XFree86 Alters License 430
kinema writes "According to the XFree86 announcement starting with XFree86 v4.4.0-RC3 there will be a new license. There are some worries that these changes might be incompatible with the GPL." The FSF has a good page about the problems with BSD-style advertising clauses, which ironically uses XFree86's old license as an example of one to emulate.
GPL popularity? (Score:2, Interesting)
XFree86 is using a different license, as is Apache... will this put off others using the GPL, and encourage them to use a license of their own creation that best suits their needs?
Contributed code (Score:5, Interesting)
Why this is a problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, why's this a problem? The XFree project doesn't include GPLed code itself, so there are no concerns from that point of view. However, if any of the code in the X libraries falls under this new license, then the FSF's interpretation of the GPL means that you wouldn't be able to link any GPLed program against the X libraries and distribute it. That's fairly bad.
On the plus side, the freedesktop.org x libraries were branched from XFree before the license change - as a result, we can pretty much guarantee that there will be libraries available that can be used with GPLed code. The end result would probably be to reduce the amount of XFree code in a distribution, rather than to increase the credit that the XFree project wants. It's almost certainly a counter-productive move.
Re:Why shouldn't it be? (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, this issue brings up some schisms between the GPL and BSD communities. However, I find the attitude of the BSD proponents on this subject somewhat strange. By choosing the BSD license, you are giving people the right to do whatever they want with their work. This means that company could take your code and include it in a proprietory app, without releasing improvements back to the community. By their decision to license under BSD, developers indicate that they are okay with this. Why, then, should any of them get mad that other developers would include BSD code in GPL'ed programs? Is GPL worse than propietory???
Problem with Open-Source (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Major Problems... (Score:3, Interesting)
Hmmm...do I smell Xouvert? [xouvert.org] or perhaps freedesktop [freedesktop.org] ?
Regards,
Steve
Why is this GPL incompatible? (Score:5, Interesting)
Can somebody explain why this new 1.1 license is necessarily incompatible with GPL2 / LGPL [fsf.org]? True, it is an annoying licence change as the FSF article explains, and may not be a smart move for the project. But annoying doesn't make it incompatible. And no one even said (that I can determine) that original flawed BSD license was in fact incompatible; just undesirable.
In fact, this seems to be less restrictive than the GNU FDL [fsf.org] license for documentation. It's not the same as past famous GPL-incompatible licenses, such as an old version of the Python license.
Maybe GPL v3 Can Support "Advertising Clauses"... (Score:5, Interesting)
That being said, one would hope that the continued work on the next generation of GPL will consider whether or not "advertising clauses" will really result in GPL incompatibility. The mission of the FSF and the GPL is to make sure that the code can be freely used and reused. It's unclear how requiring positive attribution would interfere with that. Aren't there options for that sort of thing in FSF's Free Documentation License?
Admittedly, it's a slippery slope -- imagine a license with a clause requiring binaries be accompanied by a message advocating a particular political position. Or a particular sexual position, for that matter...
Re:GPL popularity? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why shouldn't it be? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually this is not really the case if you take GPL seriously. GPL is like a prion, anything it touches is meant to turn into itself. The whole objective of GPL is deliberately and explicitly to prevent commercial exploitation. If you think differently then you have never met RMS in person and listened to him for more than 30 minutes.
I used to share an office building with RMS. I think the only person who really takes RMS and the GPL seriously is Bill Gates. Bill does believe in IP rights and so he takes the GPL as RMS intends it to be read, not as most people read it.
Take the linked screed on the 'advertisement' clause. Not having an advertisement clause is the single biggest mistake we made with the Web. If libwww had had an advertisement clause Marc Andressen and NCSA could not have plagarised the work in the way they did, they would have had to tell people that the majority of the code in Mosaic had been written at CERN. With no advertisement clause there was no requirement to tell anyone about CERN and so until about 1995 almost every press report on the Web either did not mention Tim Berners-Lee and CERN at all or did so as an afterthought.
Meanwhile Marc Andressen created a huge PR machine at Netscape dedicated to promoting Marc as the lone inventor of the Web. The fact that Eric Bina not Marc really wrote Mosaic was also rewritten. Netscape even sponsored a book to promote this revisionist history - see Architects of the Web, not only is there no chapter on Tim, the only time he is mentioned is to attack him with lies.
So no, do not take RMS's advice he has only a slight connection with reality. RMS believes in a version of anti-corporativist activism that is considered fringe by the type of people who still believe that there is no difference between Al Gore and George Bush, and plan to vote for Ralph Nader in November.
So no, not being GPL compatible is not a bug, it is something very positive that should be applauded.
As for RMS's rant on the advertising clause, it would be very easy to write a C macro and some perl scripts that compile the relevant notice section automatically. BSD does not tell every user what it is the product of Berkley every time they start a shell script. If it writes anything to the console during boot well who reads that anyway? All you need is a single one line command to print out the list of contributors. Call it credits or something.
Re:eh (Score:3, Interesting)
For the Open Source community to succeed we can not forget the hard work put in by those who came before us.
Openssl (Score:5, Interesting)
The author of that license seems to hold a deep grudge against the GPL, and specifically coded his license to make it incompatible (explicitly!!).
Anecdotally, it actually seems very common for BSD advocates to hate on the GPL. GPL users have no problem incorporating most BSD stuff with compatible licenses, because the product is GPL'd its not going to bother them.
The BSD crowd dont seem to be afraid that proprietary interests will advance the code such that the free version atrophies, but they do seem concerned that a rebadged GPL version could do just that: become the new "official" version. That would preclude any more commercial forking they had planned.
Personally, I thought the commercial fork pipe-dream was last used successfully by bill joy. I dont know why it still has so many adherents- proprietary is clearly not the wave of the future.
Re:Why shouldn't it be? (Score:3, Interesting)
"Those who desire to give up Freedom in order to gain Security, will not have, nor do they deserve, either one."
Repost (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't see any moral difference between RMS insisting that you call the operating system "GNU/Linux" and the XFree86 people insisting they get credit for their work. (Technically I see a difference, as there's nothing forcing you to call it GNU/Linux. But morally it's the same thing.)
Over the long term it is just as unworkable (Score:3, Interesting)
You are right, it isn't as immediately bad as the original BSD clause, but it does appear nevertheless to be incompatible with the GPL, and therefor with a huge volume of free and open source software development. This in and of itself is a problem (c.f. my other post on this subject regarding fragmentation of the open source / free software community).
But, more to the point, this is a practical problem.
Consider: one of the long term unbeatable strengths of free software (and the real reason entities like Microsoft are so desperate to destroy it at any cost) is that free software can be built upon and improved indefinitely.
No need to reinvent the wheel every five, ten, fifteen, thirty, fifty, or one hundred years. Incremental evolution can and largely has replaced gutting and starting over from scratch.
Which means we could be using an unrecognizably (but incrementally improved and altered) version of GNU/Linux, XFree, or what have you a century from now. And, lest you think this is far fetched, consider that the concepts in UNIX (and Linux) date back over thirty years, and that COBOL code written even longer before that is still deployed in many legacy installations. Incremental improvement and modification is almost always preferred over revolutionary "rip out everything and start over" (indeed, the best reason for doing the latter is to get out from under the Yoke of proprietary software lockin and move toward a model -- free software -- that allows incremental, long term gradual improvement instead of triannual reinvention of the wheel a la Microsoft and, to a lesser degree, Apple).
Think of how many attributions your documentation (or your bloated code) is going to have to contain after ten years. Twenty or thirty years. Fifty.
We're talking hundreds of names at least, and by the end of half a century, probably thousands. All of that bloats the code, and, over an indefinite time frame, will probably mean a seperate volume of documentation just for the attributions!
It is, long term, as unworkable as the BSD clause. The only real difference is that scalability isn't as immediate an issue. The curve of the function is the same shape, it is merely the coeffecient that is different, and while the bloat may coming in years instead of months, it is coming nevertheless.
Mod parent up please (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why shouldn't it be? (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, you fail to explain how the advertising clause would help you, if by your own interpretation it amounts to credits spewed by a command-line switch or in the about box. (The fine print of a commercial or add could have contained all the "CERN wrote part of this shite" disclaimers you want, wouldnt have mattered a bit )
Secondly, you fail to explain how the GPL would not have accomplished what you sought, when in fact it is the only license that would have done so. An open code base would have certainly prevented mozilla from becoming netscape to start with.
Thirdly, you blindly champion incompatibility with the premier technology of the open source movement (Free software), with no reason why except that it is some form of "prion". So the best you can come up with is that you get mad cow disease from the GPL.
You chose the commercializable BSD, so you got commercialized, I cannot imagine why that should be a shock.
Re:Why shouldn't it be? (Score:1, Interesting)
I licence my code under tearms of the X/MIT license (the old one, but I might change) but this is not so that proprietery interests can take my code and do whatever with it, even if they can. It is because I want my code to be free, available for ANYONE to use regardless of religious choice. If you want to use my code in your GPLed program - do it, if you want to use my code in your BSDed program - do it, if you want to use my code in your proprietery program - do it. The only one of those options not blocked by the GPL is using code in other GPLed programs.
This of course means I must be careful not to allow any GPLed code in my source tree. This is not because I am religiously against the GPL but because it would cause my licensing problems; I would have to GPL my program and I don't want to lock it up like that.
In my experience it is rare to see someone who has BSDed their code get mad because someone uses it in a GPLed program. A large portion of Linux comes from BSD and nobody complained - at least not loudly because I didn't hear it.
There is a fear, sometimes, that a GPLed fork will become more popular so that our own version becomes unimportant. That is because our work, that we want to have open, is being hijacked for religious reasons. Yes, this is more offensive than proprietery interests taking advantage of us.
In short, its more a matter of freedom. We who use wide open licenses like BSD or X/MIT feel the GPL is not free enough.
NR
...and this matters because? (Score:2, Interesting)
To define freedom:
freedom ( P ) Pronunciation Key (frdm) n.
1. The condition of being free of restraints.
To define liberation:
liberation ( P ) Pronunciation Key (lb-rshn) n.
1. The act of liberating or the state of being liberated.
Now that the terms have been defined, it is quite clear that freedom says absolutely *nothing* about "maintaining freedom," though liberation *clearly* reflects what GNU is trying to achieve with the GPL.
I'm not certain why potential lack of "GPL compatability" is of concern to anyone. I don't see anyone criticizing the GPL for "lack of BSD, MIT, and Public Domain license compatability," which I find to be a serious problem.
I find it apalling that slashdot has the audacity to state that "The FSF has a good page about the problems with BSD-style advertising clauses." So, let me get this straight, a site/post that highlights the problems with copyleft in the GPL is a troll, and a site/post that highlights the problems with attribution in the BSDL is insightful? Definitely /. bias here.
On a practical level, the advertising clause shouldn't be an issue, (it never has been, with Internet Explorer, Mozilla, or Mac OS X) as far as practical use is concerned. Also, advertising clauses are not anti-copyleft. It is simply a matter of the GPL deciding to break compatability with such licenses. GPL-like licenses such as the MPL I believe have no such restriction.
Simply put, the only real problem with advertising clauses is that RMS doesn't tolerate them.
hint to modders, this comment: "-1 True".