GNU TLS copyright [LWN.net]

GNU TLS copyright

Posted Sep 28, 2013 19:04 UTC (Sat) by oldtomas (guest, #72579)
In reply to: GNU TLS copyright by khim
Parent article: 30 years of GNU

    $ whois gnutls.org
    …
    Registrant Name:Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos
    Registrant Organization:Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos
    …

Does it look like GNU ftp to you?

Oh, for $DEITY's sake, khim!. We were discussing the license of the GNUTLS code, not the owner of the ftp site whence the sources come from. Let's stay focused, pretty please.

New code (in gnutls_dtls.c, heartbeat.c, rsa_psk.c and dozen other files) are “Copyright (C) 2013 Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos”, “Copyright (C) 2013 Frank Morgner”, “Copyright (C) 2013 Adam Sampson <ats@offog.org>”, etc. Which means that copyright is no longer assigned to FSF.

There you might have a point. Now, if the current maintainer doesn't change the AUTHORS file (which he would be free to do: not removing the copyright by FSF, mind you, but augmenting it, like he very well does in the file mentioned by you, e.g.:

 * Copyright (C) 2009-2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
 * Copyright (C) 2013 Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos

then I'd tend to assume that he's fine seeing the overall copyright in the hands of the FSF).

Still it's a departure of the assignment model preferred by the FSF, so I'll concede you a partial one on that. A far cry from "leaving", as you posted in your original article, though).

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GNU TLS copyright

Posted Sep 28, 2013 20:15 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Oh, for $DEITY's sake, khim!. We were discussing the license of the GNUTLS code,

Really? Sorry, to disasppoint you, but we were talking about an article which clearly says the development of gnutls is moving outside the infrastructure of the GNU project and that Nikos (one of two principal developers of GnuTLS) no longer consider GnuTLS a GNU project. Nothing more, nothing less.

coriordan made ridiculous claim that neither GnuTLS nor its developers actually left and another even more ridiculous one that all the GNU releases since the article have all been made by… Nikos. This is what we discussing.

not the owner of the ftp site whence the sources come from.

Why?

Let's stay focused, pretty please.

Well, let's. One property of GNU project is that it's source is distributed via ftp.gnu.org: we strongly recommend using ftp.gnu.org to distribute official releases. Another one is that GNU package maintainers are supposed request either to assign the copyright to the Free Software Foundation or to sign a copyright disclaimer to put this change in the public domain. And yet another one is that GPL license upgrade is recommended.

A far cry from "leaving", as you posted in your original article, though.

Really? License itself is important sign of GNU project, but far from the only sign. It's not even the most important one: there are plenty of non-GNU projects under GNU license. But if author of GnuTLS says that he no longer consider GnuTLS a GNU project, stops assigning copyright to FSF, no longer uses GNU-provided facilities, switches from GPLv3 back to GPLv2 (note that zombie project which proudly claims that this project is part of the GNU Project still as proudly claims that it's license is GNU General Public License v3 or later, too) then what exactly ties it to GNU project? One measly file?

For all practical purposes GnuTLS have left the GNU project, if they are keeping few attribution files to keep the name I would not blame them.

GNU TLS copyright

Posted Sep 29, 2013 18:04 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

One property of GNU project is that it's source is distributed via ftp.gnu.org

GNU is more vaporous and less dictatorial than you seem to believe. Note that both GNOME and Bazaar are 'officially' GNU projects (in the sense that 'RMS says they are'), and neither is distributed from ftp.gnu.org. Heck, RMS stamps TeX and X with the GNU imprimatur (they are 'part of the GNU operating system'), but in that case not even the projects' maintainers would agree.

Even 'developed by GNU' is a woolly thing. A few core things were originally developed by funding from the FSF, but even those were mostly not developed by RMS, and many of them are still maintained by their original developers. Some of those have got pissed off with RMS and said 'we are no longer GNU' -- but this is just semantics. It makes almost *no* difference, because GNU is no longer the sole, nor even primary, umbrella under which free software sits.

The world is bigger than GNU now -- GNU has transmitted its message effectively enough that it is no longer as important as it was. And this is a *good* thing, not a thing to be afraid of.

GNU TLS

Posted Sep 30, 2013 11:55 UTC (Mon) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

This discussion started with your claim of a "slow decay of GNU tower" and you've proved nothing to support that claim.

All you've shown is that there have been some arguments within one GNU project and the main developer of that project has decided to start keeping his copyrights (possibly because he wants to enforce the licence against someone).

From there, you dramatise, make assumptions, and exaggerate a few details to make a claim that GnuTLS is no longer part of GNU, and from there you jump to the claim that GNU is decaying.

Do you really expect a 30 year project, with a hundred sub-projects and thousands of developers, to produce as much software as GNU has, without any internal arguments? This is par for the course in such a massive undertaking and the continued existence and growth of GNU is a tribute to the rarely-praised management skills of RMS!