Red Hat Summit November 2004

Dalibor Topić
Kaffe OpenVM

Mark Wielaard
GNU Classpath

The Free Software Community, the GPL, Compromising, Trust and Control

GPL Everywhere

Originally designed for the GNU project in 1989

Traditional GNU Toolchain (GCC, GDB, Make, ...)

Now used “everywhere”

Linux Kernel

Gnome

KDE

Kaffe

Or compatible (meaning: no extra restrictions)

Projects move to GPL (compatible licenses)

Python

VIM

Mozilla

Zope

QT

http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/gpl-compatible.html
(Design your license carefully, changing it is hard!)

Why GPL?

People trust it

It has served the community well

Large body of code

Gives control back to developers and users
It allows the community to “trust” the companies
by introducing “anti-control” (nobody controls it, everybody shares).

Discussion

Control, Compatibility
JCP, Specifications, TCKs
We want to be compatible, but we don't (want to) control the community
Apache seems to have solved this (presentation Geir Magnusson)

Sharing code with the GPL world
Apache and Eclipse grew from a different community
but share same goal (Free Software and Open Source definition)
How to get “decission makers” talking about cooperation?

The GNU Classpath compromise
We already decided to compromise on the GPL “anti-control”
(to get more people/organisations helping out)
The precise exception text needs work though
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/classpath

2004-11-22T22:44:14