Gentoo/FreeBSD On Hold Due To Licensing Issues

Alan Trick writes "Flameeyes (a Gentoo/FreeBSD developer) recently came up with some serious problems among the various *BSD projects who use BSD-4 licensed code (which is all of them). Even other projects like Open Darwin may be affected. The saga started when he discovered the license problems with libkvm and start-stop-daemon. "libkvm is a userspace interface to FreeBSD kernel, and it's licensed under the original BSD license, BSD-4 if you want, the one with the nasty advertising clause." start-stop-daemon links to libkvm, but it's licensed under the GPL which is incompatible with the advertising clause. The good news is that the University of California/Berkley has given people permission to drop the advertising clause. The bad news is that libkvm has code from many other sources and each of them needs to give their permission for the license to be changed. At the moment, development on the Gentoo/FreeBSD is on hold and the downloads have been removed from the Gentoo mirrors."

hmmm

[macadamia_harold (947445)]

At the moment, development on the Gentoo/FreeBSD is on hold and the downloads have been removed from the Gentoo mirrors.

It's almost as if... BSD were dying, or something.

Re:

[baldass_newbie (136609)]

Fucking hippies.

Re:

[djh101010 (656795)]

Who the heck modded that as flamebait? Tired old in-joke, yes, but hardly flamebait. Sheesh.

Re:hmmm

[First Person (51018)]

For those who need the (admittedly weak) joke explained, try this [everything2.com].

Well...

[Aadain2001 (684036)]

This is better than getting the lawyers involved. What a great case of the community policing itself and making sure it is following its own rules. It may take a while, but I think this issue will be resolved and the project(s) will move forward.

But wait a minute...

[MarkusQ (450076)]

But wait--wasn't the decision to link to libkvm made by the authors of the start-stop-daemon? And aren't they the same ones who decided to release it under the GPL? It would seem to me that people are looking at things the wrong way 'round. Instead of getting wavers for libkvm they should be looking at the start-stop-daemon which has either effectively been dual licensed or has been misused by whoever decided to use libkvm (idf it wasn't the original author(s)).

--MarkusQ

Re:

[The_Paya (1048300)]

Actually, start-stop-daemon is Public Domain, the problem lies on the 4-Clause BSD license of the whole thing, RTFA and you'll see that there are about a hundred different "mentions" to make regarding advertisement, creating a whole mess for *any* derivative work of FreeBSD, and, perhaps, even for FreeBSD itself.

More information at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_Licenses [wikipedia.org]
And at: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html [gnu.org]

Re:But wait a minute...

[drmerope (771119)]

Just so. The anti-4 clause movement began with the FSF. Let me stake out the position that they are not entirely objective on this point. The imfamous clause 3 problem was and has always been a canard.

What's amazing is that people cite to the FSF propoganda and conclude they've prove their point.

Well here is the truth of the matter: Clause 3 relates particularly to advertising that discusses the features implemented by the code given in clause 3. What this means is you want to brag about softupdates and softupdates were covered by this imfamous third clause, you would have to say 'as implemented by Kirk...'

Anyways, this only applies to advertising with sufficient specificity to implicate particular code. Basically if you can trace a feature to 100s of contributors the clause is self-invalidating. No one contribution was responsible for the feature discussed in the advertising, therefore no mention is required.

The whole topic has been FUD for twenty years. That said, it has been such good FUD that people have actually taken extensive effort to purge the clause from the standard license. Only a few small files retain it today.

I think DragonflyBSD which is forked from FreeBSD 4.x is 4-clause free.

Re:

[arkanes (521690)]

It's not FUD - you seem to be claiming that it's a minor requirement and no big deal, which (as far as I know) nobody at the FSF has ever disputed. Not a big deal doesn't mean it's GPL compatible, though.

But the GPL specifies *no* additional restrictions, advertising clause is an additional restriction, end of story. That's all there is to it - 4 clause BSD license is not GPL compatible.

The PyDev extensions for Eclipse are distributed under a free license that includes the requirement that you take a de

Someone didn't read his next email...

[Zaurus (674150)]

Um, hello? Whoever submitted this basically took the original email that Flameeyes sent, but ignored the next one that came a few minutes later:

On Sunday 07 January 2007 02:47, Diego 'Flameeyes' Pettenò wrote:
> This is a very sad blog by my side, although I hope this can be cleared up
> soon so that I don't have to be this sad anymore in the future.
Edit: Timothy (drizzt) found us the escape route. Applying
ftp://ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/pub/4bsd/READM E.Impt.License.Change we can legally
drop the clause 3 of 4-clause BSD license, and be done with it. I'm writing
in this moment the code to do this, but it might require a new stage to come
out. Anyway, the problem is solved, and I think I'll mail FSF for them to
actually put that note somewhere, as it doesn't seem to be that documented
around here.

This *should* cover our asses about the problem, although I'm still looking if
there are sources that are redistributed under 4-clause BSD license, and for
which the license change is not effective (i.e.: they are not under UCB
copyright).

Re:Someone didn't read his next email...

[Erwos (553607)]

Unless this software came straight from UC Berkley, that escape route doesn't seem to exist. Their Office of Technology Licensing cannot unilaterally change the license on other people's code.

Re:

[robyannetta (820243)]

Shhh, don't let SCO hear about this as they'll probably assert some claim to the code just to have it disproven in 3 to 5 years.

Re:

[Otter (3800)]

The guy's site is flattened and Coral Caching doesn't seem to have happened yet so I can't check this, but... I had the same thought as you and then saw a note at the bottom or a comment or something that indicated that this "drizzt" strategem is only a partial solution.

At any rate, after fighting with yet another Portage update disaster and finding that the Gentoo documentation now recommends recompiling your entire system after updating GCC, I'm thinking this license issue is far from Gentoo's biggest pro

Re:

[Mr. McGibby (41471)]

I was confused by the whole recompile your system thing, but I did it anyway. Apparently this has something to do with the ABI. The explanation made sense to me. However, if you have some counter-explanation, I would appreciate seeing it.

Re:

[multipart/mixed (163409)]

You're fucking kidding me, right?

I'm still using the same OS I did five years ago.. but I've upgraded through SEVERAL versions of gcc...

> Besides which, a recompile every month or so is good for your system.

What, is that the Gentoo equivalent of rebooting a Windows box? *!@*!*@!!

Re:

[jandrese (485)]

I don't use Gentoo's package system, but at this point I think it would take me more than a month to recompile every application I have installed. Admittedly that includes some porkers like Openoffice (which takes 10GB of hard drive space and literally all day to compile).

Re:Someone didn't read his next email...

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

I take it you didn't read the second link, or the summary. This covers code written by UCB, and is widely known about. All UCB-original code released under the 4-clause license can be used under the 3-clause license. However, FreeBSD does not use the original 4BSD libkvm; a number of people have submitted patches to it over the years. Because FreeBSD does not require copyright assignment, these changes are still owned by their authors, and some of them are under the 4-clause license.

This means that parts of the library are 3-clause licensed, and parts 4-clause licensed.

Re:

[msuzio (3104)]

I think this might show the real problem -- copyright assignment. It appears the FSF requires copyright assignment:

http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/maintain.html#Leg al-Matters [gnu.org]

(I thought that was the case, but maybe I misinterpreted that statement)

Is this generally the case? Having never contributed back directly to a project (my contributions have all been along the lines of "look, this is wrong, here is a test case to show what might need fixing"), I realize I have no idea what the norm is. It certainl

Re:

[arkanes (521690)]

The FSF requires copyright assignment for all GNU projects (since the FSF are the owners and maintainers of the GNU project). Copyright assignment is relatively rare in the open source world, because it requires extensive and expensive legal infrastructure, not least of which is the organizational body that will actually hold the copy rights. It's also a pain for submitters, who need to send notarized copyright assignment documents. It's the best way to keep your house legally clean, but it requires a grea

Ah, freedom...

[Erwos (553607)]

Looks like we can toss a new one on our stack of freedoms:
Free as in "speech".
Free as in "beer".
Free as in "stolen".

And, yes, I understand nothing's been really stolen, and I really meant it mostly in jest. But this is one of the reasons that the community needs to understand that "open source" is not just "open source". It comprises a variety of licenses, some incompatible with each other. Developers need to be educated as to the ramifications of making bad decisions regarding software licensing.

Scare Tactics

[Duncan3 (10537)]

I'm sure this will blow over as nothing soon enough, but it's EXACTLY this kind of stuff that scares the crap out of corporations and prevents Open Source(TM) from making much headway.

The current reality is that your code is either public domain (new BSD is also allowable, GPL is _NOT_) and people will use it, or it's under one of the 7,867 Open Source(TM) licenses with 10 times that many cryptic and probably incompatible clauses that nobody really knows what to make of. The _applications_ will be used of c

Re:

[Jerf (17166)]

Can you explain to me why exactly it's an advantage for commercial software?

Open Source software can be reused, but requires attention to licensing constraints which may be problematic. Some of it may not be usable in a commercial product, in which case it isn't a problem; it effectively doesn't exist for you.

Closed Source software either simply can't be reused, but even if it can, requires paying somebody to receive the code that will contain licensing constraints that may be problematic, and may furthermo

Re:

[FallLine (12211)]

Can you explain to me why exactly it's an advantage for commercial software?

I'm not the OP, but...

A) Because most mainstream commercial/proprietary software tends to be more innovative and better. Yes, there are some exceptions, but they are very few in number and tend to be in areas where the demand is so small that it would be difficult to sustain a business on (the Windows monopoly vs Linux, perhaps being an exception in some ways).

B) Because its licensing terms are far more predictable and understand

Re:Scare Tactics

[Znork (31774)]

"B) Because its licensing terms are far more predictable..."

As in you can't use the source. At all. For any purpose. Well, sure, it's certainly predictable.

"C) Because the company that is maintaining the product is far more likely to stay in business and motivate itself to the kinds of support that you need."

New to the industry, eh?

Even if you ignore the fact that products will be altered beyond recognition and eventually discontinued, with or without the company surviving, the fact is very few companies in the proprietary software business appear to have any particular long term staying power. If they dont go belly up, they get bought up, their products cancelled, and customers forcefully migrated.

"D) Because most open source projects are simply half-assed and under-staffed."

And most proprietary projects are half-assed and under-staffed. It's endemic to the entire industry. At least with opensource you can discover it was half-assed before paying through the nose for a disconnected support number.

"they cannot afford the time and technical resources in practice to maintain said software themselves."

But if necessary they have the option. And while one company might not have the resources needed, several customers working together may very well have the resources (after all, the combined customers were the ones actually paying for the resources originally, so unless the initial producer was deliberately sinking money into the development without intending to profit, the resources still exist).

Re:Scare Tactics

[Jerf (17166)]

So, if you compare the ideal case for commercial software against the worst case for open source software, commercial software wins.

Big surprise there.

Neither your caricature of commercial software, nor your caricature of open source software, has much to do with reality. Bad open source basically doesn't exist for a commercial company, because they most likely won't even encounter it, and it certainly won't last long in their selection system unless it's completely broken. And I've been involved in buying many closed-source libraries, and your happy-happy portrayal of closed-source software doesn't really remind me of any of those experiences. By far I have more trouble with the closed-source stuff just being unsupported, and sometimes it's the big vendors (as in Microsoft, Oracle, etc.) who are the worst!

Re:

[itsdapead (734413)]

I'm sure this will blow over as nothing soon enough, but it's EXACTLY this kind of stuff that scares the crap out of corporations and prevents Open Source(TM) from making much headway.

Really? It just sounds like an open-source developer being dilligent. Nobody has sued anybody yet (and there's no huge damages to be made from doing so).

Using commercial software (especially in a corporate environment using volume licenses and developer tools) is no protection against getting sued by a patent or copyright

apple phasing out libkvm support

[oudzeeman (684485)]

OS X for Intel shipped with /dev/kmem disabled by default, which breaks libkvm (they kept the libkvm header and object files around though, and /dev/kmem can be re-enabled through a kernel boot argument). It is expected future versions will drop the support completely. It also appears that OS X on PPC based on Darwin 8.8.1 or newer also has /dev/kmem disabled by default.

I just had to remove all dependencies on libkvm for a project I work on, since we recently had our first users try to use it on OS X x86. It is software used on HPC clusters and SMPs, so there hadn't been much interest in OS X x86 until the Xeon XServes. I had been trying to get a hold of an x86 system to test on for months, and then this problem hit us.

Obviously this could affect OS X/Darwin until they completely phase this out and remove libkvm objects and headers from the software distribution.

"clean interface"???

[r00t (33219)]

Dude, you're dumpster diving in KERNEL MEMORY without any locking whatsoever. The data structures are changing as you examine them. A location holding a pointer to a process structure can suddenly change to hold a pointer to the read port of a hardware device FIFO, with any read you do being destructive by stealing the data. Even a page of memory can get remapped at any moment.

Also, this ties you to a specific version of the kernel. It ties you to a specific patch level. If ever Apple changes the layout of

FUD

[brass1 (30288)]

FUD, plain and simple.

1. The clause that's being referred to is clause three which states:

3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software must display the following acknowledgement:

The operative phrase being, "mentioning features or use of this software." Somehow I doubt there's so much with mentioning the features or use of libkvm no matter what the actual meaning of the word advertising is.

2. I've gone through all 15 of the .c files in my FreeBSD tree, exactly 2 of them have what *may* be a non-waived clause three: kvm_arm.c, and kvm_powerpc.c. The rest of the files are either copyright the Regents, don't have clause three, or use the CMU license.

The two files are copyright Wolfgang Solfrank and TooLs GmbH. I would submit that there is probably a clause three waiver from these folks; it's just that we haven't found it yet. Also, removing the two effected files would have no effect on functionality. Neither the ARM or PPC ports are functional.

The FUD here may not have been intentional, but it is FUD none the less.

Goofy

[Sloppy (14984)]

Think about how goofy this is. Berkeley originally wants ads to include a mention of them. Joe Schmoe contributes code with the understanding that his code is licensed this way (ad must mention Berkeley), and later Berkeley decides they don't care about the ads anymore.

Now there's concern Joe Schmoe might sue if an ad doesn't mention Berkeley?!?

(Could something like that be thrown out for lack of "standing"?)

Maybe it were best if only one license applied

[dosius (230542)]

If I had my druthers, I'd have an OS where all the code had one copyright and one license.

Failing that ... one license.

And I'd rather that be BSD than GPL personally. Which is why I'm trying to come up with a way to replace the whole userland on my system with one that's BSD licensed, but in Linuxland (I don't really feel like replacing my whole system right now as I have too much invested in it! Next machine though, I'll prolly put NetBSD on) it's easier said than done.

I'd like to see a BSD userland with

And the answer is...

[ByTor-2112 (313205)]

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/cvs-src/2007-Ja nuary/073415.html [freebsd.org]

All this painful discussion over what is probably a non-issue? Don't you just love this brave new world of 30 blogs linking to each other creating an artificial buzz/panic? Is this a case of premature eblogulation?

Re:

[jimicus (737525)]

Similar rules exist in the commercial world as well, y'know. Only it's a lot harder to spot breaches of them when all you have available is pre-compiled code.

BSD *is* commercial software!

[mangu (126918)]

people probably wonder why commercial software still owns the world's computers

In case you haven't noticed, the current Apple OS is BSD. "Commercial" isn't the opposite of "open source". The opposite of open source is closed source, and the opposite of commercial is non-commercial. You can have "commercial open source" software and you can have "non-commercial closed source" software.

Re:Trouble in paradise

[Richard Steiner (1585)]

Much of it is free. Much of it is not free. All generalizations are false. :-)

Re:

[JoshJ (1009085)]

As far as I'm concerned, use of public domain material in a program puts that program into the public domain also.

The lawyers would disagree. This is why we have copyleft in the form of the GNU GPL.

Re:

[smash (1351)]

You'd be wrong. In any case, the proper response to Microsoft or whoever "stealing" public domain code is, "Good! I hope it works well for them." It doesn't cost you anything if they use your public domain code (now THAT's an oxymoron), so you really shouldn't expect anything in return.

Hoorah, the first time I've actually seen a post by someone else who understands the BSD-license way of thinking.

Commercial use of my BSD code does not remove my BSD code from distribution. If someone paid coders to impr

Re:as an end-user only...

[iainl (136759)]

Basically, because if you don't give two shits about what the license says, you're better off warezing a copy of Vista and being done with the whole nonsense. It's obeying the license restrictions that makes what you're doing legal.

Re:

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

are you suggesting I just warez IE7 and run it on my Ubuntu box simply because I don't see what their issue is?

The issue is that the distribution is only able to distribute the code if they follow the licensing conditions. The issue doesn't affect you as an end user except in one way; if they can't legally distribute the code to you, how do you expect to get it and run it?

Re:as an end-user only...

[ScentCone (795499)]

Anybody want to explain to me why I (as a user only) should care?

Um, because if stuff like this doesn't get ironed out, then projects like this never get going, and you (the consumer) don't get the product/service. If you don't care about whether it's there as an option, then, right... you shouldn't care.

Caring about it, philosophically/academically isn't the same as having the wherewithal to be a nuts-and-bolts part of resolving the problem. But if you pretend that this stuff doesn't in any way matter, then you're betraying a pretty simplistic understanding of how "free" stuff comes to exist in the first place. No question that many arguments in the F/OSS universe are of the "how many angels can dance on the head of pin" variety. But whether something is, or isn't within the bounds of the licensing model under which much of this entire area is built - well, that actually does matter. One is reminded, sometimes, though, about the old saying about why intra-staff disputes at colleges are so wicked: the drama is so big because the stakes are so small.

Re:

[WNight (23683)]

And be done, something undoubtedly is. My guess is that if nobody can find a nice solution to this soon someone will just declare the module in question to be in need of a rewrite and they'll code it from scratch with a friendlier license. Rewrites of existing code are often much faster and more stable anyways so it's not like it'd be a total loss.

Re:as an end-user only...

[glwtta (532858)]

What "moral highground"? When you use other people's software, you are expected to comply with the license it's released under. With a lot of redistribution and integration of products with different licenses it can get a bit tricky sometimes.

If you are only a user you would obviously care only if you are a user of that particular product, and licensing issues would prevent you from using it. Seems pretty obvious.

Although mostly this is of interest to developers who might run into similar issues themselves.

Re:as an end-user only...

[alteran (70039)]

Here's a link explaining the problem.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html [gnu.org]

I'll explain how this might affect a user like you, because at first it doesn't seem like much of a restriction: just mention UC Berkley in any advertisements featuring BSD.

What could be simpler!

And then seventy five other shmoes copied the provision.

So now my voluteer website saying, "I'll help anyone, anywhere install BSD for free!!!!" needs to say:

"I'll help anyone, anywhere install BSD* for free!!!!

This product includes software developed by the University of California, Berkeley and its contributors.
This product includes software developed by the alteran, who considers himself extremely l33t.
This product includes software developed by the University of Utah and its contributors.
This product includes software developed by Inman Software Corp, and its employees, to be used freely as long as this statement is attached. Inman Software Corp acknowledges the work of many of its contractors, who may have also contributed code to this product.
This product includes software developed by the Grossman Progammers and Associates. Use of this software is fully authorized for all purposes as long as this statement is enclosed.
This product includes software developed by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and its contributors.
This product includes software developed by the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and its contributors.
This product includes software developed by the University of North Carolina at Tweetsie and its contributors.
etc., etc.

You get the idea, but pretend I make this list TEN TIMES longer.

Of course, when you got your copy of this software, you saw something like what I showed you above, right? Because if you didn't, well, you're running your software illegally. If you didn't, please erase it. (See, that's an effect right there!)

And that's just the beginning. Anyone advertising/distributing BSD needs to READ EVERY DAGGUM LICENSE and figure out which shmoes need to be credited on every scrap of paper or HTML mentioning BSD. Or just be illegal-- their choice. And because there are so many contributors, any one of which could insert a new program and provision at any time, which means every update needs to be rechecked.

No one is going to do this. They are just going to give up, or ignore the law-- both of which ultimately hurt free software.

And, of course, its users.

Re:as an end-user only...

[sholden (12227)]

But the entire text of the GPL doesn't have to appear on every piece of advertising for the product, so that's completely irrelevant.

Re:

[jimstapleton (999106)]

directly:
it doesn't affect you, at all

indirectly:
Technically, they are supposed to follow the license of software that they use. Now, if someone wanted to be a jerk and say "You aren't following the license for my software!" it could cause trouble. This could seriously kill development and apps. By working it out before hand, it makes sure your software has a longer and happier development lifespan.

Re:wow, great "free" software

[bmac83 (869058)]

Sure, it would be great if all these licenses were innately compatible. However, since they're not, it would be a disservice to the entire free software community if we were to start ignoring the provisions of each license in a spirit of universal brotherhood. As much as we all worry about challenges to the GPL, etc., in courts by open source opponents, we should not dilute open source licenses' credibility within the free software community. How seriously could the legality of these licenses be considered then?

I think it's great that a developer took the time to notice a problem and begin the due diligence required to come to a legal, mutually-acceptable conclusion. That's the mark of a true community.

Re:

[jimstapleton (999106)]

not to mention it's the worst of both worlds...

I've used several versions of Linux as well as FreeBSD...

In my experience, although it requires a lot of typing and less GUI, FreeBSD has been, by far, the easiest to administrate.

Linux has had much better driver support however.

So... It's a system with the base (and hence driver support) of BSD, and the administrative tools of Linux?

That just sounds painful and unnecessary.

Re:

[menkhaura (103150)]

Exactly my thought. There should be a system with the Linux kernel and the FreeBSD userland (ports mainly, but rc.conf and init scripts would be nice as well). I've heard that pkgsrc [pkgsrc.org] is a ports look-alike, designed to be portable across many operating systems, including Linux, but I haven't seen any Linux distro using it. The closest seems to be ArchLinux (which uses BSD-style init), but they have their own, incompatible, package management tools.

Gentoo's portage would be nice if it weren't so damn slow...

Re:

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

I disagree that the Debian GNU/kFreeBSD port is a waste of time. Linux is not the official kernel of the GNU project and, while I doubt anyone will actually use the FreeBSD kernel port, it is useful to improve the portability of the GNU system.

More interesting is the Nexenta project, which is porting Ubuntu to OpenSolaris (and has usable releases out already).

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't upset the OpenSolaris fanboys, they might set Jörg Schilling on you.