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" 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 --------------------------------------------------------- 1999 IRS Data: The top 1% of income earners pay over 36% of the taxes, but have less than 20% of the total income. _______________________________________________ LeapList mailing list LeapList@lists.leap-cf.org http://www.matrixlist.com/mailman/listinfo/leaplist -------------------------------------------------------