[Tags: gpl, licensing]

• the BSD license allows to use the same core in other commercial products of Cognitive Technologies
• the BSD license matches research and educational purposes so as it gives "more freedom", as it was outspoken by developer company
• other companies can use the OCR engine in their commercial projects

Harald Welte, who's done a lot for making people understand what the GPL is and is not (e.g. with his GPL Violations project) has drawn some conclusions on that benefit: ``if somebody asks me, how much the actual Free Software source code benefits from the code that was released by the vendors, my honest reply would be simple and sad: None.''

There are other benefits like public awareness, community building etc. that are also of importance to the whole Open Source community, and that a software license may or may not have an impact on, so this may be up for further discussion.

Making code available at least is not what the GPL helps about, so I guess the BSD license isn't that bad after all. Surprise! :)

[Tags: gpl, licensing]

Please let me add that I do think that the GPL -- while it has a few problematic terms -- is, in general, a very nicely written license, as it's very specific about what to do and what not to do. This can serve as a good introduction to the whole licensing topic to people who don't know about laws (like programmers :). Of course the size of the document rather turns people away, unfortunately.

[Tags: gpl, licensing]

• From ISC (where the license comes originally from), Paul Vixie promptly acknoledged the problem, and apparently an update will be made on their license
• Groklaw's Pamela Jones mentioned that there is an issue, but of minor importance as the original copyright holder still can point at the disclaimer he included. As Chris Hopps pointed out in private communication, the only party that may probably be hurt is the one removing the license when passing on. A different issue would also be license proliferation, leading to many "weak" licenses instead of one "strong" license - I tend to agree.
• One reply I got from OpenBSD (which use the ISC license) was sent by Theo deRaadt, which was accusing me of not understanding the issue at hands and that I just want to play a game. And that this is why NetBSD still uses restrictive licenses (hu??) and that I should please never send him mail again. (Funny note aside: I didn't write with my NetBSD mail address, and didn't mention that with a single word in my mail).
• Todd Miller, also from OpenBSD, wrote a much nicer mail, confirming the issue, and that they also looked at the MIT license.
• Thorsten Glaser, driving force between MirOS, an OpenBSD-spinoff, let me know that he removed the copyright template completely from their source tree.

Update #1: It seems the MIT/X11 license, which served as an example for the ISC license also has the problem. Whom to contact @ X.org?

Update #2: MirOS has only removed the copyright template, and of course not the copyright on the individual files. Doh!

[Tags: licensing]

  * Copyright (c) CCYY YOUR NAME HERE 
  *
  * Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any
  * purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above
  * copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.
  *
  * THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES
  * WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
  * MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR
  * ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES
  * WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN
  * ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF
  * OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
  */ 

Read the second paragraph closely: when passing this on, the first ("the above copyright notice") and second ("this permission") paragraph needs to be preserved, BUT WHAT ABOUT THE THIRD ONE? Shall I really be able to pass on the software but leave out passing on the "no warranty"-clause? I don't think so, too.

The mistake was already confirmed by the copyright holder of the original license, and the good deed of the day was to notify another project that chose the same license.

[Tags: licensing]

Best entry in the thread is probably Daniel Seuffert's summary, commenting on Linux jumping after every M$ feature: ``You shouldn't complain about fleas tomorrow if you go to sleep with the dogs tonight''. I think he's right, and I don't want any DRM near me. No, thanks. Never.

(Lars, who posted that questionnaire, also sent me a number of interesting links for learning more about the whole issue at hands: The AgainstTCPA website, Ross Anderson's TCPA-FAQ, Bruce Schneier's CryptoGram on TCPA etc. and Chaosradio #78 )

[Tags: drm, licensing]

Of course a bootloader is no enduser software, and companies like Brocade may well customize the software without being forced to open up changes, so this is definitely a favour to such companies, and an example how Open Source can be made business-fiendly. But with IBM aiming for Linux and GPL-based software so far, do we see a chance in thinking here?

[Tags: ibm, licensing]

I wonder what this means for the future - Linux moving to a different license, people favouring BSD systems more, or a Great New License that will make everyone (well, at least current GPL people :) more happy. At least the number of growing number of licenses arising recently seems to hint at the latter approach.

[Tags: licensing]

Update: Eric Anholt wrote me to have a look at swfdec which is way farther along - they project has taken some major steps towards flash 5/6/7 scripting support. pkgsrc, anyone? :)

[Tags: flash, licensing]

• Stefan Schumacher's lightning talk on NetBSD (AVI, torrent, slides)
• My talk on "Portable software installation on Linux, Solaris, NetBSD etc. using pkgsrc" (AVI, torrent, slides, paper)
• My talk about "GPL für Anfänger" (GPL for beginners, german language) (AVI, torrent, slides, paper)

Update: Thomas Klausner has updated pkgsrc/multimedia/mplayer-share to not require a special codecs.conf file. Make sure you have mplayer-share-1.0rc7nb1 installed to get the updated file!

[Tags: Events, gpl, licensing, pkgsrc]

• A general consequence when putting code under the BSD license or releasing new code based on existing BSD-licensed code is that the code can be kept closed. E.g. when shipping hardware, there is no need to add the source.

• In contrast, when you put new code under the GPL, or write code based on a program released under the GPL, it is mandatory that you release the full source of all your changes. Many big companies have been bitten by this with Linux, see www.gpl-violations.org to find that prominent companies like Siemens, ASUS, Sitecom, Gigabyte and many others are affected and were sued over this (apparently?) difficult to follow requirement of the GPL.

• When using BSD-licensed code as a base, it's your own choice if you want to keep your changes private, of if you want to contribute them back to the community. Contributing the source has both benefits and drawbacks, which have to be considered.

• Drawbacks of opening the source are that competitors will have access to your intellectual property. When using BSD-licensed code as a base for your work, you can choose to keep your changes private. With GPL, you have to open them up, if you want to or not.

• Benefits of releasing source to the bright public may have various benefits usually found when arguing for Open Source: people can use the code and base their works on it, the code can be audited by 3rd parties for e.g. security reasons, etc.

• A particular benefit of releasing a work based on BSD-licensed code again not (only) to the bright public but especially to the original project is that the contributions can be incorporated into the project, and get maintained by the project people.

• One of the goals of the NetBSD project is to offer a complete operating system kernel available under the BSD license only. To integrate code into NetBSD, and the kernel in particular, it has to be BSD licensed. Integration into NetBSD (which of course requires releasing the source) will lead to benefits from the efforts of the NetBSD project, its community as well as the vendors supporting it.

• Hardware designed for and with NetBSD
• Products based on NetBSD
• NetBSD-ready PowerPC toys: KuroBox and LinkStation
• SGI produces NetBSD-based WebCam
• Embedded NetBSD on Technologic Systems' ARM boards
• IBM built some NetBSD 1.3x based Network Computers (NSM V2R1): OS in some Java error code, pages 372, 594, 629, 691 of this manual.
• Parts of Apple's MacOS X / Darwin are based on NetBSD
• TCP/IP

1. All source (changed and unchanged) must remain available under the original license (GPL#2, CDDL#3.1)
2. Any modification must happen under the original license (GPL#2b, CDDL #3.2).

Digging deeper in the OpenSolaris.org Licensing FAQ, there's apparently a way to release binaries under a different license, plus the CDDL is file-based, so for mere integration of CDDL-source into Larger Works, the modifications to the CDDL to interface with the other code need to be published. Of course that only helps as long as the CDDL doesn't need to get modified for that. Relevant parts of the CDDL seem to be #1.9A-C for the "licensing on a per-file" base. For the "release binaries under differenc license" statement, #3.5 says that but also states that the new license must not take away any rights that the CDDL grants, so I don't think one can make a binary-only distribution without releasing (modified) sources.

Comments welcome!

[Tags: cddl, licensing, sun]

I'd like to thank, in no particular order, the following people for helping out at the booth: Stefan Schumacher, Bernd Sieker, Karl-Uwe Lockhoff, Dennis Wecker, Lubomir Sedlacik, Christoph Badura, DaNiel Ettle and everyone I've forgotten!

[Tags: ccc, Events, licensing]

And just in case you wonder - the software in question on my side is g4u, the ripoff and copyright violation happened in g4l.

[Tags: g4u, licensing]

Today, I found out that someone took the core parts of said software, adjusted it to run on Linux (not much to do - it was mostly shell scripts), removed all traces of my name and license on the original software, and instead put his own name in and put everything under the GPL.

I asked what's going on, and as a reply I was told that the scripts were not based on mine - something rather easy to prove wrong when looking at them (differences are mostly renamed variables, removal of my name; same code structure, even in help messages, etc.).

Now my question is, how does one handle such infringement of copyright and licensing? I don't have any money to bring this to court, nor would I really want to... It's both open source projects, but is asking for credit where credit is due too much? Can everyone steal intellectual property today in the name of the GPL?

[Tags: g4u, licensing]