I have no choice but agree with your opinion :)
Respect.
Arthur
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Stauber [mailto:bq (at mark) solarspeed.net]
> Sent: Friday, November 23, 2007 4:35 PM
> To: coba-e (at mark) bluequartz.org
> Subject: [coba-e:11226] Re: OT: FSF releases AGPL for Web services
>
> Hi Arthur,
>
> > Which comes to question: what license is BQ under?
>
> The NuOnce CD contains a license text that indicates GPL v2
> for the distribution, which may or may not be entirely
> correct. After all, the ISO contains both CentOS and
> BlueQuartz, plus custom additions made by Brian.
> What is under which license can be checked by examining the
> source code or the headers of the installed RPMs. As for
> CentOS: It's released under the GPL, but that wasn't your question.
>
> Now how about BlueQuartz itself? The CCE and UI code that
> goes back to the initial RaQ550 OSS release from Sun
> Microsystems is under the "Sun BSD license". There is enough
> "old" and "original" Sun code around to safely assume that a
> lot of parts of BlueQuartz are still under their original Sun
> BSD license.
>
> The bandwith management kernel modules of the RaQ550 OSS
> release are under GPL
> v2 as well - as indicated in the readme included in the
> original release from Sun.
>
> The BlueQuartz page itself doesn't clarify which license is
> used - at least not in a prominent fashion. Which should be
> cleared up sometime down the road. However: CentOS itself
> doesn't do that either, so we're in good company. :o)
>
> My own personal take is that it's either Sun BSD or GPL v2,
> but the best person to answer that question would of course be Hisao.
>
> > This one seems as appropriate for us, also it might give us
> a "marketing"
> > push. What do you think?
>
> I don't think so.
>
> Sun BSD even grants a broader scope of rights than GPL v2,
> like the right to distribute the code or code that derived
> from it in just binary form.
>
> GPL v2 is the most commonly used license for open source
> projects and there is a good reason for it. It gives both the
> project maintainers and the users of the code about equal
> opportunities for what it can be used for and what not.
> Most other licenses shift this balance in one direction or
> another and take usage rights and permissions away from the
> end user or the developer of derived works. The GPL sums this
> up quite nicely in its preface:
>
> "The licenses for most software and other practical works are
> designed to take away your freedom to share and change the works."
>
> The "Creative Commons v2.5" license for example grants you
> rights to alter and redistribute the code, but says: "You may
> not use this work for commercial purposes."
>
> "Open Xchange" for example uses a mix of GPL and Creative
> Commons for different parts of the distribution. The
> "backend" is under GPL, but the really interesting parts (the
> web based UI) are under Creative Commons. Some modules (like
> the synchronization with PDA's and handhelds) are under a
> pretty restrictive commercial license. Which throws a big
> wrench into using it in any shape or form for commercial
> purposes. Unless you roll out the money for it.
>
> Expectedly the "Affero General Public License" (AGPL) takes
> some freedoms away as well. Assume for a moment that
> BlueQuartz would be under the AGPL and someone used the
> BlueQuartz framework to create something new. The AGPL would
> force him to release all his modifications to the original
> code to the general public. The GPL already does that as
> well, but the AGPL also covers cases where the software is
> just provided as "a service" over the network and where the
> end user doesn't actually "see" the code or installs the code
> himself.
>
> BlueQuartz is *very* modular, so you could simply use the GUI
> framework and create new "modules" for it which do the work
> that BlueQuartz itself doesn't cover. So these extra modules
> that someone created from scratch could still be under any
> license he chooses and he wouldn't need to make the code for
> the extra modules available. That would still be fine with
> both GPL and AGPL and therefore choosing AGPL over Sun BSD or
> GPL v2 wouldn't help the project one bit. To the contrary:
> Developers might think twice about using BlueQuartz for derived work.
>
> Speaking from personal experience: I've checked out a lot of
> "interesting"
> software over the years to evaluate if I could provide it as
> extra service to clients. But if the software in question is
> not outright under GPL I usually stop looking further at it,
> because it may turn out as a bitter pill to swallow once you
> finished thumbing through the legal fineprint in that
> particular license.
>
> On the other hand the AGPL also allows developers to have
> sub-contractors work on the code and force them in a binding
> way to not use the derived works for themselves other than
> for the assigned development task. Which can be useful to a
> certain degree. But you can also do that without AGPL and in
> form of a contract between developer and sub-contractor.
>
> While there are certainly projects where the AGPL is
> appropriate, I don't think it would be something that helps us.
>
> All in all I'm not a big fan of all the different GPL
> lookalikes and GPL v2 is good enough for most "true" open
> source projects. Even GPL v3 has been subject of a lot of
> heated discussions, because it takes some rights and
> permissions away and adds new obligations to certain parties.
>
> --
> With best regards,
>
> Michael Stauber
>
>