There are actually two issues here. First, is there any legal weight behind the GPL? Answer: of course there is! But the second, and more important, issue is whether the FSF's interpretation of the GPL is legally correct.
This is why the FSF does NOT want to see the GPL before a court. Their interpretation might turn out to be wrong. Here's one example: the interpretation of "derivative". Copyright law is vague on the definition of derivative work. The FSF has always held that dynamic linkage (and in some cases runtime linkage) constitutes derivation. They use "common process address space" as their criteria. But what if a court disagreed with them? Here's another example: system libraries. The GPL makes an exception for libraries and components that come with the system or compiler. This is why they say the GPL is compatible with the Win32 and MFC libraries, but not compatible with the Motif or (old) Qt libraries. But what if a court ruled that system components included anything shipped by a Linux distribution on the CD/DVD?
Actually, the FSF allows *ANY* use, modification or distribution internal to a business. That's because they consider the business to be a legal entity without regards to incorporation. This was their basis for denying the "Free" imprimatur to the ASPL.
Their position isn't necessarily reasonable though, merely practical. It's more practical for your licensee to be a single entity rather than a collection of entities. It's practical not to sue a company for giving a modified binary-only copy of the software to the secretary. It's unreasonable, though, because it leads to arbitrariness. What do you do about other company divisions? Third party contractors? Suppliers? What if an employee takes the software home for personal use? What if he gives it to another employee *after* work hours?
Do you mean "commercial" or "proprietary"? BSD has spun off quite a few open source commercial endeavors. Official OpenBSD ISO images are for sale only. FreeBSD Mall and BSD Mall are commercial resellers (though not forks). Then there's Sleepycat Software. As for proprietary commercial forks, there are several notable ones. The biggest and most obvious is Solaris which was derived from SunOS which was derived from BSD. There's the BSD stack for virtually every proprietary operating system. There's Spice. Both Netscape and Internet Explorer were derived from Mosaic and its BSD-like license. Many others besides. All commercial OGG players (either hardware or software) derive from a BSD licenses OGG library.
One of the purposes of the GPL is to keep the software behind the fences of the Free Software commons. But one of the purposes of the BSD license is the opposite: to allow everyone to use the code for any purpose. As such BSD licensed code has found its way everywhere in the software world, even into the fenced off pastures of GNU and Linux.
You've given us an excellent example of the Wikipedia bias. Fourteen out of twenty two lines in the Bitkeeper entry are about the Linux/Bitkeeper controversy. That's two thirds of the article! Two lines are about it being closed source, and three lines about a Linux vulnerability it prevented. That leaves only three lines out of twenty two that bother to talk about what Bitkeeper is.
I believe you should have the right to jump off a cliff if you so desire, but it will be your fault if you hit the ground beneath at high velocity. I believe you should have the right to ingest anabolic steroid capsules the size of baseballs if you so desire, but it will be your fault if your heart explodes by the time you're thirty. And I believe you should have the right to incessant whining if you so desire, but it will be your fault if your face gets pounded into a pulp because of it.
All good points I'm sure, but it ignores the issue. Why are so many people spending so much time tracking down violations of a *free* software license? It's like hiring police to prevent trespassing in a free access public park.
Tell that to Redhat, SuSE, and all the other commrcial Linux distros. It seems to me that SOME people at least are purchasing stuff they could have taken for free.
Our Fearless Leaders at Work
on
Juiced
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Am I the only one who thinks Congress's priorities are completely out of whack? Aren't there more important things they could be focusing on? Sheesh.
But if all the ISPs in their area cut them off, they'll have to get their act together and start behaving. Or maybe you'll luck out and all the zombies will end up on one ISP and you can ban the whole netblock.
Letting people shit on your restaurant tables just because you're afraid to lose a customer is NOT good business.
Like most things in legal realm, it depends on the circumstances. If it can be demonstrated that the deriving author had read the GPL, this a judge would probably presume that he meant to distribute the derivative work under the GPL.
But that's still no excuse for proper copyright notices! Always include copyright notices, even on derivative works. This isn't for your sake, it's for your users' sake. And as a user, be suspicious of any code without copyright notices, and any derivative code with only the copyright notice of the original author.
Re:Why is this under BSD???
on
KDE 3.4 Released
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· Score: 2, Informative
Why does it bother you??? You're like my brother when I was a kid, getting your trousers in a twist just because you have to share mom and dad with another sibling.
Seriously, KDE is a desktop for BOTH Linux and BSD (and SysV). So you will find this same story under both sections.
But what happens with the code that has been released?
In every derivative source there are at least two parts, the code belonging to the original author (the original code), and the code belonging to the deriving author (the new code). While the original author can regulate the create of the new code, he does NOT hold copyright to it. This is crucial. The opposite view (that the original author owns everything) is common but incorrect. The original author claim damages from a wrongful derivation, but he can't claim ownership of the derivative work.
What does this mean? The GPL applies to the original code, but it can only apply to the new code if the deriving author says so. If the deriving author has incorrectly distributed the derivative work, no one who receives it has the right to any of the bits constituting the new code. It is NOT under the GPL. Let me repeat, it is NOT under the GPL. The deriving author didn't have the right to distribute the code, and so has no right to enforce any of his EULAs or licenses on it, but don't think for a minute that what you hold in your hands is Free Software.
However, the practical issues arising from this situation are enormous. This has never happened in real life before (with regards to the GPL), but I suspect that if the company didn't want to put their derivation under the GPL, then they would have to pay some sort of damages to the original author and make a good faith effort to "recall" their unauthorized derivative.
I do have a battlemat myself. They are very usefull. But what this story is talking about is something very different. That's not role playing, it's more like "Nethack: The LARP".
This is only necessary for dungeon crawls. This is a very minor subgroup of RPG gaming. In fact, it's very hard to justify the "R" in the acronym in dungeon crawls.
What about GPL developers who violate the BSD license? Why does the GPL using community tolerate members who violate other licenses? What makes it's okay to violate the copyright and license of non-GPL software? Why does the GPL community tolerate such behavior in its members?
But it's still package management. Calling it a software installer is like calling vi a word processor, or AbiWord a text editor. That we're even arguing over the proper term for a package manager is a clear sign that the Usability Inquisition has gone too far.
And nowadays, you can even choose among a bunch of mainstream languages like that: Java, C#, VisualBasic, OCAML, and Python, to name just a few.
I've used some of those languages, and a few others besides. But I'm still waiting for one that will compile down to native machine code without the overhead of a massive runtime library. As an embedded developer I don't have the option of writing bloatware.
Re:I just want C++ programs to COMPILE faster
on
GCC 4.0 Preview
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· Score: 1
On a single CPU system, the compile is still I/O heavy, so that a -j2 can make an appreciable difference in compile times. Another tip is to mount/tmp on a ramdisk, or at least mount it on a different disk drive than the source.
Slashdot Mirror
There are actually two issues here. First, is there any legal weight behind the GPL? Answer: of course there is! But the second, and more important, issue is whether the FSF's interpretation of the GPL is legally correct.
This is why the FSF does NOT want to see the GPL before a court. Their interpretation might turn out to be wrong. Here's one example: the interpretation of "derivative". Copyright law is vague on the definition of derivative work. The FSF has always held that dynamic linkage (and in some cases runtime linkage) constitutes derivation. They use "common process address space" as their criteria. But what if a court disagreed with them? Here's another example: system libraries. The GPL makes an exception for libraries and components that come with the system or compiler. This is why they say the GPL is compatible with the Win32 and MFC libraries, but not compatible with the Motif or (old) Qt libraries. But what if a court ruled that system components included anything shipped by a Linux distribution on the CD/DVD?
Actually, the FSF allows *ANY* use, modification or distribution internal to a business. That's because they consider the business to be a legal entity without regards to incorporation. This was their basis for denying the "Free" imprimatur to the ASPL.
Their position isn't necessarily reasonable though, merely practical. It's more practical for your licensee to be a single entity rather than a collection of entities. It's practical not to sue a company for giving a modified binary-only copy of the software to the secretary. It's unreasonable, though, because it leads to arbitrariness. What do you do about other company divisions? Third party contractors? Suppliers? What if an employee takes the software home for personal use? What if he gives it to another employee *after* work hours?
The BSA: helping old ladies across the street then extorting them for license payments for over century!
Do you mean "commercial" or "proprietary"? BSD has spun off quite a few open source commercial endeavors. Official OpenBSD ISO images are for sale only. FreeBSD Mall and BSD Mall are commercial resellers (though not forks). Then there's Sleepycat Software. As for proprietary commercial forks, there are several notable ones. The biggest and most obvious is Solaris which was derived from SunOS which was derived from BSD. There's the BSD stack for virtually every proprietary operating system. There's Spice. Both Netscape and Internet Explorer were derived from Mosaic and its BSD-like license. Many others besides. All commercial OGG players (either hardware or software) derive from a BSD licenses OGG library.
One of the purposes of the GPL is to keep the software behind the fences of the Free Software commons. But one of the purposes of the BSD license is the opposite: to allow everyone to use the code for any purpose. As such BSD licensed code has found its way everywhere in the software world, even into the fenced off pastures of GNU and Linux.
You've given us an excellent example of the Wikipedia bias. Fourteen out of twenty two lines in the Bitkeeper entry are about the Linux/Bitkeeper controversy. That's two thirds of the article! Two lines are about it being closed source, and three lines about a Linux vulnerability it prevented. That leaves only three lines out of twenty two that bother to talk about what Bitkeeper is.
I believe you should have the right to jump off a cliff if you so desire, but it will be your fault if you hit the ground beneath at high velocity. I believe you should have the right to ingest anabolic steroid capsules the size of baseballs if you so desire, but it will be your fault if your heart explodes by the time you're thirty. And I believe you should have the right to incessant whining if you so desire, but it will be your fault if your face gets pounded into a pulp because of it.
The purpose of the license isn't to get OSI approval, but to wag appendages at uptight licensing legalists.
All good points I'm sure, but it ignores the issue. Why are so many people spending so much time tracking down violations of a *free* software license? It's like hiring police to prevent trespassing in a free access public park.
Tell that to Redhat, SuSE, and all the other commrcial Linux distros. It seems to me that SOME people at least are purchasing stuff they could have taken for free.
Am I the only one who thinks Congress's priorities are completely out of whack? Aren't there more important things they could be focusing on? Sheesh.
But if all the ISPs in their area cut them off, they'll have to get their act together and start behaving. Or maybe you'll luck out and all the zombies will end up on one ISP and you can ban the whole netblock.
Letting people shit on your restaurant tables just because you're afraid to lose a customer is NOT good business.
I don't have it in Qt, I don't have it in GTK+, I don't have it in Motif. Maybe I just don't have any menus large enough to scroll...
I have seen this in Windows, and I hated it. Of course, I'm not an newbie, so what do I know?
...since most menus (quite sanely) scroll vertically.
Since when? Please define "most"...
Does it look like Windows? Of course it does! It has a title bar on top! Sheesh...
Visual Basic and "technologically mature" rarely go hand in hand...
Like most things in legal realm, it depends on the circumstances. If it can be demonstrated that the deriving author had read the GPL, this a judge would probably presume that he meant to distribute the derivative work under the GPL.
But that's still no excuse for proper copyright notices! Always include copyright notices, even on derivative works. This isn't for your sake, it's for your users' sake. And as a user, be suspicious of any code without copyright notices, and any derivative code with only the copyright notice of the original author.
Why does it bother you??? You're like my brother when I was a kid, getting your trousers in a twist just because you have to share mom and dad with another sibling.
Seriously, KDE is a desktop for BOTH Linux and BSD (and SysV). So you will find this same story under both sections.
But what happens with the code that has been released?
In every derivative source there are at least two parts, the code belonging to the original author (the original code), and the code belonging to the deriving author (the new code). While the original author can regulate the create of the new code, he does NOT hold copyright to it. This is crucial. The opposite view (that the original author owns everything) is common but incorrect. The original author claim damages from a wrongful derivation, but he can't claim ownership of the derivative work.
What does this mean? The GPL applies to the original code, but it can only apply to the new code if the deriving author says so. If the deriving author has incorrectly distributed the derivative work, no one who receives it has the right to any of the bits constituting the new code. It is NOT under the GPL. Let me repeat, it is NOT under the GPL. The deriving author didn't have the right to distribute the code, and so has no right to enforce any of his EULAs or licenses on it, but don't think for a minute that what you hold in your hands is Free Software.
However, the practical issues arising from this situation are enormous. This has never happened in real life before (with regards to the GPL), but I suspect that if the company didn't want to put their derivation under the GPL, then they would have to pay some sort of damages to the original author and make a good faith effort to "recall" their unauthorized derivative.
I do have a battlemat myself. They are very usefull. But what this story is talking about is something very different. That's not role playing, it's more like "Nethack: The LARP".
Then call it "Manage Packages" instead.
This is only necessary for dungeon crawls. This is a very minor subgroup of RPG gaming. In fact, it's very hard to justify the "R" in the acronym in dungeon crawls.
What about GPL developers who violate the BSD license? Why does the GPL using community tolerate members who violate other licenses? What makes it's okay to violate the copyright and license of non-GPL software? Why does the GPL community tolerate such behavior in its members?
http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/g4l.html
But it's still package management. Calling it a software installer is like calling vi a word processor, or AbiWord a text editor. That we're even arguing over the proper term for a package manager is a clear sign that the Usability Inquisition has gone too far.
And nowadays, you can even choose among a bunch of mainstream languages like that: Java, C#, VisualBasic, OCAML, and Python, to name just a few.
I've used some of those languages, and a few others besides. But I'm still waiting for one that will compile down to native machine code without the overhead of a massive runtime library. As an embedded developer I don't have the option of writing bloatware.
On a single CPU system, the compile is still I/O heavy, so that a -j2 can make an appreciable difference in compile times. Another tip is to mount /tmp on a ramdisk, or at least mount it on a different disk drive than the source.