[H-GEN] OpenSolaris!

Robert Brockway rbrockway at opentrend.net
Wed Feb 2 11:40:14 EST 2005


On Thu, 3 Feb 2005, Benjamin Carlyle wrote:

> kinds of features in Linux as they had seen in the leaked code. There's
> too much of a risk that subconscious copying (or the perception of it)
> could lead to future legal difficulties.

You know this is one of the aspects of our developing "intellectual 
property" concepts that scares the hell out of me.  That a human may 
become liable or even allow others to become liable because of what they 
have seen in the past (code under a licence other than the one they are 
coding).  Man that speaks badly for the future of freedom.

> :) I think it's just another example of why the GPL doesn't play nice
> with other licenses and why strong divisions about which side of the
> fence represents "real" open source will continue to harm the freedoms
> that open source should be bringing to everyone. At the moment you do
> have to decide which side of the fence you'll live on and you can't go
> and play on the other side whenever you feel like it. I believe that

I just had an idea.  Perhaps the best analogy is blood groups.  We have 
the Universal donor license BSD ;)  Ok not a great analogy but some of 
the license relationships allow copying one way but not the other.

> Of course, the other issue that I haven't explored is how
> well OSI-approved licenses interoperate generally.
> Interoperability does not seem to be criteria for OSI approval

Yes agreed.  Infact I was about to say exactly that :)

> such as the new BSD license. That's ok for an individual, but once
> something as big as a kernel comes along, I imagine it's harder
> to shift that momentum. I don't think well see linux dual-licensed

It has been argued that the many-authors of the kernel are a protection 
against license shifts (ok, this isn't a serious possibility).  In order 
to dual-license or differently-license the kernel it would be necessary to 
get the permission of all copyright holders.  There are thousands.  Hey I 
even have 1 patch in there :)

Rob

-- 
Robert Brockway B.Sc.
Senior Technical Consultant, OpenTrend Solutions Ltd.
Phone: 416-669-3073 Email: rbrockway at opentrend.net http://www.opentrend.net
OpenTrend Solutions: Reliable, secure solutions to real world problems.
Contributing Member of Software in the Public Interest (http://www.spi-inc.org)




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