announcing the new license-compliance partners. The companies which have agreed to adopt the "Common Cure Rights Commitment" said before they file or continue to prosecute those accused of violating covered licenses, they will allow for users to cure and reinstate their licenses.
Agreed. I was once an open source nut during my college years, but attempting to coerce someone to give away the changes they make to an openly available source code base is nuts.
The companies involved have never been known to bring suit regarding Open Source licenses. The promise to give a cure period is thus hollow.
Bruce Perens.
they just make random assumptions and move on.
People do this with proprietary software as well. They don't read the EULA and they copy from friends. Why should they only get impunity for copyright violations of the GPL? Why doesn't Microsoft support a "first time free" policy for their own software?
Came in here to say just that. Copyfree licenses, such as BSD, are what you should use if you want your code to be free and used for any purpose. GPL is what you want to use if you want to prevent commercial use of your code inside of another program. Or if you want to be an ass and make other copyfree things GPL/non commercial. It's the libertarianism vs communism of licensing.
(Yes, you can throw the argument of commercial GPL software out there. It exists, I know. And now you have cloud services as a result. Software as an internet service... thanks GNU!)
The companies which have just promised to give people time before they sue are not known for ever having sued regarding a GPL license. Thus, this is posturing.
Bruce Perens.
It is if you are trying push it to its limits, trying to mix non-GPL with GPL technologies. Using GPL technology as part of a larger service... Real life stuff, where it isn't as black and white as RMS sees it. And the GPL while may be written clearly, does have interesting loopholes. Such as the Anti-Tivoization rule, that makes the exception for IBM to do it on their mainframes. Cloud and SaaS usages havn't been completely defined.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
>> It is if you are trying push it to its limits, trying to mix non-GPL with GPL technologies
No problem here.
You can do pretty much everything with a GPL program, except statically link or mix in code with a non GPL compatible licence.
BSD is GPL compatible.
No problem here.
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