Free Republic

When a programmer decides to release their work, they have to decide on a license, of which there's no shortage. Most know of the GPLs, Apache's, Mozilla's, and BSDs. But there's a new license in town and it is inspired by two big-hearted goofs.Sometimes companies or coders decide to create their own for various reasons. While considering licenses, Lunduke did just that. Officially named the Greater Lunduke License or GLL, The Bill & Ted License borrows language straight from the slackers' own words. In fact, Lunduke credits them right in the preamble, "The "Greater Lunduke License" is inspired, in part,...

"I am puzzled as to why this might be thought a newsworthy story at all," says Richard Fontana, talking about his new licensing project, Copyleft.next (formerly, GPL.next). "Copyleft.next is just a toy research project, motivated initially by a mere desire on my part to learn more about using Git."Fontana is perhaps being mildly disingenuous. Although the importance of Copyleft.next has been greatly exaggerated, he is not ruling out the possibility that it might play a role in the development of future versions of copyleft licenses such as the GPL family of licenses.If nothing else, the project seems to reflect the...

The Doom 3 source-code -- based upon the id Tech 4 engine -- is now available as open-source software to the gaming community under the GNU GPL license. Pushed onto GitHub is the Doom 3 source-code. This comes after John Carmack had to work-around Carmack's Reverse due to legal issues. The source drop is right in line with what we were expecting. More details to come soon on the open-source drop of Doom 3, which will hopefully spark a new wave of more impressive free software games.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Microsoft's suit against TomTom, which alleged infringement of eight of its patents - including three that relate to TomTom's implementation of the Linux kernel. I wrote there that this seemed part of a larger attack on Linux, and not just one on TomTom, as Microsoft nonetheless insisted. This called forth a fair amount of disagreement, so I was glad to come across this post on Harald Welte's blog: [MS] claim that this lawsuit has no relation whatsoever to Linux, and they're only targeting TomTom's specific implementation of Linux. I have actually reviewed...

If you ever plan on writing an open source program, then you must make an important decision, selecting a program license. Generally for open source programs, there are two main licenses that most developers take into consideration. These licenses are the Gnu General Public License, and the BSD license. This article will explain the fundamentals of each license, and will help you in choosing the right license for your open source project. The first software license that comes to mind for an open source program is the Gnu General Public License(GPL). Created by Richard Stallman in 1989, the GPL is...

The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) today announced that it has filed two more copyright infringement lawsuits, on behalf of two principal developers of BusyBox, alleging violation of the GNU General Public License (GPL). The defendants in this new round of lawsuits are Bell Microproducts, Inc. and Super Micro Computer, Inc. BusyBox is a lightweight set of standard Unix utilities commonly used in embedded systems and is open source software licensed under GPL version 2. One of the conditions of the GPL is that re-distributors of BusyBox are required to ensure that each downstream recipient is provided access to the...

Two recent events should give for-profit companies new reasons to re-evaluate the ways in which they use open source software as well as the extent to which they use it. These events are: (1) the release of a new version of the widely used license that covers such software, i.e., the General Public License version 3, and (2) a round of lawsuits filed by the Software Freedom Law Center against for-profit companies using the software for commercial gain. Four companies to date, the largest of which is Verizon Communications Inc., have been sued for violation of the GPL. Although the...

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) recently released a software toolkit designed to help universities detect instances of potentially illegal file-sharing on school networks. The toolkit is based on the increasingly popular Ubuntu Linux distribution and includes the Apache web server as well as custom traffic monitoring software created by the MPAA. Although the toolkit was previously available from a web site set up by the MPAA, the software was removed last night after the organization's ISP received a DMCA takedown notice from Ubuntu technical board member Matthew Garret. Many of the components in the Ubuntu Linux distribution, including...

Fearing the restrictions it places on their work, the majority of open source software developers do not plan to publish code in the next year under a controversial new license authored by the main governing body for open source and free software, according to a survey released Wednesday. In addition, more than 40% of those surveyed said they won't ever publish their work under Version 3 of the General Public License, which was released earlier this year by the Free Software Foundation. "GPLv3 is controversial because it imposes restrictions on what you can do with programs," said John Andrews, CEO...

The first U.S. GPL-related lawsuit appears to be headed for a quick out-of-court settlement. Monsoon Multimedia admitted today that it had violated the GPLv2 (GNU General Public License version 2), and said it will release its modified BusyBox code in full compliance with the license. Spread the word:digg this story Monsoon Multimedia has stated that it is currently in settlement negotiations with the BusyBox project to resolve the matter without going to court. The company also said in a statement that it intends to fully comply with all open-source software license requirements. The company plans to make its modified BusyBox...

Skype has been found guilty of violating the GNU General Public License (GPL) by a Munich, Germany regional court, a decision likely to influence the way companies approach GPL compliance in the future. The decision found that Skype had violated the GPL by the way it distributed a voice over IP (VoIP) handset, the SMCWSKP100, which incorporates the GPL-covered Linux kernel in its firmware. The phone is manufactured by SMC, the target of a separate case that hasn't yet been decided, but the court noted that Skype was liable to fulfill the conditions of the GPL because it sold the...

This is news indeed. Todd Bishop has the story. Eben Moglen is saying that the SUSE vouchers Microsoft is distributing have no expiration date! I didn't know this. It's huge. This is, according to Moglen's remarks, another defense to any patent infringement claim by Microsoft, and it may well bring that campaign to a screeching halt. Here's why. Someone, Moglen says, is bound to turn a voucher it got from Microsoft in after GPLv3 goes into effect and GPLv3 code is being distributed, and at that moment Microsoft comes under its terms. And that should mean the end of Microsoft's...

The Free Software Foundation has admitted defeat in its attempts to ensure that the forthcoming GNU GPLv3 is compatible with the Apache and Eclipse licenses, meaning that code from some of the leading free and open source projects can still not be merged. "We regret that we will not achieve compatibility of the Apache License, Version 2.0, with GPLv3, despite what we had previously promised," said the FSF in an explanatory document accompanying its latest draft of the GPL. The FSF had hoped to ensure compatibility between two of the most used free and open source licenses, but while it...

THE FREE SOFTWARE Foundation has declared a jihad on Microsoft and Novell's licensing deal and has declared that it will wreck it using the latest draft of the GPv3. Peter Brown, executive director of the Free Software Association told Reuters that Open Saucers need to make sure that such deals "don't make a mockery of the goals of free software".

That Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux operating system, prefers the current version of the General Public License, GPLv2, over the version in development, GPLv3, is no secret. But in a lengthy E-mail response to questions from InformationWeek, he offers a full explanation of what he thinks is superior about GPLv2. Torvalds says he regrets that the authors of GPLv3 have decided to take aim at political opponents. He has little patience for statements about the "evil and immoral" nature of proprietary code or the "TiVo-ization" of Linux (a reference to set-top box producer TiVo producing a device that runs...

Give people 12 months warning (time to work out what they're going to do, talk with the legal dept, etc) then make the kernel load only GPL-tagged modules. I think I'd favour that. It would aid those people who are trying to obtain device specs, and who are persuading organisations to GPL their drivers.

Excerpt - SUN MICROSYSTEMS will announce today that its Java language, contrary to the prediction of many pundits, will be offered as pure "Free Software" -as Richard Stallman would say "free as in freedom"- under a GPL version two licence. Ponytailed CEO Jonathan Schwartz will announce the ground-breaking move in a webcast to be held later at 9:30am Pacific Time. Both Java SE -used on desktops - and Java ME - used on mobile phones and PDAs- will be included. The server-side Java, or Java EE will be available both under the GPL version two licence and the same Common...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has issued an opinion in which Judge Easterbrook declares, "[t]he GPL and open-source have nothing to fear from the antitrust laws." The case is called Wallace v. IBM., No. 06-2454. [Download a copy of the opinion.] Internet Cases covered the lower court's decision from last December here. Plaintiff Wallace filed an antitrust suit against IBM, Red Hat and Novell, arguing that those companies had conspired to eliminate competition in the operating system market by making Linux available at an "unbeatable" price (free) under the General Public License ("GPL"). The U.S. District...

On August 4th, we found out that Lenovo Group, the company that has taken over IBM's Personal Computing Division, had made a deal with Novell Inc. to preload SLED 10 (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) on its ThinkPad T60p mobile workstation. For the first time, a major OEM (original equipment manufacturer) has committed to preloading a Linux desktop.

I have some pictures to show you. They should knock your socks off. They should knock SCO's socks off, too, and then they should knock a huge chunk out of SCO's case. I'm quite serious. Here is what three individuals have now written to me, with screenshots to prove what they have found: SCO is right now itself distributing the ELF headers files it is suing IBM over. They are available to the public with no legal notice, from SCO's FTP site, and furthermore, the license on the files is the GPL. Let me show you, please. First, let's review...