7 ms·

Not a fan of the license change. Deliberately making the software less useful drains the preservation value the project would otherwise provide.

by snvzz 3y ago

LoganDark 3y ago
> Deliberately making the software less useful Well, I'm sure you'll be happy to find that GPL3 does not make any software any less useful. It just means that if you want to extend the software, you must distribute source code with it. Any entity which finds this unacceptable doesn't deserve to be using this software anyway. It becomes more useful because it encourages people to distribute source code that they may not have otherwise.
- altairprime 3y ago
  > if you want to extend the software, you must distribute source code with it Incorrect. GPLv3 does not require source code distribution if you choose to only distribute your extensions to third parties that are under a current contract to you to operate or modify the work or any derivative thereof on your behalf and to destroy all copies of your extensions at the conclusion of the contracted operational and/or modification work. I’m surprised that $1 modification contracts for GPLv3 works are uncommon. Open source isn’t free! (I am not your lawyer, this is not legal advice.)
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    Isn't this how using GPL-ed code in commercial contexts work? You don't have to share sources with the outsiders if you don't ship the program to the outsiders - and your employees and contractors are bound by their contracts to share neither the proprietary extensions nor the resulting program with the outside world. Note that SaaS means you're not shipping backend software to users, which created a loophole that has a special GPL variant patching it.
    - davorak 3y ago
      altairprime's idea seems to be to sell the software to your users, but hire them as contractors to modify the gpl code so they can not redistribute it themselves. So on perm saas where the on perm operators are technical hired for $1 so the software was never legally distributed to the company that hired the on perm saas service. Seems dubious to me.
      - altairprime 3y ago
        Specifically, it’s dubious because GPLv3 requires the third party’s modification and/or hosted operation to be exclusively on behalf of / for the client. A judge and/or jury would need to evaluate whether the license is legally valid in that jurisdiction, and whether an attempt to circumvent the spirit of the license through obligating a contracted third-party to use the code would regardless still comply. (For example, QA is permissible use, but what if QA has to be done at scale in a for-profit production environment by the contracted third party, etc.) I expect that a reasonable and demonstrated set of modifications and setting and enforcement milestones would both be essential to a determination in favor of it being permissible use — but of course I cannot guarantee this with certainty, lacking any prior judgments to refer to. (I am not your lawyer, this is not legal advice.)
    - benj111 3y ago
      If youre contracted to provide software to party A. If that software includes gpled parts you have to supply the source to them. That doesn't mean you have to supply the source to everyone. Samsung or however could require proof that you'd actually bought one of their TVs before supplying the source. In practice they dont, but they could. Red hat are now doing exactly this. Only red hat customers can get hold of the red hat source.
  - orra 3y ago
    > I am not your lawyer, this is not legal advice. I've quoted the one bit of your statement I agree with. You suggest an entirely artificial relationship to completely bypass the clear intention of the licence. To be blunt, that's a terrible suggestion.
    - altairprime 3y ago
      I encourage you to reconcile your disagreement with my first paragraph, and GPL 3.0 section 2 paragraph 2. (I certainly respect your disagreement with my second paragraph, though!)
      - orra 3y ago
        Okay to be fair, your first paragraph was spot on! It's an interesting but not widely discussed exception. (I think the word "purpose" in said paragraph encapsulates why I strongly disagree with your conclusion on your second paragraph.)
        altairprime 3y ago
        Agreed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36500774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36500774
- sudobash1 3y ago
  > It just means that if you want to extend the software, you must distribute source code with it. It means a lot more than that. The most significant difference in my line of work is the anti-tivoization requirements. Essentially if you ship this software in a device, you must allow the user to change the software/firmware on that device. I do embedded Linux work for several different clients, and they are almost never OK with this. So I have to be careful to never use GPLv3 software. Not that I agree completely with the OP. I love when I can customize the firmware on devices I get (that is almost a precondition for my purchasing it), and I wish more manufacturers were OK with it.
  - pabs3 3y ago
    Please note that the GPLv2 has the requirement that users be able to modify and reinstall the GPLed software. "Tivoisation" isn't what Tivo actually did and both the GPLv2 and GPLv3 ban "Tivoisation" but allow what Tivo actually did. "Tivoisation" as it is popularly known refers to blocking the running of modified GPL code, while what Tivo actually did was block running their proprietary software (their UI etc) on top of modified GPL code (here Linux). Both GPL versions block the former while allowing the latter. At least according to Software Freedom Conservancy. https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/mar/25/install-gplv2/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/mar/25/install-gplv2/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/jul/23/tivoization-and-the-gpl-right-to-install/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/jul/23/tivoization-and-t... https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Safely-Copylefted-Cars-Reexamining-GPLv3-Installation-Information-Requirements-ALS-Bradley-Kuhn-Behan-Webster-1.pdf https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017...
    - sudobash1 3y ago
      A good point. For completeness though, I think that the way many modern embedded devices accept updates (arguably) skirts around the GPLv2 requirements. For instance many devices will only accept signed updates, or will only accept updates from a particular https server. The GPLv3 is much more explicit about these matters.
      - 3y ago
yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
In what case would the license change impact anything? You want to make proprietary changes to the X server?
- sudobash1 3y ago
  It could be significant in embedded devices due to the anti-tivoization requirements of the GPLv3.
  - mikecoles 3y ago
    This sounds beneficial rather than otherwise.
- asveikau 3y ago
  I feel like the historical culture of X development is permissive licenses and proprietary Unix vendors developing closed solutions on top. It was deliberately like that. So this feels like a departure.
  - wmf 3y ago
    The Unix Wars were a waste of time and money for everyone involved. By the time they realized it they were already dead. There's no reason to bring back that business model.
  - badsectoracula 3y ago
    While that is the case and still is today, i remember Keith Packard (a prominent X developer) making various remarks over the year in his presentations on the negative side of having all these companies making their own private forks without contributing code back.
    - snvzz 3y ago
      This is precisely what Tinyx is doing: A "private" fork in a license that would make it impossible to contribute code back to Xorg.
wang_li 3y ago
It's not clear that they can change the license. For example in dix/dixfonts.c it says: >Copyright (c) 1991, 1997 Digital Equipment Corporation, Maynard, Massachusetts. > >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. > >The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in >all copies or substantial portions of the Software. Given the various GPL theories of tainting linked code and that this requires specific permissions be included with the program, not sure they can put a GPL license on the overall resulting product.
- lmm 3y ago
  > including without limitation the rights to ... sublicense ... the Software. Sounds like they can distribute that code under the GPL, provided they include the notice (which is OK from the GPL PoV since it doesn't frustrate what the GPL provides). That particular code continues to be available under its original license. The whole is available under the GPL. Licenses are permission to do things that would otherwise be prohibited by copyright; there's no problem with having extra permission or multiple kinds of permission. What part do you think would be a problem?
  - wang_li 3y ago
    The license on this file gives extremely broad permission to distribute with no requirements. The GPL has requirements if you are distributing it. These two licenses are not compatible. Additionally, if they are starting with software under a particular license and modifying it, in a non clean room fashion, then the final product is a derivative of the original and the copyrights likely remain with the original rights holders.
    - mkesper 3y ago
      This is nonsense.
    - 3y ago
appleflaxen 3y ago
If you need to be exempted from the GPL v3 requirements, then pay the license holders for a different license. If you offer them enough they will probably come to the table. Meanwhile, everyone without that need will benefit from the protections that GPL v3 provide.
NonEUCitizen 3y ago
The README mentions this other project: https://github.com/idunham/tinyxserver https://github.com/idunham/tinyxserver which has an XServer.man file that mentions X11/MIT-like license, but otherwise doesn't state a license for the project as a whole.

Not a fan of the license change. Deliberately making the software less useful drains the preservation value the project would otherwise provide.

by snvzz 3y ago

Not a fan of the license change. Deliberately making the software less useful drains the preservation value the project would otherwise provide.

LoganDark 3y ago

> Deliberately making the software less useful Well, I'm sure you'll be happy to find that GPL3 does not make any software any less useful. It just means that if you want to extend the software, you must distribute source code with it. Any entity which finds this unacceptable doesn't deserve to be using this software anyway. It becomes more useful because it encourages people to distribute source code that they may not have otherwise.

altairprime 3y ago
> if you want to extend the software, you must distribute source code with it Incorrect. GPLv3 does not require source code distribution if you choose to only distribute your extensions to third parties that are under a current contract to you to operate or modify the work or any derivative thereof on your behalf and to destroy all copies of your extensions at the conclusion of the contracted operational and/or modification work. I’m surprised that $1 modification contracts for GPLv3 works are uncommon. Open source isn’t free! (I am not your lawyer, this is not legal advice.)
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  Isn't this how using GPL-ed code in commercial contexts work? You don't have to share sources with the outsiders if you don't ship the program to the outsiders - and your employees and contractors are bound by their contracts to share neither the proprietary extensions nor the resulting program with the outside world. Note that SaaS means you're not shipping backend software to users, which created a loophole that has a special GPL variant patching it.
  - davorak 3y ago
    altairprime's idea seems to be to sell the software to your users, but hire them as contractors to modify the gpl code so they can not redistribute it themselves. So on perm saas where the on perm operators are technical hired for $1 so the software was never legally distributed to the company that hired the on perm saas service. Seems dubious to me.
    - altairprime 3y ago
      Specifically, it’s dubious because GPLv3 requires the third party’s modification and/or hosted operation to be exclusively on behalf of / for the client. A judge and/or jury would need to evaluate whether the license is legally valid in that jurisdiction, and whether an attempt to circumvent the spirit of the license through obligating a contracted third-party to use the code would regardless still comply. (For example, QA is permissible use, but what if QA has to be done at scale in a for-profit production environment by the contracted third party, etc.) I expect that a reasonable and demonstrated set of modifications and setting and enforcement milestones would both be essential to a determination in favor of it being permissible use — but of course I cannot guarantee this with certainty, lacking any prior judgments to refer to. (I am not your lawyer, this is not legal advice.)
  - benj111 3y ago
    If youre contracted to provide software to party A. If that software includes gpled parts you have to supply the source to them. That doesn't mean you have to supply the source to everyone. Samsung or however could require proof that you'd actually bought one of their TVs before supplying the source. In practice they dont, but they could. Red hat are now doing exactly this. Only red hat customers can get hold of the red hat source.
- orra 3y ago
  > I am not your lawyer, this is not legal advice. I've quoted the one bit of your statement I agree with. You suggest an entirely artificial relationship to completely bypass the clear intention of the licence. To be blunt, that's a terrible suggestion.
  - altairprime 3y ago
    I encourage you to reconcile your disagreement with my first paragraph, and GPL 3.0 section 2 paragraph 2. (I certainly respect your disagreement with my second paragraph, though!)
    - orra 3y ago
      Okay to be fair, your first paragraph was spot on! It's an interesting but not widely discussed exception. (I think the word "purpose" in said paragraph encapsulates why I strongly disagree with your conclusion on your second paragraph.)
      - altairprime 3y ago
        Agreed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36500774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36500774
sudobash1 3y ago
> It just means that if you want to extend the software, you must distribute source code with it. It means a lot more than that. The most significant difference in my line of work is the anti-tivoization requirements. Essentially if you ship this software in a device, you must allow the user to change the software/firmware on that device. I do embedded Linux work for several different clients, and they are almost never OK with this. So I have to be careful to never use GPLv3 software. Not that I agree completely with the OP. I love when I can customize the firmware on devices I get (that is almost a precondition for my purchasing it), and I wish more manufacturers were OK with it.
- pabs3 3y ago
  Please note that the GPLv2 has the requirement that users be able to modify and reinstall the GPLed software. "Tivoisation" isn't what Tivo actually did and both the GPLv2 and GPLv3 ban "Tivoisation" but allow what Tivo actually did. "Tivoisation" as it is popularly known refers to blocking the running of modified GPL code, while what Tivo actually did was block running their proprietary software (their UI etc) on top of modified GPL code (here Linux). Both GPL versions block the former while allowing the latter. At least according to Software Freedom Conservancy. https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/mar/25/install-gplv2/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/mar/25/install-gplv2/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/jul/23/tivoization-and-the-gpl-right-to-install/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/jul/23/tivoization-and-t... https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Safely-Copylefted-Cars-Reexamining-GPLv3-Installation-Information-Requirements-ALS-Bradley-Kuhn-Behan-Webster-1.pdf https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017...
  - sudobash1 3y ago
    A good point. For completeness though, I think that the way many modern embedded devices accept updates (arguably) skirts around the GPLv2 requirements. For instance many devices will only accept signed updates, or will only accept updates from a particular https server. The GPLv3 is much more explicit about these matters.
    - 3y ago

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago

In what case would the license change impact anything? You want to make proprietary changes to the X server?

sudobash1 3y ago
It could be significant in embedded devices due to the anti-tivoization requirements of the GPLv3.
- mikecoles 3y ago
  This sounds beneficial rather than otherwise.
asveikau 3y ago
I feel like the historical culture of X development is permissive licenses and proprietary Unix vendors developing closed solutions on top. It was deliberately like that. So this feels like a departure.
- wmf 3y ago
  The Unix Wars were a waste of time and money for everyone involved. By the time they realized it they were already dead. There's no reason to bring back that business model.
- badsectoracula 3y ago
  While that is the case and still is today, i remember Keith Packard (a prominent X developer) making various remarks over the year in his presentations on the negative side of having all these companies making their own private forks without contributing code back.
  - snvzz 3y ago
    This is precisely what Tinyx is doing: A "private" fork in a license that would make it impossible to contribute code back to Xorg.

wang_li 3y ago

It's not clear that they can change the license. For example in dix/dixfonts.c it says: >Copyright (c) 1991, 1997 Digital Equipment Corporation, Maynard, Massachusetts. > >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. > >The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in >all copies or substantial portions of the Software. Given the various GPL theories of tainting linked code and that this requires specific permissions be included with the program, not sure they can put a GPL license on the overall resulting product.

lmm 3y ago
> including without limitation the rights to ... sublicense ... the Software. Sounds like they can distribute that code under the GPL, provided they include the notice (which is OK from the GPL PoV since it doesn't frustrate what the GPL provides). That particular code continues to be available under its original license. The whole is available under the GPL. Licenses are permission to do things that would otherwise be prohibited by copyright; there's no problem with having extra permission or multiple kinds of permission. What part do you think would be a problem?
- wang_li 3y ago
  The license on this file gives extremely broad permission to distribute with no requirements. The GPL has requirements if you are distributing it. These two licenses are not compatible. Additionally, if they are starting with software under a particular license and modifying it, in a non clean room fashion, then the final product is a derivative of the original and the copyrights likely remain with the original rights holders.
  - mkesper 3y ago
    This is nonsense.
  - 3y ago

appleflaxen 3y ago

If you need to be exempted from the GPL v3 requirements, then pay the license holders for a different license. If you offer them enough they will probably come to the table. Meanwhile, everyone without that need will benefit from the protections that GPL v3 provide.

NonEUCitizen 3y ago

The README mentions this other project: https://github.com/idunham/tinyxserver https://github.com/idunham/tinyxserver which has an XServer.man file that mentions X11/MIT-like license, but otherwise doesn't state a license for the project as a whole.