Will GPLv3 Drive Users from Linux to FreeBSD?

An anonymous reader writes "Last week ZDNet put up an article asking a simple question: will GPL3 drive Linux users to FreeBSD? It's based on issues raised in the August FreeBSD Foundation Newsletter. That publication features a letter by the vice president of the FreeBSD Foundation, Justin Gibbs, arguing that the GPLv3 restricts the rights of commercial users of open source software, and is just the FSF's first step in changing the GPL in ways that authors of GPL software may not have intended. He suggests that commercial users should seriously consider BSD-licensed software as an alternative if they want to be able to safely ship products in the future. This is especially in light of requirements from the FCC that software running on devices (such as software-defined radios) be end-user replaceable. Gibbs states that the FreeBSD Foundation will provide an alternative to GPLv3'd software, especially in light of Stallman's statement that further GPL revisions are due in the near future. Is this likely to cause discontent among Linux users, or will they mostly ignore it?"

Re:GPLv3 software?

What Linux software is currently used that would be licensed for the purposes mentioned in the article which would go under the GPLv3? I can't think of any.

Wow, you must have thought about for a long time. The whole reason for the GPL3 is to stop companies like TiVO. Some people object to TiVO being able to base a product on Linux but then not let the Linux community pull it apart and play with it.

Re:GPLv3 software?

Wow, you must have thought about for a long time. The whole reason for the GPL3 is to stop companies like TiVO. Some people object to TiVO being able to base a product on Linux but then not let the Linux community pull it apart and play with it.

Linus has no intention of licensing the kernel under GPLv3. TiVO doesn't have a problem.

I am interested in finding out software that is used for such purposes which will be licensed under the new GPLv3 and which companies are effected.

I am looking forward to your reply.

Re:GPLv3 software?

Linus has no intention of licensing the kernel under GPLv3. TiVO doesn't have a problem.

That's not what TiVO thinks [guardian.co.uk].

TiVO likely uses some utilities and libraries from the GNU Project, such as glibc and coreutils, and when GNU switches to GPL3, they won't be able to make use of future versions or patches from that source.

Re:GPLv3 software?

That's not what TiVO thinks.

Yes, the kernel being licensed under the GPLv3 could harm them, but Linus has stated that he's not interested. The only time he considered doing so was for ZFS support. But then FUSE came along and ended up providing the support for the filesystem under Linux.

TiVO likely uses some utilities and libraries from the GNU Project, such as glibc and coreutils, and when GNU switches to GPL3, they won't be able to make use of future versions or patches from that source.

Actually glibc and coreutils are released under the LGPL, which are far less restrictive on what you can do with them.

Re:GPLv3 software?

Well, there's a lot of different reasoning behind the GPL. One reason for the GPL is that to have you return to the community modifications and improvements that you make to code you receive from the community. Another reason behind the GPL, though, is to allow people who receive code from you (that you based on code received from the community) to *modify* the code. When the GPLv2 was written, the thinking was that requiring you to share the code would automatically allow people to make modifications to it.

Tivo found a way around it that stuck to the letter of the GPL but violated the spirit of the agreement. Certainly if you read what RMS has written about his philosophy about software the ability to change and modify software that you get is a keep part of his philosophy.

Rightly or wrongly the Free Software Foundation is not about making software that businesses can use to make money. It's about making software that people can share and modify freely. If you're a business and you want to use code that comes under the GPL you should be prepared to go along with what the community expects. If not, go find code that is licensed differently, like under BSD, or hey, consider *investing* some money in the software so that you can do whatever you like with it and license it however you like.

Re:Um

Yeah, I always find this debate pointless on its face. BSD uses huge amounts of GPL-licensed software, so there's no substantial difference. In fact, BSD will be using GPLv3-licensed software, unless they intend on taking over their own fork of GCC (a monumental task which would substantially harm their ability to support BSD itself).

I also suspect that you'll see a fair amount of Gnome and KDE packages (though I don't know about the core of those two projects, and how they'll proceed) use the GPLv3.

Linux and BSD OSes will continue to use much of each other's code, and things like the file utilities will become less and less important. Eventually, I expect that you'll find Linux and BSD essentially differing on nothing more than how their distributions are structured and their kernels. The idea that their different licenses have a substantial impact on the end-user OS is rather myopic at best.

Get Real

I guess no one if they wanted to could write a Samba-like app for BSD? And please refrain from the juvenile "well if you think it is so easy, you do it" kind of crap. The point is, if someone wants to, they can. Complacency and pride has killed more than one software project/product. Ask Novell and maybe Corel about that.

Really, the only reason Linux/GNU software is where it is at today is because of commercial software and hardware companies. You can wear rose coloured glasses and talk 'lovey-dovey' about the hoards of volunteers, but Linus himself would have to work on predominantly 'commercial' software projects if his employer didn't think it was in their interest to have him work on kernel projects. The much vaunted open source alternative to MS Office is financed mostly by Sun and other companies. Even Ubuntu, everyone's darling of Linux distros right now would be nothing if commercial money weren't behind it to help in its financing. Shuttleworth wouldn't be able to keep the thing financed for a long time if he didn't form a company to provide commercial support options to it. Ubuntu wouldn't have the look and direction without him. And we have all seen how well he fits in with Stallman's thinking vis a vie mp3 support etc. and all the other GPL purists out there.

As much as the idealogues don't want to admit, people need to put food on the table and to pay the rent. Much (not all) of the most useful contributions to Linux/Gnu wouldn't be possible without commercial companies paying people to create the code for it. E.g. Sun, IBM, Redhat, Novell, and scores of others. Look at all the promising software projects that have died out because the original and most inspired stakeholders/developers have eventually realized that they have to spend their time elsewhere to have a family life as well as to make a living. The database tool Tora is a good example (the latest release is a year and a half old). If you can't program for your Linux/Gnu project during working hours you have to do it during 'non-working hours'... and you can't have a life outside that since it is time consuming. Most people want a 'life' and a family. The Linux/Gnu project is then tossed aside (maybe not happily, but it is still tossed)... Except if you are paid to do it during the daytime by the 'evil' commercial companies. Yes, the projects are open source. But the only ones that don't eventually die are the ones that companies help pay people to continue.

Stallman has hinted that there are more changes to GPL coming. Times have changed, and people playing with this license should be careful not to bite the hand that feeds GNU/Linux. Apple has shown that it is very possible to make some very good things from BSD.

Re:Linux != GPLv3

It's kind of amusing to look at the history of FOSS, and a recurring theme has been that developers think that just because they have developed a complex piece of software over a long period of time (gcc comes to mind) that it's not open to being reimplimented in the future. If GPL3 becomes a thorn in would-be commercial users, there will be money available to replace it with something that's not so obnoxious.

In 1977, we (SWTPc) reimplimented libc for exactly that reason: Western Electric licensing provisions were obnoxious and restrictive. This is the very same reason that RMS and others undertook to reimpliment the Unix toolkit. It's not magic; it's just code, and like employees, there is no piece of code that can't be replaced.

This could be a good thing.

More users and more developers would be a good thing.

But please, leave the attitude that i see too often in the linux world community. We don't need it on this side of the street.

( attitude is one reason i left the linux camp long ago. And i was there in the very beginning.)

Re:This could be a good thing.

Where are these elitist forums? I was accepted at many with open arms and, in retrospect, treated respectfully in light of really dumb questions while learning.

You mean you needed more elitism? Phew. I almost abandoned FreeBSD for that reason years ago, and I still am afraid to return to some BSD forums, where Linux users are treated as fanboys. No such thing on Linux forums (yet).

As a Linux user . . .

No. That was easy. Next troll post please dear editors.

so to sumarize..

Vice president of FreeBSD says FreeBSD is superior?

well i would never have guessed he thought that way

Re:Smells like FUD.

I believe the description is a bit wrong. The FCC probably mandates that it be impossible for the end-user to change the application. This is meant to avoid people changing the software to use spectrum that they are not supposed too. Example : a WIFI transmitter might be able to transmit at 2.5GHz, outside of the WIFI band. The only thing that prevents that might be a software check. So if you can update the software, you can do something that the FCC does not allow you to.

So they are arguing that it might be impossible to legally make a software radio with GPL V3 software (unless you enforce the mandatory checks at a hardware level so that the modified software is safe from an FCC perspective).

Not a chance.

GPLv3 may have some contraversy around it, but some of those reasons stated seem like FUD to me. For instance, they mention that software is required by the FCC to be end-user replaceable in devices such as software driven radios. Last I checked one of the main purposes of GPLv3 was to allow end-user replacement of software. Isn't that why they changed parts of it, so that no tivoization happens again? That alone makes me want to ignore the rest of their reasons. If they can't get that simple part correct, most likely everything else is a load of bull.

I Doubt It...

Most users don't care about the license. Users give far more weight to driver support and performance than licensing details.

Microsoft screws people and they beg for more

Even after all these years people eagerly line up to get screwed by Microsoft, so it's highly unlikely that something as tame as GPL v 3 is going to bring about a mass exodus from Linux.

calling them "users" confuses the issue

s/users/distributors/g

No, because its the same boat for both...

For FreeBSD, the kernel is BSD liscenced but pretty much all the tools are a mix of BSD and GNU v2 or later (and all from the FSF are GPLv3 soon), which is "hello GPLv3" for a lot of what you care about.

For Linux, the kernel is GPLv2 only but pretty much all the tools are the same mix of BSD and GNU v2 or later (and all from the FSF are GPLv3 soon), which is "hello GPLv3" for a lot of what you care about.

Thus there is no way GPLv3 will drive people from Linux to BSD for business use, as it really is the same impact for both.

will GPL3 drive Linux users to FreeBSD?

Short answer: no.

Why? Simple. The users of both GPLv3 and BSD licensed software really do not see a difference at all. They usually load the software in binary form and it does whatever it does in both cases. But the GPL vs. BSD differences affect mostly programmers and distributors, i.e. the provisions of the license control changes to and distribution of the software.

And in the case of programmers, nothing has really changed. Those who believe in the ideology behind GPL (ideology which was never hidden by RMS or FSF) will continue to do so, and are pleased with the direction in which v3 is headed. Those who loathe that idology in favour of another, BSD centered, which is just as ideologically motivated as the GPL, except covertly and implicitly, will continue to use BSD and bemoan the "evil" and "anti-profit" nature of the GPL.

What will change is that various large corporate leechers, who sought to abuse the GPL to their own ends, will see it harder to achieve their aims. They indeed might consider BSD ... or simply return to closed-source proprietary crud whence they came from in the first place.

Re:will GPL3 drive Linux users to FreeBSD?

That's a pretty bold statement that has many outspoken counter-examples. A lot of people believe in GPLv2's software sharing principles but think GPLv3's dictation of hardware usage crossed the line into the realm of DRM and other evils ("You must use your software how we say or you're in violation of our license").

You probably mean the "accidental" GPL users, chief amongst them Linus, who never really bothered to understand the ideology behind the GPL and simply used it out of "convenience". This "whatever works", "convenience-first" crowd is rather amusing since their success is pretty much dependant on a far greater number of contributors to their projects who do subscribe to the GPL ideology. Speaking of Linus, for an example of the consequences of his short-sighted, "technocratic" approach, witness the the Bitkeeper fiasco, amongst many other such examples.

I suspect, if nothing else, GPLv3 will drive a lot of software to remove the "and later" provision from their licenses, since they now realize that including it is essentially handing all control of their software's future to one man who seems to have gotten more extreme in recent years.

Again, that depends on if you actually subscribe to GPL ideology, or are merely using GPL because it is "convenient" or for some other such mis-guided reason. As to how many people are in this camp, I cannot even try to estimate. I would venture however to say that many of them do instinctively understand that GPL protects their work from being simply appropriated by some business for commercial use and that is what keeps them away from BSD.

Re:GPL2 is bad enough for embedded developers?

Sorry, you've got it wrong. The "work" is the software, not the physical device as a whole. You can have multiple software "works" (potentially with different licensing) that are aggregated on the physical device as a whole. This is why the whole "mere aggregation" clause exists in the GPL.

Excuse me?

I just now got Ubuntu working fine with my wireless card. I'll be damned if I'm moving to another bloody OS after all that. :P

linux user here

i do like FreeBSD, PCBSD & DesktopBSD, but PCBSD & DesktopBSD needs a feature during install to allow the person doing the install to allow selecting multiple mount points for / and /usr and /usr/home during the install, seems like with both PCBSD & DesktopBSD i could only select one partition to install everything in, i like to use a small / and a larger /usr and a /usr/home, as a long time slackware user i found FreeBSD's installer to be not much different and did allow selecting multiple mount points, i am looking forward to FreeBSD's next release (6.3? or 7?)

i welcome the competition the *BSDs will bring to the Linux world, and if Ian Murdock can get Solaris in the mix that will be good also...

Is it okay not to care about the politics?

I don't know about the rest of you, but I've been following this whole GPLv3 debate for a while, and I don't really see what the big deal about it is. I've read and I understand the differences between the three versions of the license, and I really don't see how that is going to really affect me. I've been using Red Hat/Fedora and Gentoo since 2000, and I can't think of a single instance of a software license ever really affecting me. Maybe its because I'm not a software developer, but does the regular user really care about any of this? I can't speak for everyone else, but I know I don't care. Maybe I just don't care about the politics of the whole thing, I have better things to do with my time. Am I going to jump ship on GNU/Linux because of an updated license? No. Would I ever? Probably not. Will this license ever affect me? Doubtful. Do I really care? No. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but if you don't like GPLv3, then you don't have to use it. Problem solved, next FUD article.

GPLv3 does hurt, however...

I was visiting an academic CS research group, which is doing some networking protocol work they want widely adopted (eg, in Windows would be a good start).

Their release of the prototype code was "whatever", so they did it under GPL (well, dual liscence, GPL for everyone, and a free liscence for funders). They were kind of shocked when the link on their web page was now pointing to a GPLv3 description, and I explained the implications.

They may very well change to BSD liscencing.

Commercial Users

TFS says 'commercial users', which would be businesses. If I were a business, and the GPL looked like it might be starting to impact me, I'd definitely start looking at BSD, the license of which is known for how 'free' it is to the user, rather than the developer. So far, it hasn't started to do that to anyone but Tivo and other hardware manufacturers, but the moment it starts looking like just using the software for any commercial purpose will be a problem, you can bet there'll be a ton of companies jump ship.

Why would they stick around and try to fight it instead of just picking an already-existing alternative? At the moment Linux isn't scary (to a business) and it is more popular. But let the boss get wind of imminent problems with it, and he'll ORDER a switch. That switch may even be to Windows Server, as the liabilities and costs are well known.

This is a very very hypothetical situation, since it would be absolutely insane for the GPL to further limit the freedom of users/distributors (beyond the v3 limits)... But it's possible.

No, USABILITY will move people from Linux to BSD

For practical reasons, people often find they have to use Windows. There are a lot of practical people out there, trying to actually GET STUFF DONE, so they make choices based on need.

In a similar vein, it is frustration with the out-dated UNIX system of spreading bits of applications around inconsistent places in /bin, /usr, /etc, /usr/local and who knows where else that has pushed me away from most Linux distros towards using BogoLinux, PC-BSD, and MacOS X.

BSD: providing unencumbered software for 30 years

Long ago in a galaxy far far away, Marshall Kirk McKusick wrote:

"You had copyright, which is what the big companies use to lock everything up; you had copyleft, which is free software's way of making sure you can't lock it up; and then Berkeley had what we called 'copycenter,' which is 'take it down to the copy center and make as make as many copies as you want.' You want to go off and do proprietary things with it? Fine, you can do that. You want to keep it out in the Open Source domain? You're welcome to do that as well. In fact, in the end, Richard Stallman had to agree that we had a less restrictive license than he did, although it took pulling some teeth to get him to admit to that."

Users?

Users care only a very little bit about the license. They want working software. Developers do care only a little bit since they cannot randomly mix & match code uder different licenses. GPL by definition gives them the most choice of source. Creators of disitibutions and hardware vendor (should) care a lot about the license. But they do not care about the freedom of the suers, they care about the number of copies they can distribute.

The vice president of bsd foundation cares for hardware vendor, who want to restrict hardware, which he calls the users/ freebsd community. However that are not users you and me who buy/use the end result.

PS..
-- BSD is dead. ;)

FUD

What a bunch of FUD. This is what I'd expect from Microsoft or similar. It's already clear that the Linux kernel cannot ever adopt any new license, and it the keystone for all Linux distributions. Many, many other projects have already said they will not adopt the GPLv3. I am sure that many Linux distributions will be wary of it as well, making it very prominent wherever a package is provided with said license. ("warning: module rmsgnu.o taints the kernel").

It's a shame to see such FUD perpetrated under the BSD banner, when there is actually so much more that the communities of Linux and BSD have in common than that which separates them. The only thing I have as bad is this is that NetBSD spinoff company that promotes their own embedded BSD version (Wasabi).