Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 16:55:13 +1030 From: Greg Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> Cc: Hiten Pandya <hitmaster2k@yahoo.com>, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@critter.freebsd.dk>, FreeBSD Chat <chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: IBM suing (was: RMS Suing was [SUGGESTION] - JFS for FreeBSD) Message-ID: <20011213165513.D3448@monorchid.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <3C18472F.DD3A90D5@mindspring.com> References: <20011212105559.19177.qmail@web21103.mail.yahoo.com> <3C17482C.3792DAA9@mindspring.com> <20011213115519.F3448@monorchid.lemis.com> <3C18472F.DD3A90D5@mindspring.com>
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On Wednesday, 12 December 2001 at 22:14:07 -0800, Terry Lambert wrote: > Greg Lehey wrote: >>> I am a former IBM employee, of IBM GSB division (Global Small >>> Business). >> >> I am a current IBM employee, in Ozlabs. One of my areas of activity >> is JFS. > > Good. Go to w3.ibm.com, and search for "open source". Let me know > when you get done reading the 18 page presentation on how to treat > GPL'ed code as if it were toxic waste that would instantly mutate any > intellectual property into dust. I've been on the training. I thought that they did a very good job of presenting the issues, and how IBM wanted to support the open source movement without giving up its competitive edge to other large companies. I know that things have changed since you were IBM. I still find it difficult to think that they have changed as much as would be necessary to explain the discrepancy between your viewpoint and my experience. > See also the IBM guidelines for the use of Open Source in IBM > products, Been there, done that. Your point? > and what code is and isn't vetted, and the IBM approved IBM servers > from which you are permitted to obtain the source, after attending > the mandatory 3 day "How to treat GPL'ed software as toxic waste" > IBM training. Haven't done that. As you yourself say, IBM is very fond of the GPL. >> It's pretty certain that IBM will never release proprietary code under >> the BSD license. This is a stated direction, and it's not a >> "religious/marketing GPL crusade", it's plain common business sense. >> IBM has a stated policy to help open source projects, but they're not >> prepared to release code under conditions which would enable their >> commercial competitors to take the code, use it, and not return to the >> community. I certainly understand and support this decision (though >> it was made quite plain that nobody was requiring me to personally >> agree with it). > > We are talking an IBM commercial product, and we are not even talking > an Open Source license (though the BSD license would have been highly > preferrable, it was not a business requirement for our FreeBSD based > product). I'm having trouble following you. JFS was released under the following license (this is taken from linux/fs/jfs/jfs_inode.c): /* * * Copyright (c) International Business Machines Corp., 2000 * * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by * the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or * (at your option) any later version. * * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See * the GNU General Public License for more details. * * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License * along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software * Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA */ I don't know the exact wording of the GPL, but I can't see any deviation here. Yes, the original code is proprietary. But we are most definitely talking an open source license, even if it's one you don't like. Greg -- See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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