“The Microsoft license specifically excludes software under the General Public License, commonly known as the GPL. The GPL is the software license used by Linux and by SAMBA, a popular open-source program that allows non-Microsoft systems to share files and printers with Windows.” Read the rest of the editorial at ZDNews. Our Take: Funny. Everyone is getting worked up with that CIFS license, and it seems that no one has actually read the new Visual Studio.NET license. We did so with my husband 1-2 weeks ago. We are not lawyers, but what we pretty much understood from it, was that you can’t develop and/or distribute GPL or LGPL (or compatible licensed) applications created with Visual Studio.NET. I personally believe that this is more important of the CIFS license issue, because it pretty much takes out any possibility of creating Free software for the Windows platforms, when using either the classic Win32/MFCs or .NET APIs. And if you are thinking about using Gcc, bad luck. The license prohibits using a GPL-compatible license for your apps that link against Microsoft’s libraries. Quite possibly Microsoft used such restrictions in order to protect themselves from the possibility that someone may ask them to open source their technologies if third party developers link their GPL apps with Microsoft’s libs, but on the other hand, it is restrictive to not be able to use a $1000 developer’s tool to create applications the way you wish.
The Microsoft Penalty That Isn’t
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
It doesn’t prevent people from creating their own liscense, using the mit liscense or the bsd liscense. It just means they can’t use gpl stuff (since in order to do so their liscense would have to be compatable). Of course I could be completely wrong.
I was at my University’s computer store and saw the following academic prices:
– MS Office XP: $330
– Entire MS Dev Studio .Net: $130
Just shows you what they’re trying for. They have the office suite market pegged, no use giving students and staff a deal on that, they have to pay. On the other hand, they’ll practically give away.Net to hook people like me while I’m in school.
This pricing is a big change. When I started, academic versions of the Visual Studio components were $130 each, that’s C++, VB, J++ or DevStudio for $130 a piece. The whole thing was bundled $450 academically, and Office ’97 could be had for $99. Corel was still a competitor, and Lotus was still producing SmartSuite.
Now, things are much worse… $130 is pretty tempting.. I’ll hold out, but I bet they get a lot of new grads this way. If we’re not careful they’ll completely lock up the office suite and development tool markets. Then they can just keep raising the prices…
… it pretty much takes out any possibility of creating Free software for the Windows platforms
Why do you say this?
The GPL/LGPL isn’t the only way to release software for free. I believe you’ll find the BSD licence is perfectly acceptable under the terms of the MS license. (or possibly any new licence which doesn’t have the same restrictions of source availability for derived products, etc.)
IIRC: with the CIFS license, there’s nothing prohibiting free binary distribution or free source distribution – you just cannot license the software that you write in such a way that REQUIRES others to do so.
>The GPL/LGPL isn’t the only way to release software for free.
Note the “Free”. Not free.
> I believe you’ll find the BSD licence is perfectly acceptable under the terms of the MS license.
The VS.NET license does not explicity talks about the GPL. It is carefully crafted in such a way that it applies on the GPL, without naming it. In fact, I would even think that BSD would fall also under their restrictions, just because of the way the license is written not because of the explicit naming.
> > … it pretty much takes out any possibility of creating Free software for the Windows platforms
> Why do you say this?
Because only GPL-style licenses will keep people like M$ from appropriating code you’ve written and building it into their own proprietary products, giving nothing to either you or the community. But the GPL makes it unlawful for them to do this — they’d have to actually write their own code.
This is nothing more than M$’s new aggression, but the false but apparent reciprocity in how they treat other licenses will fool many people.
“Free Software is not compatible with my computer.”
“giving nothing to either you or the community”
In fact they have to credit you for the code they use. MIT and BSD include that point. Which is plenty enough for many people, including me. In fact I would LOVE that commercial softwares like Microsoft product would include my free code, as soon as they credit me somewhere for that.
Personnaly I’m against the fact Microsoft start to restreint GPL’d stuff, but as I don’t use or program with this specific license, that doesn’t change anything in my case.
Stop you all talking about the GPL specifically. Damn it, you can’t read (or, I can’t write
.
The license is CAREFULLY CRAFTED in such a way to apply to ALL licenses that require to open the source of the system libraries/code used if the third party app is linked against them. That of course, applies mostly to GPL/LGPL. But not only for GPL. Other sentences of that paragraph even apply to BSD and MIT and whatever other “open” licenses.
I don’t have the VS.NET license to view, do you know of any online links to it?
—
It’s interesting, as the CIFS license DOES mention the GPL/LGPL by name:
1.4 “IPR Impairing License” shall mean the GNU General Public License, the GNU Lesser/Library General Public License, and any license that requires in any instance that other software distributed with software subject to such license (a) be disclosed and distributed in source code form; (b) be licensed for purposes of making derivative works; or (c) be redistributable at no charge.
The BSD license seems to be OK with the CIFS license as no requirements are placed on the derived code. But since I don’t have VS.NET (using the free .NET SDK instead) I don’t know how that license differs.
>I don’t have the VS.NET license to view, do you know of any online links to it?
I tried to find it, but I was not lucky. I can type down the paragraph though if you want. I hope that is not unlawful though… 😮
… if putting the stupid *license* agreement in the public view could be considered illegal :/
This reminds me of the restrictive “shrinkwrap” licensing clauses that prohibit publications from making any public comments about software performance or making any kind of public comparisons.
And therefore, I have a Microsoft-related question, again: you remember that discussion about slavaging your Win95 boot partition by simply copying it to another primary partition, and then make it bootable? So, we agree this works only with the good-old Win95 and maybe with Win98 (yeah, htis needs clarification, as well).
Now, I was thinking: if I install WindowNT but without using the NTFS, would I still be able to do this trick, or not? If I recall correctly, WinNT uses a few more boot files, isn’t it so? Is it important their position with respect to the MBR, or, like with Win95, it isn’t, as long as they are in the root of the C: drive?
Really curious here.
Or more precisely, if you write a GPL program that links to non-free code, the GPL won’t let you distribute it because you can’t provide source code for the entire program.
The idea that MS is afraid that they could be required to open up their source because a third party includes MS code in a GPL program is laughable. MS wouldn’t be responsible, the third party would simply be in violation of the GPL.
> Now, I was thinking: if I install WindowNT but without using the NTFS, would I still be able to do this trick, or not?
No, WinNT/2k/XP keep internally the hard drive letter name and partition number and they do not boot if it is not the same drive letter. You can always tinker with the hidden files though in the root dir where you can set the drive letter. Tricky though.
Based on your analysis of the situation it seems reasonable to conclude that MicroSoft’s next step will be to ban the use of GPL’d programs on all MicroSoft OSes.
Well, in theory, I could always keep the same drive letter and partition number. I mean, while I copy (and if we are talking of IDE devices) I would put that other disk as slave, while the source disk as master, copy and then take out the ex-master, change the jumpers on the slave disk, and boot from it.
If that’s all it takes, it’s definitely doable. I was more worried that bootsect.cfg (or what the heck is it) needs to be in a certain position on the disk in order for the program stored in the MBR can find it.
Or more precisely, if you write a GPL program that links to non-free code, the GPL won’t let you distribute it because you can’t provide source code for the entire program.
That can’t be right.
Else Cygwin, and hell every Win32 GPL app is illegal.
I’ll have to try to read the GPL again, i’ve tried before but its “All no-GPL must die” statments get get on my nerves.
Quit whining and crying about MS. Don’t like ’em? DONT USE IT!
But I can’t stop cause how whould I do such-and-such? Fuch you. Stop anyways, or shut up. If EVERYBODY that doesn’t like them JUST STOPPED, MS would be out of business. Software companies would spring fourth alternatives faster that you could count; without the fear of MS.
But what about at work? Well ther ain’t a damn thing most of us can do about work, but you don’t have to use Windows at home.
What about games? Buy freaking PS2 or Dreamcast or Gamecube.
” Or more precisely, if you write a GPL program that links to non-free code, the GPL won’t let you distribute it because you can’t provide source code for the entire program. “
This is simply not true. Besides even if this was the case, since when did MS care about you (A. N. Developer) infringing someone other than MS’s licenses?
Eugenia:
“Quite possibly Microsoft used such restrictions in order to protect themselves from the possibility that someone may ask them to open source their technologies if third party developers link their GPL apps with Microsoft’s libs”
Again, this is crap. Microsoft is not liable for the license infringements of others. That would be utterly ridiculous. A 3rd party developer can’t “infect” the Windows codebase with the GPL because he doesn’t own the codebase.
Why can’t people actually read the GPL instead of making blatantly incorrect assumptions?
Guys what is it with the Subject of Microsoft… you all just can’t handle the fact of them making good software. Now listen the .NET Framework is completely released the entire CLI for porting etc to linux and whatever. So what if microsoft has branded the visual dev center as nongpl there are about 30,000 different nongpl licenses whats the big deal has news become that little that we have come to commenting on the little stupid things that we really don’t need to hear about. The dev center may not like gpl but the framework must.. go ahead and program using the .net framework (or one of its soon to be ports like the GTK implementation of C#) and if u need a development environment USE NOTEPAD AND THE CSC/WSDL to compile em. Or go get one of a hundred different editors that are .net compliant. Stop flaming Microsoft it gets old really fast and as i see it the internet and developing must grow horizontally but at the same time it must grow vertically just becase microsoft has made a good OS and on top of that OS has built a framework of good programs and now .net leave them alone its there OS to do with as they please. Dont like it dont use it.
This isnt the only licensing agreement thats stupid in software.. i think we should all just break it if we wish. Microsoft is hardly likely to sue… especially if lots of ppl do it. I suggest its more something they are doing for publicity and suggested by their lawyers, rather than being enforceable. Or are perhaps worried that ppl will write c# apps for linux in vs .net?
maybe they want .NET to pick up as much as possible and they think that copyleft licensing will slow down the commercial development?
Ben,
Well in the case of my school things like windows and office and VC++ are given to students and staff for free, during your time at the university, you need to do a big format at graduation. With this teachers and such can require you to use excel and such, things that there are no other options and require what program you use. This is a good way to ensure future customers. If all you ever know is MS products your not to likely to switch. MS is not stupid in there sales idea’s. So if your taking say a programing course here, there could be a chance you could be required to do something in .net since it is no cost to you and the OS to run it on is free and if you don’t have a computer there is labs, no escape. Fortunetly I think the Compsci department is all Suns execpt for the C++ course for everyone other than compsci which is VC++.
ok new HD is here, time for FreeBSD and BeOS
“What about games? Buy freaking PS2 or Dreamcast or Gamecube.”
WHAT ??? All the games in ALL those consoles can be resumed in one word : SUCK. They all suck. The only console right now with decent to great games is the Gameboy Advance. But if I want to play a great “big” game, Windows is the only alternative.
“What about games? Buy freaking PS2 or Dreamcast or Gamecube.”
WHAT ??? All the games in ALL those consoles can be resumed in one word : SUCK. They all suck. The only console right now with decent to great games is the Gameboy Advance. But if I want to play a great “big” game, Windows is the only alternative.
Or more precisely, if you write a GPL program that links to non-free code, the GPL won’t let you distribute it because you can’t provide source code for the entire program.
The idea that MS is afraid that they could be required to open up their source because a third party includes MS code in a GPL program is laughable. MS wouldn’t be responsible, the third party would simply be in violation of the GPL.
—
Also, a large number of GPL and LGPL programs already hook into the win32 api right now, so what is the issue? the issue is that Microsoft itself cannot hook into GPL applications without becoming “contaminated”, even though Microsoft fails to realise/own up to the fact that the majority of opensource applications are NOT pure GPL, but LGPL, thus allowing proprietary applications to link into LGPL code. Just look at OpenOffice for example. StarOffice is OpenOffice (which is LGPL) linked into a proprietary spell checker.
There seems to be a really mixed bag on the comments here..
Many suggest, well.. its not such a bad thing, i mean… you can use any of the other hundreds of licences out there that still allow you to distribute source code. But thats really missing the point.. the point of the GPL is that it requires source modifications to be shared. Believe or not, thats a very vital point. It means other will not take your work and not give back. For people who are trying to create a lasting community of free software, this is vital.
Second.. do you really think its right of MS to be telling you how you can use the software you paid for? I can use GPL software to make commercial software… no one has ever restricted anyone like that before. But i mean, you PAY for the software, and now they want to tell you which licences are permissible. Its just so anti-human right it makes me cry.
And at what points are these licences going to start impinging on fair use? No one has ever bought a powertool with a tag telling you you cannot use it on a religious building. There is nothing like this before.. its quite insane. when will it stop?
I believe that if you copy a winnt/2k/xp partition to another one (what you’re talking about I think) there’s only one thing you need to change. In boot.ini, I have a line that looks like: “multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINDOWS=”Microsoft Windows XP Professional” /fastdetect”. NT os’s don’t boot themselves, they have a bootloader that exists even if you only have one MS os (I think you can trick it into booting non-ms os’s). So, just change the entry to reflect the new location of the os, and you’re set.
The other problem might be if it changes the drive letter (ntfs doesn’t use drive letters, nt adds them superficially) all your programs might get pissy about not being able to find themselves. If that happens, create a C: drive in the Disk Manager and mount your d drive in it (yes ntfs lets you do this).
Since GPL hasn’t been tested in court yet, it is quite reasonable for a for-profit corporation like Microsoft to protect themselves from the potential effects of GPL contamination.
Look at the Embedded Linux Consortium (lineo, montavista, redhat….), the ELC took more than 1 year to finalize the legal contract (“IP Agreement) amongst themselves to protect their proprietary toolkits from contamination. You can’t say it’s all MSFT-incited FUD when the ELC themselves are scare as hell that their proprietary toolkits could potentially be contaminated.
Look at the interview with the IBM guy who ported linux to s390, the IBM lawyers ordered him to give Linus an IBM linux demonstration WITHIN an IBM facility and made sure that nobody get a copy of the demonstration (for fear of being labeled as a linux distributor) and that the IBM lawyers ordered him not to embedded linux on certain IBM projects that have potential commercial value. IBM will show you that linux watch because that will never be a commercial product.
The BSD license is soooo much better than the GPL in my opinion, doesn’t say anything about you can’t use that. If only Samba was under the BSD and GPL …
shared object link is ok for GPL…
LGPL let you statically link non free code in your program…
.NET isn’t that *HUGE* thing, get eclipse if you want an ide for non gnome non kde platform, we already have anjuta+glade and KDevelop.
I hope that more people will do the jump and move to more confortable solution.
BTW I’m still curious to see if senting build source and make people pay for the service of building distributing is ok for the GPL.
As I said, this drive number (device number) problem is easily solveable. I was worried about hte position of the NT bootloader on the disk, whether it needs to be in a certain place in order to work correctly.
BTW, have you done this yourself?
A lot of us keep on flaming M$ for thei products licence. What is that for? The product is theirs, its up to them to put whatever licence they want.
If we don’t like it just don’t ever use it. LET US BOYCOTT M$ .NET FRAMEWORK. Or let us start other type of .NET. Why are the community like to complaint about every step commercial software company taken? Let make OSS community with this principle “WE ARE THE FIRST TO DO …..” not “WE DO …. TOO LIKE MICROSOFT OR APPLE”. (Or in the other word, don’t let OSS be the copycat forever).
I mean we all should stop developing Free softwares for non-Free platforms. In my mind Free on non-Free is kind of a strange mix. I only use my win***s for things like gaming, DVD ripping and stuff like that, but never (well not really but I was forced by my users to do so
) for programming, this OS is just a no-no for that…
From the licence quote above (CIFS licence)
>or (c) be redistributable at no charge.
The GPL doesn’t say this – it says you can charge whatever you want if you wish to. See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/selling.html for more info, but basically, you can sell GPL’d software, though of course the above clearly specifies the GPL.
Prompted by the original post, I have just read through the VS .NET license agreement (deep joy), and have totally failed to spot the clause which prevents GPL’s code being developed. Am I missing something?
Eugenia – can you point me to the part of the EULA that you think causes this problem?
The nearest I could find was clause 3.1(a)(i – ii), preventing redistribution of MFC/ATL/C runtime library/Some Samples as anything other than object code for windows platforms. This would cause problems if a GPL’d project used any of those functions, but isn’t a blanket ban by any means.
The text is as follows:
“3.1 Redistributable Code-Standard.
(a) If you are authorized and choose to redistribute Sample Code, Redistributable Code, VC Redistributables, or Limited Use Redistributable Code (collectively, the “Redistributables”) as described in Section 2, you agree: (i) except as otherwise noted in Section 2.1 (Sample Code), to distribute the Redistributables only in object code form and in conjunction with and as a part of a software application product developed by you that adds significant and primary functionality to the Redistributables (“Licensed Product”); (ii) that the Redistributables only operate in conjunction with Microsoft Windows platforms; […]”
Sean.
lu_zero , yes you can. That is what Redhat charge for. They don’t actually have to provide a free download, all they would have to provide is the source. So hence, no distro is obliged to provide Linux free of charge, only the source code, if modified.
Matthew Gardiner
Quote:
The other problem might be if it changes the drive letter (ntfs doesn’t use drive letters, nt adds them superficially) all your programs might get pissy about not being able to find themselves. If that happens, create a C: drive in the Disk Manager and mount your d drive in it (yes ntfs lets you do this).
——————————–
Though maybe the NT kernel doesn’t use drive letters
to actually login you need the correct drive letters.
Without this, it will load the login prompt, allow you to login and just when you think its all going good, it quickly snaps back and takes you back to the login screen.
I have run into this problem many times and has caused no end of headaches for me. Ways to fix it are fdisk /mbr can trick it into reassigning drive letters and fixing it
Copying the executable file it needs to login, to the drive it thinks it should be on can also work. Either way its all excessivly messy, this is just one example of the mess that is windows with all its legacy goodness…
There is quite a useful knowledge base article on this if you can find it.
In fact they have to credit you for the code they use. MIT and BSD include that point.
The advertisement clause was removed a few years ago. Don’t copy a license that still has the clause in it, get the last version from opensource.org.
I had thought that the GPL would not allow linking to non-free code, because you then would not be able to provide source for the entire “work” when you distribute the program. In view of the Cygwin example, this must not be the case.
Given this, the GPL seems rather one-sided or even hypocritical, because the GPL definitely will not allow distribution of a non-free program than links to GPL code.
So if the GPL would not prohibit linking to MS code, I guess MS really does have some sort of agenda in prohibiting GPL-like licenses in programs developed to work with .NET. I stand by my previous statement that they are at no risk of being forced to open their code just because some third party uses the GPL. I think they are more afraid of free software advancing to the point that even the general public realizes that there is no reason to pay Microsoft for anything anymore.
It’s a good thing IMHO. Let them spit at free software and suffer because of it. Besides, Windows is a pile of shite considering the money that’s been pumped into it and it’s huge user base.
What people seams to not know is that
you can’t use a GPL program to create
a non GPL program.
E.g. You _can’t_ _compile_ a propitary program with a GPL compiler or
_edit_ your propitary(non GPL)-files with a GPL Editor.
If you don’t believe me read the GPL.
It’s realy quite scary..
But that’s really missing the point.. the point of the GPL is that it requires source modifications to be shared. Believe or not, thats a very vital point. It means other will not take your work and not give back. For people who are trying to create a lasting community of free software, this is vital.
I’m sure the Apache group would disagree. They have build a strong, lasting community of open source software (Apache server, PHP and excellent collections of XML and Java-software). As a believer in open source I think that we usually don’t need the GPL to convince people to contribute. Contributing makes sense in many cases and doesn’t need to be forced onto people. GPL’ing code will just make sure that companies will have to do a lot of unnecessary work to build something similar (which is not good like some GPL-advocates claim) and won’t contribute anything.
In contrast, if companies can use BSD-code without being forced to give up their code, they (and their customers that get products faster with less bugs) will learn the benefits of working together without protecting their IP at every step they take. Apple, IBM and Sun are already learning fast about open source and have contributed a lot of code to the open source community. If I write BSD code, I hope that it convince others do become part of the open source community. I want them to change their mind and make the choice to contribute to open source in freedom. I don’t want them to be forced by law.
IMHO, that’s the whole deal. Someone writes a killer app and GPLs it. MS wants it… ergo they have to release their “extension” of the killer app as GPL. They won’t do that.
And claiming that you may not compile a commercial app with a GPL’ed compiler is utter nonsense. You are not reusing any code from that compiler.
I’m not defending the GPL here, I am much more in favour of the BSD style license. But I’m sure MS is too albeit for different reasons 🙂
GPL here, GPL there, GPL overall… GPL sucks. IMO the BSD license is more democratic and more flexible.
Time to switch to Cygwin then, especially for that Mono port.
Where did the idea that you cannot link GPL or LGPL code to non-GPL code from? Someone seems to have their linking mixed up!
It goes like this: GPL code can link to anything (I.E. I write “Hello World”, which can link to a closed libc). You cannot, however, link the other way around. I.E. if I had a completly GPL libc (Glibc is actually LGPL BTW), then I cannot link a non-GPL “Hello World” to that libc.
With the LGPL however, it works both ways. The license specifically allows you to link the LGPL code to non-LGPL code, and also allows you to link non-LGPL code to the LGPL code. Glibc uses the LGPL to allow non-LGPL code to link to it.
Basically, the idea that Microsoft are afraid of having Windows “infected” with the GPL is bull. Either that or the have the biggest bunch of dunce lawyers the world has ever seen, which I doubt somehow. Provided Microsoft are not themselves linking any Windows components to GPL code, they cannot become “infected” by the GPL.
As for this peice of LSD-Inspired scare-mongering:
What people seams to not know is that
you can’t use a GPL program to create
a non GPL program.
E.g. You _can’t_ _compile_ a propitary program with a GPL compiler or
_edit_ your propitary(non GPL)-files with a GPL Editor.
If you don’t believe me read the GPL.
It’s realy quite scary..
Thats total and utter bull, and I suggest you read the GPL if you think that is the case. The GPL specifcally notes that something created with a GPL program does not automatically inherit the GPL.
Microsoft just seem to be out to destroy the GPL. Nothing to see here, move along please.
This is just further evidence if any was needed that there is no difference in tactics between Microsoft and Free Software, only a difference in intent.
Both of them intend to use Copyright to “encourage” developers to see things their way. If you don’t like to be “encouraged” to work for Microsoft’s agenda then you can’t use VC++ or the MS run time, and if you don’t like Free Software then you can’t use libreadline etc.
The funny thing is that this has worked very well for Free Software. If you want a decent command line SQL interface you pretty much have to go to a Free DBMS because the non-free ones haven’t bothered to do all that work (and they can’t use the free code)
So now we’ll see whether Microsoft intends to force all Free Software off of their platform. Amusingly this would mean that many Microsoft employees will have to stop using Emacs and other GNU tools at their place of work, or install a Free operating system instead of Windows
At this point, as I’ve said in the past, the Microsoft juggernaut will have to be stopped via market forces. It is obvious that the “penalties” imposed by the government are going to be completely irrelevant, and ineffectual. It is therefore the responsibility of corporations to pick up the ball and make competitive products that blow the doors off of the Microsoft equivalents. No mass boycott has ever been able to sustain a longterm economic impact on a company. The majority of people don’t care who makes their computers or software, they care that it looks cool and works. So how about companies stop whining and start competing. A bit of ingenuity and, with luck, some Microsoft complacancy will put them in their place before the government’s slap on the wrist will.
Knowing MS as I do from simple historical comportment of their tactics, this is nothing more than the beginning tactic in their strategy to “cure” the Linux “cancer”… nothing less. This is in preparation to the upcoming and very entertaining WWWW1 conflict [World Wide Web War # 1]. Of course, they just can’t come out and say; “We are doing eving possible, legal and illegal, moral and immoral, smooth and slimy to prevent the proliferation of freedom in the form of Linux in particular, and freedom of choice in general.” That wouldn’t be good PR, now would it? It is a pleasure to sit back and watch the autodestruction of the Redmondland Dragon.
“Microsoft just seem to be out to destroy the GPL. Nothing to see
here, move along please.”
Of course they are. If you have a shop selling gidgets, and somebody
sets up a stall outside and gives gidgets away, naturally you want rid
of him.
Linux, Apache, MySQL, etc etc – anything free is a threat to Microsoft
and they would like to make free software illegal. Hence the talk
about “communism”.
Turns out that Eugenia and I read the license with some bias towards C/C++ (not really knowing any other of the languages supported by VS.net… yet).
The issue revolves around the pieces of code that Microsoft includes as source as part of VS.net. Those include the MFCs, the ATL and CRTs. Microsoft obviously want to protect themselves against any risk that someone would claim that those are GPL. It might sound redundant with the GPL itself (which would somewhat prohibit this as well), but you need to keep in mind that many GPL programs are licensed under the terms of “… or (at your option) any later version.” and I do not think that there is any significant and legally binding guarantee that the GPL couldn’t change radically in the future.
Anyway.
The second part of 3.1 (a) might be an issue for any freeware/shareware (whether open-source or not) : “You also agree to not permit further distribution of the Redistributables by your end users […]”.
The part that’s a killer for GPL C/C++ apps is 3.1 (b). “Your license rights to the Licesed Software are conditioned upon your (i) not incorporating Identified Software into or combining Identified Software with the Licensed Software or a derivative work thereof; (ii) not distributing Identified Software in conjunction with the Licensed Software or a derivative work thereof; (iii) not using Identified Software in the development of a derivative work of the Licensed Software. […] Identified Software includes, without limitation, any software that requires as a condition of use, modification and/or distribution of such software that other software incorporated into, derived from or distributed with such software be (A) disclosed or distributed in source code form; (B) be licensed for the purpose of making derivative works, or (C) be redistributable at no charge.” The problem here is that part of the “Licensed Software” is the very basic initialization code, including the function that calls main() (located in crt0.c). No matter how I turn it, this is serious issue.
Disclaimer : I am not a lawyer. Be stupid at your own risk.
JBQ
To answer two (seemingly different) anonymous posters :
>>or (c) be redistributable at no charge.
>The GPL doesn’t say this – it says you can charge
>whatever you want if you wish to.
Uh?
GPL, 2 b) :
“You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.”
While it doesn’t legally *prevent* anyone from licensing GPL’ed software for a fee, doing so would be pretty pointless since the GPL forces me to license it to anyone for free. “Here, I can let you use my program if you give me $100. Oh, BTW, you can also use it for free if you want. Do you want to pay?”
>E.g. You _can’t_ _compile_ a propitary program with
>a GPL compiler or _edit_ your propitary(non GPL)-files
>with a GPL Editor.
>
>If you don’t believe me read the GPL.
>It’s realy quite scary..
It’d be much nicer if you actually quoted the GPL.
“the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program).”
And the licenses of the various runtimes involved with gcc carry clauses such as this one, to explicitly allow compilation of non-GPL apps with gcc (which implicitly links some/all of those runtimes into the apps it compiles/links) : “As a special exception, if you link this library with files compiled with GCC to produce an executable, this does not cause the resulting executable to be covered by the GNU General Public License. This exception does not however invalidate any other reasons why the executable file might be covered by the GNU General Public License.”
The only thing that is really scary is how some people talk about the GPL without reading it in detail.
JBQ
How many gpl’s are there? ‘Cause it seems like not everyone is using the same one. Somewhere way back in this topic someone mentioned the fact that since the gpl hadn’t been tested in court that could be why ms (and apple and ibm) shied away from incorporating gpl too deeply into commercial products. Which is probably what this is a case of.
I do have a question though, its not really to do with this topic, but semi-related. If microsoft did use some gpl code in windows (or office, or anything) and they made some changes wouldn’t they have to release that new code? If they did, that would make it even easier to recreate whatever program it was, make it even more compatable and it would have a much better chance of taking market share from ms. If thats the case it makes sense why ms (and ibm and apple) are so gun shy about gpl, because if free or low cost software is nearly the spitting image of their programs then they’d be in real trouble. Then again I could just be rambling.
Linux, Apache, MySQL, etc etc – anything free is a threat to Microsoft and they would like to make free software illegal. Hence the talk about “communism”.
Actually the gpl and its explicit rejection of intellectual property is rather anarcho-communist. Ofcourse americans would probably prefer to look at it in the context of the history of patenting (making sure blueprints are eventually publicly available) as this was propagated by their founding fathers.
>>>The only thing that is really scary is how some people talk about the GPL without reading it in detail.
The other scary thing is that how many linux start-ups develop GPL products without first getting legal advice. When FSF ask for the source code, some of these start-ups tried to buy back FSF’s license so that they don’t have to give FSF the source code.
Look at MySQL vs. Progress — if the court sides with MySQL, then Progress loses the right to redistribute the codes in any form —- then the whole Progress as a business will be dead. Same thing for the Lindows source code fiasco right now, WINE can take back the license and Lindows would lose the right to redistribute the codes in any form.
> What people seams to not know is that
> you can’t use a GPL program to create
> a non GPL program.
Blatantly false. FUD attempt ?
> E.g. You _can’t_ _compile_ a propitary program with a GPL
> compiler or _edit_ your propitary(non GPL)-files with a
> GPL Editor.
Yes you can.
> If you don’t believe me read the GPL.
If you’re not able to understand it, there are good FAQs on the GNU web site. You can create/modify whatever you want with GPL software.
> It’s realy quite scary..
It’s not. Freedom 0 : you can use the software for any purpose.
Here is why I like the GPL – If I’m going to give my code away for free, I don’t want someone else to turn around and sell it. It should remain *free*. The BSD license does not guarantee that the code remains free. Anyone who says ‘well just use the BSD license then’ does not understand the issue at hand.
>Look at MySQL vs. Progress — if the court sides with >MySQL, then Progress loses the right to redistribute the >codes in any form —- then the whole Progress as a >business will be dead.
Exactly. This is *good*. The MySQL developers worked hard to create an excellent open source database. They want it to remain free – not have it co-opted by a commercial company looking to profit from their work.
I’m going to go back and read thru the license on my copy of Visual Studio 6.0. ‘C++ managed extensions’ make me vomit anyway.
The advertisement clause was removed a few years ago. Don’t copy a license that still has the clause in it, get the last version from opensource.org.
Unless you WANT credit
Dealing_Death,
You like GPL because if you can’t find a way to make money off your own codes, then you don’t want anybody to make a buck out of it (even though other people may have good business plans to make a profit). That have nothing to do with opensourceness at all.
Even though in business reality, the price of GPL software will go down to almost zero because other people can grab your source code and sell it at well — however there are the walmarts of the world who can outsell (at a lower price) than even cheapbytes.
MySQL is in a special category because all the original codes came from MySQL themselves (i.e. they didn’t take codes from another GPL product to build their stuff on top of it), that’s why they can dual licensed it to make a profit. But the point of the conversation is that big companies wouldn’t accept the business risk of that a large part of their business would be shut down because of a GPL violation (a la Progress).
“We are doing eving possible, legal and illegal, moral and immoral, smooth and slimy to prevent the proliferation of freedom in the form of Linux in particular, and freedom of choice in general.”
Firstly I doubt this is illegal, slimey sure, but prolly not illegal. And secondly why do so many people look to gpl software (and linux in particular) as not only the future of computers, but the embodiement of freedom as well? IMO ms has said linux is its main competiton now to make people who want ms to go down to throw their skill into gpl. All the while ms knows gpl will never be a real competitor (as I’ve said in a few other places, it would take advertising, exposure, vendor support and good code to take down ms). As good as Linux is, and will be as it continues to evolve, unless it meets all those criteria it won’t make a large dent in ms’ market share. Look at apple, it has most of those things and its still a niche market (as much as the many vocal mac fans love it, you’ll still come across many, many more windows boxes then mac machines in any line of work). So by leading all the ms haters (and would be ms’ replacements) to gpl and linux they’re turning their attention away from the only thing that could take down ms, and thats a new ms in the making (meaning a company making a proprietary os that has billions to spend on marketing and schmoozing dell, compaq, ibm, intel amd and the like). Just like ms they prolly won’t have the most advanced os, or the most stable, but it will be advanced enough to compete and stable enough to john and jane doe (i.e. *only* having to reboot once a week or a month is plenty, they don’t need to make it so stable it can go from now until 2004 without a reboot, and thats doing things that john and jane want, not trying to push the os to the limit). Of course as long as the idea of people making money off of their work is foreign and questionable to the anti-ms community all ms has to do is laugh as they continue to make billions. Thats just my 2 cents.
Turns out that Eugenia and I read the license with some bias towards C/C++
As did I – I am primarily a C++ developer.
[…] The problem here is that part of the “Licensed Software” is the very basic initialization code, including the function that calls main() (located in crt0.c).
This is odd. On the one hand, I have seen many different C++ projects under the GPL, and none of them has provided source to the C++ runtime library. Like the existence of the compiler, I would view the existence of a language’s standard runtime library as a given in order to be able to compile it. On the other hand, maybe it should be included since it is indeed part of the object code.
On the gripping hand, there’s enough legal fog here to make all the lawyers a load of money.
No matter how I turn it, this is serious issue.
It is indeed. The wording clearly intends to insulate the C runtime (and ATL, etc.) from the effect of the GPL.
Sean.
…at how bad MS sucks.