Doug Mentohl wrote:
>
> amicus_TROLL while ignoring the quote went straight for the ad hominem
> wrote:
>
> > You are being far less than candid about the truth of the
> > matter and are trying to mislead those who are the willing
> > victims of your nonsense. The real situation is as stated
> > by the IBM manager who oversees the entire effort:
>
> Schestowitz posts links to blogs quoting Bob Sutor the VP of Open Source
Disclaimer on his blog notwithstanding, it appears that Bob
neglected to get approval for his posting from fellow senior VP
and boss of IBM software group Mills (amicus quoted Mills). Apart
from that, I see the following comment on Bob's blog regarding
his GPLv3 posting:
http://www.sutor.com/newsite/blog-open/?p=1507#comments
(I can assure you that many IBM engineers, legals aside for a
moment, are NOT happy even with GPLv2... god save us from v3 so
to speak)
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JVDeLong
April 4th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
I will be quite surprised if the path to adoption is smooth.
There are several areas of serious uncertainty, such as will make
cautious lawyers advise their clients to go slow in boarding GPLv3.
Maybe the IBM engineers are happy, but it will be surprising if
many corporate GCs are.
(1) The Digitial Rights Management issue. It appears that DRM and
GPLv3 are incompatible, despite Bruce Perens recent argument to
the contrary. Many in the tech community abhor DRM, but the content
creators regard it as crucial to their survival. They will have
nothing to do with any software that does not allow them to protect
their stock-in-trade.
(2) The web services issue. GPLv3 allows any contributor of code to
a GPLv3 project to add an as-yet-unwritten Affero license clause
that would require anyone using the code for a web services
application to make the source code available. This could well
require that the services provider make available not just the code
it received, but any tweaks it made on its own. (Since the Affero
license is not yet written, who knows how far any requirements will
extend.) This not only puts valuable IP at risk for companies like
Google, it is a fundamental shift in the nature of the GPL - before,
as long as you did not further distribute code, you had not
obligation. Now, there could be a host of questions concerning the
reach of this clause to people who clearly do not redistribute code,
but who do operate over the web.
(3) The patent issue. Behind the MSFT-NOVL deal is simple a reality.
The customers care zero about the civil wars of the software world.
They want their programs to interact, without their involvement or
worry. The drafters of GPLv3 are determined to break this
interoperability. Were I distributor of open source software, I
would worry that customers might react to this state of affairs by
jettisoning the people who broke the link, not those who tried to
forge it.
(4) The dynamic linking question. An issue under GPLv3 has been how
closely code linked to GPL?ed code had to work together before the
FSF would claim that the linked code must also be covered by the
GPL. The GPLv3 says: ?Corresponding Source includes interface
definition files associated with source files for the work, and the
source code for shared libraries and dynamically linked subprograms
that the work is specifically designed to require, such as by
intimate data communication or control flow between those subprograms
and other parts of the work.? This seems to extend the reach of the
GPLv3 even further that was true for GPLv2, but the exact extent is
murky.
Finally, the whole GPLv3 rationale document is full of abstractions
and devoid of examples, so one cannot assess the intended reach of
these provisions. As I said at the start, the GCs are not gonna be
happy.
-------
regards,
alexander.
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