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

[Keith Bierman]

On Jun 27, 2008, at 11:28 AM, Alan DuBoff wrote:
>
> 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...).

Sort of like ubuntu's main, restricted, universe and multiverse?
> ...
>> I am not even sure that a separate repository could prevent license
>> violations from mixing GPLv2 and GPLv3 projects.
>
> Why?

I agree, as far as I know, there's nothing that says I can't download  
GPL2, GPL3, CDDL and BSD projects and run them on my system. There  
may be restrictions on how I merge the source trees ;> but that seems  
to be a different question than where/what/who the repository is.
> ...
>
> 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?


Indeed, and while IANAL, I don't know of any reason why Sun can't  
make it easy. Liberate those outside to create IPS repositories, and  
make IPS easy (hopefully trivial) to configure so that it will search  
"all" repositories making it look like there's a single giant  
repository in the cloud to the casual observer (so yeah, I'd default  
it to search all known repositories, irrespective of license ..  
unless the user takes some action).

-- 
Keith H. Bierman   khbkhb at gmail.com      | AIM kbiermank
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<speaking for myself*> Copyright 2008