#licensing

January 10, 2024 5:00pm

Open Source Needs a New Mission: Protecting Users

#softwaredevelopment #bigtech #change #foss #licensing #hackaday
posted by pod_feeder_v2

Open Source Needs A New Mission: Protecting Users

[Bruce Perens] isn’t very happy with the current state of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), and an article by [Rupert Goodwins] expounds on this to explain Open Source’s need for a …

Danie

November 25, 2023 3:43pm

Open Source Software Licensing: Why it matters

Open-source software is essential to the functioning of our modern internet. It’s essential to all our modern technology. Open-source tools form the simple and functional building blocks that help power everything from TVs to ChatGPT, and it’s almost impossible to overstate the importance of the open-source movement in making software development accessible.

Yet, understanding of open source software values is scarce. Companies and businesses will often ignore their licensing requirements, and even many developers aren’t aware of the licenses they operate under. Whether you’re a developer, tech enthusiast, business leader, or just an interested party, it’s important to respect the efforts of open-source developers and credit them for their contributions. As a developer or user of software, you could also open yourself up to lawsuits if using a license improperly.

There are different definitions of open source, but they generally all hit on the same key points. To be open source, software must be freely available and members of the public are freely allowed to inspect, modify, and distribute the code at their discretion. This includes the sale or commercialization of any derived (i.e. enhanced) or aggregate (i.e. combining multiple bits of software) work that might be produced from open-source software.

The world would be a very different place if it were not for open source licensing (hardware as well as software). It has allowed innovation to keep leap frogging and has also allowed so may start-up businesses to get off the ground with minimal cost. Learners everywhere have also been able to inspect it and take it apart and learn from it.

But it is not license-free. Although some open source licenses have no restrictions at all, many others do have conditions, whether it means the source must accompany the product, or the whole final product needs to be open source. So, it does often have implications, especially for any business selling products.

Although some open source projects have some or other paid support tier, or paid hosting service. If you intend to use open source into the future, it is a good idea to consider donating to that project, to ensure it is sustainable in the long run.

See https://www.xda-developers.com/open-source-software-licensing/
#Blog, #licensing, #opensource, #technology

SilouettE

January 31, 2022 6:40pm

Why is it GNU Linux and not just Linux? - Linus talking about GPL v3 vs GPL v2 (the better one) - the social (GPL) contract is "i give you sourcecode, give me back your changes" - non-free binary "blobs"

“FOSS means that effort is shared across organizations and lowers maintenance costs significantly” (src: comment by JohnFOSS on itsfoss.com)

getting the naming right: Why is it GNU Linux and not just Linux?

[video width=”576″ height=”462″ mp4=”https://dwaves.de/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Stallman-getting-the-naming-right-Why-is-ist-GNU-Linux-and-not-just-Linux.mp4″\]\[/video\]

because it would given the developers who wrote the c compiler gcc (many contributors) and libc (many contributors) that compiles the kernel (and a lot of other stuff) no credit

Linus talking about GPL v3 vs GPL v2 (the better one)

[video width=”578″ height=”348″ mp4=”https://dwaves.de/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/GNU-Linux-DebConf-Linus-talking-about-GPL-v3-vs-GPL-v2-the-better-one.mp4″\]\[/video\]

- ### the (GPL 2.0) intented social contract is: “i give you sourcecode, give me back your changes”
- Linus drew criticism over his “stubbornness” to stick with GPL 2.0 e.g. Oracle’s Sun’s ZFS filesystem is released under a GPL incompatible licence, that as seen in this video statement, that is completely on purpose, just as it is (probably) on purpose by Oracle’s Sun to be DELIBERATELY incompatible with GPL (it seems to be a Microsoft-like a fake-support for the Open Source movement attempt companies like that “want to do marketing as Open Source but not really do Open Source”)
  - GPL 2.0: (spdx.org calls it “Deprecated”? calling this the successor version)
    - GPL-2.0+.txt
    - GPL-2.0+.pdf (Courier like Font)
    - GPL-2.0+ (Liberation Sans, Arial like font)
- Tivoization /ˈtiːvoʊɪˌzeɪʃən/ is the creation of a system that incorporates software under the terms of a copyleft software license like the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL), but uses hardware restrictions or digital rights management (DRM) to prevent users from running modified versions of the software on that hardware. Richard Stallman coined the term in reference to TiVo‘s use of GNU GPL licensed software on the TiVo brand digital video recorders (DVR), which actively blocks users from running modified software on its hardware by design.[1][2] Stallman believes this practice denies users some of the freedom that the GNU GPL was designed to protect.[3] The Free Software Foundation refers to tivoized hardware as “tyrant devices”.[4] (creditz: wiki)
- Linux kernel licensing rules ============================
- The Linux Kernel is provided under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 only (GPL-2.0), as provided in LICENSES/preferred/GPL-2.0, with an explicit syscall exception described in LICENSES/exceptions/Linux-syscall-note, as described in the COPYING file.This documentation file provides a description of how each source file should be annotated to make its license clear and unambiguous. It doesn’t replace the Kernel’s license.The license described in the COPYING file applies to the kernel source as a whole, though individual source files can have a different license which is required to be compatible with the GPL-2.0: GPL-1.0+ : GNU General Public License v1.0 or later <a href="https://spdx.org/licenses/GPL-2.0-or-later.html">GPL-2.0+ : GNU General Public License v2.0 or later</a> <a href="https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/plain/LICENSES/preferred/GPL-2.0?h=v5.17-rc2">https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/plain/LICENSES/preferred/GPL-2.0?h=v5.17-rc2</a> LGPL-2.0 : GNU Library General Public License v2 only LGPL-2.0+ : GNU Library General Public License v2 or later LGPL-2.1 : GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1 only LGPL-2.1+ : GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1 or later
src: https://docs.kernel.org/process/license-rules.html
- actually there is a whole folder “LICENCE” that is shipped with the kernel sources, which has the following subfolders:
- deprecated
- dual
- exceptions
- preferred
- here is a list of all sorts of free licences https://spdx.org/licenses/ (RSS Feed)

- Can I use the word “Linux” or the Tux logo?

hereby creditz shall be given to Larry_Ewing for creating the Tux Logo

Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds and its use is governed by the Linux Trademark Institute. Please consult the following page for further information: Trademark Usage

The Tux penguin logo was created by Larry Ewing using Gimp software. It is free to use, including commercially, as long as you give Larry Ewing proper credit (“if someone asks”). For any other permissions, please reach out to Mr. Larry Ewing directly. (src)
- I heard that Linux ships with non-free “blobs” (pieces of software that are binary closed source)
- Before many devices are able to communicate with the OS, they must first be initialized with the “firmware” provided by the device manufacturer.
- This firmware is not part of Linux and isn’t “executed” by the kernel — it is merely uploaded to the device during the driver initialization stage.
- While some firmware images are built from free software, a large subset of it is only available for redistribution in binary-only form.
- To avoid any licensing confusion, firmware blobs were moved from the main Linux tree into a separate repository called linux-firmware.
- It is possible to use Linux without any non-free firmware binaries, but usually at the cost of rendering a lot of hardware inoperable.
- Furthermore, many devices that do not require a firmware blob during driver initialization simply already come with non-free firmware preinstalled on them.
- If your goal is to run a 100% free-as-in-freedom setup, you will often need to go a lot further than just avoiding loadable binary-only firmware blobs.
- src: https://kernel.org/category/faq.html

Links:

https://www.linuxplumbersconf.org/

because this site https://lpc2021.org/ is massively broken (WTF LPC?) who wants to watch the 2021 conference will have to rely on Google: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVsQ_xZBEyN2c21jFUgqI2iMa094zXanH

manpage of man: man.man.txt

mandb.man.txt

#linux #gnu #gnulinux #opensource #administration #sysops #gpl #fsf #eff #licence #licensing #license #gnu-linux #gcc #kernel #linus #stallman

Originally posted at: https://dwaves.de/2022/01/31/why-is-it-gnu-linux-and-not-just-linux-linus-talking-about-gpl-v3-vs-gpl-v2-the-better-one-the-social-gpl-contract-is-i-give-you-sourcecode-give-me-back-your-changes-non-free-binary/

0 Persons are tagged with #licensing