Re: Netatalk and OpenSSL licencing
On 13-8-2004 06:33, "Josh Triplett" <josh.trip@verizon.net> wrote:
>> What annoys me propably most is that this simple licence is non-GPL
>> compatible, and any software written with this licence is not allowed to be
>> linked against GPL-software:
>> This code may be freely modified, copied and distributed, so
>> long as no fee is charged for it.
>> (question 3, http://www.gnu.org/cgi-bin/license-quiz.cgi)
>
> That license is not only non-GPL-compatible, it is entirely non-free (by
> the DFSG, the OSD, and the FSF's criteria), so the GPL is doing its job
> there.
You are correct. However, I strongly have the impression that still most
people more or less think the same about it.
> First of all, the FSF does not push any idea of "open software", and
> many members of the FSF will probably be quite vocal about that. :) See
> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html .
That is a very good read. Thank you!
For me, I did not make a distinction between "open source" and "free"
software. All I wanted is contribute whatever I do back to the community.
Likely, this is a moral aberration I got by being employed as scientist.
I distinctly did not realize the difference, and only recently got shocked
to notice that this not only existed, but it prevented me from integrating
two pieces of open source software and give that back to the community.
Especially the latter was shocking to me: I want to publish; give whatever
is done back to the community. I want that to be possible for software I
care about as well.
I currently realize that whoever makes licences must do so extremely
careful. After all, all I ever read what that line "This code may be freely
modified, copied and distributed", more or less ignoring the rest.
I blame the GPL for not making it clearer in the first place what
restrictions come with it, but instead push people away from the LGPL to the
GPL. Just see the caption at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html
They make the advantage clear (that's good), but they don't make the
disadvantage clear enough.
I blame the authors of the OpenSSL or whatever BSD-style licence as well. If
they were ignorant of the fact that incompatibilities could exist, I blame
them for making a licence without knowing what they're doing. If instead,
they did know what they're doing, I blame them for making the
incompatibilities by forcing the acknowledgements to be so prominent.
Despite that, according to the GPL, it is still possible (and even
obligatory) to get acknowledgement in the code.
>> So by explictly designing GPL code to link against non-GPL code, the author
>> *implicitly* gives the exception that the program may indeed be linked to
>> this particular non-GPL code.
>
> The "implicit exception" has indeed been argued in the past. However,
> as that FAQ entry points out, it is better to make an explicit
> exception; otherwise, people who copy, modify, and distribute your
> software may be unable to know whether they are in violation of the
> license or not.
>
> Furthermore, how does that handle the case when the authors were not the
> ones to add the OpenSSL linkage (or not all of the authors were)? You
> are suggesting that the ability to link with GPL-incompatible code would
> only be usable by the authors (which is already the case).
You are right -- as I understand now, the author who wrote the link with
OpenSSL into netatalk was wrong to redistribute that additional code back to
the community. At least, if the reasoning of the FSF is followed in detail.
Though this particular author has, by just doing it, granted an implicit
exception to the GPL. However, he could only have done so by asking all
previous authors of the netatalk software he built upon. I'm convinced he
(or she) never asked.
Regards,
Freek
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