Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Hi Emmanuel, all, forgot to reply on this: We at HAW are fine with keeping LGPL license. So no conflict from our side. Best, Thomas On 22.03.2015 14:02, Emmanuel Baccelli wrote: Dear all, thanks for the input from everyone on this topic. It is a tough case to decide, based on our long and detailed exchanges on this subject. But it is probably time to conclude. At INRIA, we came up with the following observations: - there is no enthusiastic majority for a license change to BSD/MIT, - as solutions competing with RIOT are quasi-exclusively BSD/MIT, (L)GPL is a way to stand out positively. Concerning this last point, we observed that staying on the (L)GPL side strengthens our position comparing ourselves to Linux -- which has been one of our key non-technical arguments so far. Furthermore, studies such as [1] show that small companies and start-ups are going to determine IoT. More than bigger companies, such small structures need to spread development and maintenance costs for the kernel and all the software that is not their core business. Our analysis is that this is more compatible with (L)GPL than with BSD/MIT. We are of the opinion that, compared to BSD/MIT, (L)GPL will improve final user experience, security and privacy, by hindering device lock-down, favoring up-to-date, and field-updgradable code. We think this a more solid base to provide a consistent, compatible, secure-by-default standard system which developers can build upon to create trustworthy IoT applications. Last but not least, we think that (L)GPL is a better base than BSD/MIT to keep the community united in the mid and long run. For these reasons, even though we still believe a switch to BSD/MIT would facilitate RIOT's penetration rate initially, we want to continue releasing under LGPLv2.1. I also want to point out that even though this is basically status quo, we think this discussion was far from useless, because it helped clarify where we stand, and for what. From our point of view, the next steps are now to set up a non-profit legal entity for RIOT, and to put CLAs in place, allowing non-exclusive rights for the code to this legal structure. Best, Emmanuel [1] http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2869521 -- Prof. Dr. Thomas C. Schmidt ° Hamburg University of Applied Sciences Berliner Tor 7 ° ° Dept. Informatik, Internet Technologies Group20099 Hamburg, Germany ° ° http://www.haw-hamburg.de/inet Fon: +49-40-42875-8452 ° ° http://www.informatik.haw-hamburg.de/~schmidtFax: +49-40-42875-8409 ° ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org https://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Dear all, thanks for the input from everyone on this topic. It is a tough case to decide, based on our long and detailed exchanges on this subject. But it is probably time to conclude. At INRIA, we came up with the following observations: - there is no enthusiastic majority for a license change to BSD/MIT, - as solutions competing with RIOT are quasi-exclusively BSD/MIT, (L)GPL is a way to stand out positively. Concerning this last point, we observed that staying on the (L)GPL side strengthens our position comparing ourselves to Linux -- which has been one of our key non-technical arguments so far. Furthermore, studies such as [1] show that small companies and start-ups are going to determine IoT. More than bigger companies, such small structures need to spread development and maintenance costs for the kernel and all the software that is not their core business. Our analysis is that this is more compatible with (L)GPL than with BSD/MIT. We are of the opinion that, compared to BSD/MIT, (L)GPL will improve final user experience, security and privacy, by hindering device lock-down, favoring up-to-date, and field-updgradable code. We think this a more solid base to provide a consistent, compatible, secure-by-default standard system which developers can build upon to create trustworthy IoT applications. Last but not least, we think that (L)GPL is a better base than BSD/MIT to keep the community united in the mid and long run. For these reasons, even though we still believe a switch to BSD/MIT would facilitate RIOT's penetration rate initially, we want to continue releasing under LGPLv2.1. I also want to point out that even though this is basically status quo, we think this discussion was far from useless, because it helped clarify where we stand, and for what. From our point of view, the next steps are now to set up a non-profit legal entity for RIOT, and to put CLAs in place, allowing non-exclusive rights for the code to this legal structure. Best, Emmanuel [1] http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2869521 ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Dear Emmanuel, all; Personally, I laud this decision. It appears reasonable and based on a well founded analysis. Congratulations, to the whole community! --Pekka On 2015–03–22, at 15:02 , Emmanuel Baccelli emmanuel.bacce...@inria.fr wrote: Dear all, thanks for the input from everyone on this topic. It is a tough case to decide, based on our long and detailed exchanges on this subject. But it is probably time to conclude. At INRIA, we came up with the following observations: - there is no enthusiastic majority for a license change to BSD/MIT, - as solutions competing with RIOT are quasi-exclusively BSD/MIT, (L)GPL is a way to stand out positively. Concerning this last point, we observed that staying on the (L)GPL side strengthens our position comparing ourselves to Linux -- which has been one of our key non-technical arguments so far. Furthermore, studies such as [1] show that small companies and start-ups are going to determine IoT. More than bigger companies, such small structures need to spread development and maintenance costs for the kernel and all the software that is not their core business. Our analysis is that this is more compatible with (L)GPL than with BSD/MIT. We are of the opinion that, compared to BSD/MIT, (L)GPL will improve final user experience, security and privacy, by hindering device lock-down, favoring up-to-date, and field-updgradable code. We think this a more solid base to provide a consistent, compatible, secure-by-default standard system which developers can build upon to create trustworthy IoT applications. Last but not least, we think that (L)GPL is a better base than BSD/MIT to keep the community united in the mid and long run. For these reasons, even though we still believe a switch to BSD/MIT would facilitate RIOT's penetration rate initially, we want to continue releasing under LGPLv2.1. I also want to point out that even though this is basically status quo, we think this discussion was far from useless, because it helped clarify where we stand, and for what. From our point of view, the next steps are now to set up a non-profit legal entity for RIOT, and to put CLAs in place, allowing non-exclusive rights for the code to this legal structure. Best, Emmanuel [1] http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2869521 http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2869521___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Hey, On 02/25/2015 11:39 AM, Emmanuel Baccelli wrote: GPL with linking exception seems relevant in this discussion -- especially since eCOS, which is also a well-known embedded OS, uses this license. If we are thinking about amending an existing license, we could also try to ease the restrictions of LGPL to fit our vision (whatever that is). Like, as LGPL expects developers of proprietary code to a. release everything needed to change RIOT (e.g., object files), b. to provide reverse engineering stuff to debug such a solution, we could add exceptions to LGPL that clarify these terms. e.g., we could add an exception that if that developer provides an LGPLed port of RIOT for a specific device and also the same means to get a basic RIOT on that board using the same means as for it's own customers (none if that device is not supposed to be field upgradable), we allow skipping those the original requirements. Kaspar ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Dear RIOTers, I just found the eCos license: [1] http://ecos.sourceware.org/license-overview.html It's basically a modified version of the GPL with linker exception. The interesting point: it is officially recognised as a GPL-compatible Free Software License: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#eCos20 and it seems to enable exactly what most of us want for RIOT: it makes it possible to implement proprietary applications on top of the OS, but any changes to the OS have to be made freely available. It seems also possibly to apply this exception on device drivers if this driver is implemented in a particular way. A very quick search revealed immediately one commercial user of this rule: https://help.eyefi.com/hc/en-us/articles/301754-eCos-Open-Source-License To me this looks very promising. What do you think? Cheers, Oleg [1] eCos is another free open source real-time operating system intended for embedded applications. -- The problem with TCP jokes is that people keep retelling them slower until you get them. pgpkfyDMFCHtk.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Hi Oleg, On Wed, 25 Feb 2015, Oleg Hahm wrote: I thought that we already decided to exclude exotic licenses. Yes. GPL + Linker Exception is not exotic. but the name (or license branding). We had this discussion before. Rather unknown licenses need to be explained. Using eCos license is similar to use a RIOT license. With respect to this specific license: (1) We cannot use the license because the license text is specific to eCos (e.g., eCos is distributed [...]). And original BSD license (http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/License:BSD_4Clause) is specific to Computer Systems Engineering group at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, which is obviously no blocker to be adopted elsewhere. I don't see why replacing the name of the project should invalidate a license. Misunderstanding. I'm just wondering if eCos is the first license with the introduced exception -- I will not research on this ;). (2) We should not use the license because it is not approved by the Open Source Initiative. OSI approval is important for some open source funding programmes etc. Seems to work quite successfully for eCos, ERIKA [1], GNU Guile [2], libgcc [3], NetBeans [4], ChibiOS [5] and several other bigger projects. Would be interesting what FSF says about it. I never said it's impossible. In this type of discussion you will always find counterexamples. I just wanted to point out that I see it as an advantage to use an OSI approved license. At least eCos, ERIKA and ChibiOS are very similar to RIOT from a software architecture point of view (OS for embedded hardware). No comment ;). If you want to spend more time on this, I recommend the thread http://projects.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2014-August/000853.html, in particular http://projects.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2014-September/000910.html. I haven't found any clear answers in these two mails and don't want to spend the rest of the evening reading through another license discussion, I have enough with this one here. From what I've read, I gather that oSI doesn't want to approve it, because there's no need to approve it: why not simply stop referring to 'the eCos License 2.0' as though it were a special license and instead characterize eCos as being licensed as 'GPLv2 or later' with a permissive exception? I've encountered other projects using similarly-worded GPL exceptions but to my recollection those projects characterize themselves as being GPL-licensed. Long story short: I see your concerns, but for me GPL + Linking Exception is a common license model that works well for many well-known and mature projects. Personally, I would think that GPL + Linking Exception matches our needs far better than LGPL. Can you explain in one our two sentences why? Because it's more inclusive? As I see it now, we won't come to any conclusion for or against switching to a non-copyleft license that satisfies everyone, because the goals and visions where to go with RIOT are too different. At least we don't get new basic insights with this thread. Cheers matthias -- Matthias Waehlisch . Freie Universitaet Berlin, Inst. fuer Informatik, AG CST . Takustr. 9, D-14195 Berlin, Germany .. mailto:waehli...@ieee.org .. http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/~waehl :. Also: http://inet.cpt.haw-hamburg.de .. http://www.link-lab.net ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
I'd be willing to bet that GNU Classpath is one of the oldest projects licensed under the GPL with a linking exception. Classpath is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License with the following clarification and special exception. Linking this library statically or dynamically with other modules is making a combined work based on this library. Thus, the terms and conditions of the GNU General Public License cover the whole combination. As a special exception, the copyright holders of this library give you permission to link this library with independent modules to produce an executable, regardless of the license terms of these independent modules, and to copy and distribute the resulting executable under terms of your choice, provided that you also meet, for each linked independent module, the terms and conditions of the license of that module. An independent module is a module which is not derived from or based on this library. If you modify this library, you may extend this exception to your version of the library, but you are not obliged to do so. If you do not wish to do so, delete this exception statement from your version. [1 https://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/license.html] --adam [1] https://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/license.html On Tue Feb 24 2015 at 5:08:12 PM Oleg Hahm oliver.h...@inria.fr wrote: Hi Matthias! but the name (or license branding). We had this discussion before. Rather unknown licenses need to be explained. Using eCos license is similar to use a RIOT license. Yes, I agree, but at least it's listed (approved?) by FSF. Another option (see citation from the OSI list from my previous mail) we could just state GPL as a license and point to the exception for commercial users. I think the text on the eCos page is pretty comprehensible. The Wikipedia is even claiming that the perception that without applying the linking exception, code linked with GPL code may only be done using a GPL-compatible license is unsupported by any legal precedent or citation. I'm just wondering if eCos is the first license with the introduced exception -- I will not research on this ;). I don't think so, but it's the only listed license from FSF that specifies the linking exception. I never said it's impossible. In this type of discussion you will always find counterexamples. I just wanted to point out that I see it as an advantage to use an OSI approved license. I agree, but if the choice is between a FSF approved license (as I understand eCos License is) that matches our needs and a less matching OSI approved license, I'm willing to bite this bullet. At least eCos, ERIKA and ChibiOS are very similar to RIOT from a software architecture point of view (OS for embedded hardware). No comment ;). For clarification: I was referring to the fact that these systems have a similar use case as RIOT, not that there concept or feature set is similar to RIOT. Long story short: I see your concerns, but for me GPL + Linking Exception is a common license model that works well for many well-known and mature projects. Personally, I would think that GPL + Linking Exception matches our needs far better than LGPL. Can you explain in one our two sentences why? Because it's more inclusive? Again taken from the Wikipedia article: the LGPL formulates more requirements to the linking exception: you must allow modification of the portions of the library you use and reverse engineering (of your program and the library) for debugging such modifications. As I see it now, we won't come to any conclusion for or against switching to a non-copyleft license that satisfies everyone, because the goals and visions where to go with RIOT are too different. At least we don't get new basic insights with this thread. Which is too bad. Cheers, Oleg -- The problem with TCPIP jokes is that when I tell them, all I want is an ACK but usually get FINs and RSTs ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Hi Oleg, I thought that we already decided to exclude exotic licenses. With respect to this specific license: (1) We cannot use the license because the license text is specific to eCos (e.g., eCos is distributed [...]). (2) We should not use the license because it is not approved by the Open Source Initiative. OSI approval is important for some open source funding programmes etc. If you want to spend more time on this, I recommend the thread http://projects.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2014-August/000853.html, in particular http://projects.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2014-September/000910.html. Cheers matthias On Tue, 24 Feb 2015, Oleg Hahm wrote: Dear RIOTers, I just found the eCos license: [1] http://ecos.sourceware.org/license-overview.html It's basically a modified version of the GPL with linker exception. The interesting point: it is officially recognised as a GPL-compatible Free Software License: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#eCos20 and it seems to enable exactly what most of us want for RIOT: it makes it possible to implement proprietary applications on top of the OS, but any changes to the OS have to be made freely available. It seems also possibly to apply this exception on device drivers if this driver is implemented in a particular way. A very quick search revealed immediately one commercial user of this rule: https://help.eyefi.com/hc/en-us/articles/301754-eCos-Open-Source-License To me this looks very promising. What do you think? Cheers, Oleg [1] eCos is another free open source real-time operating system intended for embedded applications. -- Matthias Waehlisch . Freie Universitaet Berlin, Inst. fuer Informatik, AG CST . Takustr. 9, D-14195 Berlin, Germany .. mailto:waehli...@ieee.org .. http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/~waehl :. Also: http://inet.cpt.haw-hamburg.de .. http://www.link-lab.net ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
On 12/16/2014 06:39 PM, Oleg Hahm wrote: arguably written less code in my free time). On the other hand, free software also means that this software might be used for any purpose - even to harm or kill people. LGPL (or any other discussed license) does not prevent this. Are you feeling comfortable with that? That can be said about any tool. What I'm trying to say: the world might be a good or an evil place (or something in between), depending on your personal mindset, but can we really change this by choosing our license? This is not about good or evil. The other thing I read from your comment is: if any company earns money with the code I contributed to, I want to benefit from it - either by being part of this company or by having this company contributing back. Is this interpretation right? No. I think of RIOT as a tool, a building block, that should be free for everyone. (With free I mean free of charge under the terms of the respective license) See it as a network of roads that we as a community want to create. A closed-source approach would put all control about access or fees in the hands of the commercial operator(s). A GPLed approach would make every road freely usable for everyone, but would also force all services on top of that road (e.g., transportation) to be free. A LGPLed approach would keep the roads free, but enables non-free services that just use the roads. A BSDed approach would allow someone to add roads somewhere to that network, charging fees or even restricting access. As the other roads have already been created for free (source is out), that someone has the ability to use all roads, and nobody can take that back, while those that put resources into building the whole other network might end up at a toll booth or a sign not you, my friend. The analogy with code looks even worse, it would more be a taxi flatrate service that charges a premium for an all-network-access which only the builder of a proprietary road can sell, directly profiting from the resources put into building the initial, free, network, just by investing a little resources and selling the whole. So if I contribute to a (L)GPLed project, I assume I do so and everyone else also does, so the combined outcome is available under the same terms to everyone. BSD changes the whole picture. It makes me feel exploited if I contribute a lot of ressources building free roads and others just invest a little but profit from the combination of all roads (even charging me) instead of pooling ressources to improve the free network and finding a way to profit from something else. I don't want to benefit from the profit of others, I want RIOT to be open and free of charge for everyone. Kaspar ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Hi, On Thu, Dec 18, 2014 at 01:46:52PM +0100, Kaspar Schleiser wrote: BSD changes the whole picture. It makes me feel exploited if I contribute a lot of ressources building free roads and others just invest a little but profit from the combination of all roads (even charging me) instead of pooling ressources to improve the free network and finding a way to profit from something else. I don't understand where BSD changes this picture in contrast to LGPL. In either case, we provide building blocks which allow others to create proprietary applications, services and devices. Please explain without analogies and use concrete examples instead. Cheers, Ludwig ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Hi, On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 01:06:24PM +0100, Kaspar Schleiser wrote: Hey, On 12/16/2014 06:09 PM, Ludwig Ortmann wrote: (L)GPL tries to put some restrictions on that. Mostly, the source code cannot realistically be sold as long it's (L)GPL. This is not correct (depending on your definition of code and selling of course). I know that you know what my definition of selling is with respect to the discussion. Actually, I'm not sure this is the case, please elaborate. Cheers, Ludwig ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Hey, On 12/18/2014 02:09 PM, Ludwig Ortmann wrote: Please explain without analogies and use concrete examples instead. We release RIOT under BSD. Company X takes the BSD'ed code and sells some infrastructure around that, but basically, they sell commercially supported RIOT under a non-free license. Now there's a bug. It takes weeks to fix, but *we* fix it. Company X takes the bug fix, releases a new (non-opensource) version and makes its customers happy. Open source is nice. Now there's another bug. It takes weeks to fix, but company X fixes it. So they release a new (non-opensource) version and make the customers happy. But as they see their sales not optimal (e.g., there could be more customers), they decide not to share the bugfix in order to give potential customers more incentive to invest in their product instead of just using the open source version. Same goes with features. As time goes on, company X's version of RIOT gets a huge advantage over the closed source version, because, while the open source version cannot access the closed source improvements, company X can always profit from the open source improvements. They can even advertise those improvements when releasing a new version, advertise that they have the better product, so they can charge money. My personal problem now is that if I contribute to the open source version and company X directly makes profit from it, I'm not contributing to make RIOT the best RIOT around, but I contribute to make the commercial RIOT the best RIOT. Also, if there are two bugs, I fix one, company X fixes the other as they know I'm fixing the first, but they don't share, I feel exploited. Also, if I fix bugs I *know* are already fixed (because they are in company X's version), I feel like wasting my time. Kaspar ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Hey, On 12/18/2014 02:10 PM, Ludwig Ortmann wrote: (L)GPL tries to put some restrictions on that. Mostly, the source code cannot realistically be sold as long it's (L)GPL. This is not correct (depending on your definition of code and selling of course). I know that you know what my definition of selling is with respect to the discussion. Actually, I'm not sure this is the case, please elaborate. If you sell (L)GPLed source code, that code *must* be under (L)GPL, so the first buyer can freely distribute it (under those libraries terms). So practically you can sell that code only once. Kaspar ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Hi, On Thu, Dec 18, 2014 at 02:35:58PM +0100, Kaspar Schleiser wrote: On 12/18/2014 02:10 PM, Ludwig Ortmann wrote: (L)GPL tries to put some restrictions on that. Mostly, the source code cannot realistically be sold as long it's (L)GPL. This is not correct (depending on your definition of code and selling of course). I know that you know what my definition of selling is with respect to the discussion. Actually, I'm not sure this is the case, please elaborate. If you sell (L)GPLed source code, that code *must* be under (L)GPL, so the first buyer can freely distribute it (under those libraries terms). So practically you can sell that code only once. Maybe I'm missing something, but the BSDs say: 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. ... This means that if you sell BSD licensed source code to someone, they can freely distribute it just like they could with LGPL'd code. The BSD licenses do not allow you to change the license (sublicense) [1]. Cheers, Ludwig [1] Exemplary web search result: https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/how-to-sublicense.47390/ ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Hey, On 12/16/2014 06:09 PM, Ludwig Ortmann wrote: (L)GPL tries to put some restrictions on that. Mostly, the source code cannot realistically be sold as long it's (L)GPL. This is not correct (depending on your definition of code and selling of course). I know that you know what my definition of selling is with respect to the discussion. Kaspar ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Hi Akshay, Thanks for your input on this topic. With the current license, are you able to plan using RIOT as a component for some of your company's products or services? Best, Emmanuel Le 4 déc. 2014 05:13, Akshay Mishra aks...@dspworks.in a écrit : This (migrating to a BSD license) should be an awesome step, especially for small design companies like us. Thanks, Akshay On 4 December 2014 at 03:29, Emmanuel Baccelli emmanuel.bacce...@inria.fr wrote: Dear RIOTers, we have been receiving an increasing amount of negative feedback from various companies concerning the practical usability of our LGPL license in their context, being a show-stopper. For this reason, INRIA, Freie Universitaet (FU) Berlin and Hamburg University of Applied Science (HAW) are currently considering changing the license of their contributions to RIOT to a less restrictive license (i.e. BSD, potentially as soon as next release). Such a switch to BSD is betting that the effect of a potentially smaller percentage of user/devel contributing back to the master branch will be dwarfed by the effect of a user/devel community growing much bigger and quicker. This seems doable considering the current momentum around RIOT. In a second phase, if such a license switch takes place for INRIA/FU/HAW contributions, we would then contact other contributors individually, to check their status concerning a similar switch for their own contributions. But in the first place, we would like to debate this topic. In particular: is anyone violently opposing the idea of migrating to a less restrictive license, such as BSD? If so, why? On the other hand, if you explicitly support the license change, feel free to indicate this as well. Please send your opinion to the list before Dec. 10th. Cheers, Emmanuel ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Am Tue, 16 Dec 2014 12:44:57 +0100 schrieb Oleg Hahm oliver.h...@inria.fr: Hey Kaspar! If RIOT is BSD'ed, for *me* personally time spent on it is not fun time I like to in my unpaid spare time anymore, it becomes work that is also fun. Work others can (and will) sell under their terms. I totally don't get this point. How do more possibilities to work with RIOT for *others*, take fun away from *you*? (L)GPL guarantees that my contribution will stay part of something that might improve, but is always available to me under clear tearms. I disagree. The RIOT community guarantees that your and everyone else's contribution stay part of open and free software that might improve. Additionally, it might become part of something else, true. I agree with Kaspar. Also as a company we have interests that if a competitor uses our work, it would be forced to admit changes or improvements back. Best regards Johann Fischer ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
On Tue, 16 Dec 2014, Johann Fischer wrote: If RIOT is BSD'ed, for *me* personally time spent on it is not fun time I like to in my unpaid spare time anymore, it becomes work that is also fun. Work others can (and will) sell under their terms. I totally don't get this point. How do more possibilities to work with RIOT for *others*, take fun away from *you*? (L)GPL guarantees that my contribution will stay part of something that might improve, but is always available to me under clear tearms. I disagree. The RIOT community guarantees that your and everyone else's contribution stay part of open and free software that might improve. Additionally, it might become part of something else, true. I agree with Kaspar. but this is hard to understand. (L)GPL does not guarantee that Kaspar's contribution will stay part of something that might improve, but is always available to him under clear tearms. Anyone can take the code, modify or remove Kaspar's part and re-publish it. As Oleg said it is the community around the software that shapes the software. Also as a company we have interests that if a competitor uses our work, it would be forced to admit changes or improvements back. Sure that is a typical economic argument. Cheers matthias -- Matthias Waehlisch . Freie Universitaet Berlin, Inst. fuer Informatik, AG CST . Takustr. 9, D-14195 Berlin, Germany .. mailto:waehli...@ieee.org .. http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/~waehl :. Also: http://inet.cpt.haw-hamburg.de .. http://www.link-lab.net ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Hi, On 12/16/2014 12:44 PM, Oleg Hahm wrote: If RIOT is BSD'ed, for *me* personally time spent on it is not fun time I like to in my unpaid spare time anymore, it becomes work that is also fun. Work others can (and will) sell under their terms. I totally don't get this point. How do more possibilities to work with RIOT for *others*, take fun away from *you*? I'm a software developer. I code for fun and for money. I do fun work for free on my terms. My terms don't necessarily include other people selling my work without even having to tell me about it. As the man earning a shit load of money from one of these evil companies, using a proprietary smart phone, and buying Facebook goggles, working on RIOT for me is a very expensive hobby. How so? RIOT is for free. My time is not. BSDing turns it into work I do for other companies, for free. I will probably not contribute much this way, unless I become one of the companies taking RIOT and selling it somehow. That would be very sad. No need to get emotional, yet. Kaspar ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Hi Kaspar, On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 11:28 AM, Kaspar Schleiser kas...@schleiser.de wrote: As the man earning a shit load of money from one of these evil companies, using a proprietary smart phone, and buying Facebook goggles, working on RIOT for me is a very expensive hobby. I'm not sure I get your point, but if we want RIOT to have an impact similar to Linux, then RIOT cannot remain only a hobby, and RIOT has to involve companies and products. Else, RIOT will have no impact in the end. BSDing turns it into work I do for other companies, for free. I will probably not contribute much this way, unless I become one of the companies taking RIOT and selling it somehow. I don't see how any company could sell RIOT. RIOT is more a component of something bigger that is the actual business. So as a RIOT developer, it's not like there is no room to exploit this situation, should it occur. Isn't this win-win, essentially? The main point is: legal aspects of RIOT should not repel too many people/companies to build a business using RIOT as *part* of a system/service being sold. Else, there is no chance RIOT will remain relevant in the future. In my opinion, what we need is statements from legal departments from companies that are genuinely interested in RIOT technically. Is LGPLv2.1 a show stopper for them, or not? What is the main reason why? This is the key information the community should consider. Cheers, Emmanuel ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Hey Kaspar! IMHO this is not a oooh how nice, someone found a way to make money out of this! good for them! situation. It has the possiblity to become a Oh nice. Those contributers write code we can sell and they don't want anything in return situation. I think it is both. And I understand that you (and other people) don't feel comfortable if companies might earn money with the code you've written in your free time - although I don't share this feeling (which might be because I've arguably written less code in my free time). On the other hand, free software also means that this software might be used for any purpose - even to harm or kill people. LGPL (or any other discussed license) does not prevent this. Are you feeling comfortable with that? What I'm trying to say: the world might be a good or an evil place (or something in between), depending on your personal mindset, but can we really change this by choosing our license? The other thing I read from your comment is: if any company earns money with the code I contributed to, I want to benefit from it - either by being part of this company or by having this company contributing back. Is this interpretation right? Cheers, Oleg -- panic(%s: CORRUPTED BTREE OR SOMETHING, __FUNCTION__); linux-2.6.6/fs/xfs/xfs_bmap.c pgpAUkoJX69Yp.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Hi Ludwig! So in that case, you can't even (legally) sell a product based on RIOT without it (and you) being mentioned. Referring to a discussion I had with Hauke over lunch: would have RIOT to be mentioned only in the code or on the sold product (let's say an Internet connected toy dinosaur)? Cheers, Oleg -- #if 0 linux-2.2.16/fs/buffer.c pgpunVV7TU_rY.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Hi, On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 06:42:37PM +0100, Oleg Hahm wrote: So in that case, you can't even (legally) sell a product based on RIOT without it (and you) being mentioned. Referring to a discussion I had with Hauke over lunch: would have RIOT to be mentioned only in the code or on the sold product (let's say an Internet connected toy dinosaur)? After thinking a bit about this and searching a bit on the web [1], I conclude that the quoted MIT license requires this implicitly while the BSD licenses are explicit about it. Cheers, Ludwig [1] Exemplary result: http://info.protecode.com/bid/33956/How-you-can-comply-with-open-source-license-attribution Most licenses, open source or commercial, require that a copy of the copyright, patent, trademark, and attribution notices from the source software be distributed verbatim with the product using that software. Examples are GNU Public License (GPL), Microsoft Public License (MPL), and MIT license. Note that even if the source code is not distributed with your product, the copyright and other attribution must be distributed with your software. ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Hello everyone, Maybe was it already envisioned, but another strategy would be dual licensing, something akin to what FreeRTOS does for example. Using this scheme: * we got (L)GPL by default, for academic contributors and everyone that has nothing against open-source; * the same code can be licensed under an alternative license for those that don't want to contribute back. Financial resources could even be drawn from this, as the project could charge for such a proprietary license. Of course, I guess this approach has its drawbacks; I was just citing a possible alternative, I have not really thought about it. Best regards, KR Le 12/12/2014 17:55, Emmanuel Baccelli a écrit : Hi Johann, Le 12 déc. 2014 00:48, Johann Fischer johann_fisc...@posteo.de mailto:johann_fisc...@posteo.de a écrit : Can you explain exactly what you expect of licence change? That more hardware will be supported? That RIOT will be more spread? The motivation for a more permissive license now is that the RIOT community has significantly more chances to spread and reach a critical mass fast enough to not let the current momentum go to waste. There might be other strategies to reach critical mass, but for now, none have been brought forward. Reaching critical mass is arguably an important goal. If the community does not reach this goal, it might not survive -- and none of us wants that. Thus this thread, to propose and discuss a strategy based on a license change allowing direct and indirect interactions with more industrial partners. I agree this strategy is not without potential drawbacks. Other strategy proposals are very welcome ;). My main point is: we need a strategy. Cheers, Emmanuel ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel -- Kévin Roussel Doctorant, projet LAR Équipe MADYNES, INRIA Nancy Grand-Est / LORIA Tél. : +33 3 54 95 86 27 kevin.rous...@inria.fr ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Hi everyone, I'm sorry to hop in that late. To be honest, I didn't come to a final conclusion for myself, regarding the license-topic. Let me first say that I wouldn't boycott the change to BSD. Still I need to say that I have similar doubts like my previous speakers mentioned. One the one hand I do trust Emmanuel who indicated that there is a strongly need of this change to reach/hold companies that were interested in RIOT. Of course there have been good resonance from some of these comapnies. On the other hand I fear that BSD could lead to the situation that our work might be exploited by some companies and the primary idea of a wider propagation of RIOT will not take place, as one will not see the RIOT-background in every application. Regarding a the dual licensing I didn't understand the real concept behind it maybe, but I can not see in which way this avoids the mentioned doubts. What I see is an additional overhead of workload. Best regards, Peter K. Am 15.12.2014 um 11:10 schrieb Ludwig Ortmann: Hi, All in all, dual licensing is an interesting thought, but I'm afraid it inevitably leads to extra work and frustration. Because the users of the commercial branch will most likely be a major contributer of resources, the free branch would end up being treated as a second class citizen. (Please refer me to examples where this has not been the outcome if they exist.) As for the general topic of relicensing: I would wish for a license with patent clauses for Christmas. But such a clause is supposed to scare the big company lawyers away. So, a switch to Apache would probably not help with the goal of getting big companies to consider RIOT. Personally, I'm not convinced these companies are really needed for RIOT to stay alive. In order to cater to commercial use *today* (because we don't currently have tools to help satisfy the linking clause of the LGPL), I'd rather add a static linking exception to our current license (or switch to GPL with linking exception which amounts to the same as far as I remember). I am aware that this probably makes the license even more troublesome for the lawyers in question as it would probably need extra ratification, but it would help smaller companies. One aspect of this rationale is that we currently have several interested smaller companies, while the big companies could as well implement the missing bits themselves. That being said I would also be excited to see some bigger company contribute to RIOT. If switching to MIT is what it takes to achieve this, I'm fine with it. Cheers, Ludwig On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 09:51:13AM +0100, ROUSSEL Kévin wrote: Hello everyone, Maybe was it already envisioned, but another strategy would be dual licensing, something akin to what FreeRTOS does for example. Using this scheme: * we got (L)GPL by default, for academic contributors and everyone that has nothing against open-source; * the same code can be licensed under an alternative license for those that don't want to contribute back. Financial resources could even be drawn from this, as the project could charge for such a proprietary license. Of course, I guess this approach has its drawbacks; I was just citing a possible alternative, I have not really thought about it. Best regards, KR Le 12/12/2014 17:55, Emmanuel Baccelli a écrit : Hi Johann, Le 12 déc. 2014 00:48, Johann Fischer johann_fisc...@posteo.de mailto:johann_fisc...@posteo.de a écrit : Can you explain exactly what you expect of licence change? That more hardware will be supported? That RIOT will be more spread? The motivation for a more permissive license now is that the RIOT community has significantly more chances to spread and reach a critical mass fast enough to not let the current momentum go to waste. There might be other strategies to reach critical mass, but for now, none have been brought forward. Reaching critical mass is arguably an important goal. If the community does not reach this goal, it might not survive -- and none of us wants that. Thus this thread, to propose and discuss a strategy based on a license change allowing direct and indirect interactions with more industrial partners. I agree this strategy is not without potential drawbacks. Other strategy proposals are very welcome ;). My main point is: we need a strategy. Cheers, Emmanuel ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel -- Kévin Roussel Doctorant, projet LAR Équipe MADYNES, INRIA Nancy Grand-Est / LORIA Tél. : +33 3 54 95 86 27 kevin.rous...@inria.fr ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel ___
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Hey, On 12/15/2014 11:10 AM, Ludwig Ortmann wrote: I'd rather add a static linking exception to our current license (or switch to GPL with linking exception which amounts to the same as far as I remember) What kind of static linking exception do you have in mind? Kaspar ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Hi, On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 01:08:24PM +0100, Kaspar Schleiser wrote: On 12/15/2014 11:10 AM, Ludwig Ortmann wrote: I'd rather add a static linking exception to our current license (or switch to GPL with linking exception which amounts to the same as far as I remember) What kind of static linking exception do you have in mind? The regular kind ;) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPL_linking_exception I'm not aware if there is another kind with different characteristics. Cheers, Ludwig ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Hello again, As I said, I was just mentioning the possibility of dual-licensing. I never said it was the right thing to do, as I didn't really thought about it... The only thing I'm really afraid of are software patents, since these are visibly at the origin of many bad things (see the patents trolls and co in the US...) This is why I would personally prefer the Apache License--or any other license explicitly handling that problem--as the new solution. But to be honest, since I'm no lawyer, I think in fine I'll just follow the community's wisdom on that topic. Regards, KR Le 15/12/2014 11:52, Peter Kietzmann a écrit : Hi everyone, I'm sorry to hop in that late. To be honest, I didn't come to a final conclusion for myself, regarding the license-topic. Let me first say that I wouldn't boycott the change to BSD. Still I need to say that I have similar doubts like my previous speakers mentioned. One the one hand I do trust Emmanuel who indicated that there is a strongly need of this change to reach/hold companies that were interested in RIOT. Of course there have been good resonance from some of these comapnies. On the other hand I fear that BSD could lead to the situation that our work might be exploited by some companies and the primary idea of a wider propagation of RIOT will not take place, as one will not see the RIOT-background in every application. Regarding a the dual licensing I didn't understand the real concept behind it maybe, but I can not see in which way this avoids the mentioned doubts. What I see is an additional overhead of workload. Best regards, Peter K. Am 15.12.2014 um 11:10 schrieb Ludwig Ortmann: Hi, All in all, dual licensing is an interesting thought, but I'm afraid it inevitably leads to extra work and frustration. Because the users of the commercial branch will most likely be a major contributer of resources, the free branch would end up being treated as a second class citizen. (Please refer me to examples where this has not been the outcome if they exist.) As for the general topic of relicensing: I would wish for a license with patent clauses for Christmas. But such a clause is supposed to scare the big company lawyers away. So, a switch to Apache would probably not help with the goal of getting big companies to consider RIOT. Personally, I'm not convinced these companies are really needed for RIOT to stay alive. In order to cater to commercial use *today* (because we don't currently have tools to help satisfy the linking clause of the LGPL), I'd rather add a static linking exception to our current license (or switch to GPL with linking exception which amounts to the same as far as I remember). I am aware that this probably makes the license even more troublesome for the lawyers in question as it would probably need extra ratification, but it would help smaller companies. One aspect of this rationale is that we currently have several interested smaller companies, while the big companies could as well implement the missing bits themselves. That being said I would also be excited to see some bigger company contribute to RIOT. If switching to MIT is what it takes to achieve this, I'm fine with it. Cheers, Ludwig On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 09:51:13AM +0100, ROUSSEL Kévin wrote: Hello everyone, Maybe was it already envisioned, but another strategy would be dual licensing, something akin to what FreeRTOS does for example. Using this scheme: * we got (L)GPL by default, for academic contributors and everyone that has nothing against open-source; * the same code can be licensed under an alternative license for those that don't want to contribute back. Financial resources could even be drawn from this, as the project could charge for such a proprietary license. Of course, I guess this approach has its drawbacks; I was just citing a possible alternative, I have not really thought about it. Best regards, KR Le 12/12/2014 17:55, Emmanuel Baccelli a écrit : Hi Johann, Le 12 déc. 2014 00:48, Johann Fischer johann_fisc...@posteo.de mailto:johann_fisc...@posteo.de a écrit : Can you explain exactly what you expect of licence change? That more hardware will be supported? That RIOT will be more spread? The motivation for a more permissive license now is that the RIOT community has significantly more chances to spread and reach a critical mass fast enough to not let the current momentum go to waste. There might be other strategies to reach critical mass, but for now, none have been brought forward. Reaching critical mass is arguably an important goal. If the community does not reach this goal, it might not survive -- and none of us wants that. Thus this thread, to propose and discuss a strategy based on a license change allowing direct and indirect interactions with more industrial partners. I agree this strategy is not without potential drawbacks. Other strategy proposals are very welcome ;). My main point is: we need a strategy. Cheers,
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Hey, On 12/15/2014 01:19 PM, Ludwig Ortmann wrote: On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 01:08:24PM +0100, Kaspar Schleiser wrote: On 12/15/2014 11:10 AM, Ludwig Ortmann wrote: I'd rather add a static linking exception to our current license (or switch to GPL with linking exception which amounts to the same as far as I remember) What kind of static linking exception do you have in mind? The regular kind ;) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPL_linking_exception I'm not aware if there is another kind with different characteristics. IMHO the subtle differences between GPL with linking exception and LPGL is not worth another license change. Kaspar ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Hey, On 12/03/2014 10:59 PM, Emmanuel Baccelli wrote: But in the first place, we would like to debate this topic. In particular: is anyone violently opposing the idea of migrating to a less restrictive license, such as BSD? If so, why? On the other hand, if you explicitly support the license change, feel free to indicate this as well. Please send your opinion to the list before Dec. 10th. I'm violently opposing the switch to a less restricitive license. IMHO the floating interpretations on LGPL (e.g., [1]) pose the following restrictions on any product using LPGL'ed RIOT: 1. The entity distributing such a product must mention the use of RIOT. E.g., the user manual has to state that RIOT has been used. This is common practice, just pick your favirote gadget and look for that. 2. The entity distributing such a product must make a copy of the used RIOT version available via means specified in the LGPL. This is also common practice. Nowadays, about all vendors of Linux based routers provide a GPL tarball containing copies of any used GPL stuff. 3. The entity distributing such a product must release any part of RIOT that it modified under LGPL. 4. The entity distributing RIOT must provide means to exchange the RIOT part of the product's software with a (newer) version of RIOT. This requires the device to be field-upgradable and also it requires the distributor to provide at least the object files that were used in the final linking step. Mind that 4. doesn't require the released object files to be compatible with *any newer version* of the library. So basically, LGPL forces changes to core RIOT to stay under LGPL and it also forces vendors to sell products which can be updated. As far as I interpret the opinions of the RIOT community, we mostly agree that the actual license does what we expect our license to do (apart from patent protection). The only reason why we think about another license change is FUD on the company side, as the perception of the license scares away potential users. We don't want to push away potential users, so we try to find a license which takes away the FUD by giving up all rights to the code that we develop in order to please those companies. IMHO, we don't need those companies to succeed as a community project which will play a large role in IoT. Also IMHO, the advantages of LGPL, like the forced upgradability (implying possible security advantages), impossibility of sell out of community contributions, higher value of devices due to lack vendor lock-in / repurposability, complete vendor independence, ... outweigh the promise of a stream of contributions by companies selling products. Companies which are unwilling to comply to our fairly unrestrictive license. That said, if most of the community agrees to switch to a less restrictive license, I will agree to that, too. That is not because I have been convinced that the change is the right choice, but because I really like the biggest strength of RIOT: the community and the actual people behind it. Kaspar [1] http://copyleft.org/guide/comprehensive-gpl-guidech11.html#x14-9400010 ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Hi! On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 01:08:24PM +0100, Kaspar Schleiser wrote: On 12/15/2014 11:10 AM, Ludwig Ortmann wrote: I'd rather add a static linking exception to our current license (or switch to GPL with linking exception which amounts to the same as far as I remember) What kind of static linking exception do you have in mind? The regular kind ;) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPL_linking_exception I'm not aware if there is another kind with different characteristics. In general, I would agree that - to my understanding - (L)GPL with linker exception is more aligned to what we're looking for than to LGPL only. The last time I though and researched about this topic, I came to the conclusion that the main problems of the linking exception clause is, that there's no official version of it. So, we might end up in a similar case compared to inventing our own license. Cheers, Oleg -- DPRINTK(doing direct send\n); /* @@@ well, this doesn't work anyway */ linux-2.6.6/drivers/atm/eni.c pgpyrrgUDzdhZ.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Hi Kaspar! 1. The entity distributing such a product must mention the use of RIOT. Isn't that the case also for some non-copyleft licenses (e.g. some BSD-style licenses)? Not sure, just asking. This requires the device to be field-upgradable I still seriously doubt this. We're talking about IoT devices. Most of them are gonna be deeply embedded with no possibility for any end user to reprogram them - if you're not a hardcore electric magician (soldering, etching stuff...). As far as I interpret the opinions of the RIOT community, we mostly agree that the actual license does what we expect our license to do (apart from patent protection). I'm not convinced that a potential commercial user of RIOT is able to link its (closed-source/non-LGPL) software/driver/whatever against RIOT without risking to disclose something it doesn't want to disclose. The only reason why we think about another license change is FUD on the company side, as the perception of the license scares away potential users. We don't want to push away potential users, so we try to find a license which takes away the FUD by giving up all rights to the code that we develop in order to please those companies. I'm not willing to give up all rights - nor is any of the other RIOT developers I've talked to. But I don't think we have to. IMHO, we don't need those companies to succeed as a community project which will play a large role in IoT. I pray for that, but I'm not convinced that this is enough - given that the recipient of my prayer is pretty much unknown. That said, if most of the community agrees to switch to a less restrictive license, I will agree to that, too. That is not because I have been convinced that the change is the right choice, but because I really like the biggest strength of RIOT: the community and the actual people behind it. I don't want to force you (or any other active member of the RIOT community) to change the license or whatever else to something she/he doesn't feel comfortable with. I want to keep the project I'm contributing to for the last five years alive. My perception of the situation is, that we have to make a bet: - Stay with copyleft licensing and hope that we will still find enough contributors in the long run to keep RIOT developing at the current speed (with the monetary support from research projects). - Open the license to something less morally and less educational to attract more companies willing to give money to some people to do what the love: coding RIOT, and trying to keep the momentum in the community so high that theses companies don't have any incentive to do their RIOT-based stuff behind closed doors. It's up to the community to decide which bet they're willing to take. I can live with both solutions. Either as a person being proud of doing the ethical correct thing or as a person hoping that the last five years commitment to this project helped to make the world a better place. Cheers, Oleg -- Fragmentation jokes... ...are always... ...told in parts. pgpSDIwEE7LCD.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Hi, 2014-12-03 22:59 GMT+01:00 Emmanuel Baccelli emmanuel.bacce...@inria.fr: […] But in the first place, we would like to debate this topic. In particular: is anyone violently opposing the idea of migrating to a less restrictive license, such as BSD? If so, why? On the other hand, if you explicitly support the license change, feel free to indicate this as well. Please send your opinion to the list before Dec. 10th. Sorry for coming in late into the discussion, but I'm still quite undecided on that topic, mainly because my expertise in free software and open culture licenses (apart from CC License which is quite transparent) is not that great to begin with. Fact is, everytime I speak with Free Software/Open Source people more assured in that matter than me, no one really understands the fear of (L)GPL in the industry. I can't find any argument against it either, apart from the irrational arguments allegedly introduced by some lawyers. I also don't have much intuition on how a license change would change the community, but personally I'm far more interested in input from hobbyists and start-ups than from the big players. Maybe its quite naïve, but I believe that with enough traction from the former we could attract the latter, even without a license change. If a license change would attract more of the former too, I can't really tell. I trust however the Emmanuel's et al. opinion in the matter, that this might be the case. If a license change is due I won't stand against it, but I would prefer MIT over a BSD license. Cheers, Martine ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Dear all, On 15 Dec 2014, at 11:10, Ludwig Ortmann ludwig.ortm...@fu-berlin.de wrote: As for the general topic of relicensing: Personally speaking I’m rather pragmatic on this topic and either license is fine for me *but* I tend to advocate for MIT. ad contributing back”: Apart from companies practicing an open source culture forcing those others to open their changes doesn’t imply for me RIOT will actually benefit from these. Opening their changes doesn’t mean these will be opened in a way RIOT maintainers know about it. They simply have to put them somewhere publicly accessible. While with a non-restrictive license we could get the contributions (maybe also in a better shape in terms of coding style and quality) from those who’d do it with LGPL and maybe broaden the basis and convince others (by improvements and further development on RIOT’s master) to consider opening their changes to not get left behind. * As Emmanuel put it, it is a bet we will have to place. ad “mimic Linux’s story“: Looking into Linux’s story is and was very unique and GPL is no guarantee against patent trolls. Additionally I think today we are embedded in an even faster moving/developing environment with a big challenge arising next October in form of mbed OS. The biggest blocker implied by LGPL I see is that someone providing RIOT driven hardware has to provide means to re-flash the devices with self compiled binaries. At least that’s what I understood in past discussions and what I simply can’t imagine to become widely adopted. IMHO I think in the short and mid term it is greatly beneficial at least one big player taking up on RIOT providing resources to maintain and improve it and the whole surrounding quite changed since Linux emerged. Also as most “bigger” open source projects are in some sort backed by a company to ensure development, we are dealing with companies (I’m mainly referring to HW aspect here) who are not used to deal with open source by now. Taking this into account I don’t believe RIOT’s technical advantages can prevail the concerns for many companies. ** To sum up, I would like to see RIOT as wide spread as possible and thereby promote (at least) open networking standards and I think RIOT licensed under MIT has the highest chance to succeed in this. *** Best, Thomas * Philosophical question: If we take open source software as an altruistic approach to publish software for the greater good wouldn’t it be contradictory to tell others to give something in return and exclusionary to those who simply can’t? ** My (limited) experience from working for HW manufacturers is more like “don’t even mention these three evil letters”. This matches Emmanuel’s and Matthias’ experiences quite well. *** In my personal Utopia we wouldn’t have to discuss this but would be consensus to open all code for the greater good but the above thoughts come to my mind when reality hits me. ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Hey Hauke! In an ideal world I would personally want RIOT to be even published under GPL, as of RIOT should be free. But we all know that world does not exist. I would say: In an ideal world RIOT should have been published as public domain. Cheers, Oleg -- panic(smp_callin() a\n); linux-2.6.6/arch/parisc/kernel/smp.c pgpQmn2U5H0kv.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
At risk of further confusing things maybe there's a happy medium between a strong copyleft/(L)GPL and a the BSD license. While I'm most certainly not a lawyer, copyright or otherwise, a quick look at the Eclipse Public License https://eclipse.org/org/documents/epl-v10.php (EPL) and the related EPL FAQ https://eclipse.org/legal/eplfaq.php# makes me wonder if it might be another possibility. The way I read it the EPL would keep RIOT itself free and open, along with any changes a person or company makes to the core OS, in-tree drivers, etc... but would also allow for extensions to be made and distributed under whatever license the creator sees fit (open or not). It seems to me that this would end up in a similar situation to what Ludwig suggested in his license craziness post but in a slightly more sane way. Point 27 in the EPL FAQ seems to be very applicable to what we're all talking about here. - - I‘m a programmer not a lawyer, can you give me a clear cut example of when something is or is not a derivative work? If you have made a copy of existing Eclipse code and made a few minor revisions to it, that is a derivative work. If youve written your own Eclipse plug-in with 100% your own code to implement functionality not currently in Eclipse, then it is not a derivative work. Scenarios between those two extremes will require you to seek the advice of your own legal counsel in deciding whether your program constitutes a derivative work. For clarity, merely interfacing or interoperating with Eclipse plug-in APIs (without modification) does not make an Eclipse plug-in a derivative work. One potential issue with the EPL is GPL (in)compatibility. The FSF has stated that GPL code can not be linked or otherwise incorporated into an EPL licensed codebase. While the EPL isn't GPL compatible I'm reasonably certain that it *is *compatible with the LGPL. A fairly informative post on the topic of EPL/(L)GPL compatibility can be found on Stack Overflow here https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5393873/epl-eclipse-public-license-gpl-gnu-public-license-lgpl-lesser-gpl-and-lic . Another issue with using the EPL is the choice of law clause which states that This Agreement is governed by the laws of the State of New York and the intellectual property laws of the United States of America. That would most certainly need to be altered. Anyway, I just figured I'd mention this as another potential license. On Mon Dec 15 2014 at 12:03:19 PM Emmanuel Baccelli emmanuel.bacce...@inria.fr wrote: Hi Oleg, On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 6:39 PM, Oleg Hahm oliver.h...@inria.fr wrote: Hey Hauke! To my experience the typical situation in (larger) companies is, that technical people actually would like to work with LGPL products an give code back but that they are not allowed to from their management due to their lawyers not allowing LGPL. For MIT I see a different picture: from my experience there are mostly strong rules in industry about choosing a certain license, but not so many about giving back changes to the community. Actually, the person from FSFE we've contacted told us that the attitude of several executives towards open source software is: Oh, it's free, but you have to contribute back? Okay, then we have to live with that. or Oh, it's free and we don't have to give anything back? Great, why the hell should you publish our code. Don't do it! (Of, course there might be many more executives just saying: Oh, it's free, but you to contribute back? Don't even think about touching it!) It's not entirely surprising that FSF is advocating (L)GPL ;) The crux here is: are there constraints specific to IoT software, that make LGPL too often problematic, technically? I think that's what Hauke (among others) was hinting at. (iii) Last I think the community is not influenced very much by changing to MIT. It's not like a company can take the code and forbid anyone to continue working on RIOT. If the is a company taking the code, developing it further internally and selling the results without sharing it can happen. But in the mean time RIOT will move on (and that fast to the current point) and that means the motivation for paying for a closed-down RIOT clone instead of using the open Original is not very high. I second this thought! As Kaspar has written, too: It's all about the community and the fun time spending with this awesome tool. It's gonna be always free and open source, no matter what stupid companies try to do with it behind closed doors. We are RIOT, the rest is just code! +1 Emmanuel ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Hi Johann, Le 12 déc. 2014 00:48, Johann Fischer johann_fisc...@posteo.de a écrit : Can you explain exactly what you expect of licence change? That more hardware will be supported? That RIOT will be more spread? The motivation for a more permissive license now is that the RIOT community has significantly more chances to spread and reach a critical mass fast enough to not let the current momentum go to waste. There might be other strategies to reach critical mass, but for now, none have been brought forward. Reaching critical mass is arguably an important goal. If the community does not reach this goal, it might not survive -- and none of us wants that. Thus this thread, to propose and discuss a strategy based on a license change allowing direct and indirect interactions with more industrial partners. I agree this strategy is not without potential drawbacks. Other strategy proposals are very welcome ;). My main point is: we need a strategy. Cheers, Emmanuel ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Hi Olaf, if both LGPL and other considered licenses are OK for you, then switch to RIOT right now ;) What is holding you back, more precisely? I would be interesting to know about it, it might bring some arguments to this debate. Best, Emmanuel Le 11 déc. 2014 18:28, Olaf Bergmann bergm...@tzi.org a écrit : Carsten Bormann c...@tzi.org writes: On the university side To second that: I have been considering switching to RIOT as the major development platform for at least a year now. Although the license is not the major concern hesitating, it is this sort of ever-ongoing discussions that makes me always feel a bit uncertain which direction this platform will take in the future. Grüße Olaf ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
On Tue, 9 Dec 2014 16:31:00 +0100 Emmanuel Baccelli emmanuel.bacce...@inria.fr wrote: I agree with you: we need another Linux and not another Contiki. But two questions: (1) can we realistically mimic the Linux story and stay with LGPL? (2) why would RIOT necessarily become another Contiki if the license evolves to BSD/MIT? Concerning (1): what does our experience from the last year show? That LGPL is far from a perfect solution, because too many company lawyers cannot deal with it. On the other hand, we know that BSD/MIT also has its down sides. So we have to trade-off between the dangers of BSD/MIT and the dangers of LGPL. There is no perfect solution, I agree. But still, we have to make a choice. On one hand, if we do not change the license, we can force people to do things our way, and it has indeed moral value. But it's difficult to force people/companies to do things. Those who do not want to, or cannot, give back will simply not use RIOT in the first place -- hence a much slower adoption that looks like a potentially fatal problem in the short term. If we change the license, some people/companies could indeed fork and close their source, and that is not what we want. However, these people will use RIOT and have a chance to change their mind about contributing back -- when they realize the burden of rebasing their code all the time. The bet is that the momentum in the community will remain sufficiently attractive to aggregate enough contributions to thrive in the mid-term. Hello Emmanuel, sorry for late reply. The company where I work develops and produces embedded boards and makes the portings of linux kernel. We know the advantages and disadvantages of (L)GPL. We spend time and money to porting linux to our boards because we want to sale hardware and our customers benefit from it. What is the most unclear to me is: what are the consequences of the choice of license in the long run? Can you explain exactly what you expect of licence change? That more hardware will be supported? That RIOT will be more spread? There are also companies that have made the ports for contiki but will only give the porting for the hardware back to the project, but not the improvements of core (I can not say more). However, one thing is for sure: this question is irrelevant if we're out in the mid-term. The value of an open source community is equally (i) the quality of the code base it provides and (i) the liveliness of the community. So concerning (2), do you think BSD/MIT would: - harm the RIOT community? -yes, not everyone will agree with the change. - harm the RIOT code base? -no, but I think it will not improve the code base. If so how, and at which stage (short, mid long term), and how bad? Is it worse the risks of too slow adoption if we stay with LGPL? This is what we really have to gauge now. Johann Fischer ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Emmanuel Baccelli emmanuel.bacce...@inria.fr writes: Hi Carsten, on the topic of rewriting history ;) it would be interesting to know if you have an estimation of the proportion of RIOT code your people would have developed that would have been contributed back to the master branch, over the last 1,5+ years, taking into account the constraints of your customers over that period of time? (assuming RIOT code was, say, MIT licensed). Hi Emmanuel, this would be a more useful question if I were the only person on earth who looks at licensing issues before adopting some technology. I can assure you I'm not. But to answer the question anyway: Honestly, I don't know. I don't know because, without a reasonable platform, we simply did not procure work in this space. On the university side, the work on ccast (draft-bergmann-bier-ccast) might have gone into RIOT instead of Contiki (unfortunately, the hacks we needed to make this work in Contiki are probably too gross to make it back into mainline there). I also know that I could have steered the student project that started in October towards something that uses RIOT, and I didn't (they now have a different subject). We had some other ideas in 2013 that would have benefitted from RIOT that we didn't pursue because we didn't have a suitable platform. On the company side, there was a potential opportunity in the summer of this year that we let pass, but that was a somewhat longer shot. So, it could have been substantial, or it could have been trivial. What I was aiming at with my throwaway comment was that there are lots of opportunities withering on the vine, and aggressively waiting (for what?) is not the bold move that will remove this roadblock. Gruesse, Carsten ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Hi everyone, this is a gentle reminder to input your opinions on this thread before Wednesday night (i.e., tomorrow). Thanks, Emmanuel On Tue, Dec 9, 2014 at 12:43 AM, Carsten Bormann c...@tzi.org wrote: On 09 Dec 2014, at 00:09, Adam Hunt voxa...@gmail.com wrote: allow a potential license change to be put off As long as relicensing hasn’t happened, RIOT stays in suspended animation for those of us who care about actual pickup in products. Waiting some more (a license change has been discussed for more than 1.5 years now) only weakens the position of RIOT. I could have people working on RIOT for those 1.5 years... Grüße, Carsten ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Hey, On 12/09/2014 12:43 AM, Carsten Bormann wrote: allow a potential license change to be put off As long as relicensing hasn’t happened, RIOT stays in suspended animation for those of us who care about actual pickup in products. Waiting some more (a license change has been discussed for more than 1.5 years now) only weakens the position of RIOT. I could have people working on RIOT for those 1.5 years... Please stay objective and keep the logic straight. For *some* of us who care about actual pickup in products the current license makes riot stay in suspended animation. And stating *now* that you could have had people working if the license would have been MIT/BSD/permissive cannot be an argument for a license change. Kaspar ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Hi Adam, On Mon, 8 Dec 2014, Adam Hunt wrote: There's another option on the table that would allow a potential license change to be put off for some time while still being able to do it with minimal headache down the road. Any license change is obviously going to require all the past contributors to agree to it so what about keeping the LGPL license for now and asking those contributors and future contributors to sign an SLA. One of the downsides to an SLA is that a legal entity (e.g. RIOT e.v.) would have to be created and managed. we thought about this. In the current context, this will only help in case of relicensing. However, relicensing will require a lot of resources, which we should spend in technical development. Even with a BSD/MIT license, creating a legal entity and deploying a CLA should be part of our agenda. Cheers matthias -- Matthias Waehlisch . Freie Universitaet Berlin, Inst. fuer Informatik, AG CST . Takustr. 9, D-14195 Berlin, Germany .. mailto:waehli...@ieee.org .. http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/~waehl :. Also: http://inet.cpt.haw-hamburg.de .. http://www.link-lab.net ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Hello, I'm not absolutely against licence switch but... I actually feel uneasy about about this kind of demands... If I understand right, some corporations which have probably contributed nothing to the project just barges in and said : if you want us to use your work, you have to let us make whatever we want with it, ask nothing in return, no code contribution, no financial help (since this is free software), nothing. To be honest, I find this kind of behavior quite... displaced. If I'm not mistaken, LGPL absolutely doesn't impose anything on the applications made with RIOT OS, only that changes made *into* the OS are contributed back. How could that harm a business that use RIOT (at not cost, remember) to build its solution? Of course, I'm no specialist, maybe there something I'm missing here, but... Moreover, with that software patent crap that flourishes almost everywhere out of EU (and maybe even here in the future), wouldn't that change make us vulnerable to being sued for just developing our own code? As Rene Kijewski said, if we must change, we should find a license that protects us from that kind of trap... Of course, it's good to broaden RIOT community, but what kind of members will be attracted by that kind of move? I can just wonder. Best regards, KR PS: sorry for my lack of contribution these last weeks, I'm finishing some paper submissions, and will be able to get back with some interesting element soon. Le 03/12/2014 22:59, Emmanuel Baccelli a écrit : Dear RIOTers, we have been receiving an increasing amount of negative feedback from various companies concerning the practical usability of our LGPL license in their context, being a show-stopper. For this reason, INRIA, Freie Universitaet (FU) Berlin and Hamburg University of Applied Science (HAW) are currently considering changing the license of their contributions to RIOT to a less restrictive license (i.e. BSD, potentially as soon as next release). Such a switch to BSD is betting that the effect of a potentially smaller percentage of user/devel contributing back to the master branch will be dwarfed by the effect of a user/devel community growing much bigger and quicker. This seems doable considering the current momentum around RIOT. In a second phase, if such a license switch takes place for INRIA/FU/HAW contributions, we would then contact other contributors individually, to check their status concerning a similar switch for their own contributions. But in the first place, we would like to debate this topic. In particular: is anyone violently opposing the idea of migrating to a less restrictive license, such as BSD? If so, why? On the other hand, if you explicitly support the license change, feel free to indicate this as well. Please send your opinion to the list before Dec. 10th. Cheers, Emmanuel ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel -- Kévin Roussel Doctorant, projet LAR Équipe MADYNES, INRIA Nancy Grand-Est / LORIA Tél. : +33 3 54 95 86 27 kevin.rous...@inria.fr ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Hi Kevin, On Tue, 9 Dec 2014, ROUSSEL Kévin wrote: I'm not absolutely against licence switch but... I actually feel uneasy about about this kind of demands... If I understand right, some corporations which have probably contributed nothing to the project just barges in and said : if you want us to use your work, you have to let us make whatever we want with it, ask nothing in return, no code contribution, no financial help (since this is free software), nothing. To be honest, I find this kind of behavior quite... displaced. I think that is the wrong impression. In particular, BSD/MIT does not mean that companies will not contribute back. But LGPL means for many companies that they will not start to *think about* using the software. Moreover, with that software patent crap that flourishes almost everywhere out of EU (and maybe even here in the future), wouldn't that change make us vulnerable to being sued for just developing our own code? As Rene Kijewski said, if we must change, we should find a license that protects us from that kind of trap... Why is MIT conflicting with this? Of course, it's good to broaden RIOT community, but what kind of members will be attracted by that kind of move? I can just wonder. Honestly, I don't think we should argue in this direction, i.e., the bad and good people on earth. There are several very nice people and good programmers that contribute only to BSD projects. PS: sorry for my lack of contribution these last weeks, I'm finishing some paper submissions Good luck! Cheers matthias -- Matthias Waehlisch . Freie Universitaet Berlin, Inst. fuer Informatik, AG CST . Takustr. 9, D-14195 Berlin, Germany .. mailto:waehli...@ieee.org .. http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/~waehl :. Also: http://inet.cpt.haw-hamburg.de .. http://www.link-lab.net___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Am Tue, 9 Dec 2014 10:36:32 +0100 schrieb Emmanuel Baccelli emmanuel.bacce...@inria.fr: this is a gentle reminder to input your opinions on this thread before Wednesday night (i.e., tomorrow). You cannot use any of my contributions under any BSD license, because I don't think that it is a logic choice. I would welcome Apache v2.0, and would think about MIT, but there is actually nothing that speaks in favor of BSD. -- “My head was aching, and I had a singular feeling—altogether new to me—that some one else was trying to get alice’s configuration” — http://thedoomthatcametopuppet.tumblr.com/post/104397636603/ ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
Sorry Adam, I don't know how your name got intermixed into my answer. I had no intention to misquote you, and I like your previous letter very much. -- “My head was aching, and I had a singular feeling—altogether new to me—that some one else was trying to get alice’s configuration” — http://thedoomthatcametopuppet.tumblr.com/post/104397636603/ ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
I entirely understand where Johann is coming from. My view are very similar; companies all over the world beat up on Linux in the early days because of the GPL but all these years later things have died down and multibillion dollar transnational corporations are not only still contributing to the Linux kernel but are increasing their involvement. If you had asked me fifteen years ago if I thought Microsoft would be contributing I would have likely laughed in your face. The Linux kernel is proof that the GPL *is* a real option for open projects. That being said... I still wonder if even a quite permissive copyleft license like the LGPL is truly suitable for an embedded operating system. We all know how even little changes to an embedded system can require deep changes to the core of the OS. More than anything I'd like to see RIOT succeed and take its place as one of the core components in the IOT world but I think the choice of license that covers the core OS is going to play an incredibly important part in deciding whether or not that is going to happen. In my ever so humble opinion RIOT is in an unbelievably strong position from a technical standpoint but unfortunately we don't necessarily live in a world run by meritocrats. In my opinion there are *at least* two things that need to be figured out for an open project like RIOT to succeed and they're inexorably intertwined. Those things are license and community structure/governance. A project's core license and its community structure each have a huge impact on the other and the project as a whole. I suppose I'm a little more on the fence than I originally thought. Or, maybe I just want to make sure that all potential outcomes are evaluated and the decisions that are made are well thought out. A license change is a fairly large undertaking and is fraught with potential peril. A change from a copyleft license to a more permissive license, be it BSD, MIT, X11 or something similar can never be undone; once the code has be released it can never entirely be brought back under a copyleft license. Of course it can, but doing so doesn't eliminate the liberally licensed version from the universe and the project can be easily forked from using that code. Emmanuel made a great point when he said that we should distinguish between the two aspects of the change, the idea, and the effects in practice. In an more ideal world *I* would like to see the LGPL win out but in terms of practicality I wonder if companies and even research groups are going to be willing to take on the additional workload that the LGPL demands in the form of making each and every one of their changes available to their end users and in turn to the wider community. There's another option on the table that would allow a potential license change to be put off for some time while still being able to do it with minimal headache down the road. Any license change is obviously going to require all the past contributors to agree to it so what about keeping the LGPL license for now and asking those contributors and future contributors to sign an SLA. One of the downsides to an SLA is that a legal entity (e.g. RIOT e.v.) would have to be created and managed. Okay, that's enough from me for the moment.There are other things in my life that I must attend to and Monday is near a close. Adam Hunt On Mon Dec 08 2014 at 1:49:32 PM Johann Fischer johann_fisc...@posteo.de wrote: Hello RIOTers, Emmanuel Baccelli emmanuel.bacce...@inria.fr wrote: we have been receiving an increasing amount of negative feedback from various companies concerning the practical usability of our LGPL license in their context, being a show-stopper. They always do that. We have seen it in other successful projects such as linux kernel. I see RIOT as a part of a free an open infrastructure. And for the IoT we need an open infrastructure. There are companies that use (public) infrastructure but want to give anything back and BSD license favored this behavior. RIOT should not be another Contiki. But in the first place, we would like to debate this topic. In particular: is anyone violently opposing the idea of migrating to a less restrictive license, such as BSD? If so, why? On the other hand, if you explicitly support the license change, feel free to indicate this as well. Please send your opinion to the list before Dec. 10th. I am absolutely against the BSD license and I see no necessity for it. RIOT will be successful without this change. That is my personal opinion, not the company where I work. Best regards Johann Fischer ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?
This (migrating to a BSD license) should be an awesome step, especially for small design companies like us. Thanks, Akshay On 4 December 2014 at 03:29, Emmanuel Baccelli emmanuel.bacce...@inria.fr wrote: Dear RIOTers, we have been receiving an increasing amount of negative feedback from various companies concerning the practical usability of our LGPL license in their context, being a show-stopper. For this reason, INRIA, Freie Universitaet (FU) Berlin and Hamburg University of Applied Science (HAW) are currently considering changing the license of their contributions to RIOT to a less restrictive license (i.e. BSD, potentially as soon as next release). Such a switch to BSD is betting that the effect of a potentially smaller percentage of user/devel contributing back to the master branch will be dwarfed by the effect of a user/devel community growing much bigger and quicker. This seems doable considering the current momentum around RIOT. In a second phase, if such a license switch takes place for INRIA/FU/HAW contributions, we would then contact other contributors individually, to check their status concerning a similar switch for their own contributions. But in the first place, we would like to debate this topic. In particular: is anyone violently opposing the idea of migrating to a less restrictive license, such as BSD? If so, why? On the other hand, if you explicitly support the license change, feel free to indicate this as well. Please send your opinion to the list before Dec. 10th. Cheers, Emmanuel ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel ___ devel mailing list devel@riot-os.org http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
