[ANNOUNCE] upstart 0.5.2 released

[Garrett Cooper]

On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 2:06 AM, Scott James Remnant<scott at netsplit.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 2009-06-17 at 16:25 -0700, Saravanan Shanmugham (sarvi) wrote:
>
>> This is not FUD and did not mean it that way either. This is what I have
>> heard from some licensing lawyers relating to usage of GPLv3 software
>> while working on my own startup. And I have heard this same concern from
>> friends in other companies as well.
>>
> The problem is that there's a lot of anti-GPLv3 sentiment out there from
> people who haven't actually read it.  As a Linux distributor who works
> in the mobile and embedded space, we've encountered a lot of it from
> companies who fear that it prevents them from using Linux.
>
> When we've gone through their problems, we've nearly always found that
> there's no text in the GPLv3 even close to what they believe.  Sometimes
> the misunderstanding comes from earlier GPLv3 drafts, and is with regard
> to text or clauses that never made it to the final licence.
>
>> The specific concern I have heard as quoted to me is relating to
>> language in GPLv3 relating to 'intimate data communication' with GPLv3
>> communication.
>>
> The section you are referring to is the most basic one, the definition
> of "Source Code":
>
>  1. Source Code.
>
>  The "source code" for a work means the preferred form of the work
> for making modifications to it.  "Object code" means any non-source
> form of a work.
>
>  A "Standard Interface" means an interface that either is an official
> standard defined by a recognized standards body, or, in the case of
> interfaces specified for a particular programming language, one that
> is widely used among developers working in that language.
>
>  The "System Libraries" of an executable work include anything, other
> than the work as a whole, that (a) is included in the normal form of
> packaging a Major Component, but which is not part of that Major
> Component, and (b) serves only to enable use of the work with that
> Major Component, or to implement a Standard Interface for which an
> implementation is available to the public in source code form.  A
> "Major Component", in this context, means a major essential component
> (kernel, window system, and so on) of the specific operating system
> (if any) on which the executable work runs, or a compiler used to
> produce the work, or an object code interpreter used to run it.
>
>  The "Corresponding Source" for a work in object code form means all
> the source code needed to generate, install, and (for an executable
> work) run the object code and to modify the work, including scripts to
> control those activities.  However, it does not include the work's
> System Libraries, or general-purpose tools or generally available free
> programs which are used unmodified in performing those activities but
> which are not part of the work.  For example, Corresponding Source
> includes interface definition files associated with source files for
> the work, and the source code for shared libraries and dynamically
> linked subprograms that the work is specifically designed to require,
> such as by intimate data communication or control flow between those
> subprograms and other parts of the work.
>
>  The Corresponding Source need not include anything that users
> can regenerate automatically from other parts of the Corresponding
> Source.
>
>  The Corresponding Source for a work in source code form is that
> same work.
>
>> If you had standalone tools/command or utility programs that don't talk
>> to each other, I suspect it would have been ok.
>>
>> Upstart is one of those applications that everyone in the system needs
>> to communicate via D-Bus messaging where the Message API is defined by a
>> GPLv3 application in this case Upstart.
>>
> The Upstart D-Bus interface is very much intended to be a public
> interface that any software may use without licence contamination.  The
> D-Bus protocol is an official freedesktop.org standard, and the Upstart
> interface is published and documented over that protocol according to
> the standard.
>
> This is a long way from "intimate" (the old IPC interface 0.3 uses could
> be described as intimate, and one of the reasons it was dropped was to
> avoid this issue).
>
> If this needs specific addressing, I could add a comment to the
> dbus/*.xml (which define the interfaces) explicitly stating that
> software may freely use these interfaces.

If that's the case, I would explicitly note that the ideas contained
within are public knowledge and aren't GPLv3. Some engineering orgs
seem to get really uneasy about stuff like that. IIRC there was a soft
quantifiable amount of information that could be `conveyed' before one
would be bound by a given license, or some such..
-Garrett