Fwd: [LeapList]Ximian pushes licensing argument ball back in Microsoft's court ...

[Technomage]

A little news grom the gpl/copyright(bsd-style) front

----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: [LeapList]Ximian pushes licensing argument ball back in Microsoft's 
court ...
Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2002 19:32:17 -0500
From: "Bryan J. Smith" <b.j.smith@ieee.org>
To: leaplist@lists.leap-cf.org

MONO CLASS LIBRARIES LICENSED BSD-STYLE

At the urgence of HP and Intel, Ximian has decided that the class
libraries of the Mono project should be licensed under a BSD-style
license, rather than a copyleft one.  The license that has been
chosen is the X11 license, which is an older BSD-style with a
copyright display requirement.

CORE COMPILER AND LIBS ARE STILL GPL/LGPL

The license only covers the class libraries and not the C# compiler,
which is still GPL, and the core C# libraries, which are LGPL.  This
arrangement is still in-line with the reset of the widely used GNU
Compiler Collection (GCC), which allows both free and commercial
software development.  So this license change does not affect the
core of Mono itself, just the class libraries that applications use.

PUTTING MICROSOFT "ON-THE-SPOT"

With HP, Intel and many other industry partners now eyeing Mono,
Microsoft is in an interesting position.  "Leech" commercial
software companies like Microsoft and WindRiver have long argued
that the BSD-style licenses are better than copyleft licenses like
the GPL, largely because such "leech" companies don't produce any of
the software themselves.  But with Ximian moving to a BSD-style
license for the class libraries, Microsoft doesn't have any excuses
for not using the class libraries.

Of course, getting them to contribute is another matter.  That's
where the industry partners come in.

MICROSOFT SHARED SOURCE DOESN'T COME CHEAP

If there is a license that is more "anti-corporate" IP than the GPL,
it is Microsoft's Shared Source.  Besides the millions of dollars
just to gain access to the source code, you'll find your IP is often
turned over to Microsoft in the process.  This is not the case with
even the GPL, which doesn't reassign copyright, nor most "GPL
compatible" licenses.

Now that Mono's class libraries are X11 licensed, vendors like HP
and Intel know which side to be backing.

EVEN STALLMAN DOESN'T HAVE A PROBLEM WITH IT

According to NewsForge, although Richard Stallman would have wished
to see the class libraries adopt the LGPL like the core C#
libraries, he doesn't denounce the move.  Ximian clearly has a
strategic goal in mind, possibly corporate-based, but definately in
the interest of free software.  But this seems to be the role that
Ximian is playing quite well recently, and I hope it continues.

In fact, the only company that may have a "problem" with it is
Microsoft; who finds itself being delt the card it didn't expect.
It will be interesting if they end up truly embracing this move, or
just continuing its normal means of "embracing" [extending,
extiguishing.]

THE HISTORY THAT HAUNTS

For Microsoft, it's getting harder for them to fight the community,
or to dupe other companies into believing they support open
standards and interfaces -- at least a revision or two down the
road.  Companies like IBM already went through some of this with Sun
over Java, and everyone knows Microsoft is 100x the IP gorilla than
Sun.  This new arragement is looking better by the moment.

NewsForge:
http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/01/27/2232231

Wired:
http://wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,50037,00.html

cNet/Ziff-Davis (same article):
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-823734.html
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-823870.html

-- Bryan

--
Bryan J. Smith, Engineer        mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org
AbsoluteValue Systems, Inc.     http://www.linux-wlan.org
SmithConcepts, Inc.          http://www.SmithConcepts.com
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1999 IRS Data:  The top 1% of income earners pay over 36%
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