Ubuntu Edge Campaign Set To Close At $12M USD

[LinuxGamer]

You seem to have misconceptions about the MIT license.

MIT, and other BSD-style licenses, do not allow you to take the code and release it as proprietary. You can distribute binaries of the MIT/BSD-licensed code without including the source, and you can even make changes in it that you don't have to publish, but the license of the original code still stays the same, and you will have to include the MIT/BSD copyright notice with the binaries.

To my knowledge, Wayland doesn't require copyright assignment, so if you contribute to Wayland, your code will stay open - it's just a more permissive form of open, and can be used with closed projects - but also with GPL-licensed projects. No one can relicense Wayland unless they get permission from all copyright holders.

MIT/BSD-style licenses are good enough for projects like Wayland, where the aim is to make it as accessible as possible, and as widespread as possible. The license makes sense for protocols and standards, because the permissiveness of it allows it to proliferate. In cases like this, GPL might actually be counter-productive, even though it's a great license for most other things (like kernels).

"The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
THE SOFTWARE."

i Love the MIT License

[GreatEmerald]

You seem to have misconceptions about the MIT license.

MIT, and other BSD-style licenses, do not allow you to take the code and release it as proprietary. You can distribute binaries of the MIT/BSD-licensed code without including the source, and you can even make changes in it that you don't have to publish, but the license of the original code still stays the same, and you will have to include the MIT/BSD copyright notice with the binaries.

There is no MIT license. MIT itself used many different licenses. And Wayland doesn't use either of them, as far as I can tell. They're using their own license. But it is still a lax permissive license, yes.

[GreatEmerald]

i Love the MIT License

That's the Expat license. It's not what Wayland uses, by the way.

[chrisb]

You seem to have misconceptions about the MIT license.

MIT, and other BSD-style licenses, do not allow you to take the code and release it as proprietary. You can distribute binaries of the MIT/BSD-licensed code without including the source, and you can even make changes in it that you don't have to publish, but the license of the original code still stays the same, and you will have to include the MIT/BSD copyright notice with the binaries.

To my knowledge, Wayland doesn't require copyright assignment, so if you contribute to Wayland, your code will stay open - it's just a more permissive form of open, and can be used with closed projects - but also with GPL-licensed projects. No one can relicense Wayland unless they get permission from all copyright holders.

If a corporation can fork the source, and publish binaries without having to also publish the source code for those binaries, then the fork has become proprietary. Your code does not stay open if some corporation use it in their products and refuses to release the source. It has become closed. Of course you still have the original code - but that is also the case with Mir/GPLv3, so there is no difference... you always have the original code - the license can not be retroactively changed.

People are being very critical of Ubuntu because the copyright assignment means it is possible that Ubuntu has the legal right to fork the code and create a proprietary version in the future. That is exactly the same situation as Wayland is already in. Any corporation can fork the Wayland code and create a proprietary version in the future. They can make the fork only run on their hardware, and they can deny you access to the source code.

You do realise that you have the right to fork Mir and produce a non-CLA multi-copyright-holder source code? Just fork and accept contributions from everyone without a copyright assignment. It would be easy, and if people really cared about getting rid of the CLA and having multiple copyright holders, then that is exactly what they would do. Canonical/Ubuntu can't stop you. It's what the LibreOffice people did.

edit: forgot to mention that the Canonical CLA doesn't require copyright assignment either: "With the contributor agreement chosen by Canonical, the Harmony CLA, the contributor gives Canonical a licence to use their contributions. The contributor continues to own the copyright in the contribution, with full rights to re-use, re-distribute, and continue modifying the contributed code, allowing them to also share that contribution with other projects."

[RahulSundaram]

People are being very critical of Ubuntu because the copyright assignment means it is possible that Ubuntu has the legal right to fork the code and create a proprietary version in the future. That is exactly the same situation as Wayland is already in. Any corporation can fork the Wayland code and create a proprietary version in the future. They can make the fork only run on their hardware, and they can deny you access to the source code.

The difference is that ONLY Canonical can create proprietary forks of Mir due to the asymmetrical licensing agreement. This is not the case with Wayland.

[chrisb]

The difference is that ONLY Canonical can create proprietary forks of Mir due to the asymmetrical licensing agreement. This is not the case with Wayland.

Yes, but why is that a good thing? Is it better to have hundreds of potential proprietary forks from vendors that have no history of commitment to open source, or one potential proprietary fork from a vendor that does have a history of commitment to open source?

[LinuxGamer]

Yes, but why is that a good thing? Is it better to have hundreds of potential proprietary forks from vendors that have no history of commitment to open source, or one potential proprietary fork from a vendor that does have a history of commitment to open source?

LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL

This has the be the most retarded post i seen i my life

[RahulSundaram]

Yes, but why is that a good thing? Is it better to have hundreds of potential proprietary forks from vendors that have no history of commitment to open source, or one potential proprietary fork from a vendor that does have a history of commitment to open source?

It is about fairness. If one vendor has a right to do so, everybody else should have the same right. If any vendor wants to show commitment towards open source, they would step requiring asymmetrical licensing agreements. Canonical has a number of proprietary projects as well FYI (Ubuntu Landscape, Ubuntu one server etc) and Mir itself seemed to have been created for this purpose.

[dee.]

It is about fairness. If one vendor has a right to do so, everybody else should have the same right. If any vendor wants to show commitment towards open source, they would step requiring asymmetrical licensing agreements. Canonical has a number of proprietary projects as well FYI (Ubuntu Landscape, Ubuntu one server etc) and Mir itself seemed to have been created for this purpose.

Also their "smartscopes" server-side functionality runs on closed-source code, which means that no one can use the full functionality of Unity without depending on proprietary code. Don't know why anyone would want to, but whatever.

Their justification for closed-source Ubuntu one code is also funny. "We can't open that code because people would be able to compete with us!" Seriously? If your business model depends on keeping code proprietary, keeping people in the dark, then frankly your business model sucks.

Some say it doesn't matter if server-side code is proprietary, but I don't agree. Keeping all of that code open sends a message, that you're both confident in the quality of service you provide (it's not all about the code: the human interaction when there's a problem, the reliability of the hardware and network stuff, how the code is used, pricing of the service) and also that you're honest and play with your cards open. It's like a guarantee of sorts: if our service becomes shitty, you can just take the code and start your own, but we're confident that it's good so we can afford to keep all the code in the open.

As an example of things done right, there's wordpress.com. They maintain an open source blogging software, and they use their own open source product to run their blogging website which brings profit to them. Anyone can still "compete" with them by taking the open source code and hosting it on their own site, but most people still use the .com site because it's just so much more convenient than self-hosting for most people. The very fact that Canonical doesn't do the same with Ubuntu one shows exactly what is wrong with their mentality: they don't see the open source community as an asset, nor how to properly leverage the advantages inherent in the open source model.

[chrisb]

It is about fairness. If one vendor has a right to do so, everybody else should have the same right. If any vendor wants to show commitment towards open source, they would step requiring asymmetrical licensing agreements. Canonical has a number of proprietary projects as well FYI (Ubuntu Landscape, Ubuntu one server etc) and Mir itself seemed to have been created for this purpose.

Does Red Hat open source all of their server side projects? I know they do some (eg. Spacewalk), but all?

And does Red Hat require a contributor license for any projects? I know the Red Hat CCM license gives Red Hat the right to do anything with the code, including relicense it, but I don't know which projects actually use it.

As I said before, if the community really wants a symmetrical licensing agreement for Mir, then it would trivial to fork it, just like LibreOffice or MariaDB. As with those projects, the original project would be unable to integrate patches from the fork unless they began to accept non-CLA contributions.