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?"
In a word... (Score:5, Insightful)
No.
Not in a manner disproportionate to what we've seen in the past anyway. Some people will keep gpl2 as their license, others will go gpl3, bsd, or one of any of the OSI licenses for the most part, because people like attribution, they like retaining (some) control of their work.
Don't be an "indian giver" (Score:1, Insightful)
If you share, share. If you don't want to share, don't share. It used to be as easy as that. The GPL and its derivatives introduced a weird twist on the sharing that if you partake in the sharing, you must also share alike. This makes sense in the software world since a copy to you doesn't mean that I am deprived of a copy for myself. Sharing is something that you ought to do. The GPL pushes that one step further by making sharing a requirement. Now receiving obliges you to give in return (if copyright wasn't the basis for the GPL, would Stallman have required distribution too?).
It all got so confusing, and now with GPL3 putting further restrictions on sharers, I think we are seeing a bit of backlash. Not only because it is difficult to reconcile differences between implementations under GPL2 with the newer version, but also because the greater restrictions are a smack in the face to the original reason anyone wanted to get involved in the first place, i.e. to share.
Sharing is a good thing, and should be encouraged. But to try to regulate every single loophole and corner case is going too far. Public domain remains the last safe haven for shareable code. Good on DJB.
Re:In a word... (Score:4, Insightful)
dnscache as an common daemon (Score:3, Insightful)
I would like to use dnscache as a normal daemon, one below the
The software is good. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That may be good. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:In a word... (Score:3, Insightful)
I saw Open Source as a free exchange of ideas and code that let you do what ever you wanted with it. Public Domain fits that better than a lot of others.
All the Gotchas and legal overhead built into some of them are just overhead that make the whole process fustrating.
At the same time, Open Source is becomming more of a buzz word than anything else. I hear even Microsoft does Open Source software now.
Re:In a word... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:In a word... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:In a word... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That may be good. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is ludicrous. He wrote them because the ones out there weren't good enough. Others can write their own. There is nothing sociopathic about closed source software, no matter how much you may wish it to be.
(It is probably in the realm of sociopathy, as we're using the term, to go after people who reverse engineer your compiled binaries, but that's entirely different from not giving them your code. If they can extract what they need from what you have chosen given them, good for them. It is always wise to remember that while the GPL and the Free Software movement are in favor of unlimited user rights, a developer choosing to exert his own rights is not wrong.)
Re:dnscache as an common daemon (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, since there isn't a standard right now...
That's why I called it "trying".
Well, init.d is complete in the sense that brainfuck is Turing-complete.
Which is to say, it's actually awkward for quite a lot of things. For instance: networking.
On Gentoo, the way multiple network interfaces are dealt with is by assigning each of them an init script, all symlinked to the same one. Gentoo init scripts have dependencies, so I can have something depend on some or all of the network interfaces being up.
On Debian, this is dealt with by having one "networking" init script that then ties into its own init-like system for individual interfaces -- ifup/ifdown. I can force certain scripts to run after an interface comes up or goes down.
On Ubuntu desktops, this is dealt with by having a NetworkManager daemon (started by init.d) that handles everything itself, by communicating with a GUI. I'm fairly sure it uses ifup/ifdown in some way, as it seems to respect some of my static scripts.
Gentoo is the closest to the "right way", in that there's a unified way to start/stop something. That is, on Gentoo, I know I can stop a network device by doing /etc/init.d/net.eth1 stop. But Ubuntu's the most user-friendly way, because I can do it from a GUI, and, for instance, easily migrate between wireless networks.
Now, go read about upstart [ubuntu.com], for a completely different approach. In particular, the ability to receive "events" from, say, udev or HAL, means that the equivalent of "/etc/init.d/net.eth1 start" will be run when I plug a cable into eth1, without removing that functionality, or forcing it into a completely different system (ifup/down).
At least, that's how I think it would work. In practice, while Upstart is used in Ubuntu, it's mostly used just to launch all the old sysv rc scripts, which then launch things like NetworkManager.
Re:That may be good. (Score:3, Insightful)
From a system administrator's point of view qmail does NOT keep adequate logging to track the flow of a message through X MTAs. With Postfix or Sendmail (and I reckon Exim too), I can see the entire flow in the logs. If you ever worked for a company such as an ISP or where someone complained about email gone missing, stuff like this is lifesaving.
From a programmer point of view DJB's software is just the antithesis of everything decent programming stands for, magic variables, awkward named variables, undsoweiter.
No thank you. I prefer to stick with Postfix (after many years of Sendmail).
Re:A Linus supporter? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:A Linus supporter? (Score:4, Insightful)
The GPL v2 and v3 are, whatever else one may say, the most successful attempt so far at creating a "constitution" that protects users rights in perpetuity, within the current framework of law designed to do just the opposite. It may not be perfect, but it's a damn sight better than most options out there.
Re:In a word... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:In a word... (Score:3, Insightful)
(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 is like arguing RHEL isn't open source because it isn't packaged up in ready to use ISOs.
Re:it has nothing to do with GPL (Score:1, Insightful)
Uh!?, his software was open source from the start. It had restricted distribution of the modifications on the software source, but the source was open all the way. Even Microsoft have open source software!!
Re:In a word... (Score:5, Insightful)
You may call this a convoluted ideology, but the fact is if I receive a program with GPL code in it, I'm free to modify it as I see fit. If I receive a program with public domain code in it, I may not be able to modify it at all.
I'm interested in a free exchange of code that lets me do whatever I want with it. Public domain does not do that for me.
Re:Its about damn time! (Score:3, Insightful)
Huh? Why? I mean, I'm no qmail zealot, but if you're afraid of storing data in your filesystem, you have far *far* bigger problems.
Re:That may be good. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:In a word... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Its about damn time! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:In a word... (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, it doesn't matter to you whether some source code is public domain or GPL; if you only acquire GPL binaries (whether they're derived from public domain code or not), you can do what you want with them, while if you acquire non-GPL binaries (whether they're derived from public domain code or not), you may not be able to.
As an end user, assuming you don't want Bernstein's own distribution of the source (if you do, taking public domain source directly is fine for your purposes), you're going to be selecting among redistributors, and you can do so based on the terms they impose, and you can simply reject any that don't give you the rights and abilities you want, in much the same way that you would reject proprietary programs not derived from Bernstein's work. By placing his work in the public domain, he permits people who don't play nice to also benefit from his work, but that's largely irrelevant to those who do play nice (aside from the quality of the proprietary competition).
Think clearly, please. (Score:1, Insightful)
It's not your own software and I think that's the problem here. Even BSD software that you incorporate isn't your own software. In fact, the only way it COULD be your own software is if you chose the GPL as the license, in which case you could still use it any damn way you please because you don't license your own software to yourself.
Thus, you're saying that you mind someone else dictating release terms for their own software because you want to do it yourself. If you want to argue against something, at least make sure you can think straight first. You seem to think that you own other people's software just because it's BSD or public domain. Further, you hate the GPL for "dictating release terms" because you want to dictate them for what is actually other people's software that you've convinced yourself is your own.
If you're going to complain, at least take care to understand exactly what code belongs to whom and when and how licenses apply. Or maybe that's why you don't like the GPL? Because it points out that other people's code isn't yours when you're to lazy, intellectually, to keep that straight?