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"Greg M. Johnson" wrote in message <44ddf788@news.povray.org>:
> ... in the sense of legitimacy to the "pure GPL in everything or die"
> fanatical crowd ...
I know of no distribution with "pure GPL or die" policy.
> Not that povray's "copyrighted freeware" model is in any way dodgy or
> shoddy.
The problem is: POV-Ray is a very small part of a distribution, and yet its
licence is twice as long as the GPL, and more than twenty times longer than
the BSD licence.
When dealing with hundreds of packages, you can not expect the maintainers
to puzzle over 40+ kilobytes of text for each package, nor expect to have
2^n different DVD layouts depending on whether the packages on it can be
sold in box with documentation and user support, sold for the copy costs,
bundled with magazines, given as coaster, and so on.
So packages licence must be classified in very few boxes: free enough or not
free enough, and maybe not-quite-free-enough-but-not-far.
Have a look at POV-Ray licence: you need written permission just to bundle
it with a magazine...
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Nicolas George wrote:
> Have a look at POV-Ray licence: you need written permission just to bundle
> it with a magazine...
Which does NOT apply when the bundle is a Linux distribution ... the fact is
a package maintainer should read the license and then make clear that there
is no problem to the distribution maintainers. If the package maintainers
cannot be bothered to read every license of the packages they maintain, then
maybe they should not be maintaining that many. The fact is that various
Linux distribution maintainers are so misinformed about the POV-Ray license
that they make false assertions they could trivially have avoided by just
ONCE reading the license they complain about. It is neither difficult to
understand, nor limiting about the bundling of POV-Ray with a Linux
distribution.
And if _you_ complain about the license, well, if you enjoy your work being
ripped off by huge companies for billions of profits, that is your choice.
It is not that of the POV-Ray developers, and history has unfortunately
taught us that only a license as lengthy as the one we developed over the
years allows everybody to enjoy POV-Ray for free, yet prohibits unethical
types of commercial exploitation. And you would be stunned to what length
such unethical behavior can go, but this is neither the place nor the time
to discuss the POV-Ray license.
You either enjoy the work in the form and under the conditions the POV-Ray
developers decided to distribute it, or you do not. If you do not, bad luck,
but not OUR problem! So *please* do not complain about it to us.
Thorsten, POV-Team, but just stating *MY* opinion
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Nicolas George wrote:
> When dealing with hundreds of packages, you can not expect
> the maintainers to puzzle over 40+ kilobytes of text for
> each package,
fair enough. no arg.
>
> I know of no distribution with "pure GPL or die" policy.
>
You need to get out more. SUSE took out the wifi driver from 10.1
arbritrarily at the last moment because it was decided that they weren't
going to ship a non-GPL driver. Wrecking usability for the user with
contempt for the dogma of open source.
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Thorsten Froehlich wrote in message <44de0995$1@news.povray.org>:
> Which does NOT apply when the bundle is a Linux distribution ...
That was not true the last time I read the licence. And your are wrong, that
applies when the bundle is a "generally recognised Distribution", which
looks like an attempt for the World Record of Imprecise Legalese.
> It is neither difficult to
> understand, nor limiting about the bundling of POV-Ray with a Linux
> distribution.
The point is not only about the bundling with a Linux distribution. The
inclusion of a package is also a message to the user. When I find a package
in Debian main, I know without reading the licence there are a few things I
am _always_ allowed to do, and this is an information that is useful to me.
Linux distributions are not just about bundling packages, they are also
about allowing service providers to build custom solutions for corporate
clients, for example. They MUST have a precise and compact set of guidelines
about the licence of packages they accept.
> And if _you_ complain about the license, well, if you enjoy your work being
> ripped off by huge companies for billions of profits, that is your choice.
> It is not that of the POV-Ray developers, and history has unfortunately
> taught us that only a license as lengthy as the one we developed over the
> years allows everybody to enjoy POV-Ray for free, yet prohibits unethical
> types of commercial exploitation.
There are ways to prevent most of the "commercial exploitation" while being
compatible with, for example, Debian Free Software Guidelines. Copyleft, for
example.
There is a balance between the freedom you give to the people you like, and
the restrictions you put on the people you do not like. The more
restrictions you put on the latter, the more often you will find situations
that you would approve, but that the wording of the licence forbids.
The choice is yours, but it has consequences, including the non-inclusion in
Linux distributions, which is somewhat a major annoyance.
It is up to you to decide if you would rather ease the life of people who
like your soft and build a community, or fight Big Bad Capitalists.
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"Greg M. Johnson" wrote in message <44de6136@news.povray.org>:
>> I know of no distribution with "pure GPL or die" policy.
> You need to get out more. SUSE took out the wifi driver from 10.1
> arbritrarily at the last moment because it was decided that they weren't
> going to ship a non-GPL driver. Wrecking usability for the user with
> contempt for the dogma of open source.
Does not SuSE include X.org (X11 license)? OpenSSL (BSD-style licence _with_
the advertising clause, and thus GPL-incompatible)?
The problem with non-GPL kernel modules is not that they are not GPL, it is
that they violate the GPL. You can use them, but the licence of the kernel
forbids to distribute binaries versions.
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On Sat, 12 Aug 2006 19:16:56 -0400, Greg M. Johnson wrote:
> You need to get out more. SUSE took out the wifi driver from 10.1
> arbritrarily at the last moment because it was decided that they weren't
> going to ship a non-GPL driver. Wrecking usability for the user with
> contempt for the dogma of open source.
Nicholas provided a very good summary of why the decision was made.
There's also a very good interview with Greg KH (of SUSE) about why
non-GPL kernel modules are bad. I've talked with Greg about this
directly, and the move makes perfect sense.
It's not a question of dogma; it's a question of supportability. If the
kernel crashes and there are non-GPL kernel modules in memory, it's
impossible to fix the problem because there's a part of the kernel the
developers have no access to the code for. It doesn't make sense for
a company that supports the kernel to that level to ship things they can't
support - it muddies the support policy.
In the case of the Madwifi drivers (which are the affected drivers - and
the ones I need to use for my Thinkpad), getting them into the system
isn't a problem - madwifi.org has a channel that can be subscribed to
using ZLM or YaST in order to install them.
Jim
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Nicolas George wrote:
> Thorsten Froehlich wrote in message <44de0995$1@news.povray.org>:
>> yet prohibits unethical types of commercial exploitation.
<snip>
> It is up to you to decide if you would rather ease the life of people who
> like your soft and build a community, or fight Big Bad Capitalists.
Well, it seems clear you do not really know what I was talking about, or
what the "real world" actually looks like. Just two *examples* which
triggered specific changes to the license:
- A few years ago some company started putting POV-Ray on a CD and selling
it as modeler solution. There was no mention that POV-Ray is a free
download, yet people were asked to pay iirc $20 for a CD hardly containing
anything justifying the amount paid for the CD. Obviously this was a case of
commercial exploitation, and clearly unethical as it cheated the customer.
Further, the CDs did not contain any contact information for the maker of
the CDs. The license did not require it. The only contact information for
buyers was the POV-Team as maker of POV-Ray. But without an address to
contact the company making the CDs, the only option would have been to go
after the retailers to find out about the company making the CDs. In
response we had to change the license, and now it includes the requirement
to include a valid postal address of the distributor/maker.
- Many years ago a magazine included POV-Ray on a floppy disk. They wanted
to cut costs and as POV-Ray did not fit on a single disk if documentation
and such was included, they just removed it. The POV-Team then got flooded
with support requests and complaints as people who bought the magazine did
not realize they could get the documentation, or the fact that it was
removed by the makers of the magazine. That is how the old magazine
inclusion clause came to be, as did the whole distribution clause.
If you follow the current debate of the GPL 2 Linux license and the attempt
to prevent the unethical commercial exploitation built into the GPL 3 drafts
(i.e. the patent clauses) as well as the SCO "case" against Linux, you
cannot honestly say the licenses used for Linux are clear, or prevent abuse.
If they cannot prevent a three year multi-million dollar trial, they clearly
have a problem. Our license may not be perfect, but neither are those core
Linux "Copyleft" licenses you are so vigorously promoting.
Thorsten, POV-Team, but just stating *MY* opinion
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Thorsten Froehlich wrote in message <44ded80c@news.povray.org>:
> Nicolas George wrote:
>> Thorsten Froehlich wrote in message <44de0995$1@news.povray.org>:
>>> yet prohibits unethical types of commercial exploitation.
> <snip>
>> It is up to you to decide if you would rather ease the life of people who
>> like your soft and build a community, or fight Big Bad Capitalists.
>
> Well, it seems clear you do not really know what I was talking about, or
> what the "real world" actually looks like. Just two *examples* which
> triggered specific changes to the license:
>
> - A few years ago some company started putting POV-Ray on a CD and selling
> it as modeler solution. There was no mention that POV-Ray is a free
> download, yet people were asked to pay iirc $20 for a CD hardly containing
> anything justifying the amount paid for the CD. Obviously this was a case of
> commercial exploitation, and clearly unethical as it cheated the customer.
> Further, the CDs did not contain any contact information for the maker of
> the CDs. The license did not require it. The only contact information for
> buyers was the POV-Team as maker of POV-Ray. But without an address to
> contact the company making the CDs, the only option would have been to go
> after the retailers to find out about the company making the CDs. In
> response we had to change the license, and now it includes the requirement
> to include a valid postal address of the distributor/maker.
>
> - Many years ago a magazine included POV-Ray on a floppy disk. They wanted
> to cut costs and as POV-Ray did not fit on a single disk if documentation
> and such was included, they just removed it. The POV-Team then got flooded
> with support requests and complaints as people who bought the magazine did
> not realize they could get the documentation, or the fact that it was
> removed by the makers of the magazine. That is how the old magazine
> inclusion clause came to be, as did the whole distribution clause.
Requiring explicit responsibility statements of distributions and changes is
not a problem; most of the licenses, including widely-used Free software
licenses, do it at various level. Including pretty high levels, like "if you
change the soft, you have to change the name".
The major problem with POV-Ray's license is the non-commercial clauses. That
is what is preventing POV-Ray from being included in Linux distributions.
But there is another point (I re-quote your message):
> - A few years ago some company started putting POV-Ray on a CD and selling
> it as modeler solution. There was no mention that POV-Ray is a free
> download, yet people were asked to pay iirc $20 for a CD hardly containing
> anything justifying the amount paid for the CD. Obviously this was a case of
> commercial exploitation, and clearly unethical as it cheated the customer.
I Let us leave aside all questions of responsibility and support. Yes, that
is cheating the customer, but that is a problem between the company selling
the CD and the customer. Technically, _you_ (the POV-Ray authors) come to no
harm because of that: you give POV-Ray for free, so you are not losing
money; there is no risk that a cheated customer would sue you. You are less
an accomplice than, for example, the company that pressed the CD.
Of course, it upsets you specifically. But that is psychological. It is the
same phenomenon that makes that I am more upset by a journalist speaking
bullshit about maths than about biology: that is your area, and you feel it
personal, but it isn't.
You have a right to react, and fight it, of course. But you do not have to.
Therefore, you must consider how much it costs you to do so. If it is just a
matter of sending a cease and desist mail, or adding a harmless clause in
the license, do not hesitate. But if it must cause major hindrance to a
large part of your users, it is probably better to just let go; sometimes,
there is just no perfect solution.
I believe that preventing the inclusion of POV-Ray in the main part of the
major Linux distributions is a major hindrance, and preventing scrupleless
companies from taking 20 bucks to people too stupid to check whether the
same is not available online for free is just not worth it.
> If you follow the current debate of the GPL 2 Linux license and the attempt
> to prevent the unethical commercial exploitation built into the GPL 3 drafts
> (i.e. the patent clauses)
The GPL is a war engine, it is made with that purpose, and accepts all
subsequent drawbacks.
Choosing a GPL-style license for a project is a political choice of
militancy above practicality.
The question is: is the choice of license of POV-Ray political and militant
before practical?
If so, there is nothing to do but accept and respect. But if it isn't, there
is advice to be given to make it more practical.
> as well as the SCO "case" against Linux, you
> cannot honestly say the licenses used for Linux are clear, or prevent abuse.
> If they cannot prevent a three year multi-million dollar trial, they clearly
> have a problem. Our license may not be perfect, but neither are those core
> Linux "Copyleft" licenses you are so vigorously promoting.
The reason there is a three-year multi-million dollars trial behind Linux and
not behind POV-Ray is not that its license is more badly phrased -- by the
way, I know that the FSF has a bunch of lawyers working on the GPL; I wonder
what is the legal background of the actual author of POV-Ray's license? --
but because the market value of Linux is much higher, both because it holds
a more tactical position (fewer people need raytracers than operating
systems) and because of random circumstances.
But if it came that, for example, a big company started backing up POV-Ray
for the special effects of big bucks movies, and started taking market share
from the costly proprietary softwares used nowadays, then POV-Ray would
likely have its multi-million dollars trial too.
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> I wonder
> what is the legal background of the actual author of POV-Ray's license?
Lawyer. (POV is nowadays held by a legal entity.)
In general I agree with all of your statements (this is my personal opinion).
But think that there is a long history behind POV-Ray development, and that the
foundations of its license (past and current) cannot be changed without basically
rewriting the whole software. This is planed; effectively it started with 3.7
and should be completed for 4.0.
- NC
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Nicolas Calimet wrote in message <44df279a$1@news.povray.org>:
> But think that there is a long history behind POV-Ray development, and
> that the foundations of its license (past and current) cannot be changed
> without basically rewriting the whole software. This is planed;
> effectively it started with 3.7 and should be completed for 4.0.
Yes, I have seen that stated somewhere in the FAQ, "why isn't POV Open
Source?" or something. Ah, it is in povlegal-3.5 <URL:
http://www.povray.org/povlegal-3.5.html >. Which makes me wonder how they
managed to change the license for the 3.6 version.
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