new Samba license? (was Re: [Mono-list] Samba Implications?)

[Michael Torrie]

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On Sat, 2002-04-06 at 15:01, Brian Crowell wrote:
>=20
> > More specifically, M$ is banning "IPR Impairing License"s. From
> > the new license...
>=20
> I understood the Microsoft (that's an s, not a dollar sign) license very
> well. Perhaps you should review section 2 of the GPL:
>=20
> "These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole ... When you
> distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on =
the
> Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this Licen=
se,
> whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thu=
s
> to each and every part regardless of who wrote it."
>=20
> Derivative and collective works containing GPL-licensed works must be
> licensed under the GPL. This is one of the _major_ restrictions of the GP=
L,
> and one of the reasons I personally don't like the license. The LGPL is m=
y
> favorite of the free software licenses.

This may be so, but Microsoft's supposed fear of contamination by the
GPL is misplaced.  Just because some GPL code accidentally slipped into
a closed project (contamination) doesn't arbitrarily mean that your code
and all your IP is magically forced open and given to all.  You, as the
owner of the IP and the closed,albeit contaminated source code, are now
in violation of the GPL.  You can either GPL all your code (but this is
not automatic) or get rid of the GPL code and reverse engineer it
yourself.  Given that choice, what do you think a company will do?  It's
very simple.  And it's no different than when you deal with
contamination from source code of any license, including Microsoft's
Shared-Source program.

I personally like the GPL for many things (but not libraries an the
kernel should probably be LGPL), precisely because of the viral nature.=20
It must really scare Microsoft to realize that Linux cannot be quenched
by buying out companies, because of the GPL.  Even if a company
withdraws the GPL license from their code, existing copies are already
out there and GPLd.  Development goes on.  And it keeps our good code
from being stolen by closed-source projects.  If they want it, they can
do what OSS people do -- reverse engineer.

A warning here:  If the kernel hackers are justified in preventing
non-GPL kernel modules from being loaded into the Linux kernel (even
though the kernel is GPL'd but modules haven't been required to be up to
this point), then Microsoft is also justified in preventing code
produced under certain licenses from being linked to windows DLLs, and
preventing GPL'd implementations of this specification.  We should as a
community seriously reconsider the hard line the kernel people are
taking with this tainted kernel business.

Michael


>=20
> --Brian
>=20
> ---
>=20
>=20
> _______________________________________________
> Mono-list maillist  -  Mono-list@ximian.com
> http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/mono-list
--=20
Public key available from http://students.cs.byu.edu/~torriem



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