Edits would only effect GPL 3.0 licensed code...
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| Author | Content |
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| JaseP Nov 22, 2006 4:56 AM EDT |
Moglen's edits would not effect GPL version 2 code, such as the current Linux kernel, only any new forks which use the GPL 3.0... Most developers will not rush out to adopt a GPL 3 License... |
| Sander_Marechal Nov 22, 2006 11:34 AM EDT |
True, but all GNU software will move over very quickly - like the GNU toolchain used to build Linux. Since I don't think we'll see a community-wide GNU fork, this means Novell has to choose: 1) Get out of the MS deal or 2) Fork all GNU software from the latest GPLv2 version and maintain/develop it itself outside of the community for the next 5 years |
| dinotrac Nov 22, 2006 12:17 PM EDT |
sander - You presume that Novell will have to fork anything by itself. If Novell has to fork, others will join the effort out of self-defense. |
| rijelkentaurus Nov 22, 2006 12:24 PM EDT |
>You presume that Novell will have to fork anything by itself. I guess it could fork itself.... Seriously, it could get ugly. There are probably other wildcards lurking about that we know nothing about that will pop up. Too soon to tell, but soon enough to be concerned. |
| Sander_Marechal Nov 22, 2006 12:31 PM EDT |
@dino: Yes, I do think Novell will have to fork all by itself if there is no community-wide fork comparable to the XFree86->X.org fork. Simply because as it stands, Novell will be the *only* distro that is unable to use GPLv3 components (due to the MS deal). Any other distro can happily use the GPLv3 versions instead. |
| dinotrac Nov 22, 2006 3:47 PM EDT |
sander - I will be impressed if the FSF can draft a usable license that so narrowly targets Novell. If a fork is called for, Novell will not be alone because the FSF's activities have got to make other companies nervous. Getting their tool chain out from under the FSF's thumb could be a very good business decision. |
| dek Nov 22, 2006 5:37 PM EDT |
I've been a bit uneasy with the whole GPL v3 discussion -- not just the part that pertains to this discussion -- but I couldn't figure out quite why. I think I do know now. It feels like the GPL v3 will be a reactive license in the sense that FSF is reacting to DRM, patents and other "IP" issues. The problem is that when you try to target such thngs, you're doing it reactively and letting "them" set the "debate". I woud rather take a different approach like maybe identify, "What is it that we want users to be able to do that they're not able to now". I'm kind of starting to see where dino is coming from on this. Is this an appropriate way to address this question of software patents? I'm not sure that it is. Pardon my ramblings! Don K. |
| dinotrac Nov 22, 2006 5:47 PM EDT |
dek - YES!!! PERZACTLY!!! I believe that Tivo and Microsoft/Novell and who know who or what else in the days to come are causing the FSF folk to take their eyes off the prize. FSF should set the agenda, not these interlopers. |
| rijelkentaurus Nov 22, 2006 5:50 PM EDT |
>Pardon my ramblings! No! Oh, alright. 8-) The whole thing is a bit confusing. I think folks -- on both sides -- need to chill out a bit and catch their breath, then move forward with a discussion, NOT an argument. |
| dcparris Nov 22, 2006 6:15 PM EDT |
In that case, you'll have to bear in mind that the GPL was a reactionary license to begin with. Remember that RMS started out with something more akin to "You can use this however you want". Well, one company modified his code, and when he asked for the source to the modified version, they refused. That led him to write the GPL, probably the first copyleft license. Since that time, software patents have gained recognition and DRM has cropped up. He obviously did not foresee these things - for whatever reason. The fact is that you have to deal with new issues as they arise. If I were to take a trip by car, I would not plan to take a life raft, since I don't plan to sink into the ocean. However, if, during my trip, a bridge gives way, and I find myself in the water, well, I had better start swimming. That's reactive, but I have to do it. So, too, when facing new encroachments on user freedom, the community needs to respond. And yes, I'm still wrestling with this in my mind. I wonder if he knew of a good way to solve these problems until now. If that's the case, it makes sense to address it as soon as possible. I don't honestly see a better answer to either problem. In the case of DRM, you cannot rest your hopes on the marketplace, especially if the marketplace swings in the opposite direction you want to go. People love iPods and iTunes, DRM and all. One company made the point that DRM must be o.k., since so many people seem to buy into it. Well, the FSF has a very different view of things. In order to defend the 4 freedoms, and keep the power to control hardware in the hands of the owners, an anti-DRM statement prevents Free Software from being used to rob the user of their right to control the hardware they own. Whether the new license becomes popular will still depend on the marketplace. Even so, the more people who choose the new GPL (assuming that it passes as is), the greater the statement about protecting users' freedom - which is the point of the GPLv2. Remember that the GPL focuses on the user's rights, not the developers, since they already have 'exclusive' rights under copyright. I agree with Dino that adding a new provision covering the MS-Novell pact is reactive. Whether that is really an oversight on the part of the FSF, or whether that is a bad thing, I'm still on the fence. I would much rather they correct it now than have to go back to the drawing board later. The bright side is that the deal happened before they finished the revision process. |
| swbrown Nov 22, 2006 9:10 PM EDT |
"It feels like the GPL v3 will be a reactive license in the sense that FSF is reacting to DRM, patents and other "IP" issues." Well, that's kinda the point seeing as GPLv2 was intended to ALREADY prevent these things. What's happened is the 'Tivoize' and 'Noviolate' loopholes found a weasely way around the license with approaches people hadn't thought of. GPLv3 is really just a language update to make sure these things will be obviously covered in more general language, not a new agenda, as well as relaxing some conditions that made it harder for code under other Free Software licenses in the same spirit to be mixed in. I'll be relicensing all the software I do as GPLv3+ rather than GPLv2+ when released (and the new exception-based version of the LGPL whenever it's ready), as I chose the GPL with the understanding that people wouldn't be able to screw with it in these ways. |
| dek Nov 23, 2006 6:11 AM EDT |
dcp >>"The fact is that you have to deal with new issues as they arise."
and
swb >> "Well, that's kinda the point seeing as GPLv2 was intended to ALREADY prevent these things." Let me start out by saying "Yes, you are both right from a perspective that says 'everything that happens is a reaction to something." However, (or BUT), take a step back and ook at the big picture. What exactly is the GPL trying to do? It's trying to address copyright issues for code access so users have complete access to source code, to modify and run it. (I know that I'm oversimplifying here.) Using TIVO as an example, what they do is use DRM in such a way that the modified source code doesn't work. Rather than saying that any keys must be given to the user -- which is reactive and what the GPL V3 does -- just put in a line that says something to the effect that "the user has the reasonable right to expect that any hardware that uses GPL software will perform its function with a user modified version of that software" (wording to be worked out), That, it seems to me, makes the DRM and TiVO question null and void. TiVO would not be able to use the Linux Kernel and prevent the machine from running a user modified version of the kernel. In other words, it's proactive, it deals with the core issue and it does it in such a way that the hardware manufacturers know that they must give the users the right to use code or not use GPL'd software. Do you see what I'm saying? Rather than respond piecemeal, figure out what the real issue is and respond to that. As for patents, I simply question that the GPL is correct venue for doing this -- much as I would LOVE to see a fork stuck into M$'s "IP" claims! Again, pardon my ramblings! Don K. IANAL bIkrfw! |
| swbrown Nov 23, 2006 7:04 AM EDT |
"Do you see what I'm saying? Rather than respond piecemeal, figure out what the real issue is and respond to that." They're trying - the legalese is tricky as it has to hold up in all areas of the world and not have unintended side-effects. E.g., the actual 'anti-DRM' stuff in the most recent license draft is now "No Denying Users' Rights through Technical Measures" which is very similar to your "the user has the reasonable right to expect that any hardware that uses GPL software will perform its function with a user modified version of that software". There are some weird cases where terms too general in a license fail. E.g., like the straight-forward implicit patent grant in v2 that had to be made explicit and specific in v3 due to the laws of some countries, and how they have to prevent the DMCA or anything like it in other countries or trade policies (WTO) from overriding the license terms by adding "No covered work constitutes part of an effective technological "protection" measure". That's the one that scared some people as they thought it was saying they couldn't use GPLed software to secure anything, but it's not the case - it's there to prevent claims the user can't exercise their right to modify by claiming the software is a 'protection measure' which kicks in higher level law to override the license. |
| dinotrac Nov 23, 2006 8:58 AM EDT |
Everyone - I would never argue that a license should never change. I would never argue that it should not keep abreast of developments in the world around it. That would be JPF -- just plain foolish. There are very smart people behind GPL, and V3 might come out better than my Thanksgiving turkey, and my Thanksgiving turkeys always -- ALWAYS -- come out great. The danger, as I see it -- and I've been known to be wrong -- is whether the drafters will keep the mix right. Will GPLV3 be a practical instrument that furthers ideological and philosophical goals, or will it be an ideological treatise whose drafters hope will find practical application? The former has a great chance to succeed, the latter does not, and there's a good reason for that. A license is, by its nature, a practical instrument. It grants rights and sets conditions. You want a lousy license, take a look at Microsoft EULAs. Those are philosophical instruments first -- the philosophy being that Microsoft is entitled to rake you over the coals for every dime it can in every way it can -- and practical instruments second. Microsoft gets away with that because of its monopoly power on the desktop and because end users tend not to read the fool things. They are piles of gobblydegook that flash on your screen with a checkbox when all you really want to do is install the freakin' software. In the end, Microsoft will succeed in its quest to find out which point is a point too far. Vista's license may be it, or the next one. The GPL server developers even more than it serves end users. Not only that, it serves a lot of developers who are donating their time and do not have the benefit of counsel. It needs to be clear, cohesive and comprehensible. It needs to hang together in a way that avoids surprising you with its implications. That's why the reaction to Microsoft-Novell has raised a red flag for me. Are we going to see a clean license become a pile of ticky-tack special cases? Hope not. |
| swbrown Nov 23, 2006 1:07 PM EDT |
"Will GPLV3 be a practical instrument that furthers ideological and philosophical goals, or will it be an ideological treatise whose drafters hope will find practical application?" The answer is 'both'. :) However, there's really no new ideology in GPLv3 other than for people that thought DRM /should/ be able to override the license (the kernel devs). That shouldn't be surprising, given they also thought proprietary kernel modules and binary firmware /should/ be able to override the license. They've always played it looser than is really allowed despite listing no such exceptions in the license header. |
| dcparris Nov 23, 2006 1:19 PM EDT |
I see where you're coming from, Don K. As for the patents, the FSF got the idea from folks like Sun, iirc. They felt that, even though the stipulation made Sun's license for Open Solaris (I forget what they called it) incompatible with GPLv2, it was nevertheless a good idea. At least they're not trying to re-invent the wheel, and it should make the GPLv3 compatible with Sun's license. I see the patent retaliation clause as a good thing. I still wonder if the patent retaliation clause would prevent Microsoft from pursuing their legal threats. After all, they do use Linux in their Linux lab. Those with more legal training than I have (none) may need to clarify my thinking, but that's what I think. ;-) And dino, I just finished smoking our turkey with pecan wood. It came out so good, my wife hates her own turkey - she said so. :-) |
| dinotrac Nov 23, 2006 5:15 PM EDT |
>I still wonder if the patent retaliation clause would prevent Microsoft from pursuing their legal threats. How on earth can it? Microsoft is not bound by any version of the GPL. They don't use it for any of their stuff. If Microsoft decides to sue someone for patent infringement, they will, whether the license is GPLV2, GPLV3, or 007's license to kill. |
| jimf Nov 23, 2006 5:36 PM EDT |
> If Microsoft decides to sue someone for patent infringement, they will, whether the license is GPLV2, GPLV3, or 007's license to kill. That's how I've been seeing it all along. That also means that any 'contract' between Novell and MS is only valid between those two companies. Anything pertaining to GPL software or its users is just hot air. |
| dcparris Nov 23, 2006 5:59 PM EDT |
How on earth can it? Microsoft is not bound by any version of the GPL. They don't use it for any of their stuff. I see what you're saying now. Thanks Dino. I wasn't thinking clearly on that. |
| dinotrac Nov 23, 2006 6:06 PM EDT |
>I wasn't thinking clearly on that. Rev - I'm beginning to think that the only people thinking clearly -- and I include myself in the befuddled crowd -- are the nasty boys of Redmond. I see all of this vitriol unleashed at Novell who, at worst (or so I think) made a bad judgment call blinded by the glint of big old piles of money. It seems like people are taking their eyes off the prize so they can slaughter, cook up, and dine on the family's dimwitted cousin. Microsoft's patent threats cannot be stopped by the FSF no matter what they do to the license. Throwing stones at Novell doesn't hurt Microsoft. If anything, it helps them by shifting our focus, sapping our strength, and making US instead of THEM look the little boy who cried wolf. |
| jdixon Nov 23, 2006 6:17 PM EDT |
> I see all of this vitriol unleashed at Novell who, at worst (or so I think) made a bad judgment call blinded by the glint of big old piles of money, ... Now, that I can agree with completely. All Novell has done is make a business decision which, if the other side could be trusted, would be a good one. Unfortunately, Microsoft can't be trusted, as Novell's CEO is rapidly learning. Let's not forget who the problem is here, and it's not Novell. |
| dcparris Nov 23, 2006 6:24 PM EDT |
> Microsoft's patent threats cannot be stopped by the FSF no matter what they do to the license. Throwing stones at Novell doesn't hurt Microsoft. If anything, it helps them by shifting our focus, sapping our strength, and making US instead of THEM look the little boy who cried wolf. Well, I have been saying for some time that Vista is due to ship soon. Hint! Hint! Still, I was very disappointed to see that Bruce had to call Hovsepian on the carpet for pushing software patents. That violates what I have long understood to be the community mantra - no software patents. He has to be stupid. How could he have missed that? |
| swbrown Nov 24, 2006 1:16 AM EDT |
"Now, that I can agree with completely. All Novell has done is make a business decision which, if the other side could be trusted, would be a good one. Unfortunately, Microsoft can't be trusted, as Novell's CEO is rapidly learning. Let's not forget who the problem is here, and it's not Novell." The problem /is/ Novell (and any companies that might try similar, which is why we need GPL3). They didn't blunder into this, or get suckered, or make a deal where they didn't understand the ramifications - they knew exactly what they were doing - selling out the community for money. Want proof? Well for one, they told us how they tried hard to skirt the requirements of the GPL - why would anyone that cares about the community try so hard to find a legal way to basically violate the license? Also, they quietly memory-holed their old patent promise to the FOSS community and changed it into something that protects only them. This is what it used to say, "Novell will use its patent portfolio to protect open source products against potential third-party patent challenges". This is what it says now, "Novell will use its patent portfolio to protect itself against claims made against the Linux kernel or open source programs included in Novell's offerings". And despite knowing we all feel violated, they refuse to back out of the agreement. These things do not happen by innocent mistake. This was calculated and they knew it changed their stance. |
| helios Nov 24, 2006 6:51 AM EDT |
As a poor student of gpl3, one thing stands out for me. Stallman is intent, no...manically focused on beating back the encroachment of DRM and Trusted Computing within GNU Linux and the FOSS Community. It's obvious from the language that this is the main purpose of the new license. To that, I pledge my allegiance to his efforts and cause, even if I tend to disagree with his Zealotry at times. Yeah, I know...I should speak of Zealotry...as one black kettle to another.. What I believe no one could ever foresee is this "Covenant" and the impact it would have on the workings of the gpl3 draft. I along with Dino and others who have mentioned this before am watching closely any new language that comes in draft form in the near future. Bringing this into laser-focus for punishing Novell isn't a good idea, however; making it work so situations like this can not hurt us again is. Now, let's see if that kind of language is speakable in 3. TC...? You have thoughts here? h |
| rijelkentaurus Nov 24, 2006 7:15 AM EDT |
>Bringing this into laser-focus for punishing Novell isn't a good idea, however; making it work so situations like this can not hurt us again is. I think the punishment of Novell will be a side-effect, not really the intention. I think it's reactionary in the sense that Something Big Happened and we need to react to it. >To that, I pledge my allegiance to his efforts and cause, even if I tend to disagree with his Zealotry at times. He is a zealot, yes, but he's not a zealot that wants to imprison people who disagree with him, or who wants to kill dissenters, or who wants to destroy business and move towards common ownership of all property...you know, one of those &$*#$% in Washington and elsewhere. He and Torvalds have some things in common, even though they often don't see eye to eye. They are not motivated by greed (Stallman gave up the potential for large amounts of money selling software when the FSF started to do it), but they are often motivated by ego and a sense of self-importance that is a little over inflated. I say a "little" because they've both been very important to the world of Free Software. I think the FSF gets a little more leeway because of their motivation; it's not pure, but it's more pure than Novell's or MS's or IBM's or HP's...I think you get me. |
| dinotrac Nov 24, 2006 8:24 AM EDT |
>Bringing this into laser-focus for punishing Novell isn't a good idea, however; making it work so situations like this can not hurt us again is. Bingo, jackpot, "IT'S GOOD!!!", home run, nothing but net, etc. Absolutely and without question. For all of my heavy-handed "when you have a hammer" references, you, sir, have hit the nail on the head. Nothing about the Novell agreement strikes me as remarkable of unforseeable, except, perhaps, for the very specific terms. It seems this kind of thing, to the extent it should be covered, would have already been covered. I worry about building a strange little card house of specific reactionary clauses. In part, I worry because the law of unintended consequences bites like a mother. In part, I worry because a license that lots of squirrelly language is harder to understand and more likely to surprise in actual use. In part, I worry because things like that can render a license unused, and, hence, unimportant. How many of our readers have used XFree86 lately? |
| tuxchick Nov 24, 2006 9:54 AM EDT |
helios, it beats the heck out of me. The obvious bits are Novell is being weaselly in its public statements, but not successfully. Duh, we can read. Ballmer's made it clear there is no goodwill on the M$ side of the deal, it's just another day at the Cutthroat Ranch. Will this deal hurt GPL software? That's the big question. I think it's clear the primary intent is to dodge the GPL, but whether it will have wider consquences is unclear. On common sense and logical grounds it shouldn't, but unfortunately this is the real world. dino, the XFree86 license change is a great illustration of unintended consequences. Development was stagnant and the controlling cabal wasn't about to let it go anywhere. A fork was way overdue on technical merits alone. The license issue was the spark that got people to actually make the change. Oopsie.... |
| swbrown Nov 24, 2006 10:03 AM EDT |
"It seems this kind of thing, to the extent it should be covered, would have already been covered." We all thought it was. Apparently, GPL section 7's wording isn't strong enough against this attack (which was carefully designed to go counter to section 7 without crossing it, although from re-reading it I still think it violates it myself, although I guess the issue with the Novell deal is the legal definition of 'imposed on you'). The wording will get tightened up which will change the Novell deal from "Was supposed to violate, but somehow manages not to" to "definately violates". For reference, this is the important part of section 7: "If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all." You're not going to see language that singles out Novell, as that would be a waste of time, as Microsoft would just find someone else to do it. Just like Tivoization, they want to fix the Noviolate loophole. |
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