Re: [9fans] licence question

[hiro <23hiro@gmail.com>]

i never cared about the gpl license. it didn't improve anything as
it's less permissive than we had before.

i still see a risk when math&electrical engineers will be barred
access to the sourcecode.
maybe they would find a beautiful solution by changing a few lines of
code, allowing you to improve your (one-man-project ?) system.

generally i think if all users can change the code and recompile
everything, this makes it infinitely more maintainable.

one of the best things about plan9 is that all source and binaries are
all part of the distribution and installation, and easily
re-(cross-)compilable by anybody.

i don't buy the argument that source code would be too big. for just
one subject in school i had to download many gigabytes of quartus,
over a decade ago. our source is nowhere near that big.

On 1/29/22, ibrahim via 9fans <9fans@9fans.net> wrote:
> On Friday, 28 January 2022, at 10:59 PM, hiro wrote:
>> why should it be closed source?
> you're gonna seriously put the effort to remove all the traces of source
> files?
> 
> This kiosk app is meant for students in math, electrotechnics, mechanics ...
> its a closed area network where only registered students can connect. This
> plattform is only meant for exchange of data and informations. The app is
> distributed as an iso to be run from bare hardware or qemu (virtual box).
> The current version is running based on FreeBSD and has a size caused by X11
> necessity and accompanying programs of 800 MB. I'm trying to reduce the size
> and increasing the performance by using plan9. My plattform generates form
> many simulation tasks, symbolic calculations, plotting, ... intermediate C
> code and translates this to programs which are called as child processes and
> generate their output for rendering. LLVM is needed two times in the FreeBSD
> installation once for X11 and once as a system compiler. By using plan9 I
> can reduce the size of this kiosk application to estimated 300 MB. I gave
> plan9 a try a few years ago and was fascinated but the licence wasn't
> attractive at that time. But now it's ideal for such tasks.
> 
> Some sources are part of this installment inside a loop file those are
> provided internally with a ramfs so in time compilation gets possible. The
> moment I include GPL licensed code into this ramfs this would infect my own
> licence. My plattform is BSD 2 claused the students can distribute it freely
> but the mechanics for connecting to the closed area network are hidden. The
> MIT licence, zlib, Ogg Vorbis license are compatible with BSD 2 license and
> require proper acknowlegdement but GPL can't be used in such a manner.
> 
> Plan9 with its new license is optimal for such applications. I think that
> plan9 would have been more wide spread if this new license would have been
> applied from the beginning. And I believe that the reason why NetBSD,
> OpenBSD, FreeBSD are not as wide spread as Linux was the lack of a compiler
> suite conforming to the BSD license. Some time ago the BSD project asked for
> a license change for plan9 to integrate the C compiler which didn't happen
> at that time. But I'm sure that in the near future their will be some BSD
> forks which will take more ideas and tools from Plan9 (especially the
> compiler suite). Plan9 has more advantages besides those - nearly direct
> access to the hardware and a simplified way to enhancements due to its
> namespaces and 9fs.
> 
> I'm using BSD systems since 1991 and I think its important to follow a
> strict licensing scheme otherwise many years later as it happened in NetBSD,
> FreeBSD and OpenBSD you start to search for alternative implementations
> cause at some point your code is not accompanied by incompatible licensed
> code but is depending on those so it is infected. If you decide to
> distribute a system with a non infecting open source license than its
> important to do this in a consistent form. The more time passes the more you
> depend on parts and the less gets the chance to exchange those parts.
> 
> I am consequently avoiding infecting licenses in my projects and my
> distributions for decades now and those parts of plan9 (9front) which are
> not conforming are not a big deal to throw away. diff, patch are available
> in conforming licensed versions. I prefer ogg vorbis to mp3 due to its
> patent problems in the past. There are dozens of truetype fonts with better
> quality and distributable. The only problematic part not only to plan9 but
> also all BSD systems is ghostscript but I have an existing translater from
> postscript to svg and a closed source svg library for rendering for other
> projects where I would perhaps need page and the dependency to ghostscript.
> No need for lzip and xen ...
> 
> The reason why this reply was this long is simple :
> 
> My experience from the past and my involvements in BSD projects tought me
> that many open source projects try to take large steps in short time and
> most often they borrow code or libraries from projects not conforming with
> their chosen license. Legal questions are taken very lightly for a few years
> but than at some point in time those legal questions surface. The reason why
> linux took over was this simple - BSD 4.3 lost its compilers.
> 
> There are people (I am one of them) who also have to write commercial
> projects for a living. I'm developing embedded software for electronic
> circuits and plan9 is now a real alternative for me cause of its new
> license. I can decide for each project if I want to make it open source or
> not. And by consequently avoiding infecting licenses I can use the same code
> base for open source as well as closed source projects.
> 
> Why do you think p9f asked for a relicensing of plan9 while it was already
> gpl licensed a few years ago ? Both are redistributable but the MIT version
> is also usable for closed source commercial projects while the GPL version
> is not. Does this matter ? Yes of course it matters for people or companies.
> Its sometimes amusing to see developers taking legal issues lightly.
> 
> I'm not an advocate but be assured : The moment you distribute lets say a
> set top box based on plan9 using legacy9 or 9front and you don't delete
> those mentioned parts from your distribution you can't make it closed
> source. If your set top box plays mp3 or opens a pdf ps file by using
> ghostscript and this is a significant part of the functionality you have
> created a derived work based on or depending on GPL'ed code. To solve this
> problem you would have to seperate those parts from your hardware and make
> it downloadable to keep it closed source. But this wouldn't be a real
> solution because page depends on the existence of ghostscript to display pdf
> and ps files so you have a 1:1 dependency. FSF perhaps won't take this
> seriously. Aladdin will because they offer a commercial license alternative.
> And your concurrents will also look closely to make your product open
> sourced. This is not fiction this is reality happening hundreds of times per
> year.

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