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| Hints About GPL3 |
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Thursday, March 31 2005 @ 11:22 PM EST
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There is a nugget of information about the next version of the GPL from Richard Stallman himself in an interview by Open For Business on the state of GNU/Linux:OFB: There has been lots of talk about the upcoming General Public License (3.0) and how it will differ from the present version. What do you see as the key reasons people should adopt the new version?
RMS: Most programs will adopt it automatically, since they are released under "GPL version 2 or later"; however, the specific advantages that I think will appeal to many developers include: explicit compatibility with certain licenses that are not compatible with GPL v2, better handling of patents, addressing the issue of ASPs, and improving the requirements for credits.
Now that's intriguing to me, particularly the compatibility and the patent parts.
Clearly, from all we've heard, there will be an effort to make the GPL work well for business, and that's the obvious path to take: The license is being modernized to deal with new realities in the computing industry, such as widespread patenting of software, computers that will run only software that has been cryptographically signed and software services available over the Internet.
Scrutiny of the license is increasing as the free and open-source software projects it governs become promoted by mainstream computing companies and more widely used by conventional customers.
Amazon is already a happy GNU/Linux user, having switched in 2001, after which they filed with the SEC the news that doing so had saved them $17 million. Talk about Get the Facts.
Today Amazon announced this:
Amazon.com is deploying Linux-based business-intelligence tools to improve the efficiency of its financial budgeting, forecasting and reporting.
The online retail giant will use a range of analytics software from business-intelligence vendor Cognos as part of a multiyear agreement. The value of the deal was not disclosed.
Amazon will use Cognos' Linux-based reporting and analytics software as well as planning tools for its finance and operational organizations. The move reaffirms Amazon's commitment to open source after switching to a Linux-based infrastructure from Windows several years ago. As for worries about the GPL's new version, not even expected until 2006, at the earliest, Eben Moglen says this: GPL 3 is likely to include changes that take into account international copyright law and patent threats, according to Moglen.
It is not surprising that the next version of the GPL has attracted a lot of interest as it is the basis for a "multibillion-dollar industry," according to Moglen. "In a market that size, there are a lot of participants and a lot of people with interests," Moglen said. . . . "When it's all over, people will say about the GPL 3, 'It's better, it's not that different--what's all the fuss about?'" Moglen said. "People have to trust that we know what we're doing." What I am eagerly waiting to see is how they manage to be business-friendly and retain the freedoms the GPL is renowned for protecting. I do trust that they know what they are doing, and I can't wait to see the draft, when it is ready for the community to tweak. We have some experience at that already here at Groklaw, and how enjoyable it will be to put all our efforts to such an important and historic project.
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 31 2005 @ 11:31 PM EST |
| Cool, $17M saved is $17M kept away from Bill G.'s greedy fingers... [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: SpaceLifeForm on Thursday, March 31 2005 @ 11:32 PM EST |
| Please post with links in HTML format. [ Reply to This | # ]
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- Somebody had paid $800,000 for SCO shares - Authored by: troll on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 01:52 AM EST
- Somebody had paid $800,000 for SCO shares - Authored by: inode_buddha on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 02:07 AM EST
- Somebody had paid $800,000 for SCO shares - Authored by: micheal on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 03:27 AM EST
- M$ repaying a favor perhaps? (nt) - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 07:56 AM EST
- Somebody had paid $800,000 for SCO shares - Authored by: joef on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 08:43 AM EST
- Maybe someone knows they are going to file their 10-k? - Authored by: seanlynch on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 09:15 AM EST
- Why a trade of 800,000 shares - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 12:06 PM EST
- OT here - Authored by: vadim on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 09:57 AM EST
- SCO Files 10-K - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 10:00 AM EST
- OT here MS Alert - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 10:22 AM EST
- OT here MS Alert - Authored by: feldegast on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 10:33 AM EST
- OT here MS Alert - Authored by: ff5166 on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 10:43 AM EST
- Dunno, - Authored by: Asynchronous on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 10:50 AM EST
- Dunno, - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 11:09 AM EST
- Dunno, - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 03:36 PM EST
- Dunno, - Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, April 02 2005 @ 12:07 AM EST
- Dunno, - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 06:56 PM EST
- Amazing P2P revolution by Opera Software! - Authored by: skuggi on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 11:10 AM EST
- Linux looks to Hilton for exposure - Authored by: trick-knee on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 11:38 AM EST
- Ed Foster Column-Grokster must read - Authored by: pcoady on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 12:34 PM EST
- 10K and restated 10Qs filed - Authored by: AdamBaker on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 06:16 PM EST
- OT here - Authored by: Maple Syrup on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 07:36 PM EST
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 12:05 AM EST |
But there are hidden costs to Linux, Microsoft argues. "I think a
lot of customers are lured by the apparent low price of Linux," said Doug
Miller, director of competitive strategy for Microsoft's Windows division. "They
don't have a real issue with Linux, but it ends up costing them in the long
run."
With Linux, customers "end up being in the operating systems
business," managing software updates and security patches while making sure the
multitude of software packages don't conflict with each other," Miller said.
"That's the job of a software vendor like Microsoft."
While Red Hat
offers some of those services, it's difficult to ensure that software packages
updated frequently by hundreds of people around the globe work well together,
Miller said. that's the job of the distro packager... and I also
note that Microsoft do not verify that non-microsoft packages will work without
interference with other non-microsoft packages... and in Linux, software
updates are far easier than with ms-windows, as all you've got to do is just a
simple
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade I mean, how much simpler can
it get??? and if the thought of the command line scare you... there's always the
gui front end to it where it's just a matter of a few mouse clicks to do the
same thing... just try updating all your ms-windows software so
easily... [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: rm6990 on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 12:42 AM EST |
Are they still thinking of adding the clause in GPL 3 where if you are running a
webserver with your own modified version of GPL'd software you have to release
the source code? I sincerely hope they don't....and if they did I doubt the OSI
would approve the license.
---
http://members.shaw.ca/ryan_mcgregor[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Steve on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 01:28 AM EST |
An ASP is an Application Service Provider, someone who builds an application
where most of the work is done on a server the builder maintains, and the users
just use a web browser or other "light" client software to interact.
Examples include web-based email, Salesforce.com, and others. Many of Yahoo's
services are rightly considered to fit this model.
Stretching more broadly, one might call Google and Amazon ASPs, although I'm not
sure I would. Certainly such things as those sites' affiliate programs, Google
Maps, and so on could easily be considered ASPs.
Why is this important? Well, many people built ASP solutions using FOSS
software, because the terms of current free licenses only kick in when software
is distributed, and an ASP never really distributes the software code; it only
distributes dynamically generated web pages. ASP-related changes in the GPL3 may
cause ASP developers to switch away from (or towards!) tools licensed under the
GPL3.
[later] I just checked out a few licenses. Zope, PHP, Python, and Ruby are all
used for many ASPs and are not under the GPL, and Perl is dual-licensed. Many
other ASPs use Apache-licensed tools like Tomcat, or LGPL tools like JBoss.
Since many of the most common "building blocks" for ASP sites are not
under the GPL, perhaps the GPL3 changes won't have much practical effect on how
ASPs are built.
---
IAALBIANYL[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: inode_buddha on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 01:49 AM EST |
| "When it's all over, people will say about the GPL 3, 'It's better, it's not
that different--what's all the fuss about?'" Moglen said. "People have to trust
that we know what we're doing." But I'm *already* saying
that! ---
-inode_buddha
Copyright info in bio
"When we speak of free software,
we are referring to freedom, not price"
-- Richard M. Stallman [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 02:13 AM EST |
| The main difference between GPL 2 and the Apache 2 licence
is this
part of the
Apache 2
Licence:
3. Grant of Patent License. Subject to the terms and
conditions
of this License, each Contributor hereby grants
to You a perpetual,
worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge,
royalty-free, irrevocable
(except as stated in this
section) patent license to make, have
made, use, offer to
sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer the
Work, where
such license applies only to those patent claims
licensable
by such Contributor that are necessarily infringed by
their
Contribution(s) alone or by combination of their
Contribution(s) with the Work to which such Contribution(s)
was
submitted. If You institute patent litigation
against
any
entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a
lawsuit)
alleging that the Work or a Contribution
incorporated within the
Work constitutes direct or
contributory patent infringement, then
any patent licenses
granted to You under this License for that Work
shall
terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.
The last sentence is the interesting
one, it is a condition
that terminates the licence. This is
incompatible with the
current GPL 2. My hopes are that GPL 3 adds this
part
of the Apache Licence 2.
Since the
Apache licence
explicitly allows more conditions to be set (in its
final
sentence under point 4) this
would make all Apache code
licencable under the GPL 3.
Adding the first sentence to GPL 3 would also
add a patent
licence
to all current code that has the 'later' option.
Whether adding this first sentence is feasible for the FSF
to add remains to
be seen.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: IMANAL on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 03:23 AM EST |
Is copyright something personal or can it be inherited? What if a program is
filled with GPL2 code by someone who recently died. Can you upgrade that GPL2
licenced code to GPL3, or do you need the heirs' permission? Just a thought.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: danielpf on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 03:51 AM EST |
"RMS: Most programs will adopt it automatically, since they are released
under "GPL version 2 or later";"
The ".. or later" seems to me questionable. As a matter of principle,
is it legal to release a programm under a license that doesn't exist?
We trust RMS to stay faithfull to his objectives, but suppose in 10 years the
FSF is taken over by different people, and they released a GPL 4 with different
objectives. What happens to all these programs released under "GPL
version 2 or later"?
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 07:17 AM EST |
| I do trust that they know what they are doing, and I can't wait to see the
draft, when it is ready for the community to tweak.
I don't know where
PJ gets the idea that we're even going to be consulted, let alone invited to
tweak the license. I believe neither of those things are going to happen. We
will, (as before) be presented with GPL3 in final form. There will be no
tweaking. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 07:56 AM EST |
They slip "irrevocable and in perpetuity" in there very quietely, and
hope that nobody asks why it wasn't in V2.
Mattel already tried to revoke code that had been (unknown to them) released
under the GPL just before they received the rights to it. They gave up on it,
but their argument was that the GPL is a license, not a contract, and that
because it gives you something in return for (as far as they're concerned)
nothing, then there's nothing that compells the rights owner OR THEIR SUCCESSORS
IN INTEREST from honoring it in perpetuity.
What they really had was a contract case with the developer that they got the
copyrights from (strongarmed from might be more accurate), but they did raise
the issue, and it's one that will have to be addressed sooner or later.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Alphakafka on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 08:23 AM EST |
Unfortunately, PJ, when you say "business friendly", you are actually
saying "software business friendly". The GPL already is "business
friendly" to any business looking for tools to make their business better.
I can guarentee you that the GPL will not be made to enable proprietary software
companies or make them stronger. It is the explicit goal of the free software
movement not to. There will likely be no hand shaking with proprietary software,
as it would be a devastation of the spirit of the free software movement and the
license it has produced.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: whoever57 on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 03:28 PM EST |
| Was I the only one who thought the ZDNET headline: "EU Parliament forgives
Council for adopting patent directive" was an April Fool?
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 04:31 PM EST |
I was wondering that because so many software packages use the words
"released under the GLP 2 or later" that what if somebody wrote a
license and called it the GPL 4. If the license was written like the BSD
license, could GPL'd software be forced to public domain this way ? If it is
possible MS will propably try that too.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 06:17 PM EST |
I would like to read the drafts of the GPL3. What is the wording being used to
address the patent issue(s). Some caution is needed with the wording, changing
the GPL to bring the subject of patents within is somewhat tricky.
Business needs or likes, are important yes, it is just as important to have
safeties so patents do not appear accepted in the eyes of the corurts. Having
patents accepted as a part of the new GPL, would make cases where lawsuits filed
over patents very hard to fight using the GPL3.
If I have a body of water running through my land, and this body of water runs
through other's land before and after mine. To see a soluition to a usage
problem, I within an agreed *license*, that *accepts* the water running in the
body of water, as belonging to others with rights to claim the water within the
law of their ownership type(s). If at some date the water is stopped, how could
I use a license that accepted the owership of the water by others, to fight to
have the water run through my land again.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 07:06 PM EST |
I'm sure PJ will put up an article, but let's get started....
The very
first substantive line in the 10-K (i.e. as of 10/31/04):
"We
own the UNIX operating system and are a provider of UNIX-based products and
services."
Another goodie:
The UNIX operating
system, which we own, was conceived on the premise that an operating system
should be easily adapted to a broad range of hardware platforms and should
provide a simple way of developing programs. Over the years, the UNIX operating
system has been adapted for almost every OEM’s hardware architecture, and today
UNIX has achieved the goal of seamlessly sharing data across heterogeneous
environments. We own a broad and deep set of intellectual property rights
relating to the UNIX operating system which we intend to continue to enforce and
protect through our SCOsource initiatives, described in more detail below in the
subsection entitled “SCOsource Initiatives” under the section entitled
“SCOsource Business.”
What's the penalty for a
materially misleading statement in an SEC filing?
Headline numbers:
Net loss greater than $20 million, net decrease in cash greater
than $50 million for FY '04
I don't do html at all well...can
someone clickify
this:
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1102542/000110465905014787/a05-6064
_110k.htm#Item7a__205248
More to follow as we dig into this and the
10-q for January '05.
--Guil (not signed in)
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 09:33 PM EST |
Everything they're saying here about the GPL just makes me nervous. Every single
thing they've mentioned so far just reads as "add more arbitrary
restrictions"... and the FSF has not shown themselves to be very good at
that so far. I fear that the GPLv3 might not be a free software license at all.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: acebone on Friday, April 01 2005 @ 10:05 PM EST |
"What I am eagerly waiting to see is how they manage to be
business-friendly and retain the freedoms the GPL is renowned for
protecting"
business-friendly as opposed to freedom ?
It's an interesting setup - free cannot be business-friendly unless great care
is taken.
Raw capitalism is in my view a way of urging crookery, nothing more, but hey -
socialism has failed right ? (like the soviet-union collapsed and they were
sooooooo socialist, right ?). [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 04 2005 @ 11:06 PM EDT |
Eh...I haven't like GPL since around 2001 when Ulrich Drepper described the
idiocy with rms and glibc. Nor was I all that happy with how that whole KDE
debacle went down where rms and FSF essentially hosed the KDE team. And I
think that Linus has been pretty smart to limit the impact that the FSF can
have on the Linux licence by removing the upgrade clause.
"The morale of this is that people will hopefully realize what a
control freak and raging manic Stallman is. Don't trust him. As soon
as something isn't in line with his view he'll stab you in the back.
*NEVER* voluntarily put a project you work on under the GNU umbrella
since this means in Stallman's opinion that he has the right to make
decisions for the project.
...
This part has a morale, too, and it is almost the same: don't trust
this person. Read the licenses carefully and rip out parts which give
Stallman any possibility to influence your future. Phrases like
[...] GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free
Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your
option) any later version.
just invites him to screw you when it pleases him. Rip out the "any
later version" part and make your own decisions when to use a
different license since otherwise he can potentially do you or your
work harm."
-- Ulrich Drepper, glibc maintainer
(No, I'm not Ulrich...just quoting him)[ Reply to This | # ]
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