Jeremy Allison Talks Samba and GPLv3

dmarti writes "The software that enables Linux to act as a Windows file and print server is adopting the Free Software Foundation's new license. What will be the impact on users, distributors, and appliance vendors? Samba maintainer Jeremy Allison answers, in a podcast interview."

Re:Linus is right

[QuantumG]

I agree with you.

People who support "open source" and don't like RMS should stop using the GPL (any version).

Re:Linus is right

[Richard Steiner]

What does the GPL have to do with usage? It's a source license.

Re:Worng person to ask about licences

[dbIII]

So are you saying it should be illegal to reverse engineer proprietary software

It was not illegal just against the terms of the licence. This condition is of course one of the reasons he saw it as a bad licence as far as I can recall from the statements at the time. There is no point trying to read between the lines or bring extra baggage from other converations into this.

Re:Linus is right

[flyingfsck]

Hmm, the FSF is not a church. It is not a gospel. It is not a faith. It is just a bunch of people who think that the best way to spread computer knowledge for the betterment of mankind is to turn software into a free commodity. You are free to do otherwise. Just write your own software then. Don't leach off other people's charity work for your profit. A good example is Tivo. Tivo can do whatever they want, provided that they write their own software and don't leach off GPL software. Tivo can either free up their code the way the GPL intends, or they can rewrite their system using Microsoft Windows, or VxWorks, Or Sun Solaris. It is their choice. That is all that the FSF and the GPL is about.

Re:Linus is right

[QuantumG]

Well, just last month he claimed he understood the spirit of the GPL better than the people who wrote the damn thing:

You claim that I "misunderstood" the "spirit of the GPL".

Dammit, the GPL is a license. I understand it quite well. Probably better than most. The fact that the FSF then noticed that there were *other* things that they wanted to do, and that were *not* covered by the GPLv2, does *not* mean that they can claim that others "misunderstood" the license.

So tell me: who is the more confused one: the one who chose the license fifteen years ago, and realized what it means legally, and still stands behind it? I don't think so.

The whole idea that there is a philosophy behind the GPL and that is the spirit, not the words that are written down to satisfy the lawyers is just lost on the guy. He goes on to say:

The beauty of the GPLv2 is exactly that it's a "tit-for-tat" license, and you can use it without having to drink the kool-aid.

I've said that over and over again. It's the "spirit of the GPLv2". It's what has made it such a great license, that lots of people (and companies) can use, is very fundamentally that it's fair.

The fact that the FSF sees *another* spirit to it is absolutely not a reason to say that I'm "confused". Quite frankly, apparently I'm _less_ confused than they are, since I saw the GPLv2 for what it was, and they did not - and as a result they felt they needed to extend upon it, because the license didn't actually match what they thought it would do.

And now I hope you are as totally lost as I am. The "spirit of the GPLv2", what the hell does that mean? Maybe I just have this concept of a "spirit" of a document wrong but to me, it means "what the guy who wrote this document was trying to say". RMS wrote the document. He defines the spirit. The FSF represent his message.. they get their mandate from him. So for Linus to say that he understands the spirit of the GPLv2 better than they do is just obnoxious.

As for the comment about drinking the kool-aid, that's exactly what I'm talking about. You wanna talk about confusing? How confusing is it for you to choose the GPL, a Free Software license, when you just don't believe in the Free Software philosophy? If you don't wanna drink the kool-aid, and yet you still wanna use their license, don't get confused when people who have drunk the kool-aid wonder why you don't care about the same things they care about. Choosing the GPL for your project should be a message that you *have* drunk the kool-aid.

Otherwise, take off the t-shirt already.

Re:Linus is right

[QuantumG]

To Linus it's just a software license. To RMS and the rest of us who believe in Free Software, it's the legal embodiment of a philosophy. My only hope for the future is that people who don't care about the philosophy stick with GPLv2 and those that do, switch to GPLv3.

Re:Implications for commercial companies?

[Alphager]

There exist no such thing as an "appliance computer". THe Tivo is a normal computer, to which Tivo Inc. added some restrictions.

Re:Implications for commercial companies?

[jafac]

While I'd agree that your characterization of "appliance computer" as a computer that has been "crippled" is accurate; it is also incomplete.

If all you want is a device that does X, and packaging a computer as an appliance that does only X saves both development costs, and administrative overhead, then I'd say it's a damn useful crippled computer.

I wouldn't want to have an appliance as a desktop system to do my accounting/web browsing and email.

But I wouldn't want to have to deal with all the administrative overhead of managing software installs, disk space, etc. for something that's just slinging video to my TV, or web pages.

"appliance" is a much abused buzzword - I'll give you that. But they're damn handy for a lot of infrastructure tasks (routers, anyone?).