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Legal Summits to Tackle Linux 107

Posted by CowboyNeal from the open-to-suggestions dept.
An anonymous reader writes "BuilderAU has the story that the Linux Foundation, custodians of the Linux trademark, have announced that they will host two summits to deal with legal issues surrounding Linux and open-source software. Attendance at the first summit will be restricted to members of the Linux Foundation and their legal counsel. The second summit — an open meeting — will be held in Autumn 2008 where legal experts from any background will be able to attend."
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Legal Summits to Tackle Linux More

Legal Summits to Tackle Linux

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  • Trademark violations of Linux are few, and insignificant. Linus himself seems to be against the spirit of the GPL - either version 2 or 3. Had he chosen the BSD, MS would've swallowed it like Kerberos or the TCP/IP stack and bastardised them, and Linux would've been kicked dead before it started breathing.

    The danger from Linus is the one that eeds to be tackled, IMO.

    • Against the spirit... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Enderandrew ( 866215 ) <enderandrew&gmail,com> on Friday September 14, 2007 @07:53AM (#20601505) Homepage Journal
      ...the spirit of the GPL was to keep software free so that the source code can't be made proprietary (such as what happened with Microsoft swallowing pieces of BSD like you stated). Linus very much supports that clause, and has always spoken in favor of the GPLv2. I'm curious why you suggest he is against the spirit of the GPLv2. The only anti-GPL statements I've seen him make are in regards to GPLv3, in that he doesn't think a software license should govern or have anything to do with hardware.

      • Re:Against the spirit... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Aladrin ( 926209 ) on Friday September 14, 2007 @08:16AM (#20601661)
        No, the spirit of the GPL was to ensure that anyone who benefits from the code returns any upgrades they make to it.

        BSD software cannot 'be made proprietary'. The original code will ALWAYS be available under the BSD.

        If Linus had chosen BSD License, Microsoft would not have 'swallowed' Linux. It may have improved Windows with it, and may even have ended up with a better system than Linux, but absolutely no real harm would have come to Linux itself.
        • The spirit of the GPL is that it's ethically wrong to write and/or distribute software that does not adhere to the definition of 'free software' as specified by the FSF. The GPL is a tool in the struggle to eradicate non-free software, by ensuring that derivative works cannot be non-free.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by Aladrin ( 926209 )
            If that were the case, I'd say 'Fuck the GPL!' then. Any time 1 entity has sole ability to declare something 'free', something is seriously fucked up.

            Luckily, it's not the case.

            http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesFreeSoftwareMeanUsingTheGPL [fsf.org]

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by kdemetter ( 965669 )
            HonIsCool , you never read a GPL license , did you ?

            There is no way FSF can 'eradicate' non-free software . Using GPL only prevents non-free software from 'eradicating' free software . The only reason to use it , is to make sure nobody can take your work , change one line of code , and then release it under a propiertary lincense and make money of your hard work .

            No one is forcing you to use license all your programs under GPL . You can/should use the license you prefer , acording to what you need .
        • If Windows could use code from linux then it would have got better with Vista instead of worse.

          And that may have hurt Linux a lot.

        • MS making a 'better' Linux that is not free would be enough harm to Linux, and thus the GPL proves its worth, unless you have never heard of extend, embrace extinguish ...

          • You both have illustrated perfectly the difference between GPL and BSD.

            GPL guys want all software to be free. BSD guys want all software to be better.

            That's why we can't understand each other. The parent states that Microsoft would have a better product, and that's great from a BSD point of view. And you see a threat if Microsoft has a better product which is not free.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by geschild ( 43455 )
              To you and the GP I answer: if that would be your goal, you wouldn't use a license that allows those 'using' your code to pervert it for their own purposes making it defacto abuse!

              In other words: even if you give all your world class super-duper code, there will be companies that won't use that code to make their own code better but only to create a 'look-a-like', then extend the code with their own incompatible and all too oft bad additions, then release it as if it were superior to the original and lockin

              • To you and the GP I answer: if that would be your goal, you wouldn't use a license that allows those 'using' your code to pervert it for their own purposes making it defacto abuse!

                (emphasis mine)

                BSD guys are fine if anybody uses their code for any purposes, ergo there can't be any pervertion or abuse.

                The only requirement is to give attribution, respecting the copyright. And that's where Jiry and Nick failed. Ok, they have already restored the license and copyright, but now they're putting their

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by geschild ( 43455 )

                  "I know, it sounds naive at best (from a GPL point of view), that's why we can't understand each other."

                  Naive isn't what I was thinking in first instance. My main point, hidden in a defense against the argument that BSD allows anyone to build better code on the basis of BSD code, is that if that is truly the only reason BSD-type licenses are better, BSD-licensed code writers shouldn't have any problem with GPL co-opting of their code because the original code is still there under a BSD license for everyone to use, just as would be the case if the code was co-opted under a closed source license! In both cases

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by Santana ( 103744 )
                    I see your point and I agree with you. GPLed projects are not exception to "make all software better".

                    Yes, I do believe that companies make contributions back to BSD code, as you and anybody else can verify. And it's a fact that BSD code can't reuse already GPLed code.

                    There shouldn't be any angry or sad faces, certainly. I would need to brandish an ethical or moral argument for that, on which you may or may not agree:

                    Why a GPL project would relicense a BSD code, in the knowledge that BSD code would not be a

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by geschild ( 43455 )
                      I honestly sit here in admiration for the coolheaded and factual reply that I've just read...

                      Perhaps that says more about /. than anything else, but still :D.

                      I see your point that these kinds of 'moves' pit communities against each other. I hope that it doesn't happen too often, for that reason alone. I do hope that people will learn that if you create a 'freeer' license and use it, you have to take all the consequences or create a license that doesn't have so much freedom and has less of the consequences y

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by m50d ( 797211 )
          may even have ended up with a better system than Linux, but absolutely no real harm would have come to Linux itself.

          If you think that you've clearly never tried to get specs out of a hardware manufacturer.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Trademark violations of Linux are few, and insignificant. Linus himself seems to be against the spirit of the GPL - either version 2 or 3. Had he chosen the BSD, MS would've swallowed it like Kerberos or the TCP/IP stack and bastardised them, and Linux would've been kicked dead before it started breathing.

      The danger from Linus is the one that eeds to be tackled, IMO.

      Yes, we must follow the Linus way or the RMS way. It only seems logical to invite them both in and have them fight to the death in a cagematch. The survivor gets to determine the GPL version.

    • Re:The foundation owns only the trademark (Score:5, Insightful)

      by _merlin ( 160982 ) on Friday September 14, 2007 @07:57AM (#20601553) Homepage Journal
      Linus made Linux in the first place. It's his baby. He should be able to take it wherever he wants, whether you or I like it. Whether Linux is in accord with the spirit of the GPL v2 or v3 is irrelevant - the fact is he likes the letter of GPL v2 (I think his assertion that he understands the spirit of GPL v2 better than it's authors is silly, though).

      Personally, I disagree with a lot of things about Linux. And you know what I can do about it? Just not use Linux at home. Sure, I use Linux at work, because I develop software for it, because customers want to use it, just as I use Windows at work for developing Windows software for customers who want to use Windows. You can call me a sellout, but the reason I'm at work is to provide something that customers want, to make money to buy food, etc.

      If you want an OS that fits your ideology, find like-minded people and build one. Isn't that what HURD is meant to be? Don't try to take over Linux. Since HURD is going nowhere, it would appear that not that many significant developers care about building an OS on an ideology.

      Linux seems to get the balance right for a lot of people: open enough that you can modify it and feel in control, but not overly restricted so you can't build a workable business around it. It may be an uncomfortable fact for some, but Linux wouldn't be where it is now without the commercial backing it's got from IBM, Novell, etc. Building and maintaining something like an OS requires huge effort, and the only way to muster that in a capitalist society is with the prospect of building a profitable business on it.

      • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

        by jkrise ( 535370 )
        Linus made Linux in the first place. It's his baby. He should be able to take it wherever he wants, whether you or I like it.

        And RMS and the FSF made the GPL in the first place, and also wrote lots of code under that license and made it popular. It's their baby, and the FSF have stated their goals and aims very clearly in the text of the GPL, which even a baby can understand. The cry-baby corporate goons who are trying to steal the thunder of the GPL have been checkmated by the FSF which has upgraded the

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by bytesex ( 112972 )
          You seem to be trolling a bit but no, there is an alternative; keep the kernel GPLv2 and fork the GNU userland just before they go to GPLv3. That isn't such a herculean task as it at first might seem: much of the GNU stuff is at an end, so to speak; textutils, binutils, the shells and compilers are all pretty much finished works. Even Linus said that there may not be a Linux v3, because it's 'done'. Much of the applications that otherwise play on top of Linux are either windowed (which is a whole story o

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by _merlin ( 160982 )

          And RMS and the FSF made the GPL in the first place, and also wrote lots of code under that license and made it popular. It's their baby, and the FSF have stated their goals and aims very clearly in the text of the GPL, which even a baby can understand.

          And if they want to release future versions under the GPL v3, fair enough. They're free to do that, and I won't complain. If I don't like the terms of GPL v3, I don't have to use new versions released under it. However, I can fork older GPL v2 versions a

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by rbanffy ( 584143 )
          "If not the GPL3, Linus should re-release the kernel in BSD then, if he hates what the GPL stands for."

          That would be the stupidest thing to do. The GPL (all of them) keeps corporations honest and preserve the rights of users by requiring the distribution of source needed to rebuild those binaries. BSD has no such provision and the result is that corporations can do as they please. And they have been doing. That's probably why Linux has seen so much more contributions given back to it than BSD. If I am a cor

      • Re:The foundation owns only the trademark (Score:5, Interesting)

        by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Friday September 14, 2007 @08:25AM (#20601729) Journal

        Linus made Linux in the first place. It's his baby. He should be able to take it wherever he wants, whether you or I like it.
        The first place was a long time ago. The first release of Linux was about 10K lines of code; about half the amount of code that I have released so far this year as Free Software (not to Linux, so I have no personal stake in this). Since then, he hasn't exactly done nothing, but his contributions are dwarfed by the large number of other people who have contributed. He can do whatever he wants irrespective of what I want, but I don't think he should ignore the hundreds of other people who who have written the code that makes the kernel what it is today.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by _merlin ( 160982 )

          The first place was a long time ago. The first release of Linux was about 10K lines of code; about half the amount of code that I have released so far this year as Free Software (not to Linux, so I have no personal stake in this). Since then, he hasn't exactly done nothing, but his contributions are dwarfed by the large number of other people who have contributed.

          Yes, you make a fair point. I know Linus hasn't written all of what is now Linux. But when people/corporations contribute to Linux, they are

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by TheRaven64 ( 641858 )
            It's worth noting that a lot of contributors offer their code under different licenses. Some files are MIT or BSD licensed. Some are public domain. Some are GPLv2 or later. Linus uses GPLv2-only, but it is not the only license used. I'd be interested to see how much of the kernel code is under the GPLv2-only license.
          • I thought it was something like : you can foul all of the people some of the time, or some of the people all of the time; but you can't fool all of the people all of the time .

            But the i guess there is little difference between fooling someone and keeping someone happy , from the politician's point of view .
      • Linus has no option but to release the linux kernel under the letter of the GPLv2. He doesn't own copyright to the vast majority of the modern kernel. Each of the individual coders retains copyright of their parts. Even if Linus wanted to release under GPLv3 or BSD or some other license, he could not do so legally.
      • "I think his assertion that he understands the spirit of GPL v2 better than it's authors is silly, though"

        Considering that the authors have abandoned GPLv2, I would say they never understood the spirit of GPLv2. For them it was just a stepping stone to GPLv3, which itself is just a stepping stone to GPLv4.

        RMS can take his toys and go home, but he's fooling himself if he thinks he's got the only toys in town.
      • Since HURD is going nowhere, it would appear that not that many significant developers care about building an OS on an ideology.

        Can't comment on HURD development (I know next to nothing about it), but it seems like both gNewSense [wikipedia.org] and Gobuntu [wikipedia.org] (who should combine efforts, IMO) are built "on an ideology".

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by fuzzyping1 ( 266783 )
      How exactly did MS swallow "the BSD"? Last time I checked, BSD projects and communities were as strong as ever. If MS chose to use BSD code in their product, good for them! The end result is less crappy code.

      • Re:The foundation owns only the trademark (Score:5, Informative)

        by jkrise ( 535370 ) on Friday September 14, 2007 @08:29AM (#20601767) Journal
        How exactly did MS swallow "the BSD"? Last time I checked, BSD projects and communities were as strong as ever.

        How dd they swallow BSD? Simple:
        1.First they drank the BSD licensed code, like Kerberos from MIT and the BSD TCP-IP stack.
        2. As it descended down their oesophagus, they added proprietary extensions to it, and bundled it with their inferior monopoly Windows OS.
        3. The corporate types were then fed with choice quotes and reviews, and Active (Craptive) Directory got deployed.
        4. The market leading authentication mechanism is now incompatible with the original BSD Kerberos; thus it has been effectively swallowed.
        Clear?

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by suranyip ( 25422 )
          MS can always come up with a proprietary protocol and make it the "market leading" protocol, whether it is based on an open one or not does not really matter. It does not limit the use of BSD Kerberos protocol by open-source systems, and it wouldn't have changed if it had been GPL'd (in fact, quite possibly even fewer systems would support it).

          Also, I didn't really get what your problem was with MS's use of BSD TCP/IP, how it hindered open source or anything at all... Again, had it been GPL'd, they would ha

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by EvilRyry ( 1025309 )

            MS can always come up with a proprietary protocol and make it the "market leading" protocol, whether it is based on an open one or not does not really matter. It does not limit the use of BSD Kerberos protocol by open-source systems, and it wouldn't have changed if it had been GPL'd (in fact, quite possibly even fewer systems would support it).

            Yes, they tried this. They called it NTLM and it sucked. Hence the move to Kerberos which was then mangled a tad to make it incompatible. Why reinvent the wheel (poorly) when you can just modify the existing one a tiny bit it so that it doesn't fit your competitors product?

            • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

              by suranyip ( 25422 )
              The OP was suggesting that BSD licensing is bad because it allows embrace-and-extend. My point was that this is not something that can be solved by licensing, and that actually with BSD licensed code there are better chances of compatible implementations (as shown by the TCP/IP example) than with the GPL for example. In fact, even RMS agreed [lwn.net] that a less restrictive license (compared to the GPL) is suitable for reference implementation of a standard to gain wider adoptation. Thus the OGG Vorbis reference imp

        • 4. The market leading authentication mechanism is now incompatible with the original BSD Kerberos; thus it has been effectively swallowed.

          This seems fairly inevitable. I highly doubt that if these projects had been GPL instead, that Microsoft would have gone "shit! Now we have to play by their rules!" They would have just created their own proprietary authentication mechanism, and given their market position it would almost certainly have become the market leader anyway.

          The only difference that I can

        • Ahh...
          So if they've swallowed BSD and added their extensions during the digestive process, that explains how they've managed to consistently release such a crap OS!
        • Ok, I may be violating the roles here by bringing facts to the table, but:

          How exactly did MS swallow "the BSD"? Last time I checked, BSD projects and communities were as strong as ever.

          How dd they swallow BSD? Simple:
          1.First they drank the BSD licensed code, like Kerberos from MIT and the BSD TCP-IP stack.
          2. As it descended down their oesophagus, they added proprietary extensions to it, and bundled it with their inferior monopoly Windows OS.
          3. The corporate types were then fed with choice quotes and reviews, and Active (Craptive) Directory got deployed.
          4. The market leading authentication mechanism is now incompatible with the original BSD Kerberos; thus it has been effectively swallowed.
          Clear?

          A couple points here:
          1) Active Directory has had a few bugs in interop with non-AD Kerberos implementations. These have generally been fixed when discovered, however an tended to address corner cases in error handling rather than actual interop program logic. (There was an amusing bug that caused the Windows user to get a message saying that a password of several thousand characters was required when the MIT Kerberos realm issued

          • Actually AD has one more thing going for it. A huge install base and companies full of people that don't mind populating it.

            Interop of AD and existing LDAP projects will ease the progression of Linux in to the work place.

            It was easy to sell them on CENT VM servers because there was almost no interoperability required. Samba out of the box with AD logins and better integration with evolution would go a long way to selling the bosses on OSS.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by donaldm ( 919619 )
      From what I have read Linus appears quite accepting of GPL2 otherwise the Linux kernel would not have it, but he does not think the GPL3 is warranted. Of course that is his opinion and I respect him for it. Like it or not Law becomes a matter of precedent (INAL) and ruthless companies are always looking at ways of bending or circumventing but not actually breaking the Law, hence the need for laws to be expanded and hopefully improved on and because of this we now have the GPL3. In a few more years I would n

    • Had he chosen the BSD, MS would've swallowed it like Kerberos or the TCP/IP stack and bastardised them, and Linux would've been kicked dead before it started breathing.

      And yet OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and NetBSD were not kicked dead.

      • But they don't have support for nearly as much networking hardware as Windows does. In a GPL world, much of that support would have had to be contributed back. With a BSD license, Microsoft can have a whole herd of programmers extend the code, and keep all their extensions, and the improvements to the code don't go back to BSD.

        No big deal, you say, that doesn't hurt the BSD code as it exists, sure. But now take 4 or 5 or 20 groups all doing this to the BSD code -- the codebase doesn't move much, even though lots of people are making individual improvements -- even worse, those 20 groups don't get to leverage off of each others improvements.

        So while people can contribute changes to BSD code back to the code base (and many folks do), big players like Microsoft can mooch off of them and contribute nothing back; making their product always a little bit better than the BSD licensed one, which starves the BSD licencsed product of customers. And in an open source project, customers are also a developer pool.

    • Re:The foundation owns only the trademark (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rucs_hack ( 784150 ) on Friday September 14, 2007 @08:48AM (#20601939)
      Lets clear one thing up right here. Microsoft was not only allowed, but very wise to use the bsd TCP/IP stack. Berkley were asked to produce the definitive version of the stack, so as to ensure that all vendors were on the same page, so far as the specification was concerned.

      Microsoft changed some parts, as is their wont, but much of it remains unchanged. They may be buggers about a lot of things, but lets get this right, if they hadn't adopted BSDs TCP/IP code, windows would be even worse then it is now.
      • Another good example is X11. This was distributed under the MIT license, which is even less restrictive than the BSD license. Proprietary UNIX vendors added their own features, while Free UNIXes kept the MIT-licensed version (XFree86, and later x.org). The amount of work done on x.org has dwarfed the proprietary versions. Apple and Sun's versions of X11, for example, lack good support for the Composite extension, which means they can't do things like translucent windows or drop shadows.

        There were a l

    • Linus himself seems to be against the spirit of the GPL - either version 2 or 3

      His summary of GPLv2, "tit for tat", represents an optimized, reductionist, and ultimately simple expression of the license.
      Linus Torvalds must be stopped.
      Remember The Trial [imdb.com]

      Before the law, there stands a guard. A man comes from the country, begging admittance to the law. But the guard cannot admit him. May he hope to enter at a later time? That is possible, said the guard. The man tries to peer through the entrance. He'd been

    • He seems to like GPL2 though, so I don't think you can call Linus a danger. Its just that he isn't as willing to have developers give up all rights so that the user is better off.. I think he understands the needs for a balance.
    • The whole "Windows uses the BSD TCP/IP stack" thing is a bad myth. They did include some common tools originally from common BSD source, but it didn't extend much past that.

      --
      Dustin Puryear
      Author, Best Practices for Managing Linux and UNIX Servers [puryear-it.com]
      http://www.puryear-it.com [puryear-it.com]
  • Two, not one, but two! summits to discuss Linux legal issues. SIGN ME UP!

  • Will we get to see PJ. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "The second summit -- an open meeting -- will be held in Autumn 2008 where legal experts from any background will be able to attend."

    Oh I do hope so.

  • Seriously people, that's not news.

  • Invite the Slashdot crowd (Score:4, Funny)

    by Chapter80 ( 926879 ) on Friday September 14, 2007 @07:54AM (#20601515)
    Open Source summits, great! I imagine that the most frequently heard phrase at the summits will be "IANAL,..."

  • I'll help! (Score:3, Funny)

    by mattgreen ( 701203 ) on Friday September 14, 2007 @07:55AM (#20601527)
    I can answer all kinds of legal questions about Linux on Slashdot, so why didn't they invite me?

  • Taking things seriously (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JeremyGNJ ( 1102465 ) on Friday September 14, 2007 @09:33AM (#20602313)
    It's nice to see the Linux Foundation taking things seriously.

    Despite what the board-posting-fanboy-home-users say on slashdot, the legal ramifications of Linux are a serious concern to businesses adopting it. If they aren't nailed down and addressed, then it will continue to be the preferred OS of Mom's basement.

    In the end I think that the outcome will be playing nicer with closed-source and allowing a certain amount of concession. The question is: Is the community mature enough to handle that?

    • If they aren't nailed down and addressed, then it will continue to be the preferred OS of Mom's basement.
      This sentense has me completely confused. Are you saying that businesses aren't adopting Linux? My experience says otherwise.

      Are you saying we should make sure that something other than Linux (maybe Windows) becomes the preffered OS of Mom's basement?

  • ...a group of lawyers will make everything crystal clear to us. Then another, larger group of lawyers will come in and polish that crystal. Hmmm, looks like we better find someone to count the crystal...

  • Maybe on Linux the kernel, but I doubt a few can position themselves of authority on anything regarding open source software legal matters (The GPL v2 is clear enough to not need....). I did I miss some decision or all open source devs?
  • GPL: Carter, good for Humanity. Philanthropy: Expression of altruistic concern for human welfare and advancement, usually manifested by donations of money, property, or work to needy persons, by endowment of institutions of learning and hospitals, and by generosity to other socially/publicly useful purposes. Allows more low-TEK cultures, countries, communities to participate in theirs and global economic development. Focused protected IPR/GPL investment with many paths developing for returns on value. [help

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