Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Thomas C. Schmidt]

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 °
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Pekka Nikander]

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  
> 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 
> ___
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> devel@riot-os.org
> http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel



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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Emmanuel Baccelli]

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
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Kaspar Schleiser]

Hi,

On 03/02/2015 03:37 PM, Oleg Hahm wrote:

IMHO GPL + linking exception doesn't cut it. I'm not trying to change LGPL
into that.


What do you think make LGPL more appropriate than GPL + linking exception?

See below.


In my opinion the IoT world needs something that is more oriented towards
respecting the needs of potential end users.


How is this related to GPL + Linking Exception vs. LGPL?
*BSD is offering developers maximum freedom to use the code even without 
sharing or in a completely proprietary way.


GPL (+exception)ensures (theoretically) that all code changes itself 
stay GPL, thus stay open and available to everyone. This mostly benefits 
the community of developers.


LGPL additionally forces distributors to release everything needed for 
changing the RIOT version on the device, giving end users some direct 
benefits unrelated to RIOT's source code itself.


So *our* license choice will have consequences for end users using 
devices running RIOT.


So in short, LGPL trades a little developer freedom for a little user 
freedom.



If code contributions is all we want, *BSD is probably the way to go.


I thought the discussion was partly about this question and we were wondering
if this is the case or not.
The way I remember this aspect we mostly agreed that *BSD *probably* has 
advantages / no disadvantages regarding the amount of code contributions.


Kaspar


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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Oleg Hahm]

Hi!

> IMHO GPL + linking exception doesn't cut it. I'm not trying to change LGPL
> into that.

What do you think make LGPL more appropriate than GPL + linking exception?
 
> In my opinion the IoT world needs something that is more oriented towards
> respecting the needs of potential end users.

How is this related to GPL + Linking Exception vs. LGPL?

> If code contributions is all we want, *BSD is probably the way to go.

I thought the discussion was partly about this question and we were wondering
if this is the case or not.

> >Btw. I just realized during the last days that even FreeRTOS is using GPL 
> >with
> >some kind of linking exception: http://www.freertos.org/a00114.html#exception
> Nice example, as there are some successful products using it.
> 
> Take a look at Pebble:
> http://pages.getpebble.com/pages/opensource

That's great!

Cheers,
Oleg
-- 
# Okay, what on Earth is this one supposed to be used for?
linux-2.4.0/drivers/char/cp437.uni


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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Kaspar Schleiser]

Hi,

On 03/02/2015 03:03 PM, Oleg Hahm wrote:

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).


In general yes, in practise I wonder if it wouldn't be more advisable to adopt
something already existing.
IMHO GPL + linking exception doesn't cut it. I'm not trying to change 
LGPL into that.


In my opinion the IoT world needs something that is more oriented 
towards respecting the needs of potential end users.


http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/transmediale-Das-Internet-der-Dinge-gehoert-in-die-Haende-der-Nutzer-2534650.html

-> "IoT must be hackable."

A nice example of why:

"Hacking into Internet Connected Light Bulbs"

http://www.contextis.com/resources/blog/hacking-internet-connected-light-bulbs/

(short summary: Contiki based light bulbs distributed the users' WiFi 
credentials over a 6LoWPAN mesh using the same static AES key on all 
shipped bulbs.)


If code contributions is all we want, *BSD is probably the way to go.


Btw. I just realized during the last days that even FreeRTOS is using GPL with
some kind of linking exception: http://www.freertos.org/a00114.html#exception

Nice example, as there are some successful products using it.

Take a look at Pebble:
http://pages.getpebble.com/pages/opensource

Kaspar
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Oleg Hahm]

Hi!

> >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).

In general yes, in practise I wonder if it wouldn't be more advisable to adopt
something already existing.

Btw. I just realized during the last days that even FreeRTOS is using GPL with
some kind of linking exception: http://www.freertos.org/a00114.html#exception

Cheers,
Oleg
-- 
panic("huh?\n");
linux-2.2.16/arch/i386/kernel/smp.c


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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Kaspar Schleiser]

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
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Ludwig Ortmann]

Hi,

I'm opposed to the eclipse public license because of its (L)GPL incompatibility 
and therefore to joining the Eclipse foundation.

Cheers, Ludwig

Am 25. Februar 2015 11:39:08 MEZ, schrieb Emmanuel Baccelli 
:
>Hi everyone,
>
>GPL with linking exception seems relevant in this discussion --
>especially
>since eCOS, which is also a well-known embedded OS, uses this license.
>
>As a side note, but highly related: at Embedded World yesterday, we met
>with the Eclipse Foundation [1] guys.
>RIOT is now officially invited to become an Eclipse project.
>
>There are a number of advantages to be under the Eclipse umbrella: they
>provide legal services, and the IoT part of this umbrella [2] is
>actively
>helping communities such as RIOT to grow organically: in particular
>they
>promise promotion, and matchmaking with other FOSS communities and
>relevant
>industrial partners.
>
>There are however strings attached: Eclipse has good reputation as far
>as I
>can tell, but nevertheless some of our independence is lost if we join,
>and
>we have to use the Eclipse Public License [3].
>
>In any case, the Eclipse Foundation guys were stressing that CLAs [4]
>are
>crucial, whatever we do, whether we join Eclipse Foundation or not.
>
>Best,
>
>Emmanuel
>
>
>[1] https://eclipse.org/org/foundation/
>[2] http://iot.eclipse.org
>[3] https://eclipse.org/legal/eplfaq.php#CPLEPL
>[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributor_License_Agreement
>
>
>On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 2:28 AM, Adam Hunt  wrote:
>
>> 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 ]​
>>>
>>
>> ​--adam​
>>
>>
>> ​[1] https://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/license.html​
>>
>>
>> On Tue Feb 24 2015 at 5:08:12 PM Oleg Hahm 
>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 t

Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Jan Wagner]

argh - license madness - lets add some complexity fe. tri-licensed like jruby :)
https://github.com/jruby/jruby/blob/master/COPYING
 
let riot stay as independet and open as possible please - thats my only concern.
i see the websites of iot-ubuntu, iot-"mbed'a likes, iot-eclipse,
and for my personal view its looks like some "business strategy" that has less
and less todo with technical or "co-development" reasons.
 
Jan

> Emmanuel Baccelli  hat am 25. Februar 2015 um
> 11:39 geschrieben:
> 
>  Hi everyone,
> 
>  GPL with linking exception seems relevant in this discussion -- especially
> since eCOS, which is also a well-known embedded OS, uses this license.
>   
>  As a side note, but highly related: at Embedded World yesterday, we met with
> the Eclipse Foundation [1] guys.
>  RIOT is now officially invited to become an Eclipse project.
>   
>  There are a number of advantages to be under the Eclipse umbrella: they
> provide legal services, and the IoT part of this umbrella [2] is actively
> helping communities such as RIOT to grow organically: in particular they
> promise promotion, and matchmaking with other FOSS communities and relevant
> industrial partners.
>   
>  There are however strings attached: Eclipse has good reputation as far as I
> can tell, but nevertheless some of our independence is lost if we join, and we
> have to use the Eclipse Public License [3].
>   
>  In any case, the Eclipse Foundation guys were stressing that CLAs [4] are
> crucial, whatever we do, whether we join Eclipse Foundation or not.
>   
>  Best,
>   
>  Emmanuel
>   
>   
>  [1] https://eclipse.org/org/foundation/
>  [2] http://iot.eclipse.org
>  [3] https://eclipse.org/legal/eplfaq.php#CPLEPL
>  [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributor_License_Agreement
>   
> 
>  On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 2:28 AM, Adam Hunt   > wrote:
>> >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  ]
> > >> > 
> >--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 

Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Emmanuel Baccelli]

Hi everyone,

GPL with linking exception seems relevant in this discussion -- especially
since eCOS, which is also a well-known embedded OS, uses this license.

As a side note, but highly related: at Embedded World yesterday, we met
with the Eclipse Foundation [1] guys.
RIOT is now officially invited to become an Eclipse project.

There are a number of advantages to be under the Eclipse umbrella: they
provide legal services, and the IoT part of this umbrella [2] is actively
helping communities such as RIOT to grow organically: in particular they
promise promotion, and matchmaking with other FOSS communities and relevant
industrial partners.

There are however strings attached: Eclipse has good reputation as far as I
can tell, but nevertheless some of our independence is lost if we join, and
we have to use the Eclipse Public License [3].

In any case, the Eclipse Foundation guys were stressing that CLAs [4] are
crucial, whatever we do, whether we join Eclipse Foundation or not.

Best,

Emmanuel


[1] https://eclipse.org/org/foundation/
[2] http://iot.eclipse.org
[3] https://eclipse.org/legal/eplfaq.php#CPLEPL
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributor_License_Agreement


On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 2:28 AM, Adam Hunt  wrote:

> 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 ]​
>>
>
> ​--adam​
>
>
> ​[1] https://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/license.html​
>
>
> On Tue Feb 24 2015 at 5:08:12 PM Oleg Hahm  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 rever

Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Adam Hunt]

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 ]​
>

​--adam​


​[1] https://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/license.html​


On Tue Feb 24 2015 at 5:08:12 PM Oleg Hahm  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
> ___
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> http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
>
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Oleg Hahm]

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


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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Matthias Waehlisch]

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
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Oleg Hahm]

Hi Matthias!

>   I thought that we already decided to exclude exotic licenses.

Yes. GPL + Linker Exception is not exotic.

>   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.
 
>   (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. At least eCos, ERIKA and ChibiOS are very
similar to RIOT from a software architecture point of view (OS for embedded
hardware).

>   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.

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.

Cheers,
Oleg

[1] http://erika.tuxfamily.org/
[2] https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/
[3] https://gcc.gnu.org/
[4] http://netbeans.org/
[5] http://www.chibios.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=chibios:license
-- 
The bad thing about IPv6 jokes is that nobody wants to tell them first.


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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Matthias Waehlisch]

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
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Oleg Hahm]

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.


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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Joakim Gebart]

If the proposed method in https://github.com/RIOT-OS/RIOT/pull/2362
provides a way to legally comply with LGPL and still run proprietary
binary application level code on RIOT, then my vote is on LGPL.

This will make sure that any improvements to core, sys, drivers etc
are passed back to the project in the future as well, even if the
actual applications are not open.

Best regards,
Joakim Gebart
Managing Director
Eistec AB

Aurorum 1C
977 75 Luleå
Tel: +46(0)730-65 13 83
joakim.geb...@eistec.se
www.eistec.se


On Tue, Jan 27, 2015 at 9:12 PM, Emmanuel Baccelli
 wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> this thread has been silent since new year's break.
>
> Has anyone changed his/her mind on the topic in the mean time?
>
> Else, here's a tentative summary on where we are at, so far, in terms of
> expressed opinions:
>
> - a few have stated their enthusiasm for MIT/BSD
> - a few have stated their enthusiasm for (L)GPL
> - the vast majority is less enthusiastic to either direction but could
> approve a switch to MIT, for pragmatic reasons
>
> Is that fair enough, in a nutshell?
>
> On a related topic, concerning the technical feasibility of LGPL licensing
> with RIOT,
> I assume you have all seen this proposal
> https://github.com/RIOT-OS/RIOT/wiki/LGPL-compliancy-guide
> which is the first attempt at a practical guide to proprietary code in RIOT.
>
> Any comments on this in the context of the license discussion?
>
> Best,
>
> Emmanuel
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 3, 2014 at 10:59 PM, Emmanuel Baccelli
>  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
>
>
>
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Emmanuel Baccelli]

Hi everyone,

this thread has been silent since new year's break.

Has anyone changed his/her mind on the topic in the mean time?

Else, here's a tentative summary on where we are at, so far, in terms of
expressed opinions:

- a few have stated their enthusiasm for MIT/BSD
- a few have stated their enthusiasm for (L)GPL
- the vast majority is less enthusiastic to either direction but could
approve a switch to MIT, for pragmatic reasons

Is that fair enough, in a nutshell?

On a related topic, concerning the technical feasibility of LGPL licensing
with RIOT,
I assume you have all seen this proposal
https://github.com/RIOT-OS/RIOT/wiki/LGPL-compliancy-guide
which is the first attempt at a practical guide to proprietary code in RIOT.

Any comments on this in the context of the license discussion?

Best,

Emmanuel


On Wed, Dec 3, 2014 at 10:59 PM, 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
>
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Joakim Gebart]

In
http://lists.riot-os.org/pipermail/devel/2014-September/001185.html

Ludvig Ortmann stated:

>
> Last but not least, none of us intends to sue anyone for building
> proprietary applications with RIOT as long as they are in line with our
> goals (as given above). We embrace your contributions and will be happy to
> help you in the task of getting them into RIOT as best we can. However, it
> is possible for anyone, for example your competitors, to sue you for
> copyright infringement if you build a proprietary application on top of
RIOT
> that does not comply with it's license terms.


This is what started us thinking about the implications of building
applications on RIOT. We want to be able to write binary only
_applications_ for RIOT, and not have to release the source code,
regardless of what license the kernel and drivers are released under. We
wish RIOT to succeed as an OS and we will contribute back any changes that
we make to platforms, cpus or core, but we do not want to end up in a
situation where a competitor can force us to release proprietary algorithms
or other code released as an application running on an OS just because the
OS is LGPL. Some vendor provided libraries are also binary only. On the
other hand, we do not want our competitors to take the open source software
and close it off and not contribute back to the project. All in all, I
think it is important for RIOT to find a way to allow binary application
code, similar to what open source desktop OSes do.

Best regards,
Joakim Gebart
Managing Director
Eistec AB

Aurorum 1C
977 75 Luleå
Tel: +46 730-65 13 83
joakim.geb...@eistec.se
www.eistec.se

On 12/17/2014 01:52 PM, Emmanuel Baccelli wrote:

>
> Hi Joakim,
>
> Thanks for your feedback. 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

On Dec 17, 2014 1:52 PM, "Emmanuel Baccelli" 
wrote:

> Hi Joakim,
>
> Thanks for your feedback. 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 09:30, "Joakim Gebart"  a écrit :
>
>> I am also very much in favor of using a license which requires
>> openness but like Adam said, in the embedded world it is quite common
>> that changes will be necessary in order to support some hardware
>> configuration. Additionally, the interpretation that we would need
>> dynamic linking in order to comply with the license without opening up
>> all application code makes this a quite important question.
>>
>> Companies are not always willing or even able (because of patents,
>> NDAs or other contracts) to release the source of proprietary
>> applications. The use of LGPL in RIOT has been the source of some
>> discussion between me and my colleagues and I hope to see some other
>> license in the future where it is possible to still distribute
>> proprietary applications that run on RIOT.
>>
>> Eistec (see www.eistec.se) generally has the policy that anything
>> related to the platform and OS (cpu drivers, device drivers, etc) will
>> be sent upstream to related OSS projects, mainly RIOT and Contiki for
>> now (but we have also provided some patches for other tools we use,
>> such as OpenOCD), but we usually want to keep application code
>> (algorithms, higher level service implementations etc.) proprietary.
>> Since we work as a consulting firm it is also common that we do not
>> own the code to the applications themselves but have to negotiate with
>> the client on what parts to release, clients are usually fine with
>> sharing bug fixes and low level driver and OS code with upstream.
>> So far we have only used Contiki commercially but I personally would
>> like to see that change in the future, but for now I think the risk of
>> ending up in a situation where someone can demand any proprietary
>> application code from us makes this a bit too dangerous.
>>
>> This is my personal view on the license situation, but I know that
>> many of the people I work with share this concern.
>>
>> Best regards
>> Joakim Gebart
>> Managing Director
>> Eistec AB
>>
>> Aurorum 1C
>> 977 75 Luleå
>> Tel: +46(0)730-65 13 83
>> joakim.geb...@eistec.se
>> www.eistec.se
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Dec 4, 2014 at 5:06 AM, Adam Hunt  wrote:
>> > While I've been a fervent supporter of the GPL for many years I'm on
>> board
>> > with a change to a simple BSD or MIT style license. Initially I was
>> > skeptical about the need to move away from the LGPL but in the world of
>> > embedded systems it's very common to make changes to the core codebase
>> in
>> > order to work on various platforms. Under the LGPL such changes would
>> have
>> > to be tracked, checked for IP conflicts, and made available. This
>> > requirement may very well end up being so onerous that it may vary well
>> push
>> > companies to adopt a more suitably licensed alternative over RIOT.
>> >
>> > On Wed, Dec 3, 2014, 2:14 PM

Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Kaspar Schleiser]

Hey,

On 12/18/2014 03:34 PM, Ludwig Ortmann wrote:

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].

If you modify BSD code, you have a copyright to those modifications.

BSD doesn't prevent you to add any restriction on the distribution of 
those modifications, which practically allows you to sell modified BSD 
code under more restrictive terms (e.g., your modifications cannot be 
used unless you bought a license from X).


Kaspar

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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Ludwig Ortmann]

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/
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Kaspar Schleiser]

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
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Kaspar Schleiser]

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

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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Ludwig Ortmann]

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
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Ludwig Ortmann]

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
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Kaspar Schleiser]

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
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Johann Fischer]

Hello Emmanuel and RIOTers,

> 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

Statement of PHYTEC Messtechnik GmbH to LGPL and "Switch to BSD":

We spend an equal amount of time on software development as on hardware
development. Phytec contributes to the Linux Kernel. We know the (L)GPL
license and work with it every day. Phytec is also founding member of OSADL
(Open Source Automation Development Lab).

We want to see RIOT as a "Linux" for small microcontrollers in IoT world.
We find the LGPL pass very well with a project like RIOT and support the use of
LGPL. As Linux-Kernel, RIOT is a part of an infrastructure and this should
remain free and open. With the change to BSD we fear the RIOT will do more harm
than good. LGPL binds community and the companies together and ensures that a
project will not getting fragmented and falling apart. We do not support
the change to BSD and we are sure that RIOT will be more attractive by other
measures. Currently we rely on RIOT as first choice, with a change to BSD
license we would think it over again.


Best regards
Mit freundlichen Grüßen

M.Eng. Johann Fischer

- Entwicklung -
PHYTEC Messtechnik GmbH
Robert-Koch-Str. 39
55129 Mainz
Germany
Tel.: +49 (0)6131 9221-0
Web: http://www.phytec.de

PHYTEC Messtechnik GmbH, Robert-Koch-Str. 39, 55129 Mainz, Germany; 
Geschäftsführer: Dipl.-Ing. Michael Mitezki,
Handelsregister Mainz, HRB 4656, Finanzamt Mainz-Mitte, St.Nr. 266500608, DE 
149059855 
This E-Mail may contain confidential or privileged information.
If you are not the intended recipient (or have received this E-Mail in error) 
please notify the sender immediately and destroy this E-Mail.
Any unauthorized copying, disclosure or distribution of the material in this 
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Emmanuel Baccelli]

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"  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  > 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
>>
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>>
>
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>
>
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Emmanuel Baccelli]

Hi Joakim,

Thanks for your feedback. 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 09:30, "Joakim Gebart"  a écrit :

> I am also very much in favor of using a license which requires
> openness but like Adam said, in the embedded world it is quite common
> that changes will be necessary in order to support some hardware
> configuration. Additionally, the interpretation that we would need
> dynamic linking in order to comply with the license without opening up
> all application code makes this a quite important question.
>
> Companies are not always willing or even able (because of patents,
> NDAs or other contracts) to release the source of proprietary
> applications. The use of LGPL in RIOT has been the source of some
> discussion between me and my colleagues and I hope to see some other
> license in the future where it is possible to still distribute
> proprietary applications that run on RIOT.
>
> Eistec (see www.eistec.se) generally has the policy that anything
> related to the platform and OS (cpu drivers, device drivers, etc) will
> be sent upstream to related OSS projects, mainly RIOT and Contiki for
> now (but we have also provided some patches for other tools we use,
> such as OpenOCD), but we usually want to keep application code
> (algorithms, higher level service implementations etc.) proprietary.
> Since we work as a consulting firm it is also common that we do not
> own the code to the applications themselves but have to negotiate with
> the client on what parts to release, clients are usually fine with
> sharing bug fixes and low level driver and OS code with upstream.
> So far we have only used Contiki commercially but I personally would
> like to see that change in the future, but for now I think the risk of
> ending up in a situation where someone can demand any proprietary
> application code from us makes this a bit too dangerous.
>
> This is my personal view on the license situation, but I know that
> many of the people I work with share this concern.
>
> Best regards
> Joakim Gebart
> Managing Director
> Eistec AB
>
> Aurorum 1C
> 977 75 Luleå
> Tel: +46(0)730-65 13 83
> joakim.geb...@eistec.se
> www.eistec.se
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 4, 2014 at 5:06 AM, Adam Hunt  wrote:
> > While I've been a fervent supporter of the GPL for many years I'm on
> board
> > with a change to a simple BSD or MIT style license. Initially I was
> > skeptical about the need to move away from the LGPL but in the world of
> > embedded systems it's very common to make changes to the core codebase in
> > order to work on various platforms. Under the LGPL such changes would
> have
> > to be tracked, checked for IP conflicts, and made available. This
> > requirement may very well end up being so onerous that it may vary well
> push
> > companies to adopt a more suitably licensed alternative over RIOT.
> >
> > On Wed, Dec 3, 2014, 2:14 PM Thomas Watteyne  >
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> Emmanuel,
> >> I support the change to BSD. One of the reasons is that OpenWSN is also
> on
> >> BSD, so integration of the different code bases might be easier when
> both
> >> have the same license.
> >> Thomas
> >>
> >> On Wednesday, December 3, 2014, Emmanuel Baccelli
> >>  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
> >>
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> >> http://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
> >
> >

Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Kaspar Schleiser]

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
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Ludwig Ortmann]

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.
"""
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Oleg Hahm]

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
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Oleg Hahm]

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


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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Ludwig Ortmann]

Hi,

On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 05:58:20PM +0100, Kaspar Schleiser wrote:
> On 12/16/2014 03:12 PM, Emmanuel Baccelli wrote:
> >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?
> My work on RIOT is mostly about code, code review and development
> environment. I'm aware that "RIOT" is more than the source, but the license
> mostly affects that part.
> 
> If you want to sell an Iot OS software product, as soon as RIOT is *BSD'ed,
> all of that can be taken *as is* and then be sold under whatever terms
> anyone seems fit. Always based on that code & infrastructure work.
> 
> (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).

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowMoney
"""
Yes, the GPL allows everyone to do this. The right to sell copies is
part of the definition of free software. Except in one special
situation, there is no limit on what price you can charge. (The one
exception is the required written offer to provide source code that
must accompany binary-only release.)
"""

and

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowDownloadFee
"""
Yes. You can charge any fee you wish for distributing a copy of the
program. If you distribute binaries by download, you must provide
“equivalent access” to download the source—therefore, the fee to
download source may not be greater than the fee to download the
binary.
"""


Also, on a related note, the MIT license (for example) says:
"""
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
"""

So, even if someone sells the code under the MIT license, you're still
visibly the copyright holder.

In addition to that, the BSD licenses also contain:
"""
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.
"""

So in that case, you can't even (legally) sell a product based on RIOT
without it (and you) being mentioned.

Cheers, Ludwig
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Kaspar Schleiser]

Hey,

On 12/16/2014 03:12 PM, Emmanuel Baccelli wrote:

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?
My work on RIOT is mostly about code, code review and development 
environment. I'm aware that "RIOT" is more than the source, but the 
license mostly affects that part.


If you want to sell an Iot OS software product, as soon as RIOT is 
*BSD'ed, all of that can be taken *as is* and then be sold under 
whatever terms anyone seems fit. Always based on that code & 
infrastructure work.


(L)GPL tries to put some restrictions on that. Mostly, the source code 
cannot realistically be sold as long it's (L)GPL.


If we *BSD the RIOT source, the source code *I* write *will* be sold by 
someone else. Not (only) the product someone develops *on top* of that 
source code.


Economically I'll be not only hacking on RIOT for fun, but also for the 
profit of someone else. I'll not be creating an open tool that people 
can use to base their work on, but also create a tool that others can sell.


This puts me in a position where I have to reconsider if I should 
continue contributing as before or if I should be trying to get a part 
of the profit I create.


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.


Kaspar





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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Emmanuel Baccelli]

Hi Johann

On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 4:44 PM, Johann Fischer 
wrote:
>
> Am Tue, 16 Dec 2014 15:45:02 +0100
> schrieb Emmanuel Baccelli :
>
> Hi Emmanuel,
>
> > > 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.
> > >
> > >
> >
> > OK. So is LGPLv2 indeed aligned with your company's policy and legal
> > department?
> > That would be interesting to know for this discussion.
>
> Yes, even if it is not always comfortable.
>
>
>

Thanks for this information. But what do you mean by "not comfortable"?
This is somehow the crux of this discussion, and it would be great if you
could be slightly more precise.
Arguably, the level of (dis)comfort is also what turns other companies away
from LGPL in this context.


Best,

Emmanuel
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Johann Fischer]

Am Tue, 16 Dec 2014 15:45:02 +0100
schrieb Emmanuel Baccelli :

Hi Emmanuel,

> > > 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.
> >
> >
> 
> OK. So is LGPLv2 indeed aligned with your company's policy and legal
> department?
> That would be interesting to know for this discussion.

Yes, even if it is not always comfortable.

> Best,
> 
> Emmanuel

-- 
M.Eng. Johann Fischer

- Forschung & Entwicklung -
PHYTEC Messtechnik GmbH
Robert-Koch-Str. 39
55129 Mainz
Germany
Tel.: +49 (0)6131 9221-0
Web: http://www.phytec.de
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Emmanuel Baccelli]

Hi Johann,

On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 1:54 PM, Johann Fischer 
wrote:
>
> Am Tue, 16 Dec 2014 12:44:57 +0100
> schrieb Oleg Hahm :
>
> > 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.
>
>

OK. So is LGPLv2 indeed aligned with your company's policy and legal
department?
That would be interesting to know for this discussion.

Best,

Emmanuel
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Kaspar Schleiser]

Hey,

On 12/16/2014 02:36 PM, Matthias Waehlisch wrote:

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.

Of course you can republish, as long as you stick with the license.
If you remove all parts from every contributor not agreeing you can 
publish under any other license.


But assuming that you don't want to blatantly ignore the license terms 
or are not prepared to be sued for license infringement, you cannot 
simply remove my code and republish under anything other than (L)GPL.


Kaspar

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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Emmanuel Baccelli]

Hi Kaspar,

On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 11:28 AM, Kaspar Schleiser 
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
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Kaspar Schleiser]

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
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Matthias Waehlisch]

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
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Johann Fischer]

Am Tue, 16 Dec 2014 12:44:57 +0100
schrieb Oleg Hahm :

> 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
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Oleg Hahm]

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.

> 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.
 
> 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.

Cheers,
Oleg
-- 
printk(KERN_ERR "happy meal: Fry guys.");
linux-2.6.6/drivers/net/sunhme.c


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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Kaspar Schleiser]

Hey,

On 12/15/14 18:39, Oleg Hahm wrote:

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!

See it from a different perspective:

(substitute BSD with your favorite non-restrictive license)

All work I do on RIOT, I do in my spare time.

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.


(L)GPL guarantees that my contribution will stay part of something that 
might improve, but is always available to me under clear tearms.


BSD doesn't.

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.


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.


Kaspar
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Thomas Eichinger]

>>> Let's keep the discussion non-political/-philosophical - otherwise there's 
>>> no
>>> end.
>> Sure. Keep the discussion "GPL or not" non-political/-philosophical. Why
>> discuss at all?
> 
> While I think this discussion can not be lead without political or
> philosophical considerations, I agree that this particular subtopic is
> noise in the discussion. Let's get back on topic.

I read a lot of strong words and claims like “ethical correct decision” and 
similar in this debate (I had them on my mind too) which are by definition 
highly political and philosophical and I for my self question the metrics I
use to support these.

But yes, this list is not the right place to discuss this.

Thomas
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Adam Hunt]

 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
 (EPL) and the related EPL
FAQ  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 you"ve 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

.

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  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
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Emmanuel Baccelli]

Hi Oleg,

On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 6:39 PM, Oleg Hahm  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
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Oleg Hahm]

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!")

> (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!

Cheers,
Oleg
-- 
/* These are the most dangerous and useful defines. They do printk() during
 * the interrupt processing routine(s), so if you manage to get "flooded" by
 * irq's, start thinking about the "Power off/on" button...
 */
linux-2.2.16/drivers/sbus/char/aurora.h


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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Oleg Hahm]

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
-- 
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Ludwig Ortmann]

Hi,

On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 05:32:14PM +0100, Martine Lenders wrote:
> Hi,
> speaking of proprietary smart phones: seems like Android decided against
> LGPL for more or less the same reasons as we discuss right now:
> https://source.android.com/source/licenses.html#why-apache-software-license.

But they are explicitly not talking about the kernel (not that they
could change it if the wanted, it being Linux under GPL2 and all). It
doesn't say whether they would have chosen differently for the kernel
if they were at liberty to do so.

Of course we could do a similar thing and get crazy with licenses. GPL
for /core, Apache for /sys, BSD for /cpu, /drivers, ... ;)

Finally, the post-sale support situation of Android devices is a point
against letting manufacturers do whatever they want with the code, at
least according to my personal views on the longevity of computing
devices.

Cheers, Ludwig
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Hauke Petersen]

Dear RIOT Community,

after being quiet on the mailing list for some time, I gave the topic 
some more thoughts.


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.


As I am tending towards a not-so-idealistic and pracmatic mind-set, I 
would vote for the move to a less restrictive license. Personally I 
would go for the MIT license, but for this I don't have a strong 
urge/argumentation. I will however use the term MIT as placeholder for a 
less restrictive license in the remainder of this mail.


The main incentives for my opinion are driven by my view on (i) RIOTs 
perspective as well as on (ii) my (subjective) knowledge of the 
embedded/IoT market and (iii) my personal opinion on the impacts of a 
less restrictive license:


(i) I would like to see RIOT as open-source, de-facto standard OS in the 
context of IoT and maybe even further as one of the natural choices for 
any real-time embedded system. I think we have the strong advantage of a 
good timing as there is not really any dominant system out there yet and 
the whole IoT market is just about to go ballistic.


(ii) Pushing RIOT to become a major player in the embedded world is 
dependent on a number factors. Just having a great community and being 
the technical best system on the market are not sufficient. I think a 
wide adoption by industrial/commercial users is evenly as important, and 
in the real world this adoption is highly correlated with political 
decision making and prejudices in companies. 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. So 
I would guess (yepp, this is a bet), that with MIT we still have a 
strong flow of code being contributed back to the community.


My second reason for tending towards MIT in the context of commercial 
use is a simple technical one: In contrary to most open-source software 
and even to Linux, RIOT is far more entangled with the underlying 
hardware. I mean this is the major characteristic of embedded systems. 
Now that hardware plays a significant role for the overall 
product/system, we do not only deal with (classical) software 
developers, but also with hardware developers/companies who have a quite 
different view on licenses, development processes and project 
management. Even as open-source software is emerging the world market is 
number-wise dominated by commercial products (always remember hardware 
AKA 'real objects you can touch' cost money to build). Every commercial 
company has parts of their 'close-to-hardware' SW that they do not want 
to open up. I don't say that they can not do it with LGPL, but by 
offering them an MIT based OS I think we take away unnecessary hurdles 
for everyone considering to use RIOT.


(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.



So sorry for the long text: In conclusion I would vote for changing to 
MIT because I think that the embedded market is different from the 
conventional SW market and less restrictive licensed SW will prevail. 
That a license change will at least not weaken the RIOT community but in 
the same time open new opportunities.


Cheers,
Hauke
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Ludwig Ortmann]

Hi,

On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 05:23:32PM +0100, Kaspar Schleiser wrote:
> On 12/15/2014 05:07 PM, Oleg Hahm wrote:
> >>Giving away source code which strenghtens those is contraproductive to the
> >>common good.
> >
> >Says the man earning a shit load of money from one of these evil companies,
> >using a proprietary smart phone, and buying Facebook goggles. ;-)
> That implies I'm buying Facebook goggles. For the record: that's not the
> case.
> 
> >Let's keep the discussion non-political/-philosophical - otherwise there's no
> >end.
> Sure. Keep the discussion "GPL or not" non-political/-philosophical. Why
> discuss at all?

While I think this discussion can not be lead without political or
philosophical considerations, I agree that this particular subtopic is
noise in the discussion. Let's get back on topic.

Cheers, Ludwig
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Martine Lenders]

Hi,
speaking of proprietary smart phones: seems like Android decided against
LGPL for more or less the same reasons as we discuss right now:
https://source.android.com/source/licenses.html#why-apache-software-license.

Cheers,
Martine

2014-12-15 17:23 GMT+01:00 Kaspar Schleiser :
>
> Hey,
>
> On 12/15/2014 05:07 PM, Oleg Hahm wrote:
>
>> Giving away source code which strenghtens those is contraproductive to the
>>> common good.
>>>
>>
>> Says the man earning a shit load of money from one of these evil
>> companies,
>> using a proprietary smart phone, and buying Facebook goggles. ;-)
>>
> That implies I'm buying Facebook goggles. For the record: that's not the
> case.
>
>  Let's keep the discussion non-political/-philosophical - otherwise
>> there's no
>> end.
>>
> Sure. Keep the discussion "GPL or not" non-political/-philosophical. Why
> discuss at all?
>
>
> Kaspar
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Kaspar Schleiser]

Hey,

On 12/15/2014 05:07 PM, Oleg Hahm wrote:

Giving away source code which strenghtens those is contraproductive to the
common good.


Says the man earning a shit load of money from one of these evil companies,
using a proprietary smart phone, and buying Facebook goggles. ;-)
That implies I'm buying Facebook goggles. For the record: that's not the 
case.



Let's keep the discussion non-political/-philosophical - otherwise there's no
end.
Sure. Keep the discussion "GPL or not" non-political/-philosophical. Why 
discuss at all?


Kaspar
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Emmanuel Baccelli]

On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 5:07 PM, Oleg Hahm  wrote:
>
>
>
> Let's keep the discussion non-political/-philosophical - otherwise there's
> no
> end.
>
>

+1
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Oleg Hahm]

Hi!

> Giving away source code which strenghtens those is contraproductive to the
> common good.

Says the man earning a shit load of money from one of these evil companies,
using a proprietary smart phone, and buying Facebook goggles. ;-)

Let's keep the discussion non-political/-philosophical - otherwise there's no
end.

Cheers,
Oleg
-- 
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Thomas Eichinger]

Hi,

> On 15 Dec 2014, at 15:34, Kaspar Schleiser  wrote:
> 
> On 12/15/2014 03:03 PM, Thomas Eichinger wrote:
>> 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?
> Not in a world which is mostly ruled by the interests of companies which 
> don't have the greater good in their priorities.
> 
> Giving away source code which strenghtens those is contraproductive to the 
> common good.
Right, but giving away source code which isn’t used by those doesn’t serve the 
common good neither as it is only used by the initiated elite and not delivered 
to the broad public. IMHO.

Thomas

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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Kaspar Schleiser]

Hey,

On 12/15/2014 03:03 PM, Thomas Eichinger wrote:

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?
Not in a world which is mostly ruled by the interests of companies which 
don't have the greater good in their priorities.


Giving away source code which strenghtens those is contraproductive to 
the common good.


Kaspar
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Thomas Eichinger]

Dear all,


> On 15 Dec 2014, at 11:10, Ludwig Ortmann  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.

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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Oleg Hahm]

Hi Kaspar!

> >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.
> Could we sum up the differences?

Wikipedia is saying:
"Compared to the GNU Classpath license above, 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."

And I think this reverse engineering clause is an important thing for most
companies. (Actually, a lawyer of the FSF confirmed this interpretation IIRC.
I could search the link if necessary.)

Cheers,
Oleg
-- 
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Martine Lenders]

Hi,

2014-12-03 22:59 GMT+01:00 Emmanuel Baccelli :
>
> […]
>
> 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
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Oleg Hahm]

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
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Kaspar Schleiser]

Hey,

On 12/15/2014 02:29 PM, Oleg Hahm wrote:

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.

Could we sum up the differences?

Kaspar
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Oleg Hahm]

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
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Kaspar Schleiser]

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
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Kaspar Schleiser]

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
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[ROUSSEL Kévin]

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" 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

Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Ludwig Ortmann]

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
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Kaspar Schleiser]

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
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Peter Kietzmann]

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" 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







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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[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"  >> 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
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >___
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> >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
> 
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[ROUSSEL Kévin]

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" 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







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 Tél. : +33 3 54 95 86 27
 kevin.rous...@inria.fr

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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Emmanuel Baccelli]

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"  a écrit :

> Carsten Bormann  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
>
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Emmanuel Baccelli]

Hi Johann,

Le 12 déc. 2014 00:48, "Johann Fischer"  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
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Johann Fischer]

On Tue, 9 Dec 2014 16:31:00 +0100
Emmanuel Baccelli  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

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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Olaf Bergmann]

Carsten Bormann  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
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Carsten Bormann]

Emmanuel Baccelli  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
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Emmanuel Baccelli]

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).
Best,
Emmanuel
 Le 9 déc. 2014 00:43, "Carsten Bormann"  a écrit :

> On 09 Dec 2014, at 00:09, Adam Hunt  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
>
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[René Kijewski]

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.

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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[René Kijewski]

Am Tue, 9 Dec 2014 10:36:32 +0100
schrieb Emmanuel Baccelli :

> 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.

-- 
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[René Kijewski]

Am Tue, 9 Dec 2014 00:43:26 +0100
schrieb Carsten Bormann :

> On 09 Dec 2014, at 00:09, Adam Hunt  wrote:
> I could have people working on RIOT for those 1.5 years...

If you actually had any intentions to contribute to RIOT, then you would dual 
or tri-license your contributions ...

-- 
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Emmanuel Baccelli]

Hi Johan,

On Mon, Dec 8, 2014 at 1:27 AM, Johann Fischer 
wrote:

> Hello RIOTers,
>
> Emmanuel Baccelli  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.
>
>
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.

What is the most unclear to me is: what are the consequences of the choice
of license in the long run?

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?
- harm the RIOT 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.


Cheers

Emmanuel




> 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
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Matthias Waehlisch]

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

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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[ROUSSEL Kévin]

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


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--


 Kévin Roussel
 Doctorant, projet LAR
 Équipe MADYNES, INRIA Nancy Grand-Est / LORIA
 Tél. : +33 3 54 95 86 27
 kevin.rous...@inria.fr

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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Matthias Waehlisch]

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
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Kaspar Schleiser]

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
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Emmanuel Baccelli]

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  wrote:

> On 09 Dec 2014, at 00:09, Adam Hunt  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
>
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Carsten Bormann]

On 09 Dec 2014, at 00:09, Adam Hunt  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

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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Adam Hunt]

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 
wrote:

> Hello RIOTers,
>
> Emmanuel Baccelli  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
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Johann Fischer]

Hello RIOTers,

Emmanuel Baccelli  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
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Carsten Bormann]

On 04 Dec 2014, at 17:05, Emmanuel Baccelli  wrote:
> 
> IANAL

IANAL either*), and indeed it is worth talking to a few lawyers that know at 
least about the difference between common and civil law, and the peculiarities 
of the variations of the former.

First of all, thank you for this initiative, and the only additional comment I 
have is “what took you so long”.

Now with respect to which license to choose, there is indeed a small selection 
of reasonable ones, and some effort should be spent choosing the right one.

The important questions here are:
1) what is good for the licensee, and
2) what is the onus on the licensor (in addition to giving the copyright away, 
which is the point).
Let’s look at the two relevant groups here, MIT/BSD, and Apache 2.0.

There is no single “BSD license”; there is a 3-clause and a 4-clause one, and 
we certainly want to avoid the toxic 4-clause one (with the advertisement 
clause).  There is also a non-attribution clause, which is not really very 
useful — once you take that out, you essentially get the MIT license, which is 
indeed currently the leading permissive license for open-source projects.  
The language is now simple enough that there is essentially zero onus on the 
licensor.  As the numbers on github show, people already have voted with their 
feet here.

The Apache 2.0 license was written for the Apache foundation, and you can argue 
it was written in the interests of the foundation.  It trades additional onus 
for the licensor for a better position of the licensee, making it more 
attractive for the licensee to use the software governed by the foundation.  
That is great if you have a foundation that already has traction.  But the 
additional onus on the licensor may be a problem.  The Apache 2.0 license not 
only signs over the copyright, but also grants patent rights.  You need to 
understand the difference between these two to understand why this is a 
mountain of a problem.  Copyright is well-understood; unless you set out 
“stealing” stuff, it is relatively hard to create a problem with copyright (SCO 
has shown you still can, in the US legal system, but that is a problem with 
that legal system).

Patent rights, however, are a legal cesspool.  Not only does nobody really ever 
know what patent rights they have or are subject to**), the act of 
communicating about these (or thinking about these in a form that may later be 
retrieved by legal discovery) is toxic (i.e., greatly damages any legal 
position that the company may have).  No company executive in their right mind 
wants to touch patent rights unless absolutely necessary, even if lawyers can 
make a ton of money in the process.

A lawyer that is asked to sign off on a source code release that grants patent 
rights would need to do all of the above.  (How do you even find out which of 
your patent rights are touched by the code?)  To me, it seems a license that 
requires signing away patent rights is a recipe to talk deciders out of making 
source code releases, in particular for larger companies that have powerful 
patent departments.  Of course, some very large companies have established 
processes that can handle the Apache 2.0 license, so it may not be completely 
black and white.  Companies that already  have formed a consortium will have 
formed an opinion on this (Broadcom’s recent sudden exit from OIC serves as a 
warning light, though), so the Apache 2.0 license is less inappropriate for a 
consortium.

TL;DR:  Go for the MIT license***).

Grüße, Carsten

*) But I have wasted too much of my life talking to them, and second-guessing 
some of their bone-headed moves.

**) If you think otherwise, you have no idea.  Really.

***) (And if you must go for Apache 2.0, do so after talking to people who have 
real-world experience with getting source-code releases out of non-trivial 
organizations.)

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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Emmanuel Baccelli]

Hi again everyone,

If we're going for a license that is less restrictive than LGPL, it does
indeed make sense to consider alternatives such as Apache and MIT -- and
not only BSD.

However, I think we need to distinguish between two aspects:
- the ideas
- the effects in practice

The reason we consider moving away from LGPL is because, although the
*idea* of GPL is great, its *effect* is a problem for us in practice.
Experience so far shows LGPL is stopping RIOT adoption for too many
companies we interact with.

So where I'm getting at is: we need to make sure that we don't fall into
the same trap with a new license. For example: if the idea of Apache seems
better to us, but it turns out that in practice most companies we interact
with do not want to read the term "patent" in the license, we're back to
square one, which may or may not be what we want [1]. Let's assume it's not
what we want.

For the moment, surprisingly, I have not heard any company rant against BSD
-- quite the contrary in fact. So while BSD may be considered old and
incomplete, it is still a strong contender in my opinion.

Personally, I agree that the idea of the Apache license seems better,
indeed. But let's check what IoT company (lawyers) think about the Apache
license. I think we have to assess whether or not Apache is, in our case,
yet another "good idea" which turns out to be a show-stopper in practice.

Caveat: IANAL  -- a funnily appropriate acronym I just saw in a related
post [2]. If anyone has professional or personal ties with an IoT company
lawyer, please do not hesitate to chip in at this point.

Cheers,

Emmanuel


[1] Note that we could also choose to stay in square one, and dedicate
time/energy to fight for the idea. But in my opinion, we have to choose our
battles: our plates are already full with other things that none other than
us fight for (i.e. RIOT adoption & quality IoT code ;).

[2]
http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/40561/is-bsd-license-compatible-with-apache

On Thu, Dec 4, 2014 at 9:29 AM, Joakim Gebart 
wrote:

> I am also very much in favor of using a license which requires
> openness but like Adam said, in the embedded world it is quite common
> that changes will be necessary in order to support some hardware
> configuration. Additionally, the interpretation that we would need
> dynamic linking in order to comply with the license without opening up
> all application code makes this a quite important question.
>
> Companies are not always willing or even able (because of patents,
> NDAs or other contracts) to release the source of proprietary
> applications. The use of LGPL in RIOT has been the source of some
> discussion between me and my colleagues and I hope to see some other
> license in the future where it is possible to still distribute
> proprietary applications that run on RIOT.
>
> Eistec (see www.eistec.se) generally has the policy that anything
> related to the platform and OS (cpu drivers, device drivers, etc) will
> be sent upstream to related OSS projects, mainly RIOT and Contiki for
> now (but we have also provided some patches for other tools we use,
> such as OpenOCD), but we usually want to keep application code
> (algorithms, higher level service implementations etc.) proprietary.
> Since we work as a consulting firm it is also common that we do not
> own the code to the applications themselves but have to negotiate with
> the client on what parts to release, clients are usually fine with
> sharing bug fixes and low level driver and OS code with upstream.
> So far we have only used Contiki commercially but I personally would
> like to see that change in the future, but for now I think the risk of
> ending up in a situation where someone can demand any proprietary
> application code from us makes this a bit too dangerous.
>
> This is my personal view on the license situation, but I know that
> many of the people I work with share this concern.
>
> Best regards
> Joakim Gebart
> Managing Director
> Eistec AB
>
> Aurorum 1C
> 977 75 Luleå
> Tel: +46(0)730-65 13 83
> joakim.geb...@eistec.se
> www.eistec.se
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 4, 2014 at 5:06 AM, Adam Hunt  wrote:
> > While I've been a fervent supporter of the GPL for many years I'm on
> board
> > with a change to a simple BSD or MIT style license. Initially I was
> > skeptical about the need to move away from the LGPL but in the world of
> > embedded systems it's very common to make changes to the core codebase in
> > order to work on various platforms. Under the LGPL such changes would
> have
> > to be tracked, checked for IP conflicts, and made available. This
> > requirement may very well end up being so onerous that it may vary well
> push
> > companies to adopt a more suitably licensed alternative over RIOT.
> >
> > On Wed, Dec 3, 2014, 2:14 PM Thomas Watteyne  >
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> Emmanuel,
> >> I support the change to BSD. One of the reasons is that OpenWSN is also
> on
> >> BSD, so integration of the different code bases 

Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Joakim Gebart]

I am also very much in favor of using a license which requires
openness but like Adam said, in the embedded world it is quite common
that changes will be necessary in order to support some hardware
configuration. Additionally, the interpretation that we would need
dynamic linking in order to comply with the license without opening up
all application code makes this a quite important question.

Companies are not always willing or even able (because of patents,
NDAs or other contracts) to release the source of proprietary
applications. The use of LGPL in RIOT has been the source of some
discussion between me and my colleagues and I hope to see some other
license in the future where it is possible to still distribute
proprietary applications that run on RIOT.

Eistec (see www.eistec.se) generally has the policy that anything
related to the platform and OS (cpu drivers, device drivers, etc) will
be sent upstream to related OSS projects, mainly RIOT and Contiki for
now (but we have also provided some patches for other tools we use,
such as OpenOCD), but we usually want to keep application code
(algorithms, higher level service implementations etc.) proprietary.
Since we work as a consulting firm it is also common that we do not
own the code to the applications themselves but have to negotiate with
the client on what parts to release, clients are usually fine with
sharing bug fixes and low level driver and OS code with upstream.
So far we have only used Contiki commercially but I personally would
like to see that change in the future, but for now I think the risk of
ending up in a situation where someone can demand any proprietary
application code from us makes this a bit too dangerous.

This is my personal view on the license situation, but I know that
many of the people I work with share this concern.

Best regards
Joakim Gebart
Managing Director
Eistec AB

Aurorum 1C
977 75 Luleå
Tel: +46(0)730-65 13 83
joakim.geb...@eistec.se
www.eistec.se


On Thu, Dec 4, 2014 at 5:06 AM, Adam Hunt  wrote:
> While I've been a fervent supporter of the GPL for many years I'm on board
> with a change to a simple BSD or MIT style license. Initially I was
> skeptical about the need to move away from the LGPL but in the world of
> embedded systems it's very common to make changes to the core codebase in
> order to work on various platforms. Under the LGPL such changes would have
> to be tracked, checked for IP conflicts, and made available. This
> requirement may very well end up being so onerous that it may vary well push
> companies to adopt a more suitably licensed alternative over RIOT.
>
> On Wed, Dec 3, 2014, 2:14 PM Thomas Watteyne 
> wrote:
>>
>> Emmanuel,
>> I support the change to BSD. One of the reasons is that OpenWSN is also on
>> BSD, so integration of the different code bases might be easier when both
>> have the same license.
>> Thomas
>>
>> On Wednesday, December 3, 2014, Emmanuel Baccelli
>>  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
>>
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Akshay Mishra]

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 
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
>
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Adam Hunt]

While I've been a fervent supporter of the GPL for many years I'm on board
with a change to a simple BSD or MIT style license. Initially I was
skeptical about the need to move away from the LGPL but in the world of
embedded systems it's very common to make changes to the core codebase in
order to work on various platforms. Under the LGPL such changes would have
to be tracked, checked for IP conflicts, and made available. This
requirement may very well end up being so onerous that it may vary well
push companies to adopt a more suitably licensed alternative over RIOT.

On Wed, Dec 3, 2014, 2:14 PM Thomas Watteyne 
wrote:

> Emmanuel,
> I support the change to BSD. One of the reasons is that OpenWSN is also on
> BSD, so integration of the different code bases might be easier when both
> have the same license.
> Thomas
>
> On Wednesday, December 3, 2014, 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
>>
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Re: [riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Thomas Watteyne]

Emmanuel,
I support the change to BSD. One of the reasons is that OpenWSN is also on
BSD, so integration of the different code bases might be easier when both
have the same license.
Thomas

On Wednesday, December 3, 2014, 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
>
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[riot-devel] Switch to BSD?

[Emmanuel Baccelli]

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
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