R: Re: Re: Re: Re: coordinated compliance efforts addresses the issues of this thread (was Re: Amusing article about busybox)
You can turn it how you want yet every entity that distributes busybox, as it is about busybox GPL license enforcement we are talking all the time, must distribute also the source code unmodified or not, there is nothing you can do about it as it is impossible to change the license. If the end user could sue a company to get the sorce code of busybox under the GPL is to be seen in court (maybe it already was with success...) and is mostly a matter of time and money one is willing to spend. Nonetheless busybox is and will remain under the GPL and therefore you have to show the code, as an alternative i can reccomend you google's toolbox. That's it. Messaggio originale Da: felipe.contre...@gmail.com Data: 15/10/2012 11.48 A: farmat...@tiscali.itfarmat...@tiscali.it Cc: busybox@busybox.net Ogg: Re: Re: Re: Re: coordinated compliance efforts addresses the issues of this thread (was Re: Amusing article about busybox) On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 10:03 AM, farmat...@tiscali.it farmat...@tiscali.it wrote: To stay practical would you please show me how do you relicense busybox to some different license? Even if you can relicense the code in case you are the only developer or in case you can make all developers and conributors agree to the change for the binaries distributed before the relicensing occurred source code must be made available. For this very same reason you can fork busybox but cannot change the license at your will as: We are not talking about busybox. On *my* software, *I* have the rights, not the users. I grant privileges to the users. The exact same thing happens with busybox. The fact it's not easy for busybox developers to change the license of the whole thing doesn't change the facts; busybox developers have the rights, they grant privileges to the users. -- Felipe Contreras Invita i tuoi amici e Tiscali ti premia! Il consiglio di un amico vale più di uno spot in TV. Per ogni nuovo abbonato 30 € di premio per te e per lui! Un amico al mese e parli e navighi sempre gratis: http://freelosophy.tiscali.it/ ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Re: coordinated compliance efforts addresses the issues of this thread (was Re: Amusing article about busybox)
On Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 7:35 PM, farmat...@tiscali.it farmat...@tiscali.it wrote: By reading carefully what is stated above I nowhere see the word developer nor anything about how many lines of code were written. The rights stated above refer to the end user who get a copy of the binary program in his device without any of point a,b or c being satisfied. The end user is the one who is deprived of his rights and therefore is entitled to do enforcement if he wants to. Only one end user who never wrote a line of code is enough to start enforcement. Obviously this happens seldom as end user are usually not interested and not informed about their rights, but some are. You are wrong. That might be the _intention_ of the FSF, but that doesn't change the laws that are in place, and with good reason. If a user of my GPLv2 software demands enforcement towards a company that is not distributing the source code back, eventually the company might seek a settlement with *me*, the owner of the code--the copyright owner. I can say it's totally fine, and provide them with the software in a proprietary licence. I, the copyright owner, can change the license at will, and there's nothing the FSF, or Conservancy, can do about it. It is me, the developer, the one that gives the end user the privilege--not the right--of having the source code. The license is picked by the developer, it protects the developer, and it's enforcement is ultimately the decision of the developer. -- Felipe Contreras ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Re: coordinated compliance efforts addresses the issues of this thread (was Re: Amusing article about busybox)
On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 11:58 PM, farmat...@tiscali.it farmat...@tiscali.it wrote: I care that busybox is used by people willing to follow the GPL license No, you clearly don't. You care only by people that are in clear situations, not the ones in the situation that I've described multiple times now, that even though *they are complying*, they are forced to avoid your software. But I'm not going to waste any more breath trying to make you understand the situation. You fool yourself by thinking you have this rights when in fact they are eroded Riiight. I might have the right to own a gun, but I've never owned one, is my right eroding right now? No. Even if nobody in the country owns a gun, as long as it's in the law, the right is protected. It's only when the government threatens to change the law that the right is *actually* threatened. Nobody has threatened copyleft, there's no need to fight for it. *Exercising* a right is different from defending it, you go ahead and exercise it if you want, it's your choice. Fighting for it is a different matter. -- Felipe Contreras ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
R: Re: coordinated compliance efforts addresses the issues of this thread (was Re: Amusing article about busybox)
Hi, one more argument will show how your position about the number of developers involved in enforcement and the number of lines of code written by them is totally wrong. That is probably due to the fact that you yourself are a developer and therefore your view of things is biased. Let us go to the source of truth: the GPL license, 3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following: a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or, b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or, c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.) By reading carefully what is stated above I nowhere see the word developer nor anything about how many lines of code were written. The rights stated above refer to the end user who get a copy of the binary program in his device without any of point a,b or c being satisfied. The end user is the one who is deprived of his rights and therefore is entitled to do enforcement if he wants to. Only one end user who never wrote a line of code is enough to start enforcement. Obviously this happens seldom as end user are usually not interested and not informed about their rights, but some are. Ciao, Tito Invita i tuoi amici e Tiscali ti premia! Il consiglio di un amico vale più di uno spot in TV. Per ogni nuovo abbonato 30 € di premio per te e per lui! Un amico al mese e parli e navighi sempre gratis: http://freelosophy.tiscali.it/ ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: coordinated compliance efforts addresses the issues of this thread (was Re: Amusing article about busybox)
On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 9:29 PM, Tito farmat...@tiscali.it wrote: On Monday 24 September 2012 16:37:11 you wrote: True, the law doesn't make any distinction, which is part of the problem. You are contraddicting yourself. The law doesn't make any distinction and this is a matter of fact, which seems to be your the problem. No, it's not _my_ problem, it's everybody's problem. Unless you don't care if nobody uses busybox. But what is clear is that you are not interested in the problem, and thus not interested in solutions. I want my rights enforced!!! for a simple reason because if you don't fight for your rights you end with no rights at all. That's _your_ opinion. That's not an opinion but a matter of fact. I have never fought for my software rights, and I still have those rights. I have never fought for my freedom of speech rights, and yet I still have them. As long as the law is not modified, the rights will remain there. You can disagree of the reason why I still have those rights, but that's your opinion, the fact remains that I have the rights, and I have never fought them. That's an undeniable fact, not an opinion. You are minimizing the issue. If you want a more homologous analogy, it would be more like you pay your goods, but somebody with your same surname doesn't, and because of him you are forced to stay until he pays, because the law doesn't make a distinction between different individuals of the same family. It's much easier to just buy goods with other licenses than risk this ordeal. This is science fiction for me. This is crazy, which is precisely the problem. I'm very sad that you have to suffer but the above solution is still the only valid and effective solution to end your suffering. Your company as a whole has to do due dilingence and comply to the license as they do with their hardware suppliers and with every other entity they have a contract with, even with you as they pay your salary. Would like to stay in the bad non compliant team if they do not comply with your contract and do not pay your salary? I think not. The salary for my minimal contributions to busybox is the compliance to the license and I too in this sense want to be payed. It's more akin to asking the company to pay me 100K euro, and when the company offers 50K euro, I reject them. The company would rather pay 0 euro than 100K. By putting things in black-and-white, everybody looses. “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Gandhi never fought. He won by minding his own business, which is what the Linux project is doing; generally ignoring enforcement, and rather concentrate on creating an awesome project. Cheers. -- Felipe Contreras ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
R: Re: coordinated compliance efforts addresses the issues of this thread (was Re: Amusing article about busybox)
Il 11/10/2012 12:11, Felipe Contreras ha scritto: On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 9:29 PM, Tito farmat...@tiscali.it wrote: On Monday 24 September 2012 16:37:11 you wrote: True, the law doesn't make any distinction, which is part of the problem. You are contraddicting yourself. The law doesn't make any distinction and this is a matter of fact, which seems to be your the problem. No, it's not _my_ problem, it's everybody's problem. Unless you don't care if nobody uses busybox. I care that busybox is used by people willing to follow the GPL license But what is clear is that you are not interested in the problem, and thus not interested in solutions. The only problem here is that there are commercial companies that don't follow the license busybox is under, something unbelievable in the world of commercial software (where BSA or other enforcement agencies can raid your business) yet believable and almost desirable for you. I want my rights enforced!!! for a simple reason because if you don't fight for your rights you end with no rights at all. That's _your_ opinion. That's not an opinion but a matter of fact. I have never fought for my software rights, and I still have those rights. I have never fought for my freedom of speech rights, and yet I still have them. As long as the law is not modified, the rights will remain there. You fool yourself by thinking you have this rights when in fact they are eroded every day more and more, go try to ask for the source code of busybox used in most routers, tablets, phones etc. and you will experience that most companies don't even will respond to your emails because they don't care and there is only one reason why they don't care: there has been no license enforcement, so they risk nothing. You can disagree of the reason why I still have those rights, but that's your opinion, the fact remains that I have the rights, and I have never fought them. That's an undeniable fact, not an opinion. You are minimizing the issue. If you want a more homologous analogy, it would be more like you pay your goods, but somebody with your same surname doesn't, and because of him you are forced to stay until he pays, because the law doesn't make a distinction between different individuals of the same family. It's much easier to just buy goods with other licenses than risk this ordeal. This is science fiction for me. This is crazy, which is precisely the problem. I'm very sad that you have to suffer but the above solution is still the only valid and effective solution to end your suffering. Your company as a whole has to do due dilingence and comply to the license as they do with their hardware suppliers and with every other entity they have a contract with, even with you as they pay your salary. Would like to stay in the bad non compliant team if they do not comply with your contract and do not pay your salary? I think not. The salary for my minimal contributions to busybox is the compliance to the license and I too in this sense want to be payed. It's more akin to asking the company to pay me 100K euro, and when the company offers 50K euro, I reject them. The company would rather pay 0 euro than 100K. By putting things in black-and-white, everybody looses. if 50 doesn't allow to make your living maybe you have to fight for your rights, somebody did this for you in the past but times are changing. In many European countries there is political requests about a minum salary exactly for this reason: you work all days of the month, you get your salary but still you are unable the pay your bills. “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Gandhi never fought. He won by minding his own business, which is what the Linux project is doing; generally ignoring enforcement, and rather concentrate on creating an awesome project. Cheers. He fought with passive civil disobedience, but the repression was very active. We need to fight with civil law. Ciao, Tito Lupus et agnus Ad rivum eundem lupus et agnus venerant, siti compulsi. Superior stabat lupus, longeque inferior agnus. Tunc fauce improba latro incitatus iurgii causam intulit: Cur - inquit - turbulentam fecisti mihi aquam bibenti? Laniger contra timens : Qui possum - quaeso - facere quod quereris, lupe? A te decurrit ad meos haustus liquor. Repulsus ille veritatis viribus: Ante hos sex menses male - ait - dixisti mihi. Respondit agnus: Equidem natus non eram! Pater, hercle, tuus - ille inquit - male dixit mihi! Atque ita correptum lacerat iniusta nece. Haec propter illos scripta est homines fabula qui fictis causis innocentes opprimunt. Phaedrus Invita i tuoi amici e Tiscali ti premia! Il consiglio di un amico vale più di uno spot in TV. Per ogni nuovo abbonato 30 € di premio per te e per lui! Un amico al mese e parli e navighi sempre gratis: http://freelosophy.tiscali.it/
Re: coordinated compliance efforts addresses the issues of this thread (was Re: Amusing article about busybox)
On Fri, Aug 24, 2012 at 10:24 PM, Tito farmat...@tiscali.it wrote: On Friday 24 August 2012 18:20:12 Felipe Contreras wrote: On Wed, Aug 15, 2012 at 9:45 PM, Bradley M. Kuhn bk...@ebb.org wrote: Felipe Contreras wrote at 11:31 (EDT) on Monday: if you are a big company an a unit used my code by mistake I'm not going to sue you and screw the rest of your units. I don't think anyone, including those of us in the BusyBox community who enforce the GPL, want to screw companies or any of their units! No company who makes good efforts to fix compliance problems has ever been sued by any BusyBox copyright holder. Do you know of a specific case where that's not true? So if part of the company makes good efforts, and another part of the company does not, the company as a whole wouldn't be sued? I think it would. There is not something like a part of company. Yes there is. Ther is a company that produces a product and then sells it to make some money. If for example your product is defective you don't ask wich unit has engineered or produced it or sold it or delivered it as the company is liable for the warranty. True, the law doesn't make any distinction, which is part of the problem. No, I'm explaining why the Linux kernel developers don't want that. I do hope the Busybox developers see the light as well, but I'm not holding my breath. BusyBox and Linux developers are now working together on GPL enforcement, coordinated via Conservancy, as I mentioned in this email that I sent on 29 May 2012, which was posted as follow-up to this thread: http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2012-May/077908.html *Some* Linux developers. Probably the copyrights owned by these don't even amount to 1% of the Linux code. Nonetheless this developers having contributed to the project under a precise license have some rights, particularly the right to have this license enforced even if the project maintainers or other entities do not enforce it. I have a single file in Linux with my copyright, that's the only code I can ask for enforcement. I have absolutely no say in the rest of the 99.99% of the code. I want my rights enforced!!! for a simple reason because if you don't fight for your rights you end with no rights at all. That's _your_ opinion. Clearly, some Linux copyright holders and some BusyBox copyright holders are in agreement to work on compliance together in the same way. Indeed, Conservancy as a whole and I personally listened carefully to the feedback from this thread and other places that had a discussion about this. I heard the message that the community wanted to see a broad coalition of copyright holders of different projects who all agree on enforcement strategy. Denys even personally asked me to make sure that Conservancy's compliance efforts were as inclusive as possible. And, that's what we now have. I hope this means the proxy strategy doesn't get used: if a company violated the busybox GPL, that doesn't mean it cannot ship products with other GPL projects (e.g. Linux). If a driver does something bad with his car he sometimes ends up with no driving license. This of course is not the fault of who enforces the law but his fault as he did something he knew is forbiddden. The same way i suppose you don't go in shops take some goods and go out without paying as you know that you have to pay. It is the same with gpl software, you don't use it if you don't want to make the sources available. You know this before you use it as the license is contained in the very same source code that you intend to use and can not be overlooked unless you want to do it. You are minimizing the issue. If you want a more homologous analogy, it would be more like you pay your goods, but somebody with your same surname doesn't, and because of him you are forced to stay until he pays, because the law doesn't make a distinction between different individuals of the same family. It's much easier to just buy goods with other licenses than risk this ordeal. If you have a bad unit that screwed up, and this affects the products of good units; that's not good. Even after all this time since this discussion started, no one has shown one example where this outcome *actually* occurred. This was a speculation of what a copyright holder *could* ask for under copyright law in the USA if infringement occurs. Lawyers don't care about things actually occurring, but what could potentially happen. And potentially if say one unit of Sony is negligent and has a GPL violation shipping busybox, Conservancy could ask for an injunction to stop all products shipping GPL code, including products from another unit who did it's job properly. Simply having this threat would make lawyers worry, and recommend busybox not to be used. If Conservancy explicitly states that only projects that want GPL enforcement will be targeted, and not
Re: coordinated compliance efforts addresses the issues of this thread (was Re: Amusing article about busybox)
On 09/24/2012 10:37:11 AM, Felipe Contreras wrote: On Fri, Aug 24, 2012 at 10:24 PM, Tito farmat...@tiscali.it wrote: On Friday 24 August 2012 18:20:12 Felipe Contreras wrote: So if part of the company makes good efforts, and another part of the company does not, the company as a whole wouldn't be sued? I think it would. There is not something like a part of company. Yes there is. Ther is a company that produces a product and then sells it to make some money. If for example your product is defective you don't ask wich unit has engineered or produced it or sold it or delivered it as the company is liable for the warranty. True, the law doesn't make any distinction, which is part of the problem. People create corporations because they want the corporation to be liable rather than the individuals that make it up. If they wanted the individuals to be liable, they would do business as a partnership. If they wanted a portion of the company to be liable rather than the whole, they would create a subsidiary corporation. ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: coordinated compliance efforts addresses the issues of this thread (was Re: Amusing article about busybox)
On Monday 24 September 2012 16:37:11 you wrote: On Fri, Aug 24, 2012 at 10:24 PM, Tito farmat...@tiscali.it wrote: On Friday 24 August 2012 18:20:12 Felipe Contreras wrote: On Wed, Aug 15, 2012 at 9:45 PM, Bradley M. Kuhn bk...@ebb.org wrote: Felipe Contreras wrote at 11:31 (EDT) on Monday: if you are a big company an a unit used my code by mistake I'm not going to sue you and screw the rest of your units. I don't think anyone, including those of us in the BusyBox community who enforce the GPL, want to screw companies or any of their units! No company who makes good efforts to fix compliance problems has ever been sued by any BusyBox copyright holder. Do you know of a specific case where that's not true? So if part of the company makes good efforts, and another part of the company does not, the company as a whole wouldn't be sued? I think it would. There is not something like a part of company. Yes there is. Ther is a company that produces a product and then sells it to make some money. If for example your product is defective you don't ask wich unit has engineered or produced it or sold it or delivered it as the company is liable for the warranty. True, the law doesn't make any distinction, which is part of the problem. You are contraddicting yourself. The law doesn't make any distinction and this is a matter of fact, which seems to be your the problem. No, I'm explaining why the Linux kernel developers don't want that. I do hope the Busybox developers see the light as well, but I'm not holding my breath. BusyBox and Linux developers are now working together on GPL enforcement, coordinated via Conservancy, as I mentioned in this email that I sent on 29 May 2012, which was posted as follow-up to this thread: http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2012-May/077908.html *Some* Linux developers. Probably the copyrights owned by these don't even amount to 1% of the Linux code. Nonetheless this developers having contributed to the project under a precise license have some rights, particularly the right to have this license enforced even if the project maintainers or other entities do not enforce it. I have a single file in Linux with my copyright, that's the only code I can ask for enforcement. I have absolutely no say in the rest of the 99.99% of the code. I want my rights enforced!!! for a simple reason because if you don't fight for your rights you end with no rights at all. That's _your_ opinion. That's not an opinion but a matter of fact. Historia est Magistra Vitae history is life's teacher Cicero, De Oratore, II, 9. Clearly, some Linux copyright holders and some BusyBox copyright holders are in agreement to work on compliance together in the same way. Indeed, Conservancy as a whole and I personally listened carefully to the feedback from this thread and other places that had a discussion about this. I heard the message that the community wanted to see a broad coalition of copyright holders of different projects who all agree on enforcement strategy. Denys even personally asked me to make sure that Conservancy's compliance efforts were as inclusive as possible. And, that's what we now have. I hope this means the proxy strategy doesn't get used: if a company violated the busybox GPL, that doesn't mean it cannot ship products with other GPL projects (e.g. Linux). If a driver does something bad with his car he sometimes ends up with no driving license. This of course is not the fault of who enforces the law but his fault as he did something he knew is forbiddden. The same way i suppose you don't go in shops take some goods and go out without paying as you know that you have to pay. It is the same with gpl software, you don't use it if you don't want to make the sources available. You know this before you use it as the license is contained in the very same source code that you intend to use and can not be overlooked unless you want to do it. You are minimizing the issue. If you want a more homologous analogy, it would be more like you pay your goods, but somebody with your same surname doesn't, and because of him you are forced to stay until he pays, because the law doesn't make a distinction between different individuals of the same family. It's much easier to just buy goods with other licenses than risk this ordeal. This is science fiction for me. If you have a bad unit that screwed up, and this affects the products of good units; that's not good. Even after all this time since this discussion started, no one has shown one example where this outcome *actually* occurred. This was a speculation of what a copyright holder *could* ask for under copyright law in the USA if infringement occurs. Lawyers don't care about things actually occurring, but what could potentially
Fw: Re: coordinated compliance efforts addresses the issues of this thread (was Re: Amusing article about busybox)
bounced due to non-subscribed alias. Probably not worthy reading... --- On Sat, 25/8/12, Hin-Tak Leung ... wrote: --- On Fri, 24/8/12, Tito farmat...@tiscali.it wrote: snipped There is not something like a part of company. Ther is a company that produces a product and then sells it to make some money. If for example your product is defective you don't ask wich unit has engineered or produced it or sold it or delivered it as the company is liable for the warranty. Sorry, I am really losing focus of what exactly is this lengthy and long-winded discussion is about... FWIW, big tech companies, like HP, and Sony, which are (1) international, (2) have a long history and gone through many acqusition, mergers, and split-ups and lay-offs, and (3) occasionally out-source some of their work to 3rd-parties to do, can behave like island of unrelated entities, especially where policies about using/scavenging from open software is concerned. (speaking generically, from GPL/MIT/BSD). The policy can include anything between absolutely no (no polution from the freebie lunatics), to use-in-house-with-substantial-customization-but-no-contributing-out, to active-participation, etc. There is no single policy maker, and if you do decide to sue, you do need to send your lawyer's letter to the correct party, or it will get ignored... for example, sending your lawyer after Sony Italy for something that was planned in Sony Japan, designed by Sony US, but made in Sony China, probably won't get you very far. Sony Italy has no obligation whatsoever to even try to respond to tell you which party you should contact to get your view heard. Or sending your lawyer's letter to the Sony TV division complaining about their non-compliance in their camera products... Anyway, can somebody summarise in one sentence, no more than 10 words, what this lengthy thread is about? snipped ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: coordinated compliance efforts addresses the issues of this thread (was Re: Amusing article about busybox)
On Wed, Aug 15, 2012 at 9:45 PM, Bradley M. Kuhn bk...@ebb.org wrote: Felipe Contreras wrote at 11:31 (EDT) on Monday: if you are a big company an a unit used my code by mistake I'm not going to sue you and screw the rest of your units. I don't think anyone, including those of us in the BusyBox community who enforce the GPL, want to screw companies or any of their units! No company who makes good efforts to fix compliance problems has ever been sued by any BusyBox copyright holder. Do you know of a specific case where that's not true? So if part of the company makes good efforts, and another part of the company does not, the company as a whole wouldn't be sued? I think it would. No, I'm explaining why the Linux kernel developers don't want that. I do hope the Busybox developers see the light as well, but I'm not holding my breath. BusyBox and Linux developers are now working together on GPL enforcement, coordinated via Conservancy, as I mentioned in this email that I sent on 29 May 2012, which was posted as follow-up to this thread: http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2012-May/077908.html *Some* Linux developers. Probably the copyrights owned by these don't even amount to 1% of the Linux code. Clearly, some Linux copyright holders and some BusyBox copyright holders are in agreement to work on compliance together in the same way. Indeed, Conservancy as a whole and I personally listened carefully to the feedback from this thread and other places that had a discussion about this. I heard the message that the community wanted to see a broad coalition of copyright holders of different projects who all agree on enforcement strategy. Denys even personally asked me to make sure that Conservancy's compliance efforts were as inclusive as possible. And, that's what we now have. I hope this means the proxy strategy doesn't get used: if a company violated the busybox GPL, that doesn't mean it cannot ship products with other GPL projects (e.g. Linux). If you have a bad unit that screwed up, and this affects the products of good units; that's not good. Even after all this time since this discussion started, no one has shown one example where this outcome *actually* occurred. This was a speculation of what a copyright holder *could* ask for under copyright law in the USA if infringement occurs. Lawyers don't care about things actually occurring, but what could potentially happen. And potentially if say one unit of Sony is negligent and has a GPL violation shipping busybox, Conservancy could ask for an injunction to stop all products shipping GPL code, including products from another unit who did it's job properly. Simply having this threat would make lawyers worry, and recommend busybox not to be used. If Conservancy explicitly states that only projects that want GPL enforcement will be targeted, and not use the proxy method to target *all* GPL code, then perhaps in practice people won't have problems using busybox. But I haven't seen any public statement of this sort, so the fear is still probably out there. As I said elsewhere in this thread months ago, Conservancy works very very hard to make sure compliance issues don't disrupt a violators' business. The only way it could possible disrupt their business is if they spend months and months ignoring Conservancy's requests to work with us to come into compliance. Even then, Conservancy, in our enforcement efforts, we continue to look for ways to keep the business going while we help them come into compliance. Again, if these efforts only target project that explicitly request GPL enforcement, then I think that's OK. That is not true. SFC can't force anybody to comply with the kernel license unless they act on behalf of the copyright holders of the kernel. They can just convince the companies that it is cheaper for them to comply with the kernel license. They can do it as a proxy. IMO, this whole discussion is moot: Conservancy now does indeed enforce directly on behalf of a growing list of Linux copyright holders who stand alongside BusyBox copyright holders in our enforcement actions. (And, Samba developers are involved too, for those cases where Samba is also present.) No, it's not moot. You can only enforce the code that is copyrighted by these Linux developers, which is probably less than 1%. There's no need to ignore the license. Companies follow the GPLv2 license, yet they avoid busybox for obvious reasons, that apparently you are never going to understand. The real world is beyond your grasp. If they avoid BusyBox, they have to avoid Linux and Samba, too, No, see above. it's not surprising that more permissive licenses are on the rise, presumably because of the kind of thinking that you show: http://blogs.the451group.com/opensource/2011/12/15/on-the-continuing-decline-of-the-gpl/ Note that the methodology of the analysis done in that article has been called into
Re: coordinated compliance efforts addresses the issues of this thread (was Re: Amusing article about busybox)
On Friday 24 August 2012 18:20:12 Felipe Contreras wrote: On Wed, Aug 15, 2012 at 9:45 PM, Bradley M. Kuhn bk...@ebb.org wrote: Felipe Contreras wrote at 11:31 (EDT) on Monday: if you are a big company an a unit used my code by mistake I'm not going to sue you and screw the rest of your units. I don't think anyone, including those of us in the BusyBox community who enforce the GPL, want to screw companies or any of their units! No company who makes good efforts to fix compliance problems has ever been sued by any BusyBox copyright holder. Do you know of a specific case where that's not true? So if part of the company makes good efforts, and another part of the company does not, the company as a whole wouldn't be sued? I think it would. There is not something like a part of company. Ther is a company that produces a product and then sells it to make some money. If for example your product is defective you don't ask wich unit has engineered or produced it or sold it or delivered it as the company is liable for the warranty. No, I'm explaining why the Linux kernel developers don't want that. I do hope the Busybox developers see the light as well, but I'm not holding my breath. BusyBox and Linux developers are now working together on GPL enforcement, coordinated via Conservancy, as I mentioned in this email that I sent on 29 May 2012, which was posted as follow-up to this thread: http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2012-May/077908.html *Some* Linux developers. Probably the copyrights owned by these don't even amount to 1% of the Linux code. Nonetheless this developers having contributed to the project under a precise license have some rights, particularly the right to have this license enforced even if the project maintainers or other entities do not enforce it. I want my rights enforced!!! for a simple reason because if you don't fight for your rights you end with no rights at all. If you contribute 1 dollar to a charity foundation, do you have the right to sue them if you know that there is a funds misappropriation? Clearly, some Linux copyright holders and some BusyBox copyright holders are in agreement to work on compliance together in the same way. Indeed, Conservancy as a whole and I personally listened carefully to the feedback from this thread and other places that had a discussion about this. I heard the message that the community wanted to see a broad coalition of copyright holders of different projects who all agree on enforcement strategy. Denys even personally asked me to make sure that Conservancy's compliance efforts were as inclusive as possible. And, that's what we now have. I hope this means the proxy strategy doesn't get used: if a company violated the busybox GPL, that doesn't mean it cannot ship products with other GPL projects (e.g. Linux). If a driver does something bad with his car he sometimes ends up with no driving license. This of course is not the fault of who enforces the law but his fault as he did something he knew is forbiddden. The same way i suppose you don't go in shops take some goods and go out without paying as you know that you have to pay. It is the same with gpl software, you don't use it if you don't want to make the sources available. You know this before you use it as the license is contained in the very same source code that you intend to use and can not be overlooked unless you want to do it. If you have a bad unit that screwed up, and this affects the products of good units; that's not good. Even after all this time since this discussion started, no one has shown one example where this outcome *actually* occurred. This was a speculation of what a copyright holder *could* ask for under copyright law in the USA if infringement occurs. Lawyers don't care about things actually occurring, but what could potentially happen. And potentially if say one unit of Sony is negligent and has a GPL violation shipping busybox, Conservancy could ask for an injunction to stop all products shipping GPL code, including products from another unit who did it's job properly. Simply having this threat would make lawyers worry, and recommend busybox not to be used. If Conservancy explicitly states that only projects that want GPL enforcement will be targeted, and not use the proxy method to target *all* GPL code, then perhaps in practice people won't have problems using busybox. But I haven't seen any public statement of this sort, so the fear is still probably out there. People will have problems using busybox only if they violate the license busybox is under, it is as simple as that. As I said elsewhere in this thread months ago, Conservancy works very very hard to make sure compliance issues don't disrupt a violators' business. The only way it could possible disrupt their business is if they spend months and months ignoring Conservancy's
coordinated compliance efforts addresses the issues of this thread (was Re: Amusing article about busybox)
Felipe Contreras wrote at 11:31 (EDT) on Monday: if you are a big company an a unit used my code by mistake I'm not going to sue you and screw the rest of your units. I don't think anyone, including those of us in the BusyBox community who enforce the GPL, want to screw companies or any of their units! No company who makes good efforts to fix compliance problems has ever been sued by any BusyBox copyright holder. Do you know of a specific case where that's not true? No, I'm explaining why the Linux kernel developers don't want that. I do hope the Busybox developers see the light as well, but I'm not holding my breath. BusyBox and Linux developers are now working together on GPL enforcement, coordinated via Conservancy, as I mentioned in this email that I sent on 29 May 2012, which was posted as follow-up to this thread: http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2012-May/077908.html Clearly, some Linux copyright holders and some BusyBox copyright holders are in agreement to work on compliance together in the same way. Indeed, Conservancy as a whole and I personally listened carefully to the feedback from this thread and other places that had a discussion about this. I heard the message that the community wanted to see a broad coalition of copyright holders of different projects who all agree on enforcement strategy. Denys even personally asked me to make sure that Conservancy's compliance efforts were as inclusive as possible. And, that's what we now have. People make mistakes. Companies have bad units. Bad units are negligent sometimes. I already explained that complying with the license is not that easy, specially after a produce is launched. I've worked helping companies get into compliance with GPL for more than a decade. I'm quite sure that it possible to reasonably redress past violations to the satisfaction of the copyright holders involved. Conservancy works with companies to help them do that. If you have a bad unit that screwed up, and this affects the products of good units; that's not good. Even after all this time since this discussion started, no one has shown one example where this outcome *actually* occurred. This was a speculation of what a copyright holder *could* ask for under copyright law in the USA if infringement occurs. As I said elsewhere in this thread months ago, Conservancy works very very hard to make sure compliance issues don't disrupt a violators' business. The only way it could possible disrupt their business is if they spend months and months ignoring Conservancy's requests to work with us to come into compliance. Even then, Conservancy, in our enforcement efforts, we continue to look for ways to keep the business going while we help them come into compliance. That is not true. SFC can't force anybody to comply with the kernel license unless they act on behalf of the copyright holders of the kernel. They can just convince the companies that it is cheaper for them to comply with the kernel license. They can do it as a proxy. IMO, this whole discussion is moot: Conservancy now does indeed enforce directly on behalf of a growing list of Linux copyright holders who stand alongside BusyBox copyright holders in our enforcement actions. (And, Samba developers are involved too, for those cases where Samba is also present.) There's no need to ignore the license. Companies follow the GPLv2 license, yet they avoid busybox for obvious reasons, that apparently you are never going to understand. The real world is beyond your grasp. If they avoid BusyBox, they have to avoid Linux and Samba, too, and any other GPL'd project where enforcement occurs, which is many others as well that aren't involved with Conservancy. These companies will have to make their choice: either they want to follow the requirements of GPL, or they'll switch to a FreeBSD-based system. Of course, it's easier to comply with the BSD-like licenses than GPL; BSD-like licenses aren't copylefts. But just because it's more work to comply with GPL doesn't mean that complying with GPL is too arduous to be worthwhile. Many companies see the value in GPL, because it defends them as well when they contribute code back. it's not surprising that more permissive licenses are on the rise, presumably because of the kind of thinking that you show: http://blogs.the451group.com/opensource/2011/12/15/on-the-continuing-decline-of-the-gpl/ Note that the methodology of the analysis done in that article has been called into question with competing analysis that shows substantially different results. See: http://www.fsf.org/events/is-copyleft-being-framed (a recording of which is available here http://faif.us/cast/2012/feb/28/0x23/ ). The 451 Group even covered it here: http://blogs.the451group.com/opensource/2012/03/05/thats-not-science/ I obviously disagree with 451's Group latest conclusion, since if what John did in his analysis isn't science, then neither is the work that 451
Re: Amusing article about busybox
Hi, I neglected this mail and only now realized I hadn't replied. Anyway, it's not surprising that more permissive licenses are on the rise, presumably because of the kind of thinking that you show: http://blogs.the451group.com/opensource/2011/12/15/on-the-continuing-decline-of-the-gpl/ On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 1:06 PM, Ralf Friedl ralf.fri...@online.de wrote: Felipe Contreras wrote: On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 5:46 PM, Ralf Friedl ralf.fri...@online.de wrote: Let's get some facts straight. Sony wants to avoid the GPL busybox not because of busybox itself, but because they fear that they can be forced to comply with the GPL on Linux, and they want to avoid that. They know that they break the license, and they want to replace busybox so that they can continue to break the kernel license. There are different opinions about this behavior. You want to defend Sony's god given right to violate the kernel license, I think it's a shame that the kernel license isn't enforced by the developers themselves, but the fact is that Sony intends to continue to violate the kernel license and replacing busybox is just a means to the end. I already explained why this view is wrong. I am not going to repeat it. A view is not wrong because it is not yours. No, it's not because it's not mine, it's because it's wrong. And my point here was to check whether we agree on the fact that Sony wants to violate the kernel license, which seems to be true, otherwise you would have mentioned it. In fact, in another email you wrote very clearly th You keep talking about Sony as a single entity, so it's pointless to reply. I already mentioned that it is not possible to enforce copyright without consent from the copyright holders, and you repeat it here anyway, so it seems that inconvenient facts don't influence your opinion. Do you have explicit consent from Linux developers? No. Is enforcement for their pursued despite this? Yes. I already mentioned that I'm not from SFC. And no, nobody except the copyright holder can enforce the license, or we wouldn't have this discussion. Yes you can; by proxy. Again you imply that Sony might contribute something at some point, so I ask you: why would Sony suddenly start to contribute to busybox or toybox on a voluntary base, when they don't want to contribute to the kernel despite their obligation to do so? Why did any company did? Because new developers pushes for a culture change Well, maybe some companies learned that they should avoid the GPL, others, even those that were the targets of enforcement probably learned that it is a license they have to comply with (gasp!), just like all their other licenses and contracts. Companies are not people. Yes, you wrote that again and again. Companies consist of people. Some of these people are in a position to make decisions for the company. Those new developers pushing for the change are not in this position most of the time. Companies are more complex that a bunch of people; they have laws and by-laws, and policies, and culture, and different units. You might consider the bare minimum to be be almost worthless, but without enforcement the bare minimum is zero and therefor completely worthless. I prefer my code being used by millions of users even if I get no contributions, rather than few users, and a few lines contributed, or a totally unusable patch dumped somewhere. Your preferences are up to you. It just seems BSD would fit your preferences better. Encouraging contributions under the pretense of using the GPL is just dishonest. No, it wouldn't, and you can't decide my preferences for me. Nor the ones of the Linux kernel contributors. If you say the the code is licensed under the GPL, but you promise to never enforce the license, you might as well call it public domain. I didn't tell you what to expect from a license, so please leave your straw men at home. You just said that if I don't expect the same as you do, I shouldn't be using the license. No, I didn't say that here. What I said was: I said that there is in effect no difference between public domain, please please share your modification and GPL, but I won't do anything if you violate it. I just explained that there is. No, you didn't. What is the practical difference between public domain with a plea to share and GPL with a promise to ignore violations? A stronger incentive; abide by the law. By your own definition, Sony is not a good member of society. And please provide examples where the bad publicity has resulted in code contributions. Android. By your own definition Android is not a contribution at all, so how is it now an example for code contributions as a result of bad publicity? Android got bad publicity because it's not Linux, and Android developers tried to push their stuff upstream. To this day they are still trying, and from the time you wrote that mail, we are closer
Re: Amusing article about busybox
Felipe Contreras wrote: On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 5:46 PM, Ralf Friedl ralf.fri...@online.de wrote: Let's get some facts straight. Sony wants to avoid the GPL busybox not because of busybox itself, but because they fear that they can be forced to comply with the GPL on Linux, and they want to avoid that. They know that they break the license, and they want to replace busybox so that they can continue to break the kernel license. There are different opinions about this behavior. You want to defend Sony's god given right to violate the kernel license, I think it's a shame that the kernel license isn't enforced by the developers themselves, but the fact is that Sony intends to continue to violate the kernel license and replacing busybox is just a means to the end. I already explained why this view is wrong. I am not going to repeat it. A view is not wrong because it is not yours. And my point here was to check whether we agree on the fact that Sony wants to violate the kernel license, which seems to be true, otherwise you would have mentioned it. In fact, in another email you wrote very clearly th I already mentioned that it is not possible to enforce copyright without consent from the copyright holders, and you repeat it here anyway, so it seems that inconvenient facts don't influence your opinion. Do you have explicit consent from Linux developers? No. Is enforcement for their pursued despite this? Yes. I already mentioned that I'm not from SFC. And no, nobody except the copyright holder can enforce the license, or we wouldn't have this discussion. Again you imply that Sony might contribute something at some point, so I ask you: why would Sony suddenly start to contribute to busybox or toybox on a voluntary base, when they don't want to contribute to the kernel despite their obligation to do so? Why did any company did? Because new developers pushes for a culture change Well, maybe some companies learned that they should avoid the GPL, others, even those that were the targets of enforcement probably learned that it is a license they have to comply with (gasp!), just like all their other licenses and contracts. Companies are not people. Yes, you wrote that again and again. Companies consist of people. Some of these people are in a position to make decisions for the company. Those new developers pushing for the change are not in this position most of the time. You might consider the bare minimum to be be almost worthless, but without enforcement the bare minimum is zero and therefor completely worthless. I prefer my code being used by millions of users even if I get no contributions, rather than few users, and a few lines contributed, or a totally unusable patch dumped somewhere. Your preferences are up to you. It just seems BSD would fit your preferences better. Encouraging contributions under the pretense of using the GPL is just dishonest. If you say the the code is licensed under the GPL, but you promise to never enforce the license, you might as well call it public domain. I didn't tell you what to expect from a license, so please leave your straw men at home. You just said that if I don't expect the same as you do, I shouldn't be using the license. No, I didn't say that here. What I said was: I said that there is in effect no difference between public domain, please please share your modification and GPL, but I won't do anything if you violate it. I just explained that there is. No, you didn't. What is the practical difference between public domain with a plea to share and GPL with a promise to ignore violations? By your own definition, Sony is not a good member of society. And please provide examples where the bad publicity has resulted in code contributions. Android. By your own definition Android is not a contribution at all, so how is it now an example for code contributions as a result of bad publicity? I know of enough examples where vendors provide source for GPL programs because they have to, and don't provide source for BSD programs because they don't have to. So? Who cares. I care, obviously. More important, it shows that your theory that companies will contribute code if left alone long enough is not supported by the facts. By the way, which code is it where it is up to you to decide which license you want to use? You remember, you as in we, the developers? My own. I guessed so. The question was what your codes happens to be. As I mentioned, I didn't find your name in the Busybox sources, and we are on the Busybox list here, Am I free to use any code you wrote for Nokia as I wish? Of course it's up to you whether you care or not. But you are strongly advocating that others shouldn't care. I am not advocating anything, that is already the case, that's why you don't have hordes of people saying please, please, enforce my code!. I am merely explaining why. Strange.
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 04:33:20PM +0200, Felipe Contreras wrote: On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 7:06 AM, Rogelio Serrano rogelio.serr...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 10:33 PM, Felipe Contreras thats very interesting... so i can use linux in my product and not tell anyone about it? Huh? It doesn't matter if people know that you are using Linux or not. In order for a lawsuit to get started, I'd assume it has to be started or blessed by the damaged parties; the copyright owners. Since the copyright owners, Linux developers, have no interest in any of this, you can't sue a company for not distributing Linux's sources, unless wait, WHAT! thats so troublesome for me in so many ways... The copyright owner owns the code, and he can do whatever he wants it it, including to allow a company that violated the GPL to keep distributing the program without publishing the sources. Say, the company gives some kind of remuneration in return for a custom (non-GPL) license. It's all up to the owner. The law would get involved only when the damaged party requests so. Somebody might have punched me in the face, but I don't press charges, nobody can do it for me. In a divorce, the wife doesn't want any of the money from the husband, nobody can threat legal action to get it. The GPL license is a contract between the copyright owner and the user of the code (i.e. the company), only the damaged party (the copyright owner) can make any claims. Linux developers are not interested in enforcement, therefore nobody can do legal threats on their behalf... Unless by GPL proxy, which exploits the loophole that they haven't explicitly said they don't want enforcement either. I think you've misrepresented the loophole a bit. There's no way Busybox copyright holders can *force* the infringing party to comply with the GPL on Linux. If it went to court, all the Busybox copyright holders could do is get an injunction against further distribution of Busybox and collect damages for the infringement that already happened, and only if those damages were sufficient to bankrupt and buy out the infringing company could Busybox stop the infringement against Linux. Of course the idea is that you don't go to court, but instead settle out of court, and that the terms of the settlement require the infringing party to fix their GPL compliance issues on all software they're using, not just Busybox. Thus, compliance with the GPL on Linux becomes a contractual obligation (per the settlement) to the Busybox copyright holders, in addition to the (unenforced) obligation to the Linux copyright holders. Rich ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 7:00 AM, Rogelio Serrano rogelio.serr...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 2:12 AM, Felipe Contreras felipe.contre...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 11:02 PM, Cathey, Jim jcat...@ciena.com wrote: My (lay) understanding of this is that there are two separate issues: 1) Company contributes (back) to the project. 2) Company provides sources of whatever they did. Obviously #1 is preferable, assuming the mods are palatable, but only #2 is required. It would take an interested (and possibly third) party to fold #2's back to #1's. All this discussion seems to be focused on #1, but Sony is (?) in the #2 camp. Unless maybe they're in #3: 3) Company takes sources and never exhibits its modifications. I thought that only #3's were liable. #2's are merely annoying. The problem is that the whole Sony would be liable, even if only parts of it did #3 (by mistake), and other parts did their duty, even #1. does the law see it that way? can you sue only the division responsible for the violation? no. the law says its one big entity and we cant do anything about it. so one part violates the law the entire entity violated the law. Yeah, and that's a problem for good divisions in a company that doesn't care much. % git log --author=sony.com --oneline | wc -l 190 At least they seem to be doing something for the Linux kernel, so I don't buy this Sony wants to do something illegal (#3). Cheers. i myself want guarantees. not just their word that they will behave. oops my bad! just doesnt cut it. if its not gpl im not contributing. There will never be a guarantee that they will become community members, which is what I care about. Either way, busybox is not that important, Linux is. Linux developers don't care about enforcement, so if busybox does, the only thing that will be achieved is that companies will stop using busybox. I'm just trying to explain you _why_ that is going to happen. You want your stick, well, why would companies go to the only place you can actually use it? -- Felipe Contreras ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 2:15 PM, Felipe Contreras i myself want guarantees. not just their word that they will behave. oops my bad! just doesnt cut it. if its not gpl im not contributing. There will never be a guarantee that they will become community members, which is what I care about. contributing is voluntary right? they can contribute when they want to. i just dont like them building a better product on code i contributed then bitch slap me with it. its just way cheaper to collaborate. Either way, busybox is not that important, Linux is. Linux developers don't care about enforcement, so if busybox does, the only thing that thats very interesting... so i can use linux in my product and not tell anyone about it? in my previous job we wanted to do just that but didnt because we didnt have resources to answer a lawsuit. maybe ill give my former bosses a call... will be achieved is that companies will stop using busybox. I'm just trying to explain you _why_ that is going to happen. You want your stick, well, why would companies go to the only place you can actually use it? -- Felipe Contreras that's your opinion. you work with traditional companies and i dont. -- quarq consulting: agile, open source ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 10:33 PM, Felipe Contreras thats very interesting... so i can use linux in my product and not tell anyone about it? Huh? It doesn't matter if people know that you are using Linux or not. In order for a lawsuit to get started, I'd assume it has to be started or blessed by the damaged parties; the copyright owners. Since the copyright owners, Linux developers, have no interest in any of this, you can't sue a company for not distributing Linux's sources, unless wait, WHAT! thats so troublesome for me in so many ways... you do it by proxy through some other component that is GPL, and that the copyright owners explicitly blessed this legal proceeding; busybox developers. Just tell your ex-boss not to use busybox. its against my interest to tell them. they went for a very expensive proprietary os and i stuck with linux and busybox but i digress. -- Felipe Contreras -- quarq consulting: agile, open source ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 11:02 PM, Cathey, Jim jcat...@ciena.com wrote: My (lay) understanding of this is that there are two separate issues: 1) Company contributes (back) to the project. 2) Company provides sources of whatever they did. Obviously #1 is preferable, assuming the mods are palatable, but only #2 is required. It would take an interested (and possibly third) party to fold #2's back to #1's. All this discussion seems to be focused on #1, but Sony is (?) in the #2 camp. Unless maybe they're in #3: 3) Company takes sources and never exhibits its modifications. I thought that only #3's were liable. #2's are merely annoying. The problem is that the whole Sony would be liable, even if only parts of it did #3 (by mistake), and other parts did their duty, even #1. % git log --author=sony.com --oneline | wc -l 190 At least they seem to be doing something for the Linux kernel, so I don't buy this Sony wants to do something illegal (#3). Cheers. -- Felipe Contreras ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 2:12 AM, Felipe Contreras felipe.contre...@gmail.com wrote: The problem is that the whole Sony would be liable, even if only parts of it did #3 (by mistake), and other parts did their duty, even #1. isnt it the same when they violate a contract with their ip suppliers or someone elses copyright?? the company gets sued. gpl enforcement doesnt get special powers, do they? why doesnt sony ask for the same treatment from non gpl suppliers? -- quarq consulting: agile, open source ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Mit, 2012-02-15 at 03:41 +0200, Felipe Contreras wrote: On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 12:29 PM, Bernd Petrovitsch be...@petrovitsch.priv.at wrote: On Son, 2012-02-12 at 01:26 +0200, Felipe Contreras wrote: On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 1:14 AM, Rich Felker dal...@aerifal.cx wrote: [...] It doesn't matter why the GPL exists, it only matters why the copyright holders chose it. If they realize the GPL is doing a disservice to them, they might choose something else. But you cannot change the license of already released versions *and* you need the agreement of all copyright holders to change the license. So? Licenses do change. It is not a pleasant process, in some projects more painful than others, but they do change if they must. No, licenses do not change on their own, but *people* change a license. *People* can change the license for new source code and tell all others. You cannot rewrite history and change the license later on. And a license as such does not change itself. And there is a reason, why some people do not choose the automatic update option as in GPLv2 or later (though other would like to have it) - no one knows what's in the next release. Perhaps the interpretation of an existing license (text) changes or needs to be clarified for certain situations (new ones or not so new ones). Or some laws or court orders change it. But all this is driven by *people* and people have a reason. So in each of these discussions, please think about who pushes for the change and - even more important - who benefits from that change in what way and who looses something - independent of any word games people play and any presented reasoning. The latter one is usually just the sales stuff and the other 90% - the drawbacks - of the implications are kept secret. Welcome to lobbyism and politics as such ... And that's what some (if not many) people motivates to work on GPL software (and to not work with other licenses). As the GPLv3 vs GPLv2 divide demonstrates; not all people have the same expectations about what the GPL should do. But it is IMHO very clear what's the intention and spirit behind GPLv3 and GPLv3 (if we ignore that some people always try to redefine words to change some written text) and the wording as such cannot be changed. If the license doesn't fit you, take another one. If that project has a given license, you either accept it (and your contributed stuff also falls under that license) or shouldn't contribute at all. If you misunderstand the license and it's implications, *you* may have a problem. Bernd -- Bernd Petrovitsch Email : be...@petrovitsch.priv.at LUGA : http://www.luga.at ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 10:34 AM, Bernd Petrovitsch be...@petrovitsch.priv.at wrote: On Mit, 2012-02-15 at 03:41 +0200, Felipe Contreras wrote: On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 12:29 PM, Bernd Petrovitsch be...@petrovitsch.priv.at wrote: On Son, 2012-02-12 at 01:26 +0200, Felipe Contreras wrote: On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 1:14 AM, Rich Felker dal...@aerifal.cx wrote: [...] It doesn't matter why the GPL exists, it only matters why the copyright holders chose it. If they realize the GPL is doing a disservice to them, they might choose something else. But you cannot change the license of already released versions *and* you need the agreement of all copyright holders to change the license. So? Licenses do change. It is not a pleasant process, in some projects more painful than others, but they do change if they must. No, licenses do not change on their own, but *people* change a license. Yes... Licenses are not live beings =/ *People* can change the license for new source code and tell all others. You cannot rewrite history and change the license later on. Of course, nobody suggested otherwise. And a license as such does not change itself. And there is a reason, why some people do not choose the automatic update option as in GPLv2 or later (though other would like to have it) - no one knows what's in the next release. Nobody is saying licenses change by themselves. Perhaps the interpretation of an existing license (text) changes or needs to be clarified for certain situations (new ones or not so new ones). Or some laws or court orders change it. But all this is driven by *people* and people have a reason. So in each of these discussions, please think about who pushes for the change and - even more important - who benefits from that change in what way and who looses something - independent of any word games people play and any presented reasoning. Developers. It's only the developers that choose the license in which they develop. The latter one is usually just the sales stuff and the other 90% - the drawbacks - of the implications are kept secret. Welcome to lobbyism and politics as such ... Again, developers (copyright holders) are free to choose whatever license they want. If they don't like what you do with their code, and that's allowed by the GPL, they might change it. Why would they use a license that doesn't do what they want? And that's what some (if not many) people motivates to work on GPL software (and to not work with other licenses). As the GPLv3 vs GPLv2 divide demonstrates; not all people have the same expectations about what the GPL should do. But it is IMHO very clear what's the intention and spirit behind GPLv3 and GPLv3 (if we ignore that some people always try to redefine words to change some written text) and the wording as such cannot be changed. If the license doesn't fit you, take another one. Exactly. But that's not easy, it's much more efficient to just tell people to avoid busybox on products, the end result is the same; proxy company-wide enforcement is avoided. -- Felipe Contreras ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
Felipe Contreras wrote: On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 4:47 AM, Ralf Friedl ralf.fri...@online.de wrote: Felipe Contreras wrote: True, there are exceptions. There are more exceptions. You seem to imply that without enforcement of the GPL, there would magically appear more companies who want to contribute to open source, but you provide no argument why that would happen. It depends on what kinds of enforcement; abusive company-wide-without-regards-to-specific-units, that is also started as a proxy without consent from the original copy-right holders; no, I don't think companies would be too happy to use such code, much less contribute to it. Let's get some facts straight. Sony wants to avoid the GPL busybox not because of busybox itself, but because they fear that they can be forced to comply with the GPL on Linux, and they want to avoid that. They know that they break the license, and they want to replace busybox so that they can continue to break the kernel license. There are different opinions about this behavior. You want to defend Sony's god given right to violate the kernel license, I think it's a shame that the kernel license isn't enforced by the developers themselves, but the fact is that Sony intends to continue to violate the kernel license and replacing busybox is just a means to the end. Companies that are happy to contribute are not affected by enforcement. Companies that are not so happy but play by the rules anyway are also not affected, although they might wonder why they should continue to follow the rules if there is no incentive to do so. Affected are only the companies that violate the license, and continue to violate the license. I already asked why you think that these companies would change their view if there is no enforcement, and instead of an answer, you provided a diversion. So I conclude that we agree that non-enforcement is not the way to get companies to contribute. I already mentioned that it is not possible to enforce copyright without consent from the copyright holders, and you repeat it here anyway, so it seems that inconvenient facts don't influence your opinion. In fact, the opposite is true. Right... there is absolutely no company that avoids the GPL because of this abusive enforcement. Wait a second, what about Sony? Sure, maybe Sony is not a good community member _today_, but it might be at some point, and it would certainly not be contributing to busybox. I am pretty sure there's plenty of companies that they only lesson they learned from being targets of GPL enforcement is to avoid GPL code. That remark was in the context of providing existing source code, as required by the GPL, in case you didn't notice. More source code was provided by enforcement then by waiting and doing nothing. Again you imply that Sony might contribute something at some point, so I ask you: why would Sony suddenly start to contribute to busybox or toybox on a voluntary base, when they don't want to contribute to the kernel despite their obligation to do so? Well, maybe some companies learned that they should avoid the GPL, others, even those that were the targets of enforcement probably learned that it is a license they have to comply with (gasp!), just like all their other licenses and contracts. The companies that comply with the GPL do that anyway. Most of that other companies do the bare minimum to comply with the GPL. They also do the bare minimum to comply with BSD code, which means they do nothing, although it would be trivially easy for them to share their modifications. Some do the minimum, not all. I already explained that for *developers* the bare minimum is almost worthless, what is needed is community involvement, and walking around with a stick does not help a single bit. You might consider the bare minimum to be be almost worthless, but without enforcement the bare minimum is zero and therefor completely worthless. I consider a working source to be far from worthless, but I see that such a view would impact your argument. If you say the the code is licensed under the GPL, but you promise to never enforce the license, you might as well call it public domain. Do not tell me what I expect from the licensees, that's up to me to decide. I expect contributions back. If you are a good member of society, you most likely will at least publish your modifications, that's good, but I strongly prefer if you contribute back. If you are a bad member of society, expect bad publicity, as you are not doing what you are supposed to do. I didn't tell you what to expect from a license, so please leave your straw men at home. I said that there is in effect no difference between public domain, please please share your modification and GPL, but I won't do anything if you violate it. By your own definition, Sony is not a good member of society. And please provide examples where the bad
RE: Amusing article about busybox
My (lay) understanding of this is that there are two separate issues: 1) Company contributes (back) to the project. 2) Company provides sources of whatever they did. Obviously #1 is preferable, assuming the mods are palatable, but only #2 is required. It would take an interested (and possibly third) party to fold #2's back to #1's. All this discussion seems to be focused on #1, but Sony is (?) in the #2 camp. Unless maybe they're in #3: 3) Company takes sources and never exhibits its modifications. I thought that only #3's were liable. #2's are merely annoying. Free means free. Free to be a bit of a jerk about it, if that's what they want to do. Free to obfuscate all the code, free to rot13 all the non-keyword vowels in the code, etc. So long as they make the results available. -- Jim ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 4:47 AM, Ralf Friedl ralf.fri...@online.de wrote: Felipe Contreras wrote: On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 8:19 PM, Bradley M. Kuhn bk...@ebb.org wrote: Felipe Contreras wrote at 15:16 (EST) yesterday: Enforcement only ensures that we would get the bare minimum (legal) from the company, and IMO that doesn't help much. OpenWRT and SamyGo are two excellent counterexamples. While in both cases, BusyBox GPL enforcement yielded only a bare minimum release, that bare minimum was enough to spawn new upstream projects. True, there are exceptions. There are more exceptions. You seem to imply that without enforcement of the GPL, there would magically appear more companies who want to contribute to open source, but you provide no argument why that would happen. It depends on what kinds of enforcement; abusive company-wide-without-regards-to-specific-units, that is also started as a proxy without consent from the original copy-right holders; no, I don't think companies would be too happy to use such code, much less contribute to it. In fact, the opposite is true. Right... there is absolutely no company that avoids the GPL because of this abusive enforcement. Wait a second, what about Sony? Sure, maybe Sony is not a good community member _today_, but it might be at some point, and it would certainly not be contributing to busybox. I am pretty sure there's plenty of companies that they only lesson they learned from being targets of GPL enforcement is to avoid GPL code. The companies that comply with the GPL do that anyway. Most of that other companies do the bare minimum to comply with the GPL. They also do the bare minimum to comply with BSD code, which means they do nothing, although it would be trivially easy for them to share their modifications. Some do the minimum, not all. I already explained that for *developers* the bare minimum is almost worthless, what is needed is community involvement, and walking around with a stick does not help a single bit. If you say the the code is licensed under the GPL, but you promise to never enforce the license, you might as well call it public domain. Do not tell me what I expect from the licensees, that's up to me to decide. I expect contributions back. If you are a good member of society, you most likely will at least publish your modifications, that's good, but I strongly prefer if you contribute back. If you are a bad member of society, expect bad publicity, as you are not doing what you are supposed to do. And if you are not prepared to sue as a last resort, all other attempts of enforcement are futile in most cases. I don't care. No amount of enforcement is going to make them send clean patches to the mailing list, so why should I care? Companies don't ignore the GPL because it is so hard to understand, they deal with much more complicated contracts. They ignore the GPL because they can, and you seem to imply that they should be free to do so. Companies are not single entities, like people, but it seems that concept just doesn't sink in with many people. On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 03:00:38PM +0200, Felipe Contreras wrote: And few people, if any, would be interested in updating busybox on their TVs, or such. With regard to TV's, in particular, SamyGo is a clear counter-example on that point as well. SamyGo includes much more than just busybox. You seem to want to dismiss the fact your claim was wrong that users aren't interested in the source for busybox and other programs on their devices. So you are saying that there's people out there that want to update *only* busybox on their TV's? I find that hard to believe. Felipe Contreras wrote at 15:16 (EST) yesterday: Google's Android team opens their code (eventually), but most of that code has not been merged to the Linux kernel, therefore, it's basically useless to developers. I think the Cyanogenmod community -- both users and developers -- would disagree with you on that. As a Cyangoenmod user, I certainly do. And, as Rich Felker pointed out elsewhere in the thread: Cyanogenmod is not Linux. I am talking about the original _developers_, the ones that wrote Linux, since that's what Android uses, and has not contributed back. The sources are available, that does not mean that anybody is forced to use these modification. As you specifically mention the Linux kernel, a lot of companies have contributed code that is in the main kernel, so there has been benefit for the original developers. Not thanks to enforcement. There's no stick you can use to achieve that. Other code is considered not good enough for inclusion in the main kernel, but the code it there, and it is possible to use and improve this code. It's _possible_ but nobody is going to do it. The only *efficient* way to achieve this without loosing one's sanity is to actively invite companies to become part of the community, and educate them about the
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 10:42 PM, Rich Felker dal...@aerifal.cx wrote: On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 01:26:23AM +0200, Felipe Contreras wrote: On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 1:14 AM, Rich Felker dal...@aerifal.cx wrote: In my book the wishes of the copyright holders are virtually worthless. It's the rights of users that matter. GPL exists to protect the rights of people who receive software, not the rights of people who write it. If you write GPL software with the intention of not enforcing the GPL and discouraging others from enforcing it, and then use the fact that it's GPL to allow yourself to incorporate thousands of contributions and code snippets adopted from other GPL projects, you're barely one notch above infringers on the moral scale.. Yes, that is the all so usual free software vs. open source divide in approaches. It doesn't matter why the GPL exists, it only matters why the copyright holders chose it. If they realize the GPL is doing a disservice to them, they might choose something else. You mean they might decide to start over and write something new from scratch without all the GPL-only contributions they've accumulated. Good luck to them... You mean the GPL-only contributions from people that *do not agree* with the license change. Depending on the project that might be difficult, and some code would certainly need to be rewritten, but it's not unheard of. No, Toybox being open source has nothing to do with Sony. It was open source many years before Sony was involved. OK. I would say then we would have to wait and see if Sony contributes, but really, the complexities of big companies make it so sometimes by their own policy they cannot contribute directly, so they create a separate entity which can contribute, and they do so under a name that is not sony.com. Crazy, but I've seen it happen _exactly_ like that. Why should I care if they contribute? The quality of code that comes out of corporate environments is (on average) so abysmal that it's probably part of the reason things like Android remain forks rather than getting integrated upstream. I really don't want Sony's or even Google's code in itself. I want users to have access to their platforms as a foundation for disencumbering their devices. You can want whatever you want. What Linux developers want is for Google'd Android team to become active part of the community, and learn how to submit clean patches. I for one have been working on the Maemo team in Nokia, and the code quality of the developers on our side was good enough to get patches into the upstream kernel relatively easy. With time and effort, our partner for quite some time, TI, managed to get confident as well. You can grab the latest Linux kernel and run this command: % git log -p --no-merges -- arch/arm/mach-omap2 You would see many clean patches coming directly from TI developers, and you can see a quite active linux-omap mailing list with open discussions. Nobody had to sue anybody for that to happen. And that's what Linux developers want. Good luck getting their approval for this kind of pointless enforcement on their behalf. Cheers. -- Felipe Contreras ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Son, 2012-02-12 at 01:26 +0200, Felipe Contreras wrote: On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 1:14 AM, Rich Felker dal...@aerifal.cx wrote: [...] It doesn't matter why the GPL exists, it only matters why the copyright holders chose it. If they realize the GPL is doing a disservice to them, they might choose something else. But you cannot change the license of already released versions *and* you need the agreement of all copyright holders to change the license. And that's what some (if not many) people motivates to work on GPL software (and to not work with other licenses). Bernd -- Bernd Petrovitsch Email : be...@petrovitsch.priv.at LUGA : http://www.luga.at ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 01:26:23AM +0200, Felipe Contreras wrote: On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 1:14 AM, Rich Felker dal...@aerifal.cx wrote: In my book the wishes of the copyright holders are virtually worthless. It's the rights of users that matter. GPL exists to protect the rights of people who receive software, not the rights of people who write it. If you write GPL software with the intention of not enforcing the GPL and discouraging others from enforcing it, and then use the fact that it's GPL to allow yourself to incorporate thousands of contributions and code snippets adopted from other GPL projects, you're barely one notch above infringers on the moral scale.. Yes, that is the all so usual free software vs. open source divide in approaches. It doesn't matter why the GPL exists, it only matters why the copyright holders chose it. If they realize the GPL is doing a disservice to them, they might choose something else. You mean they might decide to start over and write something new from scratch without all the GPL-only contributions they've accumulated. Good luck to them... No, Toybox being open source has nothing to do with Sony. It was open source many years before Sony was involved. OK. I would say then we would have to wait and see if Sony contributes, but really, the complexities of big companies make it so sometimes by their own policy they cannot contribute directly, so they create a separate entity which can contribute, and they do so under a name that is not sony.com. Crazy, but I've seen it happen _exactly_ like that. Why should I care if they contribute? The quality of code that comes out of corporate environments is (on average) so abysmal that it's probably part of the reason things like Android remain forks rather than getting integrated upstream. I really don't want Sony's or even Google's code in itself. I want users to have access to their platforms as a foundation for disencumbering their devices. Rich ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On 11/02/12 16:41, Rogelio Serrano wrote: we might as well just rewrite linux under a more permissive license... Feel free, have fun. Not that anyone cares but I wouldn't be using it. I am guessing but I suspect a lot of the intellectual semantics of how busybox works will be transferred to toybox without attribution. That is all fine and legal but I would be curious to know if a close parallel project like toybox has in any way contributed *anything* back to the busybox project even though they are borrowing the core concept? Guessing again, I suspect not and if so then it nicely illustrates why the the GPL is important and should be enforced where ever possible, to help prevent one way dilution of intellectual concepts, let alone code. ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 1:56 AM, Rich Felker dal...@aerifal.cx wrote: On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 10:16:06PM +0200, Felipe Contreras wrote: We don't care about compliance, compliance is almost useless. What we need is for them to become members of the community, and that can only happen within, by a change in culture, understanding how open source works. It would work just as well for them to give the competitive advantage to companies that are complying. You have to think about global effects on the software ecosystem, not just a single company. The competitive advantage doesn't come from compliance, it comes from being a good community member. Google's Android team opens their code (eventually), but most of that code has not been merged to the Linux kernel, therefore, it's basically useless to developers. I hope I don't have to tell you that many people are angry about this, and have called Android a fork. How are you going to solve this? Suing? If developers care about its utility to them, they can read and merge the code. Then why hasn't the Android code been merged? That's not how development works. What matters a lot more is utility to users who have received Android devices, who want to be able to use their hardware without the encumbrance of the vendor-shipped crapware. The fact that the source code is public and free makes a huge difference to them. If their devices are not locked. And few people, if any, would be interested in updating busybox on their TVs, or such. Keep up with enforcement, and eventually you would have only a few pieces of software with GPL to enforce on consumer devices. Besides, if you really care about users, why not wait until some user requests GPL enforcement? I bet many consumer devices would not have a single user that requests that. Enforcement only ensures that we would get the bare minimum (legal) from the company, and IMO that doesn't help much. Enforcement creates a cost for companies that take advantage of free software and refuse to play by the rules. This in turn helps give competitive advantage to the ones who do play by the rules, and creates an incentive for the ones who are infringing to change their behavior. They already have a competitive advantage. Enforcement is only making companies that otherwise be good citizens (Sony) walk away, fragmenting the community, and decreasing the competitive advantage of compliant companies. Otherwise, many companies merely ignore the GPL. GPL is not important; it's just a tool. What is important for developers is to get contributions back. In the case of Sony, this tool is doing the opposite; not only is it taking potential contributions from Sony away, but it's encouraging other people to do the same (since toybox is also open source). Toybox has little to do with Sony. Rob can be abrasive, but I've known him a long time, and his main interest in Toybox is frustration with all the hideous hacks, obfuscation, ... That's not what he has been telling the people that are running the toybox stories. Perhaps it's time to write a special clause that says that the scope of busybox enforcement should be restricted to busybox (not used as a proxy). Why? I would hope many developers would be against such a policy. The most useful part of Busybox enforcement is as a proxy. Nobody actually cares about the modifications to Busybox (if any); they care about the kernel patches and other stuff that's essential to using the hardware Busybox is distributed on. Exactly. And if you don't see how that's unfair, and abusive, I guess there's nothing else to discuss. It seems to me like you are exploiting a legal loophole to play a political game against companies to use a bigger stick as you can, regardless from the wishes of the copyright holders, and without users requesting any of that. People would walk away from the GPL tanks to this, specially on the software you use as proxy, in order to diminish your abuse. And this is just doing a disservice to the open source community. Cheers. -- Felipe Contreras ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 08:05:26PM +1000, Mark Constable wrote: On 11/02/12 16:41, Rogelio Serrano wrote: we might as well just rewrite linux under a more permissive license... Feel free, have fun. Not that anyone cares but I wouldn't be using it. I am guessing but I suspect a lot of the intellectual semantics of how busybox works will be transferred to toybox without attribution. That This is actually completely false and shows that you haven't even bothered to read the most basic description of Toybox's goals and design principles. In many ways, Busybox has a lot more in common with coreutils, util-linux, BSD, etc. code than with Toybox, because the latter is a clean implementation largely from scratch written largely from the standards rather than from copying implementation behavior. is all fine and legal but I would be curious to know if a close parallel project like toybox has in any way contributed *anything* back to the busybox project even though they are borrowing the core concept? The core concept (a multi-function binary) is neither an original concept nor a valuable one. The value of Busybox is not any abstract concepts but simply the facts that it works, it's relatively complete, and it's very small. Guessing again, I suspect not and if so then it nicely illustrates why the the GPL is important and should be enforced where ever possible, to help prevent one way dilution of intellectual concepts, let alone code. I'm not quite sure what prevent one way dilution of intellectual concepts means, but it sounds very scary and antithetical to the goals of even the most zealous free software advocates... Rich ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 03:00:38PM +0200, Felipe Contreras wrote: What matters a lot more is utility to users who have received Android devices, who want to be able to use their hardware without the encumbrance of the vendor-shipped crapware. The fact that the source code is public and free makes a huge difference to them. If their devices are not locked. And few people, if any, would be interested in updating busybox on their TVs, or such. That's why it's so important that Busybox act as a proxy to enforcement of other GPL infringement. The important thing to get is the kernel and other system components. Busybox is likely unmodified or barely-modified anyway. Besides, if you really care about users, why not wait until some user requests GPL enforcement? I bet many consumer devices would not have a single user that requests that. That's what Busybox does. It seems you're completely unaware of what you're talking about, because almost all Busybox enforcement efforts stem from users being upset to find Busybox on a device they bought and want to hack around with, and no sign of source code anywhere. They already have a competitive advantage. Enforcement is only making companies that otherwise be good citizens (Sony) walk away, fragmenting the community, and decreasing the competitive advantage of compliant companies. Sony is the antithesis of good citizen in every possible way. Rich ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 3:31 PM, Rich Felker dal...@aerifal.cx wrote: On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 03:00:38PM +0200, Felipe Contreras wrote: What matters a lot more is utility to users who have received Android devices, who want to be able to use their hardware without the encumbrance of the vendor-shipped crapware. The fact that the source code is public and free makes a huge difference to them. If their devices are not locked. And few people, if any, would be interested in updating busybox on their TVs, or such. That's why it's so important that Busybox act as a proxy to enforcement of other GPL infringement. The important thing to get is the kernel and other system components. Busybox is likely unmodified or barely-modified anyway. But Linux people have not requested GPL enforcement. So you are most likely acting against the wishes of the copyright holders. Probably the only reason they don't make an amendment to the license to prohibit this, is that they don't care enough. Toybox would solve the problem anyway. Besides, if you really care about users, why not wait until some user requests GPL enforcement? I bet many consumer devices would not have a single user that requests that. That's what Busybox does. It seems you're completely unaware of what you're talking about, because almost all Busybox enforcement efforts stem from users being upset to find Busybox on a device they bought and want to hack around with, and no sign of source code anywhere. Fair enough. They already have a competitive advantage. Enforcement is only making companies that otherwise be good citizens (Sony) walk away, fragmenting the community, and decreasing the competitive advantage of compliant companies. Sony is the antithesis of good citizen in every possible way. Then why are they making Toybox open? Is anybody suing them to do that? No. You don't understand how big companies work. Sony might not have a culture of open source, but there's people inside Sony that do, like Tim Bird, and they are pushing to change the culture, and they'll do it, with time, and success stories. Toybox being open source is proof that parts of Sony are good citizens, and they would probably be contributing to Busybox if it wasn't because of the SFC. -- Felipe Contreras ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
Sony is the antithesis of good citizen in every possible way. Then why are they making Toybox open? Is anybody suing them to do that? No. Your premises are wrong. Toybox wasn't made by Sony. Toybox was made by Rob Landley. Sony is merely *using* Toybox. They chose to do so because Toybox's license is more permissive than Busybox's. Toybox being open source is proof that parts of Sony are good citizens, and they would probably be contributing to Busybox if it wasn't because of the SFC. No. Toybox being open source is proof that Rob is a good citizen; and Sony's decision to use it instead of Busybox is proof that big companies are afraid of the GPL and *will* choose non-copylefted open source software if there is an alternative. The day Sony releases some open source software will be champagne for everyone. But this day won't happen in the current decade, oh no. -- Laurent ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
Felipe Contreras wrote at 15:16 (EST) yesterday: Enforcement only ensures that we would get the bare minimum (legal) from the company, and IMO that doesn't help much. OpenWRT and SamyGo are two excellent counterexamples. While in both cases, BusyBox GPL enforcement yielded only a bare minimum release, that bare minimum was enough to spawn new upstream projects. On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 03:00:38PM +0200, Felipe Contreras wrote: And few people, if any, would be interested in updating busybox on their TVs, or such. With regard to TV's, in particular, SamyGo is a clear counter-example on that point as well. Felipe Contreras wrote at 15:16 (EST) yesterday: Google's Android team opens their code (eventually), but most of that code has not been merged to the Linux kernel, therefore, it's basically useless to developers. I think the Cyanogenmod community -- both users and developers -- would disagree with you on that. As a Cyangoenmod user, I certainly do. And, as Rich Felker pointed out elsewhere in the thread: What matters a lot more is utility to users who have received Android devices, who want to be able to use their hardware without the encumbrance of the vendor-shipped crapware. The fact that the source code is public and free makes a huge difference to them. ... If developers care about its utility to them, they can read and merge the code. What matters a lot more is utility to users who have received Android devices, who want to be able to use their hardware without the encumbrance of the vendor-shipped crapware. The fact that the source code is public and free makes a huge difference to them. Felipe Contreras also wrote at 15:16 (EST) yesterday: many people are angry about [Android kernel code not being upstream], and have called Android a fork. How are you going to solve this? Suing? AFAICT, the Google release of Android's Linux fork is in compliance with GPL, which means the community has access to the improvements. I think it's a mistake to conflate issues raised by forking (which GPL permits) with issues raised by complete failure to comply with GPLv2§3. Rich Felker wrote at 08:31 (EST): That's why it's so important that Busybox act as a proxy to enforcement of other GPL infringement. The important thing to get is the kernel and other system components. Busybox is likely unmodified or barely-modified anyway. While I agree with Rich's statement above, I want to reiterate that getting scripts to control compilation and installation of the executable for BusyBox is an essential issue under GPLv2 and those scripts are likely very different from firmware to firmware. At least, I've seen them to be quite different in various source releases I've helped liberate through GPL enforcement for BusyBox. Besides, if you really care about users, why not wait until some user requests GPL enforcement? I bet many consumer devices would not have a single user that requests that. That's what Busybox does. It seems you're completely unaware of what you're talking about, because almost all Busybox enforcement efforts stem from users being upset to find Busybox on a device they bought and want to hack around with, and no sign of source code anywhere. I can confirm this. Indeed, IIRC, every BusyBox enforcement I've been involved with has started with a report from a curious user who found BusyBox in a device or firmware that (s)he bought/downloaded. They already have a competitive advantage. Enforcement is only making companies that otherwise be good citizens (Sony) walk away, fragmenting the community, and decreasing the competitive advantage of compliant companies. Sony is the antithesis of good citizen in every possible way. Well, to be fair to Sony, I'm not aware of any Sony GPL violation. g...@busybox.net has gotten a few vague reports, but I've never seen a confirmed violation by Sony, so I presume they're abiding by GPL currently. While this might not make them a good citizen, I think the fact of Sony's apparent GPL compliance means the statement quoted above is an exaggeration. Laurent Bercot wrote at 11:08 (EST) today: Toybox wasn't made by Sony. Toybox was made by Rob Landley. Sony is merely *using* Toybox. Indeed. I encourage everyone to be fair to Tim Bird on this: Tim claims that Sony *doesn't* support the ToyBox initiative, but that it's his personal support that he's given to Rob and ToyBox. I've pointed out to Tim that it is confusing that he's giving that support using his sony.com email address, which is what led me to believe it was a Sony initiative. But Tim has clarified this point publicly, so I am going to take Tim at his word on that (but I'll continue to encourage Tim to cease using his sony.com email address to endorse things that Sony doesn't endorse). FWIW, I'm trying to schedule a meeting with Tim Bird at Embedded Linux Conference next week. I still maintain that a lot of what Tim posted on the LWN thread is based on
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 8:19 PM, Bradley M. Kuhn bk...@ebb.org wrote: Felipe Contreras wrote at 15:16 (EST) yesterday: Enforcement only ensures that we would get the bare minimum (legal) from the company, and IMO that doesn't help much. OpenWRT and SamyGo are two excellent counterexamples. While in both cases, BusyBox GPL enforcement yielded only a bare minimum release, that bare minimum was enough to spawn new upstream projects. True, there are exceptions. On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 03:00:38PM +0200, Felipe Contreras wrote: And few people, if any, would be interested in updating busybox on their TVs, or such. With regard to TV's, in particular, SamyGo is a clear counter-example on that point as well. SamyGo includes much more than just busybox. Felipe Contreras wrote at 15:16 (EST) yesterday: Google's Android team opens their code (eventually), but most of that code has not been merged to the Linux kernel, therefore, it's basically useless to developers. I think the Cyanogenmod community -- both users and developers -- would disagree with you on that. As a Cyangoenmod user, I certainly do. And, as Rich Felker pointed out elsewhere in the thread: Cyanogenmod is not Linux. I am talking about the original _developers_, the ones that wrote Linux, since that's what Android uses, and has not contributed back. What matters a lot more is utility to users who have received Android devices, who want to be able to use their hardware without the encumbrance of the vendor-shipped crapware. The fact that the source code is public and free makes a huge difference to them. ... If developers care about its utility to them, they can read and merge the code. What matters a lot more is utility to users who have received Android devices, who want to be able to use their hardware without the encumbrance of the vendor-shipped crapware. The fact that the source code is public and free makes a huge difference to them. Felipe Contreras also wrote at 15:16 (EST) yesterday: many people are angry about [Android kernel code not being upstream], and have called Android a fork. How are you going to solve this? Suing? AFAICT, the Google release of Android's Linux fork is in compliance with GPL, which means the community has access to the improvements. I think it's a mistake to conflate issues raised by forking (which GPL permits) with issues raised by complete failure to comply with GPLv2§3. The end result for developers (who originally chose the license) is the same; no code contributed back. If they don't release anything (violating the GPL), or if they put their thousands of changes on a single patch in an FTP server (complying with the GPL) doesn't make much difference to the _developers_. Laurent Bercot wrote at 11:08 (EST) today: Toybox wasn't made by Sony. Toybox was made by Rob Landley. Sony is merely *using* Toybox. Indeed. I encourage everyone to be fair to Tim Bird on this: Tim claims that Sony *doesn't* support the ToyBox initiative, but that it's his personal support that he's given to Rob and ToyBox. I've pointed out to Tim that it is confusing that he's giving that support using his sony.com email address, which is what led me to believe it was a Sony initiative. But Tim has clarified this point publicly, so I am going to take Tim at his word on that (but I'll continue to encourage Tim to cease using his sony.com email address to endorse things that Sony doesn't endorse). Even if Sony was supporting ToyBox internally, it would not issue any statement publicly, and would encourage employees to refrain from making any statements that the company has not approved. And they don't have a reason to make any statement. Tim Bird is probably being too outspoken, and might get some call of attention to refrain doing so. FWIW, I'm trying to schedule a meeting with Tim Bird at Embedded Linux Conference next week. I still maintain that a lot of what Tim posted on the LWN thread is based on second-hand confusions and misrepresentations of Conservancy's and Erik Andersen's positions in BusyBox GPL enforcement actions. My hope is that I can convince Tim that there's no reason to have such great fear of GPL (and, after all, Sony will still be using Linux, which is also GPL'd). But Linux's developers have expressed no interest in the GPL being enforced for their project. I don't think any of the outcomes Tim fears are likely to happen -- at least due to Conservancy enforcement, anyway. I hope I can convince Tim of this fact when I see him. It doesn't matter what outcomes Tim fears, it only matters what Sony lawyers fear, and the SFC said they wouldn't do it is not any legal assurance. Somebody else might. Felipe Contreras wrote at 15:16 (EST) yesterday: Yes, but s/would/could/. From what I've read, you make no distinction on product lines. And that's worrying. I'm curious to know what you've read that makes you believe that. I said pretty
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 04:47:25PM +0200, Felipe Contreras wrote: On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 3:31 PM, Rich Felker dal...@aerifal.cx wrote: On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 03:00:38PM +0200, Felipe Contreras wrote: What matters a lot more is utility to users who have received Android devices, who want to be able to use their hardware without the encumbrance of the vendor-shipped crapware. The fact that the source code is public and free makes a huge difference to them. If their devices are not locked. And few people, if any, would be interested in updating busybox on their TVs, or such. That's why it's so important that Busybox act as a proxy to enforcement of other GPL infringement. The important thing to get is the kernel and other system components. Busybox is likely unmodified or barely-modified anyway. But Linux people have not requested GPL enforcement. So you are most likely acting against the wishes of the copyright holders. Probably In my book the wishes of the copyright holders are virtually worthless. It's the rights of users that matter. GPL exists to protect the rights of people who receive software, not the rights of people who write it. If you write GPL software with the intention of not enforcing the GPL and discouraging others from enforcing it, and then use the fact that it's GPL to allow yourself to incorporate thousands of contributions and code snippets adopted from other GPL projects, you're barely one notch above infringers on the moral scale.. They already have a competitive advantage. Enforcement is only making companies that otherwise be good citizens (Sony) walk away, fragmenting the community, and decreasing the competitive advantage of compliant companies. Sony is the antithesis of good citizen in every possible way. Then why are they making Toybox open? Is anybody suing them to do that? No. Sony is not making Toybox, not making Toybox open. Toybox is Rob Landley's project that existed long before Sony had any interest in it, and it's still unclear how much interest they have in it. I heard they're paying somebody (not Rob) to work on it, probably because it's smarter to work with the upstream developer who knows the project inside out than to fork your own version and develop it in a closed environment. Toybox being open source is proof that parts of Sony are good citizens, and they would probably be contributing to Busybox if it wasn't because of the SFC. No, Toybox being open source has nothing to do with Sony. It was open source many years before Sony was involved. Rich ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 1:14 AM, Rich Felker dal...@aerifal.cx wrote: On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 04:47:25PM +0200, Felipe Contreras wrote: On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 3:31 PM, Rich Felker dal...@aerifal.cx wrote: On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 03:00:38PM +0200, Felipe Contreras wrote: What matters a lot more is utility to users who have received Android devices, who want to be able to use their hardware without the encumbrance of the vendor-shipped crapware. The fact that the source code is public and free makes a huge difference to them. If their devices are not locked. And few people, if any, would be interested in updating busybox on their TVs, or such. That's why it's so important that Busybox act as a proxy to enforcement of other GPL infringement. The important thing to get is the kernel and other system components. Busybox is likely unmodified or barely-modified anyway. But Linux people have not requested GPL enforcement. So you are most likely acting against the wishes of the copyright holders. Probably In my book the wishes of the copyright holders are virtually worthless. It's the rights of users that matter. GPL exists to protect the rights of people who receive software, not the rights of people who write it. If you write GPL software with the intention of not enforcing the GPL and discouraging others from enforcing it, and then use the fact that it's GPL to allow yourself to incorporate thousands of contributions and code snippets adopted from other GPL projects, you're barely one notch above infringers on the moral scale.. Yes, that is the all so usual free software vs. open source divide in approaches. It doesn't matter why the GPL exists, it only matters why the copyright holders chose it. If they realize the GPL is doing a disservice to them, they might choose something else. They already have a competitive advantage. Enforcement is only making companies that otherwise be good citizens (Sony) walk away, fragmenting the community, and decreasing the competitive advantage of compliant companies. Sony is the antithesis of good citizen in every possible way. Then why are they making Toybox open? Is anybody suing them to do that? No. Sony is not making Toybox, not making Toybox open. Toybox is Rob Landley's project that existed long before Sony had any interest in it, and it's still unclear how much interest they have in it. I heard they're paying somebody (not Rob) to work on it, probably because it's smarter to work with the upstream developer who knows the project inside out than to fork your own version and develop it in a closed environment. Right, I was confused. Toybox being open source is proof that parts of Sony are good citizens, and they would probably be contributing to Busybox if it wasn't because of the SFC. No, Toybox being open source has nothing to do with Sony. It was open source many years before Sony was involved. OK. I would say then we would have to wait and see if Sony contributes, but really, the complexities of big companies make it so sometimes by their own policy they cannot contribute directly, so they create a separate entity which can contribute, and they do so under a name that is not sony.com. Crazy, but I've seen it happen _exactly_ like that. Cheers. -- Felipe Contreras ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
Felipe Contreras wrote: On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 8:19 PM, Bradley M. Kuhn bk...@ebb.org wrote: Felipe Contreras wrote at 15:16 (EST) yesterday: Enforcement only ensures that we would get the bare minimum (legal) from the company, and IMO that doesn't help much. OpenWRT and SamyGo are two excellent counterexamples. While in both cases, BusyBox GPL enforcement yielded only a bare minimum release, that bare minimum was enough to spawn new upstream projects. True, there are exceptions. There are more exceptions. You seem to imply that without enforcement of the GPL, there would magically appear more companies who want to contribute to open source, but you provide no argument why that would happen. In fact, the opposite is true. The companies that comply with the GPL do that anyway. Most of that other companies do the bare minimum to comply with the GPL. They also do the bare minimum to comply with BSD code, which means they do nothing, although it would be trivially easy for them to share their modifications. If you say the the code is licensed under the GPL, but you promise to never enforce the license, you might as well call it public domain. And if you are not prepared to sue as a last resort, all other attempts of enforcement are futile in most cases. Companies don't ignore the GPL because it is so hard to understand, they deal with much more complicated contracts. They ignore the GPL because they can, and you seem to imply that they should be free to do so. On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 03:00:38PM +0200, Felipe Contreras wrote: And few people, if any, would be interested in updating busybox on their TVs, or such. With regard to TV's, in particular, SamyGo is a clear counter-example on that point as well. SamyGo includes much more than just busybox. You seem to want to dismiss the fact your claim was wrong that users aren't interested in the source for busybox and other programs on their devices. Felipe Contreras wrote at 15:16 (EST) yesterday: Google's Android team opens their code (eventually), but most of that code has not been merged to the Linux kernel, therefore, it's basically useless to developers. I think the Cyanogenmod community -- both users and developers -- would disagree with you on that. As a Cyangoenmod user, I certainly do. And, as Rich Felker pointed out elsewhere in the thread: Cyanogenmod is not Linux. I am talking about the original _developers_, the ones that wrote Linux, since that's what Android uses, and has not contributed back. The sources are available, that does not mean that anybody is forced to use these modification. As you specifically mention the Linux kernel, a lot of companies have contributed code that is in the main kernel, so there has been benefit for the original developers. Other code is considered not good enough for inclusion in the main kernel, but the code it there, and it is possible to use and improve this code. I don't think any of the outcomes Tim fears are likely to happen -- at least due to Conservancy enforcement, anyway. I hope I can convince Tim of this fact when I see him. It doesn't matter what outcomes Tim fears, it only matters what Sony lawyers fear, and the SFC said they wouldn't do it is not any legal assurance. Somebody else might. Sony's fears seem very important for you. Maybe it hasn't occurred to you or to Sony's lawyers, but from a legal point of view they could get exactly the same result if they say Here on this server is the source for busybox x.y.z, it includes the configuration we used to build the binary. (Of course, they should not just say that, but also do it.) That shouldn't be too complicated, they would be in full compliance, and it would be much easier than to replace busybox and test a replacement. Felipe Contreras wrote at 15:16 (EST) yesterday: Yes, but s/would/could/. From what I've read, you make no distinction on product lines. And that's worrying. I'm curious to know what you've read that makes you believe that. I said pretty clearly in my previous emails that Conservancy's goal in BusyBox enforcement is to avoid doing many things that copyright law would allow us to do, in the interest of friendly discussions with the violator. I think what you might have read might have been FUD, or perhaps a misconstruing of something I wrote. You and I have already a huge difference in opinion in what is desirable and fair regarding how to advance the open source movement. I don't even want to imagine what Sony lawyers are thinking. SFC _can_ shutdown unrelated product lines that are compliant, and SFC _can_ request compliance for things other than busybox. Lawyers are probably not interested in your goals, but what can be done. Microsoft could send an update that breaks an important application, they reserved the right to do that in the EULA, and it has
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 8:10 PM, Bradley M. Kuhn bk...@ebb.org wrote: Felipe Contreras wrote at 14:43 (EST) on Tuesday: Really? So Sony can violate the GPL in some small product, and it would not affect other product lines, like TVs? Technically, it *does* impact other products. No, it doesn't. The question is whether or not Conservancy, as BusyBox's enforcement agent, would *insist* that a company stop distributing *compliant* products when other products are out of compliance. Yes, but s/would/could/. From what I've read, you make no distinction on product lines. And that's worrying. You must not know how a big company works. It's not a matter of resources; it's a matter of control and organization. The bigger a company is, the more difficult it is to have tight control over all areas. I do know somewhat how big companies work: they spend resources on things that matter to them, and ignore things that don't. Big companies are comprised of many units, and divisions, and groups, and teams, and ultimately people. People do things everyday on the name of the company that the CEO might think are not worth spending resources on. Where resources are spent on is not as clear-cut as you make it seem. In my experience, GPL enforcement is the only way to get GPL compliance to matter to them. We don't care about compliance, compliance is almost useless. What we need is for them to become members of the community, and that can only happen within, by a change in culture, understanding how open source works. Google's Android team opens their code (eventually), but most of that code has not been merged to the Linux kernel, therefore, it's basically useless to developers. I hope I don't have to tell you that many people are angry about this, and have called Android a fork. How are you going to solve this? Suing? Enforcement only ensures that we would get the bare minimum (legal) from the company, and IMO that doesn't help much. Otherwise, many companies merely ignore the GPL. GPL is not important; it's just a tool. What is important for developers is to get contributions back. In the case of Sony, this tool is doing the opposite; not only is it taking potential contributions from Sony away, but it's encouraging other people to do the same (since toybox is also open source). Perhaps it's time to write a special clause that says that the scope of busybox enforcement should be restricted to busybox (not used as a proxy). Cheers. -- Felipe Contreras ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 10:16:06PM +0200, Felipe Contreras wrote: We don't care about compliance, compliance is almost useless. What we need is for them to become members of the community, and that can only happen within, by a change in culture, understanding how open source works. It would work just as well for them to give the competitive advantage to companies that are complying. You have to think about global effects on the software ecosystem, not just a single company. Google's Android team opens their code (eventually), but most of that code has not been merged to the Linux kernel, therefore, it's basically useless to developers. I hope I don't have to tell you that many people are angry about this, and have called Android a fork. How are you going to solve this? Suing? If developers care about its utility to them, they can read and merge the code. What matters a lot more is utility to users who have received Android devices, who want to be able to use their hardware without the encumbrance of the vendor-shipped crapware. The fact that the source code is public and free makes a huge difference to them. Enforcement only ensures that we would get the bare minimum (legal) from the company, and IMO that doesn't help much. Enforcement creates a cost for companies that take advantage of free software and refuse to play by the rules. This in turn helps give competitive advantage to the ones who do play by the rules, and creates an incentive for the ones who are infringing to change their behavior. Otherwise, many companies merely ignore the GPL. GPL is not important; it's just a tool. What is important for developers is to get contributions back. In the case of Sony, this tool is doing the opposite; not only is it taking potential contributions from Sony away, but it's encouraging other people to do the same (since toybox is also open source). Toybox has little to do with Sony. Rob can be abrasive, but I've known him a long time, and his main interest in Toybox is frustration with all the hideous hacks, obfuscation, and microoptimization all over Busybox that make the code difficult to read, fix, and improve, all for the sake of saving a few worthless bytes here and there. The basic principle, which I fully agree with and also adopted as a core design principle in musl, is that near-optimality in size and performance stem naturally from simple, clean design, and that complexity should be introduced only in cases where the simple solution is pathologically slow or bloated. Perhaps it's time to write a special clause that says that the scope of busybox enforcement should be restricted to busybox (not used as a proxy). Why? I would hope many developers would be against such a policy. The most useful part of Busybox enforcement is as a proxy. Nobody actually cares about the modifications to Busybox (if any); they care about the kernel patches and other stuff that's essential to using the hardware Busybox is distributed on. Rich ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 7:56 AM, Rich Felker dal...@aerifal.cx wrote: Perhaps it's time to write a special clause that says that the scope of busybox enforcement should be restricted to busybox (not used as a proxy). Why? I would hope many developers would be against such a policy. The most useful part of Busybox enforcement is as a proxy. Nobody actually cares about the modifications to Busybox (if any); they care about the kernel patches and other stuff that's essential to using the hardware Busybox is distributed on. Rich ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox we might as well just rewrite linux under a more permissive license... -- quarq consulting: agile, open source ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Mon, 2012-02-06 at 14:47 -0200, Matheus Izvekov wrote: On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 1:38 PM, Bernd Petrovitsch be...@petrovitsch.priv.at wrote: On Mon, 2012-02-06 at 13:11 -0200, Matheus Izvekov wrote: [] I think there are two main points about this: The first is that I agree with Tim that suspending the license is a big issue for any company wishing to ship busybox, much more so if all of their other unrelated products are held hostage. Any litigation regarding busybox should remain That's a question of legal systems, laws and how that works in general - and it works in pretty all areas of life that way BTW. And if it is truly such a big issue for them, why they are risking it in the first place? I am only responding to this bit because it represents a false assumption about what I was advocating for, and this propagates to all the parts of your response below. Oh, I'm glad that you think you know my assumptions. SCNR ... What I am saying has nothing to do with what the GPL text itself says, it might as well say anything. Yup, the above holds basically for all licenses. The law firm which is advancing these lawsuits is responding to someone, Denys I suppose, and this person has the power to decide to sue or not, independently of what the license actually says. What I am advocating for is more discretion in this decision, taking into account what can be gained from it, and what can be the costs. BTW you failed to propose alternatives to not suing and analyze these alternatives and think about the consequences. And you fail to analyze what will happen if no one is suing on GPL license breaches (independent of the motivation, reason and what what other excuse comes up). And don't forget to take the timeline and the life span of typical products. The cost of not suing is mainly: No one will ever adhere to the license if no one enforces it. Because - obviously - no one is interested in enforcing the license and - thus - the risk is pretty minimal zo zero. It is as simple as that. And it is the same in other areas (in some jurisdictions). This might sound wrong to the more idealistically inclined, but I am saying that the busybox legal representative should take more into account than the mere 'not complying with the license'. First and foremost, it's their - the authors rights/copyrights holders - decision. Secondly, I trust any reasonable person here (and the main busybox contributors and maintainers are reasonable IMHO) to think about it and not just sue because they feel today like it (and contrary to popular beliefs, a sue is a lot of - additional - work on the own side). Perhaps you should contribute (much more) to busybox to feel more like them. And why should they and what can the gain from - to put it simply - not suing? And why do you want to talk them out of suing? It's what executives at most companies do, they don't sue willy nilly, contrary to popular belief. They realize there are huge costs involved, and they at least have an ulterior motive, even if that sometimes is a flawed reasoning about avoiding damages. Even if they sometimes are very wrong about the payoffs, they are at least trying to take them into consideration. That's precisely the point. Then think about why they risk such an obvious(!) sue (and public shame and ...) by not adhering to the license? In the commercial world, one would phone and talk to get money for the licenses afterwards or whatever compensation. Then, one would think about the impact on the business on both sides (depending on the jurisdiction there are vast different ways to handle the risks of law suits. Most law suits never happen anyway because if the other company is significantly larger than my own, I have nearly no chance unless I have a very strong case *and* solve the funding problem for the law suit ) - but - and that hasn't arrived in the proprietary commercial old-economy heads yet - we have here a different game. That's IMHO one of the reasons behind the patent absurdity (grant as much patents as possible independent of the historical necessities like must be new, must not be trivial, must not be maths/logic - as if software is not applied maths and/or logic as such -, etc. to all areas of life) in the last 15(?) years because the patent law pretty much allows corporations to enforce the old-school rules of the game (which is: I have more commercial power, I'm right. It's as simple as that.). Bernd -- Bernd Petrovitsch Email : be...@petrovitsch.priv.at LUGA : http://www.luga.at ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 5:09 PM, Bradley M. Kuhn bk...@ebb.org wrote: As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, 99.999% of enforcement actions never go to litigation, and Conservancy always allows and even encourages the company to continue distributing the products out of compliance, as long as the company is actively working to come into compliance in a verifiable way. The goal is to convince the company to be a compliant redistributor of GPL'd software, and demanding a stop of shipment would not help toward that goal. The problem here is not that you rarely use the 'big stick', but that you can use it at all. The license is not very clear about how far it can be suspended, and how can it be reinstated. The text can not be changed now for clarification because it's too complicated, too many copyright holders would have to be tracked and asked to consent to it. Next best thing is to assure potential adopters that we have a very lenient interpretation of the license, and give them reason to believe that using GPLed code is not as a huge liability as they are led to believe it is now, which I think is about what the position of the linux foundation is. One of the important things to note is that, while GPL enforcement is typically done *by* the upstream copyright holders, it is done *on behalf* of the users who got the product with BusyBox in it. Most of our violation reports come from frustrated users who found BusyBox in a product that they bought. In the embedded market, the biggest problem is that the distributions of BusyBox fail to include the scripts to control compilation and installation of the executable, which the GPLv2 requires. As such, users who wish to take a new upstream version of BusyBox and install it on their device are left without any hope of doing so. Most embedded-market GPL enforcement centers around remedying this. And this is a second problem I am seeing with the whole thing. The busybox copyright is being used to enforce a whole set of ideologies about 'platform hackability' that are not clearly implied in the license text and not every copyright holder agrees. The very fact that busybox positions itself as GPLv2 only and not 'or later' should be a very big clue here. Indeed, enforcement has brought some great successes in this regard. As I wrote on in my blog post on this subject (at http://sfconservancy.org/blog/2012/feb/01/gpl-enforcement/ ), both the OpenWRT and SamyGo firmware modification communities were launched because of source releases yielded in past BusyBox enforcement actions. Getting the scripts to control compilation and installation of the executable for those specific devices are what enabled these new upstream firmware projects to get started. Again, don't think everyone is onboard with this idea of using busybox copyright to achieve this. While I very much would like that all these products were developed with the intent of making it easier to be hacked by the users, I don't think it's fair to require them to be so, and neither is the GPLv2 generally understood to require it. This is hard to know when an enforcement actions begins; we don't normally find out until the end, because, of course, initially, there's no source to examine. Detailed and time-consuming analysis of the binary would be the only way to determine that up-front. Not necessarily that hard to figure out. A lot can be gained from just seeing how it is being called, given that any modifications are probably going to be used, or else they wouldn't have any reason to modify the code in the first place. ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
Bernd Petrovitsch wrote at 06:49 (EST): The cost of not suing is mainly: No one will ever adhere to the license if no one enforces it. I agree with this statement above wholeheartedly, although I'd like to again make the distinction between lawsuits and mere enforcement actions that don't go to litigation. I think we should do a good amount of the latter, and only do the former when it's absolutely necessary. Lawsuits take a lot of time away from other enforcement actions, which means ultimately less compliance gets done, so I prefer to do something that can get more source to more users. Matheus Izvekov wrote at 09:25 (EST): The busybox copyright is being used to enforce a whole set of ideologies about 'platform hackability' that are not clearly implied in the license text and not every copyright holder agrees. The very fact that busybox positions itself as GPLv2 only and not 'or later' should be a very big clue here. To be abundantly clear, when Conservancy does enforcement on behalf of BusyBox, Conservancy *only* seeks GPLv2 compliance for BusyBox. I'm incredibly careful to only ask for GPLv2 compliance on GPLv2-only programs, BSD-license compliance on BSD-licensed programs, etc. I discussed this in my blog post that I linked to earlier. Note, though, that GPLv2 does require: The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. Conservancy requires that the source for any GPLv2'd programs provide sources that meet that definition. For example, it's widely believe that keys for cryptographically locked down hardware are not part of the source code for GPLv2-only programs, so that's not required by Conservancy unless a GPLv3 program is also present (e.g., Samba). First and foremost, it's their - the authors rights/copyrights holders - decision. Indeed, and Conservancy makes sure that some major copyright holders approve its actions during enforcement. For example, I've spoken to Erik and Denys both on the phone since this recent public debate started. We're exploring tweaks on the enforcement process we use now based on feedback received on this thread. Secondly, I trust any reasonable person here (and the main busybox contributors and maintainers are reasonable IMHO) to think about it and not just sue because they feel today like it (and contrary to popular beliefs, a sue is a lot of - additional - work on the own side). We all *hate* suing. It takes tons of time: Erik had to fly to NYC for two depositions, I had to be deposed three times, and Conservancy basically did no other GPL enforcement/compliance work while the main litigants were pending in the suit. We're only going to sue again as a last resort on a company that is totally non-responsive. Lawsuits have always been a last resort: that won't change. Because - obviously - no one is interested in enforcing the license Anyway, I continue to maintain that the key problem here is that BusyBox has been alone in doing enforcement, basically worldwide, for at least a few years. I think getting more projects involved will address a lot of concerns, and I'm working to coordinate that. -- Bradley M. Kuhn, Executive Director, Software Freedom Conservancy ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
Felipe Contreras wrote at 14:43 (EST) on Tuesday: Really? So Sony can violate the GPL in some small product, and it would not affect other product lines, like TVs? Technically, it *does* impact other products. The question is whether or not Conservancy, as BusyBox's enforcement agent, would *insist* that a company stop distributing *compliant* products when other products are out of compliance. It's true that in very egregious cases, only after years of litigation, Conservancy ended up asking the court for that. However, that's happened twice in the entire 12 year history of GPL enforcement I've done, and I'd already warned the company multiple times we'd need to ask the court for that remedy since they weren't fixing their compliance problems. A company would basically need to willfully ignore contact and discussion with Conservancy for many months before they got in the situation of being sued in the first place. Then, they'd further have to be incredibly non-responsive after the lawsuit was filed to ever have the situation that Tim suggests. And after hundreds of enforcement actions, that situation only ever came close to happening twice, and in fact, in one of those two situations, Conservancy settled the lawsuit before the judge even decided whether to grant the injunction. You must not know how a big company works. It's not a matter of resources; it's a matter of control and organization. The bigger a company is, the more difficult it is to have tight control over all areas. I do know somewhat how big companies work: they spend resources on things that matter to them, and ignore things that don't. In my experience, GPL enforcement is the only way to get GPL compliance to matter to them. Otherwise, many companies merely ignore the GPL. (Others, I should note, like Red Hat, HP, Google, etc. do a good job without any enforcement actions against them, because they have decided it's the right thing to do and just comply.) -- Bradley M. Kuhn, Executive Director, Software Freedom Conservancy ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
Matheus Izvekov wrote at 10:11 (EST) on Monday: The first is that I agree with Tim that suspending the license is a big issue for any company wishing to ship busybox, much more so if all of their other unrelated products are held hostage. Any litigation regarding busybox should remain confined to the offending product and the enforcement of busybox itself only. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, 99.999% of enforcement actions never go to litigation, and Conservancy always allows and even encourages the company to continue distributing the products out of compliance, as long as the company is actively working to come into compliance in a verifiable way. The goal is to convince the company to be a compliant redistributor of GPL'd software, and demanding a stop of shipment would not help toward that goal. A small list of things we (?) may want in return, in order of importance: 1) Code One of the important things to note is that, while GPL enforcement is typically done *by* the upstream copyright holders, it is done *on behalf* of the users who got the product with BusyBox in it. Most of our violation reports come from frustrated users who found BusyBox in a product that they bought. In the embedded market, the biggest problem is that the distributions of BusyBox fail to include the scripts to control compilation and installation of the executable, which the GPLv2 requires. As such, users who wish to take a new upstream version of BusyBox and install it on their device are left without any hope of doing so. Most embedded-market GPL enforcement centers around remedying this. Indeed, enforcement has brought some great successes in this regard. As I wrote on in my blog post on this subject (at http://sfconservancy.org/blog/2012/feb/01/gpl-enforcement/ ), both the OpenWRT and SamyGo firmware modification communities were launched because of source releases yielded in past BusyBox enforcement actions. Getting the scripts to control compilation and installation of the executable for those specific devices are what enabled these new upstream firmware projects to get started. Does the product in question ship a patched busybox at all? Is there any reason to believe that? This is hard to know when an enforcement actions begins; we don't normally find out until the end, because, of course, initially, there's no source to examine. Detailed and time-consuming analysis of the binary would be the only way to determine that up-front. Now, to see in which position this would put busybox, my question is, what has been gained so far from suing? Note again that very very few enforcement actions involved litigation. Of hundreds of enforcement actions, only about 17 were lawsuits. Most enforcement is a more-or-less friendly conversation and assistance given to help the company into compliance with the GPL. -- Bradley M. Kuhn, Executive Director, Software Freedom Conservancy ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
Matheus Izvekov wrote at 11:47 (EST) on Monday: The law firm which is advancing these lawsuits is responding to someone, Denys I suppose, and this person has the power to decide to sue or not Note that there is no law firm involved anymore. Conservancy is a non-profit entity that isn't a law firm and does enforcement on behalf of copyright holders of its projects. Conservancy used to work with a law firm called the SFLC, but does not do so anymore. Conservancy hires outside counsel on contingency fee to handle the (rare, see previous email) litigation. Nearly all enforcement actions don't involve litigation. They are handled primarily by technical staff and myself, not lawyers. -- Bradley M. Kuhn, Executive Director, Software Freedom Conservancy ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
Greetings, Tim, I'm hoping we can chat further about all this at Embedded Linux Conference! I think there are a lot of misconceptions going around that maybe a face-to-face conversation between us can help clear up. Bernhard has brought you into a thread occurring on BusyBox's mailing list, which I understand fully if you don't want to be dragged into. Also the list requires one to be a subscriber to post, so I completely understand if you don't want to go to the trouble of subscribing. On Feb 8, 2012 7:58 PM, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote: Technically, it *does* impact other products. The question is whether or not Conservancy, as BusyBox's enforcement agent, would *insist* that a company stop distributing *compliant* products when other products are out of compliance. Bernhard Reutner-Fischer replied today: How would you, ever? Can you elaborate or point to some resource, please? Are you asking, How would one stop distribution of compliant products? Well, copyright law is a huge stick, and a copyright holder can demand in Court that distributions of their copyright works stop immediately, if those distributions are made without license to do so. BusyBox copyright holders *could*, therefore, insist on that after just one violating distribution. Of course, we never do that! We ask for the company to work with Conservancy to come into compliance. We ask the company to set the deadlines that work for them, and to meet their own deadlines. (I've only once rejected a deadline, which was we'll fix it in a year.) Usually, a month or so is proposed and Conservancy accepts. Infringing distribution continues during that period; Conservancy doesn't want to disrupt their business if the company's intentions are clearly to comply with the GPL and fix the problems. It's true that in very egregious cases, only after years of litigation, Conservancy ended up asking the court for that. However, that's That as in stopping to distribute compliant products? Actually, more specifically, by that, I meant asking a Court to order a company to stop distributing of any kind -- compliant *or* non-compliant. Specifically, IIRC, Conservancy has only twice filed what's called an injunction motion in Court. Do you, by chance, have publically visible documentation or reference about these, just out of curiosity ? I'm pretty frustrated by this, but sadly, every violator I've ever worked with has insisted that we make the settlement agreement confidential. Conservancy would prefer to publish them, but the other side asks them to be confidential. That said, there are public documents of the one Court case that Conservancy has ever filed, which was Conservancy vs. Best Buy, et al. There were many defendants in that case, and only one is left (as of now). I can't comment in detail, though, because the one defendant is still pending, and it's always bad to speak about ongoing litigation. Generally speaking, as I said in my previous email, injunction is a remedy Conservancy only seeks as a last resort. While we've gotten close to that last resort a few times, we've been able to -- until now -- settle with the party and help them into compliance before any injunction orders were enforced. Frankly, I think some of the comments on LWN about Conservancy's enforcement are talking about things that could happen, but the comments represent them as if they are things that have happened. To set the record straight, unlike when Sony enforces its own copyrights, Conservancy doesn't use anything near the maximum legal means at its disposal to attack the other side. Our goal is to develop a positive relationship that helps a company come into compliance. Sometimes, that just doesn't work and they simply ignore us for months on end. In only those cases -- where the violation was egregious and requests to work together are ignored -- does Conservancy ever seek remedy in Court. Conservancy's lawyers will probably hate that I've admitted that publicly, because it will inspire the worst violators to simply fail to act -- always waiting for the injunction motion to be filed before coming into compliance. But I'm nevertheless willing to lose a little bit on enforcement strategy to make it abundantly clear that our goal is to get compliance on GPL'd and LGPL'd software, and we try to use as little stick as possible to get that done, and only increase the size of the stick when the other side egregiously ignores our requests for compliance. Conservancy's goal here is always to help people comply. -- Bradley M. Kuhn, Executive Director, Software Freedom Conservancy ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
Denys Vlasenko wrote at 13:47 (EST) on Saturday: But, we are not going to be deaf - we are listening to other peoples' opinions and we might consider some changes to our license enforcement process. It would be arrogant to think that we always do everything in the best way possible. Indeed, I agree with this fully. I've been communicating with lots of projects who enforce (or seek to enforce) the GPL through Conservancy -- which includes BusyBox -- and hopefully we'll come to a consensus on GPL enforcement plans that takes into account input from everyone in the community. -- Bradley M. Kuhn, Executive Director, Software Freedom Conservancy ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
[ Resend to make sure this message appears in public archive. ] Denys Vlasenko forwarded a comment from Tim Bird, which was Posted Feb 1, 2012 6:52 UTC (Wed) by tbird20d on LWN: Tim Bird says this: No. You misunderstand what unrelated products means. It means all the TV sets and digital cameras, which we properly release GPL source for. What I don't want is for some trivial mistake by GPL amateurs at some ODM supplier to some obscure product group to result in SFC having review and veto authority over our major Linux-based product lines. This is simply unacceptable. I think Tim is pretty confused here, as I can't relate what he's saying above with Conservancy's usual enforcement work. Tim has never been involved with a Conservancy enforcement action, so I believe Tim's retelling half-true stories that he's heard elsewhere, and there's a misunderstanding about what was required. ...Sony has standards in place that product teams are supposed to follow for GPL compliance. Unfortunately, I can't be sure that every team is following them, or won't make a mistake. In particular, I can 't be sure of this for sub-contractors. Sub-contractors may claim they have given you corresponding source, but have not. It happens. I think it's somewhat strange for a large company to say: We can't control what my company does. They have resources thousands upon thousands of times greater than Conservancy, yet we can find the time to review their product and give them feedback. Surely they have the resources to fix their compliance problems? What is intolerable is having a 3rd party hold your entire product line hostage, based on some issue with an unrelated product. I have no idea what he means by hold a product line hostage. Perhaps it's related to the fact that elsewhere in the LWN thread, some statements made references to pulling products off the shelves. This has never happened with Conservancy's enforcement. In fact, we usually ask for the violator to set their own deadlines for when they can come into compliance. We know that it sometimes takes a few months to get a compliant source release; we're happy to work with violators about deadlines. To my knowledge, Tim has no first-hand knowledge of Conservancy's enforcement efforts. So, how does he know what our requirements are at all? Well, since the SFC requests audit rights for all of a company's products that include GPL, I don't think the fear is irrational. Again, I don't know what Tim means here by audit rights. Conservancy does ask to talk about other products, and help the company come fully into compliance, but that's not audit rights. I believe that Tim is exaggerating half-true stories he's heard second- or third-hand. I'll add that Tim has never contacted me and asked to talk with me about Conservancy's enforcement. I've reached out to him in the past, and he's ignored my emails. I think it's pretty unfair for someone to criticize without first-hand discussions with the relevant parties. I'm going to the same conference as Tim for the first time in a week (Embedded Linux Conference 2012). I'll try to talk with him directly about the issues. -- Bradley M. Kuhn, Executive Director, Software Freedom Conservancy ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 8:35 PM, Bradley M. Kuhn bk...@ebb.org wrote: Denys Vlasenko forwarded a comment from Tim Bird, which was Posted Feb 1, 2012 6:52 UTC (Wed) by tbird20d on LWN: Tim Bird says this: No. You misunderstand what unrelated products means. It means all the TV sets and digital cameras, which we properly release GPL source for. What I don't want is for some trivial mistake by GPL amateurs at some ODM supplier to some obscure product group to result in SFC having review and veto authority over our major Linux-based product lines. This is simply unacceptable. I think Tim is pretty confused here, as I can't relate what he's saying above with Conservancy's usual enforcement work. Tim has never been involved with a Conservancy enforcement action, so I believe Tim's retelling half-true stories that he's heard elsewhere, and there's a misunderstanding about what was required. Really? So Sony can violate the GPL in some small product, and it would not affect other product lines, like TVs? ...Sony has standards in place that product teams are supposed to follow for GPL compliance. Unfortunately, I can't be sure that every team is following them, or won't make a mistake. In particular, I can 't be sure of this for sub-contractors. Sub-contractors may claim they have given you corresponding source, but have not. It happens. I think it's somewhat strange for a large company to say: We can't control what my company does. They have resources thousands upon thousands of times greater than Conservancy, yet we can find the time to review their product and give them feedback. Surely they have the resources to fix their compliance problems? You must not know how a big company works. It's not a matter of resources; it's a matter of control and organization. The bigger a company is, the more difficult it is to have tight control over all areas. I can imagine Sony TVs having a policy of complying with the GPL, and some other product line having an entirely different opinion, and without a company-wide stance to open source, the communication between SFC and Sony lawyers wouldn't be fruitful, and Sony TVs would be affected negatively, even if that division did everything right. Cheers. -- Felipe Contreras ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 8:05 PM, Tito farmat...@tiscali.it wrote: Hi, just to post a link to this article about a non-GPL busybox replacement http://lwn.net/Articles/478249/ Ciao, Tito I think there are two main points about this: The first is that I agree with Tim that suspending the license is a big issue for any company wishing to ship busybox, much more so if all of their other unrelated products are held hostage. Any litigation regarding busybox should remain confined to the offending product and the enforcement of busybox itself only. Also, the companies by themselves taking the steps to amend and make the product compliant should be sufficient to have the license reinstated and the legal matter dropped. Second point is that any decision regarding whether to sue or not should take into consideration what we want in return, and also the overall costs involved. A small list of things we (?) may want in return, in order of importance: 1) Code Does the product in question ship a patched busybox at all? Is there any reason to believe that? If not, then no reason to ask them to release it anyway just for self-gratification. Is the modification big enough to warrant all the costs and manpower wasted in the process? If Denys or anyone else could reimplement it in a few hours, then it's hardly worth all the fuss. Do we even care about the modifications at all? The changes could be one big ugly hack, out of the scope, and all other reasons why patches get rejected here in this mailing list. 2) Recognition This is a more reasonable demand, as it's much much easier to comply, easier to understand and appreciate the motive behind it. The companies would probably not put themselves at any disadvantage by doing this. I suspect requesting to comply with this would hardly go as far as into court. Now, to see in which position this would put busybox, my question is, what has been gained so far from suing? Any code? Which code? Authorship recognition? Has this even been an issue? ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Mon, 2012-02-06 at 13:11 -0200, Matheus Izvekov wrote: [] I think there are two main points about this: The first is that I agree with Tim that suspending the license is a big issue for any company wishing to ship busybox, much more so if all of their other unrelated products are held hostage. Any litigation regarding busybox should remain That's a question of legal systems, laws and how that works in general - and it works in pretty all areas of life that way BTW. And if it is truly such a big issue for them, why they are risking it in the first place? confined to the offending product and the enforcement of busybox itself only. Also, the companies by themselves taking I don't see any difference to any proprietary license. the steps to amend and make the product compliant should be sufficient to have the license reinstated and the legal matter dropped. Second point is that any decision regarding whether to sue or not should take into consideration what we want in return, and also the overall costs involved. A small list of things we (?) may want in return, in order of importance: 1) Code Does the product in question ship a patched busybox at all? Is there any reason to believe that? If not, then no reason to ask them to release it anyway just for self-gratification. Well, where is the problem with releasing it if it's unchanged? Is the modification big enough to warrant all the costs and manpower wasted in the process? In the GPL world, it's for the reader/consumer to decide that - not the one with obligation to republish it. And the effort is - when done seriously - pretty negligible if you automate it for 95% of the work. You just have to keep track which original sources you import and pull all changes out from $SCM for each release and tar.gz it. Voila. BTDT If Denys or anyone else could reimplement it in a few hours, then it's hardly worth all the fuss. I fail to find any of this in any GPL text. Care to explain where you got that effort is relevant from? And again, it's the outside to decide that (and different people may come to a different decision). Do we even care about the modifications at all? The changes could be one big ugly hack, out of the scope, and all other reasons why patches get rejected here in this mailing list. And the patches/changes could be committed right away - unless you assume that all commercial-proprietary changes are one big ugly hack. And again, it's the outside to decide that (and different people may come to a different decision). [...] Now, to see in which position this would put busybox, my question is, [ deleted ] You start at the completely wrong side: The question is *why* all these large companies with all these very professional employees manage to handle lots of different proprietary licenses with lots of other companies without getting sued and fail to get it correct with the GPL right from the start? Bernd -- Bernd Petrovitsch Email : be...@petrovitsch.priv.at LUGA : http://www.luga.at ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 1:38 PM, Bernd Petrovitsch be...@petrovitsch.priv.at wrote: On Mon, 2012-02-06 at 13:11 -0200, Matheus Izvekov wrote: [] I think there are two main points about this: The first is that I agree with Tim that suspending the license is a big issue for any company wishing to ship busybox, much more so if all of their other unrelated products are held hostage. Any litigation regarding busybox should remain That's a question of legal systems, laws and how that works in general - and it works in pretty all areas of life that way BTW. And if it is truly such a big issue for them, why they are risking it in the first place? I am only responding to this bit because it represents a false assumption about what I was advocating for, and this propagates to all the parts of your response below. What I am saying has nothing to do with what the GPL text itself says, it might as well say anything. The law firm which is advancing these lawsuits is responding to someone, Denys I suppose, and this person has the power to decide to sue or not, independently of what the license actually says. What I am advocating for is more discretion in this decision, taking into account what can be gained from it, and what can be the costs. This might sound wrong to the more idealistically inclined, but I am saying that the busybox legal representative should take more into account than the mere 'not complying with the license'. It's what executives at most companies do, they don't sue willy nilly, contrary to popular belief. They realize there are huge costs involved, and they at least have an ulterior motive, even if that sometimes is a flawed reasoning about avoiding damages. Even if they sometimes are very wrong about the payoffs, they are at least trying to take them into consideration. ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Saturday 04 February 2012 03:57, Rogelio Serrano wrote: On Fri, Feb 3, 2012 at 9:38 PM, Felipe Contreras In order to see that you need vision, and you need some basic understanding of how open source works. Sadly, a lot of people don't have those, and instead believe in FUD, and make decisions based on that. too bad they just dont get to benefit from open source economics and that may give their competitors who do a little advantage. when you have intellectual property issues you will hate gpl. i have worked with companies with no IP issues whatsoever and the gpl is perfect. Agreed. Unfortunately most, if not all, big companies have IP. Sony for example. too bad for sony. most of you will disagree but i dont think busybox needs the big companies to survive. small companies can keep busybox chugging along just fine. Well, busybox at the moment doesn't need any companies to survive. For example, my current employer did not hire me because I'm a busybox guy. Neither I have any consulting contracts related to busybox. If tomorrow busybox project magically disappears, I would still be employed, and I would earn exactly the same amount of money. So I have no financial stake in making sure that busybox is still being used by the companies, big or small. sometimes i think the big companies are just using their size to persuade developers to change the license. Busybox is not going to change the license. (This is in fact not possible - anyone who ever contributed to GPLv2 licensed code has a right to demand that all future changes must be under GPLv2 too). But, we are not going to be deaf - we are listening to other peoples' opinions and we might consider some changes to our license enforcement process. It would be arrogant to think that we always do everything in the best way possible. -- vda ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
Busybox is not going to change the license. (This is in fact not possible - anyone who ever contributed to GPLv2 licensed code has a right to demand that all future changes must be under GPLv2 too). But, we are not going to be deaf - we are listening to other peoples' opinions and we might consider some changes to our license enforcement process. It would be arrogant to think that we always do everything in the best way possible. Busybox provides executables, so it's a fairly independent piece of code. I don't think the GPL is preventing busybox from being used, at all: busybox was made to be used as is, it doesn't need to be linked against other stuff, and it's not a basis for derivative works. Every company I've worked for was OK to use busybox, despite *all* of them being totally paranoid about their IP and impervious to the idea of sharing a single line of their proprietary code. It doesn't cost anything to give a link to the unchanged busybox source, and it doesn't challenge their sacrosaint IP. GPL is basically a perfect license for a tool such as busybox. However, busybox is in a rather privileged place, because it practically never has to be patched by end users. When companies need to patch open source code to make it suit their peculiar needs, or when they need to link against some library, that's when licensing issues arise, and that's when companies will reject copylefted software. Unfortunately, that happens very often: I'd say about 80% of the open source software I'm using for professional products has to be patched sooner or later to accommodate the product's needs. Yes, the main reason for this huge ratio is that proprietary software authors don't know what Unix modularity is, and can't make their shit properly communicate with other software via Unix IPCs; nevertheless, I have to adapt and do what I can, and that often means patching existing open source software. (My own, hubris-based philosophy on this is: I'd rather have the end users of the product be happy with a good product, so I'd rather have companies use MY software rather than a crappy alternative, even if they don't give any source code back to the community; and since I'm the author, if they need support, they can hire ME, and give something back to ME. That's why I use permissive licenses for my software: I care more about the quality of the product for the end user than about the spreading of free software. But it's a personal choice and I'm not advocating it for anyone else.) Of course, all of this has nothing to do with the question of license enforcement whatsoever. Copyleft infringement should be fought, of course, at least as hard as copyright infringement is. -- Laurent ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 6:46 PM, Rogelio Serrano rogelio.serr...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 8:29 PM, Felipe Contreras felipe.contre...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 1:49 PM, Rogelio Serrano rogelio.serr...@gmail.com wrote: i think we already see that in the bsd's when companies get bsd code and dont give anything back. You mean the operating systems? I think if they used GPL, then companies would just use something else instead. Maybe something proprietary, but probably Linux. well linux has the momentum right now but the bsd came first. maybe the gpl is the reason linux overtook the bsd's or maybe its the development process or both. maybe its just too much centralization in the bsd development that held them back. Or maybe something else also helped, that's impossible to know for sure. But I think nowadays it's clear that many companies use BSD because of the permissive license, if they changed to GPL, many companies would switch. when you think that most significant software development will be the reserve of closed proprietary companies then this is a problem. Licenses won't change that. economics will. when your it department is composed of only 3 people and they are also the rd then yeah you need to leverage open source most probably gpl so a bigger company cant take your code and bitch slap you in the face with it. Economics might, if the people making the decisions actually know what's going on. Usually the change in culture is bottom up, and yes, it's usually because of economics, but only if there's some basic culture of open source; benefits, disadvantages, etc. (not FUD) But the point remains: licenses don't change culture. well i dont need convincing the bosses to do that. thats sort of the strategic business policy where i work. Most people do. -- Felipe Contreras ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 6:58 PM, Rogelio Serrano rogelio.serr...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 12:30 AM, Bradley M. Kuhn bk...@ebb.org wrote: Laurent Bercot wrote at 06:46 (EST): I am afraid that the uncompromising, unforgiving nature of the GPL will turn against it in the future, and harm more than promote widespread distribution of GPL'ed software - something that GPL zealots generally refuse to see. It's entirely possible this could be the case. I don't really believe it is, but all we have is some second-hand, anecdotal evidence on either side of the debate, so it's tough to know for sure. But that's not a new debate: it's the fundamental debate that goes back 20 years between those that prefer permissive licenses and those that prefer copyleft. There are reasonable arguments on both sides, of course. i dont agree. its just business economics at work. is it going to be cheaper in the long run to contribute or not? when its more economical to contribute then its better to gpl. In order to see that you need vision, and you need some basic understanding of how open source works. Sadly, a lot of people don't have those, and instead believe in FUD, and make decisions based on that. when you have intellectual property issues you will hate gpl. i have worked with companies with no IP issues whatsoever and the gpl is perfect. Agreed. Unfortunately most, if not all, big companies have IP. Sony for example. -- Felipe Contreras ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 6:30 PM, Bradley M. Kuhn bk...@ebb.org wrote: But, I also think it's a contradiction to say: I prefer a copylefted license but don't want it to be enforced. I don't think anyone on this thread has said that, but it has been said in some of the public debates in other fora in the last 24 hours. I do. I expect contributions back on my projects, thus the GPL license, but I would rather have my software used in millions of products, than waste time fighting for a couple of patches (or none). If you want to be good, you know what to do, if you want to be bad, well, bad for you. Practically, the only thing I would ensure with legal action is to get my software to be out of millions of products... Sure, ideally I would like companies to be good community members, but neither the license, nor legal actions would achieve that. Cheers. -- Felipe Contreras ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 6:05 AM, Tito farmat...@tiscali.it wrote: Hi, just to post a link to this article about a non-GPL busybox replacement http://lwn.net/Articles/478249/ they have the resources. they can do whatever they want. gpl and restrictive IP just dont mix. and if you want to use open source to serve the needs of big companies surrounded by massive IP minefields then dont use gpl. been there done that. is it bad for the gpl side of open source? i dont think so in my own opinion. -- quarq consulting: agile, open source ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 4:10 PM, Bradley M. Kuhn bk...@ebb.org wrote: Denys Vlasenko wrote at 06:15 (EST): Some of the arguments from the other side found in that thread make sense. We are possibly a bit too aggressive when we try to force people to comply with GPL on other projects too, not only on bbox. I'd like to point out that many of the stories on the other side are second-hand accounts. Obviously, as the person who directly handles most of the GPL enforcement for BusyBox, I can confirm there is no one with first-hand experience on the other side commenting on the LWN thread, nor on Matthew's blog post. Tim Bird says this: Posted Feb 1, 2012 6:52 UTC (Wed) by tbird20d (subscriber, #1901) [Link] No. You misunderstand what unrelated products means. It means all the TV sets and digital cameras, which we properly release GPL source for. What I don't want is for some trivial mistake by GPL amateurs at some ODM supplier to some obscure product group to result in SFC having review and veto authority over our major Linux-based product lines. This is simply unacceptable. What I'm saying is that the legal risk far outweighs the value of busybox. Posted Feb 1, 2012 17:55 UTC (Wed) by tbird20d (subscriber, #1901) [Link] ...Sony has standards in place that product teams are supposed to follow for GPL compliance. Unfortunately, I can't be sure that every team is following them, or won't make a mistake. In particular, I can 't be sure of this for sub-contractors. Sub-contractors may claim they have given you corresponding source, but have not. It happens. What is intolerable is having a 3rd party hold your entire product line hostage, based on some issue with an unrelated product. Posted Feb 1, 2012 19:31 UTC (Wed) by tbird20d (subscriber, #1901) [Link] That seems like an irrational fear, I can't imagine the copyright owner getting an injunction against or even pursuing code that you can trivially show the provenance and licensing for. Well, since the SFC requests audit rights for all of a company's products that include GPL, I don't think the fear is irrational. -- vda ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
Am 31.01.2012 23:05, schrieb Tito: Hi, just to post a link to this article about a non-GPL busybox replacement http://lwn.net/Articles/478249/ Thx for the hint, i like the dump-source idea maybe someone can implement it :) it will increase size for nothing but the designer can always disable same parts of bb. re, wh ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 11:05 PM, Tito farmat...@tiscali.it wrote: Hi, just to post a link to this article about a non-GPL busybox replacement http://lwn.net/Articles/478249/ Some of the arguments from the other side found in that thread make sense. We are possibly a bit too aggressive when we try to force people to comply with GPL on other projects too, not only on bbox. -- vda ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
Some of the arguments from the other side found in that thread make sense. We are possibly a bit too aggressive when we try to force people to comply with GPL on other projects too, not only on bbox. Good quality alternatives are a good thing. If Rob starts his Toybox project again, more power to him. If users - whether they are individuals or companies - can choose between two similar implementations of the same stuff, everyone benefits. The unfortunate reality is that most companies *really don't want* to release their source code. They will either refuse to have anything to do with copylefted software, or infringe the copyleft more or less blatantly. The return something to the community idea just does not work with them. So, GPL inforcement is a good thing, but as time goes by, companies will turn away more and more from copylefted software, and use more and more open source, non copylefted software. I am afraid that the uncompromising, unforgiving nature of the GPL will turn against it in the future, and harm more than promote widespread distribution of GPL'ed software - something that GPL zealots generally refuse to see. -- Laurent ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 7:46 PM, Laurent Bercot ska-dietl...@skarnet.org wrote: Some of the arguments from the other side found in that thread make sense. We are possibly a bit too aggressive when we try to force people to comply with GPL on other projects too, not only on bbox. Good quality alternatives are a good thing. If Rob starts his Toybox project again, more power to him. If users - whether they are individuals or companies - can choose between two similar implementations of the same stuff, everyone benefits. The unfortunate reality is that most companies *really don't want* to release their source code. They will either refuse to have anything to do with copylefted software, or infringe the copyleft more or less blatantly. The return something to the community idea just does not work with them. So, GPL inforcement is a good thing, but as time goes by, companies will turn away more and more from copylefted software, and use more and more open source, non copylefted software. I am afraid that the uncompromising, unforgiving nature of the GPL will turn against it in the future, and harm more than promote widespread distribution of GPL'ed software - something that GPL zealots generally refuse to see. -- Laurent ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox i think we already see that in the bsd's when companies get bsd code and dont give anything back. when you think that most significant software development will be the reserve of closed proprietary companies then this is a problem. but where i work where we do only open source stuff for all our software needs its not that big a problem. and year after year more and more collaborate with us under the gpl. -- quarq consulting: agile, open source ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 1:46 PM, Laurent Bercot ska-dietl...@skarnet.org wrote: Some of the arguments from the other side found in that thread make sense. We are possibly a bit too aggressive when we try to force people to comply with GPL on other projects too, not only on bbox. Good quality alternatives are a good thing. If Rob starts his Toybox project again, more power to him. If users - whether they are individuals or companies - can choose between two similar implementations of the same stuff, everyone benefits. The unfortunate reality is that most companies *really don't want* to release their source code. They will either refuse to have anything to do with copylefted software, or infringe the copyleft more or less blatantly. The return something to the community idea just does not work with them. Companies want to do what companies want to do. If a license really tries to make them do something they don't want to, then they won't use the software. Period. I think that's a mistake many 'free software' advocates make is that a license would somehow make companies be good community members. That's not the case. If Sony doesn't want to contribute, that's probably a mistake, but they are free to make that mistake, and they would do it regardless of what Matthew Garrett says. So, GPL inforcement is a good thing, but as time goes by, companies will turn away more and more from copylefted software, and use more and more open source, non copylefted software. I am afraid that the uncompromising, unforgiving nature of the GPL will turn against it in the future, and harm more than promote widespread distribution of GPL'ed software - something that GPL zealots generally refuse to see. Totally agree. But GPLv3, not GPLv2, or even better LGPL, which seems to be fine. Cheers. -- Felipe Contreras ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 1:49 PM, Rogelio Serrano rogelio.serr...@gmail.com wrote: i think we already see that in the bsd's when companies get bsd code and dont give anything back. You mean the operating systems? I think if they used GPL, then companies would just use something else instead. Maybe something proprietary, but probably Linux. To me this is a bit like the piracy arguments; they are not really stealing anything, whether they use the software and don't contribute, or don't use the software at all; the project is not affected negatively. And that's assuming that's true, which I don't think it's the case; companies do contribute--sure, not as much as if they were legally obliged to, but some, which is better than nothing. I believe if Linux was BSD licensed, companies would still contribute, because there are advantages to it: * Less maintenance costs * Free help from developer rock stars * Free widespread testing * Developers learn from the community * Etc. And in fact, these are exactly the arguments developers inside companies use (I've seen it in Nokia) to convince managers to contribute upstream, and it's the same arguments I've seen in embedded conferences to make companies better community members. Remember that for embedded Linux, many companies write proprietary drivers, and some others make thousands of changes, and just publish a huge patch which is useless for upstream. Even Android which has proper commits is difficult to merge upstream. And this is GPL. The problem is not the license, the problem is the attitude regarding open source, the community, and upstream. And that comes from within; the developers. when you think that most significant software development will be the reserve of closed proprietary companies then this is a problem. Licenses won't change that. I wish some software I love was BSD licensed, because I could convince my employee to ship it on products. And I would convince my managers that contributing back makes sense, when I get some free time... Cheers. -- Felipe Contreras ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
Denys Vlasenko wrote at 06:15 (EST): Some of the arguments from the other side found in that thread make sense. We are possibly a bit too aggressive when we try to force people to comply with GPL on other projects too, not only on bbox. I'd like to point out that many of the stories on the other side are second-hand accounts. Obviously, as the person who directly handles most of the GPL enforcement for BusyBox, I can confirm there is no one with first-hand experience on the other side commenting on the LWN thread, nor on Matthew's blog post. I think the community needs other projects to stand with us to enforce the GPL, and I'm working on coordinating that. BusyBox has become a poster child -- unfairly -- because for the last few years, BusyBox was the only project actively enforcing the GPL. I see that elsewhere in this thread, a debate is starting about whether or not the GPL works effectively as a tool to advance software freedom. I think that's an important debate, but I also think the conclusion of that debate is orthogonal to enforcement. Specifically, if the conclusion is: It's valuable for the license to place requirements that code be liberated, then GPL enforcement is valuable, too, automatically -- because an unenforced GPL is exactly the same as the ISC license. Anyway, I'm happy as always to discuss further Conservancy's GPL enforcement efforts, how they work, and what tweaks BusyBox developers want to see in Conservancy's enforcement efforts. OTOH, I hope we won't led any FUD about enforcement be the sole reason we make changes to our strategy. While I mostly lurk on this mailing list, I'll follow this particular thread and comment when it seems useful. -- Bradley M. Kuhn, Executive Director, Software Freedom Conservancy ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
Laurent Bercot wrote at 06:46 (EST): I am afraid that the uncompromising, unforgiving nature of the GPL will turn against it in the future, and harm more than promote widespread distribution of GPL'ed software - something that GPL zealots generally refuse to see. It's entirely possible this could be the case. I don't really believe it is, but all we have is some second-hand, anecdotal evidence on either side of the debate, so it's tough to know for sure. But that's not a new debate: it's the fundamental debate that goes back 20 years between those that prefer permissive licenses and those that prefer copyleft. There are reasonable arguments on both sides, of course. The return something to the community idea just does not work with them. I think you're right about this point, but only with respect to GPL violators. Specifically, it's certainly difficult (although not impossible) to convince a company to become a community contributor, when that company saw the GPL and just decided to see if they could get away with ignoring it. While the job of changing their minds is tough, it does happen sometimes. A classic example is Broadcom, which has been a frequent source of GPL violation problems as an upstream for more than a decade. Yet, some divisions of Broadcom now actively contribute to Linux development upstream. Their culture has changed just a little bit, and I hope that it will continue to get better. I firmly believe that without BusyBox's enforcement efforts, even this little bit of change wouldn't have happened. Nevertheless, I can agree that such change is rare. But it's important to also consider the many companies that virtually always do the right thing with regard to GPL compliance -- the Red Hat's, the HP's, the Google's, the SuSE's, the Canonical's (just to name a few). Some of those companies do quite a bit of proprietary software development, but they *don't* violate the GPL (to my knowledge) when they do it. Sometimes, those companies do favor permissively-licensed projects because they want to make something proprietary. It's unfortunate when that happens, but it's of course their right to do so. In this context, the question we should ask ourselves is: do we want the license to require software sharing? Again, that's the classic copyleft vs. permissive license debate, and there's important points on both sides. My view is that, given that some projects are indeed copylefted, we in some sense owe it to those who participate and comply to make sure the license is respected. In essence, companies that comply regularly put in more effort to make sure they do so -- which they do willingly. IMO, it's unfair to them that other companies get away with cutting costs by ignoring GPL. Of course, compliance isn't *that* expensive, but it does require that engineering teams pay attention to the fact that source needs to go along with the binaries, etc. Companies that go cut-rate and ignore that are able to undercut compliant company's products. I think for that, and are plenty of reasons, it's good to uphold a copyleft license; I've talked about these reasons extensively for years in talks (See http://faif.us/cast/2011/sep/13/0x18/ if you want to hear one). I know that some people disagree, and I respect those who prefer to contribute to permissively-licensed projects because they disagree with copyleft. But, I also think it's a contradiction to say: I prefer a copylefted license but don't want it to be enforced. I don't think anyone on this thread has said that, but it has been said in some of the public debates in other fora in the last 24 hours. -- Bradley M. Kuhn, Executive Director, Software Freedom Conservancy ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 8:29 PM, Felipe Contreras felipe.contre...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 1:49 PM, Rogelio Serrano rogelio.serr...@gmail.com wrote: i think we already see that in the bsd's when companies get bsd code and dont give anything back. You mean the operating systems? I think if they used GPL, then companies would just use something else instead. Maybe something proprietary, but probably Linux. well linux has the momentum right now but the bsd came first. maybe the gpl is the reason linux overtook the bsd's or maybe its the development process or both. maybe its just too much centralization in the bsd development that held them back. linux has a more resilient and innovative community that the license made possible but i digress. when you think that most significant software development will be the reserve of closed proprietary companies then this is a problem. Licenses won't change that. economics will. when your it department is composed of only 3 people and they are also the rd then yeah you need to leverage open source most probably gpl so a bigger company cant take your code and bitch slap you in the face with it. I wish some software I love was BSD licensed, because I could convince my employee to ship it on products. And I would convince my managers that contributing back makes sense, when I get some free time... Cheers. well i dont need convincing the bosses to do that. thats sort of the strategic business policy where i work. -- Felipe Contreras -- quarq consulting: agile, open source ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 12:30 AM, Bradley M. Kuhn bk...@ebb.org wrote: Laurent Bercot wrote at 06:46 (EST): I am afraid that the uncompromising, unforgiving nature of the GPL will turn against it in the future, and harm more than promote widespread distribution of GPL'ed software - something that GPL zealots generally refuse to see. It's entirely possible this could be the case. I don't really believe it is, but all we have is some second-hand, anecdotal evidence on either side of the debate, so it's tough to know for sure. But that's not a new debate: it's the fundamental debate that goes back 20 years between those that prefer permissive licenses and those that prefer copyleft. There are reasonable arguments on both sides, of course. i dont agree. its just business economics at work. is it going to be cheaper in the long run to contribute or not? when its more economical to contribute then its better to gpl. when you have intellectual property issues you will hate gpl. i have worked with companies with no IP issues whatsoever and the gpl is perfect. -- quarq consulting: agile, open source ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Wed, Feb 01, 2012 at 11:47:14AM +0100, walter harms wrote: Thx for the hint, i like the dump-source idea maybe someone can implement it :) it will increase size for nothing but the designer can always disable same parts of bb. The dump-source option defeats the purpose Busybox is serving by being GPL, which is forcing companies using embedded Linux to think about GPL compliance and acting as a wedge to get them to open up other components (like the kernel) if they're caught infringing. An easy way to make their use of Busybox compliant without fixing the other issues would just be a detriment. Rich ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
Re: Amusing article about busybox
On Wed, Feb 01, 2012 at 02:09:15PM +0200, Felipe Contreras wrote: On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 1:46 PM, Laurent Bercot ska-dietl...@skarnet.org wrote: Some of the arguments from the other side found in that thread make sense. We are possibly a bit too aggressive when we try to force people to comply with GPL on other projects too, not only on bbox. Good quality alternatives are a good thing. If Rob starts his Toybox project again, more power to him. If users - whether they are individuals or companies - can choose between two similar implementations of the same stuff, everyone benefits. The unfortunate reality is that most companies *really don't want* to release their source code. They will either refuse to have anything to do with copylefted software, or infringe the copyleft more or less blatantly. The return something to the community idea just does not work with them. Companies want to do what companies want to do. If a license really tries to make them do something they don't want to, then they won't use the software. Period. I think that's a mistake many 'free software' advocates make is that a license would somehow make companies be good community members. That's not the case. If Sony doesn't want to contribute, that's probably a mistake, but they are free to make that mistake, and they would do it regardless of what Matthew Garrett says. If they don't want to contribute, then they should be subject to a serious competitive disadvantage by being unable to use the best software out there and/or having to spend their resources making in-house replacements. That's the way it's always worked. Rich ___ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
