RWH Wrote: > , > > That seems a bit simplistic. How many places/projects do you think might > want to use GPL but don't care to participate in the legal vagarities > revolving around GPL? If I license a commercial library I pay cash and > agree to restrictions on distribution. If I go the GPL route I don't pay > cash but I do have to buy into the social goals of the GPL and accept > some uncertaintly about IP liability. If I go the BSD route I only have > to accept some uncertainty about IP liability. > Ahem, the GPL doesn't mean the code is free of cost, it just ensures the source code will be available on request. If you don't want IP liability, and be a programmer, you better find a new job - or move to the EU. Just about every program - FOSS or not - violates somebody's patent somewhere. The BSD license doesn't protect you from liability any better than the GPL. Ever since the PTO started granting patents on software, it is impossible, and I do mean impossible - not to violate a patent somewhere. The question is whether or not the patent is enforceable. Patent liability only extends to things that have no "prior art". In other words, if someone is granted a patent and there turns out to be something similar somewhere already in use - the patent is worthless and unenforceable. Hell, I remember reading about a year ago about a patent granted by the PTO on single CPU computers years ago. So that means that every PC, Mac, or whatnot has violated that patent. Try to enforce it, and they would laugh. Same with Microsoft - they have a patent on the "double-click". Every time you download source code or a program you take that risk. Especially from the EU, where software patents are illegal. If you download, aka import, you are probably violating someone's patent here in the US. The only thing you can do is try to keep your risk of infringement at a manageable level. > It was also my impression that Apple's OS X was based on the same BSD > licensed by NeXT from Berkeley rather than FreeBSD, although parts of OS > X were ported from FreeBSD. I'm also pretty sure that Apple had been > posting back enhancements to FreeBSD - Wikipedia mentions the Base > Security Module being ported back from Apple's implimentation. They were > also contributing patches and features from Safari back to KDE's > Konqueror - at least until there was some conflict in priorities between > Apple and the KDE folks. > > Actually, Darwin a hybrid of BSD and Mach, if you want to be picky. They borrowed from FreeBSD and Mach. The interface code, such as Quartz and Cocoa is entirely propreitary, however. Mike Wrote: > That's nice of them, but the license is still such that OS X source is not > available to us. > Darwin (the kernel) is available. The code for the GUI and interposing API layers are not. > OS X is making Linux > a little less attractive and it is thereby slowing Linux development. I honestly can't see how. The same people who worked on Linux will still work on it. People come and go, but the averages remain the same. Realistically, I can't see how OSX can take programmers away from Linux, when you consider that applications programmers for both systems write code according to POSIX standards -meaning it will compile on either. Quite frankly, I prefer Linux. The POSIX threading support on Darwin/OSX really sucks. Ever try to compile PostgreSQL on Darwin? It can be done, but since their pthread support is questionable, you might not get a reliable binary. As for "Linux" the core system, the Linux kernel guys are most certainly running their own versions of the Linux kernel, and NOT Darwin. Just my 2 cents, T.J. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: tj.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 117 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mailman.mn-linux.org/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20070224/37eb3823/attachment.vcf