Ubuntu Planning To Develop Its Own File Manager

[mrugiero]

Yes, it's asymmetric. The money Canonical puts into its development, advertising and marketing is also quite asymmetric from what I put. Most free software doesn't go very far because it lacks resources for development, advertising and marketing. Canonical puts that money.

OK, it might be that way. I'm just sick of people in denial. As long as you don't deny it's asymmetric, I'm alright with you, I don't expect you to think that asymmetry is necessarily bad, because it depends on your own values. And I actually had what you point out in mind when I said fairness is not objective (it didn't occurred to me myself, but I read that same argument in an answer to Upstart's author G+ before answering you), because maybe it does count more because of this investment. In my opinion that's already compensated by the fact they make money out of it, I don't think it justifies the extra rights to make close source additions to other people's code, if everyone else doesn't have that right, but again, that's a personal belief you don't have to share (and while that's obvious, I say it so you know I'm aware that I have no word over your beliefs, as self-entitlement seems to be really common around here).

It might not be good FOR YOU, but it's good enough for many developers and much better than being part of a community of losers going nowhere.

I don't know. I wanted to check the numbers to make my point, but I'm really bad at looking for people in the internet, so the names in Ohloh by themselves didn't help too much. But my guess is that it really isn't that many. Obviously some people willing to contribute in those conditions exist, but I don't think that's true for most free software (volunteer) developers.

[mrugiero]

That's fine. You're not contributing to Ubuntu. Others are.

Well, that's kind of it. I probably would contribute bug fixes if I were skilled enough, but I wouldn't invest time on features for CLA projects. I do fill bugs that affect me and try to provide feedback whenever I can, as I don't really see Canonical as "the enemy" as some does. I do have my disagreements, mostly with the whole Mir and CLA issues.

How many? You should bring numbers along and compare equally relevant projects, otherwise this is pure chitchat.

As I said in another thread, I tried to track it, but I failed. I do recall from Phoronix articles (I might look for them in a while) that Mir have near zero external contribution, although that one could be explained by its age alone. Upstart seems to have quite less momentum than systemd, though.
Anyway, I might give another shot to the attempt of looking for numbers later, but until then could we agree in a reasonable time frame to consider? What do you think about looking just in the last 12 months? Would it suffice? I ask because the longer the time frame, the longer it will take to track contributors to know how many of them are employed by Canonical and how many are not.

Actually if really very little people is contributing to Canonical, we must conclude Canonical is a really generous company, since they are putting out there a lot of GPL 3 code themselves with very little outside help, right?

Yes, that's one possible conclusion.

[dee.]

man you are stupid. you can release ALLL!!!!111 the code on GPL3 even if it was originally under BSD licence.

No you can't.

[erendorn]

No you can't.

Why couldn't you? The point 7 of the GPL v3 specifically allows for the BSD clauses, so GPL v3 + BSD additional terms is a valid GPL license (if a custom one).
The fact that it is useless does not make it impossible.

[sarmad]

One day we'll hear about Ubuntu planning to develop their own kernel. Aren't they realizing that they are dispersing their work force which is affecting the quality of Ubuntu?

[Kivada]

Zoom is ctrl+ ctrl-. No buttons. This is how I and the vast amount of users expect to zoom just like browsers.

There are still zoom buttons included in Firefox, they are in the view option, they may not be visible by default but they are there. I add them and the fullscreen button to every install of Firefox I do since many users still don't realize their browser can zoom.

[dee.]

Why couldn't you? The point 7 of the GPL v3 specifically allows for the BSD clauses, so GPL v3 + BSD additional terms is a valid GPL license (if a custom one).
The fact that it is useless does not make it impossible.

But the code would still be under a BSD license. You'd just have part of the program under GPLv3 and part of it under BSD.

[mark45]

Canonical's also working on a new filesystem for Ubuntu - UFS, like Btrfs only different.

[mrugiero]

I don't think you can relicense BSD or Apache code if you're not the copyright holder, can you?

No, you can't in fact, but you can use the code under whatever terms you want, which is practically the same thing, so the workarounds work the same. The fact you can't relicense only means the original work will still be there as BSD, but any extra work in the fork will be GPL, if you want it that way. The same way, if you fork a GPL+CLA project, the original project can still be relicensed by Canonical.

Maybe with plain GPL there would be so many contributors that it would be impossible to close the code up. But this makes it hard to enforce the GPL, according to Eben Moglen from SFLC. (If anyone thinks this information is wrong, they can talk to him.) So I think the CLA helps in this case. You say the Canonical CLA doesn't apply there, but that's something I'd like to hear from a lawyer.

Even though I believe you (you seem to be honest), I can't corroborate nor refute your claim about Eben's claims if you don't provide me with a link, or at least give me pointers as to where and when he said so. I'm aware that it's believed (although I forgot why, someone explained it to me a few weeks ago) that having all the copyright holders agree (which is far easier if there is a single one) makes it easier to enforce the license. Still, the CLA is not a copyright assignment, so it doesn't help enforce the license. Canonical is not the copyright holder for the whole project, but just has the special right to relicense, and a few extra things that AFAIK are already covered by the GPLv3 license (like the royalty free license for any patented material). I'm not a lawyer, though. I'll re read it more carefully later, to further discuss this.

With GPL+CLA, only one company can close the code. With non-copyleft, anyone can close the code up. Yeah, I could fork it too, but it would still feel horrible to see someone with I never had an agreement just take my code and create a proprietary version on top of it. If I new beforehand it could happen it would be totally different. That's why I think the former is better.

If you use non-copyleft licenses, you know beforehand it can happen, and you did agree anyone could use it. So, I still don't see your point on it being intrinsically better. I can understand it in the context you pointed out before where you value their investment and you agree to give them that extra right because of that, but other than that, it's not like you wouldn't expect anyone to use it to make proprietary forks and just caught you off guard if you used a liberal license.

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't like to see Canonical make closed-source software with a code I contributed. But I fail to see what's so wrong with their CLA currently and I don't believe they would close anything. Fine, we disagree there. They are an open-source company whose only value is creating open-source products focused on regular people, so if they close them up they become irrelevant.

Actually, we don't disagree completely. I did think before that their intention was only to close up the software, but seeing how the right to sublicense is just part of a template from another project they use, it may as well be mostly for the "don't sue us!" part. I don't like the possibility being asymmetrical, and that's where we do disagree, but right now I don't think they really want to make closed source software, or at least I won't consider that a fact until (if) it happens.
I agree that they will probably become irrelevant if they go fully closed. That's one of the things I'm concerned about. I think it's a damn fine product overall (personally, Unity doesn't fit me well, but Ubuntu as ecosystem and base for several flavors is great IMO, I use Xubuntu and I'm very happy with it, and I acknowledge that for the kind of user Unity is targeted, it seems to serve really well, at least that's what I got from some friends who love it), but this kind of CLA, IMO, reduce contributions and alienate the community, and that could mean it will get worse over time, instead of improving.

[V10lator]

Of course GPL makes the software non-copyleft to the copyright owner. Duh.

But all copyright owners have equal rights. That's no longer the case with a CLA. Just think about a program written by two independent developers, can each of them re-license the whole thing or Canonical only?

If you wanna sell software as proprietary, write proprietary software.

Good point, tell that to Canonical please.

It's from a Software Freedom Law Center lawyer. But it seems you think you know better than him, so whatever.

When it's not questionable then why did Samsung open-source their exfat driver, why did Microsoft open-source the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool? Do you need more examples?

Yeah, and they will also use your code for the death star they're building to destroy the earth and live on Mars in Shuttleworth's secret spaceship. You guys are hilarious.

Yea, cause it's that unlikely that Canonical will sell proprietary stuff:

Landscape,[13] a proprietary web service for centralized management of Ubuntu systems

(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_Ltd. )

Longtime Linux kernel developer Matthew Garrett criticized choice of licensing for Canonical's software projects, particularly Mir. Unlike X.Org Server and Wayland, both under the MIT License, Mir is licensed under GPLv3 – "an odd [choice]" for "GPLv3-hostile markets" – but contributors are required to sign an agreement that "grants Canonical the right to relicense your contribution under their choice of license. This means that, despite not being the sole copyright holder, Canonical are free to relicense your code under a proprietary license". He concludes that this creates asymmetry where "you end up with a situation that looks awfully like Canonical wanting to squash competition by making it impossible for anyone else to sell modified versions of Canonical's software in the same market".[31][32][33][34] Garrett’s concerns were echoed by Bradley M. Kuhn,[35][36] Executive Director of the Software Freedom Conservancy.[37]

(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir_%28software%29 - And, why do they need Mir at all when Wayland is MIT and there are no technical reasons?)

http://ostatic.com/blog/canonical-opens-codec-sales-and-potential-can-of-worms#rss

Canonical, Ltd. refuses to promise to keep the software copylefted and never proprietarize it (FSF, for example, has always done the latter in assignments). When I ask these questions of Canonical, Ltd. employees, they invariably artfully change the subject.

(source: http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2010/1...admits-it.html )

Canonical is now encouraging Ubuntu users to use proprietary software from IBM.

(source: http://techrights.org/2010/01/22/can...tary-software/ )

Need more examples?

What I'd get as a contributor is a great operating system and all its code. That's much more than a few pennies.

And still the only one getting money from your work and without coding anything is Canonical. You really can't see why this isn't fair?

I didn't take it out of meaning, I quoted what I found the most relevant part of it: if you are against CLAs, then all the other companies are as bad, but no, people just like to hate on Canonical and Canonical alone.

You took it out of meaning as this quoter was about contribution restrictions, not about re-licensing. Also on the very same discussion Linux Torvalds wrote this:

CLA's are bad. Some of them are worse.

But surely you don't take quotes out of its meanings....

It's like a hobby or something. Who cares about Canonical and their tiny OS. What about Google?

Did I ever say what Google does is good? But we're talking about Canonical here.

Linus doesn't agree with CLAs either, obviously, so that's not news. But you know what? If he had asked for copyright assignment to the Linux Foundation we'd now have the possibility of someday having a GPL3 (and 4/5/6/etc.) kernel instead of a GPL2 one.

Linus removed the "or any later version" for a reason. Now you think it's a good idea to just ignore that and re-license?

But whatever, this discussion is pointless.

True, as you even ignore points I'm making. I'm out.