DJB Releases All Source to Public Domain 330
A Sage Developer writes "During a recent conference, Sage Days 6, Dan Bernstein (who has recently come under attack for his licensing policy) was among the invited speakers. During a panel discussion on the future of open source mathematics software, Bernstein declared that all of his past and future code would be released to the public domain. This includes qmail, primegen, and a number of other projects. Given the headache that incompatibility between GPLv3 and GPLv2 is causing developers, will we see more of this?"
OK so when exactly? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Don't be an "indian giver" (Score:5, Informative)
Sigh. No, it doesn't. The GPL sets forth rules you need to follow if you choose to share (i.e. distribute) the software. But nothing in the GPL obliges you to share anything.
Re:Don't be an "indian giver" (Score:5, Informative)
How is it confusing?
The restrictions are essentially closing loopholes whereby people could either avoid sharing or share something useless.
Under GPLv2, you could create a derivative work and run a website based on it, but not share the changes since you weren't technically distributing the software. Or you could create a signed binary, and hardware that won't run it unless that binary is exactly the same. Or you could patent some procedure used, so that people can see the source code, but if they do anything with it, they violate your patent.
All GPLv3 does is enforce the spirit of GPLv2. Specifically: Everyone has to be able to get the source code, make any change they want, recompile, and run the modified binary.
If you're getting hit with these restrictions, chances are, you, yourself, are an "indian giver" -- you want to pretend to share, except, not really.
Or GPLv2... or BSD... or Apache... or MIT...
You're suggesting that GPLv3 somehow "infected" GPLv2, or every other license out there. That's simply not true. While public domain is perhaps the only way to ensure your code can be included in any kind of project, I see nothing wrong with share alike, and I see no reason why closing the loopholes is "going too far".
Re:Google video slashdotted? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Don't be an "indian giver" (Score:3, Informative)
As I understand it, the only project in which Modified-BSD code could not be included is a project where the author wanted to claim you recommend their project without your permission. So while it's technically true, I don't think it's fair to say that public domain is the only way to allow code to be used in any project, not realistically speaking anyway. Anyone who insists on falsely claiming I endorse or recommend their product because I wrote some code they yoinked is a charlatan and I don't think their project is legitimate.
A Linus supporter? (Score:4, Informative)
Linus' interpretation is, so long as we get to see the code, it's fine, even if we can't do anything with it.
That is not the original intent. Say what you will about RMS, but he wrote the damned thing.
Do you know why RMS started this "free software crusade", founded GNU, and wrote any GPL at all? It starts with a printer. He'd messed with the old printer driver for the old printer -- it was prone to paper jams, so his hack was to at least detect a jam and alert the user, even if he couldn't fix it. Well, the new model of printer came in, and he was all set to port his fix, but he didn't have source code.
That's why GPLv2 is all about source code -- RMS wants to be able to tinker with any device he owns, and he saw lack of source code as the only thing stopping him. In the case of this printer driver, it was. But now we have tivoization. Tell me, if the lab computer was set to only accept signed binaries, what good would any amount of source code be? He could change it to do his paper-jam-fixing-hack, and even compile it -- he could do anything but run it -- which makes it completely useless.
Linus has a point, and so do you -- there is some academic value in seeing how people did what they did.
But Linus and you miss the crucial point -- it's not about restricting the developers, it's about empowering the users. The GPLv3 guarantees that any piece of software you get that's GPLv3-licensed, you can modify it, recompile it, and run it in the same way as the original. What's restrictive about that?
Re:OK so when exactly? (Score:5, Informative)
From http://cr.yp.to/qmail/dist.html [cr.yp.to]:
I hereby place the qmail package (in particular, qmail-1.03.tar.gz, with MD5 checksum 622f65f982e380dbe86e6574f3abcb7c) into the public domain. You are free to modify the package, distribute modified versions, etc.
Re:dnscache as an common daemon (Score:3, Informative)
It's being worked on. [ubuntu.com]
Re:That may be good. (Score:3, Informative)
When Qmail was release, glibc was more than a decade old. So though glibc might not have been as widely used as those of commercial Unix versions there were certainly plenty of opportunity to release it.
That said, most of the stuff he reimplemented is not stuff that belongs in libc, and quite a bit of it is pointless paranoia and just contributes to make the Qmail source hard to read.
Re:In a word... (Score:4, Informative)
(DJB's license forbade distribution of modified source - you can only distribute patches. You man not distribute binary files that result from any modification from the distribution source. I argue that it isn't open source at all.)
This might mean that qmail's glaring deficienies will get fixed. That's if qmail is still relevant. Plus, it might be secure on muliti-gigabyte ram 64 bit machines (which, frankly, are run of the mill linux boxes these days.)
Now, arguing a swap from GPL or BSD to/from Public Domain is another thing entirely IMHO.
Re:In a word... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What headache? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:In a word... (Score:4, Informative)
We deliberately put the source codes for the original Web browser and client library into the public domain in order to create the maximum chance of growth.
At the time there was no Apache license and the GPL poison pill simply did not meet our needs. At the time we were actively lobbying Microsoft and IBM to come on board with the Web.
The only regret I have about it is that if we had had a license it would not have been possible for NCSA to put out the early releases of Mosaic which consisted of 75% or more of CERN code without a single mention of CERN or even the Web in the documentation. I would probably recommend that people think about the attribution issue carefully, the behavior of NCSA is the main reason that the Web received very shabby treatment from CERN, in the early days NCSA was getting all the press attention and they simply were not mentioning the fact that the ideas had come from Tim.
I don't think this applies in Bernstein's case. Nor would I be too concerned about possibly insecure extensions. There are some open source projects that have successfully maintained a very strict security process over ten years or more.
Re:In a word... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Don't be an "indian giver" (Score:3, Informative)
Quite correct. Fortunately, it's almost trivially easy to beat the AGPL [honeypot.net].
Re:In a word... (Score:3, Informative)
Yes; just like everybody else who's publishing Open Source Software, they're doing it using an OSI Approved Open Source License.