[advocacy-discuss] OSUG Discussion: OGB Reorg and New Webapp Issues

[Alan DuBoff]

On Fri, 27 Jun 2008, Joerg Schilling wrote:

> Alan DuBoff <alan.duboff at sun.com> wrote:
>
>> What if we had an IPS repository that hosted ONLY GPLv3 code? People
>> within the community could contribute code that would be held in a public
>> repository (genunix.org for instance, which Al Hopper agreed would be a
>> good use for the community), so that we can start to create a large GPLv3
>> repository.
>
> Why do you like to give so much attention to a license that just likes to be
> incompatible even to it's older sisters?

That's exactly why. In the best open source world we wouldn't have to 
worry about licenses, but we're not in the best open source world, and 
licenses do in fact cause us problems.

Maybe to classify it as GLDv3 would be wrong, but to classify any software 
that couldn't ship on a Sun system, such as mplayer for instance, to be 
available for our platforms and/or be distributed in a country where that 
could happen (Hungary, Finland, etc...).

genunix.org wouldn't fill that gap, as it's in the U.S., but it could 
provide for a respository that was not associated with Sun in any way, so 
that we could host packages that are not officially putback into 
OpenSolaris.

> I am not even sure that a separate repository could prevent license 
> violations from mixing GPLv2 and GPLv3 projects.

Why?

There is nothing to prevent us from hosting packages of any license. There 
is nothing to prevent any system from installing software of any license 
to their system also. If we have a repository that is not connected to 
Sun, and in the community, what stops people from adding the repository to 
their config, grabbing community packages, and using them on their system?

While Sun can't distribute those packages, that's ok, why do they need to?

I want to be able to play mp3 files.

I want to be able to run GPLv3 software on my system.

I just want a usable system, one that is not caught up in a legal 
quagmire trying to figure out what we can or can't have on our system.

It is true that any system that Sun ships will not be able to mix these 
packages, there is no reason that people in the community can't do that, 
or is there a problem with that?

--

Alan DuBoff - Solaris x86 IHV/OEM Group