Slashdot Mirror
Interview: Ask Bruce Perens About Open Source Licensing
Bruce Perens is one of the mainstays of Linux and the Open Source movement, but he has never gotten as much publicity as Linus Torvalds, Richard M. Stallman or Eric S. Raymond. His latest project is TECHNOCRAT.NET. He sent in a few notes (hit "Read More" to see them) about what's happening on the Open Source licensing front, an area in which he is one of the World's Leading Experts(tm). Bruce will happily answer questions about Open Source and related software licensing issues. Instead of posting your questions here, please send them to questions@slashdot.org. We'll choose the 10 or 12 best ones, forward them to Bruce, and post the answers in a day or two.
When to Stop Complaining
I'm known for complaining, publicly, when I think something's wrong. There's
another side to that, though, if you want to be an agent for constructive
change and be taken seriously. When people fix what you are complaining
about, you can't just keep complaining, you have a choice of shutting up
or saying something nice. So, it's time to say something nice about two
huge companies.
Good News From IBM
A while ago, I publicly complained about IBM's termination clause in their
original Jikes license. Lots of people read my complaint and made
it clear they felt the same way, and IBM noticed. An IBM product manager
and attorney contacted me, they fixed their license, they released the
license for public criticism, and they put the new license on Jikes
and PostFix (IBM Secure Mailer). IBM is referred to as the
600-pound-gorilla of the computer industry, but in this case they were
an extremely polite and accommodating 600-pound-gorilla that did the right
thing for the community. They should be praised for that. I like their
new license so much that I'm going to use PostFix as the mail-delivery
agent on my own system. I've been using qmail, but its license isn't
really compliant with the Open Source Definition so it's time to switch.
Apple, Too
The Debian developers and I publicly complained about the original Apple
Public Source license. Again, lots of people read our complaint and helped
get the message across to Apple. The press and even some Open Source pundits
handled our complaints very poorly, treating them as an "attack" rather
than the constructive criticism we meant. Apple, however, handled our criticism
extremely well. They addressed our complaints in the APSL version 1.1 .
Again, a big company that should be praised for doing the right thing for
the community.
Other Companies
Lots of other companies have recently come out with software that complies
with the Open Source Definition. They all seem to be taking an OSD-compliant
license quite seriously as a prerequisite for community participation in
their projects, and many companies are contacting me for a reality-check
before they release their licenses for public criticism. I've been able
to save a few of them from embarassing gaffes. I'm currently working with
several really big companies on OSD-compliant licenses.
You hold copyright on everything you write. If you don't grant them permission to reproduce it, they can't without risking an unwinnable lawsuit. You'd end up with something that looked like this:
Q (Deleted due to copyright issues)
A Yes, that's correct.
Furthermore, they didn't want to limit what they did with those questions; they might want to post them somplace else, reproduce them in an interview, publish them in a book, or whatever. Assuming that you granted them all these rights would be wrong. Telling you ahead of time "Don't submit material if you aren't willing to do this" is perfectly honorable. Not asking for exclusive rights is, too.
A lot of the engineers inside Sun are pissed at the SCSL in a big way - particularly the commercial clause. At JavaOne, a number of different BOFs that I attended, when Sun lawyers were present, they copped a hammering about the SCSL (admittedly I was one of the people doing said hammering). From memory the SCSL and JINI BOFs were the two most problematical for their legal types.
Here's what I know is going on inside at the moment. The Java Media folks are pushing through a version of SCSL that does not include the commercial clause. That is, you can pretty much do anything you like with it - no compatibility checks, no license fees etc. Take the source and run. I imagine this would bring it extremely close to satisfying the open source guidelines. Naturally the Sun legal people are having a hard time swallowing this so it is taking some time to get through (It's been going at least for the last 3 months that I know of). Note that this is not changing the core SCSL, just a variant of it minus the crappy bits (like the Jini License is a variant of the SCSL).
The first of the Java Media APIs to undergo this is JSDT (Java Shared Data Toolkit). Once this goes through, pretty much all of the rest of the Java Media stuff will be following in quick succession. (Java3D, Media Framework, Sound and Advanced Imaging).
BTW - This is not leaking any private information. The Sun people at the JSDT BOF were the ones talking about this (Rich Burridge and Mike Bundschuh (sp?)) out in the open. Also, directly talking with the various Java Media marketing types and engineers running the stands there were talking about it too.
Life is complete only for brief intervals in between toys or projects -- John Dalton
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Yeah, I've always considered Bruce 'The Linux Nut who dosen't make a fool of himself in public' ;)
Other software I've written can be found here. And I'm currently writing software - I've made a lot of contributions to the Squishdot forum software in the past week.
So, don't write me off as a writer, please.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Also there is license-discuss@ opensource.org, a mailing list where Bruce has been a very active participant. (I hope that doesn't stop!)
Forrest J. Cavalier III, Mib Software Voice 570-992-8824
The Reuse Rocket: Efficient awareness for software reuse: Free WWW site
lists over 6000 of the most popular open source libraries, functions, and applications.
Are you sure? It's not slash, it's Squishdot (built on Zope, which is built on Python).
Admittedly, the look-and-feel is "borrowed" from Slashdot, but the underlying technology is completely different. Check The Technology behind TECHNOCRAT.NET for more info.
Moo!
What makes slashdot `management' think they should be the sole arbiters of what constitutes a good question?
If Bruce is going to answer questions about Open Source the forum should be, um, OPEN.
Why is it that many people who claim to support standards have such atrocious spelling and grammar?
qmail is an exception to the Open Source Definition. Purportedly, a project has to allow redistribution of modified binaries in order to get all the benefits of Open Source. Yet, Dan Bernstein has been able to do this without it. The answer is, of course, that very few of us can even approach being a Dan Bernstein.
I'm on the board of the Open Source Initiative, and I use qmail because it's reliable and secure.
-russ
p.s. I also sell support for it.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Roblimo's style doesn't really fit well with the other posters (except perhaps John Katz). This may be because he's more of a professional, but it can come off as too polished and too editorial.
I like the way most content is presented on slashdot: There's a submitter's intro, a link, and a few lines from the poster. The submitter and the poster usually include personal opinions, but they are easily recognized as such and everyone can make up their own mind about the content of the link.
This post from Roblimo does not present his take on the article as a personal opinion, and, ironicly, he's probably the poster on slashdot least qualified to make the statements he does.
I'm not saying I don't like the article, but this new presentation is a turnoff. It seems too much like "Here's the way it is" instead of "Check this out and come to your own conclusions."
-OT (who has complained too much recently, I know)
Given that it's database-driven, Zope is very scalable: just synchronize database writes and you can make any number of servers run the same site.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
In practical terms, it means they'll write comments from the editor and attach them to your note. Presumably, it also means you can do the same, so you can have an entire discussion within a single post.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I'm just wondering, because I'm somewhat surprised Bruce isn't using the GPLd Exim for his MTA. I've found it to be quite good, and it scales up well to at least several thousand users. Easy to configure, too. It doesn't support some of the more exotic transports like BITNET or FidoNet, though, I think.
I'm guessing security, since I seem to recall a quasi-flamefest on Bugtraq between qmail and Secure Mailer over that issue.
--