Developers hot or cold on GPLv3?
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GPLv3 is either manna from heaven or fire and brimstone, depending on the survey you read.
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Boomshakalaka A General Public License (GPL) test case in the US looks dead in the water after a start-up promised to abide by the GPLv2 rather than duke it out in court with the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC).â¦
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Under the Free Software Foundation's previous roadmap, a so-called "last call" draft of the third GPL revision was due by now, with final release set for March. However, recent comments in the tech press indicate that is no longer the case.
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Final draft of GPL 3 doesn't block the Novell-Microsoft patent pact that has raised open-source hackles.
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Linux looms large in software shifts in India. Plus: Version 3 of the GPL gets a long-awaited release.
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Back in February, Ralph Green asked me to speak at the North Texas Linux Users' Group. I discussed Linux administration and then took questions. Some one in the audience asked me about Mono. I gave a cavalier answer having a bias against it. Then someone else in the audience said that I needed to get my facts straight.
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Rob Richards mentioned in a previous book review about some of the issues he was having getting the Oracle extension enabled on his Fedora 8 system. Well, he's come back after doing some more testing/compiling and has found some resolution to his issues.   I really didn't need to get it running, but the sheer fact that I tried it and it wouldn't work, pissed me off enough to spend some time getting it resolved. Hopefully this helps anyone else having the same problem. I am currently using instant client 11.1, but I did try the 10.2 version with the same results.   He steps through the process he followed - tracking down the missing libaio files, correcting an issue with SELinux loading the Oracle libraries and his realization: he just needed to allow text relocation. Included in the post are the command line calls that'd need to be made to make it all happen.
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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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Not since SCO has there been a company so reviled by the open source community as Novell following its deal with Microsoft.  Already there are some clear signs of the negative effects of that anger: senior coders have left the company; Novell has posted a loss for the most recent quarter; and there are calls for a boycott of Novell products â to say nothing of imminent changes to the GNU GPL that might well nullify the entire Novell-Microsoft deal.  Some people are rubbing their hands in glee at the thought of Novell crashing and burning completely, but such a development could actually turn out to be one of the worst things to happen to free software.
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InfoWorld - Free Software Foundation (FSF) leader Richard Stallman said at the launch of the group&#39;s new version 3 of the General Public License (GPLv3) that businesses are &quot;foolish&quot; not to adopt nonproprietary technologies as he contends that the continued use of paid products limits companies&#39; innovation and weakens security of their IT operations.
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Linux creator Linus Torvalds, in an interview being made public by the Linux Foundation Tuesday, stressed that version 2 of the GPL (GNU General Public License) still makes the most sense for the Linux kernel over the newer GPL version 3.GPL 3, which was released last year by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), reflects the FSF''s goals while GPL 2 closely matches what Torvalds thinks a license should do, Torvalds said.?"I want to pick the license that makes the most sense for what I want to do. And at this point in time, Version 2 matches what I think we want to do much, much better than Version 3," said Torvalds, who is now a fellow at the foundation. He was interviewed in late-October by Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin.Among GPL 3 highlights are protections against patent infringement lawsuits and provisions for license compatibility. Torvalds acknowledged he had spoken out against GPL 3 before it was released. He had opposed digital rights management provisions in early-2006, calling them burdensome.There could be a change in his stance, though, Torvalds said. GPL 2 basically has acted as a single license covering a huge bulk of source code. Version 3 splits this base with some projects covered by version 2 and others by version 3 or later, he said. Version 3 might be useful if "there ends up being tons of external code that we feel is really important and worthwhile that is under the version 3 license," said Torvalds.He added he cannot change the license on his own anymore. "I mean, because I have accepted code over the last 15 years by people who kind of accepted my original choice of the GPL Version 2, I?m not just, I think, ethically bound by those people?s choices, I am also actually legally bound," Torvalds said.Torvalds also was asked about the Linux development process being centered in North America and Europe despite Linux's now-global reach. Developers, Torvalds said, tend to come from countries with a high density of Internet access. While China and India have a lot of people, they have issues with Internet access, he said.Language and cultural barriers also present an issue. While some Asian countries have huge Internet use and a great deal of education, they do not contribute a lot to the kernel or other open-source projects, said Torvalds. South Americans, meanwhile, may not necessarily speak English but culturally, they are closer to Europe and the U.S., which makes it easier to enter the fray, according to Torvalds.?Asked why the kernel does not have a stable device driver ABI, Torvalds said one reason is that people ask for one but do not want to merge their source code into the stable kernel or the standard kernel."And that, in turn, means that all the people who actually do all the kernel work and maintain the kernel are basically unable to work with that piece of hardware and that vendor because if there are any bugs whatsoever, we can?t fix them," said Torvalds.Commercial vendors have moved away from wanting anything to do with binary drivers because they are not maintainable, he said.Torvalds said Linux started out as a hobby of his, but he has now been working on it full-time for the last four years.
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InfoWorld - Linux creator Linus Torvalds, in an interview being made public by the Linux Foundation Tuesday, stressed that version 2 of the GPL (GNU General Public License) still makes the most sense for the Linux kernel over the newer GPL version 3.
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Forget about Tivoization. How about adding a clause to the next version of the GPL that counters Novellization? The clause would say (in proper legalese), that if any code infringes on intellectual property or patents held by third parties, and the third parties take legal action, the contributors of the offending code assume 100% liability.  In short, if Novell injects Microsoft IP into open source and Microsoft wants to sue, it must sue Novell and nobody else, because Novell assumes liability under this new license.  This would render any "promise not to sue the end customer" agreement with Novell meaningless.
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Microsoft shot back at the open source community Thursday, saying it would not provide support for software licensed under the GPLv3. The third version of the GPL was officially launched a week ago by the Free Software Foundation.
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A Win/Mac developer recently asked me what I thought about his plan to create a binary of his application and sell it to interested Linux sound and music people. He asked with some trepidation, having already received a rather critical chorus of objection from some overly enthusiastic Linux users. This man's work is excellent and his software already runs nicely under Wine.read more
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Travis Swicegood is teasing us with some output from a script in his latest blog post:   So my free time of late (what there is of it) has been spent on a project that's getting really close to v0.1 release. In other words, its first functional release. If you've ever run a test using the PEAR installer or know what a .phpt file looks like, you might be able to guess what I've been up.   Keep an eye on his blog for more information on his "secret project".
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(InfoWorld) - What's the link between eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher Adam Smith, often regarded as the father of modern economics, and the open-source software movement? According to Marten Mickos, the chief executive officer of open-source database company MySQL, it's Smith's concept of an "invisible hand," which guides individuals pursuing their own betterment to achieve goals that also benefit society at large. Mickos sees an invisible hand at work in much of what's going on in today's open-source community. This includes the wrangling over the current draft of the GNU general public license version 3 (GPLv3), which he anticipates will result in a good outcome. MySQL's database is distributed under the GPL. Even Oracle's surpriseÂ acquisition of InnobaseÂ a year ago has worked out well, Mickos contends. Oracle's purchase was widely seen as a predatory strike against MySQL, which bundles the Finnish startup's InnoDB database storage engine with its database. The move led to other firms approaching MySQL about developing their own engines for the database and ended up with the company opening up its database storage API (application programming interface) to third parties to give users more choice of which engines to use. Mickos also talked about other aspects of the open-source business model and what lies ahead for MySQL when he chatted Friday with the IDG News Service. What follows is an edited transcript of that conversation. IDGNS: Recently, a number of open-source developers have expressed their unhappiness with the Free Software FoundationÂ (FSF) and the second draft of GPLv3. Are you concerned about a potential forking of the license as some people stick with GPLv2 and others move to GPLv3? Mickos: It's not a catastrophe if we have two GPLs out there. It does show how sometimes success can turn against you. The fact that GPLv2 has been so successful means developers don't see a need to change. They say, 'If it's not broke, don't fix it.' I agree with the arguments the FSF has with the license. They've done their homework and they have good rational reasons for changing it. But they also have a philosophical, dogmatic attitude that many open-source developers don't have. We've always preached that open source is not a religion or a political party or a society. FSF does have a societal aspect. That's a great area but some developers don't care. They're not here to save mankind or save the planet from destruction. The process is still ongoing. It's time to debate, not time to deliver conclusions. At MySQL, we haven't made up our minds on GPL and we don't need to do so yet, it's not time. IDGNS: How do you decide when MySQL needs to develop new features for the database and when to rely on the open-source community for those innovations? Mickos: One of the essences of our business is to know when to do what. You need to figure out what the end user wants. We have 10 million users. How the heck do you figure out what they want and then figure out how to do it? If 9 million want one thing and 1 million another, it could be that the 1 million is more important than the 9 million. It's the ability to know what makes sense. Thanks to the early releases [of our products], we can fix mistakes. We're allowed to make mistakes in passing. For example, we had an internal project on optimization or a cache that we were developing, then we found someone else was developing one too. We could turn [around] our mistake and choose what was best. Or, take our JDBC (Java database connectivity) driver. The community developed three, four or five. One was clearly the market leader. We acquired and licensed it and brought the developer onboard. We didn't decide, but let the ecosystem or Darwinism say what works best. IDGNS: So, is open source then a more forgiving environment than the proprietary software world? Mickos: No, you're not forgiven, but open source is self-healing. There's no forgiveness, but someone else can cover up for you. A year ago, Oracle bought InnoDB. Now, a year later, there are many ways you can store MySQL and many players. It's like the invisible hand that Adam Smith spoke about is really working. There's some sort of invisible hand guiding open source. At the end of the day, something good can come out of it. Some people are very angry with FSF, still people will see a community and a good outcome [with GPLv3]. IDGNS: What's ahead in 2007 for MySQL? Mickos: We'll see a strong uptake in the enterprise market as the number of users running MySQL 5.0 grows. It takes time for developers to adopt the new version; it's starting to happen. We'll seeÂ more partners. We already have Novell, Hewlett-Packard, Unisys, and recently Red Hat. There will be others. With our technologies, there will be Falcon and MySQL 5.1. We're doing great work on our GUI (graphical user interface) tools and making our ODBC (open database connectivity) and JDBC drivers even better. IDGNS: What's the latest news on Falcon, the transactional database engine being developed by database architect Jim Starkey who joined MySQL in February? Mickos: It's not just Jim Starkey. We have a handful of engineers working closely with him. The next stage is for Falcon to be in alpha [testing], which will be soon. IDGNS: Is MySQL's current dominance of the open-source database market ever a cause for concern? Mickos: I do hear sometimes from staff, "We're great. We don't need to work." But then our engineers are very self-deprecating and they get embarrassed about any problems. It's a balancing act. Sometimes, I have to say to the organization, "Cheer up, we have a great product;" other times, "Don't be complaisant. We're not done yet." If we're good, we keep going at it until we feel we're done and can rest. If something bad happens, we should work a little bit harder to get it done. Like it looked bad when Oracle acquired InnoDB. At first it was "What the heck are we going to do?" But weÂ turned it to our advantage.