Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1999 11:38:43 -0500 (EST) From: "Matthew N. Dodd" <winter@jurai.net> To: "Robert V. Baron" <rvb@cs.cmu.edu> Cc: cvs-committers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Coda license term changes ... GPL Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.02.9901091137040.8926-100000@sasami.jurai.net> In-Reply-To: <yzs7lux1lyc.fsf@sicily.odyssey.cs.cmu.edu>
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Wow, yet another 'Open Source' project switching to a more restrictive license. Why don't they ask the current Debian-core what they really think about the GPL? On 8 Jan 1999, Robert V. Baron wrote: > The first piece of mail below was posted to coda-announce earlier in > the week. The netbsd folk (on developers) have been having mixed > feeling over it. A clarification was posted to (developers) which is > also included below. I was wondering how the FreeBSD folk felt. > Note: a number of people have taken offense over the OSS usage in > the first post. This is clarified in the second post. > > ================================================================ > To: coda-announce@TELEMANN.coda.cs.cmu.edu, > Coda Discussion <linux-coda@TELEMANN.coda.cs.cmu.edu> > > Happy 1999! > > I have just uploaded the first 5.0 pre release. > > There are many differences with 4.6: > - an entirely new directory system which removes a really nasty bug that > plagued the servers for years. > > - many improvements to the networking code, in particular, much more > stable computations of bandwidth and retransmission times. > > - Coda is now GPL'd - primarily because we want to indicate that we are > really an OSS project. > > This is a good moment for maintainers of Debian, Sparc Linux and other > platforms to jump forward. > > We will smooth out some remaining bugs during the next few weeks. We will > come out with a Windows 95 client next week and an NT server soon, as well > as with the NetBSD/FreeBSD releases. Windows 95 is hard to build right > now (wait until next week) or read the coda-HOWTO, for BSD you should be > ok. > > A couple of other points: > > - a new Coda HOWTO was written. Have a look at: > http://www.coda.cs.cmu.edu/coda-howto.html > source in > ftp://ftp.coda.cs.cmu.edu/pub/coda/doc/coda-howto.sgml > > - We have a bugs list (Jitterbug): please read them and fix them! > > - I have made a list of some projects that are falling between the cracks > here. > http://www.coda.cs.cmu.edu/todo.html > > > Have fun, let us know what is good (and bad). > > - Peter - > ================================================================= > Let me try clarify the dicussions about Coda and its recent adoption > of the GPL. > > 1. HISTORY > > First, I have been a BSD follower since 4.2BSD. I worked on the > porting of Mach to various platforms. Perhaps most signficantly I did > the Mach i386 distribution and supported the Mach 2.5 kernel and later > Mach 3.0 kernel. I have most recently worked on kernel support for > Coda on x86 for NetBSD and FreeBSD, though the original code was > written by others. > > I am low on the Coda organizational totem pole. Peter Braam (who made > the original post) is a senior systems scientist who leads Coda > development. He reports to the Coda PI, Mahadev Satyanarayanan (Satya > for short). Satya is responsible for making the GPL decision and did > so only after careful thought. He has advised many students whose > theses make up Coda. Numerous people (~20) have worked on Coda in the > past. > > When Coda was proposed to be included in the NetBSD & FreeBSD systems > and allowed in, there was no plan at that time that to GPL Coda. So I > was acting in good faith. Satya made the decision to GPL Coda only in > December 1998. > > 2. RATIONALE FOR DECISION > > Satya has pondered how Coda will survive when contract funding for it > ceases. He also has considered who, if anyone, should profit from it > when all the people who contributed to it at the university have > graduated and gone their separate ways. Next, there is the issue of > Coda source fragmentation. Satya believes that GPL is more likely to > ensure that Coda remains coherent, preserving a single copy of Coda > with the same API for every user/builder/supporter. Finally, Satya > also believes that GPL reassures potential contributors that their > work will forever remain publicly available, and not become the > captive of some company that derives sole benefit from it. These were > the reasons for his deciding to GPL Coda. > > Note that components of Coda that have independent use (typically > libraries such as RVM and RPC2) are under the less restrictive LGPL. > Most importantly, KERNEL CODE IN NetBSD AND FreeBSD IS NOT GPL'ED. > They preserve the original copyright from CMU under which they were > integrated into NetBSD and FreeBSD. We have no plans to change this. > However, if it will make the NetBSD and FreeBSD communities more > comfortable, WE ARE WILLING TO TRANSFER OWNERSHIP OF THIS CODE TO > THEM. > > 3. WHERE TO GO FROM HERE > > Let's let the dicussions proceed for a while and I will wait for an > answer from core. I think that GPL is a fact of life. Our > compilation tools are GPL'ed, visit /usr/src/gnu. I don't accept that > we have a system without the comp tools. Further, I would find it > difficult to survive w/o some flavor of emacs which is GPL/ed, etc ... > I don't think that it should matter that the Coda application code is > GPL'ed. > > In a past discussion, it was maintained that if Coda was in the kernel > it should be in the source tree. It was resolved that it was > unfeasable to split Coda apart and populate the source tree with the > directories and still maintain synchronization with Coda development. > Perry suggested that Coda be maintained in a shadow tree like gnu is. > This was defered for a while because we were not ready. Perry's plan > is sensible and I will follow up on it if Coda remains part of NetBSD > and FreeBSD. > > Finally, you could just yank Coda out of the kernel and make it an lkm > only. This would make life more difficult for me, since lkms are > currently difficult to debug in NetBSD. However, I am willing to do > this if that's the preferred outcome. > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe cvs-all" in the body of the message > -- | Matthew N. Dodd | 78 280Z | 75 164E | 84 245DL | FreeBSD/NetBSD/Sprite/VMS | | winter@jurai.net | This Space For Rent | ix86,sparc,m68k,pmax,vax | | http://www.jurai.net/~winter | Are you k-rad elite enough for my webpage? | To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe cvs-all" in the body of the message
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