:ZDNet: Caldera to introduce modified open-source license
ZDNet: Caldera to introduce modified open-source license May 10, 2001, 13 :03 UTC (106 Talkback[s]) (15578 reads) (Other stories by Mary Jo Foley)
Ransom Love of Caldera says the GPL might not be the best license going for commercial software, and to that end he plans to consider other licenses. "Microsoft is attacking open source at its weakest point: the GPL," he says.
"Caldera has some similar misgivings -- not about the GPL model being the optimal one for open-source development, but about how appropriate the GPL is for open-source software that is sold commercially, Love acknowledged."
As a result, Caldera is "seriously looking at and considering different licensing models," he said. Caldera is considering BSD and "other licensing models" that "would be truly open source but still allow folks to influence the (development) process," Love added.
Rob Landley wrote in with these comments when he submitted this story:
Ransom Love fell for Microsoft's recent gambit, discarding the GPL in favor of BSD-style licensing. That was the whole point of Microsoft's recent attacks, convincing people to do that. Why? Very simple.
Open Source is not a threat to Microsoft.
Think about it. Microsoft is thrilled to embrace and extend BSD licensed code; the entire Windows network stack and many of the standard command line utilities are derived from BSD. They even stole enough BSD code (and found enough standards loopholes) to get Windows NT declared posix compliant! It's not just BSD, they're embracing and extending the internet as well. Most of their growth since Windows 95 has been derived from the internet, and making Internet Explorer the primary interface to it for 3/4 of it current user base. How long did Tim Berners-lee's public domain web browser remain in the public domain, anyway? Outlook and exchange for email, front page for web authoring. Embrace and extend.
Embrace and extend is what Microsoft does for a living. They haven't had a new idea in decades, even DOS 1.0 was a clone of CP/M they bought from a third party. Their OS development stalled after 1995 because they'd finally run out of ideas to copy from Apple. Open Source must seem like a godsend to them, a pristine alaskan wilderness to strip-mine.
If Microsoft was facing BSD, they'd just fork it. Grab the BSD codebase, embed explorer and some Win32 compatability Dlls (not a difficult problem when you have the windows source code) , hide half of office in the system dlls just like on Windows, and bingo you have a new Unix based version of Windows incorporating every advance the BSD people have made.
But they're not facing BSD. They're facing Linux. And Linux is protected by the GPL. They can't embrace and extend the GPL, the GPL embraces and extends THEM. And that is scaring the heck out of them.
Idealism aside, the GPL is an effective, pragmatic solution to the problem of monopolies that intentionally fork code bases once they reach critical mass. The 1980's unix world was BSD based and it forked itself to death as soon as companies saw that there was money in it. Netscape hired all the Mosaic developers away. Altruism doesn't keep corporations from strip-mining nature preserves, and it won't keep them from forking open source projects if they see money to be made, no matter how we try to "educate" them about software environmentalism.
Richard Stallman created the GPL to fend off the monopolistic practices of AT&T and Xerox in the 1980's, and it works just as well against Microsoft in the 1990's. This is what it was DESIGNED for. As Eric Raymond said, it's a "stake in the ground they can't pull out". The GPL doesn't just put stuff in the public domain, it nails it there so it can't be removed.
The GPL is a very effective immune system for open source projects, defending them from proprietary embrace and extend attacks. The GPL is what makes Linux a threat to Microsoft, not the merits of the code itself or the amount of effort going into its development. That's just a contributing factor. Linux* couldn't BE a threat without the GPL.
Microsoft has recognized this, and it's about time we do too.
[* Richard Stallman tries to point all this out to people by insisting people call Linux "GNU/Linux", which is about as annoying as Kellog's insisting we call their product Kellog's Corn Flakes, or Budweiser insisting it's "Bud Lite", and about as likely to be universally adopted. He's a smart enough guy he assumes everybody else will think through the dozen or so logical steps and figure out what he means to say, and of course assumes everyone knows the ideals of the GNU project and thus know what he means to imply. What he's MANAGED to do is annoy a very large number of people without actually getting his message across, but not all hackers are great with the humanities side of things. It's a pity, he DOES have great things to say. The FSF could REALLY use a marketing department. Or at least somebody to explain the concept of "judicious and focused expenditure of political capital".]
GPL is not Linux's weakest point Mr. Ransom Love has got it wrong... The GPL is not Linux's weakest point. It is perhaps one of its strongest assets!! (Although It seems that Caldera will still continue to support and release some of it's products under the GPL) Go figure!!
The GPL is the *strongest* link, not the weakest Ransom Love is dead wrong and Rob Landley is dead right. The GPL is the one thing about Open Source that lets it stand as a credible threat to Microsoft, otherwise you'd find Windows 2000 merrily running kernel 2.4 and no BSODs. That'll be $15,000 per CPU plus Client Access Licenses, thanks.
Ransom Love again How many times has this guy came with the same line? It's sad to have such dumbhead as leader of such a prominent Linux company. I know he wants to sell to PHBs but at least he should get some education before
Re: GPL is not Linux's weakest point > Mr. Ransom Love has got it wrong... The GPL is not Linux's weakest point. It is perhaps one of its strongest assets!!
This is the same phenomenon that produced the Netscape Public License, the Sun Community License, etc. Companies want to tap in to the benefits of the GPL (whether the *actual* benefits or merely the PR benefits), but they also want to leave some strings attached.
Whether they can actually have that cake and still eat it remains to be seen. I don't object to whatever Semi-Free license a company wants to come up with; I just don't have any use for it. I would think twice before donating a single line of code to one of these S-F licenses.
GPL finally understood The term "open source" was indeed, as Stallman said long ago, diverting the attention of the community from what is essential. Quite a lot of people were prepared to do "open source" outside the GPL, failing to understand the implications. It's incredible that we had to wait for Microsoft to publicly vindicate Stallman, that he was right all along. I think the community will now finally understand why we must unite behind the GPL.
Weakest point? If GPL is open-source's weakest point, Microsoft would have broken it long ago. Instead, MS is trying to fight it and use FUD tactics. I believe they are dying to use all this free source code in their programs to "embrace and extend" as they have done in the last 20 years, but they can't.
Translation Paraphrasing...."Caldera is bleeding red ink. Must be that bloody GPL's fault so let's dick around with it and see what we can come up with."
Sure helped Netscape and Sun. Will RL get his head out of his ass long enough to see the light?
BSD Licence Instead of GPL BSD Licence is suck! It is good for commercial Industry not for Open Source.
BSD allows people to modify the source code and they don't have to make the source code open!
BSD is not a good licence for OPEN SOURCE....
CALDERA SUCK!
Powerful imagery... Rob Landley "gets" it. And this is by far, by far the best "apologia" for the GPL I have read in a long, long time. Short, incisive and to the point. Frame it and put it on the wall.
I feel a pang of envy for not having written it myself ;-)
"Immune system..."
"...strip mining nature reserves..."
"software environmentalism"
"...doesn't just put stuff in the public domain, it nails it there..."
RL the weakest link Caldera has always been the weakest link IMHO. It comes as no surprise, although I'll grit my teath and curse under my breath when M$ hold Caldera's scalp high for all to see...
Chill out! I can't believe this. Now the BSD license is evil? I think it is easy to carry this way over the edge. GPL is a good thing in many regards, but it's not perfect. LGPL eases that for those who look at software as business. This is seen from several angles...
1) Users: Give me GPL, give back all code, and damn the company that makes a dime doing it! Unfortunately many (most?) of those users never really contribute and many of those projects never achieve momentum.
2) Authors: I want to make it free -> This has turned into a pile of work more than I have time for... if only I could get paid to finish it...
3) Companies: We gave away the software... we can't sell much service... how do we walk the thin line and get revenues where they should be while maintaining a good reputation in the community.
4) Microsoft: Rape, pillage and plunder.
However nothing has changed regarding M$ and frankly I'm sick and tired of hearing about it. Clue: Linux has come up on it's own taking it's direction from where people wanted to take it and has reached a point where it is doing damage now to M$. You don't win a battle deciding the merit of every move based solely on what an insane lumbering dinosaur will do.
The comments by the submitter here are also less than responsible. Apache uses BSD and they said they did it for a reason. Now IBM and others use it as the basis of their web servers... and we, the open source community pound our chest for the dominance of Apache without regard to the fact that some of those are sold by IBM and others. For that matter IBM is not the same company of 30-40 years ago and has donated journaling file systems, code, resources and credibility to Linux and open source. Well I say damn them and Apache for bringing such evil. At least I would if I were going to have a knee jerk reaction and go on a GPL jihad like so many people seem ready to do.
Caldera has produced some very slick packages and has sponsored Webmin which is in my opnion the best admin package ever for Linux. I would submit that if they and other companies fail to find thier linux businesses solvent that we would suffer a great many losses.
Another thing to consider is that the GPL is viral. If you are an author you can respect the frustration in considering what is best. If a company came up to you after years of tinkering with your project on the side and offered you $100,000 for the rights to incorporate it in their commercial offering you would have to say no, I can't, I'm restrained by the GPL. If you wanted to offer an enhanced version but needed to be paid to subsidise the time you could take a year off and code... but you would have to be sure your new code plugged in to and did not link your old code.
In fact the GPL has done what Stallman intended and insured a large code base for us in perpetuity. However it has also limited the further development of some of that same code because it could not make the leap to some commercial level to subsidise it's growth. Don't think that corporate contributions to open source don't make a difference and that the success of Linux business models won't dramatically skew the time line for world domination. Those who have not developed open source projects have not penciled the numbers to see how dissapointingly small a percentage of users ever contribute... and those companies taking up the slack have to realize a profit to stay around. Ask Eazel about that one.
If there is one thing the Linux community does very well indeed is is run off on a tangent and eat it's own in some pathalogical conspiracy theory mode. M$ and their minions don't need to attack the GPL as opposed to open source... they just need to get enough users and developers and companies bringing up the same old concerns to create a polarizing effect. Then we can be shown as crazed reactionaries and simultaniously put Linux companies out of business because we won't buy their packages since we don't like their license (shutting down a noticable chunk of open source coding). To think so many people are second guessing their motives when we should be reviewing our own!
Commercially friendly licences Ransom Love does have a point - which a lot of people seem to be missing. If you want to make a living SELLING SOFTWARE then the GPL is a serious barrier.
But as many people have pointed out, the GPL does its intended job, and it does it extremely well. As people may remember, I wish Corel would open their source! but that desire seems to be going nowhere.
Let's try and come up with another licence, that does its job just as effectively as the GPL. Lets call it the "Commercial Public Licence" that says:
1) Here's a commercial software product.
2) It comes WITH SOURCE
3) Provided that you have paid for a licence you may use it internally as you wish
4) (and here is the crucial difference from GPL) you may redistribute code/mods/fixes/whatever ONLY to OTHER LICENCE HOLDERS.
So effectively, it gives users similar rights to the GPL with the one major exception - it's not free gratis.
I'm not saying I like this licence, but let's live in the real world, and there are a lot of people who would like to make a living selling software. Why shouldn't they be allowed to do so?
Detraction GPL isn't the weakest point of Linux.
People like Ransom Love are the weakest point of Linux.
People that appear to be Linux people, fall for Microsoft's arguments and try to detract others from what they support thus destroying the common base.
Don't just dismiss this Are we saying that the only reason that Linux is doing so well is because of a license? Are we saying that the method of it's development, the quality of the code and the glamour of it's technical rags to riches history have nothing to do with it.
I don't think Microsoft give a damn about the GPL. If the Linux community can clean room or reverse engineer Windows API's then Microsoft can sure as hell do anything they like with Linux innovations, particularly as they are documented at every stage of development on the kernel mailing lists. Also, even if Microsoft used all of the Linux code or any other GPL code for that matter, they'll never be able to give it away and gain advantage because it's already free.
Saying the GPL is the reason for the success of "open source" or "free software" denies everything that is good about the movements i.e. the community and the motive of doing a good job and doing it right and letting everybody play. The GPL is a good license but it isn't the god of free software and I can understand why large companies or people wanting to make a buck or two hesitate to dip their toe into the rather muddy GPL waters.
It's all about market positioning I think this is all to do with Caldera's acquisition of SCO and their positioning of whatever merged Linux/SCO product they have. If they can create some form of Linux binary or API compatability in the SCO stuff, but sew the seeds of doubt in pure GPL'd Linux, then maybe Caldera/SCO is "better" for business.
Personally, I think Caldera is a non-player, and all the SCO stuff will eventually die a well deserved death.
in the GPL we beleieve... We have to listen, really carefully, to the Richard Stallman's words, understand and keep his faith.
It should become our shield and sword also.
Not new from Caldera I have been one of Caldera's testers in 1995 and trying to "proprietarize" Linux has ever been Caldera's policy. However it is funny to look back at 1995-1996: Caldera and Redhat were pretty new but Caldera had a superior product (it was Redhat plus addenda) and far deeper pockets (Ray Noorda's backing). So it looked like Caldera would eliminate RedHat and however a few years later we find Caldera has little market share (and dwindling), far less money and it is spending ten dollars for one dollar of revenue. Looks like RedHat's GPL policy was smarter than Caldera's proprietary one.
RRichard Stallman is Da Man The story of Richard Stallman is really cool, he's really the guy who knows what open source software should be. He is my idol, and one of his coolest creations is the GPL. He is a great leader.
Caldera and Me Back in the old days (pre 1.0 kernel days) I used slackware. A little after that I tried a new package called something like Caldera Desktop for Linux. This was Preview software, $29.00 a crack. I went through 2 or three of these before the news came out that the "real" release was ready. Then I found out 2 things; one was Caldera was simply building their desktop on top of RedHat Linux, and two - Caldera wanted around $300 for the finished product (since I was part of the user group who paid to preview the package, I was entitled to $25.00 off. I switched to RedHat the next day.
Now today we find that Caldera (through Love) is still trying to screw those people who have in the past been loyal to them.
Re: It's all about market positioning > Personally, I think Caldera is a non-player, and all the SCO stuff will eventually die a well deserved death.
I hope that they do survive, Dr. Dos, and Open Linux have been through some tuff Times, like Early Utah Pioneers,
Some may need a License in between True Open Source, and Closed Source to
stay afloat.
With Microsofts, "a line of code here", and "a line of code there" and "soon
we will have an Operating System" that we can sell.
I just wish somebody would Infuse capital into many strugling Linux Companies.
Now is the Time for Hardware Companies to Invest in Linux, as it's capabilaties are just being manifested.
Microsoft Troll I believe this article is just a troll send by Microsoft in the name of Caldera. They would never say or think this way. Looks exactly like the crap Mundie (or was it muddie) started to spread.
> Another thing to consider is that the GPL is viral.
So is Microsoft's license.
> If you are an author you can respect the frustration in considering what is best.
This sentence doesn't parse.
> If a company came up to you after years of tinkering with your project on the side and offered you $100,000 for the rights to incorporate it in their commercial offering you would have to say no, I can't, I'm restrained by the GPL.
If you were tinkering with code contributed by *SOMEBODY ELSE* - why
on earth should you, alone, have the right to that code? When did a
GPL project become 'your project'? It didn't, unless you're the only contributor, in which case you have complete rights to do what you
want with it.
I don't recall anything in the GPL preventing commercial usage anyway,
so this example really doesn't seem to work.
> If you wanted to offer an enhanced version but needed to be paid to subsidise the time you could take a year off and code... but you would have to be sure your new code plugged in to and did not link your old code.
>
Why - where does the GPL require that, exactly?
This looks like more FUD attack on the GPL.
The GPL is the cornerstone of open source/ free software - it prevents
Microsoft and co from taking the work, repackaging it and selling
it on, making a profit on the work of a 3rd party, which is exactly what
they have done with BSD code.
If Caldera would rather use a different license, that is up to them,
but they will not be able to change the licensing on existing GPLed
code.
This should come as no surprise anyway - they've hung onto DRDOS
as a commercial product, and have not released it as GPLed code.
They hung onto CPM for a very long time, before gently relaxing
their grip (still not GPL afaik, though).
Caldera can do what they like, they're allowed to, but they can't
do what they like with GPLed code - this is a good thing.
Re: Chill out! > Another thing to consider is that the GPL is viral. If you are an author you can respect the frustration in considering what is best. If a company came up to you after years of tinkering with your project on the side and offered you $100,000 for the rights to incorporate it in their commercial offering you would have to say no, I can't, I'm restrained by the GPL. If you wanted to offer an enhanced version but needed to be paid to subsidise the time you could take a year off and code... but you would have to be sure your new code plugged in to and did not link your old code.
This is a long held piece of FUD about the GPL and most certainly is wrong. As copyright holder on a work you can license it under anything you want even under many licenses if you want. Even if you put code under the GPL it does not prevent you from licensing that same code to someone else to integrate it into a proprietary work. If you want to ingrated GPL code into a proprietary work you have to talk to the copyright holder(s) and get their permission to do so.
The GPL is just like any other license. The code is put available under certain conditions. If you don't like those conditions talk to the copyright holder and try to arrange a deal with them.
licenses The BSD license allows theft, and of course M$ knows this. What's most ridiculous is that M$ enforces its "licenses" while does not care for other licenses. Do you really believe GPL stops M$ from stealing code ? Anyway, we just NEED GPL, so we can at least think our code is safe.
Caldera Sucks Anyway... I never cared for Caldera or any of their mothods. Although the GPL is not a business friendly license, it is the best defence against Microsoft.
Re: BSD Licence Instead of GPL I do understand those that are commited to the BSD license as a matter of principle, and that actually find the GPL restrictive. Certainly, as a free software license, BSD represents freedom fully, but it only can function properly in a world seperated from preditory companies, where the GPL accepts the world as it actually is and hence only limits the freedom of unethical preditory companies.
Once Microsoft is gone, or finds an ethical basis for continuing business, the
GPL could well potentially be retired having served it's purpose. I think many
who do use the GPL today would look forward to such a day when it's use is no
longer actually nessisary and when all software is free. Until then, though,
the GPL is the front line of defence against the criminals of the world that
steal and destroy IP and damage our society and even our most basic freedoms in the quest for ever greater rights to what people think and express, whether one is talking of greedy and ethicless proprietary software vendors or greedy
and ethicless entertainment cartels.
Which code is that?
Somebody else's code, or the code you wrote?
You alone can't possibly have the right to somebody else's code, or it wouldn't be somebody else's.
I have an off-topic question for you, spurred by discussions I've had lately. Imagine we have a world without any rights in IP.
No copyright, no patents, no nothing. The only way to protect inventions, etc, is to keep them secret.
What keeps someone from taking your code, burying it in the middle of a bunch of stuff, encrypting the whizbang out of it and selling it to you in an embedded device.
Remember: There is no GPL. Without IP, the GPL doesn't work.
In a truly "free" IP world like that, would it even matter?
Again, kiddies, accepting a gift is not theft. For all the talk of freedom around here, precious few seem to appreciate a gift given generously and freely.
The GPL allows more theft than the BSD license because there are more ways to violate the GPL and nobody has the resources to police it effectively.
Just what the heck did Love say that was so awful?
That Caldera may release software under the same license used by apache, *bsd, etc?
That the GPL may not be the most commercial choice?
Where are all the folks who usually come out saying that you save money with the GPL, you don't make money with it? You guys should be in agreement with Love's assessment.
Rocket Science Alert Caldera is trying to make money. What they're doing now isn't working. They would be shirking their legal and moral duties to their investors and employees if they didn't try to fix that problem.
Re: Re: BSD Licence Instead of GPL > I think many who do use the GPL today would look forward to such a day when it's use is no longer actually nessisary and when all software is free.
By what mechanism can the GPL become unnecessary, from the standpoint of RMS and followers?
It would have to be a world in which there was no conceivable way to make money from software -- including software embedded in products -- so that nobody tries.
The only other way I could see that happening would be the abolishment of Intellectual Property laws.
Under that situation, it would be impossible to enforce the GPL, making it irrelevant.
At which point, if the first case has not come to pass, product makers are free to gobble up GPL'd code, modify it, obfuscate it, do whatever and embed it in products while keeping the modified source a secret.
Re: Don't just dismiss this > Are we saying that the only reason that Linux is doing so well is because of a license? Are we saying that the method of it's development, the quality of the code and the glamour of it's technical rags to riches history have nothing to do with it.
Good point. The GPL has some nice features for some purposes, but Linus chose it pretty much because it was there and he knew about it. Linux spread largely because of the internet, because of Linus's very open development style, and because of the good people involved. I doubt that anything would have been different under the BSD license. I could be wrong, but we'll never know.
For all of the time people spend here deriding marketroids, they seem to ignore the rather serious marketing and credit-taking done by Mr. "GNU/"Linux himself.
Greedy corporations or individuals I do not think, that Caldera has real problem with GPL.
Caldera has problem with Income.
Just few days they laid off a nic guy Nick Peterley of http://www.linuxworld.com that runs also happens to run http://varlinux.com because they are out of money.
And they Do sell decent distribution, probably more stable than Mandrake or RedHat - although less bulky and less up to date.
I heard many rants about greedy corporations trying to pack themself with softwrae licence fees, but there are obviously many more greedy people who want software (free or commercial) for free and do ont want to pay the just wages to the people who create it, collect it, test it, advertize it and distribute it.
Their problem is, that if you do not have any mechanism to 'extort' the wages from your user base (a la commercial licence), you do not get nearly any wages.
Disclaimer: I am not emlployed in Redmond, have no experience with MSFT tools, do not use them for the past 5 years and do not plan to use it in the next 5 years. But if there IS some good software, I am willing to pay for it.
Re: Re: Re: Chill out! I totally disgaree: read th > > If you were tinkering with code contributed by *SOMEBODY ELSE* - why
> > on earth should you, alone, have the right to that code?
>
> Which code is that?
> Somebody else's code, or the code you wrote?
> You alone can't possibly have the right to somebody else's code, or it wouldn't be somebody else's.
I agree - that's what I was trying to say.
>
> I have an off-topic question for you, spurred by discussions I've had lately. Imagine we have a world without any rights in IP.
> No copyright, no patents, no nothing. The only way to protect inventions, etc, is to keep them secret.
>
> What keeps someone from taking your code, burying it in the middle of a bunch of stuff, encrypting the whizbang out of it and selling it to you in an embedded device.
To be honest, I'm not sure that the GPL can *practically* help you now in this respect. If something is sufficiently well encrypted, how will you even know it's in there to look?
> Remember: There is no GPL. Without IP, the GPL doesn't work.
>
> In a truly "free" IP world like that, would it even matter?
This is heading towards anarchic communism as a political system, ie., no rules, no ownership or property. In such an environment, no it wouldn't matter, but then it wouldn't have happened.... since there'd be no property, there'd be no money either, so nobody can sell you anything anyway, so there's no reason to hide code in the first place, no (personal) profit to be made and so on.
If you're suggesting an environment which has legally defined physical property but no legally defined intellectual property, then it would become impossible to steal an idea, so there'd be no need to encrypt code, because nobody would own it. You'd have the choice of hiding or revealing your own code, by hiding it, you lose the advantage of 3rd parties inspecting, patching, improving it, but would gain secrecy (for what it might be worth). Also, if there's no intellectual property, then there'd be nothing to prevent reverse engineering of any kind (at least of software and other 'ideas'), so if you felt so moved, you could decrypt anything you wanted to and verbatim copy it. If you wanted to.
Another consequence of all this would be the end of the popular music and arts sectors as they stand now. Since you'd be able to copy any film, book, song, whatever as often as you wanted, the current massively profitable film, music companies would probably disappear, or they'd have to find a new commercial model (eg., make money from Concerts, spectacular movie theatres or whatever). Anyone could create a pokemon and sell cards for it.
Where this might get tricky is in 'design', where art meets function. Is the design of the i-MAC proprietary? Can anyone copy it? In a no IP world, maybe they could?
What about eg., electronics? Is the design of a processor an idea? I think it is, which suggests that anyone could copy it.
Basically, I think our current economic system would collapse, and would have to be replaced with another one with an anarchic view of ideas (share or hide - it's your choice), but *with* legally supported physical property. I can design a computer, and own the result, but anyone can copy it because I don't own the design, because nobody does.
The GPL would have no function in this environment, in my view.
Bye Caldera No GPL, no Linux community support for your distro, and you won't be able to use GPL software. Better start hiring a ton of coders and support staff. Opps!, there goes your overhead and your competitiveness.
About valid business models... You are saying you can't make money if you can't trap consumers into a software path using propriatary code? Too bad. Maybe it's not your business model... maybe it is the quality of your distro.
Haven't you been paying attention? Do you think that Linux got where it is today by relying on Microsoft's propriatary software model? Do you think Microsoft is attacking the GPL because it doesn't work? You can almost smell the fear in their anti-GPL campaign. The GPL is working, and working well!
So you want to follow Microsoft's selfish model, which is take, take, take from the community and don't give anything back? What's the matter, won't you be able to retire at 55 as a billionaire? You need a larger revenue stream? Be especially sure you try out your new "business" model in the third world countries, if you think you can compete against Microsoft in that arena.
Go with the BSD!
While you're at it, use a hex editor to look at Microsoft's FTP program. You will see references to the Regents of the Univ. of Calif., but you WON'T see any source to the code modifications Microsoft made. They don't return code to the community, only EULA's, outrageous license terms and fees, shoddy products and lizard lawyers attacking 'pirates' which, no doubt, includes you. Watch Microsoft embrace and extend your best software technology and leave your dry bones bleaching in the sun.
You must have given thought to why we are beginning to see a large movement away from Microsoft to Linux. If that were not the case, and Linux wasn't cutting into Microsoft's bottom line, you would NOT be hearing a peep out of Microsoft concerning Linux and the GPL.
Listen carefully. Hear that sound? That sound is the footsteps of a herd of former Caldera users heading to other Linux distros. You caused it. Your distro hasn't captured that much attention from the Linux community, and you are throwing what is left of your market share away. There is a reason why an increasing number of folks dislike Microsoft and their business ethics, models and practices. You put your mouth right into it. Now you are adding to Microsoft's planetary wide stink.
Re: Chill out! (clue) > Another thing to consider is that the GPL is viral. If you are an author you
Ok, I am tired of GPL being attacked with the word 'viral'. While viruses are bad for human bodies, the property of spreading like a virus is not in itself bad. Yes, GPL spreads very nicely. But is that bad? I don't think so. Information itself spreads in just the same way. Everything is influenced by everything else as it spreads.
Now, when you look at a pile of GPL'ed code, NOTHING IN THE WORLD forces you to contribute to it!!!! Get it? So actually, NO YOU CANNOT CATCH GPL LIKE A DISEASE. When you release your code under GPL you do it willingly and volunterily. And that's the whole point!!! Voluntery cooperation. Now, don't tell me the authors of GPL'ed software should change the license just so that you could make a living by embracing and extending their code! If you want to embrace and extend your own code, MORE POWER TO YOU! You can do that. What GPL prevents you from doing, is having flippant and selfish frivolities with other people's code, that you do not own and have no rights to own.
If this bothers you, shut up, and quickly start contributing to BSD code base, and more power to you!! GPL cannot be attacked on the basis of it being 'viral'. That's pure FUD. I know the word FUD is overused, but it truly fits in this case.
Linux companies and money We run around 40 machines with Redhat, and I am really interested in Redhat
making enough money to stay alive. They do not really have the product that we
need. At every upgrade we buy three copies of the plain vanilla version because
we don't really want to spend our time burning cd's, and we do want to know what
is going on, so we cannot use their update service. What would really have value
to us would be very detailed release notes. We spend a lot of time trying to figure out what has disappeared and what is new. We had to discover how to make wordperfect8 keep running after the upgrade to 7.0 (answer: install 2 rpm's from 6.2, but redhat does not want to tell you.) I had to figure out how to keep my hp880C printer working nicely after the upgrade to 7.1 (answer: deinstall the new printerstuff and take the old from 7.0). A package with really detailed release notes and 4-5 copies of the cd's would be very valuable to us.
And I don't really think they need to put up iso images. I actually find it rather irritating that I sometimes have difficulties downloading security fixes because the bandwidth is taken up by people downloading iso-images.
Re: Re: Re: Chill out! I totally disgaree: read th > I have an off-topic question for you, spurred by discussions I've had lately. Imagine we have a world without any rights in IP.
> No copyright, no patents, no nothing. The only way to protect inventions, etc, is to keep them secret.
>
> What keeps someone from taking your code, burying it in the middle of a bunch of stuff, encrypting the whizbang out of it and selling it to you in an embedded device.
> Remember: There is no GPL. Without IP, the GPL doesn't work.
That seems like FUD. When people complain about IP, they mostly complain about patents that 1. last way too long, 2. do not protect the little guy, as they are intended to, but instead serve as clubs for billion dollar corps to keep each other from suing, while preventing Free Software developers from using that knowledge, which truly doesn't belong to "IP owners", as they relied on other knowledge in order to create it, and in fact, you can't really separate the new from the old. Allow me to remind you, that a patent is a limited, temporary, granted (that means you don't inherently have it) right to a monopoly offered as an incentive to spur innovation. Many people only see the words 'right' and 'monopoly' and would rather forget about the original intention of 'limited, temporary, granted'. Also, they'd rather forget that the original patent time limit was based on the industrial age, when things took forever to develop. This is not so in software world.
I've yet to hear someone complain about copyrights. Software patents are a problem number one.
This is about SCO, NOT linux Caldera just finished acquiring SCO UNIX and UNIXWARE and now they're re-thinking the licensing scheme they plan to use for any future software releases; what a surprise. Caldera has released some kernel modifications under the GPL, so they've contributed to the community in the past. However, they made their business plans clear from the start: sell to the commercial sector with a distribution containing value added commercial software. Look at the original Caldera Network Desktop (this was before Caldera OpenLinux), and you'll see a proprietary desktop, a proprietary X server (Accelerated X), a proprietary backup client, etc etc etc. Caldera positions themselves as a business out to serve business interests; linux was simply the product they chose to offer. So it's not surprising, now that they own the SCO codebase, that they might re-think their licensing schemes. Nor is it surprising that they might publicly agree with Microsoft's anti GPL position... especially if they're thinking about a future buy-out or strategic alliance with MS.
Caldera has never aligned themselves with the core of the linux community by hiring principle developers or releasing more than a some minor programs and kernel patches, however they have been successful selling Linux just the same. And this is their right, just as it's their right to make ridiculous statements such as these. Somehow, I predict that instead of releasing SCO source they'll drop Linux in future products and instead migrate their product line over to a proprietary SCO codebase with free software enhancements: bash, tcsh, bison, pine, KDE, etc etc etc. Again, this is their right... just don't call them a free software company any longer, it won't be true.
GNU/Linux comment RMS has noble intentions in his naming Linux GNU/Linux. However, there is much more to Linux then GNU and RMS. By his own statement only about 30% of Linux distributions are GNU based. This constantly infuriates those that contribute open source software under licenses like the BSD and Apache-type licenses.
Yes, I have read the GNU license and a number of statements from RMS defending his position. I know that he is trying to recognize the contributors. But I don't immediately think of Linus when I hear Linux and I don't think GNU when I hear GNU/Linux. I hear RMS.
He really doesn't seem to care or it's irrelevant that most people don't follow his argument, but it is a continual sore point. Only 15% of the Linux community share his feelings about the GNU/Linux name by many polls. The term "Linux kernel and GNU and other utilities" seems much more appropriate. GNU/Linux is also the only thing I've seen that has the slash with a GNU name, everything else is GNU whatever like GNU C compiler.
We should just move on and worry about better things then insisting on a name change that most people don't want.
Is this legal? Would it be legal for Caldera to distribute GPL'd software under a different license? I'm no lawyer, but I don't think so. That's the whole point of the GPL, after all.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Chill out! I totally disgaree: rea > Basically, I think our current economic system would collapse, and would have to be replaced with another one with an anarchic view of ideas (share or hide - it's your choice), but *with* legally supported physical property.
But why the exception?
What should give me the right to own land, which was here before me and will be here after I'm gone, if I can't own my own creation?
And, where does R & D come from?
Would we eliminate safety and efficacy testing requirements for drug manufacturers? After all, without IP, they have no mechanism for recovering any cost above pure manufacturing and distribution expenses.
And so on.
(What?!) was Re: Don't just dismiss this Just look around and tell me how much people develop for a GPL'd kernel (Linux) and how many for a BSD one? I think that most hackers don't want to make improvements to let MS add 2 incompatible, patented cents, neccesary to run his Software. BSD is 'give us your code and thanks'. BSD is the perfect license to embrace and extend software. With GPL you know that someone won't embrace and extend your code. Just look what's happening with Kerberos (BSD), MS has extended it and wants to use it for .NET and we can't use their modifications of our work, is their IP. Don't make me laugh. The community is not stupid....
Re: Re: Chill out! (clue) > Now, when you look at a pile of GPL'ed code, NOTHING IN THE WORLD forces you to contribute to it!!!! Get it? So actually, NO YOU CANNOT CATCH GPL LIKE A DISEASE. When you release your code under GPL you do it willingly and volunterily. And that's the whole point!!!
I agree completely.
That raises the question, however, of why so many people get their undies in a knot when somebody decides to use a different license. Either it's a free choice or it isn't. There's no good or evil in choosing to use, or not to use, the GPL. The GPL, as most of its supporters will agree when they're not attacking other licenses, is not designed for making money from software. It's designed to spread free software. If you want to make money from software, you should be looking at a different license.
The BSD license allows theft, and of course M$ knows this.
>
No the BSD does not allow *theft*. You cannot steal what is freely given.
>
The people who talk about "stealing" BSD code are as thick and clueless as those who whine about the "viral" GPL.
>
You're very right. The BSD license does not allow theft. However, the BSD license does allow hypocrisy. It allows information to flow 1 way. You can take code, that you have not built, repackage it, and sell it as though it were your own, and worse -- you can find yourself competing against a product that was mostly a result of your own personal efforts, and have no recourse. You cannot demand that your competitor release the enhancements to the product with which you compete. The BSD license strikes me as self-defeating and irrational.
Contrary to this, the GPL encourages fair cooperation and is rational. You cannot take some other's work, repackage it, and sell it as though you were the sole author. If you wanted, you could always negotiate a special license with each of the authors of a GPL'd work so that you could develop a proprietary product, but you must give credit where credit is due--fair enough? Anything else strikes me as hypocritical. Hypocrisy is one of the greatest abominations in life -- yet the BSD license allows it.
Is this how Linux forks? Maybe I'm way off base on this, but perhaps the recent FUD salvo from M$ is an attempt to fork Linux. No, not fork the kernel, but fork the licenses that Linux is typically distributed under. Perhaps billg and co. are hoping to weaken linux by introducing proprietary licenses into it.
Put down the flame-throwers, boys. I talking serious here. Think about it - do we really think M$ is scared of the GPL? I don't. Hell, they came through the last government-sponsored anti-trust trial unscathed. Sure they "lost", but from what I've heard the Bush camp seems to favor leaving M$ alone, no matter what Jackson ruled. M$ is probably thinking they are legal untouchables. Certainly an un-tested license like the GPL isn't worrying them. It is the brain-child of a nerd (no offense to RMS...).
No, what M$ is scared of is the acceleration behind the Linux movement. M$ has NEVER had a true grass-roots campaign behind any of its products, they've always had to rely on either marketing or strong-arm tactics. If, and it's a big if, M$ can get the Linux distros in-fighting amongst themselves over who can put the most "commercially successful" (read: proprietary) components in their kits, suddenly what the un-initiated see as "Linux" starts fragmenting. IT managers decide it's too difficult to even try "Linux" since each distro works so differently. Scores of the current wild-eyed, GPL-loving Linux developers get a bitter taste in their mouths from the "commercially successful" Linuxes (Linuxi??) and jump ship to go work on Atheos or some such. "Linux" starts losing not only acceleration, but velocity as well. Micro$oft laughs all the way to the bank. They killed yet another competitor. It'll be a Windows world forever.
Re: Is this legal? > Would it be legal for Caldera to distribute GPL'd software under a different license?
They aren't going to distribute Linux under a different license.
Good thing.
Only the owner of the copyright can pick the license, or someone who has been authorized by the owner to re-distribute under a different license. That ain't going to happen with Linux.
Caldera also owns SCO and has developed software of its own.
Re: Commercially friendly licences > Ransom Love does have a point - which a lot of people seem to be missing. If you want to make a living SELLING SOFTWARE then the GPL is a serious barrier.
Why? You're free to contact the person that wrote a specific piece of code and ask whether s/he's willing to license the code differently and give hime a fair share of what you're making. If you don't want to pay for what you use, why should you be allowed to charge for what others use?
Re: Re: Re: BSD Licence Instead of GPL > > I think many who do use the GPL today would look forward to such a day when it's use is no longer actually nessisary and when all software is free.
>
> By what mechanism can the GPL become unnecessary, from the standpoint of RMS and followers?
>
> It would have to be a world in which there was no conceivable way to make money from software -- including software embedded in products -- so that nobody tries.
This happening for all software may be some way off, but for certain classes of software it is already happening. It's called "commoditization".
Actually what I see happening is a "water line" creeping up all the time, below which you cannot realistically hope to sell a commercial product because the free stuff already does it all.
Currently this waterline is somewhere creeping up over operating systems and system software, moving into graphical user interfaces, and soon to take on standard desktop productivity software.
Things like games etc. will probably be high and dry for a long time to come. But close to the waterline you have to compete, by offering something clearly better or more useable than what's available for free.
So, yes, perhaps not the world at large, but local "worlds", certainly.
> The only other way I could see that happening would be the abolishment of Intellectual Property laws.
> Under that situation, it would be impossible to enforce the GPL, making it irrelevant.
> At which point, if the first case has not come to pass, product makers are free to gobble up GPL'd code, modify it, obfuscate it, do whatever and embed it in products while keeping the modified source a secret.
Conversely also the ban on reverse engineering would disappear. Publishing new gadgets with firmware in them would become a race against the clock. Secrets within boxes that "everybody" has, have a tendency to get out before long.
Caldera code? Linus has always said that the person who writes the code has the right to choose the license.
What code does Caldera write? What code are they planning to license in a new way?
It Is the License, Get over it. Good point. The GPL has some nice features for some purposes, but Linus chose it pretty much because it was there and he knew about it. Linux spread largely because of the internet, because of Linus's very open development style, and because of the good people involved. I doubt that anything would have been different under the BSD license. I could be wrong, but we'll never know.
Well, you are wrong. The experiment has been made and the evidence is as clear as we could hope for.
The development of Linux was contemporaneous with the various BSDs. The BSDs started with a more mature code base and a longer tradition. All factions have been lapped in popular uptake by a Finish student project.
The internet was available to both BSDs and Linux so you can cancel proposed differential #1.
Your good people just begs the question of why so many people gravitated to Linux before it had critical mass. They could have contributed to other projects, and many of the early ones would have been contributers to Minix.
Proposed differential #3 is hand waving, not explanation, I would contend.
That leaves the whole burden on the singular brilliance of Linus's management style. The periodic forking of the BSDs has allowed various project leads to have their go at it, so his brilliance would have to be much greater than any BSD head. I suppose it's possible.
( flamer disclaimer - I do not wish to disparage the technical merits of BSD or its contributers in any way, shape or form. My arguement is that it is the license that makes a big difference, remember. )
A standard arguement is that other catagory killer apps like Apache have BSD-like licenses. This was about OS's, other situations might change the balance. In particular a non-conforming webserver suffers immediate network death sentance, arguably providing the anti-forking disciple required.
That's enough not-so humble opinion for now, so I'll let the Stallman swipe pass. Geez, you'd think he went around killing people's children or something.
Re: It Is the License, Get over it. > Well, you are wrong. The experiment has been made and the evidence is as clear as we could hope for.
Umm, no.
The BSDs continue to be developed and quite a bit of nice software, including apache is available under BSD-style licenses.
If the experiment has been done, the disigner should be shot, because experimental controls were lousy.
First is the Linus factor. I know a lot of people don't like to admit that an individual can be special, but Linus is.
Second, the development methodologies are different. The BSDs have tended more toward the cathedral style of development than Linux has.
>All factions have been lapped in popular uptake by a Finish student project.
>
Popular uptake? Hmmm. Maybe that has to do with people starting companies to distribute the stuff and lots of good press AND the fact that it's good software.
Still, for popular (whatever that means in this market) uptake, it's hard to fault apache.
If there had been no GPL, there would still be a Linux. I don't know if it would be more attractive, less attractive, as good, less good, whatever.
> The internet was available to both BSDs and Linux so you can cancel proposed differential #1.
>
> Your good people just begs the question of why so many people gravitated to Linux before it had critical mass. They could have contributed to other projects, and many of the early ones would have been contributers to Minix.
> Proposed differential #3 is hand waving, not explanation, I would contend.
>
> That leaves the whole burden on the singular brilliance of Linus's management style. The periodic forking of the BSDs has allowed various project leads to have their go at it, so his brilliance would have to be much greater than any BSD head. I suppose it's possible.
>
> ( flamer disclaimer - I do not wish to disparage the technical merits of BSD or its contributers in any way, shape or form. My arguement is that it is the license that makes a big difference, remember. )
>
> A standard arguement is that other catagory killer apps like Apache have BSD-like licenses. This was about OS's, other situations might change the balance. In particular a non-conforming webserver suffers immediate network death sentance, arguably providing the anti-forking disciple required.
>
> That's enough not-so humble opinion for now, so I'll let the Stallman swipe pass. Geez, you'd think he went around killing people's children or something.
>
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Chill out! I totally disgaree: > Would we eliminate safety and efficacy testing requirements for drug
> manufacturers? After all, without IP, they have no mechanism for recovering
> any cost above pure manufacturing and distribution expenses.
> And so on.
This is an excellent point. Drug testing costs a lot of money. I used to work for Covance, which does contract testing for the pharmaceutical industry. In addition to the actual tests mandated by various regulatory bodies, you have to follow the Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) standards (or their equivalent outside the US), which adds to your cost.
IP is a delicate balance. I would certainly argue that we've gone too far to protect the rights of IP owners, but BSD-style licenses aren't the problem.
Business use of GPL It's worth remembering that when Sun was choosing an open license for Star Office, after very careful consideration of all the alternatives, they settled on the GPL. Even commercial businesses can find the GPL valuable.
Oh yes, remember that only around 5% of programmers work to create software for its sale value, the rest of us are employed to create software for its use value.
GPL & BSD, Linux & *BSD 1) Love is PARTIALLY correct about the GPL being not-too-good for business models.. The GPL makes it very hard (infact almost impossible) to run a pure-play software company (ala Microsoft) and be profitable. Why? Because the entire concept of selling software has been built around the closed-source model. Now (assuming RH actually *DOES* start to turn a profit and continues to do so) RedHat (and maybe SuSE and Mandrake) may make a profit packaging Linux, but there's limited space in the commercial distro market, not in terms of how many distros we want (after all, choice is good), but in terms of profitability. O'Reiley can make lots of money writing books about open-source (and closed as well) technologies, but they're not a sofrware company. And IBM isn't a pure-play software company - while they do sell software, they sell it as a feture of IBM hardware. Think about it: Free software (which is available for free, with no M$ style licensing allowed) is not, in and of itself, going to make money. Selling it as a prominent feature of something else (like as part of your consulting service, or as part of your hardware package) will.
2) Linux & BSD: Linux proliferated not because of it's license, but because of publicity, which brought in more developers, and eventually the commercial distros (which up untill recnetly, BSD didn't really have)... Remember, most of the user base is here because of the technical quality and the fact that it is under *A* free license. They don't care which one.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Chill out! I totally disgaree: > > Basically, I think our current economic system would collapse, and would have to be replaced with another one with an anarchic view of ideas (share or hide - it's your choice), but *with* legally supported physical property.
>
> But why the exception?
You don't need to lose the legally supported physical property aspect to make the GPL pointless by removing Intellectual Property as a legally recognised concept. I was looking for the minimum change to our current system to gain what you'd suggested. If you don't have that exception you end up with an anarchic-communist system (read Ian M Banks Culture novels for one example).
> What should give me the right to own land, which was here before me and will be here after I'm gone, if I can't own my own creation?
Nothing would if you remove property rights, but then you have 'law and order' issues - you need to redefine the role of the police (or whatever its equivalent might be) in resolving disputes, eg,. I want this house and someone else does - am I allowed to kill the other person to get it?
> And, where does R & D come from?
If you've lost money, then profit is no longer a motive. That doesn't mean R&D would necessarily stop, it does mean a new system is required, non-money based, to get this done.
> Would we eliminate safety and efficacy testing requirements for drug manufacturers? After all, without IP, they have no mechanism for recovering any cost above pure manufacturing and distribution expenses.
Ah, governance is not directly related to the existance of money, so safety requirements can happily exist in an environment where profit does not exist. How well the requirements are adhered to is another question though.
> And so on.
Indeed. There's no easy answer to this - it's philosophy!
Just Lost My Liking for Caldera.... Well, I just now lost my liking of Caldera if they are going to believe -- which they have seem to have done already! -- Microsoft's ramblings. I used to like Caldera OpenLinux eDesktop, but now it seems any company that will base there lincense on the one Caldera will use then I will not use there version of Linux. So, it looks like I will have to go with Debian -- or use the Linux distro my group is working on -- If all companies react the way they did to Mundie what's next?!
Re: (What?!) was Re: Don't just dismiss th BSD is the perfect license to embrace and extend software. With GPL you know that someone won't embrace and extend your code. Just look what's happening with Kerberos (BSD), MS has extended it and wants to use it for .NET and we can't use their modifications of our work, is their IP.
We don't actually know enough about the MSFT implementation of Kerberos (having never seen the code) to say if the GPL would have made any difference or not. MSFT may have used large sections of code from Kerberos, but we don't know that. The GPL protects the code itself, not the algorithms, data structures, protocols, and APIs it implements. Its legal to study a source file licensed under the GPL and reimplement it some other way. This of course takes resources, but MSFT isn't short on cash or skilled programmers.
Given enough time, they could even reimplement Linux (not too hard, since the APIs are close to POSIX anyway) as a closed source OS. They would probably have to call it something else, since Linus may not be too keen on letting them use the Linux trademark. :-)
Re: Re: It Is the License, Get over it. > Still, for popular (whatever that means in this market) uptake, it's hard to fault apache.
>
Apache was there first.
You don't know what would have happened if an alternative GPLed web server had been created in the early days, like happened with operating systems. The web server space just never had its Linus, and now we'll never know.
That's the problem with history: "what if" hypotheses cannot really ever be proven or disproven because of the many uncontrollable factors.
Superb Commentary by Rob Landley! Now all we need to do is to get not just the open source community but also the general population to understand his points.
There has to be more communication between the "hard-core" open source community and the rest of computer users. Those running Win2000/XP, having never heard of linuxtoday.com or this article, need to be informed on this issue. Some say countering Microsoft with its own (or similar) tactics of media manipulation is not the right thing to do, but Linux is in need to more PR exposure.
Re: Re: Re: It Is the License, Get over it. > > Still, for popular (whatever that means in this market) uptake, it's hard to fault apache.
> >
> Apache was there first.
>
> You don't know what would have happened if an alternative GPLed web server
My bet is that a GPL'd web server as good as apache would have done quite well.
My main point is that licenses are more interesting to developers than users -- which is what I interpret popular uptake to mean. Of course, I would go one step further: In the absence of the GPL, things would be pretty much the way they are now. The license would just be different.
Don't you find it odd the same people who get on an anti IP rant and claim up and down that people will continue to create and sing and make movies after so major a change as eliminating the basis for payment that derives from IP, but seem to think that free software would fall on its face and nobody would code it or use it because of the fairly small difference between the GPL and the BSD licenses?
Re: Re: Re: It Is the License, Get over it. That's the problem with history: "what if" hypotheses cannot really ever be proven or disproven because of the many uncontrollable factors.
Yes, it is so. With no repeatable and controllable experiments historians must settle for much lower standards of proof than physicists. Pity, but they keep trying.
My chances of convincing Dinotrac of the error of his ways is slight. All I can do is point out that he's resting a lot of weight on the singular genius of Linus Torvalds making up for a number of early disadvantages.
A number of red herrings- internet, publicity(???!), corporate adoption, skilled contributers, were potentially available to the BSDs over the same period and with equal force but they benefited the Linux project more. To me, that's a significant effect worth explaining.
But yes, to those determined not to accept my conclusion, there's still wiggle room to declare a mystery.
BSD is a license for peace, GPL is a license for war. If only good people were living in this planet, BSD would be nice. Unfortunately we are surrounded by sharks, as M$.
How is this different from the GPL? The one "difference" is that you can only distribute to other license holders? That's exactly what the GPL does. You can use the software privately for whatever. But if you want to re-distribute, you must use the GPL to do so, thus making those you distribute to "other license holders." It's just really easy to become a license holder with the GPL. This license you speak of is just a "pay to be in the club" GPL. Sounds downright putrid to me.
A misconception about the GPL is you can't sell GPL'd software. You can seel all you want, but it is true that it's difficult to sell just software under the GPL. You have to sell "value-added" features. Like service, support, manuals, distribution, delivery, etc, which are all standard in any good commercial package, and most of the vlaue is there anyway. Any computer seller will tell you that the money is not made in the sale, its made in the service. So dispense with selling software! Sell service! Sell develoment of new features! I truely believe real business can survive on this model. It's very different form the current model, but it CAN work. MS FUD has already started to work again. Where's another Halloween Document when you need it? Blech...
K, that was quite rambly....
Tempest in a teapot Everyone is reacting largely to a single phrase:
where Love describes the GPL as being open source's "weakest link".
Most of us would beg to differ with that. I'm not sure he meant it the way we're taking it, though--given that he went on to specifically claim that GPL is a good license for open source development in general. He may just have meant that it's easy to attack politically which, given the ignorance level of the American public and legislators, is probably quite true.
However, in general what he's saying makes a fair amount of sense--from his perspective. He's just saying that it would make his life easier as a company writing software for sale to use a different license for their software. Well, the general refrain that's always allowed BSDers, Linuxers and so on to coexist is "You write the software, how you license it is up to you".
Now, if the license turns out not to be free, the community may not adopt it. And if it's free but not copylefted, the free software portion of the community (myself included) probably won't adopt it if there's a copylefted alternative. And that part is up to us. Hopefully, if his license turns out to suck, he will gradually come to realize this is not the route to widespread adoption.
But let's put things in perspective. TheKompany releases some of their software under old-fashioned pure proprietary licenses, and few people get massively upset. And until there's a good, Free alternative we may buy their stuff, although I'd advocate everyone working on GnuCash until the Free alternative is at least as good as the proprietary offering. I think we can deal with Caldera in the same spirit.
That Caldera may release software under the same license used by apache, *bsd, etc?
followed by
Caldera is trying to make money. What they're doing now isn't working. They would be shirking their legal and moral duties to their investors and employees if they didn't try to fix that problem.
Would you care to explain how releasing software under a license that gives away more than the GPL does helps Caldera's investors and employees? The ones, that is, that aren't large shareholders in, say, Microsoft or other competing software companies?
An invasion of We are experiencing a large influx of newbie refugees from WinXX.
After seeing some of the comments on this article it appears we are also gaining some 'mini-Bill's, who wish they could take formely GPL code propriatary and generate income from code that was freely given to the GPL and freely contributed to by who know how many coders.
Sort of reminds one of that website that accepted freely donated songs, titles and descriptions but, after they got a gob of records, stole them and made them propriatary. Now they are selling access, with no thought of paying their 'workforce' for services rendered. Pure theft driven by greed. Big Bill is, no doubt, very proud. "After all, those who contributed are nothing but a bunch of pirates. It serves them right." the mini-Bill is thinking.
I am not against propriatary code in Linux. I have purchased several propriatary packages in the past and will continue to do so in the future if I need a good one. But, the GPL exists for a purpose. No one puts a gun to a programmer's head and forces her to give the code to GPL. She did that voluntarily. She, or someone, notices later that the app is getting very popular and thinks "wouldn't it be nice if I could take that code base propriatary and make a ton of cash selling annual licenses!" Too bad. The author of MoneyDance started from scratch, so can the 'mini-Bill's.
Re: Re: Re: Blech! How did I end up on the same s > Would you care to explain how releasing software under a license that gives away more than the GPL does helps Caldera's investors and employees?
I didn't say that their plan was going to work, did I?
Seriously, though, two things come to mind:
1) they might be able to incorporate BSD'd code into their own products and sell them more easily than incorporating GPL'd code, thus creating new without having to start from scratch and still being able to release products.
2) they might sell BSD'd stuff to some people who are leery of the GPL.
Will it work?
Heck, if I knew the answer to questions like that, I might be solvent.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Chill out! I totally disgaree: Basically, I think our current economic system would collapse, and would have to be replaced with another one with an anarchic view of ideas (share or hide - it's your choice), but *with* legally supported physical property.
It has become obvious that our current economic system and laws have been hijacked by the giant multi-nationals, who have become a law and government into themselves. How else can Microsoft sue you for violating terms of their own EULA but you can't sue them for doing the same thing? Nice racket. The enforcement goons wear suits and carry legal briefs. The CEO can lie in court under oath, tamper with evidence, and get a way scott free, and I'm not talking about Bill Clinton's perjury.
>
> But why the exception?
> What should give me the right to own land, which was here before me and will be here after I'm gone, if I can't own my own creation?
Aren't you mixing metaphores Dino? Tangible vs the intangible.
And, where does R & D come from?
Linux and Alan and the Linux kernel crew are doing a mighty fine job of R&D!
Most of the kernel coders are employed but work on the kernel on their own time, like the majority of GPL coders. When my C++ skills get up to speed I plan to contribute too.
Would we eliminate safety and efficacy testing requirements for drug manufacturers? After all, without IP, they have no mechanism for recovering any cost above pure manufacturing and distribution expenses.
And so on.
Are you kidding? "Eliminate safety and efficacy"? Have you read the contra-indications on the majority of crap released by US pharms? I've been controlling prostrate enlargement for several years. I can take one of the commerical products at between $75-150/month or I can take Saw Palmetto with African Pygeum for 1/4th the price and twice the efficacy. The herb has no toxic side effects and won't damage my liver or other internal organs. I don't have to take frequent liver tests. It was a doctor who gave me hepatitis using a dirty needle and poor aseptic techniques. Using another doctor's recommendation for treating Prostate swelling would have killed me.
Besides, with the FDA testing procedures it take several miilion bucks and ten years to get FDA approval, even with the contra-indications. Add those costs to the profits the drug companies want and you have medicine that the elderly and low income folks can't afford. But this is off topic.
Re: Re: Re: Chill out! (clue) Now, when you look at a pile of GPL'ed code, NOTHING IN THE WORLD forces you to contribute to it!!!! Get it? So actually, NO YOU CANNOT CATCH GPL LIKE A DISEASE. When you release your code under GPL you do it willingly and volunterily. And that's the whole point!!!
>
> I agree completely.
> That raises the question, however, of why so many people get their undies in a knot when somebody decides to use a different license. Either it's a free choice or it isn't. There's no good or evil in choosing to use, or not to use, the GPL. The GPL, as most of its supporters will agree when they're not attacking other licenses, is not designed for making money from software. It's designed to spread free software. If you want to make money from software, you should be looking at a different license.
Dino, what I gather from Ransom Love comments is that his problem is not simply a matter of using a different license. He can do that any time without telling anyone. He appears to be asking for a retroactive modification to the GPL which would allow him to take liberties with existing GPL code and mine it for free as Gates did with the FTP app under the BSD license. I couldn't think of a faster acting and more lethal action to take against Linux and the GPL.
No. Property is intangible. It is a right granted by society. Land is tangible, but some societies have not accepted that land can be owned, viewing it as a common resource.
There is no magic about physical things that renders them property. The moon is physical. To my knowlege, it ain't property. You and I are physcial, tangible things. In most countries, we cannot legally be property.
I think what really underlies people's strong desire to draw a distinction is that most people can imagine owning things like cars, houses, furnsishings, etc. Not to call those things property could cause them a loss.
Not to call music, literature, artistic creations property only hurts the poor schlubs who own those rights. Most people probably make out because they would simply be able to take the product of the creators.
>
>I can take one of the commerical products at between $75-150/month or I can take Saw Palmetto with African Pygeum for 1/4th the price and twice the efficacy.
Fine. I suppose we should tell those folks taking the assorted drug cocktails that seem to actually improve both quality of quantity of life for AIDs sufferers to take Saw Palmetto.
Re: Re: BSD Licence Instead of GPL Once Microsoft is gone, or finds an ethical basis for continuing business, the GPL could well potentially be retired having served it's purpose. I think many who do use the GPL today would look forward to such a day when it's use is no longer actually nessisary and when all software is free..
You will have to 'retire' human greed, corruption, laziness and a host of other human frailities first. Not a likely prospect, so I expect to see the GPL around for as long as Linux is being used. Otherwise, a 'mini-Bill' would steal Linux blind, copyright and/or patent it, license it and sue everyone else still operating a GPL version.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Chill out! (clue) > He appears to be asking for a retroactive modification to the GPL which would allow him to take liberties with existing GPL code and mine it for free
Hmmm. I didn't get that at all. Maybe I'd better try to find a time when I'm not sneaking breaks from my current project and re-read his comments at leisure. I got the impression that he was talking about doing additional software projects based on other licenses, not trying to co-opt GPL'd code.
That "telling" is not the difficulty, their understanding is sometimes the difficulty. Why don't you try to explain to them that they might try to use a bit more of their brains ?
And if that don't work, you can of course always say that you are the majority (in pounds or so :-).
Re: Re: Re: Re: Chill out! (clue) >
> Dino, what I gather from Ransom Love comments is that his problem is not simply a matter of using a different license. He can do that any time without telling anyone. He appears to be asking for a retroactive modification to the GPL which would allow him to take liberties with existing GPL code and mine it for free as Gates did with the FTP app under the BSD license. I couldn't think of a faster acting and more lethal action to take against Linux and the GPL.
Hrrrmmm . . . having read the article, I don't think Love is suggesting or requesting any such thing. Certainly, if he were we wouldn't be just talking anathematize and shunning by the community, we'd be talking serious lawsuit--the GPL tested in court at last. Taking any such action would be illegal and there's no way in hades RMS would stand for it. But I really don't think that's in the wind--he's just talking about add-ons. Possibly some reverse engineering, but then that's what IBM did with AIX, right?
Re: Don't just dismiss this Quote:
‘Are we saying that the only reason that Linux is doing so well is because of a license? Are we saying that the method of it's development, the quality of the code and the glamour of it's technical rags to riches history have nothing to do with it.”
We are saying that without a legal guideline, a legal umbrella, that method of development could be too easily perverted. RMS created the GPL to protect a way of life/a method of development that was being destroyed by the commercial software industry. The GPL is supposed to protect that community and the software it produces. And it does and darned good job. Without something to protect this development model, the community would have no guiding rules under which to play. The GPL isn’t just a license. It is a legal definition of a truly open, free community development model.
Quote:
“I don't think Microsoft give a damn about the GPL. If the Linux community can clean room or reverse engineer Windows API's then Microsoft can sure as hell do anything they like with Linux innovations, particularly as they are documented at every stage of development on the kernel mailing lists. Also, even if Microsoft used all of the Linux code or any other GPL code for that matter, they'll never be able to give it away and gain advantage because it's already free.”
I do believe you overestimate the ability of the community to reverse engineer. Reverse engineering takes time and any changes MS makes to their API will take time to discover and engineer. AOL is fending off the MSN messenger charge by altering parts of their protocols, sending the MS reverse engineers back to drawing board again and again. Under BSD, MS would do the same the same thing to the Linux community that it has to the proprietary community: steal your work and make sure their version is incompatible with yours. That way they can always keep you chasing your own tail.
Quote:
“Saying the GPL is the reason for the success of "open source" or "free software" denies everything that is good about the movements i.e. the community and the motive of doing a good job and doing it right and letting everybody play.”
Again, the GPL is a legal document establishing the legal foundation needed in order to let every play. The GPL is a brilliantly written document that provides legal protection for everything that is good about “open source” and free software. Attributing protection to the GPL doesn’t deny anything. Acknowledging the GPL affirms those principles of free software.
Now that Linux is of such a quality that it threatens Microsoft’s revenue streams, MS is impotent to co-opt Linux due to the GPL. If you try to co-opt Linux, you are more likely to get co-opted. Thanks to the GPL we may not have to live in a world where vendors have to be concerned that their Linux software is “MS compatible.”
I too don't blame (some) businesses for not wanting to get too deep in the GPL waters. The GPL wasn't designed for them. It was designed for the community.
Re: Re: Don't just dismiss this The Linux kernel is but one part of a very large system/community. If anything, Linus is co-opting GNU and not the other way around. RMS deserves all the credit he can get. He stood up for the principles of free software. He made the sacrifices and laid the foundation for what we have today. The GPL helps guard against the Balkanization that plagued Unices. All RMS did was help lead the development of an entirely Free operating system. Linus, plugged in a kernel, stood on the shoulders of Giants, and called it Linux. You don't have to like RMS. Sure he can be fanatical. But give him his due.
> Ransom Love does have a point - which a lot of people seem to be missing. If you want to make a living SELLING SOFTWARE then the GPL is a serious barrier.
>
> But as many people have pointed out, the GPL does its intended job, and it does it extremely well. As people may remember, I wish Corel would open their source! but that desire seems to be going nowhere.
>
> Let's try and come up with another licence, that does its job just as effectively as the GPL. Lets call it the "Commercial Public Licence" that says:
>
> 1) Here's a commercial software product.
> 2) It comes WITH SOURCE
> 3) Provided that you have paid for a licence you may use it internally as you wish
> 4) (and here is the crucial difference from GPL) you may redistribute code/mods/fixes/whatever ONLY to OTHER LICENCE HOLDERS.
>
> So effectively, it gives users similar rights to the GPL with the one major exception - it's not free gratis.
>
> I'm not saying I like this licence, but let's live in the real world, and there are a lot of people who would like to make a living selling software. Why shouldn't they be allowed to do so?
And what is exactly hindering them??, not the GPL, it's a license not a law.
Only if these software developers want to use GPL code , than there might be under certain circumstances a hindrance in them exploiting the GPL'ed code from someone else.
(L)GPL for basic functionality, PickYourLicense fo I've said it before and I'm saying it again, read my lips, GPL or LGPL are ideal licenses for the basic infrastructure projects which must remain open and free in order to guarantee free exchange of information and ideas.
On top of this open infrastructure people and companies are welcome to build their applications using whatever license they wish, from ultra-free GPL to proprietary. Yes, even proprietary apps are okay (if they provide superior user experience), but it calls for a strong commitment to agreed _standards_ (file formats, protocols etc.) to prevent the erosion of inter-operability.
(L)GPL and standardization together can provide a solid foundation for reinvigorated Information Age, not GNU GPL or MS-Whatever Uber Alles alone.
The basic Linux distro building is not going to be a license to print money, but whoever thought so must have been wearing $$-coloured IPO shades. However, the distro companies which provide solid value to their customers (standards compliance [LSB], solid support, timely updates, backward compatibility, perhaps support deals directly with ISVs and OEMs...) will make a comfortable living as Linux gains momentum and "notoriety" worldwide.
Now, I don't know what got Ransom Love to insert (Mundie's?) foot in his mouth (again), but he could have made his point much more clearly and forcefully without giving credit to the MS attack guy Mundie or calling GPL (the foundation of the Linux "OS ecosystem") the "weakest link" of open source. When the CEO of a "Linux company" starts talking like that, I could see him looking for the exits. That'd be alright by me, since it would leave a bigger slice of the cake to the remaining major distro companies.
Re: Chill out! This is crap. If you own the copyright for some GPL code and a company offers you money for it, you ARE allowed to license it to them under a different license (which doesn't require them to submit their changes back to you), while SILL keeping it under the GPL license for all other people. Many open-source projects are currently dual-licensed. The GPL does NOT prevent you from profitting from your own code; it only prevents you from profitting from someone else's.
Apache is a fine piece of code, but the BSD license is still a problem. This license allows evil companies like Microsoft to steal the code and "embrace and extend" it. No one minds IBM using it because IBM isn't a leech: IBM actively contributes back to the open-source community in many ways. Microsoft doesn't. The GPL, or other licenses, can allow companies like IBM to benefit from such code and prevent companies like Microsoft from doing the same. BSD-license supporters go on and on about how "truly free" code should be allowed to be used in any way by anyone, including MS, but I could not sleep at night knowing that I helped contribute to MS's domination. This is like developing some great technology in WWII and giving it to the Nazis to further their agenda. "But I made it free for all of humanity!" "Yeah, and it helped exterminate millions of people." As wonderful and idealistic and it seems to make everything free for everyone, there are too many evil people out there who need to be prevented from easily using such benefits.
> I can't believe this. Now the BSD license is evil? I think it is easy to carry this way over the edge. GPL is a good thing in many regards, but it's not perfect. LGPL eases that for those who look at software as business. This is seen from several angles...
>
> The comments by the submitter here are also less than responsible. Apache uses BSD and they said they did it for a reason. Now IBM and others use it as the basis of their web servers... and we, the open source community pound our chest >
> Another thing to consider is that the GPL is viral. If you are an author you can respect the frustration in considering what is best. If a company came up to you after years of tinkering with your project on the side and offered you $100,000 for the rights to incorporate it in their commercial offering you would have to say no, I can't, I'm restrained by the GPL. If you wanted to offer an enhanced version but needed to be paid to subsidise the time you could take a year off and code... but you would have to be sure your new code plugged in to and did not link your old code.
>
>
> If there is one thing the Linux community does very well indeed is is run off on a tangent and eat it's own in some pathalogical conspiracy theory mode. M$ and their minions don't need to attack the GPL as opposed to open source... they just need to get enough users and developers and companies bringing up the same old concerns to create a polarizing effect. Then we can be shown as crazed reactionaries and simultaniously put Linux companies out of business because we won't buy their packages since we don't like their license (shutting down a noticable chunk of open source coding). To think so many people are second guessing their motives when we should be reviewing our own!
Re: Commercially friendly licences The GPL was never meant to help people who are in the business of selling software. In fact, it seems rather stupid to actually attempt to profit from the sale of GPL software. That's like setting up a stand selling "mountain spring bottled water" right next to the spring (on public land) you got it from. The GPL was meant to protect free software developers from having their code misused. The only way to profit off GPL software either either service/support or by selling convenient shrink-wrapped packages. Obviously, this will never allow you to build an empire like MS, but isn't that what we'd like to avoid?
Your "CPL" idea actually sounds pretty good; maybe in the future some commercial products will adopt such a license.
For your final question, there's nothing wrong with trying to make a living selling software. But bitching about the GPL is like bitching about that publicly-available mountain spring that's putting your bottled water company out of business. No one ever guaranteed you a profitable business, especially if your business plan is stupid. If you're trying to sell software, you probably shouldn't be using the GPL.
> Ransom Love does have a point - which a lot of people seem to be missing. If you want to make a living SELLING SOFTWARE then the GPL is a serious barrier.
>
> But as many people have pointed out, the GPL does its intended job, and it does it extremely well. As people may remember, I wish Corel would open their source! but that desire seems to be going nowhere.
>
> Let's try and come up with another licence, that does its job just as effectively as the GPL. Lets call it the "Commercial Public Licence" that says:
>
> 1) Here's a commercial software product.
> 2) It comes WITH SOURCE
> 3) Provided that you have paid for a licence you may use it internally as you wish
> 4) (and here is the crucial difference from GPL) you may redistribute code/mods/fixes/whatever ONLY to OTHER LICENCE HOLDERS.
>
> So effectively, it gives users similar rights to the GPL with the one major exception - it's not free gratis.
>
> I'm not saying I like this licence, but let's live in the real world, and there are a lot of people who would like to make a living selling software. Why shouldn't they be allowed to do so?
Re: Don't just dismiss this No one ever said the ONLY reason for Linux's success is the GPL; only that it was a large contributor. Its technical qualities are very important, but the license protects most parts of Linux (those under the GPL) from being misused by companies like Microsoft. (Actually, I'm getting a little sick of that phrase: MS has pretty much wiped out all other software companies, so they're the only company like themselves.)
Your logic about MS APIs is very flawed; the GPL has nothing to do with reverse engineering. MS's license protects their code from non-MS developers. Reverse engineering is necessary since we can't simply steal their code and use it to develop compatible products. Similarly, the GPL protects Linux and other GPLed code from MS, so they can't simply steal it and use it for their own purposes (remember Kerberos?). Your statement about MS being able to use GPL code as they please is simply wrong. They can't use GPL code at all (unless they use it as-is, which would not serve their purposes). If they embrace and extend it, they must legally contribute the changes back to the author. If they don't, they're in violation and can be sued. And considering how much trouble they've had lately keeping their source code secret, it wouldn't be long until someone found out the truth.
The GPL doesn't hinder companies trying "to make a buck or two", unless they're in the business of selling software based on other people's code. For all other businesses (most companies are NOT software companies, remember?), GPLed software poses no problem.
> Are we saying that the only reason that Linux is doing so well is because of a license? Are we saying that the method of it's development, the quality of the code and the glamour of it's technical rags to riches history have nothing to do with it.
>
> I don't think Microsoft give a damn about the GPL. If the Linux community can clean room or reverse engineer Windows API's then Microsoft can sure as hell do anything they like with Linux innovations, particularly as they are documented at every stage of development on the kernel mailing lists. Also, even if Microsoft used all of the Linux code or any other GPL code for that matter, they'll never be able to give it away and gain advantage because it's already free.
>
> Saying the GPL is the reason for the success of "open source" or "free software" denies everything that is good about the movements i.e. the community and the motive of doing a good job and doing it right and letting everybody play. The GPL is a good license but it isn't the god of free software and I can understand why large companies or people wanting to make a buck or two hesitate to dip their toe into the rather muddy GPL waters.
Re: Chill out! > Another thing to consider is that the GPL is viral. If you are an author you can respect the frustration in considering what is best. If a company came up to you after years of tinkering with your project on the side and offered you $100,000 for the rights to incorporate it in their commercial offering you would have to say no, I can't, I'm restrained by the GPL. If you wanted to offer an enhanced version but needed to be paid to subsidise the time you could take a year off and code... but you would have to be sure your new code plugged in to and did not link your old code.
Flat out wrong.
You, as the copyright holder, are not bound by your license; the license only applies to people who do not hold the copyright to the work. If you write something, GPL it, and later want to commercialize it, you can license it to anyone else under any terms you please. In that case, it becomes dual licensed under the GPL and another license. The only fly in the ointment is that if other people have contributed to it, they have to give their approval too; if it's BSD licensed, you don't have to ask them for permission to sell their changes.
What's more, if you BSD licensed your software originally, the company that wants to commercialize your software doesn't even have to ask you for your permission; they can take it, acknowledge your copyright, and do whatever they please without offering you a thing! So by GPL'ing your software to begin with, you're keeping leverage for just this kind of thing if that's your choice.
I simply do not understand why so many people say "the BSD license is business-friendly" and "the GPL is business-hostile". Unless you have a very specific business model, specifically taking free code that someone else wrote, making proprietary changes, and selling the result as a proprietary work without compensating the original author, it is almost surely the case that it's exactly the other way around -- the GPL is business-friendly while the BSD license is hostile. The GPL ensures that a competitor can't take your work and use it against you with proprietary extensions, and it allows you to meaningfully dual license it -- assuming you don't accept somebody else's changes who's not willing to dual license it.
Re: Re: Re: Chill out! I totally disgaree: read th > > If you were tinkering with code contributed by *SOMEBODY ELSE* - why
> > on earth should you, alone, have the right to that code?
>
> Which code is that?
> Somebody else's code, or the code you wrote?
The code contributed by someone else. The code that you wrote, you possess sole copyright to, and can relicense it however you please.
> I have an off-topic question for you, spurred by discussions I've had lately. Imagine we have a world without any rights in IP.
> No copyright, no patents, no nothing. The only way to protect inventions, etc, is to keep them secret.
>
> What keeps someone from taking your code, burying it in the middle of a bunch of stuff, encrypting the whizbang out of it and selling it to you in an embedded device.
What de facto prevents someone from doing the same thing today? The difference is that if you manage to catch them you can (at least in theory) get a cease & desist and perhaps damages.
> Remember: There is no GPL. Without IP, the GPL doesn't work.
I'm aware of that, and I would personally be willing to give up the GPL in exchange for the elimination of IP (and suitable restrictions on "licenses" to stop the predatory nonsense that takes place constantly).
>
>You don't have to like RMS. Sure he can be fanatical. But give him his due.
Sometimes, a fanatic is what's required. Anytime someone consistently stands up for moral principles, (s)he will be viewed by the general populace as a fanatic. Individuals that come to mind are Mahatma Gandhi, JC and Joan of Arc.
For the Free Software movement, RMS is exactly what is required; a lesser person could not have done the job, IMHO.
Re: Re: Chill out! > This is crap. If you own the copyright for some GPL code and a company
> offers you money for it, you ARE allowed to license it to them under a
> different license (which doesn't require them to submit their changes
> back to you), while STILL keeping it under the GPL license for all other
> people. Many open-source projects are currently dual-licensed.
Correct. Blackbox, e.g., a window manager, has changed from the original
GPL to a BSD-like license. (Correct me if I am wrong ... I use Blackbox
myself.) And under the latter it's currently developed. I don't know in
which situation the GPLed Blackbox currently is--to relativize the fact
that some software is available under different licenses--, but I easily
imagine that it's "obsolete" software. (Should not be an unsurmountable
problem though, given that the actual Blackbox is BSDish.)
> The GPL does NOT prevent you from profitting from your own code; it only
> prevents you from profitting from someone else's.
Correct--if you give to "profiting" a negative connotation. Actually you
could still profit from someone's else's code by modifying it and not
redistributing it longer. (Using the graph theory language you would act
like a "drain".)
On the other side, if you don't act like a "scrounger", you can plainly
and honestly "profit" from someone's else work by adding your own work--it
doesn't even need to be "code". (Theoretically the GPL would even let you
try to "profit" from its work by simply adding nothing ... you just need
to imagine that it hardly will succeed.)
You see: the GPL is not an authoritarian license; and yet it's not at the
mercy of the arbitrary acts of the "wicked". (If someone can't
recognize--as RMS correctly has remarked it already--that the GPL is
entirely American-compatible, and indeed it fully shows from where the
roots originate, then it's time to seriously start to look for a good
phrenologist.)
There is NOTHING more equitable than the GPL around. Any attack that I
have seen against it is pure and plain demagogy (i.e., it does not stand
to any serious discourse and argumentation). Call it FUD, if you like.
The GPL might nearly be considered a license with an ethics. Do you
already have listened about an Hippocratic oath? (How do these peaple
live? mistery!) Apropos: do you have seen virus with an ethics already? :)
Anyway. Good so. It makes the GPL only stronger, A GPL that is becoming
sound like a Pythagoras's theorem. FYI (I am translating Henry Leroy's `La
Fiabilite' des Programmes'): "If it's not reasonable to doubt about the
validity of the theorem of Pythagora, say, it's not because we have seen
once a demonstration of it. It's because we know that this demonstration
has been repeated, that it's result has been dissected many and many times
without being able to discover the least defect; more: the proposition is
very short, the demonstration relatively simple ...
Yup! The GPL make even appear the microsofties as intellectuals :)
Bye bye Caldera! :) Well, too bad for a company that is already under siege... and under an immense burden after purchasing SCO Unix.
I think it has had little support from many Linux fans, and now it alienates even the remaining ones.
Good luck with whatever license you want. I don't think it will help Caldera a single bit. It's good to realize a change is needed to help the company. But changing the wrong thing could make things worse!
Re: Re: Don't just dismiss this "Your logic about MS APIs is very flawed; the GPL has nothing to do with reverse engineering"
Maybe I didn't make the point clearly. My point is that Microsoft are not frightened of the GPL. Why should they be. Any innovations that come from the free software/open source community can be copied by Microsoft in the same way that we copy their proprietry software, regardless of the GPL. They don't actually need to cut and paste to use GPL code in the same way the "wine" team didn't to "copy" Microsoft API's. It takes a while for the community to do it but for Microsoft it is easy as the technical specifications are available for all to see.
One more point, although I have never used the BSD license and probably never will, the argument that it can be embraced or extended or otherwise subverted by evil corporations is ridiculous. Write some code, release it using any license you like and you'll find whatever anybody does with it, your code is still there and you can still do whatever you want with it. They can't steal it from you.
Anyway, who gives a damn about Microsoft, I thought we were here to produce a nice operating system and some nice applications for ourselves.
Re: Re: Commercially friendly licences How is this different from the GPL? The one "difference" is that you can only distribute to other license holders? That's exactly what the GPL does. You can use the software privately for whatever. But if you want to re-distribute, you must use the GPL to do so, thus making those you distribute to "other license holders." It's just really easy to become a license holder with the GPL. This license you speak of is just a "pay to be in the club" GPL. Sounds downright putrid to me.
How is this different from the GPL? Because your "pay to be in the club" assumption is correct. I like "free beer" software. But I don't demand that other people throw their work into the "free beer" domain.
But I have been bitten by code (not only MS's) that is not "free libre". We still use WordPerfect 5.1 (the effort of upgrading would be horrendous - loads of unstable macros, etc etc). And some of the instability is the fault of bugs. I'm denied the opportunity to fix them :-( I WANT TO GET MY HANDS ON THE SOURCE OF WORDPERFECT! as I suspect many other fans of the product would like to do!
Plenty of open source people are happy to pay for software. Plenty of open source people curse their favourite software because it is not free libre. Plenty of open source people are perfectly happy with software that is NOT free beer.
Why not create a standard licence that is free libre but not free beer, and try and persuade commercial companies to use it. And no, that does NOT weaken Open Source. Those companies that go down this route will find that they need to provide good service. They have just presented their competitors with a golden opportunity to reverse-engineer their product! They had better make damn sure that their customers are too loyal to make such a move worth while! (And in passing, I can't see this licence being a viable long term strategy - but it's excellent at its intended purpose of luring proprietary companies within range of Open Source's gravity.)
And we have an excellent example of exactly this sort of thing. TrollTech. Okay, it's different, but Troll (thanks to making the source available (under the GPL)) are now the default choice for anybody who wants to code for both linux and windows, and they've sown up the Borland Kylix market too.
In short, support Open Source, but DON'T demand that everybody else give away their hard work for free (as in beer).
Most successful open source projects... Who gives a rat's ass about which license is more business friendly? Let's see what the most successful open source projects are to date: Apache (BSD based license), Perl (dual licensed), XFree86 (MIT license). The open source project most likely to be hit the "consumer" users in big way is Mozilla (MPL). Even the Linux kernel is not pure GPL, since it has a linking exception.
You choose your own license for your own projects based on your own needs. This is all that Caldera is saying: that the GPL does not meet its needs for the software that it produces.
Re: (L)GPL for basic functionality, PickYourLicens "The basic Linux distro building is not going to be a license to print money, but whoever thought so must have been wearing $$-coloured IPO shades. However, the distro companies which provide solid value to their customers (standards compliance [LSB], solid support, timely updates, backward compatibility, perhaps support deals directly with ISVs and OEMs...) will make a comfortable living as Linux gains momentum and "notoriety" worldwide.
...Well put, very well put. I believe that Linux software companies creating their own versions and modifications of the GPL license in order to profit may in the short term generate more income, however, if you look at the larger, more long term picture, the different licensing amongst different distributions of Linux will only add to the confusion and division that already exists from an external perspective on the Linux community. Changing the licensing in order to aid commercial vendors of Linux therefore is a destructive concept as it will certainly not aid its momentum, image or notoriety. This will ultimately hit back home with decreased Linux sales, and especially to companies with modified licensing.
It would be nice if the tooth-fairy existed and could leave a nice sum of money under some of the major distributions of Linux's pillows... :)
Re: Chill out! Assuming that you did not assign the copyright to a second party. > This is a long held piece of FUD about the GPL and most certainly is wrong. As copyright holder on a work you can license it under anything you want even under many licenses if you want. Even if you put code under the GPL it does not prevent you from licensing that same code to someone else to integrate it into a proprietary work. If you want to ingrated GPL code into a proprietary work you have to talk to the copyright holder(s) and get their permission to do so. > > The GPL is just like any other license. The code is put available under certain conditions. If you don't like those conditions talk to the copyright holder and try to arrange a deal with them.
