Re: [9fans] Open but not free

Re: [9fans] Open but not free

[John Kodis]

Previously, presotto@plan9.bell-labs.com wrote:
> I just got this mail.  I thought people would be interested.
> Our software may be open but it'll never be blessed.
>
> 	Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 20:42:45 -0600 (MDT)
> 	From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> 	To: presotto@plan9.bell-labs.com
> 	Subject: Plan Nine deep-sixed by non-free license
> 	Reply-to: rms@gnu.org
>
> 	I was excited to hear that Plan Nine might become free software, but
> 	it turns out that the license is too restrictive to qualify.  We will
> 	have to urge people not to use the Plan Nine software under its
> 	present license.

Is this all that RMS said on the matter, or was this an excerpt?  I'd
have expected some explaination of what he found objectionable.  As it
stands, this is like submitting a bug report saying "Plan 9 is broken.
If at some point you wish to fix it, please contact me."

I'm curious about what objections RMS has, given that the intent of
the license seems in line with the ideals of the FSF, and that other
free software advocates have said that it looks good to them.

-- John Kodis.

Re: [9fans] Open but not free

[Christopher Browne]

Centuries ago, Nostradamus foresaw a time when John Kodis would say:
>Previously, presotto@plan9.bell-labs.com wrote:
>> I just got this mail.  I thought people would be interested.
>> Our software may be open but it'll never be blessed.
>>
>> 	Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 20:42:45 -0600 (MDT)
>> 	From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
>> 	To: presotto@plan9.bell-labs.com
>> 	Subject: Plan Nine deep-sixed by non-free license
>> 	Reply-to: rms@gnu.org
>>
>> 	I was excited to hear that Plan Nine might become free software, but
>> 	it turns out that the license is too restrictive to qualify.  We will
>> 	have to urge people not to use the Plan Nine software under its
>> 	present license.
>
>Is this all that RMS said on the matter, or was this an excerpt?  I'd
>have expected some explaination of what he found objectionable.  As it
>stands, this is like submitting a bug report saying "Plan 9 is broken.
>If at some point you wish to fix it, please contact me."
>
>I'm curious about what objections RMS has, given that the intent of
>the license seems in line with the ideals of the FSF, and that other
>free software advocates have said that it looks good to them.

RMS seems to have a thing for basically saying what he wants to say,
and then stopping there.  Those comments appear to be all that he had
to say, and that's pretty consistent with other occasions of
"pronouncements ex cathedra" (and despite him having some distain for
organized religion, the parallels to the Pope in Rome are pretty
extensive).

I would tend to think that the "deep six" is based on the _mandate_ to
redistribute changes to Lucent.

I have to agree with the increasing degrees of irritation at having to
puzzle through "Yet Another License Whose Implications Are Not Widely
Understood."  The "license debugging" has taken place with BSDL and
GPL so that they are both:
 a) Reasonably well-understood, and
 b) Tuned to fit their respective intents.
Any time "Yet Another Variation on the Netscape Public License" comes
along, it is necessary to go through the legal processes again, which
bear remarkable similarity to those used when preparing computer
software for use "in production."

I'm likely going to see about trying Plan 9 out on an Alpha box at
home, once my book project gets done; looks pretty interesting...
--
cbbrowne@ntlug.org - <http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/>
:FATAL ERROR -- ILLEGAL ERROR\a

Re: [9fans] Open but not free

[Jonathan S. Shapiro]

> I have to agree with the increasing degrees of irritation at having to
> puzzle through "Yet Another License Whose Implications Are Not Widely
> Understood."

Regrettably, the issue is much larger than this, which is why EROS is now
under GPL rather than the original Mozilla License, even though Mozilla is
generally accepted to be a perfectly good open source license.

One of the main sources of power in open source is the ability to borrow
from this or that work to create a new thing that meets needs unanticipated
by the original designer. Even if a new license is really a better license,
the simple fact that it is not the same license is enough to prevent this
sort of mix and match.

In defense of Lucent, GPL has some problems -- particularly in the area of
liability. This is one of the reasons that IBM has come up with its own
license.

Section 3.4 is very interesting and quite broad. One thing that might help
very much is if Lucent's legal department were to agree that distributing
the code under GPL satisfies the requirements of this section.


Jonathan Shapiro

Re: [9fans] Open but not free

[rob pike]

	Is this all that RMS said on the matter, or was this an excerpt?

It was all he said; he offered no explanation.

-rob

Re: [9fans] Open but not free

[John Kodis]

Previously, presotto@plan9.bell-labs.com wrote:
> I just got this mail.  I thought people would be interested.
> Our software may be open but it'll never be blessed.
>
> 	Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 20:42:45 -0600 (MDT)
> 	From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> 	To: presotto@plan9.bell-labs.com
> 	Subject: Plan Nine deep-sixed by non-free license
> 	Reply-to: rms@gnu.org
>
> 	I was excited to hear that Plan Nine might become free software, but
> 	it turns out that the license is too restrictive to qualify.  We will
> 	have to urge people not to use the Plan Nine software under its
> 	present license.

Is this all that RMS said on the matter, or was this an excerpt?  I'd
have expected some explaination of what he found objectionable.  As it
stands, this is like submitting a bug report saying "Plan 9 is broken.
If at some point you wish to fix it, please contact me."

I'm curious about what objections RMS has, given that the intent of
the license seems in line with the ideals of the FSF, and that other
free software advocates have said that it looks good to them.

-- John Kodis.

Re: [9fans] Open but not free

[Berry Kercheval]

At 08:49 AM 06/14/2000 +0000, Christopher Browne wrote:
> >I think anyone can call anything at all "Open Source"
> >with nothing more to fear than derision from the community.
> >
> >I could be wrong, though.
>
>You would indeed be incorrect.
>
>You might want to look at <http://www.opensource.org/>.


I did; the FAQ has this to say:

     We strongly encourage everyone who cares about open software to use
     the term only to describe licenses that conform to the OSD, or software
     distributed under such licenses; but since the term has passed into more
     general use, we also encourage people to refer to the ``OSI Certified''
     mark, which has precision and legal force in identifying software
distributed
     under licenses that are known to meet the OSD requirements.

which seems to imply that the term "open source" is indeed not a trademark.

This is all off topic for 9fans and I will take any further discussion to
private email.

   --berry
--
Berry Kercheval :: Ajuba Solutions :: http://www.ajubasolutions.com
Berry@ajubasolutions.com                 (Formerly Scriptics Corp.)

Re: [9fans] Open but not free

[Greg Hudson]

Berry Kercheval said:
>> I was not aware that there was a legally constituted person
>> (whether a natural person or a corporation) that held a trademark
>> on the term "Open Source"

Christopher Browne replied:
> You would indeed be incorrect.

> You might want to look at <http://www.opensource.org/>.

This misconception has come up several times now and no one has
corrected it, so I will.

"Open Source" is not trademarked.  If you actually go to
www.opensource.org and read a bit, you will find the following text
(third paragraph, under press_releases/certified-open-source.html):

        So ``Open Source'' is not and cannot become a trademark.

What OSI has is a certification mark on "OSI Certified."

Re: [9fans] Open but not free

[Christopher Browne]

Centuries ago, Nostradamus foresaw a time when bwc@borf.com would say:
>Now that RMS will ``have to urge people not to use the Plan Nine''
>I feel that the software release has been a complete success!

I don't have _such_ a negative opinion towards RMS, but I'd tend to
agree with this; if RMS feels the need to make any comment at all
about Plan 9, that is likely to establish its credibility amongst
some.

Saying, "Don't use it!" indicates that there's something there worthy
of looking at...
--
cbbrowne@hex.net - <http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>
And me, with this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side...

Re: [9fans] Open but not free

[Christopher Browne]

Centuries ago, Nostradamus foresaw a time when Berry Kercheval would say:
>At 11:15 PM 06/13/2000 +0200, Pedro de-las-Heras-Quiros wrote:
>>perhaps the Plan 9
>>license does not qualify as Open Source according to the Open Source
>>Guidelines of the Open Source Initiative, what among other things
>>means that legally, Plan 9 could not be called "Open Source".
>
>I was not aware that there was a legally constituted person (whether a
>natural person or a corporation) that held a trademark on the term "Open
>Source"; absent that, I think anyone can call anything at all "Open Source"
>with nothing more to fear than derision from the community.
>
>I could be wrong, though.

You would indeed be incorrect.

You might want to look at <http://www.opensource.org/>.
--
cbbrowne@hex.net - <http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>
"I don't plan to maintain it, just to install it." -- Richard M. Stallman

Re: [9fans] Open but not free

[James G. Stallings II]

dhog@plan9.bell-labs.com wrote:

> [Disclaimer: in spite of the email address, I am not a member of the
> group that developed Plan 9.  Any opinions expressed here are mine
> alone].
>
> [snip]
> > perhaps the Plan 9
> > license does not qualify as Open Source according to the Open Source
> > Guidelines of the Open Source Initiative
> [snip]
> >
> > And it is obvious that there are people in the free software
> > community, like Richard Stallman, who don't like the license used by
> > Bell Labs for releasing the source code.
>
> I don't see what Richard Stallman's opinions have to do with the
> OSI's definition at http://www.opensource.org/osd.html.  The
> latter doesn't seem too controversial; can anyone see any reason
> why the Plan 9 license wouldn't satisfy their definition?
>
> And yes, apparently they do have ``Open Source'' trademarked...

Actually, the people at OSI probably don't see what RMS' opinions have to
with the definition either. Last I heard, they were hardly of a single
mind about anything with RMS...

James




__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger.
http://im.yahoo.com

re: [9fans] Open but not free

[dhog]

[Disclaimer: in spite of the email address, I am not a member of the
group that developed Plan 9.  Any opinions expressed here are mine
alone].

[snip]
> perhaps the Plan 9
> license does not qualify as Open Source according to the Open Source
> Guidelines of the Open Source Initiative
[snip]
>
> And it is obvious that there are people in the free software
> community, like Richard Stallman, who don't like the license used by
> Bell Labs for releasing the source code.

I don't see what Richard Stallman's opinions have to do with the
OSI's definition at http://www.opensource.org/osd.html.  The
latter doesn't seem too controversial; can anyone see any reason
why the Plan 9 license wouldn't satisfy their definition?

And yes, apparently they do have ``Open Source'' trademarked...

Re: [9fans] Open but not free

[kim kubik]

RMS is really just PO'd about the man
page for emacs in the p9/commands/emacs
section.

Notice James Gosling seems to have a sense
of humor vis-a-vis the sam tutorial, that is,
he hasn't jumped in here ranting.

 - kim

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Schwartz <schwartz@bio.cse.psu.edu>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
Date: Tuesday, June 13, 2000 2:30 PM
Subject: Re: [9fans] Open but not free


>> If you consider this is not a list where such matters must be
debated,
>> tell me and I'll not disturb.
>
>I would rather not see arguments about licencing on the list.  The
>newsgroup gnu.misc.discuss is probably a more appropriate venue for
>that sort of thing.
>
>

re: [9fans] Open but not free

[Berry Kercheval]

At 11:15 PM 06/13/2000 +0200, Pedro de-las-Heras-Quiros wrote:
>perhaps the Plan 9
>license does not qualify as Open Source according to the Open Source
>Guidelines of the Open Source Initiative, what among other things
>means that legally, Plan 9 could not be called "Open Source".

I was not aware that there was a legally constituted person (whether a
natural person or a corporation) that held a trademark on the term "Open
Source"; absent that, I think anyone can call anything at all "Open Source"
with nothing more to fear than derision from the community.

I could be wrong, though.

   --berry
--
Berry Kercheval :: Ajuba Solutions :: http://www.ajubasolutions.com
Berry@ajubasolutions.com                 (Formerly Scriptics Corp.)

Re: [9fans] Open but not free

[Scott Schwartz]

> If you consider this is not a list where such matters must be debated,
> tell me and I'll not disturb.

I would rather not see arguments about licencing on the list.  The
newsgroup gnu.misc.discuss is probably a more appropriate venue for
that sort of thing.

re: [9fans] Open but not free

[Pedro de-las-Heras-Quiros]

bwc@borf.com writes:
 > Now that RMS will ``have to urge people not to use the Plan Nine''
 > I feel that the software release has been a complete success!


The release of Plan 9 sources is cool if done well. 

But it seems that the licensing terms used cause problems to the "free
(libre) software" and "Open Source" communities: perhaps the Plan 9
license does not qualify as Open Source according to the Open Source
Guidelines of the Open Source Initiative, what among other things
means that legally, Plan 9 could not be called "Open Source".

And it is obvious that there are people in the free software
community, like Richard Stallman, who don't like the license used by
Bell Labs for releasing the source code.

You can consider that licensing issues is a loss of time or you can
not. But you'll agree with me that ad hominem arguments or ironic
jokes against Richard Stallman or whoever, is certainly a loss of
time. 

I am interested in the licensing terms of Plan 9 and so I would like
to hear reasons and not rants and jokes about the "blessing" of
Stallman.

For example, I would like to hear from Bell Labs people if they are
talking with the Open Source Initiative, or other parties, in order to
design a better license for Plan 9.

If you consider this is not a list where such matters must be debated,
tell me and I'll not disturb.



Best regards,
-- 
Pedro de-las-Heras-Quiros                 | email: pheras@acm.org
Grupo de Sistemas y Comunicaciones (GSyC) | tlf: (+34)-91-664-74-68

 	     Dpto. Ciencias Experimentales e Ingeniería
Universidad Rey Juan Carlos--ESCET. C/ Tulipan s/n.Mostoles E-28933 Spain

Re: [9fans] Open but not free

[philw]

>	have to urge people not to use the Plan Nine software under its

He may be a genius, but he still can't get
the name right.

Re: [9fans] Open but not free

[Douglas Fraser]

Nigel Roles wrote:

> Someone has to occupy an extreme position, or we wouldn't
> know where it was.
>

True, sort of like Patrick Buchaanan here in the USA.
He acts as a nice bookmark to deliniate the political
spectrum. RMS is the bookmark, nay, THE book, on free
software. (not free beer...)


--
Doug

Re: [9fans] Open but not free

[Alexander Viro]

On Tue, 13 Jun 2000, Bill Gunshannon wrote:


[what RMS is]
>
> He doesn't fit either of those catagories.  In charity, I will not say
> just where I think he falls.

Why? .procmailrc, indeed... (along with this thread, to be honest)

re: [9fans] Open but not free

[bwc]

Now that RMS will ``have to urge people not to use the Plan Nine''
I feel that the software release has been a complete success!

Brantley

Re: [9fans] Open but not free

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <39461903.D1FC3A9A@yahoo.com>,
 alteridentity@yahoo.com (James G. Stallings II) writes:
|>
|> I wouldn't let RMS spoil my day

I have never taken him seriously enough for him to do that!!

|>                                  - if his were the final word there'd be no linux
|> and we'd all be sitting around waiting for HURD.
|>
|> He may be a genius and a visionary, but he's one in a million...

He doesn't fit either of those catagories.  In charity, I will not say
just where I think he falls.

bill

--
Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
bill@cs.scranton.edu     |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton   |
Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>

Re: [9fans] Open but not free

[James G. Stallings II]

I wouldn't let RMS spoil my day - if his were the final word there'd be no linux
and we'd all be sitting around waiting for HURD.

He may be a genius and a visionary, but he's one in a million...


-James



Lucio De Re wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 13, 2000 at 01:42:50AM -0400, presotto@plan9.bell-labs.com wrote:
> >
> > I just got this mail.  I thought people would be interested.
> > Our software may be open but it'll never be blessed.
> >
> That's quite OK with me, at least.  There are enough religious programs
> out there already.
>
> It is ugly of Stallman to recommend that people should not use it,
> though.
>
> ++L


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger.
http://im.yahoo.com

Re: [9fans] Open but not free

[forsyth]

>>He could have been more diplomatic, I think.

i thought he was at his most diplomatic.

Re: [9fans] Open but not free

[Lucio De Re]

On Tue, Jun 13, 2000 at 08:32:22AM +0100, Nigel Roles wrote:
>
> Someone has to occupy an extreme position, or we wouldn't
> know where it was.
>
Maybe.  But the turn of phrase he used is rather unfortunate.  I'm
a firm believer that computer programming is a form of communication,
and Stallman did not express his sentiments in a manner I would
consider appropriate.  He could have been more diplomatic, I think.

++L

RE: [9fans] Open but not free

[Nigel Roles]

It might be ugly of Stallman, but not entirely surprising.

Someone has to occupy an extreme position, or we wouldn't
know where it was.

-----Original Message-----
From: Lucio De Re [mailto:lucio@proxima.alt.za]
Sent: 13 June 2000 07:07
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] Open but not free


On Tue, Jun 13, 2000 at 01:42:50AM -0400, presotto@plan9.bell-labs.com
wrote:
>
> I just got this mail.  I thought people would be interested.
> Our software may be open but it'll never be blessed.
>
That's quite OK with me, at least.  There are enough religious programs
out there already.

It is ugly of Stallman to recommend that people should not use it,
though.

++L

Re: [9fans] Open but not free

[Lucio De Re]

On Tue, Jun 13, 2000 at 01:42:50AM -0400, presotto@plan9.bell-labs.com wrote:
>
> I just got this mail.  I thought people would be interested.
> Our software may be open but it'll never be blessed.
>
That's quite OK with me, at least.  There are enough religious programs
out there already.

It is ugly of Stallman to recommend that people should not use it,
though.

++L

[9fans] Open but not free

[presotto]

I just got this mail.  I thought people would be interested.
Our software may be open but it'll never be blessed.

	Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 20:42:45 -0600 (MDT)
	From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
	To: presotto@plan9.bell-labs.com
	Subject: Plan Nine deep-sixed by non-free license
	Reply-to: rms@gnu.org

	I was excited to hear that Plan Nine might become free software, but
	it turns out that the license is too restrictive to qualify.  We will
	have to urge people not to use the Plan Nine software under its
	present license.

	If at some point you are willing to consider rerelease under a free
	software license, please contact me.  For more information, see
	http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html and
	http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html.