On 11/10/2011 1:31 PM, [email protected] wrote:
On Thu, 10 Nov 2011 15:37:35 +0100, Hans J. Albertsson wrote:
Having just been to a Richard M Stallman lecture, I think I'd like to
know the following:
Hehe, you to? Quite ... interesting person, he is... :)
How "Free" in the FSF sense is Illumos/OpenIndiana?
Is everything under strict Gnu GPL?
From what I understand, it is (and must be - for the time being?) CDDL
which is some Sun 'free' license... ANd I think he would have a fit
over that license (he seem to get a fit over about everything :).
Having had non-trivial exposure to Richard and many of the FSF folks
over the past two decades (including enough experience while at MIT to
keep me for an entire lifetime), let us say that, without getting into a
GPL vs non-GPL debate, that practically everything in the IllumOS core
is covered by one of three Open Source license: the original Sun CDDL
(which, as Linda pointed out, is a Mozilla Public License derivative,
with some patent protection for the end-user added), the GPL, and the
MIT/BSD license.
All three licenses protect the core FSF/GNU values, though there is some
disagreement amongst purists as to the specifics. It's a Holy War, so
don't get into it.
Overall, the various IllumOS-derived distributions vary a bit in their
inclusion of various other licenses, as to most Linux distros. Overall,
we're not a license-centered community like Debian. I would put the
IllumOS community closer to the BSD communities in terms of views of
licensing, but that's just my opinion. The basic thrust here is that
if you're modifying code inside IllumOS, please be respectful of the
original license, and release the updates under the same original
license. As for whole new additions, well, that's entirely up to you.
Though I do think most of us here would prefer a more
commercial-friendly license such as the MIT/BSD or CDDL than the GPL.
Overall, the community seems to be have not attracted the kind of
free-loader activity from various commercial entities that plague some
other more popular distributions/OSes. I'd like to see this continue,
keeping it a congenial family thing, rather than trying to enforce some
particular mentality on everyone.
-Erik
-------------------------------------------
illumos-discuss
Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/182180/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/182180/21175430-2e6923be
Modify Your Subscription:
https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21175430&id_secret=21175430-6a77cda4
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
