xMach GPL Free

Anonymous Coward writes "I just downloaded xmach from xmach.org and it appears that they are now completely gpl free. I emailed one of the developers and he tells me that they have someone working on adding BSD drivers to it, and that he (the guy I emailed) is integrating ufs+ffs+softupdates from freebsd. Sounds like they're going to be producing something usable in the near future. Oh, and the full source tarball is less than 3megabytes. I guess they meant it when they said proactively not bloated."

Re:What compiler?

[Anonymous Coward]

You compile it with GCC under FreeBSD or, *shudder*, Linux. Basicly I hope they will try to make it compile with LCC, because a GPL free world would be great.

Re:What use is The Hurd then?

[Anonymous Coward]

a) its not GPL'd.

b) HURD is a microkernel design. xMach is just a monolithic BSD kernel running on top of Mach. All the disadvantages of both microkernels and monolithic kernels, and none of the advantages of either.

(none)

[mr]

The GPL can be understood by anyone who is willing to invest a small amount of time in understanding it. You claim to understand it, and you are clearly of below average intelligence.

Miss, I have made no such claim to understand the GPL.

My claims are:

1) the GPL is a long, wordy document
2) It is harder to read than other licences, and I used a common tool to show that.
3) If the document was easy to understand (your claim) than why did Corel Corp fail TWICE to comply, why did Virgin ship a non-conforming implementation, etc.

To quote you:
I can't imagine a company like Corel would be unable to find a IP Lawyer who would explain the license to them for a few thousand dollars

Thank you for making my case. The GPL is complex enough to baffle IP lawyers Corel uses. And Corel is a company that makes its money off of IP in software. Corel understands the importance of IP. Yet, Corel failed twice to understand and comply with the GPL. And Bruce Perens explained it to Corel after the 1st violation. Are you next going to claim that Bruce is incapable of explaining the GPL? If HP (HP now pays for Bruce's time) violates the GPL, that argument would hold water.

BTW, are you attemting to present an argument to refute that the purpose of the GPL is to destroy IP? Because that is what you quoted of my text.

wide code useage

[mr]

The only thing is, I'm sad there so down on the GPL

Who says they are DOWN on the GPL? Does the new licence *STOP* this code from being used in some GPL project?

Perhaps the idea of wide code useage is more important than a false feeling of 'protection'. If someone who is bigger wants something, and are prone to taking what they want, they will do that.

And the GPL isn't going to stop them. It hasn't stopped anyone yet, has it?

none

[mr]

Miss,

Here is your ORIGINAL statement:

well understood Gnu license

And I have given examples that support the claim the "GNU license" (GPL) is NOT well understood.

Given you have determined that you can not provide a useable counter-argument, you now choose to state that you did not make such a statement?

You also make a claim:
The LCC "license" is not a license at all. Yet you also claim I'm not a lawyer, and probably without any legal meaning at all Is there anything you are sure of, other than you are not a lawyer and that you have no skill in passing legal judgement, YET insist some software license is a fucked up pile of crap.?

Re:Pro GPL people with mod points are delusional.

[mr]

I agree that the actual text of the GPL is somewhat complex, but the gist of the GPL can be summarized quite succinctly:

Then why not dump the 24K plus words for your 37 words?

The original comment was "well understood Gnu license". The 7 page document, the trail of license violations show that the Gnu License is NOT well understood.

If the document was well understood, companies who WANT to protect their IP would not touch GPLed code and instead use other code. Apple did this and selected FreeBSD. (+ Net and openBSD although Apple only notes FreeBSD) Given issues with Corel and others, the GPL is *NOT* 'well understood'.

Re:Pro GPL people with mod points are delusional.

[bellings]

If the document was well understood, companies who WANT to protect their IP would not touch GPLed code and instead use other code.

The GPL can be understood by anyone who is willing to invest a small amount of time in understanding it. You claim to understand it, and you are clearly of below average intelligence. I can't imagine a company like Corel would be unable to find a IP Lawyer who would explain the license to them for a few thousand dollars (read: very cheaply).

No-one is claiming the superiority of the GPL over the LCC license is due to the intent or underlying philosophy of either license. The claim is that the GPL license is superiour because it is a license -- is is not a non-intelligible and probably non-binding group of words which probably lack any legal meaning, like the LCC license is.

Of course, your measure of the "goodness" of a license is the Bormuth Grade Level of the license, as measure by Microsoft Word. It's certainly pretyy clear you have no understanding or appreciation of Law or Philosophy.

Re:Mac OS X sucks?? I'm confused

[ickyfreak]

isnt it bsd with mach over the bsd kernel? blah

Re:Pro GPL people with mod points are delusional.

[jmallett]

And that any program that relies on GPL code must itself be GPL'd.
--

Shoudln't this be YABSD?

[azephrahel]

Yet Another BSD?

Well to be honest, good. Everyone needs a project to work on, and if somone wants to hack on an operating system, groovy. That means there a better coder than me ... or at least more ambitious. The only thing is, I'm sad there so down on the GPL. AFAIK the only thing the GPL limits you to is closing the source, and selling your colosed source derviates without including the source (hence closed source. OK I'm getting redundant). Still another OS, another phiolosphy, and another Unix. I'll probably never use it (Unless the m4 microkernel is ported to hardware that NetBSD isn't) but its still a neat project.

..I just wonder what compiler the'll use since gcc is, well, gpl'd.

Re:Pro GPL people with mod points are delusional.

[klaun]

There is a difference between how understandable boilerplate is and how understandable the ideas of the GPL, BSD, etc are. For example, the lease on my Apartment is thirty some odd pages of legalese. But the idea is simple, I pay the owner and I get to live here.

Now, as to your suggested alternative, it doesn't matter how much more easily an idea can be stated if it doesn't communicate what you want to convey. I think people who use the GPL recognize the difference between it and the public domain. And decide the GPL is what makes sense.

What compiler?

[vesamies]

I also want to know what compiler they have. And that 3 megabytes probably don't include the compiler nor the userland. Interesting project though.

Re:Pro GPL people with mod points are delusional.

[__aakpxi9117]

remember that part of the purpose of the GPL is to motivate people to write free software ;-)

Umm, don't you mean FORCE people to write free software. At least if they want to use GPLd software that's what they have to do. Even Linus is making special concessions like allowing loadable kernel modules, otherwise TiVO would be based on BSD because of the anti-commercial GPL license. Even with those special exceptions that have been allowed, developers want freedom, not code that decides their morals for them. This is why NetBSD is getting to be the OS of choice for Handhelds rather than Linux which works on few, and sucks on all.

Re:Mac OS X sucks?? I'm confused

[ant_morgan]

A small clarification: OS X is actually Mach with a BSD unix layer on top. I to however wish to see more varients as I feel that they generaly increase quality, dispite the traditional 'less unix acceptance due to too many venders' argument, as this is normally only taken by comercial vendors.

Re:What compiler?

[little_fluffy_clouds]

LCC [or insert any other compiler other than GCC] ? It'll probably never happen. GCC is not the best compiler in the world, and at certain things (optimisations, for example), it is rubbish. However, it is more portable than anything else around, and, let's face it, we are stuck with it. There are a lot of people very pissed off that they have to use it (I'm most familiar with the attitudes and bitches of people who use/develop NetBSD regarding GCC), however there is no even remotely mature compiler that could drop into it's place in the project.

That's not to say it won't happen, but it won't happen soon.
--

Re:wide code useage

[Arandir]

Correct. BSD code can be used in GPL projects, but the reverse cannot occur. So the BSD code gets wider coverage.

Re:Pro GPL people with mod points are delusional.

[flimflam]

Well, you're right about the pro-GPL slant of slashdot. I really don't have anything against the BSD license, but it really has a different function from the GPL. I use both of them for different projects.

I agree that the actual text of the GPL is somewhat complex, but the gist of the GPL can be summarized quite succinctly: "You can use this program for anything you want. If you distribute it you must also distribute the source code. If you distribute modified copies of this program, the modified copy must also fall under this license."

The complexities mostly come in in defining in which circumstances GPL'ed software can be used with proprietary software. For people that exclusively write free software, this doesn't become an issue. For the others, well, remember that part of the purpose of the GPL is to motivate people to write free software ;-)

Pro GPL people are delusional.

[mr]

well understood Gnu license

If the GPL is so well understood, then why did Corel have 2 brushes with GPL violations? How about the Virgin Webplayer? Or AMD's latest hammer emulator?

Re:What compiler?

[bellings]

Basicly I hope they will try to make it compile with LCC

The LCC license is a fucked up pile of crap [princeton.edu]. The LCC license essentially says "you can't sell or use this this compiler, except under a set of conditions that we can't be bothered to clearly define. If you have any questions, talk to our publisher." I'm not a lawyer, but it's pretty clear they didn't bother to consult a decent one when they wrote up the license, and I'd be very suprised if the license they wrote didn't effectively say, "You are not allowed to use this code, ever, for anything. Go to Hell."

I'll take the restrictive and well understood Gnu license any day of the week.

Re:(none)

[bellings]

No. I don't give a flying fuck what the "purpose" of the GPL is. The point I made was that the LCC license was an unintelligible mish-mash, probably without any legal meaning at all. The LCC "license" is not a license at all.

By contrast, the GPL is a license. Given a choice between no license (the LCC "license"), and a real license (the GPL license), the GPL license is always preferable, since it provides me with at least some rights. The LCC "license" does little more than convince me that the copyright holders feel that learning from the book is fair use, and they won't sue me if I try to use the book to learn from.

I have no idea what you have against the GPL license. If you don't like it, please stop using any software that falls under the license. Perhaps, if you feel strongly enough, you can create your own license, and spend the next 20 years of your life creating software and a community around your license. Or, you can just bitch and moan on slashdot. It's your choice.

Being BSD will help...

[ant_morgan]

As FreeBSD has showen (working closely with Apple) being BSD allows for co-operation with industry, which can be advantagous, however If a company choses to close the source completely then they can simply be ignored. Conversly if they wish to implement a partially open operating system (as apple have done releasing the code under the terms of thier own licence) then the BSD is flexible enough to allow them to do this, whilst still contributing code back to the community under the terms of the BSD.

Re:Pro GPL people are delusional.

[flimflam]

If the GPL is so well understood, then why did Corel have 2 brushes with GPL violations? How about the Virgin Webplayer? Or AMD's latest hammer emulator?

Because these are companies whose business in is proprietary software, and the whole concept of free software is new to them.

At any rate, the GPL is, for the most part, internally consistent and complete, and can therefor be fully understood without referring to very much external documentation. The concept is really not very complicated at all. Really, it only gets complicated if you are looking for some loophole to break the spirit of it, without breaking the letter.

Re:Pro GPL people with mod points are delusional.

[mr]

Ok, facts (per Micorsoft word) that the GPL is *NOT* easy to understand, compared to other options.

The GPL with preamble/postable/all the babble
Counts:
7 pages
words 2946
characters 14538
paragraphs 171
sentences 93
Averages:
Sentences per paragraph 0.5
Words per sentence 31.7
characters per word 4.8
Readability
Bormuth Grade Level 11.6

The 4.4BSD-Lite with clause #3 removed.
Counts:
1 page
words 254
characters 1422
paragraphs 26
sentences 6
Averages:
Sentences per paragraph 0.2
Words per sentence 42.3
characters per word 5.2
Readability
Bormuth Grade Level 10.7

And the simplest license:
"I hereby place this software in the public domain" (given how Berkely didn't go after Microsoft and others for the use of BSD code in an improper way, or how no one has sued over GPL violations, it might as well be public domain)
Counts:
1 page
words 9
characters 42
paragraphs 1
sentences 1
Averages:
Sentences per paragraph 1
Words per sentence 9
characters per word 4.6
Readability
Bormuth Grade Level 8.5

The GPL is more complex compared to the BSD license. And, it is that complexity that causes issues for Corel and others.

Readability formulas

After Word completes a grammar check, readability statistics are displayed, including the following readability formula:

Bormuth Grade Level

This index determines a readability grade level based on characters per word and words per sentences.

Oh and once again, the /. moderation system mods up pro-GPL comments and mods down anything critical of the GPL.