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Update to RDist License Discussion
Dennis Heltzel writes "MagniComp just changed their license (again) to freely allow distribution with Linux Read the news here. I wonder if RedHat will do an errata to their errata. " (This
change was posted today, 17 July, 1999.)
Well, you're certainly persistent.
As i'm sure you must have understood by now, there is no element of "stealing" in the GPL. If the GPL is a valid licence then any person modifying or using the code is freely choosing to do so and abide by the licence. If it wasn't valid then it would simply has no effect. Either way, nothing is stolen.
RADIX MALORUM CUPIDITAS EST
You claim that there's no element of stealing in the GPL. That's wrong. Listen, if you link with a Microsoft library, and then Microsoft tells you that your program is now a derived work whose use and distribution and royalties they get to control, they'd be laughed out of court. It's stealing, and it's ludicrous. But that's what the GPL is about, and why the LGPL fixes the illegal bug in the license by removing the virus. The virus is not legal, moral, or ethical. It's nothing else than stealing.
If you don't agree with the license, don't use it, and stop complaining.
Microsoft has some requirements with the Microsoft Libraries too, go read!
Do you mean the CD Rom company or the project? They are not the same thing (ok, so they are closely related). It's true that one of the CD Rom companies that distributes FreeBSD is hurting financially. It may not survive. But what effect that has on the project itself remains to be seen. Loss of marketshare doesn't mean that FreeBSD need go away. Look at Minix, DRDOS, GEOS and Coherent. They are still with us in one form or other.
Hold on your horses Senator McArthy. If you are unable to do business on such environment it's your problem. Business works and works well here. The fact you can't get a profit of it does not mean that GPL is communism.
I would recomend you to read some books on economics (any book of AMERICAN Economics for dummies is good, start by that please) before blasting such statements.
I wonder if you consider IBM a nest of communist wasps.
A communist from the Iron Curtain
What makes rsync better than rdist? In what ways does rsync make up for the missing features that rdist has?
rdist 6.1.4 was the last version under a BSD style license. The only substantive difference between it and the current (6.1.5) version is a small change to the man page. I have a copy of 6.1.4 if anyone wants it.
Or just have people download it seperatly... Or include it as a "special free gift offer" on seperate media..
Or just ask them for an exemption, I'm sure they would allow it to be bundled with any open software... They seem to just be concerned with people selling a service based wholly or to a large extent on their product...
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
> Maybe we should make a patch to rDist that :)
:(
> automatically includes a complete (tiny) linux
> distribution that way it is always free
O forget it. I just reread the license and the above suggestion still wouldn't make it Free Software since you cannot distribute modified versions.
So you are still stuck if you find a bug or security hole in it since you cannot distribute the patched version
Agreed. Free software is good. However, I don't think licenses like 'free -- if you use it with linux' are as free as I'd like... Linux is nice, but it's not some kind of magical special case...
In my opinion such kind of licensing is much worse than before. It would be better to have either a free open source licensing or a pure commercial one.
:) )
In fact how can I use rdist in a heterogeneous environment? For example I have a network of several advanced workstations on Linux and some Solaris servers. So do I need to buy rdist just because I have such environment? What difference makes that I'm using one system and not another? This would look much like I would pay 50 cents on gas if I'm driving a Ford or 2,5 dollars if I use a Mitsubishi... It's nonsense.
Such "advertising" "save-face" licenses should be avoided. Letting them on will lead us into a lot of bottlenecks. No one uses _ONE_ OS (no matter that one guy tries to lead us to it
That or somthing like it strikes me as a good approach. Placing non-free (speech) software that can be legally distributed into its own "ghetto" serves to deprecate its use while still making it readily available for those who truly need it and lack a free alternative.
Well, get ftp://ftp.astron.com:/pub/freerdist/freerdist-0.9. 0.tar.gz
This version is based on Michael Coopers' rdist-6.1.3 with a *lot* of bug fixes (see ftp://ftp.astron.com:/pub/freerdist/ChangeLog), and still has the old nice BSD license, and will stay free.
christos
Magnicomp has messed up and do really need help sorting things out. They just look like a bad example right now. I guess they didn't expect that. They should have got a second opinion about their licensing terms before changing them.
Bruce, you have done a very good job lately on slashdot in educating license differences. Do you offer consultant services for commercial vendors?
If not would you consider doing so.
It is only for linux non-free distributions. I don't think there are any for-profit (or any other than the original) distribs of the *BSD's, though. Is it illegal to make one?
It *looks* to me that all of this has been done in a sort of hurry, and is *not* the final license. Mind you, the guy posted a reply earlier on and made a very hasty fix. So I'd suggest giving him some time to figure out how and what.
Give him a break
The OpenBSD version of rdist is as free as it was in the past.
And it is modern.
It probably includes all the new
features that the commercial one does. Theirs probably has fixes that we made.
Software is not free until it is free for everyone
to use and reuse as they please.
I think it's pretty safe to assume that they will. Red Hat will not distribute anything they're not allowed to patch, for the obvious support nightmare reasons that no-patching clauses would tie them in.
That's why they can't distribute qmail, for example. It's also why they can't distribute the code under new, "improved" rdist license.
Sincerly I wouldn't be so radical about its end. X is a typical UNIX product. You're right about the fact that no one misses them. But X continues to live in several flavours and tastes. Frankly I think this is the way it should go. Diversity generates the market. If there is one thing that proves this thing is UNIX itself. That's the most successful long-living OS ever made.
I've read your comments and found them to be totally incomprehensible.
Yep, there are non-free *BSD's. They tend to be in those little internet appliances that companies buy, like the Whistle Interjet.
So you can distribute it for free as a part of a Linux distribution, but not FreeBSD. Ugh.
It's pretty cool that they revised their license when their users spoke up. Progress... :-)
The license doesn't address the issue of redistributing modified versions of the software. Also, it is only free under certain circumstances. These factors combine to make it a bad basis for a branch if future versions have a more restrictive license. Hence, the community would be better served by branching from a version with a free software license.
I don't think that this license change is enough. This is not yet free software. What if I want to use it with FreeBSD, or GNU/Hurd, or whatever the next system I'm interested in is?
This is not truly free software. Find an alternative package, or use the last version released under a BSD license. And I hope RedHat doesn't change their mind.
--
Ian Peters
Their web page says that it is freely distributable with *BSD, but the license only excepts Linux distributions from commercial redistribution.
So much for Red Hat FreeBSD. [That would be amusing.]
Or is there a different license agreement with the versions distributed with the BSDs?
I can see the next version of Solaris being called "Solaris Linux" now, and including the Linux source code. Hey, it is a Linux distribution, so rdist is free!
I believe that the Debian free software definition clearly disqualifies licenses that say software is free when distributed with some or other system. And rightly so, IMO.
So if 6.0 has a free license, and 6.1 doesn't, why would we want to use 6.1? Anyone who actually uses rdist 6.x care to comment on any feature/bug changes that real users might care about?
I'll try to get them interested in an OSD-compliant license. However, there are perfectly up-to-date versions of rdist that are real free software, and there are several good replacements for rdist, too.
Thanks
Bruce Perens
Bruce Perens.
I quote: RDist has been and continues to be freely distributable with free versions of UNIX such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD, as well as with all Linux distributions whether the distributions are free or not.
Looks pretty good to me.
--
Infuriate left and right
So, if you want to distribute RDist, you just have to add a Linux kernel to the tar file, or what? Doesn't seem thought out very well.
Remember when The Open Group (which I worked for at the time) decided that it needed more money to fund X11, so it changed the licensing terms for R6.4?
Well, The Open Group isn't doing X development anymore.
And RDist isn't nearly as essential or complicated as X (and there are competing products), so why do they think they can make money with that model?
And here is why... First who cares about rdist...
rsync is much better. even mirrordir. Redhat should promote these alternatives first. I'm frustrated when a standard UNIX component get's development sucked away by a entity that wants to make money from it. Well that just means that rdist isn't standard. I'm going to remove it from all my free os boxes and pretend it never existed...
Also, these are the guys that have taken sysinfo(tm) from the community (although they worked hard on it), and made it commercial. So much for walking up to a compuuter and figuring out what's inside. The OS vendors will have to catch up w/ such tools. And I certianly don't think the company have a good future besides....
Well at least they didnt' trademark that like they trademarked (tm).
In a way this makes sense. After all, MS, or more likely Apple, might decide to use BSD as the basis of their next operating system, and there's nothing that I know of in the BSD license to stop them. Personally, I prefer the GPL, but there are reasons behind this (as explained... I haven't read the license).
OTOH, if it doesn't get distributed with the Linux that I use, it probably won't matter, as I don't know what it does that I need. And if I look for something that does that, what I'll probably find will be rSync (or some such).
Also, if it's GPL, then I know what to expect. If it's some brand new license, then I need to read it carefully, and hope I haven't overlooked something. Too many licenses benefits nobody but the lawyers.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
News
July 17, 1999: RDist has been and continues to be freely distributable with free versions of UNIX such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD, as well as with all Linux distributions whether the distributions are free or not. Our RDist License Agreement has been updated to clearly reflect this. We welcome all feedback on this and other areas of concern.
The email address is feedback@magnicomp.com . Go to it, people.
What ever happened to Richard's idea that consultants who make money from free software should donate 10% of their net income to the FSF? Because the FSF is a charitable foundation, this is really only 1 or 2 percent of the gross when it's all accounted for. The GNU/Linux vendors could do the same.
This would be good publicity, not hurt post-tax income, and generate plenty of money so the FSF could pay people to create free software, which would then give the consultants more to consult over, and the vendors more to vend over. It seems a clearly moral decision that hurts no one. Why aren't more people calling for the parasites to bankroll the FSF? Is that why RMS called O'Reilly a bunch of parasites?
One of the best things about Linux is that *BSD is just around the corner.