Juha Saarinen wrote:
> I've noticed that there's some interest from the FreeBSD
> crowd in XFS. But, they don't like the GPL... would SGI
> consider using a BSD-style license instead?
Juha --
First off, I speak as an individual not associated with SGI in any
way. I also speak as a closet BSD advocate. I hope everyone here
takes note of the level of proliferation BSD has in the current
Internet, and even at Microsoft. Without BSD, our modern Internet
would be no where near where it is today -- where BSD runs a number
of major archives, sites and key services. And far be it from me or
anyone else to being a political discussion on licensing.
But at this point of development, I would be interested to note
whether or not SGI is the copyright holder of 100% of the current
XFS codebase (at least the parts that would be needed to port to
BSD). Or if some 3rd party GPL submissions have been made, and
their copyrights would need to be consulted before re-releasing as
BSD (or any other license). It gets touchy, as with any other GPL
project, although it can be accomodated -- by dual licensing "out of
the box" as GPL and another (usually commercial, but BSD is an
option).
[ SIDE NOTE: For an article on what I'm talking about, see my
pre-pre-preliminary article on "Dual Licensing GPL" here:
http://www.smithconcepts.com/opinion/#tth_sEc1.2 ]
So, again, before SGI could even consider releasing under a
different license, 100% of the GPL XFS source code used would need
to be either under SGI's copyright, or others have signed over their
copyrights to SGI. This is the _key_ to dual-licensing (or
switching the original license to another after-the-fact). I'm not
familiar with SGI's XFS codebase, but I'm sure there was a lot of
work to get it to compile for the GNU toolchain and other intricies
of Linux and other GNU toolchain OSes (like Linux, BSD, Solaris and
a few other, RTOS). Did SGI do all this work? Or was some "early
porting" done via GPL by outsiders?
And if "dual-licensure" ended up being a copyright option after
careful checking, I'm not sure SGI, nor most others, would go for
BSD. As I discussed in my article, companies are choosing GPL, LGPL
or dual-licensed GPL/commercial for a reason -- they don't want to
give "free R&D" to long-time, industry "leeches" like Microsoft and
WindRiver. SGI has already choosen GPL, so the only "possible"
option I see is a binary-only release for BSD (maybe LGPL?). So,
maybe, that is the avenue the BSD team should be taking. Maybe
working with SGI under a NDA or some other agreement.
Again, it gets mighty complicated -- barring even the political
decisions that need to be made.
-- TheBS
--
Bryan J. Smith mailto:b.j.smith@xxxxxxxx chat:thebs413
SmithConcepts, Inc. http://www.SmithConcepts.com
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