Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

EU study recommends OpenBSD

undeadly.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 153 posts

Re: EU study recommends OpenBSD

#31

Post by Someone1234 »

nnq wrote: post #21
s_dev wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could have easily taken the full quote -- it's not quite the contradiction you're trying to make: "GPL fans said the great problem we would face is that companies would take our BSD code, modify it, and not give back. Nope—the great problem we face is that people would wrap the GPL around our code, and lock us out in the same way that these supposed companies would lock us out. Just like the Linux community, we h…

> once the code is GPL'd, we cannot get it back I don't get it. Can't you retain copyright to code you yourself release under GPL and also use it under a different license or as part of closes source software? As far as I know, you can...

Let me rephrase the quote for you: "once the code is GPL'd, we cannot get the modifications back"

That's what he meant. Look at the full context.

Re: EU study recommends OpenBSD

#32

Post by chupy »

th0br0 wrote: post #23
ersii wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting! Could you elaborate some more and perhaps list a few projects, if you're allowed to?

I primarily know about the projects listed at https://www.fokus.fraunhofer.de/809f10db25eddf3e/projects A personal observation is that, nowadays, gitlab seems to be preferred to github as part of a push to rely more on software developed inside the EU (guess it's an aftermath of the whole NSA story). PolicyCompass, for example, lives at https://github.com/policycompass Carneades lives at http://github.com/carneades M…

Just curious, is that software developed by consultants or by actual EU employees?

Re: EU study recommends OpenBSD

#33

Post by th0waway »

nbevans wrote: post #29

"[...] the use of open source computer operating systems and applications reduces the risk of privacy intrusion by mass surveillance. Open source software is not error free, or less prone to errors than proprietary software, the experts write. But proprietary software does not allow constant inspection and scrutiny by a large community of experts." That worked great for OpenSSL didn't it? ;)

Yep, the issue was fixed (even though it took a while).

Re: EU study recommends OpenBSD

#34

Post by jkyle »

tbrownaw wrote: post #18
jkyle wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Theo De Raadt always complained that many of the institutions that run and use OpenBSD don't contribute back. Sounds like he needs a different license then.

I don't think any of the free/open licenses require users to contribute to the parent project. I don't think any even require that people distributing modified versions, send those modifications back upstream.

    I don't think any even require that people distributing modified versions, send those modifications back upstream.
Copy Left licenses require those changes be shared on request. Which is pretty close.

Re: EU study recommends OpenBSD

#35

Post by debacle »

Someone1234 wrote: post #27
tbrownaw wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think any of the free/open licenses require users to contribute to the parent project. I don't think any even require that people distributing modified versions, send those modifications back upstream.

The GPL kinda-sorta does. I guess it depends on your definition of "contribute back." People that derive from GPL source have to release those changes to the public, which could just be a zip archive on their web-site rather than a git pull request. I guess what I mean is, the company can try to be as unhelpful as possible (e.g. strip comments, place all code into a giant .cpp file, etc) but it does technically have…

> People that derive from GPL source have to release those changes to the public

This is entirely not true. If I take a GPLed application, download it, modify it, and never distribute it, then I am under no obligation to release the source.

Re: EU study recommends OpenBSD

#36

Post by cwyers »

Someone1234 wrote: post #27
tbrownaw wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think any of the free/open licenses require users to contribute to the parent project. I don't think any even require that people distributing modified versions, send those modifications back upstream.

The GPL kinda-sorta does. I guess it depends on your definition of "contribute back." People that derive from GPL source have to release those changes to the public, which could just be a zip archive on their web-site rather than a git pull request. I guess what I mean is, the company can try to be as unhelpful as possible (e.g. strip comments, place all code into a giant .cpp file, etc) but it does technically have…

The GPL requires you to distribute source code in addition to binaries. If you don't distribute binaries (i.e. if you're running the code on your server farm only), then you don't have to distribute anything.

Re: EU study recommends OpenBSD

#37

Post by Ded7xSEoPKYNsDd »

nnq wrote: post #21
s_dev wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could have easily taken the full quote -- it's not quite the contradiction you're trying to make: "GPL fans said the great problem we would face is that companies would take our BSD code, modify it, and not give back. Nope—the great problem we face is that people would wrap the GPL around our code, and lock us out in the same way that these supposed companies would lock us out. Just like the Linux community, we h…

> once the code is GPL'd, we cannot get it back I don't get it. Can't you retain copyright to code you yourself release under GPL and also use it under a different license or as part of closes source software? As far as I know, you can...

You can ask all copyright holders of the code since the code was GPL'd to relicense the code under a different license (BSD presumably). If only one declines you can't use their code and anything based on it.

Re: EU study recommends OpenBSD

#38

Post by th0br0 »

chupy wrote: post #32
th0br0 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I primarily know about the projects listed at https://www.fokus.fraunhofer.de/809f10db25eddf3e/projects A personal observation is that, nowadays, gitlab seems to be preferred to github as part of a push to rely more on software developed inside the EU (guess it's an aftermath of the whole NSA story). PolicyCompass, for example, lives at https://github.com/policycompass Carneades lives at http://github.com/carneades M…

Just curious, is that software developed by consultants or by actual EU employees?

Consultants essentially. There's also some IT development going on by actual EU employees, but the projects I listed above are usually won through tenders often submitted as a joint project by multiple companies/organisations (research partners - i.e. universities -, development partners - i.e. big companies - + public partners - often for demo purposes) although the EU also funds some purely research oriented projects of course.

Re: EU study recommends OpenBSD

#39

Post by jdub »

jkyle wrote: post #34
tbrownaw wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think any of the free/open licenses require users to contribute to the parent project. I don't think any even require that people distributing modified versions, send those modifications back upstream.

I don't think any even require that people distributing modified versions, send those modifications back upstream. Copy Left licenses require those changes be shared on request. Which is pretty close.

Copyleft licenses require changes be shared on distribution, and only to whom binaries have been distributed.

Re: EU study recommends OpenBSD

#40

Post by s_dev »

gillianseed wrote: post #20
s_dev wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could have easily taken the full quote -- it's not quite the contradiction you're trying to make: "GPL fans said the great problem we would face is that companies would take our BSD code, modify it, and not give back. Nope—the great problem we face is that people would wrap the GPL around our code, and lock us out in the same way that these supposed companies would lock us out. Just like the Linux community, we h…

>Nope—the great problem we face is that people would wrap the GPL around our code, and lock us out in the same way that these supposed companies would lock us out. Does he offer any examples of this happening ?

The point I think Theo is trying to make is in the open source world you simply have to expect that people will take code - put it under a different licence and modify it - restricting their ability to take back the modified code into OpenBSD.

Typically OSS licences allow and tolerate "selfish" behaviour. I don't think I or he needs to back up this claim with examples.

Post reply on HN