Sun Looks To GPL3 For Java, Solaris

daria42 writes "Sun is leaning toward changing the license for Java and Solaris to the GNU GPL version 3. The article has some insightful comments from Sun boss Jonathan Schwartz. '"Will we GPL Solaris? We want to ensure we can interact with the GPL community and the Mozilla community and the BSD community," he says.'"

Huh?

GPL'ing stuff will make it difficult to "interact" with the BSD and Moz communities, unless by interact they mean "take stuff and put it in Solaris/Java"...

Re:Huh?

This stupid license wars is slowing Linux and FOSS community and serves NO FUCKING PURPOSE!
You are completely wrong. License is a key feature of FOSS, and provides the developer which is the freedom of her work
roughly, IMHO,
BSD: the world has the freedom to do whatever: companies like it- not only to use the code but to provide FOSS modules as well!
GPL: the user won't loose the freedom to keep using the work made by the programmer.
Which is better? depends strongly on the programmers intention about the software she is releasing. She has put a lot of effort on that, so she may have an opinion of which is the allowed use of her code.
Saying it is stupid, is selfish as you seem to be thinking only in the present day with the present apps, which seem you have not developed, have you?

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"GPL: the user won't loose the freedom to keep using the work made by the programmer."

Um, no. The work made by the programmer will be available to the user no matter whether the license is BSD or GPL, or many others. Once a version of some code is releas

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"The difference between the GPL and BSD is that the GPL ensures that any improvements to the code will be given back to the community."
GPL and BSD code are totally free to use.
BSD is free to redistribute, no problems (well, you should

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The difference between the GPL and BSD is that the GPL ensures that any improvements to the code will be given back to the community.

Basically, the BSDL is about what you want to happen with *your* code. The GPL is what you want to happen with *other pe

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I was doing my best to refrain from saying anything that harsh. ;) I'm not particularly enamored with the 'freedom' the GPL provides for third-party developers. I didn't see the need to get into that argument, though. Heh.

Interesting point

I used to think that GPL is the only way to go. I share my code, so why shouldn't others using my code (assuming they distribute software) have to share their modifications to it, as well?

Well, I've since found one good use for BSD-like licenses. They're good for situations where what you care about the most is that people are using your code. For example, I think some of the Vorbis code was released under BSD so that companies producing proprietary software would add Vorbis support, hopefully leading to widespread adoption of Vorbis.

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The vorbis example is a good use of the BSD licence.

Two bad examples are the BSD network stack and giflib (MIT Licence).
Both are now in Microsoft Windows with nothing more than a credit line to the original developers buried somewhere.

Personally all my cod

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I'm not sure how the vorbis example is any different than the network stack or giflib. In any case, the BSD licence explicitly allows inclusion in proprietary software that is its advantage in the eyes of its supporters. The disadvantage is that it has no

Re:Interesting point

Both are now in Microsoft Windows with nothing more than a credit line to the original developers buried somewhere.

So what? Given that a network stack is a fundamental part of a modern operating system, and that poorly written, incompatible and vulnerable network stacks would degrade the entire network for everyone on it, surely it's better that MS used a tried and tested stack rather than going it alone and producing a buggy, not quite compatible version of their own?

Besides which, it was clearly the intention of the authors in using the licence that it could be used in closed-source products, and MS are complying with the letter and the spirit of the licence; "use it as you see fit, just credit us".

Re:Interesting point

Best option, IMHO, would be to use GPL with pay-for-business-use clause. All proceedings from this should go to Electronic Frontier Foundation or similar, so they can be nicely used for patents, lawsuits, and so on.

If business pays for code they buy it from community for their own use, thus code will be released from GPL and free for their use. That would mean licensed for their use. And cash can be used, for example, to pay developers for creating things dull and boring like Exchange connectors (damn important for businesses) and such.

Just an idea, what do you think?

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Careful now: profit/not-for-profit with respect to Qt is a bit more subtle than that. Trolltech's "free" Qt license is the GPL. This does permit selling derivative works, within the restrictions imposed by the GPL. You have to pay to license it for use in

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Both are now in Microsoft Windows with nothing more than a credit line to the original developers buried somewhere.

You say this like it's a bad thing, why ? It is _precisely_ what the developers intended when they released their code under the BSDL.

Inc

Re:Interesting point

The LGPL covers situations like file formats or codecs that you want become standard even in proprietary software. Using BSD for such a case allows unscrupulous companies to create their own incompatible Vorbis+ codec to lock users into using their own software. LGPL at least ensures that if they use your code to do this, they have to provide the source so that other implementations can provide compatibility.

Re:Huh?

You may think it is the fscking truth, but what you say denotes a complete lack of understanding of the reasons for which FOSS people code. Choosing the license which better represents the programmer will is IMPORTANT. Otherwise we would all put our code in the public domain, which most of us do NOT want.

License WARS serve no purpose, I agree, but you will likely not see "one license to bind them all".

Re:Huh?

You lose karma because people believe you are wrong. FOSS is about choice and freedom, and license is one of those choices. You are essentially saying that they are stupid for believing in what they do.

I'm a huge fan of the BSD license. Nothing says freedom like lack of restrictions.

But lately, I've begun to see the draw of the GPL license. I've never had an issue with the LGPL, as it does what I think the GPL should: It makes certain that code improvements are returned to the community. The GPL tries to make additional code belong to the community, too, though.

So you cannot kill this 'license war' without killing the FOSS community, too. They're the same thing.

If it makes you feel better, you can think of them as GPL and BSD communities instead of a single FOSS community.

What a load of FUD

First they're "bandwagon jumping", and then then later in the same sentence they're not trying to "play nice"? Well the fact that they're picking the same license as the majority of the Free Software community will be means that they actually are playing n

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How is GPL3 "the same license as the majority"? Utter tosh; you see far more people rejected the drafts because of the political DRM restrictions than are accepting it.

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The only people opposing GPLv3 are Linux kernel developers and a bunch of people who like talking on Slashdot, message boards, mailing lists, but don't really write any code and probably don't even understand GPLv3 properly. Even the kernel developers seem

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Well obviously there isn't any software under GPLv3 since it isn't finished yet. I would expect most projects to move to GPLv3 once it is finished, though.

One thing you seem to be missing is that GPLv3 is intended as a replacement for GPLv2, not a competin

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Of course it's is a competing license. If a project moves to GPLv3 the other code that uses that project has the choice of either moving to GPLv3 or forking to maintain their current license. Expect forks of the major FSF works so that GPLv2 projects are

Re:What a load of FUD

The GPL3 is not the same license as the majority because it hasn't been released yet. There is no other reason. Nobody has rejected it because there is nothing to reject.

The entire process is being driven by consensus. The DRM stuff is in there because regardless of the views of a vocal minority, most people interested in Free Software are well aware that software is not free if someone can simply define it as an "Access Control Mechanism" and then use the DMCA to tear apart anyone who changes that code in a way they don't like. The "signatures" thing is in there because regardless of the views of a vocal minority, most people interested in Free Software are well aware that software you cannot use in any modified form except those signed-off by a hardware manufacturer is not free.

And I might hazard a guess that the primary reason why Torvalds is being to vocal in winging about both of the above has to do with the amount of work he'd need to do to change the license in the first place, given his lack of forethought in neither adopting the "or later version" clause, or any alternative that would make it easy to upgrade the license to one similar in spirit without the active support of every single person who has ever made a "contribution", no matter how small, to the Linux kernel.

Either way, I'm not seeing much evidence that, outside of the Linux kernel, there's much rejection of GPL3 at all. And I am seeing much of the Free Software community who rejected GPL2 seeing GPL3 as a much better alternative. That's the aim, after all, to try to get a license that suits almost everyone who believes in Copyleft, and to end the current, insane, license forking that causes so much damage.

Re:What a load of FUD

I said he was whining, not that he merely had an opinion and that any opinion constitutes whining. There is nothing in my comment that constitutes calling "having an opinion" whining, and if you read that, then you need glasses.

As for whining, that's what he's doing. He's making up excuse after excuse, complaining that GPLv3 is somehow overbearing compared to its predecessor when, in reality, it is cut from exactly the same cloth and merely closes a few loopholes. His complaint that, in some way, TiVo using signatures to close its hardware and its code is in some way what he wanted all along is a completely ridiculous position - if you want that, you don't make your code copyleft. His complaints about DRM have no basis in anything the draft license says.

Torvald's inability to posit a position consistant with the aims and effects of the license he chose, claiming GPL2 is somehow not the copyleft license it is intended to be, shows me that his positions are completely insincere, and this realistically is more excuse making, presumably because of his shortsighted decision not to ensure there was a process for upgrading the license in the future.

Yes, it's whining. If he had a strong legitimate point, I'd say it was merely having an opinion. But he doesn't. He's saying his choice of a strict copyleft was right, yet complaining that the loopholes within it that completely undermine the entire point of making it copyleft are, in some way, desirable. He's full of shit, and not for the first time. [slashdot.org]

That's a reasonable choice

Seems pretty normal for Sun to not be willing to give away years of hard work, without getting anything back.

Well thay are a hardware shop...

They benefit from the commodization of the complementary product (software).

Should OpenSolaris be dual licensed via CDD

CAB/OGB Position Paper # 20070207 version 0.6
Topic: Should OpenSolaris be dual licensed via CDDL and GPLv3

http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?thread ID=23699&tstart=0 [opensolaris.org]
http://lwn.net/Articles/221543/ [lwn.net]

Not too long ago....

Somebody asked linus if he would be willing to put the license for the next kernel up to a vote. His reply was: "Sure, write your own kernel, license it how you want it, and see how many people use it."

Be careful what you wish for...

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It makes no business sense for MSFT to fund NT development when Linux is available for free.

That really depends on whether or not you believe that NT offers any compelling advantages over Linux. If you do, then it may well be worth your while investing in

Put the tin foil hat away.

You know some people don't like GPL3 because the DRM Restriction crosses the line between, software freedom and telling the programmers what the can and can't program. A lot of people believe that software development freedom should go both ways, Freedom

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"the DRM Restriction crosses the line between, software freedom and telling the programmers what the can and can't program"

I am not a lawyer, but as I understand it the DRM clause is just meant to take any covered software out of the legal definition of "t

Has this any implications for the Linux kernel?

I'd be interested to see if this might result in things like zfs being ported natively to the Linux kernel (rather than the current FUSE-based solution).

But then... if Sun go for GPLv3, I'm not certain that can coexist within the same kernel as a bunch of GPLv2 code.

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I'd be interested to see if this might result in things like zfs being ported natively to the Linux kernel (rather than the current FUSE-based solution).

Well, based on TFA, that won't happen: :

Using GPLv3 for Solaris likely would preclude Linux programm

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There's actually quite a lot of code in linux licensed under "GPLv2 or later", so Solaris will be able to benefit from some of the code in Linux, but not view-versa.

Java as a first class citzen on FOSS Desktops

I wonder,

Now that Java is OpenSource, and that it has bindings to both GTK (as in SWT) and QT (as in Jambi), will we see it on more desktop applications? I'm asking because I feel that Java is a better choice than C#, because of its extensive libraries and frameworks.

Also, Java is already a major player on the server side, if KDE and Gnome had a better integration with it than Windows... it would be a major push for the adoption of a FOSS Desktop...

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I hate Java. But I think that for linux it would be a necessary evil. And Sun's efforts to open source it are a winning step towards a huge market.
The ONLY thing required is that one of the mainstream distros begins to include it by default. I am predict

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Well,

Actually I enjoy Java quite a bit. Things like SpringFramework, WebWork and Hibernate take a lot of weight from the developer's back, and are very flexible... Java has a really nice environment for Web development.

Swing on the other hand is a major PI

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Only parts of Java has been open sourced yet. The remaining parts will be released in the first quarter of this year they say at Sun. I believe them, but I won't go out dancing in the streets until I have all the code with a nice license on it in my hands.

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Now that Java is OpenSource ... will we see it on more desktop applications?

I was going to respond to your post with my Java(TM) capable browser. I waited a minute or so for it to start, but the web page was too big and it ran out of memory. So I went

My user concerns

As an end-user, I'm rather interested to see the first Java packages included in Linux distros... well maybe there already is, but not in the distro I use. I want to see an RPM added to the respositories and the horrible GNU/Java implementation removed forever.

GPL2 vs GPL3

The dispute really centres over the emotive and overtly political language in which the first ever version of GPLv3 was written. It's not possible to eliminate politics altogether, because software licencing is a political issue; but there's a difference

One of the things to do...

when considering GPLv3 for Solaris is to contact the actual authors of key parts of the Linux kernel that they would be interested in incorporating and sound out their willingness to license those parts under v3.

The Linux kernel as a whole is indeed copyright by many people, some of whom are not keen on GPLv3, but what is critical for Solaris is not the WHOLE kernel but the parts which are in fact better than Solaris. The obvious ones are drivers and file system support, but I imagine there are others as well. The point, however, is that Solaris doesn't NEED all of the Linux kernel code. They could only benefit from a few key parts, and the authors of those parts might be convinced to see things differently than Linus and company.

If I were Sun, what I would be doing is a) waiting for the final GPLv3 while being very active in the process of developing the license b) quietly contacting key individual authors of parts of the Linux kernel that would benefit Solaris, sounding out their attitude to see how much code would be available if they did make the switch, and c) putting an in-house team on a Linux vs. Solaris evaluation to determine the major lacks of Solaris and how they might be addressed internally, assuming no Linux code will be usable.

The Free Software Foundation's support is not necessarily a guarantee of OS kernel success (*cough*HURD*cough*) but if all FSF code goes GPLv3 and Solaris follows suit being the new favorite development platform of the GNU toolchain will have to have some benefits.

I'd say the biggest key for Solaris is "what can GPLv3 do for me?" And the biggest immediate factor there is how many of the current Linux kernel authors with desirable code would be willing to consider accommodating Sun by releasing under GPLv3. If they won't, then the question becomes how many new developers could they attract, and that's a much harder question to answer.

Will harm mobile developers

Most of the games and software for mobile phones runs on JavaME. To protect software there are DRM features but surely if Java goes GPLv3 support for these DRM functions will have to cease.

GPLv3 makes sense for Java, not for Solaris

It seems to me that by far the largest benefit to Sun from GPL'ing Solaris would be to gain the ability to import driver code from Linux. They can't do that since Linux is forced to stay at version 2 because of its lack of an "or later" clause or a clear

Novell

If Sun changes Java's license to GPL3, will Novell be able to distribute java?

v2/v3 incompatibility?

Using GPLv3 for Solaris likely would preclude Linux programmers from using Solaris software, and vice-versa.

Is there any evidence that GPLv3 and GPLv2 licenses are going to be incompatible with one another? I don't see any reason why they should be. In t

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This seems nothing more than a publicity stunt by Sun in order to gain attention and hopefully get some more people using their OS.

Who cares. Whatever it is, it is a very good thing.

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Mac OSX tiger has most GNU software - gcc g++ emacs make wget nano.. etc. Does that make it a GNU distribution with mach microkernel?

The way you put it: no. gcc, emacs, nano, wget also run under windows. It's the usage of the GNU-tools for the basic system functionality that makes a system a GNU-system.

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My definition of a GNU system would be one that used GNU coreutils out of the box. gcc, emacs, wget, nano etc are add-ons above the basic system.

Free Software Isn't As Important As You Think

"So what is it about the GPL that makes developers want to use it? I can't speak for others, but in my own case it boils down to this: in 1985, when I first came across the GPL, I thought about the matter and decided that the inheritance of my life-time so

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[...] I don't see why this is such a big draw for most developers.

This is probably because often, you just want to make a small change in a program to make it solve the problem at hand. With Free Software, this is relatively easy. With proprietary softw