Keep up the good momentum [LWN.net]

Keep up the good momentum

Posted Apr 18, 2003 21:42 UTC (Fri) by coriordan (guest, #7544)
In reply to: Better than I expected by kmagnusson
Parent article: An apology from Novell's CEO

hello kmagnusson,
I'd like to pass on a bit of advice of my own: GNU General Public License

The announcement the Novell will support "Linux" is interesting but has not
gotten me excited. In the past companies have decided to support "Linux"
or to "open source" their software, but all too often this means making up
their own software license and bashing down the corners until the OSI will
certify it (or at least endorse their efforts).

This doesn't work.

Take RealNetworks as an example. They didn't understand Free Software
development at all. Their biggest mistake was making up their own license.
Their next was adding a lot of "We control This" clauses to the license.
And finally they made the whole process complicated and only released
token parts of their software. Nobody cares about them. (As far as I
know, Bruce Perens and the Free Software Foundation both tried to help
RealNetworks do it right but even they couldn't save them.)

Two different examples are TrollTech and Netscape. Both companies were
afraid that the GNU GPL wouldn't work in a commercial environment, they
decided to make up their own licenses (the QPL and the NPL). The community
made it known that this was an annoyance and both groups adopted the GNU
GPL.

Sun did it right from the start. OpenOffice: they GPL'd every single line
they owned. And the parts they didn't own, they wrote GPL replacements
for. Sun didn't GPL every piece of software they owned, but they GPL'd
a complete unit of software, not portions of it. They made it very clear
what was GPL. They even setup openoffice.org to distribute this piece
of Free Software.

Most of the companies that do it wrong don't do it out of malice, it's
just that they can't convince their legal departments to trust the GPL.
Please do what you can, and when I see "Novell" and "GPL" in a headline,
I'll get excited.

Thanks for reading.
Ciaran O'Riordan

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Keep up the good momentum

Posted Apr 18, 2003 22:46 UTC (Fri) by kmagnusson (guest, #10670) [Link]

Thanks for your comment. Rest assured that where it's appropriate that we use the GPL, that we will do so. We have no intention of running off and creating our own incompatible license--we've seen that doesn't work. Further, we've done an extensive review of the GPL--we're not at all scared of it, we know what it's about and how it works, and we know how to use it in conjunction with our own proprietary services that will run in user space. So you should see "Novell" and "GPL" in the same headline in the next 18-24 months when we release NetWare 7 based on the Linux kernel.

............ kris

"... when we release Netware 7..."

Posted Apr 19, 2003 17:46 UTC (Sat) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link]

That phrasing suggests strongly that you think you've figured out a way to prove that what commercial clients for something like Netware are *paying for* is auditability, accountability, and support, not merely the functionality of the package. And that, by extension, you can stay in business and make a living and still open source your code.

And I *dearly* hope you're right.

Someone makes the point further up the page that Sun "got it right" with StarOffice -- which is only questionably accurate, but not *pertinent*, as OOo is *not* the bread and butter for Sun.

Netware *is* for you.

I'm personally pleased to see that you think that the underpinnings of Linux are sufficiently sturdy even at the current stage to be a good target to port your services subsystems to for commercial sale -- it makes my sales job (for those few who are still Linux scaredycats) even easier.

Best of luck on this one, and good save. :-)

Keep up the good momentum

Posted Apr 21, 2003 17:22 UTC (Mon) by kmagnusson (guest, #10670) [Link]

I want to clarify my comment about seeing "Novell" and "GPL" in the same headline--I can see that it was confusing. I don't want to disappoint anyone, but Novell doesn't have plans to release our proprietary services under the GPL--things like our file, print, directory, collaboration, and other services are how we are adding proprietary value to Linux for our customers, and they are what our customers customarily pay for when purchasing NetWare.

What I meant was that when we develop Linux kernel code, we will of course contribute these improvements to the developer community under the GPL. We have staffed up a large team of Linux kernel engineers whose intentions are to become first-class citizens of the Linux developer community in the same way HP, IBM, Red Hat, SUSE, etc. are. Further, Novell is evaluating which of its proprietary technologies are good candidates for open source release, and we will likely use the GPL for the license for these projects. So that's why you'd see "Novell" and "GPL" in the same headline--code contributions to the Linux developer community, and new open source projects of formerly proprietary code. I hope that clarifies things a little bit--I certainly didn't mean to mislead anyone. Thanks for understanding.

................ kris

Keep up the good momentum

Posted Apr 22, 2003 4:03 UTC (Tue) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

> I don't want to disappoint anyone

I'm not dissapointed. Solaris remaining proprietary does not change the
fact that OpenOffice is GPL. I use Free Software. I descriminate by
license, not by vendor.

> when we develop Linux kernel code, we will of course contribute these
> improvements to the developer community under the GPL

(as is required by law)

> Novell is evaluating which of its proprietary technologies are good
> candidates for open source release, and we will likely use the GPL

I look forward to hearing about this, I hope that the GPL'd parts are
independantly useful.

See you in the media.
Ciaran O'Riordan

Main difference between moz, oo, and helix != GPL

Posted Apr 19, 2003 17:58 UTC (Sat) by jensend (guest, #1385) [Link]

I don't think the main difference between the success of Mozilla, the relative success of OpenOffice, and the quiet "this doesn't change all that much" reaction to Helix is the use of the GPL as a dual license. People not affiliated with Netscape did lots of work with Mozilla before the tri-licensing movement was started, and it is quite surprising how few the non-Sun contributors to OpenOffice are. The difference is in how open the projects are and how the products are percieved by the open-source community.

Mozilla is an extremely open project- they went to open-source largely based on Eric Raymond's "Cathedral and the Bazaar" paper and so went to a bazaar model. This does have its drawbacks- you get tons of clueless lusers ranting in Bugzilla and wasting developers' time- but it has helped Mozilla become a showcase for open source. Mozilla also started out with a product which many people in the open source community were excited about.

OpenOffice is working to become more open to speed development, and is trying hard to get people to help in the performance efforts. They have taken what is almost a cathedral style tack in development, and it has served them well in making a coherent and feature-complete suite. StarOffice was a product many users were excited about years before Sun even acquired it.

Real, on the other hand, has what is very obviously a cathedral style of development, and this and the fact that RealPlayer was not a product people in the open-source community were excited about (due to its reputation for bloat and closed standards) have made the Helix work a much quieter operation in the open source world than either of the other development efforts. However, Helix has been successful in its own way- the latest RealPlayer, based on the Helix code, is a lot leaner- and the bare-bones helix client is rather good. They'll need to open up more if they want more far-reaching results, though.

Main difference between moz, oo, and helix == GPL

Posted Apr 22, 2003 4:50 UTC (Tue) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

Cathederals and Bazaars. What a crap book, it has more nutritional value
than educational value. heh ;)

> The difference is in how open the projects are

I agree, but I say that GPL *is* openness. The NPL was kinda
open, the MPL was pretty open, the GPL put an end to all closedness.

No company is going to hire a programmer to work on code someone else
releases under the NPL, or probably the MPL. Once it was announced that
Mozilla would go GPL, companies were no longer afraid to pay coders to
work on it. The GPL levels the playing field. Completely.

It's no surprise that OpenOffice found it slow to build a developer
community. It's 9 million lines of C++, and the file/directory layout is
hOrrIBle. Throw in a lack of modularity and you find few people can even
compile it more than once per day.

Mozilla is 1 million lines. I haven't looked at the code but the Netscape
guys had a pretty good reputation. Also, in 1998, a web-browser was *the*
most requested piece of Free Software. That made it sexy to work on.

As for RealHelix? Their business model probably couldn't stand up to
openness. Their main selling point is a monopolly on a data format.

Ciaran O'Riordan

Main difference between moz, oo, and helix != GPL

Posted Apr 22, 2003 16:09 UTC (Tue) by jensend (guest, #1385) [Link]

The GPL *is not* openness. Why do you think the GCC/EGCS saga happened? Because the GCC team was a fairly closed team, as were most of the GNU teams in the mid 90s.

If you look at the Mozilla project, the move to a GPL tri-license didn't change much at all. There was not a noticeable change in the number of people working on it when they moved to tri-license. Your comment that no company would pay to have people work on MPL licensed stuff doesn't make any sense at all. The MPL is almost functionally identical to the LGPL.

Linux-related forums are always clogged by people who think the GPL is some sort of cure-all, demanding that everybody in the world release under the GPL. These people don't have any idea what they're talking about.

Main difference between moz, oo, and helix != GPL

Posted Apr 23, 2003 15:50 UTC (Wed) by babrew (guest, #9862) [Link]

> The GPL *is not* openness. Why do you think the GCC/EGCS saga happened?
> Because the GCC team was a fairly closed team, as were most of the GNU
> teams in the mid 90s.

Why being GPL-licensed software means that developer team has to be closed ?

Is it GPL's fault ?

I have seen "fairy closed" developer teams on BSD-licensed projects...

Main difference between moz, oo, and helix != GPL

Posted Apr 23, 2003 16:37 UTC (Wed) by jensend (guest, #1385) [Link]

No, no, no. I'm not saying that using the GPL ensures closed development; that's obviously wrong. I'm just saying the GPL doesn't ensure open development. My statement that the GPL is not openness and counterexamples mean "not (GPL implies openness) and not (openness implies GPL)", not "GPL implies not openness".