There are also the OASIS royalty-free rules for the ODF committee. IBM and Sun are contributors, and they are bound by those rules.
There is also the matter of your own protection from patent aggressors. You might think about using LGPL3 just for the patent language. It allows commercial derivatives as BSD does. Or you could use some license with termination on patent suit, like the Mozilla ones. Look at the way the JMRI developer got sued for patent infringement by a manufacturer who actually embeds JMRI in his product. IMO that was a very chilling event for anyone who doesn't have patent protection in their license.
I don't think you have any reason to say that unless you see anyone actually attempting to do that and a court actually agreeing with them. You can rely on the court enforcing a large body of law, going all the way back to common law of centuries ago, that people have the right to rely on a promise.
Contract law has different interpretations between counties, states and federal districts. Is there a state in which the law would acknowledge the dissolution of one sided software contract (possibly similar to UCC..)?
I'm ignoring for the moment the issue of whether it is a contract at all. Some licenses have langugage that makes them revocable. Not the GPL, of course. It's really difficult to make the court agree that other parties should not have a right to rely on your previous promises, if those parties bother to come to court and challenge.
SFLC probably doesn't like any patent covenants, even Sun's and IBM's, regarding GPL software. But unlike Microsoft, Sun and IBM have themselves participated in the development of GPL code implementing the standards those covenants were meant to cover, and thus they are also covered by the GPL's language regarding patents.
Microsoft, in contrast, hasn't bound itself to the GPL during the development of any existing OOXML implementation. Microsoft has also behaved in a very hostile manner, for example spreading FUD about their patents (we still don't have the list) covering our existing software. So, we don't have much reason to read their agreements in a favorable light.
The reason it's really not irrevocable is that it states in writing that future versions of anything under the promise are not automaticaly under the promise. So, if they add a feature and you were interoperable before, you may not have the right to be interoperable any longer. It's the usual embrance-and-enhance stuff we've seen from Microsoft.
"Yes" and "no" are not complete answers to this question, it's more complicated than that, so "yes" and "no" really can both be true for different parts of the question. A better answer is that you have all of the rights of a copyright holder to license your own code differently, but the promises you've already made are still binding on you. You can not tell the folks that you've given GPL code that they no longer have the rights that you gave them under the GPL. So, what you get is that the code you released will be out in the world under the GPL forever. You can also put a commercial license on that code and sell the license, and people who want to not have to comply with the GPL will buy that license. Any new code you make doesn't have to go under the GPL.
Don't take other people's GPL modifications to your code and commercial license them! You aren't the copyright holder to that stuff. You have to pay them or otherwise get the rights from them before you can do that.
It looks like I owe you an apology. FYI, my phone number is 510-984-1055, it's on my web site too. You are welcome to call any time if you have questions or complaints, as are all in the community. It rings in my home and office. It doesn't accept calls when we would be asleep.
I am surprised that the thing actually got one hearing. I never knew. Obviously the fact that you were involved at all is absurd, that a Magistrate would suggest that sort of judgement against you is highly absurd.
That looks like the statement I made. I haven't run "diff".
At the time the lawsuit was filed, I asked Slashdot's company and Novell for help. No help was forthcoming from either company. This worried me more than anything about the case, not because I needed help that much, but because those companies were willing to let their community down that way.
I had some advice from Larry Rosen, who felt that the case was bull, and that nobody was really threatened. If I had known that you would be threatened to the extent you were by the Magistrate's statement, I might have acted differently. But in the end, Larry was right - nothing came of the case.
My main reason for getting out of the case was that in a fight as stupid as that, everybody looks stupid. Walking away was the only respectable action, in my opinion at the time.
Jeff Merkey's family thought it was stupid too, and pressured him to stop, and he approached me and settled. I gave him a statement that did not compliment him and did discourage the folks on Slashdot who really did talk about physical violence. Remember, this was at the hight of the SCO stuff, and tempers were high. Sure, the talk about physical violence was inflated and taken advantage of by anyone who wanted us to look bad in the press. But the reality is that if you don't want to look bad for that sort of stuff, you have to make sure that you and your friends are not doing any of it at all. My comment was effective at stopping that stuff.
Jimbo Wales problems now stem from the Wikipedia's growing pains, the mistakes that any leader makes when going from nothing to high visibility, the fact that various entities would like to see Wikipedia tarnished, and just the fact that his and Wikipedia's profile is high enough that gossip about him gets web hits for news sites. I've been there. IMO, his worst problem is nothing to do with this, it's the fact that Google looks as if they might do their best to screw Wikipedia and get something that they own, and that carries their ads, in its place. We've never really seen Google turn against an Open Source project before, this will be interesting if it really happens. IMO, Google would lose.
So, you must be angry about all of this. I'm sorry. I didn't know.
A public call for opposion is hardly enough unless that was part of the legalses that included the contribution.
Well, people say this but the reality is that Linux has has two significant license modifications, Wikipedia has had one, and not all parties were contacted when these things happened. Many Open Source projects go through similar changes. Until you get a court case, it's not going to be 100% sure, but as far as I can tell right now, the absent, dead, etc. can't hold up the majority of the Open Source developers if they decide to make a change to their collective work.
MySQL is under the same license, and look what it sold for. $50,000 was a silly offer. Needing to locate all contributors is oft-repeated, but IMO not necessarily true. I think that a change to GPL3 could be done with just a public call for opposition and a note directed to the last known email address of all known contributors. Anyone who opposes has their code pulled and replaced. Anyone asleep at the switch during such a widely-publicized event is going to have trouble convincing a court about their rights later on.
I don't think a change to BSD is anything the kernel team would seriously consider, though.
Didn't he also offer to pay $50,000 if they'd BSD-license Linux or something?
Uh-huh. He vastly underestimated the value of the code and the difficulty of getting that kind of license change done. Most folks took the offer as an insult.
Jeff Merkey filed suit against me, and against PJ, some years ago. His family eventually convinced him to withdraw the suit against me, I don't know how his suit against PJ was resolved. The legal opinion I had at the time was that the suit would never see a hearing, but it was still a nuisance.
Jeff mostly just wants to be listened to. He can be grandiose and can get somewhat separated from reality.
Any article about Jeff on Wikipedia that relates events around Novell, SCO, and other stuff in 2005 would be a liability problem. I am not the slightest bit surprised that Wales had to re-write it. I don't think this has to be connected to a donation.
I think the phrase you want for this is disclosed source. The fact that you can see it doesn't mean it's open. The license makes it useful mostly as an academic curiousity and a source of litigation if you try to do anything real with it. I guess you could say that it's open in the same way that a glue-trap is open for a mouse:-)
Real Open Source satisfies all of the terms in the Open Source Definition, which includes things like the right to modify, the right to distribute, no discrimination, etc. Without those things the software is neither open nor very useful.
Off the top of my head I can think of three organizations that accept assignments of GPL code: FSF, SPI, and SFLC said they would start something to do this last year but I don't know its name. There is also the Apache foundation if you like their license. All four have their own lawyers.
IMO the only reason to make your own foundation is if you want to own a special right that nobody else has, like the right to vend proprietary licenses. There is not much point in this since the other copyright holder won't budge.
Has nothing to do with those big screen TV's for the morning news, nor
the dual monitors and multicore processors for email.
Uh, no. It has mostly to do with increasing use of air conditioning. New TVs are more power-efficient compared than the cathode-ray-tube TVs they replace. Multi-core processors have smaller transistors than older ones, and they use idle power management more effectively than older processors.
I pointed to your comment only because _after_ more information was made available, it didn't seem so insightful
But it did get the original article author to give us the missing information:-)
The problem with being held very highly by some folks is that if some day they decide they disagree with me, I immediately go to the opposite pole and they consider me to be evil incarnate. Fortunately, most of them grow up eventually. I'd be most happy to be accepted as an often-knowledgable human being with faults. My notoriety is important, though, because it helps me to get people to listen about issues that are important to us.
I can live with Slashdot moderation. What I do have a problem with is that I can't get my damn submissions approved when they're important. Slashdot actually rejected a submission on the California "Open Voting" bill.
I have had disagreements with Bruce in the past and found some of his comments lacking in this respect.
Your slashdot user name is "sumdumass" and you want respect?:-)
The original article claims that the copyright is held by more than one commercial company. Implying not all by him. I took that to mean "not siginificantly by him" because I find it difficult to believe that he is a viable commercial company and has to ask Slashdot for legal advice.
Slashdot Mirror
Bruce
There is also the matter of your own protection from patent aggressors. You might think about using LGPL3 just for the patent language. It allows commercial derivatives as BSD does. Or you could use some license with termination on patent suit, like the Mozilla ones. Look at the way the JMRI developer got sued for patent infringement by a manufacturer who actually embeds JMRI in his product. IMO that was a very chilling event for anyone who doesn't have patent protection in their license.
Thanks
Bruce
I don't think you have any reason to say that unless you see anyone actually attempting to do that and a court actually agreeing with them. You can rely on the court enforcing a large body of law, going all the way back to common law of centuries ago, that people have the right to rely on a promise.
Wrong analogy. Suppose the owner of the cabin changed the sign while you were inside. You would have the right to rely on the previous invitation.
If this happened to a program they were actually wanted to be seen with, they would at least have made an amicus brief.
Bruce
I'm ignoring for the moment the issue of whether it is a contract at all. Some licenses have langugage that makes them revocable. Not the GPL, of course. It's really difficult to make the court agree that other parties should not have a right to rely on your previous promises, if those parties bother to come to court and challenge.
Bruce
Microsoft, in contrast, hasn't bound itself to the GPL during the development of any existing OOXML implementation. Microsoft has also behaved in a very hostile manner, for example spreading FUD about their patents (we still don't have the list) covering our existing software. So, we don't have much reason to read their agreements in a favorable light.
Bruce
The reason it's really not irrevocable is that it states in writing that future versions of anything under the promise are not automaticaly under the promise. So, if they add a feature and you were interoperable before, you may not have the right to be interoperable any longer. It's the usual embrance-and-enhance stuff we've seen from Microsoft.
Don't take other people's GPL modifications to your code and commercial license them! You aren't the copyright holder to that stuff. You have to pay them or otherwise get the rights from them before you can do that.
Bruce
It looks like I owe you an apology. FYI, my phone number is 510-984-1055, it's on my web site too. You are welcome to call any time if you have questions or complaints, as are all in the community. It rings in my home and office. It doesn't accept calls when we would be asleep.
I am surprised that the thing actually got one hearing. I never knew. Obviously the fact that you were involved at all is absurd, that a Magistrate would suggest that sort of judgement against you is highly absurd.
That looks like the statement I made. I haven't run "diff".
At the time the lawsuit was filed, I asked Slashdot's company and Novell for help. No help was forthcoming from either company. This worried me more than anything about the case, not because I needed help that much, but because those companies were willing to let their community down that way.
I had some advice from Larry Rosen, who felt that the case was bull, and that nobody was really threatened. If I had known that you would be threatened to the extent you were by the Magistrate's statement, I might have acted differently. But in the end, Larry was right - nothing came of the case.
My main reason for getting out of the case was that in a fight as stupid as that, everybody looks stupid. Walking away was the only respectable action, in my opinion at the time.
Jeff Merkey's family thought it was stupid too, and pressured him to stop, and he approached me and settled. I gave him a statement that did not compliment him and did discourage the folks on Slashdot who really did talk about physical violence. Remember, this was at the hight of the SCO stuff, and tempers were high. Sure, the talk about physical violence was inflated and taken advantage of by anyone who wanted us to look bad in the press. But the reality is that if you don't want to look bad for that sort of stuff, you have to make sure that you and your friends are not doing any of it at all. My comment was effective at stopping that stuff.
Jimbo Wales problems now stem from the Wikipedia's growing pains, the mistakes that any leader makes when going from nothing to high visibility, the fact that various entities would like to see Wikipedia tarnished, and just the fact that his and Wikipedia's profile is high enough that gossip about him gets web hits for news sites. I've been there. IMO, his worst problem is nothing to do with this, it's the fact that Google looks as if they might do their best to screw Wikipedia and get something that they own, and that carries their ads, in its place. We've never really seen Google turn against an Open Source project before, this will be interesting if it really happens. IMO, Google would lose.
So, you must be angry about all of this. I'm sorry. I didn't know.
Bruce
Well, people say this but the reality is that Linux has has two significant license modifications, Wikipedia has had one, and not all parties were contacted when these things happened. Many Open Source projects go through similar changes. Until you get a court case, it's not going to be 100% sure, but as far as I can tell right now, the absent, dead, etc. can't hold up the majority of the Open Source developers if they decide to make a change to their collective work.
Consider that a good deal of the value of MySQL was the code. 172 Million seems a bit low for the kernel.
I don't think a change to BSD is anything the kernel team would seriously consider, though.
So, instead of hearing from the horse's mouth, you'd rather hear from the other end of the horse?
Jeff mostly just wants to be listened to. He can be grandiose and can get somewhat separated from reality.
Any article about Jeff on Wikipedia that relates events around Novell, SCO, and other stuff in 2005 would be a liability problem. I am not the slightest bit surprised that Wales had to re-write it. I don't think this has to be connected to a donation.
Bruce
Real Open Source satisfies all of the terms in the Open Source Definition, which includes things like the right to modify, the right to distribute, no discrimination, etc. Without those things the software is neither open nor very useful.
Bruce
IMO the only reason to make your own foundation is if you want to own a special right that nobody else has, like the right to vend proprietary licenses. There is not much point in this since the other copyright holder won't budge.
Bruce
The problem with being held very highly by some folks is that if some day they decide they disagree with me, I immediately go to the opposite pole and they consider me to be evil incarnate. Fortunately, most of them grow up eventually. I'd be most happy to be accepted as an often-knowledgable human being with faults. My notoriety is important, though, because it helps me to get people to listen about issues that are important to us.
I can live with Slashdot moderation. What I do have a problem with is that I can't get my damn submissions approved when they're important. Slashdot actually rejected a submission on the California "Open Voting" bill.
Bruce
The original article claims that the copyright is held by more than one commercial company. Implying not all by him. I took that to mean "not siginificantly by him" because I find it difficult to believe that he is a viable commercial company and has to ask Slashdot for legal advice.
I am told that Vista includes TWO slots per timezone for deltas. Why they don't just use the Olsen package is beyond me.
Here's the Zoneinfo article in Wikipedia. Impressive.