HP calls IBM and Sun for new open license scheme

I can not resist to comment on that one.
An HP VP made a call during his yesterday's speech at LinuxWorld Conference San Francisco for IBM and Sun to invalidate their current open-source licenses and re-publish the code under the terms of the GPL.

I can't disagree more !

One of the essential value of open-source software is freedom, and one of the concept behind this freedom is the concept of choice. The choice a user has to choose one operating system or another, the choice the developer has to license its code using the legal framework he wants.
I can not see the advantage of having a single open-source license for the whole community and for all pieces of code, and does not understand the value HP could have in that situation.
The GPL is, in my opinion, a very restrictive license, obliging developers to publish any derived code under the term of the very same GPL (see section 2.b.). And although the third version of the GPL is just around the corner, I don't read any significant changes in its major directions.
Other licenses offer more freedom of choice to the developers : Apache and the other BSD derivatives, Sun's CDDL etc ...
Maybe I missed something in HP's strategy ? Please share your thoughts as well !

Posted on: août 11, 2005

Posted by: sebsto

Category: General

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Comments:

Just so you know, the GPL is there so that people cannot steal other people's hard work. Why do you think it's such a popular license? Because while people want to share, they don't want to be taken advantage of.

And you people can definitely understand that. You wouldn't want IBM to release SOLARIS as IBM UNIX S10 for Mainframes without you having access to the new slightly modified codebase.

Because, you would feel cheated...

So you see, the CDDL is like the GPL: not really free, not free like the BSD license.

Posted by Christopher Mahan on août 11, 2005 at 08:19 PM CEST #

Thanks Christopher for your comment. I really would like to avoid a passionate flame war about the pros and cons of each and many open-source license available out there. Because I feel the subject is really touchy (should I write religious ?) to many and because I don't know all the details and subtelties of each one. I understand your point. It is the very same argument I receive each time I criticize the level of freedom offered by the GPL. Outside of every commercial context, I must say that I am not afraid about someone cheating or stealing part of my work when I am open-sourcing some code I write. If someone else can take advantage of my work, good for him and too bad for me if I did not realized that before. When choosing an open-source license I want to share code and experience. Sharing is the key word. Sharing allows other to choose the license and the mode of distribution they feel more appropriate for their work, even if part of their work is some of mine. That being said, I understand the commercial risks of doing so and I am sure many smart people @ Sun have worked on these. My personal bet (and I guess Sun's bet as a corporation) is that there is more value in sharing than restricting code usage. I did not say GPL is bad, we are using it as well for some projects. One license type does not match all needs.

Posted by Sebastien Stormacq on août 11, 2005 at 10:58 PM CEST #

<p style="padding-bottom: 5px">Sebastien,

<p style="padding-bottom: 5px">I agree about not wanting flamewars. That's what slashdot is for.

<p style="padding-bottom: 5px">People that really want to make their software free can put it in the Public Domain. That's what it's for.

<p style="padding-bottom: 15px">I agree with you that there is more value in sharing, as long as it stays sharing.

Posted by Christopher Mahan on août 11, 2005 at 11:47 PM CEST #

So... where can I download the source of HP-UX, Tru64, Non-Stop?? Oh wait... has they been released under GPL yet??

Posted by Rayson (via proxy) on août 12, 2005 at 06:38 AM CEST #

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