Theo de Raadt on Plan 9 licensing (2003)

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.plan9/0j5Xa_Bu_fs

by vezzy-fnord • 11 years ago

78 49 11 years ago

groups.google.com

Not that it would make Theo happy, but Plan 9 is now also licensed under GPL V2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs#License

SixSigma• 11 years ago

The toolchain was Gpl/MIT first as part of Inferno.

The OpenBSD team were interested in said toolchain to replace GCC. His railing at the Plan9 team was a little unfair, we (the team and the community) mostly agreed with his basic point. It was Lucent legal that walked slowly.

This was a time when money was on fire at Lucent. Bell-labs had removed every other lightbulb as a money saving exercise for example. Playing at Open Source wasn't very high up anyone's todo list.

The initial opening of the code in 2000 was just too late for plan9, the GPL was eating the world.

Pyxl101• 11 years ago

I urge everyone in power regarding this issue to think this through -- and then, make your simple compiler which we can build into a trusted component FREE, or, if you don't, sometime in the next few years something else which is simple and matches it in power, can and might and probably will show up (because it is clear the gnu bloat compiler will never achieve such a goal...)

Looks like Theo correctly predicted the advent of clang.

cwzwarich• 11 years ago

Clang is dramatically more complex than the Plan 9 compiler, and doesn't really qualify for satisfying Theo's prediction.

Flow• 11 years ago

Maybe that is because clang supports much more than plain C? Also, they have set a very ambitious goal with the friendly error messages for C++.

justincormack2• 11 years ago

OpenBSD is still using their patched old version of gcc, and they are still looking for another solution.

batou6• 11 years ago

Didn't they look at PCC as well? No idea what happened to that.

pjc50• 11 years ago

The license itself, which is critical to this discussion, is a dead link. If it's not included then we're just re-opening an old flamewar.

4ad2• 11 years ago

Can't remember if he was talking about the first, or the second version of the LPL, but in any case, around the same time-frame (can't remember exactly when either) the compilers were available under the MIT license, distributed as part of Inferno (Inferno generally is GPLv2/commercial, but the compilers were MIT).

EdiX2• 11 years ago

He's talking about the current version. The first version was rejected by OSI.

_wldu• 11 years ago

"I urge you to write something much simpler."

When I was younger, I thought that the OpenBSD folks were backward and unsophisticated when compared to Linux. I imagine that a lot of younger people feel that way. But after working with various systems over the years, I can now really appreciate that simplicity. It's really the heart and soul of OpenBSD, OpenSSH and all the other projects (libreSSL, etc.) that they release.

batou6• 11 years ago

This. I really wish I could get paid to use it but everyone wants Linux and Microsoft shufflers. I can live in hope.

jane_is_here• 11 years ago

"Note that I sell OpenBSD CDs to fund our project. That contract right there says in term 7:

        If Theo accidentally sells a CD to
        North Korea, the US can fuck him.

Thanks OSI. Thanks for being so damn patriotic.

It also says in term 4:

        Sell this in a product in ways which "we" do not like, and the
        contract you have accepted says you can be fucked by anyone
        who owns this license later and who decides they want to fuck you.

Who is "we". You don't read term 4 that way? ."

Is he for real ?

BuildTheRobots• 11 years ago

He's extremely real; one of the three founders of NetBSD and the founder of OpenBSD. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theo_de_Raadt

protomyth2• 11 years ago

"Put another way... do you guys have some kick ass technology that you want to change the world, or don't you?"

At the right time they might have had just that. I do hate Lucent's lawyers for the roadblocks.

Who actually owns the copyright on Plan 9 these days?

pavlov2• 11 years ago

Nokia recently acquired Lucent and Bell Labs... So the answer is probably "a Finnish telecom equipment maker that many people mistakenly assume was bought by Microsoft".

razzmataz• 11 years ago

Alcatel, Alcatel not Nokia bought Lucent.

justin662• 11 years ago

The licensing became a lot more reasonable after the episode in 2003.

Licensing info here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs#License

http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/licence.html

phkahler2• 11 years ago

> The license you propose is NOT FREE SOFTWARE. I am astounded the OSI has gone and decided to become an organization that just rubber stamps things which are not free. I don't know who they are talking to, but these "licenses" which they approve are chock full of constraints against various segments of the user community.

OSI is not about free software. It's not even very good about open source. They seemed happy if people had access to the source code regardless of the terms around it. They approved lots of licenses that had crap in them.

IMHO BSD/MIT or GPL/LGPL are pretty much it. If you need a different license than those, you've probably got an agenda. OSI gave a rubber stamp to different agendas.

candeira• 11 years ago

Please point one single OSI-approved license that is not free by the FSF's Free Software Definition and/or the Debian Free Software Guidelines.

I'd be delighted to learn something I don't know. I asked Stallman once, and he could only remember a case where OSI messed up and then fixed it when they realised.

phkahler2• 11 years ago

Well this is turning into a lesson for me. There are a few that used to be non-free until newer versions came along:

Apple Public Source License - was nonfree before 2.0

Artistic License 1.0 was nonfree. 2.0 is.

Reciprocal Public License - FSF doesn't indicate a revision, but OSI shows a version 1.5.

Without history it's not clear weather these were OSI approved before revision. There are also some in the OSI list that are not on the FSF list, so I'm not sure if they're free or not.

But I still stand by my second assertion that most of them are unnecessary. If you're not BSD/MIT compatible and not GPL/LGPL compatible, your code will probably have a limited life.

dragonwriter2• 11 years ago

OSI is not about free software. It's not even very good about open source. They seemed happy if people had access to the source code regardless of the terms around it. They approved lots of licenses that had crap in them.

The last sentence isn't true unless the FSF has also done so; there aren't lots of OSI-approved Open Source licenses that aren't also blessed by the FSF as Free Software licenses (the same is true in reverse, as well.)

pnut• 11 years ago

His writing style makes me cringe... just unprofessional, regardless of content.

Karunamon2• 11 years ago

"Professionalism" is usually nothing more than a euphemism for using PC/CYA language and avoiding any type of discussion of hard truths because they might offend someone in power.

Technology as an industry would be better if we discarded it.

billyhoffman• 11 years ago

"Professionalism" is expressing yourself without using ad hominem attacks or insults. Using professionalism actually makes your points stronger, since people are forced to discuss and debate facts instead of how focusing on how you are behaving like a child.

I'm sick of this idea that "professionalism" == whiny or politically correct and being "honest" allows you to be a jerk. The entire thing is so unproductive.

elchief• 11 years ago

Yawn

bitwize• 11 years ago

If it were up to ken and dennis, it would have been wtfpl-licensed, I'm sure.

Theo de Raadt on Plan 9 licensing (2003)

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