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BSD Operating Systems News

McKusick's Soft Updates now under BSD license 14

Posted by Nik from the live-from-the-Usenix-terminal-room dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "According to Kirk McKusick's soft updates page, the soft updates code that had a problematic license in the past is now (as of June 21 2000) released under a BSD license!. This is another big plus for the *BSD community, including some people that were hesitant in adding this stuff in their code base."
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McKusick's Soft Updates now under BSD license More

McKusick's Soft Updates now under BSD license

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  • "allows unrestricted use in source and binary forms for commercial or non-commercial use. "

    Now I'm trying to figure out what might violate those terms. A non-binary and non-source form? So is this discussion about it a violation?

  • Offtopic, but THANK YOU SEWILCO!!!! That is the first "First post" that I've ever seen on topic, and not eaten up by AC phirst post goons...
  • You're welcome, but maybe your comment should have been in sid=moderation [slashdot.org] or sid=slashdot [slashdot.org] where it would be on topic.

    Of course, both of these comments are offtopic for the topic of this discussion...

    (SEWilco vanishes in a cloud of greasy black smoke)

  • That applies only to redistribution, and in non-proprietary systems. This includes FreeBSD and most FreeBSD users.

    If you wanted to use it for proprietary systems, you could approach Kirk for a relicense for yourself.

    This is pretty standard. Did I miss your point?

  • Redistributions in any form must be accompanied by information on how to obtain complete source code for any accompanying software that uses this software...

    In the BSD world, we want businesses to be able to make proprietary products out of our products. (There are reasons for this which I will avoid discussing in this post.) With the old license in place, some company using softupdates would need to provide the source to softupdates, costing them money and time. The old license is not the BSD way.

    --
    Eric is chisled like a Greek Godess

  • Yes, it was there, but it was disabled, and marked along the lines of "do not use unless you want to debug". When I set up an OpenBSD machine to be secure and solid, I don't install _any_ external pieces of code. If softdeps is there by default, then that means that softdeps has been checked out and approved by the OpenBSD squad. (running NetBSD-current is an entirely different issue however, that box is a test bed and I do whatever I want with it)
  • I just got finished with McKusick's kernel internals class, and I must say, softdeps is conceptually one of the most interesting pieces of code I have ever seen. It's great that it will get to show up in {Open,Net,Free}BSD.
  • It always *HAS* been, it's just not been in by default. The code is distributed, but you had to recompile the kernel AND symlink the *.[ch] files from the contrib directory into the kernel source tree, presumably after reading the license and agreeing to it's (then) noncommercial only use.

  • I think it complements my point.

    --
    Eric is chisled like a Greek Godess

  • And here [netbsd.org] are detailed instructions for NetBSD.
  • Of course its hard to tell without asking Kirk himself why the old license was in place...

    No need to ask him, its right there in the README file that accomanied the code (in FreeBSD at least):

    "The idea is to allow those of you freely redistributing your source to use it while retaining for myself the right to peddle it for money to the commercial UNIX vendors."

  • Hmm, I wonder if he was joking. Nothing stops a commercial UNIX vendor from reading the softupdates source and reimplementing softupdates themselves. It also kind of defeats the purpose if it is now under BSD license.

    Of course I've usually found that Occam's Razor is the best tool for finding truth, so you are probably right.

    --
    Eric is chisled like a Greek Godess

  • No, quite obviously it wasn't intended for use in proprietary products without fee. If you wanted to use it in your proprietary product, you could pay for it. Your product will work with or without softupdates, so it's a matter of whether you're willing to contact Mr. Mckusick and see what sort of arrangement you could get.

    I'm quite sure, and hope, Kirk was able to make some money out of it, which allows him to continue developing and contributing. From the beginning, it was intended to be released under BSDL later, but still allowed the open source BSDs to use it, and help develop, test, and contribute towards it. I think this is great.

    I'm happy the BSDL allows this to happen - Kirk has worked on BSD for years, distributing the results under the BSDL, and other licenses might not have given him the opportunity to fund his development simply by developing. Of course the 'service and support' side could work, and does, but that one can make a living with updates, speedups, new algorithms, and redesigns is mostly the point.

    I think this is the BSD way. The other license is simply not the BSD license, but definitely fits in with the BSD way, in the grand scheme of things.

  • I doubt it, from the top of the license:

    Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

    along with this piece of section 4:

    This source code must either be included in the distribution or be available for no more than the cost of distribution plus a nominal fee, and must be freely redistributable under reasonable conditions.

    Show that Kirk probably recieved no money for people using softupdates. I've used it in FreeBSD since 3.0-RELEASE (maybe earlier) and I've never had to contribute any money to Kirk.

    The old license was probably in place because Kirk didn't feel that softupdates was proven or ready for widespread use. With this sort of license when you buy a product using softupdates you can examine the source to see if you really trust what softupdates is doing to your disk. It is required. With a BSD license you don't get that protection.

    Of course its hard to tell without asking Kirk himself why the old license was in place...

    --
    Eric is chisled like a Greek Godess

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