Re: Where's the love?
Casey Marshall csm at gnu.org writes: So sure, the FSF could release Classpath under the disjunction of the GPL and the ASL, if they saw it as fit to. That would not be what the Apaches would want. Dual licensing is not acceptable for the ASF, as far as I have been told. The only way GNU Classpath would be acceptable for Apache Harmony, afaict from our dicussions in the past year, would be if the FSF contributed it to the ASF, and had the ASF manage the project, under the Apache license. Anything else is non-option for ASF, for a variety of reasons. cheers, dalibor topic
Re: Where's the love?
Dalibor Topic wrote: The only way GNU Classpath would be acceptable for Apache Harmony, afaict from our dicussions in the past year, would be if the FSF contributed it to the ASF, and had the ASF manage the project, under the Apache license. Anything else is non-option for ASF, for a variety of reasons. Harmony appears to be basically an attempt at a hostile takeover of the Free Java movement. They're all in favor of cooperation - as long as it is 100% on their terms. Complete surrender is all they will accept. I hope I'm wrong, but nothing I've heard suggests otherwise. -- --Per Bothner [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://per.bothner.com/
Re: Where's the love?
On Fri, Mar 10, 2006 at 12:20:02AM -0800, Per Bothner wrote: Dalibor Topic wrote: The only way GNU Classpath would be acceptable for Apache Harmony, afaict from our dicussions in the past year, would be if the FSF contributed it to the ASF, and had the ASF manage the project, under the Apache license. Anything else is non-option for ASF, for a variety of reasons. Harmony appears to be basically an attempt at a hostile takeover of the Free Java movement. They're all in favor of cooperation - as long as it is 100% on their terms. Complete surrender is all they will accept. I hope I'm wrong, but nothing I've heard suggests otherwise. I am sorry if I gave that impression, since that's not the way I experienced it. My impression was that the ASF simply has certain ways to do things, and does not want to change those, since their way basically works fine for them, and they don't think GNU Classpath is worth changing their ways of doing things, as apparently, that's all very tedious and so on. I wouldn't want to imply malice, where buerocratic inertia is a sufficient explanation. cheers, dalibor topic -- --Per Bothner [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://per.bothner.com/
Re: Where's the love?
On Fri, 2006-03-10 at 00:20 -0800, Per Bothner wrote: Dalibor Topic wrote: The only way GNU Classpath would be acceptable for Apache Harmony, afaict from our dicussions in the past year, would be if the FSF contributed it to the ASF, and had the ASF manage the project, under the Apache license. Anything else is non-option for ASF, for a variety of reasons. Harmony appears to be basically an attempt at a hostile takeover of the Free Java movement. They're all in favor of cooperation - as long as it is 100% on their terms. Complete surrender is all they will accept. I hope I'm wrong, but nothing I've heard suggests otherwise. I think that is a bit harsh. Dalibor's description of the project and how Apache deals with it seems correct though. It is clear that a lot of the founders of Harmony that came from the GNU Classpath, GCJ, Kaffe, IKVM, etc communities had envisioned a different kind of cooperation. And I think most of use really tried to work hard for the last 9 months to make it work and tried to explain how a community works, what the goals of the different projects were, how we could do this together, etc. Some of us are rightly frustrated that it didn't work out. It isn't like we didn't try very hard and didn't put a lot of energy and effort into it. In the end the new people seemed only interested in doing all things the Apache way. I don't think the legal/license issues were real blockers. It is just used as an excuse to not work together (for now). It would have been easy to solve if anything to have the code both ASL and GPL compatibility was acceptable to them. I also think we as GNU Classpath community are a bit intimidating. We have so many people working on so many wonderful things which aren't just java (.net/mono integration, aot/gcc integration, pushing distribution/packaging issues to the GNU/Linux distributions, creating an platform for innovative research and alternative runtime models, etc). It isn't easy for anybody to grok such a community with millions of lines of free code. And clearly some of the Apache people are proud of their own way of doing things. I just want to add that the FSF has been very helpful in trying to resolve any issues with respect to cooperation. Several of us (Dalibor, Tom and I) have had multiple (hours long) teleconferences with the FSF and ASF people to try to get a common understanding of what the real issues were. And I know a lot of people have tried to explain how we work together, why GPL-compatibility is important to our community, and how to resolve any perceived legal issues. Either by talking directly to people, using teleconferences or by phoning people directly. The lesson to draw from this is probably that if you are talking for months with several people on how to cooperate and the only people that agree with you are the people that you are already working together with and that are actually working on code together, then you might want to just cooperate with the people you are already sharing and working on code with and not with the people only talking and disagreeing. There are also a couple of good things though. It is clear that more people are frustrated with proprietary java as controlled by Sun (and some large JCP companies). That will only help us all to get awareness that we have to solve this problem (hopefully together). And the FSF did listen and incorporated a lot of ideas in the draft of the GPLv3. I believe the language is more clear and the biggest improvement is that there has been a lot of thought about being compatible with other free software licenses that have extra requirements like the ASLv2 and EPL for example. Which means that as soon as GPLv3 is adopted a lot of these it is incompatible, so we cannot cooperate discussions will hopefully be over and we will just reuse anything useful and really work together more. I do encourage everybody to take a look at http://gplv3.fsf.org/ Cheers, Mark signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Where's the love?
Dalibor Topic wrote: On Fri, Mar 10, 2006 at 12:20:02AM -0800, Per Bothner wrote: Harmony appears to be basically an attempt at a hostile takeover of the Free Java movement. They're all in favor of cooperation - as long as it is 100% on their terms. Complete surrender is all they will accept. I am sorry if I gave that impression, since that's not the way I experienced it. My impression was that the ASF simply has certain ways to do things, and does not want to change those, since their way basically works fine for them, and they don't think GNU Classpath is worth changing their ways of doing things, as apparently, that's all very tedious and so on. I wouldn't want to imply malice, where buerocratic inertia is a sufficient explanation. I used hostile takeover in the sense of a corporate takeover. Malice is usually not involved - just an unwillingness to negotiate with the old management and board. That seems to be descriptive. I think it goes beyond bureaucratic inertia. You agree that they seem to have no interest in co-operating with the rest of the Free Software movement, unless it is done on their terms. Rather like the attitude of the current US government to the rest of the world ... And of course there is the Orwellian name Harmony - reminds you of Ministry of Peace, doesn't it? -- --Per Bothner [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://per.bothner.com/
Re: Where's the love?
Dalibor Topic wrote: On Fri, Mar 10, 2006 at 12:20:02AM -0800, Per Bothner wrote: Dalibor Topic wrote: The only way GNU Classpath would be acceptable for Apache Harmony, afaict from our dicussions in the past year, would be if the FSF contributed it to the ASF, and had the ASF manage the project, under the Apache license. Anything else is non-option for ASF, for a variety of reasons. Harmony appears to be basically an attempt at a hostile takeover of the Free Java movement. They're all in favor of cooperation - as long as it is 100% on their terms. Complete surrender is all they will accept. I hope I'm wrong, but nothing I've heard suggests otherwise. I am sorry if I gave that impression, since that's not the way I experienced it. My impression was that the ASF simply has certain ways to do things, and does not want to change those, since their way basically works fine for them, and they don't think GNU Classpath is worth changing their ways of doing things, as apparently, that's all very tedious and so on. I wouldn't want to imply malice, where buerocratic inertia is a sufficient explanation. This is all really sad. Guess the only thing to do is ignore Harmony and and rub it in that they had to get donations to get anywhere. Ha! ;) Brian
Re: Where's the love?
Brian Jones wrote: I'm not following Harmony too closely (so let me talk out my ... a moment) but let me see if I understand it so far. Harmony is: 1) Writing their own class libraries (based on email about japi comparisons) 2) Writing their own JVM (which I think is based in some part on one of the current JVMs, but ok, sure, everyone seems to write one eventually) 3) Writing their own test suite (because Mauve doesn't use junit and has a different license, but I think that's going to be fixed) Here's a little bit more information re #2. I've donated an interpreter-only version of JCVM to Harmony (called JC Harmony Edition) under the Apache license. Whether they'll end up using it or not, who knows. IBM has donated a class library (called, unfortunately, classlib). There is an effort underway to port that class library to JCHEVM, using the existing (Classapath-defined) Java/VM API. This effort has seen some initial success. So in theory, if all goes well, any combination of (classlib or Classpath) and (any VM that works with Classpath) will run. This would be great if it can be achieved. As for all the license stuff, I don't understand it all and don't care strongly enough to follow the debate. I do think it's a real irony that free software can't be packaged with other free software. I don't in general like the idea of two competing class libraries nor two competing test frameworks (the latter being especially stupid). So #1 is not really true: they're not writing new stuff, they've just accepted a pre-existing donation. They believe they can't just use Classpath for license reasons (this part I don't fully understand). Re #3 I've not been following it. -Archie __ Archie Cobbs *CTO, Awarix* http://www.awarix.com
Re: Where's the love?
Brian Jones wrote: Harmony is: ... 3) Writing their own test suite (because Mauve doesn't use junit and has a different license, but I think that's going to be fixed) I think you are right that Apache are working on their own test suite. In Mauve, work is being done on JUnit integration (refer to the Mauve mailing list for more info). But I'm not aware of any plans to change the license. Regards, Dave
Re: Where's the love?
Okay, there is a solution that is rather expedient to fixing the classpath/classlib licensing problems. The FSF has within it's power the ability to relicense the software under new terms and conditions or could in fact dual license the software under both the current license and a suitable Apache friendly license. All that is required is to win the argument with Richard Stallman or Bradley Kuhn. And that would have to start with getting most of the committers on board with the idea and the project maintainer. This is how we did the license change from LGPL to GPL+exception. Gcj (gcc) needed us to switch from LGPL to the exception bits because it is what they were already using to make certain use cases, such as delivery of a software controlled toothbrush, work, without requiring the redistribution of object files suitable for re-linking the application on your toothbrush. I don't really see the FSF backing down from the point of view that the users of free software should have the right to modify and release the software and Apache is unlikely to change either, as they have benefited enormously (in terms of brand at least) from letting anyone embed their software without having to divulge the source code to users. Given that you can already ship products with closed binary-only java class libraries from many sources adding one more isn't going to change that world or hurt a user. But, we can benefit enormously from combining our energies with Harmony to deliver a free J2SE 5 faster than anyone thinks is possible. So, given these things and my love for this project, I would really like the FSF to allow the developers to provide Classpath under an Apache compatible license in addition to the current licensing scheme, at least until the FSF and the Apache Foundation resolve their own license incompatibilities. We have no guarantees they will ever work things out and waiting a year to find that out is waiting a year too long. Thanks for letting me share, Brian (former maintainer)
Re: Where's the love?
Brian Jones wrote: I don't really see the FSF backing down from the point of view that the users of free software should have the right to modify and release the software and Apache is unlikely to change either, as they have benefited enormously (in terms of brand at least) from letting anyone embed their software without having to divulge the source code to users. Huh? This is not the issue. Both licenses are compatible with the software being embedded/linked with non-Free code. So, given these things and my love for this project, I would really like the FSF to allow the developers to provide Classpath under an Apache compatible license in addition to the current licensing scheme, The FSF's hope is that GPL3 will be such a license. -- --Per Bothner [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://per.bothner.com/
Re: Where's the love?
Archie Cobbs wrote: Brian Jones wrote: So, given these things and my love for this project, I would really like the FSF to allow the developers to provide Classpath under an Apache compatible license in addition to the current licensing scheme, at least I would support that idea. However, I don't think we require the FSF's permission. We are the authors of Classpath and therefore retain copyright privledges. IANAL, but I could swear that I signed over copyright to the FSF long ago. David Daney
Re: Where's the love?
David Daney wrote: So, given these things and my love for this project, I would really like the FSF to allow the developers to provide Classpath under an Apache compatible license in addition to the current licensing scheme, at least I would support that idea. However, I don't think we require the FSF's permission. We are the authors of Classpath and therefore retain copyright privledges. IANAL, but I could swear that I signed over copyright to the FSF long ago. IANAL either .. but I think you assigned copyright to them, meaning you gave them the right to copyright. This has no effect on your own right to the copyright of your own work. Ie, you did cp self fsf, not mv self fsf. But since IANAL and TINLA [1], I should probably just shut up for now :-) -Archie [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IANAL __ Archie Cobbs *CTO, Awarix* http://www.awarix.com
Re: Where's the love?
On Mar 9, 2006, at 6:34 PM, Archie Cobbs wrote: David Daney wrote: So, given these things and my love for this project, I would really like the FSF to allow the developers to provide Classpath under an Apache compatible license in addition to the current licensing scheme, at least I would support that idea. However, I don't think we require the FSF's permission. We are the authors of Classpath and therefore retain copyright privledges. IANAL, but I could swear that I signed over copyright to the FSF long ago. IANAL either .. but I think you assigned copyright to them, meaning you gave them the right to copyright. This has no effect on your own right to the copyright of your own work. Ie, you did cp self fsf, not mv self fsf. But since IANAL and TINLA [1], I should probably just shut up for now :-) I think technically the FSF assigns back to you permission to use any contributions you make (but not the work as a whole) however you want (you can read what you signed ;-) on fencepost, in /gd/gnuorg/ Copyright). So you can use code that you write in proprietary/other software, if you want. The FSF still owns the copyright on Classpath as a whole, however, and so the decision on what license they release Classpath under is at the FSF's discretion, as long as they use a free license (this is also specified in the agreement; the FSF can't turn your work proprietary, even if you assigned them copyright over your contributions). So sure, the FSF could release Classpath under the disjunction of the GPL and the ASL, if they saw it as fit to. At least that's how I understand it. Standard disclaimers apply...
