Re: Fedora 12 x86 DVD images
On Nov 24, 2009, Jesse Keating jkeat...@redhat.com wrote: Yes, we may rename the Live images to i386. If we're going to rename directories to match base arches... How about using “x86_32”? -- Alexandre Oliva, freedom fighterhttp://FSFLA.org/~lxoliva/ You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Gandhi Be Free! -- http://FSFLA.org/ FSF Latin America board member Free Software Evangelist Red Hat Brazil Compiler Engineer -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: GCC var-tracking-assignments: testing and bug reports appreciated
On Sep 11, 2009, John Reiser jrei...@bitwagon.com wrote: Not fast enough to avoid a two-day slip in rawhide kernels. ?!? A work-around that enabled a successful kernel build was offered within minutes. A patch that fixed the bug was offered within hours. A GCC with the fix was available about half a day after the initial bug report, and the kernel built with the newer GCC (but without newer debug info) was already available at that point. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=521322 This bug was opened before the new GCC. Exactly *one* kernel build failed because of the new GCC feature. I can't find any evidence that this bug is in any way related with VTA or with the new GCC. So how do you get from “GCC debug info was fixed, with one kernel build and a few hours as casualty” to “two-day slip in rawhide kernels”? -- Alexandre Oliva, freedom fighterhttp://FSFLA.org/~lxoliva/ You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Gandhi Be Free! -- http://FSFLA.org/ FSF Latin America board member Free Software Evangelist Red Hat Brazil Compiler Engineer -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: GCC var-tracking-assignments: testing and bug reports appreciated
On Sep 10, 2009, Josh Boyer jwbo...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Sep 09, 2009 at 06:35:09AM -0400, Josh Boyer wrote: On Tue, Sep 08, 2009 at 10:46:26PM -0300, Alexandre Oliva wrote: Jakub built gcc-4.4.1-10 earlier today, with a new feature that generates much better debug information in optimized programs. The feature has been under development for a couple of years, and it's recently been accepted into GCC, for GCC 4.5. We've backported it for Fedora 12. Why are you backporting something like this from a non-released compiler into F12 _after_ Alpha and particularly _after_ the mass rebuild? No response? None? It helps to Cc: me. There are hundreds of mailing lists I'm in that I don't open every day ;_) As Jakub said, this was planned to go in before. The merge into Fedora was delayed because there was a possibility of upstream rejection, based on opinions voiced some 1 or 2 years ago, when this work was still in early planning and development stages. Indeed, formal acceptance took much longer than anticipated, which is why this hit Fedora rawhide so late in the game. I can surely understand the feeling that, as a feature, it should have respected the feature freeze deadlines. But this feature also happens to be a major bug fix, for debug information in optimized programs way too often used to be incorrect and incomplete, to the point of being pretty much a show-stopper for systemtap and other monitoring, inspection and debugging tools that rely on debug information. As such, I apologize for the delays in getting buy-in from upstream and completing the work needed to get it in, and ask you to please tolerate the delays and the changes, let it into Fedora 12, and enjoy the better-quality debug information while debugging problems in time for Fedora 12 ;-) Thanks, -- Alexandre Oliva, freedom fighterhttp://FSFLA.org/~lxoliva/ You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Gandhi Be Free! -- http://FSFLA.org/ FSF Latin America board member Free Software Evangelist Red Hat Brazil Compiler Engineer -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: GCC var-tracking-assignments: testing and bug reports appreciated
On Sep 10, 2009, Michel Alexandre Salim michael.silva...@gmail.com wrote: This bug affects LLVM on ppc: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=522316 I've Cc:ed you on it. Thanks, I'm on it. BTW, I wanted to mention that in the e-mail that started this thread, but failed. You all feel free to get in touch with me on IRC (my nick is lxo) to bring bug reports along these lines to my attention. E-mail is very slow in this regard, as in, I fetch new mail every several hours. I could have started working on this last night, but since I hadn't got notice of it yet, I ended up working on something else that was not quite as urgent ;-( Thanks, -- Alexandre Oliva, freedom fighterhttp://FSFLA.org/~lxoliva/ You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Gandhi Be Free! -- http://FSFLA.org/ FSF Latin America board member Free Software Evangelist Red Hat Brazil Compiler Engineer -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
GCC var-tracking-assignments: testing and bug reports appreciated
Jakub built gcc-4.4.1-10 earlier today, with a new feature that generates much better debug information in optimized programs. The feature has been under development for a couple of years, and it's recently been accepted into GCC, for GCC 4.5. We've backported it for Fedora 12. I'd appreciate if you Cc: me on any bug reports you hit that might be related with this new feature (GCC internal compiler errors, verify_ssa failures, crashes, etc). It's very important that any such bugs you run into be reported quickly: I'm going to be around this week, full time, working on this, but my network connectivity will be poor at best next week. In case you suspect a problem might be caused by this new feature, instead of say untagging the GCC build, please instead install a temporary work-around in your package to compile with the flag -fno-var-tracking-assignments. If it compiles with this flag, the you know I'm the culprit. Mentioning the successful use of this work around in the bug report may help prioritize the resolution of bugs. If you follow this path, I suggest also creating a bug report on your package, blocked on the resolution of the GCC bug, so that, once the GCC bug is fixed, you're reminded to remove the work-around. Thanks in advance for your cooperation, -- Alexandre Oliva, freedom fighterhttp://FSFLA.org/~lxoliva/ You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Gandhi Be Free! -- http://FSFLA.org/ FSF Latin America board member Free Software Evangelist Red Hat Brazil Compiler Engineer -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Kernel-firmware package and Anaconda.
On Apr 1, 2009, Bram_Gro bram_...@lavabit.com wrote: For those (like me) who wish to avoid proprietary firmware, they have been moved since Fedora 10 into a single package called kernel-firmware. Can I uncheck this kernel-firmware package during the custom installation process within Anaconda, or is this done otherwise? No, the kernel packages depend on kernel-firmware, and the kernel package itself contains non-Free firmware and microcode. Besides, both kernel and kernel-firmware contain Free Software too, which you presumably wouldn't want to remove. Your best bet to avoid non-Free Software from Fedora is probably to resort to Freed-ora Linux-libre builds, available from http://linux-libre.fsfla.org/, and to exclude *-firmware and microcode_ctl from the Fedora repositories. -- Alexandre Oliva, freedom fighterhttp://FSFLA.org/~lxoliva/ You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Gandhi Be Free! -- http://FSFLA.org/ FSF Latin America board member Free Software Evangelist Red Hat Brazil Compiler Engineer -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
Re: [Fedora-legal-list] Linux firmware
On May 6, 2009, Tom \spot\ Callaway tcall...@redhat.com wrote: On 05/05/2009 09:29 AM, Alexandre Oliva wrote: Hopefully the authors got any permission needed from nVidia. But there's no evidence of that in the patch, and I don't know for a fact that they did. Do you? Yes. NVIDIA is aware of their usage. Being aware is not quite the same as granting permission for it. Like, a patent holder might be aware of usage of some of their patents, but wait a long time before lauching a patent attack, so that it becomes more difficult for the defendant to stop using the technology. I can see the same strategy would be effective with copyrights. Red Hat Legal advises that there is no concern here. Could we perhaps get an explicit license from nVidia, and put it in the patch so that people are aware that there's no legal trap being set? Thanks, -- Alexandre Oliva, freedom fighterhttp://FSFLA.org/~lxoliva/ You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Gandhi Be Free! -- http://FSFLA.org/ FSF Latin America board member Free Software Evangelist Red Hat Brazil Compiler Engineer ___ Fedora-legal-list mailing list Fedora-legal-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-legal-list
Re: [Fedora-legal-list] Linux firmware
On May 5, 2009, Tom \spot\ Callaway tcall...@redhat.com wrote: On 05/04/2009 10:23 PM, Alexandre Oliva wrote: but it is probably something that we could try to address with Broadcom and the owners of the code space, (specifically, Yaniv Rosner yan...@broadcom.com). Have you reached out to him about your concerns? Nope. Perhaps you should do that as the logical next step. That would make sense if people in general could set apart message from messenger. In my experience, few people do :-( My reasoning is that it would be better for someone who's less likely to evoke a hostile reaction. Because of some of my beliefs, people tend to assume I'm saying or writing things I'm not, assume everything I do is about one particular issue, and react explosively to their faulty assumptions. I've seen that stuff quite recently ;-) So, no, I'm not going to spoil that possibility by trying to do it myself. I've already got a fix for the problem that I'm reasonably happy with. Fixing it upstream, where such fixes are not wanted, is your preference, not mine, so I'll leave that for you to pursue. Thanks, -- Alexandre Oliva, freedom fighterhttp://FSFLA.org/~lxoliva/ You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Gandhi Be Free! -- http://FSFLA.org/ FSF Latin America board member Free Software Evangelist Red Hat Brazil Compiler Engineer ___ Fedora-legal-list mailing list Fedora-legal-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-legal-list
Re: [Fedora-legal-list] Linux firmware
On Apr 30, 2009, Tom \spot\ Callaway tcall...@redhat.com wrote: It took you several emails to accomplish this, and I just don't have enough time to chase ghost issues where your personal stance on licensing differs from Fedora's. I have a high degree of confidence at this point that you understand the definitions of Fedora licensing policies. I'm pretty sure the definition of Fedora licensing policies does not make room for blatant copyright violation, distributing code under GPL+restrictions that is derived from GPL code. And, again, the GPL violation is not firmware, it's driver code (stuff that runs on the primary CPU, per Fedora's definition), in case it isn't clear yet. When information is presented calmly, clearly, and without rhetoric, I continue to look into it. Thank you. I'd appreciate your pointing out where you saw this thing you refer to as rhetoric. If any of us two is guilty of jumping to conclusions, abusing rhetoric and aggressive tone, it's not me. You thought I was going back to an old discussion, and overreacted. Apologies accepted :-) but please try not to do that again. I know I've failed that myself in the past, but it is possible to change. Don't react to the ghosts. To assert that I am either failing, or at risk of failing in that task is rather insulting, especially given a lack of evidence in that area. The “I'm done with it” in response to the specific information about the problem was quite a shocking confession of your unwillingness to deal with this particular copyright infringment issue. Do you understand the consequences of infringing copyrights of code licensed under the GPLv2, such as Linux? Are you comfortable with Fedora's wilfull loss of its license to distribute Linux, and its inducement for third parties that redistribute Fedora to lose theirs? Are you comfortable with the idea of having to beg thousands of developers for a new license? And having all of our mirrors and redistributors do the same before they can be legal redistributors again? It is also worth considering that the Linux kernel, like X.org and texlive, is a rather special case. Neither X.org nor texlive are under the GPL. Our best recourse is to work with the upstream to address these issues. Progress continues to be made in this area. Good. I look forward to seeing progress in rejecting code whose copyright holders derived it from Linux, but refuse to offer it under terms that are compatible with the licensing terms of Linux, rather than becoming their hostages and supporting their attack on our communities and our values. Best, -- Alexandre Oliva, freedom fighterhttp://FSFLA.org/~lxoliva/ You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Gandhi Be Free! -- http://FSFLA.org/ FSF Latin America board member Free Software Evangelist Red Hat Brazil Compiler Engineer ___ Fedora-legal-list mailing list Fedora-legal-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-legal-list
Re: [Fedora-legal-list] Linux firmware
On May 4, 2009, Tom \spot\ Callaway tcall...@redhat.com wrote: Is this what you're talking about? (And if so, why couldn't you just *#$ing say so?) Message-ID: orfxfsndp8@oliva.athome.lsd.ic.unicamp.br [...] it's a driver under a license that's not even compatible with GPLv2? Message-ID: or4ow7nzrj@oliva.athome.lsd.ic.unicamp.br This is about [...] (ii) combining *driver* (rather than firmware) code that's under GPL-incompatible terms with the GPLed code in the rest of the kernel. Message-ID: orvdonkv36@oliva.athome.lsd.ic.unicamp.br The one situation in which there are derived works is that the driver B is derived from Linux, but then it sets forth an additional restriction, which is incompatible with the GPL that governs the creation and distribution of derived works. Message-ID: or7i12sp6p@free.oliva.athome.lsd.ic.unicamp.br 1. combining GPLed Linux code with *driver* (!= firmware) code derived from GPLed code that adds incompatible restrictions = GPL violation, enforceable by *any* Linux copyright holder If it is, this isn't a copyright violation. Distributing this piece of code derived from GPLed code under any license other than the GPL is not in compliance with the conditions set forth in the GPL for the creation and distribution of derived works. As such, the distribution is unauthorized, and therefore copyright infringement. It's very strange, and I could see the argument that it makes that piece of code non-free, I don't know whether it's non-Free, but that's besides the point. but it is probably something that we could try to address with Broadcom and the owners of the code space, (specifically, Yaniv Rosner yan...@broadcom.com). Have you reached out to him about your concerns? Nope. See how useful specific details are? :/ Not really. All I see is how little of what I wrote in this thread you actually paid attention to before issuing your opinions :-( The specific details were in the first post. grep is not that hard to use. Heck, even a web search for the licensing terms I quoted would have found all the specific details that, honestly, I was baffled you weren't aware of. So much for my trying to anonimize the guilty to avoid undesirable reaction. Thanks (not) for pretty much forcing me to change that, just to feed your... What is it? Pride? Laziness? Distrust? :-( -- Alexandre Oliva, freedom fighterhttp://FSFLA.org/~lxoliva/ You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Gandhi Be Free! -- http://FSFLA.org/ FSF Latin America board member Free Software Evangelist Red Hat Brazil Compiler Engineer ___ Fedora-legal-list mailing list Fedora-legal-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-legal-list
Re: [Fedora-legal-list] Linux firmware
On Apr 26, 2009, Tom \spot\ Callaway tcall...@redhat.com wrote: If we find these non-redistributable firmware bits anywhere, we'd remove them. What if one piece of firmware is licensed under: * This file contains firmware data derived from proprietary unpublished * source code, [...] * * Permission is hereby granted for the distribution of this firmware data * in hexadecimal or equivalent format, provided this copyright notice is * accompanying it. and another piece of code, copyrighted by the same party, says: * [...] this software is licensed to you * under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 [...] * * Notwithstanding the above, under no circumstances may you combine this * software in any way with any other $PARTY software provided under a * license other than the GPL, without $PARTY's express prior written * consent. Which of the two should be taken out so that the other can be redistributable? Perhaps the latter, given that it's a driver under a license that's not even compatible with GPLv2? -- Alexandre Oliva, freedom fighterhttp://FSFLA.org/~lxoliva/ You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Gandhi Be Free! -- http://FSFLA.org/ FSF Latin America board member Free Software Evangelist Red Hat Brazil Compiler Engineer ___ Fedora-legal-list mailing list Fedora-legal-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-legal-list
Re: [Fedora-legal-list] Linux firmware
On Apr 29, 2009, Tom \spot\ Callaway tcall...@redhat.com wrote: On 04/29/2009 03:04 AM, Alexandre Oliva wrote: Which of the two should be taken out so that the other can be redistributable? Perhaps the latter, given that it's a driver under a license that's not even compatible with GPLv2? It depends on whether you consider firmware as software, and currently, in Fedora, we do not. You can't change what a copyright holder meant in its license by twisting the meanings of the words it chose to fit what you want them to mean. That's not how copyright works. The copyright holder didn't permit the combination of the second piece of code (which, being driver code rather than firmware, is software even under your standards) with the other “derived from proprietary unpublished source code” (does anyone use “source code” for anything other than software, or is this enough of a give-away?) Please don't start this up again, I have minimal patience for the same tired arguments again and again. That you're trying to turn this into the same old argument doesn't make it so. It's a different issue. This has nothing to do with mere aggregation of firmware here, or with whether firmware is software or not. This is about (i) combining two pieces of works of authorship in a way that doesn't comply with the licenses provided by the copyright holder, none of which are under the GPL, and (ii) combining *driver* (rather than firmware) code that's under GPL-incompatible terms with the GPLed code in the rest of the kernel. -- Alexandre Oliva, freedom fighterhttp://FSFLA.org/~lxoliva/ You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Gandhi Be Free! -- http://FSFLA.org/ FSF Latin America board member Free Software Evangelist Red Hat Brazil Compiler Engineer ___ Fedora-legal-list mailing list Fedora-legal-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-legal-list
Re: [Fedora-legal-list] Linux firmware
On Apr 29, 2009, Tom \spot\ Callaway tcall...@redhat.com wrote: On 04/29/2009 01:19 PM, Alexandre Oliva wrote: The copyright holder didn't permit the combination of the second piece of code (which, being driver code rather than firmware, is software even under your standards) with the other “derived from proprietary unpublished source code” Given that the copyright holder on BOTH works is the same, unless you have it in writing from the copyright holder that they do not permit this combination, I don't draw the same conclusion as you. I don't understand your reasoning. Say I create two works A and B. I publish A under a permissive license. I publish B under a license that prohibits its combination with A. Per your reasoning, you're entitled to publish a combination of A and B. What gives you the idea that you are? -- Alexandre Oliva, freedom fighterhttp://FSFLA.org/~lxoliva/ You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Gandhi Be Free! -- http://FSFLA.org/ FSF Latin America board member Free Software Evangelist Red Hat Brazil Compiler Engineer ___ Fedora-legal-list mailing list Fedora-legal-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-legal-list
Re: [Fedora-legal-list] Linux firmware
On Apr 29, 2009, Tom \spot\ Callaway tcall...@redhat.com wrote: On 04/29/2009 03:06 PM, Alexandre Oliva wrote: Say I create two works A and B. I publish A under a permissive license. I publish B under a license that prohibits its combination with A. Per your reasoning, you're entitled to publish a combination of A and B. If you create work A that is dependent on work B (which you also created) False assumption. We're talking about copyright notices in two separate drivers, one unrelated with the other. Even if the drivers were somehow related, I'm pretty sure the driver B is not derived from the firmware in driver A. The one situation in which there are derived works is that the driver B is derived from Linux, but then it sets forth an additional restriction, which is incompatible with the GPL that governs the creation and distribution of derived works. Keep in mind that we're still talking hypotheticals here. No, we're not. You think I made up those license snippets? I'm talking about two specific network interface driversf grep for the license notices I posted to find them in the Linux 2.6.29 source tree. (The firmware in driver A moved into firmware/ in 2.6.30-pre, but I haven't checked how or even whether the license notices were adjusted) -- Alexandre Oliva, freedom fighterhttp://FSFLA.org/~lxoliva/ You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Gandhi Be Free! -- http://FSFLA.org/ FSF Latin America board member Free Software Evangelist Red Hat Brazil Compiler Engineer ___ Fedora-legal-list mailing list Fedora-legal-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-legal-list
Re: [Fedora-legal-list] Linux firmware
On Apr 29, 2009, Tom \spot\ Callaway tcall...@redhat.com wrote: My psychic powers not withstanding, you really shouldn't make assumptions. As I wrote, I made them based on your opinions. I honestly didn't expect you to go about making strong assertions without having the faintest clue as to what you were discussing. I was honestly under the impression you were pitching a hypothetical scenario, Not enough of a clue that I wrote: What if one piece of firmware is licensed under: (note the present tense *is*, not *was*) and another piece of code, copyrighted by the same party, says: Which of the two should be taken out so that the other can be redistributable? Perhaps the latter, given that it's a driver under a license that's not even compatible with GPLv2? And then, why would I add “[...]” to indicate omission of portions from a hypothetical license? As to the upstream Linux kernel having firmware, yes, it does. What I don't get is why you keep returning to this point. The issue is not about firmware. There are two issues here: 1. combining GPLed Linux code with *driver* (!= firmware) code derived from GPLed code that adds incompatible restrictions = GPL violation, enforceable by *any* Linux copyright holder 2. combining the aforementioned code with code that is explicitly excluded by the GPL-incompatible restriction = copyright infringement enforceable by the very party who set the trap While you keep focusing on the firmware, these two points that have to do with a driver, not with firmware, fly way over the top of your head. It is sad that Linux upstream developers are so sloppy with licenses, but unfortunately not all of the problems they bring about revolve around firmware. I honestly wish they weren't so sloppy, it would make for far less legal risk for all of us. Please take your head out of the sand. If you are the party responsible for looking after this kind of legal problem in Fedora, it's not responsible to declare you're done with this issue just because you don't like another unrelated issue I brought up before, and you pretend it's the same. Now, you don't have to report anything back to the list or to myself, but please don't fail to do your job just because you can't stand me. It's an important job, and the Fedora community counts on you to do it. Thanks, -- Alexandre Oliva, freedom fighterhttp://FSFLA.org/~lxoliva/ You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Gandhi Be Free! -- http://FSFLA.org/ FSF Latin America board member Free Software Evangelist Red Hat Brazil Compiler Engineer ___ Fedora-legal-list mailing list Fedora-legal-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-legal-list
Re: Misunderstanding GPL's terms and conditions as restrictions (and an apology)
First of all, I'd like to apologize to the subscribers of this list for my recent excesses. I'm known to have a hard time resisting the impulse to participate in mailing list debates about software freedom and related issues, but most of the time I manage to keep it under control. Furthermore, I tend to dismiss demands for silence from people who hold an opposing opinion in a debate, for obvious reasons. A couple of weeks ago, a very stressful personal situation came up, and these discussions here about 100% Free distros, Linux-libre, GNU GPL, GNU Operating System, Copyleft, Free Software, its movement and its philosophy, appear to have served as an escape, to keep my mind away from the stressful situation that I could do nothing about. In my state of mind, I was unable to realize I was posting *so* *many* messages, and to tell the legitimate complaints about the volume from the complaints I'm used to dismissing when performing my Free Software advocacy and education work, often at environments not anywhere as friendly as Fedora lists. I apologize to all Fedora users and contributors for my excess and for the harm I caused, and I thank my colleagues who approached me with a friendly tone and helped me see my error. On Jul 30, 2008, Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Alexandre Oliva wrote: On Jul 29, 2008, Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: No, RSAREF couldn't have been modified. It had restricted distribution and everyone had to get their own copy. http://www.nic.funet.fi/index/crypt/cryptography/rpem/ripem/rsaref/ And the point was, and is, that the GPL makes really free software distribution difficult or impossible even when source is available for everything. Having source available is not enough for Software to be Free. It might come as a surprise to some, but it's not even enough for it to be Open Source. Note that it was Stallman himself leading the charge against this free distribution, /me stares at 'free distribution', then at the sentence containing 'restricted distribution' above, and pauses, wondering if it makes sense to even try to understand this stance, compared with the stance directed at the GPL. Later the license on the gmp library was changed to lgpl. AFAIK the reasoning is that, once there is a functionally-equivalent library under a more permissive license, the requirements of the GPL that are relaxed by the LGPL no longer work as an incentive for more software to be released in terms that both respect and defend users' freedoms, because anyone who'd rather not respect or defend them would just use the equivalent library. So we might as well use the LGPL which, should someone want to further improve the library or the software that uses it, ensures one or the other can be offered under the GPL. http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/ReplacingGMPNotes#ReasonsforReplacingGMPastheBignumlibrary Interesting arguments there. #1. is the result of misreading LGPL v2.1, missing its section 6. I know because at some point I'd misread it that way myself, and asked authoritative sources about it :-) #2. and #3. amount to we'd rather rewrite from scratch than adapt GMP [under its current license] so that it does what we want, which probably only makes sense under the influence of mistake #1. Or a fair aomunt of alcohol :-) Best, -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: Misunderstanding GPL's terms and conditions as restrictions
On Jul 29, 2008, Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: No, RSAREF couldn't have been modified. It had restricted distribution and everyone had to get their own copy. http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.misc.discuss/browse_thread/thread/ecc4d4ff360019e/b3dbb6f89144b706?lnk=stq=gnu.misc.discuss+ripem#b3dbb6f89144b706 http://www.nic.funet.fi/index/crypt/cryptography/rpem/ripem/ http://www.nic.funet.fi/index/crypt/cryptography/rpem/ripem/README http://www.nic.funet.fi/index/crypt/cryptography/rpem/ripem/rsaref/ There is indeed a lot of conflicting information out there, and the files above are older than the discussion, but the point stands that some piece of software could only be distributed under the GPL, and by people who had accepted a patent license that prevented them from doing just that, regardless of any copyright license incompatibilities. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: that old GNU/Linux argument
On Jul 29, 2008, Antonio Olivares [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you ever come to the US close to the border with Mexico, I went to San Diego some 9 years ago, to speak at a Usenix conference. Is that the location you're speaking of? I would invite to a couple of beers :) I'd pass the beer, but I'd enjoy the company :-) Thanks, I might seem like a bad person, because I question many things. Questioning is actually a good trait, but some people indeed mistake that for a bad one. Many people do not like me because they say that I am a rebel without a cause. They must have some hidden reason to put such a label on you :-) I am sorry but I happen to like the Linux name very much. At school they call me the Linux Man/Linux Dude. Hey, people do that to me, too. I promptly correct that, and if I get a blank stare, I know I have work to do :-) IT will be very hard to convince them to call me GNU/Linux man. You could try, but even if you don't succeed, it would be very important that *you* used it, because you're a role model to them. I believe Les has a very strong point when he wrote: GNU is a radical political movement. Putting the name next to Linux makes it seem as though Linus himself endorses the movement. But that's rather dishonest, given that Linus has always stayed away from such political zealotry. So I added a +1) and sent it in. So it would be dishonest to retain the name of the system that Linus chose to use along with his kernel because of imaginary concerns that he himself waved away when he said he didn't care if it was called GNU/Linux, but it's honest to rename it to something that makes it harder for the software to achieve its goal, and denies credit to its authors while at that? Double standards? If Linus was concerned about having the GNU name next to Linux, he wouldn't have oked the name. If he was concerned about distancing himself from GNU, he might as well have kept a distance from all that GNU software. That argument doesn't hold even ice, let alone water :-) Similarly I agree with many things from the FSF, I do believe in the ideas that software be free and made available to all. What I do not believe is in the approach that they take. I also do not agree to certain things about the Free and Open Source licenses. We can get back to that one or two months from now :-) Please Cc: me explicitly when you want to start talking about these.a It creates a great deal of confusion that many users on this list and creators of softwares are not excited about dealing with the FSF. The confusion is created mostly by spreaders of FUD. The best way to deal with it is to educate people as to the facts, which ends up exposing and denouncing the FUD. But you have opened my eyes in some ways. While I do not agree with you 100% of the way, I have learned many things that I did not know before :) Good. (part of the) mission accomplished :-) Best, -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: a long rebuttal to the Linux-is-the-engine fallacy
On Jul 29, 2008, Antonio Olivares [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What is wrong with the Fedora kernel? It contains non-Free Software. Is it not released under the GPL, which ensures that the software that is being released is free? Unfortunately, no. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=450492 See all that stuff in the kernel-firmware package in rawhide? Only three of those files are Free Software. All the rest is blatantly non-Free, some of which because the license does not permit modification, all of which because source code is missing, even though some of those files are under the GPL, so distributing them without source is not permitted. And they still haven't moved all of the non-Free stuff into that package, so the license tag of the kernel packages is still wrong in rawhide. And maintainers of some of the drivers that contain this non-Free Software refuse to let it move out, because it would be too inconvenient. And the move is being pushed as a means to enable even more non-Free Software to be added, either directly into the kernel source tarball, or as external dependencies. Great stuff, huh? Again, Doesn't the GPL umbrella protect users from this kind of behavior? It's supposed to, and it takes only one copyright holder to enforce the terms of the GPL against infringers. But it's a situation in which nobody would risk throwing the first rock. Picture one of those movie scenes in which people are pointing guns at each other's heads :-) If this same GPL that is such veneered and loved by the FSF and others and it cannot protect its users, then its useless :( The license can't protect the users, it's just a tool that copyright holders can use to do that if they feel inclined to do so. Many Linux leaders unfortunately don't care about protecting users, so they tolerate this stuff, and even come up with legal excuses to try to defend this abomination. I see where you are coming from, but by looking at the things a little better, I would be shortchanged if I ran your kernel-libre, from the sites that you did not mention by the way I thought I'd mentioned it here already, but maybe it was on fedora-devel only. Anyhow... What do you think you'd miss? I can see the connection, but I do not believe that those kernels there support all the drivers and modules that are not free according to your specifiations. The purpose of kernel-libre is precisely to remove the non-Free Software, so you're right, a couple of dozen rare modules that can't be used in freedom become non-functional and are thus removed from kernel-libre. Give it a try when you get a chance and let me know how it goes. You don't have to believe me any more than you'd believe the anti-freedom FUD spreaders. You can see for yourself. If I ask you to build a true GNU/Linux based on Fedora, you have it and it is called BLAG. *And* BLAG can actually distribute a lot of the Free Software that Fedora prefers to steer clear from. *And* BLAG gives equal mention to Linux And GNU. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: a long rebuttal to the Linux-is-the-engine fallacy
On Jul 29, 2008, Alan Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: *And* BLAG can actually distribute a lot of the Free Software that Fedora prefers to steer clear from. *And* BLAG gives equal mention to Linux And GNU. So why don't you set up blag-list somewhere ? Because (i) I'm not involved in BLAG, BLAG just happens to use linux-libre (that I am involved with) and offer resources to help me maintain it, and (ii) such a list already exists. I don't see ubuntu people trolling this list, so why should you be doing so ? Moo. Who's the bully here, threatening to take things up to my manager who had explicitly approved of my use of the Red Hat e-mail address to promote software freedom even in Fedora lists? Suggestion: how about you demand those who support *your* point of view to shut up, so that I will then not have to keep correcting them to provide Fedora users with at least a balanced view? It says a lot about a person when he demands with such force that only those who oppose his point of view shut up. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Creating an operating system with Linux but without GNU (was: Re: that old GNU/Linux argument)
On Jul 28, 2008, Marko Vojinovic [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In the following paragraphs of that post, I used it to draw a silent parallel to the whole Linux vs GNU/Linux discussion. FWIW, classical/information doesn't make for such a parallel. It's not the classical on top of the information; classical is not a noun, it's an adjective to information. You'd just say classical information and be done with it. That's how the English language works. Now, GNU/Linux or GNU+Linux is GNU on top of Linux, or GNU with Linux. It's not the GNU version of Linux. No such thing exists, although I guess Linux-libre might be thought of as such. To make the point clear, let's try a thought experiment. Imagine that some people are so fed up with these threads that they set out to create an operating system built exclusively out of Free (Libre) and Open Source software, but without any GNU software, to avoid any claims GNUdists might have on it. They're fond of Linux, for they helped write it, so they decide to use it as a kernel. They look around and see there are a number of BSD operating systems out there, so they decide to use the BSD userland to complete the operating system, taking bits and pieces from FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD. It takes some effort to port the lower-level libraries, init scripts and stuff, but eventually the thing boots up, runs a shell and it's announced to the world, with pointers to BSD ports systems and many pre-built ports of applications and servers that most people have come to expect from typical distros. Lucky for them, most of the ports build without change. Now, of course they can use whatever name they like to name the distribution (they picked cRocks), but what term would you use to best describe the operating system on which it is based? a) non-GNU/Linux, because *that* will show those FSF bastards! b) BSD/Linux, because that's what it is: BSD userland with Linux kernel c) cRocks, because that's the (funny) name of the distro, and this makes for a great recursive definition: cRocks is a cRocks-based distribution... d) BSD, because that's where most of the software came from, and it's the most user-visible component e) Linux, because I like this name so much, and I don't care that Linux is just a kernel, a small piece of the puzzle. I just want it to be Linux, dammit, and you BSD people are full of sh*t, shut up and go preach to your own choir, we're only interested in your software, and it's your own fault that you expected us to be reasonable and fair, rather than demanding in your license that we give you the due credit! :-) f) Other, please specify: I do not see how not using GNU/Linux is a social injustice. I disagree. Neither do I, but Alexandre is talking about it in a number of posts. This is conflating two issues that are related, but not the same. One thing is the social injustice promoted by non-Free Software. That's what the Free Software movement, started along with the GNU project, fights, with its ethical, moral and social values and its approach in educating users to value their freedom and reject software that doesn't respect it. Another thing is the name. Linux doesn't promote or endorse this philosophy. GNU does. By naming the GNU system combined with Linux as Linux, you promote only the philosophy that wants to hide the GNU philosophy. You do nothing to address the social injustice that the GNU software was created to oppose, and you instead promote values that accept and often go even as far as endorsing and recommending software that is at the root of this social injustice. OTOH, by referring to the OS as GNU/Linux, you help spread the Free Software philosophy, such that more people become aware of it. At least some of them will identify themselves with these values, which will ultimately help correct the social injustice. Now, maybe there's some resemblance to this to your suggestion about clearly labeling classical information, but I don't see it. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: that old GNU/Linux argument
On Jul 28, 2008, Antonio Olivares [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: RMS is the one requesting this I am. He's not here. He's not even aware I'm doing this here. But you are under his jurisdiction, He is the leader of the FSF/GNU. He is obviously in command. He may very well be in command of something or someone, but he has no authority over me. I just happen to share and promote the goals of the Free Software movement, like he does. I learned a lot from him. But that doesn't put him in command as far as I'm concerned. IT is not my FAULT that they have not succeeded or are not succeeding :( In as much as you help the other side by adopting an unfair name, it is indeed in part your fault. You've become an accomplice of this unfairness. Only Debian and a few others have caved in to those requests. Not even Ubuntu which is based on Debian call themselves Ubuntu GNU/Linux is that an insult to the Debian and GNU camps? Fedora and Ubuntu are the full distro names. These names are fine, they don't demean GNU or promote Linux over GNU. Fedora Linux or Ubuntu Linux would have been unfair. Saying Fedora and Ubuntu are Linux distributions is unfair. And, worse than being unfair, these names don't help correct the social injustice that the Free Software movement and the GNU project were created to correct. Yeah, the kernel could have been named Freax. Then they'd have renamed the GNU operating system to Freaks. Nope, by the arguments they would have named it GNU/Freaks in honor of the GNU guys who deserve the credit too. That's what would have been the right thing to do. But they chose early on not to do the right thing, as history shows. And it's not GNU utilities. It's an operating system. But GNU utilities exist in *BSD camps as well, and the name GNU/*BSD is not used or required. Exactly. Because it's not about the GNU utilities, it's the GNU operating system. GNU utilities are a part of it, but far from all. Linux Distributions include that and they call themselves Linux Distributions not GNU/Linux Distributions with the excepion of Debian GNU/Linux. That a lot of people insist in a mistake doesn't make it right. Debian is far from the only one who uses a fair name for the distros, or to describe it. Heck, there's even a commercial distro in Brazil called Insigne GNU/Linux, by Insigne Free Software do Brasil. Fedora is not free as you have said so yourself. So I am not running a free GNU/Linux distribution. Why should I say Fedora GNU/Linux if it is not pure and it has bad stuff? http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#reserve Yet your buddies still leech off Fedora and get their guidelines off the Fedora site *blinks* What?!? How did you get the impression that any such thing happened? That Rahul, Spot and others worked along with the FSF to come up with those guidelines and to review licenses used in Fedora packages is nothing at all like the FSF just taking Fedora's guidelines. Heck, Fedora even conflicts with those guidelines in important ways, both in policy and package set. Why would anyone say Fedora is a Free distribution when it isn't? -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: Creating an operating system with Linux but without GNU
On Jul 29, 2008, Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you are going to make this effort, why not just ditch the kernel too and re-implement any missing drivers for the *BSDs or OpenSolaris instead? Because that person really really wants to call it Linux, and if Linux wans't even part of it, that would make even less sense. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: Misunderstanding GPL's terms and conditions as restrictions
On Jul 28, 2008, Ed Greshko [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Oh, goodieyet another subject to trash. Can't you people just stick to one lousy thread? Netiquette recommends that the subject be changed when the topic of the conversation does. Knowledge of netiquette is probably the first thing that any wannabe-moderator should display. Posting the same useless and off-topic message to 3 different threads is a clear demonstration of unsuitability. Do you actually expect us to abide by netiquette just because you're not interested in some topics that you probably can't even define? And since you haven't even read the discussion after you kill-filed it, you couldn't even refer to what it is that disturbs you in it any more? What if someone were to demand all people who post say technical questions to use the same subject line, so that it's easier for us Fedora users who're not that interested in technical discussions to filter them out more easily? Would that work for you? I thought so. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: Misunderstanding GPL's terms and conditions as restrictions
On Jul 28, 2008, Antonio Olivares [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What if the bad guys already made a great deal of money and then they declare themselves bankrupt? Then what? What does this have to do with the GPL? They have already taken advantage of the free code available and make their own proprietary programs and not give anything bad. Users who accepted these restrictions were harmed, indeed. Society missed an opportunity to get their contributions, indeed. That's quite unfortunate, indeed, but there's nothing special about the GPL in this situation. This is very true but unfortunate. Businesses and developers need something that will protect them and make the abusers pay. How about users conscious of the importance of freedom? Then abusers wouldn't even make the money in the first place. But to this end people need to learn about freedom, and why they should care about it. That's why it is so important that you and everyone help spread these ideas. Just by using the term GNU/Linux, you'll get several opportunities to talk about it and spread awareness. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: a long rebuttal to the Linux-is-the-engine fallacy
On Jul 28, 2008, Antonio Olivares [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Of course there is. If you want to help, call it GNU/Linux, or GNU+Linux. That's all we ask for. What will I gain if I do that? Do I get a prize? Feeling good and making for a better world, is there a better prize than that? :-) I would do it for you, but not for RMS :( Is that fair? Sure. It doesn't matter whom you do it for. That's not important at all. The important thing is to spread awareness about freedom. I think that the FSF is not being fair to Fedora as well, when the original question was asked, why was not Fedora a free GNU/Linux OS? Why isn't the FSF being fair? Fedora actively refuses to take steps that would make it a 100% Free distribution, and takes steps away from that. How could the FSF recommend and endorse this kind of behavior? gnewSense, BLAG and others did make it Sure, and they do take the steps needed. It's not just empty promises and reluctance and delays and steps back to balance freedom with the alleged needs of users not interested in freedom, it's hard work to put freedom first and try their best to make sure people get what they expect when they go after a 100% Free distro. Today, with Fedora, that's just impossible, and by Fedora's own decisions. Since Fedora is not a truly free GNU/Linux Distribution, why shall I call it Fedora GNU/Linux? Because it *is* GNU/Linux, even though it has non-Free Software added to it. Where is the script that I shall run to make my system a GNU/Linux system? You don't need to run any script to do so, it already is a GNU/Linux system. In order to make it a Linux system, you'd have to run something along the lines of this script (do NOT run it unless you really know what you're doing ;-) #! /bin/sh umount /boot rm -rf / :-) -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: that old GNU/Linux argument
On Jul 28, 2008, Antonio Olivares [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It is a war. Indeed. A war for freedom for all software users. A war that started back in 1983, and whose proponents have suffered many threats and losses, but also several wins. One of the greatest threats these days are people who just don't care about freedom, who just want to use the software and who would love to sacrifice whatever freedom was already achieved for some temporary convenience. People who will fight vigorously against any attempt to educate others about these issues. They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. -- Ben Franklin, freedom fighter A war between the FSF who want the GNU part attached to Linux This is just a smaller battle, not the war. Your choice of words is quite poor and extremely unfair. The FSF is not the only one who makes this request and works for software freedom or on the GNU project, and nobody is requesting to have their own names attached to Linux. Linux is a kernel. All we ask for is to have the name of the operating system created to give people freedom back where it should always have been: on the operating system that people chose to run on top of the kernel Linux. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: that old GNU/Linux argument
On Jul 28, 2008, Alan Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Please take your war elsewhere. The civilians are tired of having to put up with you. ... says a member of the opposing army with a vested interest in having his faction prevail. Hey, you haven't stopped calling the GNU OS Linux, why should I stop trying to fix that error here or anywhere else? Wow, there really are no limits to double standards and false pretexts :-/ -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: Misunderstanding GPL's terms and conditions as restrictions
On Jul 28, 2008, Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Who? Anyone who did something contrary to those terms. And who did, in the presented scenario? One of the four must have, because they did something that you claim to be impossible under the GPL. repost John A. Hacker develops, from scratch, a program that contains two source files: lib.c and main.c. lib.c was developed to be released as a separate library, under the modified (3-clause) BSD license (so these are the headers it carries), whereas main.c was developed to be released under the GPL (so these are the headers it carries). John A. publishes the whole, named gnothing, under the GPLv2+, and never publishes lib.c in any other way. Wanda B. Foreman downloads gnothing, and notices lib.c would be really useful in his project, linstall. She thus modifies gnothing by removing main.c and the build scripts, and then adds lib.c to her version control system, along with changes to the build machinery to have lib.c built and linked into his own program. She then publishes linstall, under the GPLv3+. Ken C. Farsight has access to Wanda's VCS repository, and sees lib.c show up there. It provides just the feature he wanted for his bsdown Free Software program, that he's always distributed under the 3-clause BSD license. He copies lib.c into bsdown and releases a new version of bsdown. Evelyn D. Scent maintains a non-Free fork of bsdown called macrash, so she takes this new release containing lib.c, merges the add-on features she maintains, and publishes a new release, under the usual restrictive EULA, known to be compatible with the 3-clause BSD license. Please ask your lawyer questions such as: - Has any party had his/her license to distribute gnothing or lib.c automatically terminated? - Can John A. Hacker stop any of the other 3 from distributing lib.c in linstall, bsdown, or macrash, under the licenses given or implied by the description above, or even by itself under the modified BSD license, without a copy of the GPL? - Can Evelyn be stopped by any of the other 3 from distributing this version of macrash containing lib.c, under the usual EULA? then let us know how he justifies the answers. /repost You say you don't need to consult a lawyer to answer these questions, but you also refrained from answering them. Please do. Don't be a weasel. If you agree, then you've agreed not to violate section 2b. You've agreed to not violate section 2b when modifying the program and distributing, under the GPL, modified versions of it. Distributed along with the main work, right? No, RSAREF was done by someone else and was available in source with some distribution restrictions because of export restrictions. You had to obtain your own copy separately. Was the program we're talking about distributed only in source code form, or also in binary form derived from RSAREF? But that would not have been an issue if the other library had not been required. Read the rest of the license and notice that that exception for system libs wouldn't be there if third party libraries in general were permitted. The exception for system libs applies to distribution in object code form. It doesn't apply to distribution in source code form because there's no need for it. And, indeed, there's no exception for other libraries in distribution of object code. That's exactly why I asked the questions I asked. Why couldn't that implementation be GPLed? And why couldn't it just be left out of the main work? It couldn't be GPLed because it wasn't part of the work and it had other distribution restrictions. Good, you've now understood that it's other restrictions that cause problems, rather than the GPL. Note also that the gmp library was not included either. That's not important. As far as the GPL is concerned, what matters is whether the work as a whole is derived from GPLed code or not. The claim was that the source that would require the library's functions was a derivative work even though no copying took place. That's correct. The program derived from gmp was a derived work, so it had to be GPLed, even if no copying took place. RSAREF didn't stop the program from being created in the first place, or from being distributed under the GPL in source form. It would have prevented the program from being distributed in object form, though, because that would be a derived work from RSAREF, and you couldn't provide the corresponding sources of the whole under the GPL. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: a long rebuttal to the Linux-is-the-engine fallacy
On Jul 28, 2008, Antonio Olivares [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Feeling good and making for a better world, is there a better prize than that? :-) How will that make for a better world? Teaching people to value their freedom will make for more products that respect everyone's freedom. Avoiding the control afforded by the artificial introduction of dependencies, that is only possible by not respecting others' freedom, makes for a better world. they already get it by opening a shell terminal and typing the command uname -o. That should suffice. Yeah, because that's so visible and it will contribute *so* much to spread awareness of freedom to people... http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-1290-16.html?hhTest=1 A better way would be to encourage users to not buy those Genuis Bars from Apple. Heh. Follow the links to figure what a genius bar is. That's not something for sale. Matt Asay seems to be completely unaware of the works underway about freedom on the web. Fedora follows all the sh*t rules of not including properietary crap, It doesn't, and that's the problem. patented stuff, mp3 codecs, dvd playback shipping software This has zero to do with abiding by the Free Software definition. It's about legal risk avoidance. There's a lot of Free Software out there that implements the patents required to play mp3 and dvd. Please don't confuse these topics again. That's yet another FUD campaign by the enemies of software freedom to confuse people and draw them away from software freedom. [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ uname -o GNU/Linux Good. Learn from it. Spread it. But it is not really Free :(. (according to the FSF) Right. It's the GNU operating system, and it also contains non-Free Software. It only appears to be a contradiction if you conflate RMS, FSF, GNU, Free Software, GPL, patent-avoidance, Free Open Standards, no-DRM, etc, all under the same I don't like this topic umbrella. But they're all separate issues. Some of them are completely unrelated to each other, some are closer. Where is the script that I shall run to make my system a GNU/Linux system? You don't need to run any script to do so, it already is a GNU/Linux system. http://www.fsfla.org/svn/fsfla/software/linux-libre/scripts/ These will make your *kernel* free. They have no effect on the rest of the operating system. They won't make it any more or less GNU. They don't affect GNU software at all. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: that old GNU/Linux argument
On Jul 28, 2008, Alan Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: laugh at Alexandra and ignore him ? ^ Wow, it wasn't enough to rename the operating system and the movement, now you're trying to rename *me*? :-) -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: that old GNU/Linux argument
On Jul 28, 2008, Alan Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You know I really don't care what you call it, but I do care that you are systematically driving people away from free software. Away from Free Software or away from Fedora and Linux, that are both non-Free Software, and vocally not interested in being Free Software? -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: a long rebuttal to the Linux-is-the-engine fallacy
On Jul 28, 2008, Marko Vojinovic [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Oh, really? So you are saying that memtest talks directly to the graphics hardware, printing its output pixel-by-pixel on the screen? Pretty much. Except that not pixel-by-pixel, but rather writing bytes directly to the table that the video card then displays using its built-in font. It doesn't rely on bios routines for basically everything except maybe memory-access? The only uses of bios routines I see in its source code are in its own boot loader, to read from disk, and in the code that queries the BIOS for configuration information, also used by Linux. Heck, even the Serial I/O it does is done directly using inb/outb instructions. So it is actually *less* dependent on the BIOS than both Linux and GNU GRUB :-) Aha, so xen is something in between a fully-fledged kernel and a loader. I don't understand what you mean by 'loader'. It's more of a kernel wrapper. It doesn't know how to load anything. It actually depends on the loader or the domain zero kernel to give it programs^Wkernel images to boot up. What other artifical exceptions and work-arounds are you going to have to invent to make it seem like Linux deserves to be more relevant than GNU in a distro? Well, as many as I find convenient for the job. :-) :-) Isn't that an indication of something about both your intent and about the truth of what you're trying to dispute? My intent is to demonstrate that there is an alternative to your reasoning, because I intutively feel that there is, at least one. Feel free to keep trying. I've played a lot of this game, and it always ends up with It's Linux because I want it to be, I don't care what's right or moral or ethical, I don't want to give credit to the GNU project, live with it. Which is very human, but very sad. So I am just trying to construct an argument that can be considered valid enough, while producing a different conclusion than your own. The more artificial it is, the less appealing it will be, and the less it will serve as a valid excuse to deny GNU the space it earned and deserves to fulfill its goal of promoting freedom. giving names to stuff is largely a matter of taste, and that there is no single valid criterion for doing that. Indeed. But the point here is that his not about 'giving names', but rather 'renaming things that existed before'. Nobody's trying to rename Linux, in spite of Linus' claims that people do. Linux is a kernel, and trying to rename it would be as wrong as renaming GNU Operating System to Linux Operating System was. Nobody's trying to rename Fedora. Fedora is its name. It's not Fedora Linux or Fedora GNU/Linux, and that's fine. It sidesteps the issue by not promoting one over the other, which is precisely the most unfair situation. Of course it would be nice if the naem promoted GNU and thus the Free Software philosophy, but at least it's not detrimental to it by promoting an antagonic movement and philosophy that are represented by terms such as Linux Operating System and Open Source Software. The authors of the GNU project named GNU GNU, and Linux developers renamed it. That is the problem. It's not reasonable to rename something just because you replaced a small portion of it. It's not right if you do so with the intent of denying those from whose work you benefited the achievement of the goal for which the work was created in the first place. It's even worse when this is done to work *against* that goal. People have to name it based on intuition. Intuition is not a good guide when it has been distorted by years of lies. How long did it take humanity to overcome the notion that the world was flat, to believe that energy could be converted into mass and vice-versa, that sub-atomic particles could behave like waves and vice-versa, that nature isn't deterministic. And if your agenda is to influence the intuition of general public regarding the name, My agenda is to promote freedom. My reasoning is that, even if I don't convince anyone that the name GNU is relevant, at the very least I'll have reached several people with the underlying message. We can't end up worse off (those who allegedly distantiate themselves from the movement are those who already rejected it in the first place), and for every person who learns about the philosophy, the social goal will have advanced, even if just a little bit. The only things I lose are time and, sometimes, patience. I claim that it cannot be done by arguments, but by education to build a new kind of intuition. And that is not something that can be done in a thread of a mailing list --- it needs a completely new approach. I'm looking forward to suggestions and willing to give them a try. Not necessarily as replacement for this approach, of course, but perhaps in addition to. Thanks for your insights, -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL
Re: a long rebuttal to the Linux-is-the-engine fallacy
On Jul 28, 2008, Antonio Olivares [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But my *kernel* is free. Nope. That's another lie they told you. If it was Free, and it was intended to be Free, there wouldn't be any need for Linux-libre. What is wrong with the Fedora kernel? It contains non-Free Software. I can download it from kernel.org, and compile it and it is free. You can't compile all of it, or study the source code of all of it, because there's non-Free Software without source code in there, or with source code obfuscated so you can't understand it. So you can't adapt it to your needs either. For several of them, you don't even have permission to modify. Some may even cause your license to the rest of the kernel to be automatically terminated, if as much as one of the 1500+ copyright holders of Linux decide to take it upon you. Just compare linux-2.6.26.tar.bz2 with linux-2.6.26-libre1.tar.bz2 and you'll see how misled and fooled you were by the people you're siding with and promoting. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: that old GNU/Linux argument
On Jul 28, 2008, Antonio Olivares [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You know I really don't care what you call it, but I do care that you are systematically driving people away from free software. Away from Free Software or away from Fedora and Linux, that ^ ^ Do you really mean Linux Of course. That's the name of the kernel I'm referring to. I thought you were pushing for GNU/Linux. That's what I use to refer to the combination of the GNU operating system with the kernel Linux. Are you conceding your position? *sigh* It feels like you didn't read a word that I wrote :-( are both non-Free Software, and vocally not interested in being Free Software? That is not the purpose of the Fedora Project. The first archived copy of the Fedora Project web page begs to disagree: http://web.archive.org/web/20030923215031/http://fedora.redhat.com/ The goal of The Fedora Project is to work with the Linux community to build a complete, general purpose operating system exclusively from free software. Everytime a piece of non-Free Software is added, regardless of the excuse, it becomes more distant from its original goal. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: that old GNU/Linux argument
On Jul 28, 2008, Antonio Olivares [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ uname -o GNU/Linux That should be enough. Enough for what? -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: that old GNU/Linux argument
On Jul 28, 2008, Claude Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Mr. Stallman posted to this list on the 17th, He followed up on an e-mail sent directly to him, copying every other recipient of the message in his response. What does this prove? I've been a member of this list for five years, yet, I wouldn't be surprised if you have exceeded my total posts in your short time here... I've been a member of this list since the Fedora project was launched. I was on Red Hat [GNU/]Linux lists before it was renamed to Fedora. Not that how long I've been around makes any difference... -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: that old GNU/Linux argument
On Jul 28, 2008, Antonio Olivares [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: personal attack because we do not agree with your purist ways. Purist? Who's the one denying that it's not a combination of GNU with Linux, but rather pure Linux? :-) -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: that old GNU/Linux argument
On Jul 28, 2008, Marko Vojinovic [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Monday 28 July 2008 16:56, Alexandre Oliva wrote: And it's not GNU utilities. It's an operating system. If it was just the GNU utilities, you might be right. GNU is *not* an operating system. An operating system must have a kernel as its part. GNU does not, so it is not an operating system. It does, so it is. Hurd is its kernel, it is part of the GNU operating system. See how the GNU project makes the distro with the Hurd kernel available: it's under `gnu', not under `gnu+hurd' or any such nonsense. GNU/Linux is another operating system. Its kernel is Linux. It is nearly identical to the GNU[/Hurd] operating system, except for the small kernel. So stop promoting GNU as an operating system. It is intended to be one, but never made it on its own. It is a tried-and-failed-to-be-operating-system. Everyone who uses GNU on top of Linux would disagree if only they knew that it was the GNU operating system they were using, and Linux was just the kernel that replaced the Hurd. GNU within Fedora (or any Linux distro) is *not* an operating system. It is only a part of an os. GNU+Linux makes for an operating system. Linux by itself doesn't. So how does your argument support calling the operating system Linux, rather than GNU+Linux? -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: Misunderstanding GPL's terms and conditions as restrictions
On Jul 28, 2008, Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Alexandre Oliva wrote: John A. Hacker develops, from scratch, a program that contains two source files: lib.c and main.c. lib.c was developed to be released as a separate library, under the modified (3-clause) BSD license (so these are the headers it carries), whereas main.c was developed to be released under the GPL (so these are the headers it carries). John A. publishes the whole, named gnothing, under the GPLv2+, and never publishes lib.c in any other way. Agreed to GPL, abides by terms. Agreed? He *chose* the GPL. Wanda B. Foreman downloads gnothing, and notices lib.c would be really useful in his project, linstall. She thus modifies gnothing by removing main.c and the build scripts, and then adds lib.c to her version control system, along with changes to the build machinery to have lib.c built and linked into his own program. She then publishes linstall, under the GPLv3+. Agrees to GPL, abides by terms (assuming changes to v3+, if any, were permitted in any copied parts). Ken C. Farsight has access to Wanda's VCS repository, and sees lib.c show up there. It provides just the feature he wanted for his bsdown Free Software program, that he's always distributed under the 3-clause BSD license. He copies lib.c into bsdown and releases a new version of bsdown. Free to ignore GPL terms. On what grounds? Evelyn D. Scent maintains a non-Free fork of bsdown called macrash, so she takes this new release containing lib.c, merges the add-on features she maintains, and publishes a new release, under the usual restrictive EULA, known to be compatible with the 3-clause BSD license. Free to ignore GPL terms. On what grounds? You omitted the scenario where Ken or Evelyn need to redistribute gnothing or a modified version of it, It was implicit in the first question below, as you noticed. After which they have agreed not to do what they would otherwise be permitted to do with parts that have alternate licenses. That's where you misread it. - Has any party had his/her license to distribute gnothing or lib.c automatically terminated? They have broken the terms they agreed to. And? - Can John A. Hacker stop any of the other 3 from distributing lib.c in linstall, bsdown, or macrash, under the licenses given or implied by the description above, or even by itself under the modified BSD license, without a copy of the GPL? He can only act on copyright violations against his own code. It's all his own code. He only published it all as a whole under GPLv2+. - Can Evelyn be stopped by any of the other 3 from distributing this version of macrash containing lib.c, under the usual EULA? No, lib.c, being BSD-licensed, has no such silly restrictions. It was only ever published as part of a work under GPLv2+. What restrictions? I'm not interested in paying a lawyer to claim that you don't have to do what an agreement says you 'must' do, You could pay a lawyer to explain to you that you misunderstood it. You'd be happier. You wouldn't waste so much time embarrassing yourself before your colleagues on the list. If you agree, then you've agreed not to violate section 2b. You've agreed to not violate section 2b when modifying the program and distributing, under the GPL, modified versions of it. Where does it say that you are ever excused, once you've agreed that you will apply exactly the GPL terms to all parts. Ok, let's try again: 2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions: [...] b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License. translation to English that Les Mikesell can hopefully understand: 2. I, copyright holder, hereby grant you permission to modify the program or parts of it, forming derived works, and to distribute, under the GPL, the derived works, as long as: [...] b) you arrange for this license to be granted at no charge to every recipient of the entire derived work. I.e., if you modify it without abiding by the conditions, you don't get to distribute it under the GPL. If you don't distribute it in accordance with the conditions, you're not distributing it under the GPL. That's what you're agreeing to when you agree with this clause of the GPL. No, RSAREF was done by someone else and was available in source with some distribution restrictions because of export restrictions. You had to obtain your own copy separately. Was the program we're talking about distributed only in source code form, or also in binary form derived from RSAREF? Why don't you
Re: Misunderstanding GPL's terms and conditions as restrictions
On Jul 29, 2008, Alexandre Oliva [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Jul 28, 2008, Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: RSAREF didn't stop the program from being created in the first place, or from being distributed under the GPL in source form. Per the FSF, RIPEM was a derived work of gmp and could not be distributed execept under the GPL. However that was impossible because RSAREF was needed and had other terms. I don't see where the FSF said such a thing. I see the FSF discussing restrictive patent licenses that SSH developers had accepted, and that didn't permit them to distribute the work under the GPL, with as little as plugs for RSAREF to be used. Err... Digging further, I found out that RIPEM included RSAREF, and it was RSAREF itself that had been modified in such a way that it became a derived work of GPLed work. So this modified version of RSAREF could only be distributed under the GPL, which neither the patent license nor the copyright license under which RSAREF were provided permitted. So is looks like it is the main program (SSH?) that was the distraction. Anyhow, if you have pointers to more specific information about what the FSF actually wrote (all I found was second-hand hearsay), I'd love to know more about it. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: that old GNU/Linux argument
On Jul 28, 2008, Antonio Olivares [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: personal attack because we do not agree with your purist ways. Purist? Who's the one denying that it's not a combination of GNU with Linux, but rather pure Linux? :-) I did not say pure Linux. You are putting words* that I did not write here. Note the :-). /me makes jokes, too. I am only resenting that name be forced when I simply know the system as a Linux system or Linux Operating System. I just don't understand why you resent the messager, rather than those who fooled you for all these years. Think of it this way: if you keep on calling the operating system Linux, you not only keep on strenghtening the movement against the fundamental ideals of software freedom, you also deny those who believe the name you choose and what it implies an opportunity to learn about both movements and make up their own minds. You bias them against software freedom. If that's what you want to accomplish, nothing I could say or ask would change it. But if you believe in letting people learn, think and decide for themselves, rather than censoring information some opponents of the Free Software movement want to hide from them to keep them in ignorance and stop them from pursuing freedom, pretty please make the tiny effort it takes to get used to naming the system GNU+Linux or GNU/Linux. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: that old GNU/Linux argument
On Jul 28, 2008, Antonio Olivares [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You had been quiet for all these years :) Mostly, indeed. What triggered the awakening of a sleeping GNU/Linux GIANT? I had been involved in the conversations about the Free Software Distribution Guidelines on both capacities as Free Software activist at FSFLA and as Fedora user/irrelevant developer. I answered the initial question, and one thing led to another. It certainly fed the fire that I'd been talking to Les Mikesell about his misunderstanding of the GPL on fedora-devel. I've been more active in other Fedora lists, just not so much on the Fedora users' list. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: a long rebuttal to the Linux-is-the-engine fallacy
On Jul 27, 2008, inode0 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Fedora, Ubuntu, and other distributions probably describe their operating systems as Linux-based in a feeble attempt to not offend people on either side of this insanity. Right. So, let's say, there's a dispute as to whether you or I wrote the largest part of a book. It's trivial to assess that you wrote an order of magnutide more than I did, for your style is clear all over. Still, I published it under my name exclusively, because I wrote the closing chapter all by myself. And then, when you bring up that you wrote the largest part of that book, the publisher says that it's going to say it's an AlexOliva-based book, in a feeble attempt to not offend people on either side of this debate. Would that even pass for an excuse, you think? -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: a long rebuttal to the Linux-is-the-engine fallacy
On Jul 27, 2008, Antonio Olivares [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Nobody is claiming that they do not deserve credit, but many do not want the pushing on of their agenda :( Exactly. And that's why they invent all these excuses. And they even fail to understand that the principles that led to the creation of all this software is the reason why all this software is available and functional, and that the alleged pragmatism pushed in its stead is just a short-sighted corrupted version of the underlying principles and goals. Several of the leaders of this separate movement have already come to that conclusion, but the effects of that nonsense still percollate society, unfortunately. What would be excellent, is if someone can run David Wheelers SLOC, http://www.dwheeler.com/sloc/ and/or get the code http://www.dwheeler.com/sloccount/ Run it on Fedora build system and then and there, if GNU is found to be the greater of all, then and only then it should get its proper credit. Are there any volunteers? Given that I and others have already provided enough evidence that GNU is at least an order of magnitude larger than Linux in any distro out there, so I'd say the burden of pursuing this would be on those who believe it might lead to different conclusions. Meanwhile, GNU should get its proper credit. http://fsfla.org/svnwiki/blogs/lxo/2007-05-21-gnu+linux http://www.slackware-rn.com.br/~vuln/2007/07/19/gnulinux-or-linux/ Those same GNU packages were born of BSD/SunOS/Solaris code Err, no. GNU packages didn't use any SunOS or Solaris code whatsoever, and BSD was still under the 4-clause license back then, so its use was severely limited because it couldn't be combined with GPLed code. I just know that it has many wonderful people(yourself included), that Brazilians are penta-campeon(five time world cup champions in soccer(futbol), Heh, Don't count me in as a great soccer player :-) I'd embarrass my country :-) I actually consider it strange that most of the western world got independence from Spain, and only one country from Portugal, which is your country :) That's mainly because Brazil got its indepedence in a mostly-uneventful discussion internal to the Royal family, whereas the rest of Latin American, under Spain's crown, actually had to fight for its independence, and AFAIK Simón Bolívar and others managed to gain independence for smaller pieces, one at a time. They just want you to push on their agenda. What do you get out of it? Err... I happen to work for the goals I myself believe in. That's why I co-founded FSFLA, a completely autonomous organization. It just so happens to pursue the same goals of other FSFes all over the world. Good for them. What I get out of it is the feeling of correcting social injustice, of working to make the world a better place. That's why I do it. I don't expect to get rich or famous or powerful out of it, but I do hope to be able to look back at my life, or even at the end of the day, and realize I did something other than surviving, making money, and thinking of how to make more money. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Misunderstanding GPL's terms and conditions as restrictions (was: Re: Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?)
I'm changing the Subject: header because some people who are not reading the thread seem to have inferred, from the unchanging subject, that the original huge thread was all about a single topic. Although this particular topic would probably be a better fit for fedora-legal, I believe most of its subscribers are sufficiently familiar with Free Software licensing to tell that Les' theory is flawed, whereas many Free Software users in this list operate under the same false assumptions and the influence of FUD against the GPL, so I think this sub-thread will remain more useful here. For those who somehow got the impression that this list was supposed to be limited to technical matters, please update your kill files to ignore this thread as well. On Jul 26, 2008, Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: A lawyer can't change what it says. Indeed. But a lawyer you trust could be able to convince you you've misunderstood it. If the FSF doesn't not believe that the work-as-a-whole clause actually means the terms must cover the work as a whole, It does. The terms are permissions, the conditions are requirements for the exercise of the permissions. It doesn't take away any other permissions you might have. That it does is the incorrect assumption that's misleading you. Consider this scenario: John A. Hacker develops, from scratch, a program that contains two source files: lib.c and main.c. lib.c was developed to be released as a separate library, under the modified (3-clause) BSD license (so these are the headers it carries), whereas main.c was developed to be released under the GPL (so these are the headers it carries). John A. publishes the whole, named gnothing, under the GPLv2+, and never publishes lib.c in any other way. Wanda B. Foreman downloads gnothing, and notices lib.c would be really useful in his project, linstall. She thus modifies gnothing by removing main.c and the build scripts, and then adds lib.c to her version control system, along with changes to the build machinery to have lib.c built and linked into his own program. She then publishes linstall, under the GPLv3+. Ken C. Farsight has access to Wanda's VCS repository, and sees lib.c show up there. It provides just the feature he wanted for his bsdown Free Software program, that he's always distributed under the 3-clause BSD license. He copies lib.c into bsdown and releases a new version of bsdown. Evelyn D. Scent maintains a non-Free fork of bsdown called macrash, so she takes this new release containing lib.c, merges the add-on features she maintains, and publishes a new release, under the usual restrictive EULA, known to be compatible with the 3-clause BSD license. Please ask your lawyer questions such as: - Has any party had his/her license to distribute gnothing or lib.c automatically terminated? - Can John A. Hacker stop any of the other 3 from distributing lib.c in linstall, bsdown, or macrash, under the licenses given or implied by the description above, or even by itself under the modified BSD license, without a copy of the GPL? - Can Evelyn be stopped by any of the other 3 from distributing this version of macrash containing lib.c, under the usual EULA? then let us know how he justifies the answers. Would this imaginative interpretation also permit sharing of GPL-covered components modified to link with proprietary libraries among people who otherwise have the right to do so AFAIK the GPL doesn't stop anyone from adding dependencies on non-GPLed libraries to GPLed programs. In fact, this is very common, in the particular case of system libraries on non-Free operating systems. It doesn't grant permission for the GPLed program be distributed in a form that contains the library or derived portions thereof, without also offering the corresponding sources of the library under the GPL, but if you distribute the GPLed program in source code form, you're covered, and if you can create an object form of the program that does not contain code derived from the library, and then distribute it, you're also covered. Now, if you split things up into a separate library, as a means to circumvent the GPL, and distribute both the library and the GPLed program that you modified so as to depend on it, you might still face a lawsuit on the grounds that the library is actually a derived work, or even that it is part of a single work, and the separation is just a trick to try to circumvent the license. A judge or a jury might actually side with the copyright holder of the program you modified, in this case. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Misunderstanding GPL's terms and conditions as restrictions (was: Re: Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?)
On Jul 26, 2008, Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Gordon Messmer wrote: In the context of a legal interpretation of a distribution license (copyright license), work as a whole does not mean each individual part. Of course it does, or proprietary parts could be included - or linkages that make them a required part of the work as a whole. GPLv2 section 2 says: (emphasis mine) the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose *permissions* for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and *thus* to each and every part regardless of who wrote it. IOW, the whole is under the terms and conditions of the GPL. The permissions (1-3, in GPLv2) apply to each and every part as a consequence of this. Section 6 says: 6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. IOW, you get the GPL permissions by receiving the program, and upstream distributors can't have restricted any of these permissions. I don't see anything that would stop any of them from granting additional permissions over their own contributions. They can't grant additional permissions over others' contributions, because copyright law prevents that in the absence of explicit permission from the copyright holder. Now, back to section 2, and your favorite 2b. It says that you may modify the program and distribute modified versions of the program under this license, as long as you (among other things) grant the same permissions, subject to the same conditions, to recipients of the modified program and derived versions thereof. Again, it doesn't say you can't grant additional permissions. It doesn't say you have to impose restrictions that stop others from enjoying additional permissions you might have gotten yourself. It doesn't say you can't enjoy any additional permissions you got yourself. Now, what does agreeing to this amount to? You may breathe in, as long as you breathe out. Do you agree? Some possible responses: - No, I don't agree. I don't need to agree with it to keep on breathing. - Yes, I may. I have other permissions to breathe, but if they're all revoked, it will be nice to have this one. - Yes, I do agree. It's no big deal, and if I ever need to breathe in without breathing out, I can always use the other permissions I have. - Why, sure, and thanks! I was losing my breath already, all my other permissions to breathe had been revoked! Thanks for saving my life! And so nicely! I don't mind the requirement to breathe out at all, it's just reasonable! Of course you understand that I can still accept other permissions that are not subject to this condition, and that if I do, I'll then be entitled to breathe in without breathing out. My lawyer says so, and I have no doubt so does yours. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: a long rebuttal to the Linux-is-the-engine fallacy
On Jul 27, 2008, Marko Vojinovic [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Memtest runs under the bios operating system. Nope. It does rely on probing and some BIOS configuration tables to find out what it's running on, but that's about it. No operating system involved. No program runs without some sort of kernel, except the kernel itself. That's just not true. Have a look at all of the *-elf or *-coff configurations available in the GNU toolchain. Those are aimed at creating applications for embedded targets without any operating system whatsoever. They run on bare hardware, *sometimes* with a loader that enables arbitrary files to be loaded over say a serial line or over NFS, *sometimes* configured to just start the program stored on (P)ROM. And I hope we all agree that giving the name to a distro based on the bootloader is plain silly. And why wouldn't naming the distro after the kernel be just as silly? Even Fedora includes yet another, called xen. And then xen starts Linux. Why is the xen virtual machine monitor not more essential than Linux, per your proposed measuring stick? I am not very familiar with the working of xen, but it looks just like an additional step to booting the kernel. Most hypervisors are microkernels of their own (the exceptions being full-fledged kernels). Xen is slightly different from most in that, even though it is a microkernel, it depends on and redirects to another kernel that runs under it a lot of interaction with the hardware. All the kernels running under xen are under constraints determined by xen, so they're not as special as they were before, but this one kernel (called domain 0) is not as constrained, so it remains a bit more special than the others. But it definitely isn't just a loader. As I said above, grub [...] has nothing specifically to do with the [GNU/]Linux os or distro (except that it is convinient to include it there and that it is GPL'ed). Ok, this is a new criterion you've introduced. It's a good one. So, if we take out the kernel Linux, and put on another kernel, like some have done, if you still get the same operating system, then Linux also has nothing specifically to do with the os or distro (except that it is convenient to include it there and that it is GPL'ed). Right? What other artifical exceptions and work-arounds are you going to have to invent to make it seem like Linux deserves to be more relevant than GNU in a distro? Isn't that an indication of something about both your intent and about the truth of what you're trying to dispute? If you remove the whole distro, including the kernel, you are left with the bios and its applications (grub, memtest, etc.). That is a *different* os, Agreed. Just like, if you remove all but Linux, you're left with a different OS from this one we're talking about. In fact, I said so myself in the first message under this new subject, and you agreed this wasn't a good measuring stick. So grub simply does not deserve its name in the name of the distro or the os. s/grub/linux/ CQD -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: a long rebuttal to the Linux-is-the-engine fallacy
On Jul 27, 2008, Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Perhaps no code is shared, but what about the design? GNU's not Unix. The credit for the design is right there in the name. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: Misunderstanding GPL's terms and conditions as restrictions
On Jul 27, 2008, Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Alexandre Oliva wrote: IOW, the whole is under the terms and conditions of the GPL. The permissions (1-3, in GPLv2) apply to each and every part as a consequence of this. Not _just_ the permissions. The exact terms of the license must apply: Exactly. And the GPL *is* a set of permissions with conditions, nothing but it. Like any other Free Software license. It says the 'terms of this License'. You can't have the terms of this license without the terms of 2b also being applied. 2b is not a terms of the license, it is a condition for you to be entitled to modify and distribute the work, or modified versions of it, under the GPL. If you want to distribute it under another license, and you have some additional permission to do so, it doesn't get in your way. Now, what does agreeing to this amount to? You may breathe in, as long as you breathe out. Do you agree? If you agree to cause any work that you distribute or publish, You don't have to agree to that. That's the point. That's where you're misreading it. Please talk to a lawyer you trust. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: that old GNU/Linux argument
On Jul 26, 2008, Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'd prefer that the Linux based distros had shared more of the BSD-origin work rather than the GPL-encumbered GNU copies. Obviously. Have you ever wondered why? -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: that old GNU/Linux argument
On Jul 26, 2008, Gordon Messmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Theo continued to complain about the lack of cooperation between the Linux driver authors and the original OpenBSD developers. The problem that he perceived was that the Linux driver developers created a derived work, and the code that *they* contributed to the driver was licensed only under the GPL. This made it unacceptable for the OpenBSD developers to use the modifications from the Linux developers. And that's not because of any restriction, real or imagined, imposed by Linux developers, but rather by OpenBSD developers own decision to reject code that they couldn't distribute on their own terms. Oddly, a choice they claim to make to enable to people to do just what they're complaining about: create derived works that they can't use. Talk about consistency. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: that old GNU/Linux argument
On Jul 26, 2008, Marko Vojinovic [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sure, RMS and GNU did begin to create an operating system, but failed to finish it before Linus took the unfinished OS and finished it himself. IOW, Linus completed GNU? And now they ask for credit? For what? For cloningenhancing Unix OS infrastructure and GPL-ing it? (ok, I am being a bit over the line here, I know, sorry... ;-) ) Yeah, shared with credit for the kernel that clonedenhanced Unix kernel infrastructure and GPL-ed it, forming a complete Unix operating system that amounted to that kernel plus GNU minus its own kernel. Anything wrong with that? -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: that old GNU/Linux argument
On Jul 26, 2008, Antonio Olivares [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If there was no kernel, the GNU operating system would not have gone anywhere It would have completed it eventually, or someone else would have developed another kernel that would work with GNU. ATM we have at least 4. without the GNU tools, where would Linux be? Who knows? It might not even have come to existence, since it was developed making extensive use of GNU software, and it depended heavily on GNU software to be usable since its inception, and nobody ever tried to change that. An analogy for the GPL would be the farmer who receives the gift of a GPL cow from a neighbour. The cow is completely free, but all of the milk from the cow must be given away for free, and all of the cow's calves, and the calves' calves, yea, even unto the thousandth generation, shall be given away for free. If the cow is completely free in the same sense as in the GPL, then it can't have been given as a gift, for gift amounts to ownership, which is slavery rather than freedom. I perceive an overloaded-word fallacy here: using 'free' with two very distinct senses, one that tries to bring the subject closer to the Free Software free, while all others have to do with cost. Now what kind of use is such a cow? You can eat it. You can use its pieces to build other objects and sell them. And you can expect to get more free cows from the neighbor, so you could run a business until the neighbor realizes what you're doing and realizes he can do that himself, and kills his own free cows. There's a fable about a farmer who kills the goose that laid golden eggs somewhere. Of course none of this bears any significant resemblance with the way the GPL works. This is quite interesting and the points are very well stated. Yep. Clever use of fallacies and dependence on public ignorance and gullibility :-) -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: a long rebuttal to the Linux-is-the-engine fallacy
On Jul 27, 2008, Marko Vojinovic [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You know, I don't want to be rude or hostile in any way, but I just can't help this feeling that the (noble) reasons you state above are somehow in a disharmony with your behavior (ie. your posts) in this thread. I've already covered the why elsewhere in the thread, and even in the message you responded, but how about we save that part of the debate for later, just so that nobody thinks you're just resorting to ad hominem and red herrings to draw attention away from our debate on factual matters? My intentions or even my honesty shouldn't matter at all to assess the truth of my points, at least as long as there's no doubt as to the correctness of the evidence I present. It's all verifiable anyway. I am also a believer in FOSS and all that, This doesn't make much sense, especially when FS and OSS have conflicting goals, as they do in this case. If there were a genuine credit to be appropriately given to GNU, I would expect the general public to recognize that spontaneously over time, Unless there was a conspiracy to deny it that credit, as you say. Now take it straight from the horse's mouth: The whole Open Source *renaming* was done largely _exactly_ because people wanted to distance themselves from the FSF. http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/9/25/161 First, rename the software and take credit for it (1992-today), then make a fuss that the FSF is trying to rename their kernel rather than asking for the name of the OS to be restored (~1994-today), then use the leverage and the minor-presented-as-full achievement of building such a great operating system to *rename* the movement and mine its goals even further (1998-today). Renamer, and proud of it. But renaming back, or at least to something fair, no, that couldn't be permitted, because it would help promote the agenda they wanted to subvert, obviate and demean. Is hijack too strong a term? Making it seem like it was the self-proclaimed pragmatic approach of sacrificing the fundamental goals of the original movement that enabled and led to the development of a nearly-complete system and made it valuable for people and businesses to use. Indeed, part of the commercial success of it stems precisely from this subversion of the movement and sacrificing of its essential goals. That's precisely because many big businesses saw an opportunity to use it to mine existing monopolies to establish their own, on other levels, by as much as failing to abide by the fundamental issues that motivated the creation of most of the software. How's that for conspiracy theories? http://www.digitalcitizen.info/2006/09/30/why-cant-free-software-and-open-source-advocates-just-get-along/ -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: a long rebuttal to the Linux-is-the-engine fallacy
On Jul 27, 2008, Antonio Olivares [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There is not much we can do to help. Of course there is. If you want to help, call it GNU/Linux, or GNU+Linux. That's all we ask for. http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2006-August/msg00101.html Hear, hear. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: Misunderstanding GPL's terms and conditions as restrictions
On Jul 27, 2008, Antonio Olivares [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: One of the problems with the GPL is that people can violate it and then when they see themselves corraled, they can say I will release the code and be clear. This is simply not true. When people violate the GPL, they lose their license to further modify or distribute the program. They depend on the copyright holders to reinstate the license. If the copyright holders refuse to do that, no more modification or distribution rights for the infringer. Now, it is common for copyright holders to be happy to accept outcomes such as this, because it fulfills the very purpose of the GPL (presumably the reason why they chose it in the first place): to ensure that all users can have their freedoms respected, some of which require access to the source code. There are no consequences. Someone who thought that depriving others of these freedoms was key to one's business would surely disagree. Add costs of legal proceedings and it may become even more serious. And then, nothing stops copyright holders from demanding more from the infringers, but that wouldn't be in line with the reasoning that often leads to licensing under the GPL, and it might very well backfire in the long run, if it scares businesses away from the GPL. We already have enough FUD, no need to make room for even more. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: Misunderstanding GPL's terms and conditions as restrictions
On Jul 28, 2008, Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You only have to agree to the GPL requirements if you need the permissions for modification and distribution the GPL grants. Who forfeited the opportunity to distribute gnothing under the GPL by violating the license, then? Under your theory that the GPL imposes restrictions on the code licensed under it, someone must have, because the author only released lib.c as part of a GPL program, and some licensee managed to somehow escape what you call the restrictions of the GPL. At the very least, this shows that your allegations about the impossibility of using code released as part of GPLed programs under their former licenses was false. Now it remains for you to realize that, even if you accept the GPL, your faulty assumption remains incorrect. You'll find the answers by asking your lawyer. Show me. I'm pretty sure you're getting it backwards: the case you cited is one of GPLed library and derived program distributed under an incompatible license. The main work was released in source and might have been GPL'd or dual licensed but could not because of this library dependency. Distributed along with the main work, right? And because gmp was under GPL at the time See? The work was derived from a GPL library. You got it backwards. It was impossible to re-implement the needed functions from RSAREF because of the patent Why couldn't that implementation be GPLed? And why couldn't it just be left out of the main work? Now for the really strange part: no one ever actually used the fgmp library because gmp performed better. However, since it existed and it was the linking user's choice which to use, it was no longer possible to claim that the main work was derived from the gmp library. A beautiful case of circumvention of the spirit of the GPL and of copyleft by legal technicalities. Way to go! NOT -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: a long rebuttal to the Linux-is-the-engine fallacy
On Jul 26, 2008, Antonio Olivares [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://www.cmake.org/HTML/index.html That one should suffice. Nope. It offers the features, and even in a desirable fashion, but it doesn't preclude anyone from rewriting all the intelligence encoded in configure.ac and Makefile.am into a format that cmake can understand. And *that's* the huge task. Rewriting autoconf, automake and libtool, in spite of big a large undertaking, pales on the face of dropping GNU autotools code from all projects you might want to include in a GNU-less distro. If it does not, we will look for another one, but there have to be some out there :) Why? If Linux folks didn't bother rewriting a majority of their operating system, because it was already implemented and readily available in the GNU porject, why would they have bothered with rewriting a much smaller piece of it? -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?
On Jul 26, 2008, Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Alexandre Oliva wrote: 2. You may [...] provided that you also meet all of these conditions There's no room to interpret that as saying or some other license you found on some web page There's no denying of this possibility, and there couldn't be. Welcome to the world of copyright. Seriously, do us all a favor, and go talk to a lawyer. Ask the FSF. The FSF has gone so far as to say that not only does everything included in the work as a whole when distributed together have to be covered by the GPL, by also anything that might conceivable be connected to create a derived work, such as a library distributed separately. That's correct. All of the permissions (you may...provided that...) are granted over the whole and every piece of the work, and derived versions thereof. This is true regardless of whether any piece of the code is also covered by additional permissions or alternate licenses. Only your imagined license that restricts what you can do and conflicts with other licenses you might have does what you think the GPL does. Please stop spreading misinformation. That's funny - remember this post is in response to my exact quote of the license section 2b. Do you really consider what the license actually say as misinformation? When you quote it out of context, you turn it into misinformation, yes. Please. If you are serious about trying to make progress in this discussion, go talk to a lawyer and stop making things up. If you proceed further without talking to a lawyer, the only possible conclusion is that you are only interested in wasting our time. FTR, I did get a lawyer's opinion on that, from the same legal counsel that advises the FSF, who happens to be the author and the copyright holder of AFAIK the largest body of code available under the GPL. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?
On Jul 26, 2008, Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Your wording is too ambiguous and you associate unusual politics with some of those words so I have no idea what you intend. Tell me which words, and I'll point out they're present in the GPL as well, and you don't seem to have any trouble (mis)interpreting it. - I charge the first customer, that hired the software development, a fair price for the work I did. Put yourself on the other side of that fence. Would you be that first customer for something no single person could afford? If I need it badly enough, sure? If I believe I can recover a fair portion of those costs, sure? - This customer is entitled to further distribute it or sell it, since it's Free Software. Yet, the first recipient can also sell it at a lower cost - or give it away. Why should I care? Remember, I've already been paid by my work. If they do, good for them! - I help the customer set up a plan to recover some of the investment: I commit to not publishing the software before a certain date, except to customers who join an early access group, and we invite others to join this group for a fee that shrinks as more customers join. The fee is split over all previously-joining customers. None of them are under any obligation to not distribute the software any further. - Once they reach a goal number or a date, I make the software available to everyone. Why? Long before that the early recipients will have made it available. If they do, per your argument, they'd be losing the ability to recover part of their costs. Why would they? to make the point clear, let's assume that this work would be intuitive to use and have no flaws so there is no potential revenue beyond an initial sale. Because in some strange world, that's how the majority of software is? -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?
On Jul 24, 2008, Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Alexandre Oliva wrote: it has always been immoral to demand that others give up their rights. Taking away legitimate rights, yes, that would be immoral. Taking away any right is immoral. Like, let's say, taking away one's right to own slaves? A person who is respectful of others cannot demand to take their choices away. Agreed. But granting more choices that the person didn't have is hardly similar to this. And refraining from granting other choices that the person wanted to get, but that would enable the person to take away from others, might be respectful to the direct recipient in some strange world, but not respectful of downstream users. That's the reasoning behind copyleft. And it is clearly misguided, given that there is no value in what it provides, and much harm it what it takes away. And yet, per your own arguments, sharing something that is undesirable never harms the sharing you regard as good. So why do you care? Could you at least try to be consistent? The only situation in which you're not able to share the code is when it's part of a work that is based on someone else's work. Would you care to estimate how many potential improvements that prohibits? Not respecting users' freedoms can never be an improvement. Being unable to combine GPLed code with code under some other license is not something you can blame on the GPL alone. It's always because the other license is less permissive than the GPL, and for all other copyleft licenses, because they were *designed* to be, to weaken the plan of sharing of the GPL. Now go take it up to *their* masterminds. http://www.fsfla.org/svnwiki/blogs/lxo/draft/forking-and-license-patching There is no way to take any of the rights that the GPL conveys compared to copyright law without this clause being applied. And what about *other* rights you might have received through other means? If there is any part where only the GPL applies you must accept the 2b terms or you can't share it at all. That's false. You only need to abide by the conditions in 2b *if* you choose to modify the program, and distribute modified versions. If you merely run the program, or distribute it in source code form the way you received it, you don't need to abide by any of the conditions of section 2. I'm talking about what the license actually says and what has to happen if you comply with it. A license (rather than license agreement) is a grant of permissions to do certain things, nothing but it. The only thing you agree to is to receive those permissions. As long as you operate within those permissions, you're covered. If you operate outside them, you're not covered by that license. If you have another license that grants you that permission, you're still covered. Some key points to their assessment is: those who learn to cooperate will benefit the most. We believe that this cooperation should be based on mutually acceptable terms, and that the best basis for cooperation is voluntary contributions. Do you not agree that cooperation should be voluntary? Or that you should have the right to make that voluntary choice? No. Quite the opposite. It is a key point. It is by no means wrong. You're the one insisting that it's wrong for lots of developers to not want their contributions to GPLed programs contributed to non-GPLed efforts. Consistency? Based on our experience, we advise open-source developers to use the least amount of copyleft necessary. I.e., anecdotal evidence for an unsupportable belief, Unsupportable? They are talking from experience. In *one* project. That's hardly statistically significant. That's what anecdotal evidence means. How many other factors could have influenced the outcome they observed? Do they even mention any? I don't see that they do. The reasoning behind this is akin to observing that the Brazilian president doesn't have one of his fingers, and from that concluding that Brazilians only have 9 fingers. Anecdotal evidence leading to unsupportable conclusions. that they'd get more commercial contributions if they permitted commercial exploitation, while fear of commercial exploitation was their primary motivator (misguided as it was) for the choice of a strong copyleft license in the first place. Something that you make freely available can't be 'exploited' in any way that hurts it. It can only be improved. The recipients can be exploited, and that's the harm that the GPL attempts to prevent. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: a long rebuttal to the Linux-is-the-engine fallacy
On Jul 26, 2008, Les [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: why would they have bothered with rewriting a much smaller piece of it? If it is really free, why does this last paragraph belong in your argument? The argument about why it is correct to say that what some people mistake for Linux is actually the GNU operating system? I don't see what this has to do with freedom. Sure, they can use it, or write something else. But if they use it, that won't make it something else, no matter how wonderful the kernel they use with it is. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: a long rebuttal to the Linux-is-the-engine fallacy
On Jul 26, 2008, Marko Vojinovic [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The bootloader, although completely crucial, is a fairly simple piece of code (compared to the kernel or any other serious part of the system). Like Linux is a fairly simple piece of code, compared with GNU. (no offence to the grub developers :-) ) But the system without a kernel has *precisely zero* usability. Yet you provided and cited the counter-example yourself: the boot loader required to load the kernel, and that actually provides some usability, including the ability to load a fully-functional program such as memtest86+, that runs without a kernel and is also included in the distribution. You could get many other useful programs that run in real mode started from grub. Linux happens to be just one of them. Even Fedora includes yet another, called xen. And then xen starts Linux. Why is the xen virtual machine monitor not more essential than Linux, per your proposed measuring stick? So we have three programs that work without the kernel Linux, one of which is essential (in the distro) to get the kernel running. This one seems to meet your criterion of most important component of the distro better than Linux, so, going by it, we'd have to say Fedora is a grub-based distribution, and itis the grub operating system. But, wait... Last I looked, its name was GNU grub. So, even going by your own selected criterion, the one single component that is most essential to the system is GNU software, part of the GNU operating system. And if you can wave it away by claiming it's much smaller and simpler than Linux and mostly useless by itself, then, again, by the same criterion you proposed, we can wave Linux away by claiming it's much smaller and simpler than GNU, and as you recognized yourself, it's also mostly useless by itself. And this measuring stick (although imperfect) works, and as a result gives some notion of importance level for the kernel vs the rest. Just because, just like in the faulty measuring stick for the most defining component I proposed as an exercise, you stopped applying the criterion when you found the answer you were looking for, rather than taking it to its ultimate consequences. (In all fairness, you did apply the first criterion to wave grub away as the most essential component, but then failed to apply it back to Linux) whatever. Oh, you forgot the squirrel in a barrel type of drive. ;-) And the pedals, (like on a bycicle), or barefooted drive (as in Flinstones). :-) s/whatever/*/ :-) But this conversion is the essential part of the process of driving to places. No dispute here. The dispute is on why that is more essential than anything else in the process. See above. Without the engine, it is completely impossible to do something useful with the car. How about electrical cars? Or Flintstones' cars? :-) Now... Would anyone still recognize that as this system we're talking about, that people mistakenly call Linux? Would a kid on Jurassic Park, looking at such a system, shout hey, that's Linux!? I doubt it. Recognition is irrelevant. It *would be* Linux, because of the kernel used. Right, such a single-static-program-running-on-Linux scenario could indeed be qualified as a Linux system. I said so myself. And, by the same reasoning, any typical GNU+Linux distro would just as well be GNU, because of the userland used, right? 1) based on the amount of essentiality of given components, ie. how much of a working system is left if a component is removed --- the winner here is the kernel (with grub as a side-effect), and the distro name is Fedora Linux; Unless you revise your proposed criterion, this would actually lead to Fedora GNU GRUB. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: a long rebuttal to the Linux-is-the-engine fallacy
On Jul 25, 2008, John Cornelius [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I fail to see the value of this line of discussion in this forum I can't think of a better place for discussions on whether it is reasonable for Fedora to be introduced, at its web front page, as a Linux-based, rather than as GNU+Linux-based or GNU-based. Evidently no list outside the Fedora project would be suitable for this discussion, and I don't see any other list in which it wouldn't be ruled off-topic or fail to reach the intended audience. If you have a better suggestion, I'm all, erhm, eyes :-) -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: a long rebuttal to the Linux-is-the-engine fallacy
On Jul 26, 2008, Antonio Olivares [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What does that have to do with freedom? They have a right to call it what they want. Nobody is taking, or even trying to take, that right away, even when it's not morally correct for them to abuse it right to mislead and fool the recipients of the collection of software they package, and deprive the authors of the largest single piece of code they use from fulfillment and advancement of their goals when developing that software, or even a fair amount of credit. For instance the USA fought a war with Great Britian/England for independence. They won and became an independent nation. They named the country United States of America(USA), they should have named it England/USA because most of the people came from over there? Did those people remain loyal British citizens afterwards, still cared for by the Queen? I don't think so. But this is precisely what happened to the GNU packages that inhabit the United States of GNU and Linux. I.e., the analogy doesn't seem fitting at all. OT Brazil fought a war with Portugal(1821-1825) for independence. Brazil won, and they named their country Brazil, not Portugal/Brazil. http://www.onwar.com/aced/nation/bat/brazil/fbrazil1821b.htm Heh. A war doesn't really describe what actually happened, or what children are taught at school. The royal family had moved to Brazil, to run away from attacks from Spain, some two generations before, and the prince was born in Brazil and felt Brazilian rather than Portuguese. When the royal family moved back and called him up, he declared independence. The royal family decided not to crush their own offspring. Kind of a sad joke, really. Brazilians had fought for independence long before that, and been crushed. It was *so* uneventful that this romaticized version of the story, in which the prince raised his sword on his horse, by river Ipiranga, and cried Independence or Death, is taught at schools, in spite of being regarded as entirely fictitious by several historians. That the URL you quoted presents it as fact casts a shade of doubt on every other sentence there. /OT -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: that old GNU/Linux argument
On Jul 24, 2008, Nifty Fedora Mitch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Recall, the name of this line that joins the kernel (Linux) and application space (think HelloWorld, X-windows and more) is the question I am asking. Of interest the omissions in the list of system calls commonly show up as hardware specific ioctl() side doors. Perhaps the answer is as simple as glibc. I suspect that Posix is slightly more apropos. The interface is mostly Posix, although there are GNU extensions to it. The implementation of the interface (with or without extensions) is provided by GNU libc. GNU libc borrows little more than system call numbers from Linux header files. At times, even the headers with this information had to be maintained separately from Linux, because Linux developers didn't want these headers to be ever included by userland. That's why I say Linux offers only an ABI to userland; there's no actual API to use from userland. Whatever APIs there are, they're provided by GNU libc. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: that old GNU/Linux argument
On Jul 25, 2008, Ric Moore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I assume that glibc had to be re-written to accommodate the Linux kernel. Nah. Rewritten is a large exaggeration. Most of GNU libc is independent of whatever kernel is running under it, and that's how it should be. Only the thin system call lower layer has to be retargeted. That's what enables GNU libc to offer the same API and, at times, even the same ABI, while targeting very different kernels. Who did that port?? Linus and his team? Most certainly. I can't quite picture the GNU project putting resources into the early development of GNU+Linux to make the combination usable. Linux was not perceived as a relevant kernel for the GNU operating system back then. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?
On Jul 25, 2008, ksh shrm [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is philosophical, spread ur technical knowledge. Do you have any reason to believe that technical knowledge is more important for society than philosophical knowledge? Nevermind that the subthread you entered was about legal knowledge, which is technical rather than philosophical. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?
On Jul 24, 2008, Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Alexandre Oliva wrote: it has always been immoral to demand that others give up their rights. Taking away legitimate rights, yes, that would be immoral. But taking away Immoral rights, that serve the purpose of exerting power over others and taking away their rights and freedoms, no, nothing immoral or wrong about that. Other copyleft and non-copyleft licenses followed that were designed specifically to be incompatible with the GPL, to prevent code sharing. BSD license whose intent is obviously to permit code sharing but not take away anyone's rights predates the GPL and certainly GPLv2. The BSD licenses are not copyleft licenses. They are permissive Free Software licenses. One of them is GPL-compatible, the other isn't. The GPL was intentionally incompatible because it's only purpose is to force you to choose between giving up your rights or sharing code. You can't give up a right you never had. The GPL (or any Free Software license) doesn't (and can't) take away any right you had. Its purpose is to ensure that all recipients have the four freedoms respected in all programs based on the program licensed under it. Permitting the program to be distributed under whatever terms you like would grant you the power to not respect others' freedoms. I'd much rather you didn't have that power, and if you are a well-meaning person, respectful of others, you shouldn't mind that you don't. Can't fault the GPL for that, can you? Of course I do. There's never a reason for anyone to give up their rights, and no need to withhold the ability to share code. If everyone was respectful of others, there wouldn't be any such reason, indeed. There wouldn't be reasons for laws either. Unfortunately, some people are too selfish, don't think of others, and need society to put some limits on them so that they get stronger reasons to respect others' rights. That's the reasoning behind copyleft. It has its drawbacks and inconveniences, no doubt, but we're much better off when someone has to decide between respecting others' freedoms or incurring the costs of duplicating code in order to not respect them: at least some of them will then decide to respect others, and, for those who decide not to, they wouldn't have respected them in the first place, so we lose nothing from them. So the only actual loss is from incompatibility between Free Software licenses. As I explained on the thread from one month ago on fedora-devel, exceptions are often possible (see 10. in GPLv2), and if they're too hard to obtain, it's because of legal maintainability of the projects, or because the licensors aren't really interested in respecting your freedoms (this unfortunately happens), or in granting you power to make it easier for you to erode others' freedoms (this fortunately happens). If you think that's unacceptable, why did you accept the less permissive or artificially incompatible license that got you into this situation? In general the terms I'm speaking of are more permissive than the GPL If they were strictly more permissive on all accounts, then they would be compatible. The original BSD license, for example, with the advertisement clause, didn't create a major problem as long as only UCB made that demand. But as you combined code from multiple sources with multiple such demands, it would soon have become a major hassle to abide by all those advertisement clauses, to the point of making it prohibitive. Now, the modified BSD license, that came up after years of negotiations between UCB, the FSF and others, lifts this burden and thus becomes compatible with the GPL. The point is that the work-as-a-whole clause is an immoral restriction. Granting permissions over the work as a whole is immoral? The thing that's not acceptable is forcing a decision to give up your rights or to not be able to share the code. The only situation in which you're not able to share the code is when it's part of a work that is based on someone else's work. You don't have a right to share that without permission from this someone else. If you pretend that you do, you're misleading and confusing yourself and others. Depending on your legal system there may or may not be a difference between a license and a contract, but having agreed to: b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License. Ok, that's 2b. [I realize I responded before as if you were referring to 3b, sorry.] Now, please realize that this is not to be taken in isolation. This is a condition on one of the various grants of permission for you to copy and distribute the program. 2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program
Re: Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?
On Jul 24, 2008, Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Alexandre Oliva wrote: 1. a grant of rights cannot possibly impose restrictions to whatever you could do before you received those rights. It's a grant, so it adds. It's not a contract, so it can't take away. Per wikipedia, there are locations where is a difference between a license and a contract and locations where a license is treated the same as a contract. Those that use the term 'contract' for unilateral grants have a term to make the distinction. Say, in Brazil, the GPL is regarded as a contrato benéfico (=~ beneficial contract), i.e., a kind of contract in which only one of the parts becomes encumbered with obligations. I.e., the licensor grants the license and becomes required to respect the licensees' freedoms and to grant the same license to anyone who comes across the program and derived works thereof, whereas the licensee receives permissions (subject to conditions) to modify, copy and distribute the work and works based on it. 2. you can grant additional permissions as to any part of the whole, if you're the copyright holder for that part. Nothing whatsoever stops you from doing that: not copyright law, not any copyright license. You could make it available separately under a different or multiple licenses It doesn't have to be separately. You can grant multiple additional permissions along with the program. Have a look at GCC, and look for the additional permissions for say libjava, libstdc++ and libgcc. They're all different, but they're all part of GCC. And GCC is linked with libgcc. And GCC contains libiberty, that has files under many different licenses, and also files in the public domain. I.e., the whole is available under the GPL, but there are additional permissions for parts. But it doesn't matter that someone else has given you permission to copy a part under different terms if you've agreed not to. The faulty assumption is the you've agreed not to. See the other message I've just posted. Note: you may do X as long as Y is not a restriction, it's a grant. you may not do Z under this license is not a restriction, it's a statement of fact, if doing Z requires permission from the copyright holder. It's at least equivalent to a requirement to pay for a copy. Not quite. In general, paying for a copy means you have to pay before you receive the license and the copy, and you don't even get permission to copy or distribute. In fact, in general such copies come with shrink-wrap license agreements (i.e., contracts) that try to take away even fair use right you might have. But the GPL requirements are different in an essential point: you don't owe the author anything whatsoever if you receive the program and just run it. Furthermore, even if you choose to modify, copy or distribute the program, you stil don't owe the author anything. The conditions set forth make it clear that you owe the *recipients* respect for their freedoms, and that there's nearly nothing you have to do to clear this debt: offer them the source code you have, under the same terms and conditions you got yourself, and refrain from getting in their way should they want to enjoy their freedoms. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: that old GNU/Linux argument
On Jul 24, 2008, Marko Vojinovic [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Under the hood there is the Linux engine, But tell me, what is in principle The Single Most Important element of the car? There is only one answer --- the engine. So, what remains to be justified is why you decided Linux is the engine rather than say one of the tires. You present no evidence whatsoever to support this decision, and it seems entirely arbitrary, bordering circular logic. IOW, you arbitrarily chose the elements in the analogy, without any backing whatsoever, in such a way that they would support the conclusion you wanted to arrive at. That's called a false analogy. It's caused by circular reasoning. Unless you have reasons to support the parallel, that is. Please share. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: that old GNU/Linux argument
On Jul 22, 2008, Bruno Wolff III [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 22:34:39 -0300, Alexandre Oliva [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Jul 22, 2008, Bruno Wolff III [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Do you have any evidence of that? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Hurd sounds about right to me. Me too, but it seems to agree with my point; that Hurd development was glacially slow before Linux was released, Yup, I wrote that, and the web page supports this claim: ] It is true that HURD's choice of kernel model slowed things down, so I don't see any reason to claim that the existance of Linux slowed its development. Indeed, the web page doesn't support this statement: ] but the main factor for its slow development since 1992 was that a ] Free kernel that worked with the GNU operating system was available. Sorry, it wasn't clear which point you wanted supporting evidence for. The latter is based on things I heard at speeches and read, such as http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/11/12/229240# Unfortunately, the interview is no longer available, but this comment http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23686cid=2556745 is (admittedly thin) evidence to back up my statement. Regardless, it actually makes a lot of sense, once you take into account the goals of the FSF and of the Free Software movement in general. Developing Hurd is not a goal in itself. Enabling people to use computers is freedom is the ultimate goal. To this end, the most urgent need was a complete operating system. That's GNU. Every OS needs a kernel, so Hurd was part of the plan to address the most urgent need. Turns out it still needed a lot of work when Linux came up. Once Linux became Free and, years down the road, was shown to be portable (a major concern for RMS, after having had to rewrite operating systems after hardware platform changes), the need for a complete operating system was mostly addressed. While GNU software still had to be maintained, development efforts could from that point on be focused on other urgent software needs that couldn't be satisfied with Free Software. E.g., you'll see a kernel is not listed on http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority.html Hurd is still a technically interesting project, and there's no point in killing it while there are people interested in working on it. But there isn't any need for the FSF to focus efforts on it either. It wouldn't significantly advance the goals of the movement. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: that old GNU/Linux argument
On Jul 22, 2008, Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Alexandre Oliva wrote: You're probably right that Red Hat gave GNU/Linux some polish that even enthusiasts needed, but it started 3 years into Linux's history and 11 years into GNU's history, so I don't think we're talking about the same kind of early. Age isn't the point - that old stuff was unusable. Nothing much came out of those 11 GNU years but an editor, a fairly buggy compiler, and some lukewarm copies of simple Unix utilities that might have ended up with a user base in the hundreds (there wasn't much networking in those days if you weren't a university with a defense contract). And still, RMS earned his living and funding the FSF for several years selling tapes containing this software you label as unusable, compiled for several operating systems. Oddly, I used it back in 1991 and it was quite usable. So if there's something unusable there, it was Linux itself, or the still new GNU/Linux combination. It's not surprising that porting GNU to a different kernel takes work. Heck, back around 1992, I faced an upgrade at the uni from SunOS 4 to Solaris 2, and rebuilding all of the GNU software on it was a bit of a challenge. A number of patches were needed. I wouldn't surprise a change of kernel to be as big a deal as a change in userland-visible components of the OS, like the switch from BSD to SysV in the Solaris upgrade. But then, the GNU ports themselves were pretty young, even the object file formats and the shared libraries were still very active until things settled down on ELF and libc.so.6, on 1995/96. But GNU was pretty solid and widely used within the Unix community much earlier than that, and Cygnus already had solid business around a relatively small but quite significant part of the GNU operating system: the toolchain. Heck, rumor has it that Cygnus almost bought Red Hat a few years before Red Hat bought Cygnus in 1999. Guess where the middle letters of Cygnus came from! Rumor has it that the other name considered for the company was Wingnut. See a pattern? :-) Now, where would GNU be if it weren't for Linux? Hard to tell. Linux took GNU much farther than it had been able to get before, and the slow development of Hurd is an unfortunate factor in that. But where would Linux be if it weren't for GNU? Hard to tell. It might have gone the BSD way, and stalled along with BSDs during the ATT lawsuit. Or it could have taken several years rewriting the userland tools that GNU had written and they adopted early on. It makes little sense to deny the important of any of the two. GNU folks don't try to make it seem like Linux is irrelevant. The converse is unfortunately quite true. That's why you see GNU folks unhappy about this, and Linux folks who don't care because they were given the false impression that GNU was and is not relevant, as if all the merit had been with Linux, or they don't even know what GNU is, which is a very serious problem for the Free Software movement. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?
On Jul 22, 2008, Antonio Olivares [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I do not understand here, why some licenses are compatible and which ones are not. License compatibiliy analysis requires looking into the permissions and conditions established by each license, and looking for conflicts between them. For example, there's this funny Free Software license that is incompatible with itself: it says you can run, study, modify and distribute the software, with or without modifications, but you must distribute your modifications as patches to the pristine version of the file, rather than by distributing the modified version. So, if you take a program A and a program B, and you want to combine them, you can't do that, because both demand to remain as the baseline. A more common case of incompatibility is trying to combine two strong copyleft licenses: each license permits you to distribute the combination only under the license itself, so the only way you can satisfy both is if they're both the same license. Another common case is that of combining non-GPLed software with GPLed software. If the non-GPL license fails to grant some permission that the GPL grants, the combination cannot be distributed, because the GPL requires the combination to be distributed under the terms of the GPL, and doesn't permit distribution if you can't offer or pass on the permissions established in it for each and every part of the whole. For instance, the Mozilla Public License is incompatible with the GPL and we can see Mozilla firefox and/or Seamonkey, Thunderbird, .., etc live nicely in several distributions Licenses apply to copyrightable works such as individual programs. Even a single package might contain code under different licenses, as long as the combination doesn't amount to a copyrightable work in itself. A distribution is a collection of programs. Although such a combination might be copyrightable in itself, and thus amount to a derived work, the GPL makes an explicit exception to combinations that are mere aggregations of packages in the same medium. This is clear permission for GPLed programs to be distributed along with programs under licenses incompatible with the GPL, as long as the programs are not derived works of the GPLed work. Or something like that, IANAL :-) Also a project that was licensed under the GPL, made changes to another license the CDDL, and I wondered why, GPL does not allow those kind of things? If all the copyright holders of a program agree to offer the program under a different license, copyright law says they can do that. It doesn't invalidate licenses granted before, or commitments to grant such licenses, but they can stop offering the program under the old license and start offering it under the new license. Or they may start offering the program under both. Or offer it under some license to some parties, and under another license to other parties. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?
On Jul 23, 2008, Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Gordon Messmer wrote: You do have the freedom and right to license your own work under any terms you want. Nope. You have that legal right, but you're only operating within your freedom as long as your choice respects others' freedom. If it doesn't, then you're using your right to exert power. You do have the freedom and right to redistribute other works under other licenses, free or with other arrangements. You are entitled to the freedom to redistribute works, subject to respecting others' freedoms. The choice of license is not part of freedom, it's part of power. If there wasn't copyright law, nobody would need any license from you. Copyright law creates a legal right that gives you power to control how others can use your own. And then, as a consequence of this very law, you don't always have a right to redistribute works. Others are legally entitled to exert power over you, even when that conflicts with your freedom. So, no, because of copyright, you may end up without the right and without the freedom you claim above. But you must give up your freedom and rights or you are unable to participate in distributing these things as part of a work that contains any GPL-covered material. The or denounces your syllogism. The must is inappropriate when there's an alternative. As explained above, because of copyright law, you end up without that freedom and right by default, even though you should have them. The GPL respects the freedom to (re)distribute the program that you're entitled to, restoring your right to do that which copyright law took away, but not restoring your power to control how others can use the work that you're using to derive another work you want to distribute. The GPL doesn't require you to give up anything. It only restores some of your rights that copyright law took away, so that essential freedoms are respected for you and for every other user. But the point is that you also cannot impose fewer restrictions, 1. a grant of rights cannot possibly impose restrictions to whatever you could do before you received those rights. It's a grant, so it adds. It's not a contract, so it can't take away. 2. you can grant additional permissions as to any part of the whole, if you're the copyright holder for that part. Nothing whatsoever stops you from doing that: not copyright law, not any copyright license. Please point out any exception you can find to section 2b. Here: * Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without * modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions * are met: * 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright *notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. * 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright *notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the *documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. * 3. [rescinded 22 July 1999] * 4. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors *may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software *without specific prior written permission. additional permissions on top of those granted by the GPL. No matter what the GPL says, you still have the permissions above as to any file in which these permissions are written down. What makes you think they're revoked just because the whole is under the GPL? Only your flawed theory that the GPL imposes restrictions that would somehow take away rights you had or received with the program. Show what part of the GPL says you give up rights you had before, or that imposes restrictions, or hire a lawyer to explain this to you. Note: you may do X as long as Y is not a restriction, it's a grant. you may not do Z under this license is not a restriction, it's a statement of fact, if doing Z requires permission from the copyright holder. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?
On Jul 23, 2008, Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Alexandre Oliva wrote: Your freedom to distribute the improvement is respected by the GPL, but not by the combination of the licenses you accepted. Why do you consider that acceptable? It's undesirable, indeed, but what's to stop people from inventing intentionally-incompatible licenses or accepting them? The GNU GPL was the first copyleft license. It was incompatible with other licenses that preceded it because they did not grant the rights the GPL was intended to grant, and it was not deemed appropriate to give up those rights for the sake of compatibility with them. Can't really fault the GPL for that, can you? Other copyleft and non-copyleft licenses followed that were designed specifically to be incompatible with the GPL, to prevent code sharing. Can't fault the GPL for that, can you? If you think that's unacceptable, why did you accept the less permissive or artificially incompatible license that got you into this situation? If you accepted them, you think that's acceptable. If you don't want to accept them, talk the copyright holders into changing their minds and permit you to respect others' freedoms while not granting them the power to not respect third parties' freedoms. Anyhow, where does this leave you? Does barking up the wrong tree mean anything to you? That is, why do you believe is it right for one license to have any affect on the terms of another? Moo. Does when did you stop beating your wife? mean anything to you? :-) I don't believe that is right, and the GPL doesn't do any such thing. This license you invented that you call GPL and spend your life complaining about might do that, but then, that's between you and your imagination. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: that old GNU/Linux argument
On Jul 23, 2008, Nifty Fedora Mitch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: systematic interface between the kernel services and the applications. This interface consists of an API and and ABI. Not really. It's just an ABI, really. It's GNU libc's job to offer an API for applications and translate that into the system calls defined in the kernel ABI. There's no such thing as a kernel header file you can include from userland and start issuing calls into the kernel. Kernel developers will tell you that including kernel headers from userland is not kosher. Of course GNU libc has its own ABI as well, and that's what applications for GNU/Linux are compatible with, after being built using the GNU libc API. As for the kernel ABI, nothing but GNU libc really cares about it, since pretty much nobody else issues syscalls directly. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: that old GNU/Linux argument
On Jul 21, 2008, Tim [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Software for Linux = Linux software. By this reasoning, reading Linus' first announcement of Linux, you'd conclude that Linux is a GNU kernel. That's how the English language works. http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/Historic/old-versions/RELNOTES-0.01 Sadly, a kernel by itself gets you nowhere. To get a working system you need a shell, compilers, a library etc. These are separate parts and may be under a stricter (or even looser) copyright. Most of the tools used with linux are GNU software [...] Linus Torvalds [EMAIL PROTECTED] You may also note the These are separate parts, used with linux. I.e., not part of linux. linux is the kernel. So, anyone who insists in naming Linux all of the GNU operating system used with the kernel Linux is contradicting the primary developer of GNU and the primary developer of Linus. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?
On Jul 21, 2008, Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Alexandre Oliva wrote: For me it means using/reusing/improving freely-available, well-tested code in all possible situations. And where did you get this idea that this is what Free (and|or) Open Source Software are about? That's what I say it is about. I.e., you start out by assuming that there aren't differences between these movements, and then conclude from this that they're the same. Sounds like circular logic to me. Is there a Pope-of-Software who is the only person with the right to make decisions? This is not about making decisions, this is about history. It's a matter of fact, not opinion. Why have a discussion if I can't present my own view? You can. You're doing just that. That doesn't make it meaningful or right. If you want it to be convincing, you have to show convincing evidence, not just insist that it's your view and you have every right to have it and present it. This won't change anyone's mind. The lack of freedom comes when the GPL is involved with any other code, a situation you seem to ignore. The only cases of combinations for which the GPL refrains from granting permission for distribution are those involving code under licenses that are less permissive than the GPL, in at least one aspect. Why do you insist that the GPL is at fault for that? It is only difficult to escape when equal/better choices don't exist. 'fraid you've never tried to move to a superior Free Software platform, away from an application that uses a proprietary format, that nobody else supports and yet you've stored years of data in it, Red Herring. It's not necessary to do that. Please look up 'red herring'. I provided an example that directly contradicts your claim. How can you regard that as a distraction? I do notice the difference Good. Then you acknowledge that the values behind the FS and OSS movements are different, and that they are often at odds with each other? hence I know that the GPL is the one that most often does not permit Again, this is a distraction, since the GPL is largely adopted and promoted by both movements. It is compatible with a large number of licenses that are both FS and OSS licenses, and it is incompatible with several other licenses that are both FS and OSS licenses. You appear to be working under the common but incorrect assumption that Free Software license means GPL-compatible license. I can't see why you'd obsess about the GPL in an investigation of differences in values between FS and OSS movements. Heck, the GPL isn't even the only copyleft license. In fact, almost all other copyleft licenses are incompatible with the GPL, but this doesn't preclude them from being Free Software licenses, or Open Source licenses. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: that old GNU/Linux argument
On Jul 22, 2008, Ric Moore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Linux is a trademark, please use it properly in combination with other marks. ... and an GPL'd registered project under the name of Linux, Good. Now go check what was registered under that name. ] Oh, my God, a kernel! I thought it was an operating system! :-) -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: that old GNU/Linux argument
On Jul 22, 2008, Tim [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've little sympathy for users being harassed into calling Linux something else, Me too. Likewise GNU. It works both ways. Linux = kernel (says Linus) GNU = operating system (says RMS) -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: that old GNU/Linux argument
On Jul 22, 2008, Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: the gnu utilities in linux distros could easily be replaced with counterparts from the *bsd's, opensolaris, or any commercial unix version. And the Linux kernel could be swapped with a bsd, opensolaris, or commercial unix in a distro running GNU utilities. That all this could be done and yield something else doesn't change what the combination GNU+Linux is. Removing the GNU bits until it is no longer the largest single part of the whole operating system would just give legitimacy to naming the whole after some other part. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?
On Jul 22, 2008, Antonio Olivares [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: if he decides to make changes and distribute them, i.e, sell to other fisherman, then he must make those changes available back to GNU I realize this is meant to be funny, rather than factually correct (mixing up GPL with GNU, for one), but there's no such requirement in the GPL. Nobody's required to make changes available *back* to anyone else, under any Free Software license whatsoever, distributing the software or not. The requirement is to make them available *forward* to the recipients of that modified version of the software. This is unlike some Open Source licenses, that do make such requirements, even if you'd rather not distribute the software. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?
On Jul 22, 2008, Antonio Olivares [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Just like the Mepis/Zenwalk examples I used previously in the thread, they modified the code and released it, yet they were not releasing the changes/what they modified back to the community. They didn't have to. All the GPL required of them that they allegedly didn't do was to offer those who got their binaries from them a chance to obtain the corresponding sources. They got into some kind of trouble and were forced to release the code/make it available AFAIK, nobody can be forced to do so. The most a copyright holder of GPLed sotware can get from a court for the defendant to cease distribution, so that the infringement stops, plus damages. Releasing the code to rectify the harm caused by the infringement can be part of the negotiation to reduce or even remove the damages. I don't know of any court who's ever ordered someone to release source code to satisfy the requirements of a copyright (pure) license. How could it? It migth very well be the case that the infringing party doesn't even *have* the source code, and can't possibly get it. The restrictions or the viral part of the GPL is what bites many people and what turns them against it :( Please don't call it viral. It isn't viral. Not even close. That's a lie spread by the enemies of the GPL. It only applies to derived works, i.e., its freedom is an inheritance that a GPLed program leaves only its descendants. Many authors have changed licenses to others besides the GPL, because according to them, it restricts their freedoms :( As long as they still respect others' freedoms, that's fine. Unfortunate, but fine. http://fsfla.org/circular/2007-078#1 http://www.slax.org/modules.php?author=151 Not all the modules are GPL, there is one GNU/Grub. I use the source and build it according to rules of creating modules for Slax. Is there any chance I can get sued because I created those modules? Of getting sued? Sure, anyone can sue anyone else for any reason :-) I think the question you wanted to ask is, is it likely that such a lawsuit would be legitimate and successful, right :-) I don't have all the facts right now, and I'm not a lawyer anyway, so I won't comment on the specifics. In general, if you combine into a single program code under some specific version of the GPL with code under other licenses, you only have permission to distribute the result if the other licenses are compatible with that specific version of the GPL. For a (not necessarily complete) list of licenses that are compatible with the GPL, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLCompatibleLicenses If you need help to determine whether some Free Software package you're working on is in compliance with applicable Free Software licenses, or have doubts about Free Software licensing in general, the FSF offers a service to Free Software developers and users: just e-mail your question to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Am I violating any GPL rules when I posted those modules on the Slax website? The sources are freely available, the build scripts is contained within each module, does that satisfy the GPL? From what you say, you're clearly not in intentional infringement, but this is not enough to tell whether there is any unintentional infringement. The important questions are: - whether you copied code whose copyright is held by someone else, and that you don't have permission to sub-license, into these packages, and whose licensing terms do not permit you (or any other person) to extend to others the permissions encoded in the GPL, over the whole of the combined work. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?
On Jul 22, 2008, Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Alexandre Oliva wrote: Yes, so if you want to distribute a copy under the GPL, you must agree to its terms, which then cover the entire work. But that does not take away any other rights you might have as to specific parts. Rights aren't the issue. Of course they are. A license is a grant of rights, nothing else. I don't see how you can agree to the GPL terms for a copy first, then distribute a copy of some dual or other licensed part of it in a way you just agreed not to do. I honestly don't see any agreement not to do. I see permissions. The closest to that, in GPLv2, are sections 4 and 5. The statement These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License, in the case of dual licensing, or of a component under a more permissive license, is simply not true in these cases. It is at all clear, however, that section 4 does not apply in spite of the 'you may not ... except as expressily provide under this License' being false. That's not the way it works. You have permissions. You can choose to use them any time you like. Except that you agreed not to in that 2b clause. Err, no. 2b is just a condition to one of the permissions. You're not even bound by 2b; you could instead use the permissions encoded in 1, 2a, 2c, 3, or any other permissions you have that are not subject to this condition you object to. 2b is not a prohibition, just a specification of one of the possible variants of the permission granted in 2. It's a you're welcome into my home, as long as you don't smoke inside, or you smoke a pipe with flavored tobacco. You're not agreeing to smoke a pipe with flavored tobacco, or to never smoke again. You can smoke, even inside my home, if you abide by the conditions of the permission granted. Or perhaps you don't smoke, in which case you go don't smoke inside. And you can most definitely smoke (or not) whatever you like elsewhere, if you have permission to do so, or if there's no requirement for permission to do so. It's a permission, not a restriction. (Given the assumption that, by law, you need my permission to enter my home) but I don't see how the agreement to apply the GPL restrictions You're still getting confused because you're thinking in terms of restrictions. There aren't any. Think permission to go that far, in the absence of which you couldn't go anywhere. The restriction on not going any farther is not something you get from the GPL, so by agreeing with it you don't agree with any such restrictions. The restrictions are encoded in copyright law. If you accept the permissions granted through the license, they won't take away any other permissions that lifted restrictions from law. The point of that work-as-a-whole clause is to get you to agree to apply restrictions to other people's work Rather to grant the same permissions over any work derived from the work provided under the GPL, to ensure that the whole remains free. You don't have to believe me, that's spelled out in the preamble of the license. When not combined into that single work, if they're not derived works of GPLed works on their own, their copyright holders can apply whatever terms they like to it. The GPL can't and doesn't change that. The condition for distribution of modified works only extends only to works derived from the GPLed work. If the combined work is derived from a GPLed work, then its authors have granted you permission to distribute the combined work under the GPL. You also need permission from copyright holders of any other works you have used. If all of them permit distribution under the GPL (say, because they granted you a license that is more permissive than the GPL), then you have permission to distribute the whole under the GPL. And then, if you don't have any other permissions that would enable you to distribute the whole under the GPL, then the GPL is only license you could use to distribute the whole. If you have permission from all copyright holders to distribute the combined work under another license, you can do that too. Even if the licenses are incompatible, you can extend the permissions granted by the copyright holders to all recipients of the program. You don't have to choose one and use it. Even if you modify the program, as long as you work within the permissions of both licenses, you can extend those permissions to anyone else. It's a bit like Schrödinger's cat. Until you open the box and check (i.e., do something that one of the licenses don't permit), the cat is both dead and alive ( i.e., you are operating under both licenses at the same time). It's only when you operate out of the scope of a license than you are then no longer permitted to modify or distribute the result of that modification under that license. You can still distribute the work under the other. That's the reason the GPL is different from other licenses. All copyleft licenses
Re: that old GNU/Linux argument
On Jul 22, 2008, Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I suspect the X-related bits outweigh the GNUish parts considerably. Bring on the numbers! It won't even matter that the GNU operating system was designed to work with X and thus technically X would count more on the GNU OS side than on the Linux kernel site. But even without it, you'll see you're mistaken. Unless by X-related bits you refer to anything with a GUI. That would be comparing apples and oranges. GNU bits are those created as part of the GNU project. If you were to count X-related as runs on top of X, then all X-related bits would be GNU-related as well, for X runs on top of GNU. So, how are you going to count it to come to the same conclusion? -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?
On Jul 22, 2008, Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Licenses often impose terms you must meet as a condition of granting those rights. Those are not (pure) licenses, those are license agreements. Agreements as in contracts. Contracts are meeting of minds and mutual obligations. The GPL is a unilateral grant of rights. I honestly don't see any agreement not to do. I see permissions. Permissions you get when you agree to the license terms. Still, where's the agreement not to do you allegedly agree to when you accept the license, that you referred to as prohibitions and restrictions of the GPL? 2b says that if you accept the license - and you are not free to redistribute the gpl-only parts if you don't - that the terms must apply to all components. Point is, even if you do apply those terms, they don't take anything away, because they are unilateral permissions. Permissions aren't the point - it is what you agree to do. You agreed to accept the right to do a number of things. It's a bit like Schrödinger's cat. Until you open the box and check (i.e., do something that one of the licenses don't permit), the cat is both dead and alive ( i.e., you are operating under both licenses at the same time). At this point you've agreed to apply GPL terms to the whole work. Nope. You can always claim you merely distributed the work under the other license. That the copyright holder of the work chooses to grant both licenses to the recipients is of no concern to you. Unless you distribute in a way that doesn't comply with one of the licenses. Only in this case can someone else conclude that that was not a license you were operating under. (because otherwise it would have been copyright infringement). Even though they can't exactly force you to apply their terms to other people's work, No pure copyright license can. The farthest it can reach is derived works. If other people's work are not derived works, they're necessarily outside the scope of the GPL, unless you choose to make them part of a derived work. If you can decide whether to combine them or not, you're not being forced. They withhold your freedom to redistribute Your freedom to redistribute is respected. There's no such thing as freedom to choose whatever license you want in the FSD. Choosing licenses is not freedom, it's power. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?
On Jul 22, 2008, Antonio Olivares [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Like others have said on this list, they should call it whatever they consider is best. Do you think it's just fine if I call you Florisvaldo Azeitonares? What if people started a campaign and got a lot of people to call you like that, because they consider it best? What if you found that offensive and denigrating? What if you kid's colleagues at school started calling him by a demeaning name? Wouldn't you reprimand the colleagues at school and teach them that this is not something that good kids should do, or at least ask the teacher to do so? Why do you think this situation is any different? Why is it that the bullies get away with using a demeaning term to refer to our kid, and even find that they have a right to do it? Just because they invented the name? -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?
On Jul 22, 2008, Antonio Olivares [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The code is available for free from some places, is that a sufficient condition? Not for GPLv2. For GPLv3, it is, but the responsibility of ensuring people who get the binaries can get the sources still lies with the distributor of the binaries. Why do people have to tarnish products when they are doing good and those that are not accuse them of violating the GPL? If they didn't mean to do wrong, they fix it and move on (GPLv3's automatic restoration is a great improvement over GPLv2's automatic termination in this regard). If they did mean to do wrong, then they're not doing good. Of course you'll find people who are too trigger-happy and will go for the jugular of people who didn't mean to do wrong. That's unfortunate, but there are such poeple everywhere. In general, a friendly approach to inform the person that they're making a mistake is the best to get problems fixed and to verify that no ill was meant. In the instance of Zenwalk, they posted it on their sites with the corresponding sources, for Mepis, you can get the sources provided that you pay and they will be sent to whoever asks for them. Sounds like both are in compliance with GPLv2 at least in this regard. The restrictions or the viral part of the GPL is what bites many people and what turns them against it :( I do not know enough about it, I just quote what others say. When you do that, you're helping them spread it. Please challenge it, help us expose the lie and the manipulation underway. All I question is why some programs yes and others no, while both are free and open source. I don't understand what you're questioning here. Could you please rephrase or elaborate? I am not an enemy of the GPL, I only question why it tries to restrict things that are not licensed within itself? If you can read Portuguese (from your name, perhaps you can), please have a look at http://fsfla.org/svnwiki/blogs/lxo/pub/gplv3-novidades and http://fsfla.org/svnwiki/blogs/lxo/pub/copyleft, it may help understand the reasoning behind the conditions of the GPL, if its preamble doesn't for you. It is/was an excellent license, but there are some things that it prohibits Nope. Copyright law prohibits. The GPL prohibits nothing. It doesn't permit everything, though. Whatever it doesn't permit that copyright prohibits, in the absence of some other license you might have, remains prohibited. *I do not know which ones*, that forces authors of software to use other licenses in which their work is more protected. What do you mean by protected? For the others, the users that demand the source, it is available in the own binary that they download, the instructions are provided as to how the binary is generated and how it is built and how it works. This all sounds good, I don't see any conflict with the GPL (or any other Free Software license, for that matter) in this description. But it's not the whole story. You have to look at the licenses of all pieces of software you've used and see how they play out together. If there are conflicts, you might be in infringement. Even if you are, if you're well-meaning, and if the copyright holders of the software you've derived from are well-meaning, some arrangement can generally be achieved, but you might have to get in touch with them. I only question if it is not a GPL offense? Distributing sources along with the binaries are not a GPL offense, no. Whether they're packaged in a single file or not is irrelevant. Thank you Alexandre for your kindness and taking the time to explain the GPL and other things. You're welcome. One is glad to be of service. I know that the vast majority of users do not appreciate the agenda that you push, but it is something that you have to push. Stress on have to :-) and some quotes from comments section in Distrowatch.com weekly Take comment 37 I'm not an expert at all, just an end-user, and like it when something just works, as I find in Linux. Sadly for this gnewbie, Linux doesn't just work. It needs userland to work, and that userland has GNU at its foundation. The people should decide in the end what they want to call it, is that fair? That people can and should decide it, sure, by all means. Whether or not it's fair, that depends on how they decide. It's between them and their conscience. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: that old GNU/Linux argument
On Jul 22, 2008, Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: That the non-surprising meaning of GNU/Linux would be if the GNU project packaged a distribution themselves with a Linux kernel. No, that would be something like GNU GNU/Linux, or GNU GNU+Linux. I.e., the GNU+Linux distribution maintained by the GNU project. They don't and any other use of the name doesn't make much sense. What's the logic behind your demand that the GNU name be attached only to a distribution created by the GNU project itself? By a similar logic, if Linux named an operating system (like GNU), it could only be attached to the name of a distribution published by Linus Torvalds. Like I suggested in the beginning of the thread, could folks please check arguments against GNU/ in the name to see whether they don't apply equally to /Linux? This could save a lot of time, bandwidth and embarrassment. I credit (blame?) RedHat for the bulk of the early work on Linux, The timing doesn't look right. Back then I was running GNU stuff still mostly on SunOS 4.3 and Solaris 2, but I remember some colleagues at the uni who got into the GNU/Linux bandwagon earlier than myself and who carried around huge stacks of floppies, and I'm pretty sure Red Hat wasn't even in the map back then. It was probably Slackware or Yggdrasil. That was probably Summer 1993/94 (Southern hemisphere, so that's 1993 EOY). Red Hat started around that time-frame, and Red Hat [GNU/]Linux 1.0 came up only in late 1994. You're probably right that Red Hat gave GNU/Linux some polish that even enthusiasts needed, but it started 3 years into Linux's history and 11 years into GNU's history, so I don't think we're talking about the same kind of early. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?
On Jul 21, 2008, Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Agreed that there is next to no chance for enforcement in such a case, but does your reading of the GPL not indicate that non-GPL distribution of copies of anything ever covered by its work-as-a-whole provision is prohibited? Yep, my reading does not indicate that. As I've already tried to explain to you, the GPL doesn't take away any rights that you had before receiving the program, or even before accepting the license. So, if you have received a whole program under the GPL, and one of its files says: This file is in the public domain Then you can use it however you like, no matter what the GPL says, because the GPL can't bring the file out of the public domain. If the file says: Copyright 2008 John Doe You have permission to do whatever you like with this file, including running, reading, studying, modifying, distributing, publishing, selling, etc, as long as you retain the copyright notice and this license. then it doesn't matter that the GPL refrains from granting you permission to do certain things, you have that express permission straight from the copyright holder in the file itself, and the GPL will not take it away from you. To make sense of this in your twisted GPL has restrictions understanding, you could picture it as if each file was under a dual license: the GPL under which the whole is distributed, with its alleged restrictions, and the individual license applied to the file (or even to parts of files). To me it makes more sense to just take it as a sum of permissions: such and such license over such and such parts (or the whole) grant me permission to do such and such with those parts (or the whole); such and such license over such and such parts grant me permission to do such and such with those parts, etc. Free Software licenses, being pure copyright licenses, can't remove any rights, so this kind of reasoning has worked quite well for me. Of course, if you bring non-Free agreements into the picture, agreements that require explicit acceptance because they do remove certain rights you had before, then things get messier, and this simple sum of permissions approach won't work. I don't see any escape clause. There isn't any for dual licensing either. But that's because other licenses and rights you might have are outside the scope of this one license; it only adds to the things you're entitled to do. That said, IANAL, so please don't take this as legal advice. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?
On Jul 21, 2008, Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Alexandre Oliva wrote: Several times, you end up having to decide between promoting software freedom and promoting the software that happens to be Free (and OSS). Yes, the divisive nature of the GPL is unfortunate. FYI, the GPL (and very many other licenses) satisfy both the Free Software and the Open Source Software definitions. There's some 5 different licenses that satisfies one of the definitions and not the others. Please don't get the impression that the issue above has anything whatsoever to do with licensing choices. It's about underlying values and goals of the two movements. Depending on whether you're guided by FS or OSS values, you'll tend to consistently choose one in detriment of the other. Yes, that is unfortunate, but you have to live with it to promote FOSS. This is fundamentally contradictory. If you have to choose between these two, you're choosing between promoting either FS or OSS. I.e., you're promoting one in detriment of the other. How can that be promoting FOSS? Or, in a more fundamental level, how would it even make sense to say promoting something, where something is defined by means of conflicting goals? I guess it's worth giving a concrete example, to save a round-trip delay. The FS movement cares about software freedom, so an essential part of this movement is to not accept, endorse or promote software that denies users any of the 4 essential freedoms, even if this means inconvenience for or even a delay in the liberation of some users. The OSS movement cares about popularity and convenience, so an esential part of this movement is to accept, endorse and promote the use of software that denies users their freedoms, when that is convenient and can lure in more users. Do you see the conflict in these two positions? Do you see that a step forward for one amounts to a step backward in the other? How, then, could it possibly make sense to even talk about promoting FOSS? -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?
On Jul 21, 2008, Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Please show how something can
include any GPL-covered work, yet be distributed under different
terms if you insist on claiming that.
Rahul Sundaram wrote:
I don't have to show anything like that.
You don't, but why make such a claim when you obviously can't back it up?
I think you're pasting each other. The question is just not related
with the sub-topic at hand, and it's ambiguous.
What do you mean by include?
If you mean something like contain, then the answer is mere
aggregation, i.e., when the combination of the GPL-covered work with
the GPL-incompatible work, not derived from the former, is a fully
mechanical, rather than creative, process.
If you mean something like C's #include, then the answer can be
clean room implementation.
Now, what you're asking is about modules that are not derived works.
There's no reason to assume a module needs to include (in either
sense) GPLed code. This doens't mean it's easy, practical or even
legally bullet-proof, but it's on this kind of argument that non-GPLed
modules for Linux are justified.
Now, I'd rather not go into further details, because I don't feel like
offering a recipe on how to work around the spirit of the GPL,
especially because I don't entirely believe it would actually work if
ever disputed in a court of law.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing
Those are licenses that can be usurped by the GPL requirements.
Err... Did you notice how many of those licenses have a NO in the
GPLv{2,3} compat columns?
Are you by any chance confusing FSF Free (= respects the 4 freedoms)
with GPL compatible (= grants the permissions the GPL grants without
establishing any further requirements)?
The GPL must apply to the work-as-a-whole.
But do you have any reason to assume that a module can't be a work on
its own?
--
Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org}
FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org}
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Re: that old GNU/Linux argument
On Jul 21, 2008, Anders Karlsson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (For the record, Emacs is my favourite editor, before anyone else has a stroke and starts bleating Heresy!!) Heresy! Emacs is not (just) an editor! :-) -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?
On Jul 21, 2008, Ed Greshko [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Les Mikesell wrote: Not at all. The more choices you have the better. You can only go forward. I keep telling my wife that But she doesn't buy it. She does. She just doesn't tell you about it :-P :-D -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?
On Jul 21, 2008, Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Alexandre Oliva wrote: I think you're pasting each other. The question is just not related with the sub-topic at hand, and it's ambiguous. Heh. -ENOENGLISH. s/pasting/talking past/ This part of the conversation started with someone claiming that some other licenses are 'compatible' with the GPL and my counterclaim that within the 'work-as-a-whole', no terms other than the GPL can apply. Both claims are correct, in a way. Licenses can be compatible with the GPL if they grand the same permissions and don't object to the same conditions and requirements of the GPL. Nevertheless, once there is some GPLed work in a whole, the work as a whole can only be distributed under the terms and conditions of the GPL. What do you mean by include? I mean as a part of what the GPL calls a work as a whole, where some part of that work is already covered by the GPL. Include as in contains, then. Now, what you're asking is about modules that are not derived works. There's no reason to assume a module needs to include (in either sense) GPLed code. This doens't mean it's easy, practical or even legally bullet-proof, but it's on this kind of argument that non-GPLed modules for Linux are justified. Yes, that's really a separate issue, related to how modules operate. How they operate is irrelevant to copyright. What matters to copyright is how they're created and distributed. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing Those are licenses that can be usurped by the GPL requirements. I'm talking about within a work-as-a-whole, which is the only place where there is any concept of compatibility. I'm sorry, even in this context, your statement above still doesn't seem to me to match the contents of that web page. Some licenses do allow their own terms to be replaced by the GPL, True, but these are very rare. GNU LGPL and the Brazilian LPG-AP v2, so far unpublished, are the only examples that come to mind. Most licenses that are compatible with the GPL are compatible just because they don't conflict with the terms and conditions of the GPL in any way, so distributing the work under the GPL (without removing the original license) is in perfect accordance with the terms and conditions of the original license. but it's a one way trip and that copy of such code no longer has its original license terms. Can you back this up? All the evidence I've got suggests the exact opposite. On the contrary, Linus clearly stated that a module was not necessarily a derived work simply because it is loaded by the kernel and uses the services of the kernel. That's correct. This is not the same as saying that, just because a module is loaded by the kernel and uses its services, it is NOT a derived work. It may or may not be a derived work regardless of that. Some people seem to think the story has changed recently, On both sides :-) (for such large values of recently as 1995+ :-) -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: that old GNU/Linux argument
On Jul 21, 2008, Timothy Murphy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've never, ever, misunderstood someone because they use the term Linux. So, if someone said I'm a Linux developer, you'd immediately know that the person: a) wrote some code present in linux-2.6.26.tar.bz2 b) wrote some code for your favorite application c) maintains a package in your favorite distro d) helps translate your favorite desktop mgmt system e) writes scripts in your favorite scripting language f) two or more of the above FTR, I do realize that some of the ambiguities above stem from often-inflated meanings for developer, but even if you disregard this detail you'll still realize there's a communication failure because of the often-inflated meaning for Linux. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: that old GNU/Linux argument
On Jul 21, 2008, Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Alexandre Oliva wrote: On Jul 20, 2008, Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I can't recall ever having any reason to have a name for a subset of a distribution that only included the GNU components and the kernel. Can someone who uses this term explain the circumstances where it is useful? /me mumbles something about UNIX and UNIX-like I expect unix-like operating systems to supply apache and sendmail these days, and have X at least as an option - unless you are just talking about a kernel. I'll assume you mean the Apache http Server, not the Apache Software Foundation or any other of its projects. You're probably right about sendmail (that the GNU operating system was designed to use as its MTA), but I wouldn't think apache is supplied as part of a majority of the proprietary UNIX or UNIX-like commercial distributions these days, let alone as part of the operating system. Saying apache is part of the operating system is pushing it a bit. Everyone these days wants to send mail, but not everyone needs an http server. Especially, say, on a Live CD, that most definitely contains a complete operating system in spite of the absence of the apache http server. In fact, per the ASF's trademark rules, very few people are actually running something that can be called the Apache http Server, since the ASF demands (and has legal grounds to demand, rather than just request) people to not claim modified versions of its software are the Apache http server. Most distributors of http servers containing ASF code actually modify it. So, in most cases it can't be called Apache. http://www.apache.org/foundation/licence-FAQ.html#Name-changes Isn't it funny that the same people who refuse to retain the due credit to the GNU project and respond to the request with GNU can't force me to, will refuse to remove the credit to the ASF, even though it can legally demand it? -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Re: that old GNU/Linux argument
On Jul 21, 2008, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I really could not care less what it is called, just that the bleedin' thing works. If you don't care, then wouldn't object to calling it GNU/Linux, right? That's all some of the authors of a lot of the bleedin' thing you're running ask of you, to help extend to others the freedoms they worked hard to give you, by writing this very software, and laying the ground for the rest of it. Pretty please! Please at least try to show some respect and gratitude for their efforts, and to let others make an informed decision about on whose side of the F/OS debate they are, if any, rather than inducing them to believe that this was all the result of the effort of the man who happened, just for fun, to cross the Finnish :-) line, after they had taken the baton nearly all the way, to give you and everyone freedom. Please don't hide behind such poor excuses as everyone else calls it Linux or Linux is shorter and more convenient. You're not everyone else (one would hope you're better than that), and GNU is actually shorter than Linux. It took a lot of work to write all this GNU software, *far* more than writing Linux and porting all components of the GNU operating system but its kernel to run with it. Saying or writing GNU or GNU/Linux or GNU+Linux to refer to it is not even close to being as inconvenient as writing all of that software yourself, or not having the freedoms to run, study, adapt, share and improve, which these GNU people worked hard to provide you with. Giving them the credit they deserve is the least you can do. Helping us reach more people, not only with the software, but also with the philosophy of freedom, would be a plus, and this is the reason we ask you to do so. Please don't deny us the only thing we humbly ask of you. Thanks, Oh, boy, at this point I'm pretty sure Les will come back with his theories that the GPL makes demands and imposes restrictions, and conclude from this misunderstanding that we do indeed ask more of you. Please remember that the GPL doesn't do any such thing, it doesn't demand or even request anything, it merely grants permissions that are enough to respect your freedoms while defending everyone else's. What a spoiler :-( -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED], gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! = http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED], gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
