On Tue, Sep 06, 2005 at 11:16:59PM -0500, Nathan Hawkins wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Roy T. Fielding wrote: > > I see no reason for this conversation to continue, ad nauseum, > > for the remainder of eternity. OpenSolaris is under CDDL. > > GPL is incompatible with any license that is not a sublicensable > > subset of GPL. That wasn't by accident -- it is the intention > > of the FSF that all software be under the GPL. The FSF will not > > change that regardless of how many times the GPL is revised. > > They (FSF) should at least update it to address the common situation of > linking with libraries for which source is available under licenses even > the FSF considers free, but not GPL-compatible. The present situation is > fairly stupid and self-defeating.
Notice that the discussion which started this (or at least the one which got me involved in this thread), mentioned the LGPL, which is exactly such a licence. (well, upto a point, and not including statically linked code, but well, i suppose OpenSolaris has dynamic linking, right ?). > > OpenSolaris will never be under GPL because GPL is incompatible > > with Solaris. OpenSolaris does not need to be compatible with > > GPL because it is an operating system platform, not an application > > that uses other GPL code. > > It would be useful if OpenSolaris' libc were compatible with the GPL. > Given that there's no BSD or CDDL replacement for gcc, it's going to > become a problem for people who want a distribution that has source code > to everything. Well, remember the system library excpetion, which allowed sun to distribute the gcc toolchain in the past, provided it is not on the same CD media as the OS itself. This is a bit inconvenient and means you have to distribute gcc and stuff from a separate source, but still works just fine for opensolaris. > Because of the vagueness of the GPL's exception for system libraries, > it's not exactly obvious under what circumstances (or if) it would be > legal to distribute a GPL'd program, such as gcc, linked with the CDDL'd > libc. That's a fairly important problem. Whatever is vague with it. You are allowed to link GPL code with system libraries, if : 1) those system libraries are distributed as integral part of the OS. 2) the GPLed code is not distributed as integral part of the OS, but separatedly. So, depending on the distribution media (sun used to ship gcc as a separate CD in the old days), you just need a separate CD iso, or a separate repository or ftp archive, or whatever. I believe it is even possible to have it under a different subdir in the same ftp server, like debian has main and non-free for example. > > End of discussion. If you are interested in working on a CDDL > > project, then please participate in OpenSolaris. If you are not > > interested in anything other than GPL, then please leave now. > > Pissing in the wind is not a collaborative activity. Bah, i don't care about licencing discussions so much, i was brought to these threads because i heard by Andreas Schuldei about the possible Debian Gnu/Opensolaris project (an OpenSolaris kernel, glibc and the whole debian userland). And know what, there is lot of FUD going on about this, and after some investigation it seems to me that the CDDL vs GPL incompatibility is a moot point, and the main problem is the CDDL not being DFSG free because of the choice of venu clause. That said, i have seen rather rude and childish language of some of you guys doing active GPL bashing and linux-FUDing, which i think a sad think when on aims at community building, which i believe is the goal of OpenSolaris. And no, i don't care about anything but the GPL, i have participated to the XFree86 project, i am even maintaining a debian package (Objective Caml), which is partly LGLP, with a static linking exception, and partly QPL, and which prior to my involvemenet was a in-house-cooked-patch-only-non-free licence, and i also maintain the unicorn ADSL modem driver module which contains binary only code. I have been at this since 98 (when i became a debian developper), and believe i have some experience with those licencing issues, as well as discussion with the most staunch GPL defendant and even RMS himself, and i thought that i could make you benefit from that knowledge and maybe be an interface to at least the debian community and its legal team. But then, if you are more interested in GPL bashing and isolating yourself, ... > Some people have legitimate interest in both OpenSolaris and GPL > software. It's a concern to those of us who do that there seems to be > conflict. I don't believe that to be the case. > Personally, I really wish Sun had used a BSD license. It has the very > great virtue of being intelligible to people other than lawyers. Neither > the CDDL nor the GPL fits that description. Simplicity at the cost of no protection at all, i don't think that would have been acceptable to sun :). The code would just have found their way to microsoft's code base quickly, altough i doubt they will not use it anyway :) Friendly, Sven Luther _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
