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Bill Joy, ESR, RMS and more on SCSL vs GPL
Frank Sullivan writes "Upside Today has this
excellent article on the relative value of Sun's "Community Source" license versus the GPL. Richard Brandt, an Upside columnist, wrote recently that Sun "doesn't get" Open Source. Bill Joy responded with an email saying that SCSL is less restrictive than GPL, rather than more restrictive. Brandt forwarded this to ESR and RMS, and a "frank exchange of views" ensued. Many interesting questions were raised, such as is the right to fork a bug or a feature? Well worth reading, if you're interested in the philosophy of source code licensing.
" Wow. Well worth the time of reading.
The GPL would allow you to keep an internal improvement to the Linux core proprietary and closed. You could distribute the binaries throughout the corporation and never have to provide a line of source.
Secondly, he does not make it clear what kind of "improvements" he is referring to. Again, this matters.
Anything that can be compiled and inserted as modules (INCLUDING code which modifies the kernel, as it's running) is NOT covered by the Linux GPL. Thus, such improvements CAN be shipped as closed, proprietary binaries. There's NOTHING to stop you from doing that.
Third, the "normal" method of getting return is to sell your product. The GPL explicitly permits you do do this, just so long as you don't restrict the purchaser's freedom. There's nothing in the GPL that is inherently "anti-sell".
Then, there's the matter of the choice of licence. This guy says he worked on the BSD licence. So why not use that? People are fine with it, you get to keep your binaries as closed as you like, and you don't have the complication of flooding the userspace with different, incompatiable licences.
If there's something I'm seriously missing, please enlighten me! Otherwise, could someone from Sun kindly either fill in the blanks, explain why one of the million other semi-OSS licences (such as BSD) were unused, or rectify the situation by USING one of these other licences! Nobody is pressuring Sun to go GNU!
I happen to like the GPL because it suits my needs. Sun doesn't think it suits theirs, and I respect that. But there's a million alternatives out there. We DON'T need Yet Another Licence, which conflicts with Every Other Licence. Unless there is a VERY good tactical reason for going that route, I would have to say it is mindboggingly STUPID!!!
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)
The fact of the matter is that although source code is not a scarce resource (Since it can be copied infinitely for free) programmers themselves are. Especially good programmers. People and Companies will always need to have programs customized or written from scratch, systems maintained, security reviewed, networks laid out and monitored and all the things that companies do. They need to get used to the idea that if they share some of the stuff they output -- the source code -- and everyone else does the same, that everyone will benefit in the long run. Right now Sun will show us theirs, but they don't really want to share. I suggest they be subjected to Barney videos until they get the picture.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Eric Raymond: Very different. The SCSL enforces control with the threat of lawsuit and jail. Linus controls the kernel because the community grants him authority in recognition of his authorship.
Richard Gabriel: What if Torvalds were a dictator? Would this be better or worse than Sun exerting some influence or control? Hard to say.
The kind of control Linus has over the kernel (lets just leave out Alan for simplicity) is far better than what Sun does simply because if for example Linus started to think that upcoming kernel releases should only run on "Genuine Intel" processors, everyone would just start using a kernel distribution managed by someone else. Linus just managed to keep the control by the users respect for the quality of what he is doing, not because it says in some license that he is entitled to that control.
Somehow he claims that the right to implement compatible applications (i.e. to reverse engineer an API in the case of Java) is the "right to fork" granted by the SCSL.
I refuse to believe that this seasoned programmer doesn't understand the meaning of a code fork. Rather it seems he is just determined to divert the issue. It seems clear to me that SCSL doesn't allow code forking (i.e. complete, modified versions of the source may not be redistributed under SCSL or any other license).
This is not a Good Thing (TM), from our (Free Software/Open Source community) point of view. Nevertheless we recognize Sun's right to license their code in any way they see fit, as they recognize ours. But I would at least hope they could be honest about it and not claim that their license offers something it doesn't.
It seems to me that, if Sun truly "gets it", all their stated goals could be handled by BSD-style (old or new) licensing and strict trademark enforcement. That would allow developers to do what they need to with the code, and allow Sun to squelch forking by preventing incompatible forks from using the trademarks. Any forks that don't use the trademarks won't be an "embrace and extinguish" attempt like Joy fears, just like changes to Mesa can't possibly hurt OpenGL.
We all know that Bill Joy is very familiar with BSD licensing issues. It's clear, at least to me, that his only real objection to Free/Open Source software can be better solved by Trademark Law instead of Copyright Law. Therefore, there must be an unstated objection. Personally, I suspect the unstated objection is that Sun management is fearful of the Free Software Movement and wants to get some of the publicity benefit of being "Open" and "Free" without actually helping the movement.
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Open mind, insert foot.
....
my take on this. Bill Joy said:
if you do something to improve linux, you have to give it back to everyone because of gpl. therefore, you don't own your own innovations and the reward for these (other than fame) goes to ???.
??? = the community , i.e. the same folks that gave you linux in the first place.
Bill (is it Joy or Gates...) has quite obviously decided that money is the end all be all and if you can't leverage your product to make money you are a dad-gum fool. I'm starting to get the impression that software and capitalism don't mix too good, I guess it's that whole infinite supply thing.
+&x
I think someone needs to give this self-center, egotistical community a spanking. Here are some talking points.
/. you might have the intellect to become your own shepard. Your most important tool is the word "why". Use it question you own assumptions. Question the assumptions of others. Question the assumption of your "community" leaders. Don't be a sheep.
There is no open-source movement
There are, however, open-source projects. If you are a coder and you first decision is the license followed by the idea for a project, you are not really a coder. You are a manager and your project will only succeed by luck or happenstance.
There is a Free Software movement
While I would disagree with RMS on just about everything, I respect the hell out of him. His clarity of purpose and resolute aherence to his core philisophy is a wonder to behold.
Programmers are gods
If you create the program, you control the source. You can choose a free or proprietary license. The code has no life of its own and the simplistic anthropomorphism that asserts that the source code does have a life separate from it's creator or maintainer is the product of one too many viewings of Tron.
The madness of crowds
A venue like slashdot tends to have the same effects as mob behavior as it has been chronicled since the French Revolution. The cry for companies to open their source code festers and swirls into a freenzy. Not a week goes by without a call to boycott or act against one body or another. Accept the fact that some of you may know it all. There is a big world out there and logic and conceit are not a good combination.
The sheep
One thing you should learn is that people are like sheep. If you are reading
In a previous post to /. attached to It's the Developers, Stupid!: The Real NT-Linux Battle I mentioned my belief that the only thing that is really important is the API's and that the most important API's today are those which allow for component based programming.
Clearly Sun and Bill Joy agrees with this statement. Firstly they have made great strides in making Java a modern component based environment through such things as Java Beans, Enterprise Java Beans and JINI. Secondly they have done everything they can to retain control of how those API's are developed in the future. Look at the licensing they employ. Look at the effort they went through to find an open standards organization willing to rubber stamp their requirements for Java itself. Look at this whole issue of code forking.
The problem is that they are in business to make money. I cannot find fault with that. If they feel a need to control the API's for Java, then more power to them. But they should not expect me, or anyone else, to want to play the game by their rules!
Nor should they expect me to believe the propaganda. Sun is trying to portray themselves as brothers with the Open Source community against a common enemy. What they are not saying is that they want to be Microsoft. That little fable about the "Lion's Share" near the end of the article was telling...
In my opinion it boils down to this: We need a fast, simple, powerful and complete Open Source solution for component based development. An API (preferably a cross platform one) that you can write code to in any of the most popular languages. And it must have a reference implementation that is open source with a GPL license. It should be highly Object Oriented and should provide base objects for every major Design Pattern. It should front-end the OS so completely that you can write a new OS which directly provided the relevant API's (making it a kind of Meta-OS). The API itself should be open and there should be a standards committee that isn't loaded with representatives from the big companies. Plus, no-one is penalized for producing a non-compatible version (other than the fact that compatible versions would probably receive a greater market share).
I have been working on my own for some time to develop the beginings of such a standard. A kind of hobby for me. And I know there are plenty of people out there who will claim such a thing already exists in (choose one) PERL, Python, Smalltalk, Gnome or some flavor of the month. I don't think any of those things meet all the criteria of the environment I want to see, but I can state one thing rather confidently...
Until we pull together a produce such a thing the Open Source movement will have a lot of difficulty competing against Sun and Microsoft in the Business Systems space.
Jack
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Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
Well, I already replied to one poster on the whole article bit, so I'm going to shoot a bit of a tangent off now. For a while now I've been trying to get support for a site that tries to educate people about licenses - no bias. When I say no bias, I mean that anything contriversal would have to be footnoted with research. Unfortunately, not to many people have been to eager to help, other than say.. sounds useful.
Obviously people disagree on things, from ignorance or real problems. Would it not be better to give more of a resource? Even here people are mixing up what FSF's and BSDL's license goals our and the SCSL's our.. which is why the emails went back and forth with RMS, ESR, and Bill Joy.
If anyone wants to help, or other info, email me.
"Open Source?" - Press any key to continue
"For those Java developers who side with Stallman on this issue, a GNU Java compiler does exist."
Interestingly enough the innovations to Java are not coming from the GNU community. There's a GNU Java compiler so there's no fundamental reason not to innovate. Yet, the GNU compiler is merely lagging behind suns implementation and does not any value to it. Really, what's the point of maintaining a gnu copy whose ultimate goal is to remain compatible with whatever it was copied from?
The only reason that there is a GNU java compiler is that SUN doesn't provide a compiler for all platforms. GNU is a nice license for developing software in the LINUX community since it allows for massively parallel development of software.
The GNU java compiler will never replace SUNs compiler, however, because for that to happen it would require companies to give away all the future innovations they are going to do. This won't happen.
I really liked the discussion about forking and how the different licenses deal with it. In addition I really liked the fable about the lion, the fox and the wolf because it showes exactly where Bill Joys reasoning is flawed: the SCSL gives sun the power to decide between right and wrong. While this prevents forking it also gives sun ownership of the software and the power to steer the software in a direction that is good for them but not for their users. BSD style licenses prevent this by allowing any change under any license but these types of licenses are perhaps not so good at preventing forking (here my knowledge probably falls short). So here's a potentiallly unaddressed issue: how to prevent forking without centralizing control of software. The GNU license doesn't address this but the community around LINUX effectively prevents forking so far. This informal process is not enough however. There is nothing in the license that prevents the development of incompatible Linux forks.
The BSD license does not prevent this either, there are many incompatible versions of BSD unix.
Because of this, neither the GNU license nor the BSD license is perfect in my point of view.
Maybe SCSL goes to far in its effort to prevent forking but I'm not aware of a better license that also prevents forking.
Jilles
I think the point about forking is this:
What if, god forbid, the current group "controlling" linux kernel distributions went nuts (i.e. for whatever reason they starting making wacky changes and "improvements" on the kernel that a majority of Linux users didn't like)? Under GPL, that majority (or a minority if they are disgusted with it enough) can take the source they do like and start a new group who "control" the development of the linux kernel. Under this sun license, apparently if a group of users/programmers decided that sun was developing java in the wrong way they could not take the last java they liked and develop it how they want.
And that is what I always saw forking as -- and undesirable (and sad) thing that might happpen to a software project that *may* be necessary. In an open source project I think the ability to fork is paramount because one could contribute work to a project only to find that the "official" version no longer does what one thinks it should do. What does one do then? Lay down and cry or fork the project? (Assuming one wants to take the time. Presumable there would also be like minded individuals.)
Rachael
"Go Forth Ye Lemmings and Propagate"
Ok, since everyone is talking about all the
d e/bugs/4156278.html
things that could happen with the SCSL, I
thought it might be a good time to tell you
all a real problem with the current Java API
and how Sun interacts with developers.
I have been trying to get Sun to fix the
Runtime.exec() API for more than a year.
If you are a Java developer, you probally
already know what I am talking about. The
exec() method does not provide a useful
way to set env vars or to exec() a process
with a current directory other than the one
the JVM was started in.
If you are a JDC member you can read all
about it at this URL. (Sorry, if you
can not view this URL, but Sun will not
let people look at Java bug reports without
joining the JDC and agreeing to a license).
http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/bugPara
I submitted this bug report on July 10, 1998
and it was not "reviewed" until June 28, 1999.
It was then shelved for another 3 months when
they decided to "fix" the problem. Now comes
the tricky part. There is no real information
about how they intend to "fix" this bug, and
the reviewer mentions that they are not even
going to fix "all" of the problems with this
API, just the current directory problem. So
I still have no real feedback and I will have
to wait until the new release of the JDK to
see how they decided to "fix" this bug. There
is something really wrong here. This
kind of crap would never happen on a real
Open Source project.
Mo DeJong
CHAORD = pleasant B.S.? Please...
.rso/ know what the word means. But hopefully, that will change =P
A Chaord exists in the phase between CHAos and ORDer. It's any complex, adaptive, self-regulating system capable of constant learning and evolution. Like VISA. Like the Internet. Like Linux. Unlike any "for-stock" corporations.
Allow me to repeat:
VISA. ($1.2 trillion in sales last year.) It's an info-age corporation with 30 years experience, growing 20% every year past booms bubbles busts bear bulls. No IPO's, take-overs, buy-outs, trade-outs, shake-outs, raids. Why? It's owned by its members. Shared in "non-transferable rights of participation". Dee Hock, who founded VISA, wanted to extend ownership to merchants and cardholders, but it wasn't possible at the time. Had it been, he believes it would be four times more powerful today.
Key to Visa's success is chaos/organized *open* structure that attracts the by far most valuable (and least used) resource on earth: human ingenuity.
call it "chaorganization". read about it here here here
SCSL will have great difficulty enabling any true chaord, because in the end, their "community" is responsible Sun's shareholding owners. Sun's aim is to first achieve ubiquity, and then leverage proprietary advantage. It's a shame, because JINI, especially, seems really cool.
CHAORD is the keyword to the most fruitful integration of "open source" and profitable business in the long run. RHAT missed it. Andover.net missed it. (chaords don't do IPO's) It's shocking that so few