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Ignoring the ad hominem attacks, I didn't actually advocate a contributor agreement -- to the contrary, I cautioned against them. And indeed, the reason that t

Ignoring the ad hominem attacks, I didn't actually advocate a contributor agreement -- to the contrary, I cautioned against them. And indeed, the reason that this two-year-old presentation is on HN today is because today we did away with the node.js CLA[1]; we're walking the talk here. As for your misunderstanding of history with respect to OpenSolaris licensing: the decision to use a modified MPL (i.e., the CDDL) and not the GPLv2 had nothing to do with Linux (indeed, none of us predicted that the GPL would be so ardently perceived to be incompatible with the CDDL) and everything to do with the fact that (due to various covenants and agreements), we couldn't actually open source everything. That is, we needed to allow for proprietary in-kernel code from both ourselves and from third parties -- and we didn't want to end up in the legal no-mans land of "tainted" kernels. Simon Phipps has been very clear about this[2]: The difficulty with using the GPL was that it became clear as we did the licensing archaeology that there were going to be places in the software where we couldn't negotiate a free license for the source code. And, there were going to be some quite important places in the code, and there were going to be quite a lot of them for a long time. And, that was probably the deciding factor not to use GPL but to use the Mozilla license. Finally, I stand by my assertion that the GPL is in decline relative to MIT/BSD/Apache -- a trend that I elaborated on after my FISL talk[3] and has only accelerated in the two years since, declining from 36% to now 27% of projects.[4] [1] http://www.joyent.com/blog/broadening-node-js-contributions http://www.joyent.com/blog/broadening-node-js-contributions [2] http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9624 http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9624 [3] http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2012/08/01/post-revolutionary-open-source/ http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2012/08/01/post-revolutionary-op... [4] http://www.blackducksoftware.com/resources/data/top-20-open-source-licenses http://www.blackducksoftware.com/resources/data/top-20-open-...

JoshTriplett 12y ago
> Ignoring the ad hominem attacks The presentation itself discusses the fall of OpenSolaris and the lack of Sun/Oracle support for it, as though if Sun or Oracle was fully committed to it, it would have succeeded. My mentioning and questioning that, and referring to it as spin, is not at attempt at an ad hominem attack; it's an attempt at a well-founded argument. > I didn't actually advocate a contributor agreement -- to the contrary, I cautioned against them. You cautioned against copyright assignments (and thank you for that), but regarding contributor agreements you said (on slide 21) "Corporate entities may (and indeed, should) have a contributor agreement ..." Have I missed something there? > And indeed, the reason that this two-year-old presentation is on HN today is because today we did away with the node.js CLA[1]; we're walking the talk here. A change that's deeply appreciated; thank you for doing that. Regarding the licensing: I'm not going to quibble over intent, but intentional or not, it had the same effect. The MPL and its various forks were well-known as GPL-incompatible licenses; that was not hard to predict, and people started talking about it right away. Even if you had proprietary binary-only components, you could still use the GPL with an explicit exception, or alternatively any number of GPL-compatible FOSS licenses, rather than something GPL-incompatible. You could also use a dual-license with GPL or LGPL, providing GPL compatibility along with any other license you might wish to use, as OO.o once did (dual LGPL/SISSL). More importantly, it seems quite disingenuous to release software under a GPL-incompatible license and then complain that the GPL caused the problem and fragmented the community ("Was it the intent of those who licensed their work under GPLv2..."). If nothing else, I'd suggest that we both should make fewer assumptions about intent, and talk about results instead. Finally, I'm certainly not going to dispute that more new projects have arisen using non-copyleft licenses. That hardly makes the GPL obsolete, nor does it invalidate the large number of existing GPLed projects. More importantly, GPL compatibility remains critical; people choosing all-permissive licenses still tend to choose GPL-compatible ones, Apache being the most notable exception (and it still has GPLv3 compatibility).
gillianseed 12y ago
>As for your misunderstanding of history with respect to OpenSolaris licensing: the decision to use a modified MPL (i.e., the CDDL) and not the GPLv2 had nothing to do with Linux The actual creator of the CDDL licence, Daneese Cooper claims that it was indeed crafted to be GPLv2 incompatible, and of course from a business standpoint that also makes perfect sense as Linux was eating Solaris in the market and handing over their technical advantages (ZFS, Dtrace) for inclusion in to Linux would have made no sense to Sun's management. So both the word of the person responsible for the licence, aswell as pure business logic says that it was indeed created to be incompatible with GPLv2. It's also hilarious when you say something like this: >For example, GPLv2 has prevented the integration of open source technologies like DTrace and ZFS in Linux • Was it the intent of those who licensed their work under GPLv2 to erect walls within open source software? Linux was already GPLv2 licence when Sun decided to licence Dtrace and ZFS under CDDL a new licence they created, when they (Sun) instead could have chosen a number of GPLv2 compatible licences under which they could have licenced their code had they so wished, or even made sure that the one they ended up creating would be GPLv2 compatible. Of course that was never the intent, for VERY logical reasons, this is just as JoshTriplett said, 'an absurd amount of spin' on your part.
- bcantrill 12y ago
  Danese Cooper was not the "actual creator" of the CDDL; she was one person among several who advised the efforts internally, and Simon Phipps played a much larger role in the drafting and selection of the CDDL -- and (again) he is very explicit as to why a modified MPL was selected.[1] Of course, I appreciate that the facts don't fit with your chosen narrative here and that you are much more likely to discard the facts than change your narrative... [1] http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9624 http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9624
  - gillianseed 12y ago
    Simon Phipps himself introduced Danese Cooper as -"the one who actually wrote the CDDL", at the 6th annual Debian conference where Danese Cooper said that it CDDL was indeed drafted to be incompatible with GPLv2. I realize this does not fit 'your chosen narrative', but hey.

JoshTriplett 12y ago

> Ignoring the ad hominem attacks The presentation itself discusses the fall of OpenSolaris and the lack of Sun/Oracle support for it, as though if Sun or Oracle was fully committed to it, it would have succeeded. My mentioning and questioning that, and referring to it as spin, is not at attempt at an ad hominem attack; it's an attempt at a well-founded argument. > I didn't actually advocate a contributor agreement -- to the contrary, I cautioned against them. You cautioned against copyright assignments (and thank you for that), but regarding contributor agreements you said (on slide 21) "Corporate entities may (and indeed, should) have a contributor agreement ..." Have I missed something there? > And indeed, the reason that this two-year-old presentation is on HN today is because today we did away with the node.js CLA[1]; we're walking the talk here. A change that's deeply appreciated; thank you for doing that. Regarding the licensing: I'm not going to quibble over intent, but intentional or not, it had the same effect. The MPL and its various forks were well-known as GPL-incompatible licenses; that was not hard to predict, and people started talking about it right away. Even if you had proprietary binary-only components, you could still use the GPL with an explicit exception, or alternatively any number of GPL-compatible FOSS licenses, rather than something GPL-incompatible. You could also use a dual-license with GPL or LGPL, providing GPL compatibility along with any other license you might wish to use, as OO.o once did (dual LGPL/SISSL). More importantly, it seems quite disingenuous to release software under a GPL-incompatible license and then complain that the GPL caused the problem and fragmented the community ("Was it the intent of those who licensed their work under GPLv2..."). If nothing else, I'd suggest that we both should make fewer assumptions about intent, and talk about results instead. Finally, I'm certainly not going to dispute that more new projects have arisen using non-copyleft licenses. That hardly makes the GPL obsolete, nor does it invalidate the large number of existing GPLed projects. More importantly, GPL compatibility remains critical; people choosing all-permissive licenses still tend to choose GPL-compatible ones, Apache being the most notable exception (and it still has GPLv3 compatibility).

gillianseed 12y ago

>As for your misunderstanding of history with respect to OpenSolaris licensing: the decision to use a modified MPL (i.e., the CDDL) and not the GPLv2 had nothing to do with Linux The actual creator of the CDDL licence, Daneese Cooper claims that it was indeed crafted to be GPLv2 incompatible, and of course from a business standpoint that also makes perfect sense as Linux was eating Solaris in the market and handing over their technical advantages (ZFS, Dtrace) for inclusion in to Linux would have made no sense to Sun's management. So both the word of the person responsible for the licence, aswell as pure business logic says that it was indeed created to be incompatible with GPLv2. It's also hilarious when you say something like this: >For example, GPLv2 has prevented the integration of open source technologies like DTrace and ZFS in Linux • Was it the intent of those who licensed their work under GPLv2 to erect walls within open source software? Linux was already GPLv2 licence when Sun decided to licence Dtrace and ZFS under CDDL a new licence they created, when they (Sun) instead could have chosen a number of GPLv2 compatible licences under which they could have licenced their code had they so wished, or even made sure that the one they ended up creating would be GPLv2 compatible. Of course that was never the intent, for VERY logical reasons, this is just as JoshTriplett said, 'an absurd amount of spin' on your part.

bcantrill 12y ago
Danese Cooper was not the "actual creator" of the CDDL; she was one person among several who advised the efforts internally, and Simon Phipps played a much larger role in the drafting and selection of the CDDL -- and (again) he is very explicit as to why a modified MPL was selected.[1] Of course, I appreciate that the facts don't fit with your chosen narrative here and that you are much more likely to discard the facts than change your narrative... [1] http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9624 http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9624
- gillianseed 12y ago
  Simon Phipps himself introduced Danese Cooper as -"the one who actually wrote the CDDL", at the 6th annual Debian conference where Danese Cooper said that it CDDL was indeed drafted to be incompatible with GPLv2. I realize this does not fit 'your chosen narrative', but hey.