3 Comments:

At 12:20 PM, gumout said...

The EU license theory incorporates valid
"copyleft" in its formulation. The main aim of
copyleft is the freeing of the public from the
"chains" of intellectual property -- proprietary
copyright. Unmentioned by anyone in open source
advocacy is this small fact... software doesn't
exist in a vacuum. Programs, if they are to have
any meaning must be utilized on *hardware*.

The silicon hardware creations upon which software runs are some of the most heavily utility patented inventions on the planet. Intel, IBM, AMD and whatever EU manufacturers there are, compose some of the most IP centric institutions that exist.

The instruction sets of all CPUs are patented
methods inextricably incorporated into the
hardware. To prevent cloning, the instruction sets
of the next generation sixty-four bit CPUs are
extensively hardware and software patented
devices.

This much I can comfortably predict... if open
source licensing *ever* seriously threatens
proprietary software, it will never run on
anything other than outdated first and second
generation hardware.

Because of the IBM Power hardware and Novell Linux combination posing a real competitive threat, I expect Microsoft to move soon to buy a silicon company since IBM-Novell's looming presence reduces Justice Department anti-trust threats.

For example, Microsoft could buy AMD with their pocket change. Microsoft software on Microsoft
hardware is a real possibility.

I seriously doubt if the EU has enough independent FAB capacity to defy U.S. silicon companies. The
EU license proposal is an ill-considered reaction
to Microsoft hegemony.

 

At 6:32 PM, Anonymous said...

The BSD license is dismissed because it's not explictly copyleft; this is not "in order to avoid the appropriation of the program by third parties", but in order to allow such appropriation - eg, the Windows NT TCP/IP stack was taken from BSD.

The GPL is dismissed as "viral", as "massive spreading through dynamic linkage is not the aim of the EU" ... the GPL allows dynamic linking, it's static linking which invokes the GPL.

So far, two licenses dismissed in a few lines, and none out of a possible two points.

The quality of English used in the article is also poor, which indicates that not much real effort has been put into it... the typo on page 6 ("hits" instead of "its") also indicates that it has not even been proof-read.

The issue of GPL-compatible licenses is also blurred on page 6, showing either that the author doesn't understand these issues, or cannot be bothered to describe them so presents an oversimplification without pointing out that it is such a thing.

Page 7: "just in the case of re-distribution" ... no, in the case of static linking, sharing of source code etc.

Page 8 says of CIRCA, the application being discussed with regard to open-sourcing:
"At the same time, the business and legal objectives include a number of requirements:
- the software, or parts thereof, should be made proprietary by other parties"

That's enough said... there's no point reading on. If the requirement is for proprietary software, why even bother considering F/OSS?

(PS. I take it that this site is no longer maintained, as this most-recent article is now 2 months old)

 

At 6:32 PM, Steve Parker said...

The BSD license is dismissed because it's not explictly copyleft; this is not "in order to avoid the appropriation of the program by third parties", but in order to allow such appropriation - eg, the Windows NT TCP/IP stack was taken from BSD.

The GPL is dismissed as "viral", as "massive spreading through dynamic linkage is not the aim of the EU" ... the GPL allows dynamic linking, it's static linking which invokes the GPL.

So far, two licenses dismissed in a few lines, and none out of a possible two points.

The quality of English used in the article is also poor, which indicates that not much real effort has been put into it... the typo on page 6 ("hits" instead of "its") also indicates that it has not even been proof-read.

The issue of GPL-compatible licenses is also blurred on page 6, showing either that the author doesn't understand these issues, or cannot be bothered to describe them so presents an oversimplification without pointing out that it is such a thing.

Page 7: "just in the case of re-distribution" ... no, in the case of static linking, sharing of source code etc.

Page 8 says of CIRCA, the application being discussed with regard to open-sourcing:
"At the same time, the business and legal objectives include a number of requirements:
- the software, or parts thereof, should be made proprietary by other parties"

That's enough said... there's no point reading on. If the requirement is for proprietary software, why even bother considering F/OSS?

(PS. I take it that this site is no longer maintained, as this most-recent article is now 2 months old)

 

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