Date: Sun, 3 Dec 2000 19:39:17 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in (Rahul Siddharthan) Cc: tlambert@primenet.com (Terry Lambert), brett@lariat.org (Brett Glass), freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Here is what IBM thinks about using FreeBSD on their newer Message-ID: <200012031939.MAA29429@usr05.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <20001201134530.H61418@lpt.ens.fr> from "Rahul Siddharthan" at Dec 01, 2000 01:45:31 PM
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> > His ideology may eventually win (IMO, to the detriment of us > > all), but I don't think that he is going to be able to force > > the issue this way; it is more likely he will slit his own > > throat with the attempt. Of course, this was always a > > danger of the "or later version of the license". > > As I said, I think this ASP clause is a bad idea. But I also think > ASPs are a bad idea and clueful people will prefer running > well-maintained code on their own systems. I don't even think the > usual arguments for freeing the code (fixing your own bugs, etc, as in > RMS's old story of the printer with the closed-source driver) work > for freeing ASP code. What will you do after you fix the bugs: set up > your own ASP server? If you can do that you didn't need to use an ASP > in the first place. I actually have to weigh in against this. Logically, this would mean that I would not buy Stronghold (Apache+SSL+X.509 certificate), since I can have the software for free, now that OpenSSL includes an RSA implementation, and RSA is off patent. $1000 is a lot to pay for just a certificate. The fallacy here is that it devalues the installation and the productization work that went into the package -- what Geoffrey Moore calls "the whole product". Frankly, I think that the idea of a "WhiteHat FreeBSD" has merit because of the value that could be added through installation and productization (but the FreeBSD trademark controllers have specifically said that they would not permit the use of the trademark in that context). I think, most free software is only usable by technophiles, and that a large part of the succes of Linux is attributable to someone making the technology accessible to non-technophiles. > But the "or later version" is an option only, and code which is now > distributed under GPL2 can be distributed under GPL2 for all time. > Moreover, the author can choose not to allow that option. I seem to > remember Linus removing the "or later version" clause for the linux > kernel recently, though I may be wrong. This was a wise decision, IMO. Spo was the decision to treat the kernel as a shared library for the purposes of kernel modules, and several other decisions that have been made in that same genre: this is where we see the distinction between GPL ideology, and real-world practicality, most clearly. > > I also see it as being problematic for things like Linux, > > which unlike the FSF tools, accept contributions without > > having to have the rights granted to a single legal > > entity. The problem with that has always been that any > > author could claim version differences for their code > > contributed to the project. > > In the linux case, Linus could always refuse to accept patches > not contributed under GPL v2. I really doubt that the code is audited that closely, on the assumption that the contributions in the form of patches are a derivative work, and thus tmust themselves be GPL'ed. The problem with this is that if I made my patches against a pre modified license kernel, and they were incorporated, Linus can not really legally change the license without violating my copyright. For the code I've personally contributed, I have no problem with giving him the rights to do this, but realize that this is a place where political differences are fairly prominent within the GPL community itself (I don't count myself as a member, though I've contributed code to a dozen or more GPL'ed projects). Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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