I can't think of a license where the above is not the case. If you combine two of them, you get the rules of both. Whoever is complaining about this, IMO, has unrealistic expectations.
I agree. A signed executable is only a problem if some feature of the device is disabled without the signature. In the case of Debian's signed packages, you're given the choice to ignore the fact that there's no signature, you can disable the signature code permanently, and you have the source code for that system and can modify it any way you like.
IMO it's always applied. This is one reason that I feel the complaints about GPL3 from the kernel team were at least somewhat mis-directed. GPL2 had the same stuff they were complaining about, just less obviously.
There isn't any question that RMS experienced Multics. But at the time he wrote the GPL, it was very unlikely that a modified version of the software it applied to would be performed to the public on a large scale and never distributed.
But my understanding is that the Apache License v2 is "less free" than the newBSD/MIT licenses. That is, if I release a work under Apache License v2 it cannot be incorporated into another work or collection that is newBSD/MIT licensed.
There seems to be a persistent source of BSD licensing propaganda that says these things. IMO he or she is attempting to mislead you, or is self-decieved.
It is entirely legal and ethical to combine work under the BSD and Apache 2.0 licenses. When you do so, part of the work is under the BSD license, and part is under the Apache license, and you have to follow the rules of both.
What whoever-it-is is complaining about is that when you combine the two works, the part that is under the Apache license doesn't automatically become a work under the BSD license instead of the Apache license.
This is also true for all other licenses. Unless there is a license somewhere that says "if you combine me with a BSD work, I automatically become the BSD license".
I can't imagine what whoever-it-is expected would happen. I would rather have the Apache license anyway, because of the patent terms. Who wants to lose them?
GPL2 has problems with signed applications as well.
For an executable work, complete source
code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any
associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to
control compilation and installation of the executable.
You can make a pretty good case that this involves the secret key used to sign the application, if it won't work otherwise.
It won't protect you from everyone, only from companies that are actually making use of your software. There is language to that effect in all of the licenses I suggest.
Do you, then, advocate that protocol reference implementations should be supplied under a license which allows examination but prohibits modification of the source code?
No. But it seems that amateur software engineers generally pay immediately for their mistakes and in any case they are easy to rectify. The mistakes of amateur license writers can stay with us for decades and often can't be fixed at all. But the tools for them to make their mistakes are still available to them. We just set the bar a bit higher.
Can I have a bit more detail? Digium has a driver that they haven't distributed at all, or they just haven't given it to Zapata Software (creators of Zaptel), or they haven't done anything to fix it in years?
AGPL would be an appropriate license for a mail server. It doesn't place a burden on the user, only the developer or one who would modify the software.
No one got fired because there were too many licenses.
That's silly, lots of companies have failed that might still be here with a viable Open Source strategy.
Attorneys are concerned with avoiding liability for their company and having enforcible licenses. If you had an employee who went around all day with his hands on his buttocks due to some irrational fear, your choice would be to terminate him or send him for psychological help. Attorneys can be more paranoid than systems programmers, and sometimes a manager must temper this.
Web frameworks are for supporting proprietary stuff, so they have to be under a license that allows it to be linked directly. Operating systems kernels don't generally have this problem, the license isn't transmitted to user mode. GPL was very effective with Linux because the main collaborators really were competitors, and considered operating systems to be of too high value to give away with no strings.
Why is it "smart" to copyright text, but not smart (restrictive, proprietary, evil etc.) to copyright source code?
Both are copyrighted. One grants the right to modify, one does not.
Consider why it is not smart to modify your TCP/IP stack to be incompatible with the standard. You have the right to do so, but doing so will make it very difficult to communicate with others. And unfortunately engineers and tech companies are more likely to understand the consequences of modifying TCP than those of modifying a license. FSF doesn't prohibit you from using your own license text, they can't. They just decline to help you stick your foot in your mouth by modifying their text.
Because "can share" / "must share" embodies the fundamental difference in Open Source licenses, and each makes business sense for a different set of purposes. In addition. GPL is applied to a very large number of Open Source projects, more than any other license, so the main compatibility issue is that a license be compatible with GPL.
The AGPL3 requires distribution only of programs that actually present interfaces to the outside, not every program. Slashdot used to distribute the slash code. That was back when anyone would have wanted to run it rather than something like wordpress. That code bore the cost of history - its paradigm predated the more elegant web programming platforms, and that showed. I don't know what it looks like today.
Evolutionary theory makes it quite clear that lack of diversity leads to a much higher liklihood of extinction in the event of a crisis, and Open Source is no exception.
If you want your software to survive a Darwinian catastrophe, which in this case means a successful challenge in court, the most important thing is having the possibility to relicense it. FSF would have you use their "and any later version" text so that this is possible.
Other than that, the main difference between licenses is popularity. GPL currently wins the popularity contest. But it seems to me that incompatibility is too big a cost if the benefit is just the popularity contest.
How did he 'write the rules' in 1997 when GNU & FSF long predated this?
They're the rules for the Open Source Initiative and the Debian Project to approve licensing.
Richard wrote a statement of the Four Freedoms in an early edition of the GNUs Bulletin, which was mostly distributed in paper form on the MIT campus and environs. He did not further promote them until a long time later. So, when I had to write license guidelines for Debian, the Four Freedoms document was unknown. I sent my document to Richard, and he wrote back that he felt it was a good definition of Free Software. Surprisingly, he did not mention his Four Freedoms document in that correspondence.
Much later, FSF published its statement of the Four Freedoms on its web site as an alternative to the Open Source Definition.
I am waiting for BSD kernel development and user popularity to overtake Linux, before I believe that the GPL hasn't played a very strong role in making something like Linux possible. Don't worry, I won't hold my breath.
I agree that GFDL is a botch. I used the Open Content License (otherwise mostly unknown today) for my own books. My problem with Creative Content is that it's one name over a broad spectrum of incompatible licenses that have few rights in common other than the right to read the text at all. Can/can't distribute, can/can't do it commercially, can/can't modify, and so on.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't think of a license where the above is not the case. If you combine two of them, you get the rules of both. Whoever is complaining about this, IMO, has unrealistic expectations.
Thanks
Bruce
According to FSF, Apache 2.0 is still incompatible with GPL2, but not GPL3, due to a minor issue of wording.
The anti lock-down provision in GPL3 that the kernel team doesn't like also exists in GPL2. The wording is less obvious in GPL2, but it's there.
Thanks
Bruce
Because the kernel developers don't want to bring the lawsuit. It has to be on behalf of the copyright holders.
I'm going by Freshmeat's statistics for project licensing.
I agree. A signed executable is only a problem if some feature of the device is disabled without the signature. In the case of Debian's signed packages, you're given the choice to ignore the fact that there's no signature, you can disable the signature code permanently, and you have the source code for that system and can modify it any way you like.
IMO it's always applied. This is one reason that I feel the complaints about GPL3 from the kernel team were at least somewhat mis-directed. GPL2 had the same stuff they were complaining about, just less obviously.
There isn't any question that RMS experienced Multics. But at the time he wrote the GPL, it was very unlikely that a modified version of the software it applied to would be performed to the public on a large scale and never distributed.
Bruce
There seems to be a persistent source of BSD licensing propaganda that says these things. IMO he or she is attempting to mislead you, or is self-decieved.
It is entirely legal and ethical to combine work under the BSD and Apache 2.0 licenses. When you do so, part of the work is under the BSD license, and part is under the Apache license, and you have to follow the rules of both.
What whoever-it-is is complaining about is that when you combine the two works, the part that is under the Apache license doesn't automatically become a work under the BSD license instead of the Apache license.
This is also true for all other licenses. Unless there is a license somewhere that says "if you combine me with a BSD work, I automatically become the BSD license".
I can't imagine what whoever-it-is expected would happen. I would rather have the Apache license anyway, because of the patent terms. Who wants to lose them?
Bruce
GPL2 has problems with signed applications as well.
You can make a pretty good case that this involves the secret key used to sign the application, if it won't work otherwise.
Thanks
Bruce
It won't protect you from everyone, only from companies that are actually making use of your software. There is language to that effect in all of the licenses I suggest.
No. But it seems that amateur software engineers generally pay immediately for their mistakes and in any case they are easy to rectify. The mistakes of amateur license writers can stay with us for decades and often can't be fixed at all. But the tools for them to make their mistakes are still available to them. We just set the bar a bit higher.
Can I have a bit more detail? Digium has a driver that they haven't distributed at all, or they just haven't given it to Zapata Software (creators of Zaptel), or they haven't done anything to fix it in years?
AGPL would be an appropriate license for a mail server. It doesn't place a burden on the user, only the developer or one who would modify the software.
That's silly, lots of companies have failed that might still be here with a viable Open Source strategy.
Attorneys are concerned with avoiding liability for their company and having enforcible licenses. If you had an employee who went around all day with his hands on his buttocks due to some irrational fear, your choice would be to terminate him or send him for psychological help. Attorneys can be more paranoid than systems programmers, and sometimes a manager must temper this.
Bruce
Bruce
GPL2 and GPL3 includes the "system library exception" text. There is also a special license on the GCC runtime.
Both are copyrighted. One grants the right to modify, one does not.
Consider why it is not smart to modify your TCP/IP stack to be incompatible with the standard. You have the right to do so, but doing so will make it very difficult to communicate with others. And unfortunately engineers and tech companies are more likely to understand the consequences of modifying TCP than those of modifying a license. FSF doesn't prohibit you from using your own license text, they can't. They just decline to help you stick your foot in your mouth by modifying their text.
Bruce
Because "can share" / "must share" embodies the fundamental difference in Open Source licenses, and each makes business sense for a different set of purposes. In addition. GPL is applied to a very large number of Open Source projects, more than any other license, so the main compatibility issue is that a license be compatible with GPL.
Slashdot, or at least commander taco, has generally been unwilling to do anything to help me.
If I had submitted this article to Slashdot directly, they would not have published it.
Bruce
The AGPL3 requires distribution only of programs that actually present interfaces to the outside, not every program. Slashdot used to distribute the slash code. That was back when anyone would have wanted to run it rather than something like wordpress. That code bore the cost of history - its paradigm predated the more elegant web programming platforms, and that showed. I don't know what it looks like today.
If you want your software to survive a Darwinian catastrophe, which in this case means a successful challenge in court, the most important thing is having the possibility to relicense it. FSF would have you use their "and any later version" text so that this is possible.
Other than that, the main difference between licenses is popularity. GPL currently wins the popularity contest. But it seems to me that incompatibility is too big a cost if the benefit is just the popularity contest.
They're the rules for the Open Source Initiative and the Debian Project to approve licensing.
Richard wrote a statement of the Four Freedoms in an early edition of the GNUs Bulletin, which was mostly distributed in paper form on the MIT campus and environs. He did not further promote them until a long time later. So, when I had to write license guidelines for Debian, the Four Freedoms document was unknown. I sent my document to Richard, and he wrote back that he felt it was a good definition of Free Software. Surprisingly, he did not mention his Four Freedoms document in that correspondence.
Much later, FSF published its statement of the Four Freedoms on its web site as an alternative to the Open Source Definition.
Bruce
I don't like public domain because there's nothing to protect you from patent lawsuits.
I am waiting for BSD kernel development and user popularity to overtake Linux, before I believe that the GPL hasn't played a very strong role in making something like Linux possible. Don't worry, I won't hold my breath.
I agree that GFDL is a botch. I used the Open Content License (otherwise mostly unknown today) for my own books. My problem with Creative Content is that it's one name over a broad spectrum of incompatible licenses that have few rights in common other than the right to read the text at all. Can/can't distribute, can/can't do it commercially, can/can't modify, and so on.