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Novell License Draft 1.0 Submitted for Review 90

Posted by Roblimo from the add-your-$0.02-to-the-debate dept.
Bruce Perens writes "Novell has submitted its Open Source license for review. You can find it, and a few details about license-review, here. "
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Novell License Draft 1.0 Submitted for Review More

Novell License Draft 1.0 Submitted for Review

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  • Re:innovation? ... look harder (Score:3)

    by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Thursday November 25, 1999 @12:02PM (#1504592) Homepage Journal
    Agree that license proliferation is bad. We are working on coming to some sort of convergence.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • I'm going to talk with them about the GPL and implications for linking with the Linux kernel. I don't know if I'll get anywhere, but it's worth a try.

    Bruce

  • I just gave Novell some advice. They started out with the right attitude, which is really important. I didn't really have to convince them of anything.

    Bruce

  • Re:Copyright Open Source (Score:3)

    by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Thursday November 25, 1999 @08:44PM (#1504596) Homepage Journal
    Attorneys have told me that it's more difficult to lose a trademark through not defending it than most laymen think.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • 1. I wasn't at that meeting.

    2. Not every attorney agrees with yours on that issue.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • During it's meglomanical phase, Novell bought Unix from AT+T, and for a brief period sold a x86 Unix called UnixWare. (If only this product was marketed properly...)

    They've since sold Unix and UnixWare to SCO and turned the UNIX trademark over to The Open Group (?). So they don't currently have any vested interest in Unix other than the fact that Linux/BSD is competition for NetWare.
    --
  • I did advise someone at Novell who is directly connected with the license to read slashdot and technocrat today. But weblogs are somewhat noisy, if I put objections together into a coherent document it might get a bit farther.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • That's not how they do it, though. They ship with the GPL, and the authors even frequently think that it's GPL software. But it's not, and this is done without changing a word of the GPL--the actions override the text.

    This usually happens because the GPL was a poor choice for the project, and that the developers didn't fully understand the consequences of the viral nature of the license. That is, it usually happens in projects that can't possibly be GPL'd.

    The solution is not editing the text, but another file that explains what the text means in light of what really happened. Alternatively, a LICENSE file could state that the terms in the file in the directory GPL apply save as follows. Either way, the copyright isn't violated.

    hawk, esq.

  • If you are distributing your own work and nothing else, you may always change the license, and you can also distribute with more than one license. What you can't do is tell people who already have an old license that their license is no longer valid, unless you wrote the ability to do that into your terms.

    I don't see that this restricts what you can do with your own work at all.

    Bruce

  • As a developer, I do feel the GPL does benefit me by enforcing the quid-pro-quo in which we exchange code and "developer attention". I recommend it as a first choice to people who are asking about Open Source licensing.

    When I contribute code, I do it to increase the problem space covered by free software. Not only am I not interested in helping proprietary software developers, I would object to their incorporating my code without negociating a commercial license. My code is not a gift to them, it's something I share with the free software community.

    Regarding Java, if the copyright holder doesn't want to prosecute your use of a non-free run-time, that is the copyright holder's choice. See also the GPL provisions for code that is a standard component of your system, which may apply to the Java run-time.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • I am actually a bit concerned about the arbitration thing, because of the chance of a rich company being in dispute with a poor developer, and the poor developer having to pay very large legal fees. I'm surprised that with this up on Slashdot and Technocrat for most of a day, nobody's taken the time to think this issue through. Also, note that licenses that insist on a U.S. arbitrator probably wouldn't be upheld by courts outside of the U.S. - I got exactly one comment about that.

    I've got to take comments on these issues back to Novell. Please think them through, folks.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • I think we could handle the branding issue without everyone having their own license. The problem is that everybody's law department has a different take on what they need to do, and there is no case history of how these licenses have held up in court.

    There is a working group on license convergence that has not yet officialy invited me on board but I think I will get in to their next meeting. Hopefully at that time they will see that I am not an ogre and will invite me to be a regular participant.

    Bruce

  • Hi Mr. AC,

    What makes this newsworthy is that another really big company has decided that they can play by the community's rules. I am just as bothered by you by the proliferation of licenses, but lawyers need time to develop their opinions just as we need time to develop code, and we are working on a convergence to fewer licenses.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • OK, you mean patent it as a business system. Fortunately for all of us, it is too late to patent it now.

    Bruce

  • I'm going to ask them to clear up the linking issues. I think it's a big ambiguous regarding whether or not this is a "partnership" license like the GPL (don't say "viral", it's pejorative) or not.

    Bruce

  • I found an article on Eactivism [eactivism.com] called Democratizing Technology through Open Source [eactivism.com]. It really goes off on the SCSL saying the it fails to democratize the design process which undermines the democratic principles of Free Software. According to the article this is a major problem. They say something like "without democratization of design democracy throughout society will be subverted." Ouch. On the other hand it is a serious arguement for why the software industry needs to go true Open Source. It's kind of the activist bent. Interesting arguement though. I wonder if the Novell license will have similiar problems.

  • trusting Novell... (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 25, 1999 @12:38PM (#1504612)
    Hi all!
    Wasn't there an outstanding copyright-court-case with some people from the open-source-community?

    Why should we (the open source community) trust Novell ? Why should we trust Novell while court case 9704-339 (4th Judicial District Court) is still outstanding ?

    For those of you who don't know, this court case
    alleges (using the evidence of contractors who
    worked for Novell as well as internal Novell
    documents), that much of Novell's BorderManager
    product (a closed source product) was based on the Squid proxy server (a GPL product).

    Why should we trust a company who thinks the following of us :

    "..... Once again we must balance the costs in-house development of "comparable code" against the costs and risks of simply taking their code and using it... this last group of copyright holders could be particularly troublesome for Novell to deal with.... "

    If Novell now also favours the open-source-method, this could mean a view things:
    1.) It's "we too" (marketing!)
    2.) They really fear, that Micros~1 and their
    Active-Directory could make Novell obsolete. So
    they use coopetition-tactics to hurt them
    (so they are Linux-friendly as long as it's favorable for them)

    We'll see. Currently Novell might be ally, but who know's what they'll do in the near future? The license is a bit loose on prohibiting mayor changes to the license. They could (IMHO! I'm no lawyer) in the next version of the licence change it to their very own rules...
  • Hi, Bruce,


    don't you think the Novell folks are actually reading these already? I know the NetWare specialist very well (I am a MCNE myself) and they are all Linux enthusiasts, too, and some of them read Slashdot. I don't know for Novell employees, but I guess some might be lurking right now.

    And maybe some of those who worked on the NCL are interested in the feedback on Slashdot. It's quite interesting how Novell showed respect for the OSS community. Maybe it's only for the money, but it's nice to know a company believes it is possible to make money with OSS!





  • Bruce,

    I think the problems with the license can pretty much be summarized into the following three points (two of which you mention above):

    1. Arbitration, which as you point out could result in the little guys (read: us) getting walked on.
    2. The specific mention of AAA holds zero weight outside of US borders.
    3. Most importantly, like the GPL, the NCL is viral. That is, derivitave works must be licensed under the NCL. There is not even an exception clause for the GPL, which means not only does NCL alienate people who dislike the GPL for the same reason, it also effectively prevents using GPL code in an NCL project, or vice-versa.

    If you look at this from Novell's point of view, this is a perfect spot to be in. They get all the good karma that comes with being a supporter of true "open source," but have put it under a license where none but the most mercenarial coders (i.e. those who will contribute to anything regardless of license) will even touch the code. On top of that, nobody from either of the other license camps can touch the code--the NCL will "infect" BSD programs, and NCL's "you can't relicense" clause prevents GPL programs from incorporating the code.

    In short, it's good as far as being "open source," but it seems to have been purposely designed not to play well with existing OSS licenses. Interoperability among licences should be a higher priority for the OSS community in general, and this is a great example.

    Nathan Strong
  • I offer an alternative: Give us differential licenses! People like to refer to licenses using phrases like "GPL but you can't fork" or "BSD but you need to advertise in Playboy" or whatnot. If there's a pressing freedom or restriction that needs to be embedded in the license, ship the GPL with a patch. There will be some noise made, and your license should not include GPL in the name, but at leaast it would be simple to derive what specific changes you desired.

    There is a slight problem with that. The GPL is copyrighted. The copyright does not say that the document itself falls under it's own copyright, so the GPL has not been GPLd. Hence you are not allowed to change or make modifications to the GPL (and hence not allowed to redistribute such changes either) for your own use.

    Which is probably a good idea.

    Imagine if someone forked a version of the GPL in such a way as it no longer forced the software it applied to to be free. Although the original GPL would have to still apply to the license itself, the license could be marketed as 'a GPL derivative' or 'an extension of the GPL'. If this were the case, the percieved 'power' of the GPL would be significantly weakened IMHO.

    (IANAL)

    K.

  • And it states that the costs incured in any legal battle will be payed by the "losing" side.

    I guess people in the US won't be used to this, but its normal practice in many other places - it helps stop frivolous (sp?) lawsuits by people who know they'd lose but want to make a quick buck by getting an out-of-court settlement.

    Note that you get 60 days following receipt of written notice to correct any incompliance, which means you can't get rolled on "just like that".

    In the case where you're sure you're right, some large company throwing its weight around would have to foot the entire bill and you'd be protected against being rolled on at all.

    -- Steve

  • Overall the licence looks quite sound. But I am a little worried about the link to the AAA, not being an american and all. Nice job though, seems quite a fair licence.

    //rdj
  • You do have to license your work under GPL if your work extends GPLed code.

  • Actually, there are loads of opensource projects out there not licensed under GPL. Always have been, always will be. See for example:

    Open Directory: Open Source Java [dmoz.org]

  • They haven't actually claimed SCSL is open source though have they? They just set it up so that people might assume that way - and sure enough, people are even starting to think that Sun said SCSL was "open source". Which they never did (to my knowledge).

  • The GPL was written in an age of static linking, when one could sensibly distinguish deriving from a program from simply using it. RMS has claimed that dynamically linking to a shared library with a unique interface actually constitutes a derived work, but that's on pretty dubious legal ground.

    Now that shared libraries and distributed objects are commonplace, we need a GPL-like license with just enough restrictions on use (the GPL was devised with none, which is now the problem) to prevent our work from subsidizing proprietary software vendors.

  • I think that open source should have been copyrighted, int he last 6 months more companies than ever are tryin to go open source, can u imagine how profitable it would have been to just copyright it from the get go (the whole idea of open source - in software anyway) As more and more companies go open source, it seems to be taking away from the original enthusiasm of linux, and how powerful its future is. People are confused spending time making other products better.
  • I'd rather see more technological innovation instead of more legal/licensing innovations. In the end, that's the only thing that matters
  • Maybe he means that the term "Open Source" should have been successfully trademarked so someone could enforce some rules about what is really Open Source.

  • Wow (Score:1)

    by Kinthelt ( 96845 )
    I was getting so used to licenses including the "one computer install, and allowed one backup" clause that this one took me by surprise!

    Seriously, it looks pretty good to me. Of course, IANAL. But I have read my fair share of software licenses (a boring hobby, I know). Only one thing bugs me. It doesn't specify whether code re-use (borrowing code) is allowed or disallowed.

  • Then somebody would have just come along and made a term "free source" that would have meant the same thing, but no trademarks would be broken.
  • This is an interesting license. I don't see any immediate showstoppers which would prevent this from being a free software license.
  • Er? You mean patented... Open source is right on about copyrights... Sorry, that mistake took away at least three Funny scores :)

  • Differences between GPL and NCL (Score:4)

    by retep ( 108840 ) on Thursday November 25, 1999 @08:59AM (#1504632)

    As far as I can see there are very few differences between the GPL and NCL. There are no "hidden" details that would give Novell any rights to your work. Like the GPL dirivitive works get put under the NCL.

    Unlike the GPL the NCL doesn't specificly mention what would happen in the event of a patent dispute or other restrictions such as export laws.

    The NCL has one last interesting feature. By agreeing to it you also agree to how any breaches of the agreement will be handled. In paragraph 5 the NCL specificly states how any breaches shall be handled. And it states that the costs incured in any legal battle will be payed by the "losing" side. Interesting...

  • It seems to have basically the same requirements as the GNU GPL, only expressed differently. However, code under this licence will not be compatible with GPLed code. I wonder why, therefore, they are not using a GPL-compatible licence.
  • I can understand the need for about three versions of Open Source license
    a) a BSD type license
    b) a GPL type licence
    c) a "commercial" license which allows the originator some rights over how his code is used to prevent forking and 'embrace & extend' by rivals. i.e. a sort of you can see the source, propose modifications and fixes, but we retain control over distribution license.

    Why do people keep coming up with their own variations on a theme ?
  • The licenses that are coming out are innovative they let people share ideas and contribute to existing technologies. I'm glad that there are people like Bruce taking care of getting these licenses properly reviewed by peers so that when I get around to releasing my own killer app or start contributing to a project myself,I know that my cvscommit will stand on solid legal ground!

    thanks Bruce.
  • But that's not new. We had that for a long time with BSD, GPL and MPL (ok that is more recent but it covers both bases pretty nicely). Do we really want to deal with 5 zillion licenses?
  • 3. If the Distributions contain derivative works created by you, you must place a Notice in the source code of the derivative works stating that your derivative works are being made available under the NCL;

    Considering that the proposed NCL shows the same transitive property on derived work as the GPL, this would create another disjoint set of OSS incompatible with anything else. In the case of Novel, this is esp. problematic, since - considering their business - they probably won't use the NCL for mere end-user applications, but for low-level stuff with will require massive kernel-interaction.

    If this trend to incompatible OSS licences continues, the resulting balkanisation will negate the greatest advantage of OSS, the possibility to freely share code.

  • The Downsides Of Yet Another License (Score:3)

    by Effugas ( 2378 ) on Thursday November 25, 1999 @01:49PM (#1504640) Homepage
    I'm beginning to wonder about the proliferation of licenses in a slightly new light:

    What if it's not merely a problem to have new licenses pop up that are more complex, more restrictive, more Gotcha-Source(where users presume rights that some small clause shoved into five words restrict) than the standard, rather simple to generally understand but well defined and heavily thought out GPL, LGPL, and BSD licenses?

    What if it's a significant worry to have licenses that aren't complex enough?

    After all, we talk alot about the benefits of Open Source turning the copyright system inside out upon itself, protecting situations where others restrict further usage of code beyond what the original authors ever intended. I like the Novell License for its simplicity and its lack of Gotchas for the user, but I have to wonder if there's not some small aspect of a ticking time bomb for Novell built into it?

    There's a reason for every single clause in the GPL. The arguments are publically available and quite searchable. (Is there an annotated GPL out there, incidentally?) Novell's license isn't nearly as extensive, which could create a situation where *cough* a certain devious company sets up a front startup to Embrace and Extend Novell's code in a manner so as to make them anexample to the industry.

    The GPL closes loopholes. It almost feels like the only reasons for this Novell license to exist are to leave them open.

    There's a dark side to that. As far as I know, copyright law is set up such that one has no rights to the content beyond that which is explicitly granted. It is not inconcievable that Novell could be forced(or has individuals counting on being able to) to go to court to try to reclose a loophole that never should have been there in the first place, making a whole bunch of noise about the inadequacy of Open Source in the process.

    It's a Media War, and all that.

    Now, I doubt this is what Novell is up to. They've been doing some pretty cool stuff for Linux. (Windows 9x is another matter.) But they're going down a dangerous road.

    I offer an alternative: Give us differential licenses! People like to refer to licenses using phrases like "GPL but you can't fork" or "BSD but you need to advertise in Playboy" or whatnot. If there's a pressing freedom or restriction that needs to be embedded in the license, ship the GPL with a patch. There will be some noise made, and your license should not include GPL in the name, but at leaast it would be simple to derive what specific changes you desired.

    It's just not clear from the Novell license why, say, they didn't just go with BSD. And that's a problem.

    Yours Truly,

    Dan Kaminsky
    DoxPara Research
    http://www.doxpara.com

  • I think the worst enemy of free software is not software forking, but license splintering. As much as I think the BSDL is too lax, it is at least compatible with the GPL, so we, as open-source programmers, can share our code between projects.

    What we really need is for OSI (or the FSF, or SPI - someone we trust) to make a list of open-source licenses, with their standing in `restrictiveness'. Then any open source project can include the clause:
    "This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the , or (at your option) and license of equal or greater restrictiveness, as deemed by the Open Source Initiative (see http://www.opensource.org/)."
    --------
    "I already have all the latest software."

  • Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Novell part of the lawsuit against the BSD folks a decade ago? I think Novell had some vested interest in AT&T Unix.

    If so, that doesn't show very well for Novell's track record.

    Why does everyone use the term Open Source now? May Free Software live on.



    WorldServe Consulting http://www.worldserve.net

  • Licenses are not little animals that should be protected =). And I think it would be great if everything were licensed under GPL, instead of the current situation.
  • i dont doubt it but novell employees dont influence management much anyway. its the management which makes the decisions not the coders...anyway, i hope they include a GPL relicense clause in their license instead of adding it to the general license pool of shit..which grows bigger every day. We ought to make it a clause in the dfsg..only licenses which allow GPL relicensing qualify as open source/free software licenses.
  • read the NCL. its more GPL than BSD.
  • Was this mentioned on /.?
  • Exactly. The commercial licence that is proposed is very similar to the SCSL. So can we term it as open source without the right to fork? But that is what SUN is claiming the SCSL is (approximately).
    So the third point must necessarily imply a license like the SCSL.
  • From the draft licence:

    2. [...]you may distribute the Distributions in binary code form only under the NCL or a license agreement containing a prominent notice informing recipients how to obtain the Distributions in source code form under the NCL;

    3. If the Distributions contain derivative works created by you, you must place a Notice in the source code of the derivative works stating that your derivative works are being made available under the NCL;

    Unquote.

    What this seems to me to say is that (2.) non-NCL licensing (a work containing?) an unaltered Novell binary is allowed so long as notice of said binary having originally been NCLed is kept (which keeps it from being GPLed, BSDed, &c.), but that (3.) derivative works would be NCLed "virally." Which is odd.

    I assume that my reading doesn't reflect Novell's intent, and I'm neither a lawyer nor a potential developer of Novell-derivative works, so I might be wrong and it doesn't matter if I am; but, some clarification here might be helpful/needed before the NCL goes official.

    (And apologies to /. and BP if this is redundant, but I spent a while pondering the license before I posted (which is also odd).)

  • You're right, they haven't actually come out and said "open source," and instead say things like "similar to an 'open source' style of license." Still, I think their reasoning for coming up with this was to jump on the speeding open source bandwagon. It's really too bad they are only willing to go halfway.
  • notice i said relicense not be compatible with.
  • I am a lawyer, but this isn't legal advice. If you need legal advice, see a laywer licensed in your jurisdiction.

    Reality is that there are plenty of GPL-derived, or Quasi-GPL (QGPL) licenses already out there.

    *Every* time someone purports to release something under the GPL but codes to a non-GPL library (KDE & QT, lyx & xforms, etc.), the result is not GPL, simply by the way the law works.

    These products *do not* violate their own license; this is legally impossible. Instead, the actions taken by the authors amend to purported license. With LyX, we made the qualifications explicit a couple of releases ago; KDE may be too far into flamewar for this to be possible.
  • These products *do not* violate their own license; this is legally impossible. Instead, the actions taken by the authors amend to purported license. With LyX, we made the qualifications explicit a couple of releases ago; KDE may be too far into flamewar for this to be possible.

    No, the point I was trying to make is that you're violating the GPL copyright by modifying the GPL.

    GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE

    Version 2, June 1991

    Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
    59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA

    Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

  • I thought that "Open Source" _was_ trademarked... or did that fall through?
    ----
  • Doesn't the third licence sound like the SCSL?
  • I think we should give credit to where it's due :)

    Thanks
    --
  • they should simply have a clause which sez code can be relicensed under the GPL if desired. unfortunately they dont. anyone want to propose it as a modification ?
  • the point is that developers wrote the code and they have the inherent right to license it as they wish. dont like it ? go write it yourself or GPLise yer code.

  • IMHO (Score:3)

    by Pyrrus ( 97830 ) on Thursday November 25, 1999 @10:37AM (#1504664) Homepage
    The liscense looks good, however the lawspeak words like "hereto", "thereof" etc. are annoying. I want a liscense agreement written in C or PERL. Then we'll know what we're agreeing to. Also, why are parts of the agreement IN CAPS? The lawyers are hurting my ears.
  • There's nothing about the GPL that would make NDS access for Linux impossible, because integrated access to a directory tree wouldn't go in the kernel. The proper place for it is in libc, which is LGPL'd. This is where NIS client-side code went, and it's where NDS client-side code would logically be placed. Problem solved.

    Now that I think about it, I think it would make sense if the glibc were modified to allow plug-ins to change the behavior of various library calls. For example, on a vanilla glibc you call getpwnam() and it checks in /etc/passwd, but with an NDS plug-in installed, it would check the directory tree instead.
  • Novell is not losing or in trouble. The only problem novell has had in the last few years was no one wanted to upgrade to netware 4 because 3.12 was SOOO stable. The benefits of NDS have been realized and Netware 5 with Zen is just incredible and my customers are excited.

    I personally think that novell is widening it's horizons since they realize that not every network is a totally MS network. Cheers to Novell. One of the last few companies that have a foothold in a MS world.
  • What do you mean by "code re-use?" Re-use as much code as you like, just keep it under the terms of the Novell license.

    Really though, Novell has a lot of cool products, and I hope they are being sincere about this. I've read over the license, and I see no immediate problems. This looks like a lot more effort than Sun put into their pseudo "open source" SCSL, which was basically a ploy by their marketing people so that they could actually (ab)use the term "open source."
  • SPI should start defending it, then. Otherwise it will "lose" it (although how you can lose something you never owned, I'll never know).
    -russ
  • ESR, Perens, and the others at the O'Reilly gathering tried to create a better name for free software, one which was more descriptive (as RMS continually has to say, "Free software means free speech, not free beer"). They succeeded, in "Open Source". Unfortunately, you create an unenforcable trademark when you try to make it descriptive, as we (OSI) found to our chagrin.
    -russ
  • I think I read on Slashdot that it fell trough, mostly because it was already a widely used term, or someting like that.

    You can read ESR's announcement [slashdot.org] on the trademark issue.

  • The SCSL is not an Open Source license, so it doesn't qualify.
  • yea, thas what i meant - oh well..next time maybe :)
  • it should be patented, i was on my 5th can of soda, and i actually got some sleep, its hard to cope with the new abundance of energy.
  • The reason that companies are coming up with their own "Open Source" lisence is so that their code will still be "branded" with the company name.

    If Novell decides to release said code under the GPL, it looks to the casual observer that we have another piece of software coming from the GNU project. By releasing it under their own lisence, any derivative of the work will still have the Novell name attacted to it.

    It might seem like a pain to all of us who have to carefully read through the lawyer speak, but I think it is a small price to pay for having a new source of Open Source projects. Novell gets some name recognition and we get access to the code.

    Seems like a win win situation to me...

    - Cees

  • Re:Copyright Open Source (Score:3)

    by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Thursday November 25, 1999 @12:00PM (#1504681) Homepage Journal
    It is still a trademark of SPI, but does not have a federal registration at this time. That will be sorted out eventually, I think.

    Bruce

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