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Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica)Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica)Posted Oct 26, 2010 11:40 UTC (Tue) by AlexHudson (subscriber, #41828)In reply to: Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) by rsidd Parent article: Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica)
I agree with your post mostly; I think you're right about the motivation. I think you're wrong about the 'no harm' though.
Already Ubuntu has a set of APIs which no other distro has, and which they either patch into applications to use or (rarely) have upstream developers put into the application on some kind of switch. As their UI becomes more and more specific, that's only going to increase.
Additionally, their development of Unity comes at the opportunity cost of driving forward Gnome's UI work: Canonical could be in there contributing directly to upstream, but instead they're not - over seemingly small-beans design choices.
It's hypocritical and disingenuous to support projects like LibreOffice while requiring copyright assignment for your own projects. It's also hypocritical to claim to be a Gnome-based distro when all your development happens outside Gnome (I don't buy that Ayatana is an "upstream" in any sense of the word). To be a member of a community, you have to contribute to that community, not take away from it.
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Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2010 14:56 UTC (Tue) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]
Yes, the copyright assignment part is discomfiting: but the FSF claims that they do it to be able to defend the copyright, and as long as they insist on using that argument, anyone can.
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2010 16:27 UTC (Tue) by donbarry (guest, #10485) [Link]
There's an enormous difference. Read what the FSF actually
promises in return (vs the hot air information silence surrounding Canonical).
* The FSF promises to *never* make their software proprietary.
* The FSF, as a non-profit, with a public charter stating its goal
I trust the FSF completely. Given that most of Shuttleworth's
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2010 17:23 UTC (Tue) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] The FSF promises to *never* make their software proprietary. True, the software will remain free, for their definition of "free". It will never actually be "proprietary" but the licensing can and has become more restrictive: ie, GPLv2 -> GPLv3. Contributors to GCC and other FSF projects have seen their contributions relicensed under GPLv3, because of the "v2 or later" clause that accompanied all FSF GPlv2 projects. Projects like FreeBSD consider GPLv3 too restrictive, and have refused to include recent versions of GCC into their base. When you say you trust the FSF completely, you mean the GPLv4, whatever its terms, will be acceptable to you. I trust neither the FSF nor Canonical, but it doesn't really matter to me. Even if Canonical "makes their software proprietary" at a future date, they can't erase the free versions that are already out there and users who are dissatisfied are free to fork. Worst case, it's like the BSD licence and there's nothing wrong with that licence. This is a less likely scenario than the FSF introducing an unsatisfactory GPLv4: because the GPLv4 will still be "free software" by most definitions, the motivation to fork will be less, whereas if Canonical "makes their software proprietary" and the software has any value to others, a fork is pretty much guaranteed.
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2010 17:41 UTC (Tue) by ewan (subscriber, #5533) [Link] Contributors to GCC and other FSF projects have seen their contributions relicensed under GPLv3, because of the "v2 or later" clause that accompanied all FSF GPlv2 projects.To the extent that that's true it's got nothing to do with copyright assignment. With the FSF priojects older contributions are still available from older versions under the older licence, and any project that was formerly available on a "v2 or later" basis (of which there are many, including non-FSF ones) could equally be taken to GPLv3 by later contributions being added with a "v3 or later" licence.
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2010 18:36 UTC (Tue) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]
Great point. The "v2+" issue is orthogonal to the "copyright assignment" issue. It should also be noted that GPLv2 is too restrictive to the BSD advocates, so it perhaps shouldn't be shocking that GPLv2+ and GPLv3 are.
A big point to note about the "+" issue is that the "+" ensures forward-compatibility with future GPL releases, i.e. GPLv2 is incompatible with GPLv2+. Perhaps some will see it as a conspiracy from the FSF, but it's arguably a logical consequence of the "no further restrictions" in the GPL that ensure end-user freedom (at the expense of the mid-users' freedom to restrict others' freedom, BSD advocates will note).
The GP has a fair point, however, in that the "+" implies a non-legally-binding trust in the FSF to not go where you don't want them to in future GPL releases, with the benefit of forward-compatibility and the ability to fix "bugs" in the license (e.g. tivoization and the MSFT-NOVL deal; the scare quotes are there because it's clear that not everyone agrees that these are bugs in the license).
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2010 18:42 UTC (Tue) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]
"GPLv2 is incompatible with GPLv2+" should read "GPLv2 is incompatible with GPLv3, while GPLv2+ is not."
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2010 16:49 UTC (Tue) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
The devil is in the details. The FSF makes a solid legal binding statement about _not_ relicensing under proprietary terms that contributors can rely on. The FSF can't just decide to sell proprietary version of the code you assign copyright to them under their standard assignment agreement...or they would be in breach.
Canonical makes no such legally binding promise-back. The details of the contributor agreement matter...and will continue to matter. Canonical's contributor agreement makes zero effort to provide unpaid external contributors that their interest are protected.
I sincerely hope that when Rick Spencer (Director of the Ubuntu Engineering Team) says:
That needs to include a change in Canonical's policy with regard to external contributors to actually mean anything at all.
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