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That would probably be legal. However, I'd take it as violating the spirit but not the letter of the license, so I wouldn't do it. Finding a loophole is not honoring the wishes of the developers, even if it's technically allowed by law.
OT.... Thank you! The world would be a far better place if more people honored this idea with respect to all laws and regulations.
OT.... Thank you! The world would be a far better place if more people honored this idea with respect to all laws and regulations.
Good luck!
Franz
When we meet in a dark alley it is not the laws of the particular jurisdiction, or fear of the enforcers, or anything beyond our persons that determines how we will interact, or that restrains us from doing each other harm.
When we are alone with the treasure of another, it is not any outside law that determines whether we make off with it, or whether we make it our responsibility to safeguard it until the owner returns.
In every case, it is what is in our hearts and minds at that moment, and only that, which determines our actions.
We must learn to respect each other from the heart, from second to second, in spite of applicable laws if necessary, if this world is to survive. Law does not define good and evil - they have their own existence, and consequences, independent of law, as we are re-learning the hard way in the present world.
Personally I think the very concept of intellectual property and applicable laws are an absurd affront to my sensibilities as a Created man and FREE_RANGE human being, and have only contempt for them. But I too respect the wishes of the people who employ them, misguided though I think they are...
Respect. I think that was Pat's point, and I respect him all the more for it!
[End of sermon, thanks for considering it...]
Last edited by astrogeek; 05-29-2013 at 04:08 AM.
Reason: typos... and after thoughts...
I though that if a project goes GPL, then since all code is published and made available, that it can be re-licensed without any need for dramatics.
Only the copyright holder, in most cases and in case of the kernel this is the original author, can re-license a piece of software. Since in the case of the kernel there are literally thousands of original authors, re-licensing the kernel is next to impossible.
When we meet in a dark alley it is not the laws of the particular jurisdiction, or fear of the enforcers, or anything beyond our persons that determines how we will interact, or that restrains us from doing each other harm.
When we are alone with the treasure of another, it is not any outside law that determines whether we make off with it, or whether we make it our responsibility to safeguard it until the owner returns.
In every case, it is what is in our hearts and minds at that moment, and only that, which determines our actions.
We must learn to respect each other from the heart, from second to second, in spite of applicable laws if necessary, if this world is to survive. Law does not define good and evil - they have their own existence, and consequences, independent of law, as we are re-learning the hard way in the present world.
Personally I think the very concept of intellectual property and applicable laws are an absurd affront to my sensibilities as a Created man and FREE_RANGE human being, and have only contempt for them. But I too respect the wishes of the people who employ them, misguided though I think they are...
Respect. I think that was Pat's point, and I respect him all the more for it!
[End of sermon, thanks for considering it...]
That's exactly how do I feel it. Very nice written. You've made my day
Only the copyright holder, in most cases and in case of the kernel this is the original author, can re-license a piece of software. Since in the case of the kernel there are literally thousands of original authors, re-licensing the kernel is next to impossible.
It wouldn't be next to impossible. It would be very improbable, but not impossible to get the kernel re-licensed. However, Linus Torvalds is the sole original creator of the Linux kernel. Others have added onto it, but in all regards, Linus was the originating author.
It wouldn't be next to impossible. It would be very improbable, but not impossible to get the kernel re-licensed. However, Linus Torvalds is the sole original creator of the Linux kernel. Others have added onto it, but in all regards, Linus was the originating author.
Linus would have to ask any contributor to the kernel, since he is not the original author of code that was added by third parties. Copyright does not change ownership with the commit of the code to a Git repository.
Linus would have to ask any contributor to the kernel, since he is not the original author of code that was added by third parties. Copyright does not change ownership with the commit of the code to a Git repository.
This is absolutely true, and is why GNU won't accept code contributions unless you assign copyright to them.
In the case of the Linux kernel, some of the contributors are dead and others are missing. Even if Linus wanted to change the kernel license, any code contributed by developers who cannot be contacted or who don't wish to allow it to be relicensed would have to be reimplemented from scratch. I'm also not sure how well authorship was tracked in the early days before the kernel was kept in BitKeeper or git.
In my opinion, relicensing the kernel would be next to impossible.
That would probably be legal. However, I'd take it as violating the spirit but not the letter of the license, so I wouldn't do it. Finding a loophole is not honoring the wishes of the developers, even if it's technically allowed by law.
Honoring wishes of developers is pointless if those wishes themselves are not honorable. Some say, Sun created and used CDDL specifically to prevent compatibility with GPL, and if that's true, then their wishes are pretty irrelevant to me. It's squatting, that's what it is. Suppose someone writes a perfect or near-perfect integer factoring algorithm in C or x86 Assembly and licenses it badly. Then everyone else has no choice other than using a completely different, and considerably slower algorithm. We are not yet at a point (mathematically) where a perfect algorithm can be devised, but this can change tomorrow. There is no fairness here, and not an ounce of common sense: why do we have to write around perfectly good code?
The purpose of copyright has always been to give censorship controls to rich men with printing presses and distribution chains, and Richard Stallman wrote the GPL (which itself can be seen as a hack, an exploit of a legal loophole) to subvert this purpose, and to give some leverage to writers and users. He clearly didn't think twice about the wishes of people who invented and shaped the copyright law over the years, as he was only concerned with our freedom to use the software. Using a legal loophole to distribute ZFS would be in the same spirit, IMHO.
Honorable or not honorable, there is still the matter of "if we could, should we, and if we could, would we" as the underlying issue.
Yes, while offering a patch system to add ZFS to the kernel at entirely optional preference would be technically legal, since you aren't pre-patching ZFS to the kernel, as Patrick said, it would be a very grey area to delve into without knowing what you'd be getting into. Since this neither upholds or violates GPL or CDDL, the real question of it is as I stated above "if we could, should we, and if we could, would we"?
However, there is one underlying aspect I didn't think of. If the parts of the kernel that are from authors who are dead or missing, right of ownership could be deferred to next of kin to which a decision could be made. Otherwise you'd have to wait until the license term expires if it has one, or re-implement it as stated. However, there is one aspect I did realize... if the kernel did transfer to a license such as the MIT license, and parts of contributed code are still GPL, and since MIT and GPL are compatible licenses, couldn't you still have the MIT code and GPL code in the same project provided both licenses for their purposes of software did not conflict with their intended functions?
if the kernel did transfer to a license such as the MIT license, and parts of contributed code are still GPL, and since MIT and GPL are compatible licenses, couldn't you still have the MIT code and GPL code in the same project provided both licenses for their purposes of software did not conflict with their intended functions?
Just do a grep for BSD or MIT over /usr/src/linux and you will see that the kernel already is a mix of code with different licenses.
Honoring wishes of developers is pointless if those wishes themselves are not honorable.
So you are saying if it benefits me, screw them? That person built that and release it for others to use under certain conditions. That person put in the the blood, sweat and tears to create whatever it is. It is their decision to do with it what they want. If someone wanted to use the algorithm you mentioned. They should abide by terms that person released it under or write their own.
What is a person that has no character or honor? Are they not just an animal living from day to day?
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