[ANNOUNCE] upstart 0.5.2 released

[Garrett Cooper]

On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 2:32 PM, Scott James Remnant<scott at netsplit.com> wrote:
> First off, please stop spreading FUD.
>
> If you have an actual issue with the GPLv3 as a licence, compared to the
> GPLv2, then please state what it is verbosely, clearly and without
> opinion.
>
> I can take that to our legal department for consideration, we can look
> into whether your concern is genuine, and if so consider whether it's
> the best licence for Upstart.
>
> Please don't just wave your hands and claim that the embedded, mobile,
> or other similar spaces "don't like the GPLv3".  We work in those
> spaces, we have partners in those spaces, and we ship a lot of GPLv3
> software.  We know that there is no problem.
>
> On Wed, 2009-06-17 at 12:12 -0700, Saravanan Shanmugham (sarvi) wrote:
>
>> Fedora and Redhat may not have issues with distributing GPLv3.
>> But I can guarantee you customers of Redhat, Monta Vista, etc which
>> include many large companies will have a problem with it. As I
>> understand it many of these companies do have a policy of not using
>> GPLv3.
>>
> Then how are they shipping any recent versions of just about any
> software?
>
> Large parts of the Linux software stack are already GPLv3, large parts
> of the library stack are already LGPLv3.
>
> And here's a little piece of information for you: the GPLv2 and LGPLv3
> are not compatible.  If you have a "GPLv2 or later" piece of software,
> linked to an LGPLv3 licence, the only way you can legally distribute
> that is (as you are permitted to do so) "under the terms of GPLv3".
>
>> So yes it will be a problem. Now Redhat/Monta Vista might package it as
>> part of the distro, but will most likely still leave SysVInit as part of
>> the distro and everyone with a policy of not using GPLv3 will not be
>> using it in their products.
>>
>> Also note that these same companies which see benefit in functionality
>> similar to Upstart WILL go off and do their own replacement. Which will
>> look a lot like upstart in functionality but be branched for licensing
>> reasons.
>>
> Then they're going to have to rewrite a lot of code, starting with the C
> compiler and working their way upwards.  Good luck to them.
>
> Meanwhile that effort will show them for what they are, free-riders who
> are taking advantage of Linux without contributing back or supporting
> its ecosystem.

First off, IANAL.

Providing a slightly different perspective, yes there are many groups
that are doing this exact piece of work in the *BSD and Apple
communities, mostly dealing with gcc -> clang, GNU grep -> BSD grep,
etc.

The point is that many people get tired of the GPLv3 license because
apart from clarifying some areas that were ambiguous with GPLv2, it
really puts teeth into who owns what and who can sue anyone for full
disclosure of source (Sections 1 and 6 of the GPLv3), as well as the
rhetoric is very anti-DRM and patent protection based (TiVO clause),
as one can read in the GPLv2 vs GPLv3 preambles. This is very
difficult for some companies, like Cisco, where we use hardware
protection to ensure that our software being executed is trusted and
comes from Cisco, not a third party. Apple, similarly can't do this
with their iPods, iPhones, etc because they need DRM functionality, as
required by the movie and recording industries (-_-). I'm not saying I
agree with the latter case, but Apple is just one group that doesn't
have too much of a say in the matter because it would restrict revenue
if they did.

It becomes even more painful with libraries, like readline... which is
GPLv2 / GPLv3.

So again, exposing one's proprietary secrets while not violating the
3rd party license one agreed to is the primary concern that plagues
the industry when moving from GPLv2 to GPLv3.

My 2 cents,
-Garrett