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Release for Linux, or why I don't like GPL zealots

Started by January 04, 2005 10:20 PM
225 comments, last by Yann L 19 years, 8 months ago
Quote: Original post by CoffeeMug
So the whole loss of sanity due to autotools, managing makefiles, and C-x C-u C-e wait 372ms M-s C-r M-t business didn't bother you? [smile]

nope =)

But then again, I'm quite comfy around emacs odd key-bindings and I don't use autotools (for my own applications anyway)
-LuctusIn the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move - Douglas Adams
Quote: Original post by Oluseyi
Quote: Original post by bani
whats interesting is that microsoft's eula forbids the obverse, which is using visual c to develop anything gpl.
FUD, or, more accurately, bullshit.

Carry on.


oops, it wasnt visual c, it was one of their SDKs.

full text of the eula is here.

this EULA is mentioned in a department of defense study.
[=^_^=]http://bani.anime.net/etpro/ - ETPro websitehttp://bani.anime.net/banimod/forums/ - ETPro discussion forums
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Quote: Original post by bani
full text of the eula is here.

this EULA is mentioned in a department of defense study.


Did I miss how that relates to anything but the Microsoft program itself? Because for your argument to hold up, I must have...
www.aidanwalsh(.net)(.info)
Quote: Original post by doodle_sketch
Quote: Original post by bani
full text of the eula is here.

this EULA is mentioned in a department of defense study.


Did I miss how that relates to anything but the Microsoft program itself? Because for your argument to hold up, I must have...


yes, you did. it relates to building and distributing software that used microsoft SDKs. if you dont build software using microsft SDKs then you wont have anything to worry about. i've done it before.

the DoD study is a pretty good summary of the licenses (including microsoft's) in general.
[=^_^=]http://bani.anime.net/etpro/ - ETPro websitehttp://bani.anime.net/banimod/forums/ - ETPro discussion forums
Yann, since you are going to keep the sources closed I wonder what does it entail for the linux users to install and use your program?
Quote: Original post by bani
Quote: Original post by doodle_sketch
Quote: Original post by bani
full text of the eula is here.

this EULA is mentioned in a department of defense study.


Did I miss how that relates to anything but the Microsoft program itself? Because for your argument to hold up, I must have...


yes, you did. it relates to building and distributing software that used microsoft SDKs. if you dont build software using microsft SDKs then you wont have anything to worry about. i've done it before.

the DoD study is a pretty good summary of the licenses (including microsoft's) in general.


Actually, all that license really says is that you cannot distribute any part of the SDK that the license refers to, and no future derivative work may distribute it either.

They also have this neato line
Quote:
Recipient may not use the Software in a live operating environment with data that has not been sufficiently backed up.

haha, that one is funny :)
Lucas Henekswww.ionforge.com
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Quote: Original post by bani
oops, it wasnt visual c, it was one of their SDKs.

full text of the eula is here.
Let's do some annotated reading.
Quote: From the linked EULA
(c) Open Source. Recipients license rights to the Software are conditioned upon Recipient (i) not distributing such Software, in whole or in part, in conjunction with Potentially Viral Software (as defined below); and (ii) not using Potentially Viral Software (e.g. tools) to develop Recipient software which includes the Software, in whole or in part.
This doesn't say that you can't develop GPL software with the SDK - licensing your own code to be released under GPL. It says that you can't develop software that incorporates GPL'd code or is developed with GPL'd tools when incorporating the Software (ie, the SDK). Now why would they say that?

Quote: For purposes of the foregoing, "Potentially Viral Software" means software which is licensed pursuant to terms that: (x) create, or purport to create, obligations for Microsoft with respect to the Software or (y) grant, or purport to grant, to any third party any rights to or immunities under Microsofts intellectual property or proprietary rights in the Software.
Ah. Viral licenses such as the GPL would, supposedly, mandate that not only your source code be released, but that the source to the Software being provided by Microsoft - the SDK - be released as well, and that all released code would fall under the terms of the GPL. Which is moronic as all hell.

Quote: By way of example but not limitation of the foregoing, Recipient shall not distribute the Software, in whole or in part, in conjunction with any Publicly Available Software. "Publicly Available Software" means each of (i) any software that contains, or is derived in any manner (in whole or in part) from, any software that is distributed as free software, open source software (e.g. Linux) or similar licensing or distribution models; and (ii) any software that requires as a condition of use, modification and/or distribution of such software that other software distributed with such software (A) be disclosed or distributed in source code form; (B) be licensed for the purpose of making derivative works; or (C) be redistributable at no charge.
Further explication to make perfectly clear why these rights are explicitly reserved/not granted to the user (You): the requirements under these viral licenses place responsibility upon code authors that they have not explicitly agreed to. That shouldn't even be legal.

Quote: Publicly Available Software includes, without limitation, software licensed or distributed under any of the following licenses or distribution models, or licenses or distribution models similar to any of the following: (A) GNUs General Public License (GPL) or Lesser/Library GPL (LGPL), (B) The Artistic License (e.g., PERL), (C) the Mozilla Public License, (D) the Netscape Public License, (E) the Sun Community Source License (SCSL), and (F) the Sun Industry Standards License (SISL).
And, just in case you're not smart enough to determine what kinds of licenses specifically are being referred to, here's a couple examples.

That's still a far cry from "forbids you to develop GPL software." Allow me to reiterate: bullshit. Ordinarily, I wouldn't engage in this, but this sort of mis- and disinformation is a disservice to software developers everywhere, and is dishonest in the extreme. Worst of all, it is hypocritical, as it adopts the very techniques that Microsoft has been so demonized among GPL fanatics and their ilk for: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt predicated on misinterpretation and outright falsehood.

For shame.
Quote: Original post by Oluseyi
Quote: Original post by bani
oops, it wasnt visual c, it was one of their SDKs.

full text of the eula is here.
Let's do some annotated reading.
Quote: From the linked EULA
(c) Open Source. Recipients license rights to the Software are conditioned upon Recipient (i) not distributing such Software, in whole or in part, in conjunction with Potentially Viral Software (as defined below); and (ii) not using Potentially Viral Software (e.g. tools) to develop Recipient software which includes the Software, in whole or in part.
This doesn't say that you can't develop GPL software with the SDK - licensing your own code to be released under GPL. It says that you can't develop software that incorporates GPL'd code or is developed with GPL'd tools when incorporating the Software (ie, the SDK). Now why would they say that?

Quote: For purposes of the foregoing, "Potentially Viral Software" means software which is licensed pursuant to terms that: (x) create, or purport to create, obligations for Microsoft with respect to the Software or (y) grant, or purport to grant, to any third party any rights to or immunities under Microsofts intellectual property or proprietary rights in the Software.
Ah. Viral licenses such as the GPL would, supposedly, mandate that not only your source code be released, but that the source to the Software being provided by Microsoft - the SDK - be released as well, and that all released code would fall under the terms of the GPL. Which is moronic as all hell.

Quote: By way of example but not limitation of the foregoing, Recipient shall not distribute the Software, in whole or in part, in conjunction with any Publicly Available Software. "Publicly Available Software" means each of (i) any software that contains, or is derived in any manner (in whole or in part) from, any software that is distributed as free software, open source software (e.g. Linux) or similar licensing or distribution models; and (ii) any software that requires as a condition of use, modification and/or distribution of such software that other software distributed with such software (A) be disclosed or distributed in source code form; (B) be licensed for the purpose of making derivative works; or (C) be redistributable at no charge.
Further explication to make perfectly clear why these rights are explicitly reserved/not granted to the user (You): the requirements under these viral licenses place responsibility upon code authors that they have not explicitly agreed to. That shouldn't even be legal.

Quote: Publicly Available Software includes, without limitation, software licensed or distributed under any of the following licenses or distribution models, or licenses or distribution models similar to any of the following: (A) GNUs General Public License (GPL) or Lesser/Library GPL (LGPL), (B) The Artistic License (e.g., PERL), (C) the Mozilla Public License, (D) the Netscape Public License, (E) the Sun Community Source License (SCSL), and (F) the Sun Industry Standards License (SISL).
And, just in case you're not smart enough to determine what kinds of licenses specifically are being referred to, here's a couple examples.

That's still a far cry from "forbids you to develop GPL software." Allow me to reiterate: bullshit. Ordinarily, I wouldn't engage in this, but this sort of mis- and disinformation is a disservice to software developers everywhere, and is dishonest in the extreme. Worst of all, it is hypocritical, as it adopts the very techniques that Microsoft has been so demonized among GPL fanatics and their ilk for: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt predicated on misinterpretation and outright falsehood.

For shame.


This seems to be a newer one, It's not in my msvs 2003 eula (quite early), good idea on their part though. My DDK does have a similar one though.
I don't want to "push" you or anything but I'm sure many of us would really like to see an alpha version of the IDE (i.e. where it's at now) - as long as it doesn't trash our GTK+ as it did to yours (IIRC).
It doesn't do anything to GTK, but as it is currently, it requires GTK 2.6, which many people won't (yet) have. We can simply add the precompiled libs to the pack, but this can lead to weird problems, if older versions of some .so libs are already loaded and in use. We have to fix that before releasing a demo, because I don't want to force people to screw around with their Gnome installation.

Anyway, we're trying our best to get out a demo, but we (especially Alex) have very limited time currently, due to negotiations with a highly important customer. So the IDE will probably have to wait until the end of this month. I'll post a new thread about it as soon as we get something out.

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