GPLv3 Emerges After Long Debate, Opposition Muted
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TechWeb - One of the early adopters of GPL 3 will be the Samba Server project, which supplies file translation code between Linux and Windows.
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Let the porting begin: Uploadr 3.0 is not only out of beta, it's also governed by the GPL now.
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I'm back, with a very interesting topic too!  Joel Spolsky, ex-Microsoft Manager and software engineering guru has a new essay, How Microsoft Lost the API War that is creating quite a big storm in the blogging communitiy.  Joel posits that the priests in the holy Temple of Microsoft have lost their way, because it has split into two factions, and the wrong faction is winning. One faction worships on the alter of backward compatibility, while the other is led by fervent priests who are proselytizing to raise up the new gods of .NET and Longhorn. Joel suggests that the new gods will cause the destruction of the holy Temple because Microsoft's great victories were built on the altar of keeping customers happy with backward compatibility. Furthermore the old gods of the Windows API continue to grow more grotesque and cruel with the passing of time, driving former worshipers into the arms of the friendlier gods of World Wide Web.  This story sounds extremely plausible. I must admit that i fit the profile of the developer who used to develop on the Window's API, is familiar with COM and Win32 who now develops mostly using PHP and Python. However I continue to develop and maintain Windows apps that keep our customers happy, and we still plan to develop new Windows apps. Some points:  Temple of the Blind? Firstly, Microsoft is still a compelling place to work for to people who feel that they can make a difference. The Temple continues to attract talented people with a Unix background. For example we have the recent hiring of Ward Cunningham, author of the Wiki.  Microsoft is still able to keep talented people like Raymond Chen, and others like him who continue to look after the Windows API, and Longhorn apparently will still give high priority to backward compatibility. Open sourcerers like Miguel Icaza are sufficiently attracted to the .NET vision to stake their careers on Mono. Longhorn and .NET are compelling technologies, so even if Win32 is not so cute anymore, M'soft is providing something that remains very attractive.  What i do see M'soft doing wrong is that they aren't disseminating the .NET runtime fast enough. It remains an optional install in XP Service Pack 2 for example. Also their IE dev team appears to be hog-tied due to political reasons; nevertheless IE remains good enough, particularly when I can embed IE as an activeX control, something I cannot do with Mozilla (AFAIK) - Update: I'm wrong.  Temple of the Spider?  Secondly, people don't merely use a web browser. They run the web browser in the OS.  So let me ask you, if you are using DreamWeaver or HomeSite or Photoshop or vi or emacs or Gimp, how many of you are willing to give it up for a java applet (or whatever your favorite technology is) running in your web-browser? Precisely.  Temple of the Abandoned?  Third, Joel makes the claim that developers are not developing to the Windows API. Well he could be right. But I bet a lot of them are still calling Win32.  If you are using a framework or IDE like Delphi or wxWindows (or .NET or VB) then you certainly are insulated from the Windows API, but that doesn't mean that you're not calling the Windows API all the time. I don't see Borland dropping their Windows version of Delphi at any point in time.   In fact, the fact that many developers are using some form of framework is a compelling argument for Microsoft to enhance the .NET framework to attract developers who are using other frameworks.  Today, not that many students learn x86 assembler, but that doesn't mean that Intel lost the CPU wars. Just because fewer people are learning Win32 doesn't mean Microsoft has lost the API wars, if the frameworks run predominantly on Win32.  Temple of the Lost  Joel even warns you in the beginning that "because I'm talking about big trends, I need to exaggerate and generalize". But you still get sucked in because Joel Spolsky is a first-class writer, in the same order as Philip Greenspun or Eric Raymond. That makes him so persuasive and plausible. But this is not Indiana Jones and doomed temples, but Steve Jobs and reality distortion fields.  Other opinions:  Harry Fuecks (PHP is ASP's upgrade path),  Dennis Hamilton (M'soft is just covering all bases), Robert McLaws (Joel is wrong in 7 points), Oliver Travers (the web is not good enough), One Run-time to Rule them all....
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Following Nicholas Petreley's   discussion   of the GNU GPLv3 debate from one   angle, I'd like to look at it from another - that of the cultures of the two   groups involved - and what this implies for the future.
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Blog: For all its sound and fury, the third version of the General Public License has not had much impact on the industry yet. Very few projects have adopted it. Here's why.
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On Thursday, the free software world saw a first. The Software Freedom Law Center announced that it filed the first-ever U.S. copyright infringement lawsuit based on a violation of the GNU General Public License (GPL) on behalf of its clients.
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Between the lines The Free Software Foundation (FSF) appears to be polishing up its legal sabers over possible violations of the General Public License (GPL) by Microsoft.â¦
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Blog: The Free Software Foundation raises the specter that the iPhone's software will violate its new GPL 3 license.
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Blog: Is version 3 of the GNU General Public License asking for too much?
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Ziff Davis - Greg Papadopoulos says Sun's Common Development and Distribution License is "more liberal in its IP license than even the GPL, because it gives a clear patent license and doesn't demand the same viral propagation."
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(InfoWorld) - Free Software Foundation (FSF) leader Richard Stallman said at the launch of the group's new version 3 of the General Public License (GPLv3) that businesses are "foolish" not to adopt nonproprietary technologies as he contends that the continued use of paid products limits companies' innovation and weakens security of their IT operations. Surrounded by supporters from the software programming and academic fields on June 29 at the GPLv3 launch at FSF's Boston headquarters, Stallman detailed his opinions on why businesses, large and small, would be better suited to pursue the use of free software programs. By turning to alternatives like his GNU operating system rather than the proprietary technologies, such as Microsoft's Windows OS, that dominate corporate IT shops today, Stallman said, businesses would become less dependent on technology vendors to help solve many of the issues around applications development and security that currently prove troublesome. As the free software guru waved off the champagne being circulated among his advocates to mark GPLv3's arrival with an admission that he doesn't much like the pricey beverage's taste, it was clear that the legendary hacker and grassroots technology advocate remained more eager to convince IT users that they should move away from proprietary software than to begin celebrating. Catering directly to businesses isn't what FSF is about, said Stallman, who reiterated that he considers the group's mission more of a human rights campaign than a technological debate. However, the expert said that businesses could help loosen the current stranglehold on the market maintained by proprietary products like Windows if they were more open to the use of free software. "Business users should have the same freedom over the control of their software as everyone else, and for businesses to use software they don't have control over is foolish," Stallman said. "Today, many businesses look at free software in terms of convenience and say that it is impossible to make a shift, but there is already free software available for doing a lot of the jobs businesses want to do." As a stack of empty boxes wearing the logo for Microsoft's newest Windows Vista OS stood in a nearby room awaiting their use in some sort of protest against the software giant, Stallman cited multiple "dangers" he sees in the use of such products. For example, he said that Microsoft's process of removing support for various computing devices and applications in its products forces businesses into a never-ending cycle of "forced upgrades," a system he said should be made illegal. In another sense, onboard functions like Vista's remote software upgrade feature allow Microsoft to essentially take control and manipulate end-users' computers whenever they feel like it. Another hotspot for FSF's advocacy efforts is its continued opposition to DRM (digital rights management) technologies, such as those built into both Microsoft and Apple products. "Businesses have to give up their current approach and suffer some of the inconvenience of moving to free software to get back control, but that is a long-term process, and businesses are typically focused on the short term," Stallman said. "Like all areas of computing, business users must insist on the same level of freedom as everyone else; it's not just an alternative to proprietary software, it's the only way to ethically defend the rights of users." As with its predecessors, GPLv3 is a licensing model for use by providers of free software programs that allows products covered by the certification to be altered by their users as they so choose, without fear of subsequent copyright infringement charges. Among the most important updates in the newest version of GPL -- the first official update of the model since the previous version was released June 1991 -- are new implications for free software licensing and compatibility, additional definitions for programmatic source code, and terms that prevent so-called "tivoization" of free software programs -- the practice by device makers of using hardware features to prevent users from running modified software programs on their products. The latter term is derived from the use of the GNU OS on digital video recorders made by TiVo. The reengineered software licensing terms are meant specifically to prevent additional deals like the joint patent agreement signed between Microsoft and open-source software vendor Novell in November 2006, which the FSF has characterized previously as "a narrow and discriminatory promise by a patent holder not to sue customers of one particular distributor of a GPL-covered program." "The freedom of users and developers to use software as they choose has been put in danger by these types of patent agreements," Stallman said. "We wanted to do whatever we needed to do to abolish this type of practice and protect users from being sued by patent holders." While use of free software programs like GNU remains nascent among enterprise businesses by most estimates, some experts do believe that companies can begin adopting the tools today. For instance, the ability to use free programs to build customized EDI systems, such as those used by companies to trade materials with partners, is already available, said Thomas Dukleth, CEO of Agogme, a maker of a tool used to aid in the cataloguing and searching of library books. "The free software programs necessary to support systems like EDI already exist," Dukleth said. "Some libraries are already using free software to do this very sort of thing." Sanjoy Mahajan, an associate director for teaching initiatives at MIT who lectures on the topic of electrical engineering, observed that businesses can significantly benefit from the ability to see the source code in their software programs. It's much easier to find potential security flaws and build new features on top of existing programs when the underpinnings of the technologies being used aren't hidden as they are in proprietary products, he said. "You have companies today saying that they can't accept file attachments in Office 2007 because the product is too incompatible with their existing systems, which is something that definitely interferes with business," said Mahajan. "When something in the free software world gets improved, there's no waiting to buy a new license, everything is shared with all users, so everyone benefits," he said. "I think that now would be a good time for businesses to put more effort into free software; they will get back more than they put in." Whether or not many enterprise businesses heed such advice remains to be seen, but in the area of vendor support, GPLv3 appears to have already impressed some significant players. In an e-mail sent to InfoWorld, officials at Sun lauded the additional licensing clarity provided by the updated version, and the company said it would continue to pursue many different distribution models. "We regard the GPLv3 as a great achievement by the FSF in particular and by the greater open-source community of free software communities," Simon Phipps, chief open source officer at Sun said in the note. "Sun believes the GPLv3 revisions represent important steps in the evolution of the free software movement. In particular, it clarifies language that was unclear in GPLv2 and addresses many issues that did not exist when GPLv2 was written more than 15 years ago," Phipps said. "We have a strategy to free all our software into open-source communities, and we have strategies for each technology that lead us to choose certain licenses on a case-by-case basis."
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InfoWorld - The new GNU General Public License (GPL) version 3 is not a fit for Linux because switching would require permission from the kernel&#39;s thousands of de facto owners, a maintainer of the SCSI portion of the kernel said on Thursday. Also, Microsoft released a statement that the company has no GPLv3 obligations.
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Microsoft has rejected the idea that its deal last year with Novell ties it to the new General Public License Version 3 (GPLv3).
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(InfoWorld) - The Free Software Foundation has released the fourth or "last-call" draft of the third version of its GNU general public license, set a date for its official publication, and laid out reasons why the free and open source software community should adopt GPLv3 sooner rather than later. The GPL gives users the right to freely study, copy, modify, reuse, share, and redistribute software. Created by Richard Stallman in 1989 for the GNU free operating system project, the license was last fully revised 16 years ago as GPLv2. Besides releasing the fourth draft of GPLv3 on Thursday, the FSF also published an essay by Stallman extolling the benefits of moving from GPLv2 to GPLv3. The new license deals with issues that have emerged recently, notably the patent-licensing deal around Suse Linux struck between Novell and Microsoft in November. Parts of the Linux operating system including its kernel are licensed under GPLv2. Earlier this month, Microsoft executives created a firestorm of protest in the open source community when they asserted that Linux and other open source softwareÂ infringe on 235 of the software vendor's patents. "Microsoft made a fewÂ mistakes in the Novell-Microsoft deal, andÂ GPLv3 is designed to turn them against Microsoft, extending that limited patent protection to the whole community," Stallman wrote. "In order to take advantage of this, programs need to use GPLv3." Software distributors who make discriminatory patent deals after March 28, 2007, may not pass on to others software covered under GPLv3. Ultimately, the FSF would like to do away with software patents altogether but realizes that is currently impossible, aiming instead with GPLv3 to ensure free software can't be made proprietary through patents, according to Stallman. GPLv3 also deals with what Stallman terms "tivoization" or computers containing software covered by the license that can't be changed as well as DRM, or digital rights management, which the FSF prefers to call "digital restrictions management." "Freedom means _you_ control what your software does, not merely that you can beg or threaten someone else who decides for you," Stallman wrote. "GPLv3 ensures you are free to remove the handcuffs. It doesn't forbid DRM, or any kind of feature. ... Rather, it makes sure that you are just as free to remove nasty features as the distributor of your copy was to add them." The fourth GPLv3 draft draws on feedback the FSF received from the general public and official discussion committees on the previous draft that appeared in March. One of the key changes is around license compatibility between the GPL and open source licenses. In the new draft, GPLv3 is now compatible with version 2.0 of the Apache License. The license also supports BitTorrent and contains language to make it friendlier to an international audience. Previous drafts of GPLv3 were met with a mixed reception in the open source community. In particular, Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, was highly critical of the first two drafts, butÂ mellower about the third draft. Like other developers, he's previously stated he prefers to stick with GPLv2. "GPL version 2 will remain a valid license, and no disaster will happen if some programs remain under GPLv2 while others advance to GPLv3," Stallman wrote. "These two licenses are incompatible, but that isn't a serious problem." By "incompatible," the FSF means that it sees no legal way to combine code licensed under GPLv2 with code under GPLv3. Such incompatibility is only an issue if developers want to link, merge, or combine code from programs licensed under GPLv2 and GPLv3. "There is no problem in having GPLv3-covered and GPLv2-covered programs side by side in an operating system," Stallman wrote. The FSF will take comments on the fourth draft for 29 days and plans to officially publish the final GPLv3 license on June 29. The fourth draft of GPLv3 and Stallman's essay are on the FSF's Web site atÂ gplv3.fsf.org.
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Two hot issues are making the rounds.  First, Debian and Firefox are having a spat, and the end result may be that Debian will distribute Firefox under a different name.  Second, the war betwen Linus Torvalds and other Kernel developers and the Free Software Foundation over GPLv3 is continuing, with Torvalds saying he's fed up with the FSF.  Here is my take on both, and related issues.
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There was a time when Hans Reiser was known as a cantankerous but visionary open source programmer. His work was funded by the government; he was widely credited (and sometimes reviled) for rethinking the structure of the Linux operating system. Now he is known as prisoner BFP563.
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While many consumers are standing in line to get their hands on a $500 iPhone, Apple&#39;s new toy is not the only major release in the technology world today. Indeed, Friday also marks the release of version 3 of the GNU General Public License (GPL).