121–130 of 256 posts
In case anyone's curious, I blogged about the backstory of the acquisition.[1] tl;dr: We at Joyent are elated, and we believe that this will be a huge win for our customers, for our technologies and for the communities that they serve! [1] https://www.joyent.com/blog/samsung-acquires-joyent-a-ctos-p...
Thank you for not burying the lede! It's a lost art.
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Linux has a specific amendment to the GPLv2 stating that it must always be distributed under the terms of the GPLv2, not the GPLv3 or any later version.
Honest question, how is anyone expected to keep up with all of this? Software licenses are not all that interesting to me, I just like making things, but now I have to also read pages and pages of legalize for every single dependency. I thought it would be good enough to know most mainstream licenses, but apparently Linux has a modified version of the GPLv2? I would never notice that, nor would I trust myself to even…
That is a good, honest question, but there is a different standard of expectations for some random programmer doing a project and one of the biggest, most powerful multinational corporations on the planet with business operations (and legal advisors) in most of the world's countries.
If Samsung has the legal muscle to go up against Apple and others in the courtrooms of the world, and the technical muscle to customize multiple operating systems for countless products, they have the resources to read and understand the Linux license. While inept bungling is always a possible explanation for any party, a more likely explanation for a license violation for something as fundamental as an operating system by any party with that level of resources (if one were to ever occur) would be that they examined the issue, understood the situation, and decided that they could probably get away with it.
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Cantrill advocated the fact that CDDL was copyleft as a good thing[1] (it's a bad license overall, but the point is the same) specifically mentioning that the fact that Oracle couldn't use new DTrace and ZFS improvements from the community was a good thing. I agree (though I much prefer the GPL). So actually all of Cantrill's worries with Oracle exist with Node.js's license. I am sad when I see large free software pr…
There are people out there like myself who are convinced that GPL is the most vile, fascist license out there. On the other hand, I have nothing against CDDL. I think the incompatibility of CDDL with the GPL is what saved the illumos community (even if inadvertently) from having their technology cannibalized by GNU and Linux. I'm happy that BSD is benefitting from illumos (and vice versa), but I'm even more happy tha…
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Having worked in a Samsung office for enough time to have an informed opinion, I can emphatically say that the "hardware focused history" has nothing to do with their lacking on the software front. They have some amazing engineers (especially at HQ in Korea), but the main obstacles are partly Korean culture in general (especially as it pertains to engineers) and partly the management practices of the company. The bes…
> They have some amazing engineers (especially at HQ in Korea), but the main obstacles are partly Korean culture in general (especially as it pertains to engineers) and partly the management practices of the company. Can you explain the cultural aspects (and management shortcomings) in more detail for those of us who haven't experienced Korea? Thanks.
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> They have some amazing engineers (especially at HQ in Korea), but the main obstacles are partly Korean culture in general (especially as it pertains to engineers) and partly the management practices of the company. Can you explain the cultural aspects (and management shortcomings) in more detail for those of us who haven't experienced Korea? Thanks.
I only have secondhand knowledge (my brother worked at Samsung HQ for almost two years after grad school & a post-doc), but Samsung managers are often corrupt and treat their employees like trash. Foreigners have it a little better, they're allowed to go home at relatively more normal hours, but if you're from Korea and Korean, you do whatever the boss tells you or they retaliate hard since there are plenty of starry…
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Linux has a specific amendment to the GPLv2 stating that it must always be distributed under the terms of the GPLv2, not the GPLv3 or any later version.
Honest question, how is anyone expected to keep up with all of this? Software licenses are not all that interesting to me, I just like making things, but now I have to also read pages and pages of legalize for every single dependency. I thought it would be good enough to know most mainstream licenses, but apparently Linux has a modified version of the GPLv2? I would never notice that, nor would I trust myself to even…
* ... apparently Linux has a modified version of the GPLv2? I would never notice that,*
From the point of view of a personal project it doesn't matter that much. If you accidentally breach a license and someone notices they'll tell you and you'll fix the issue.
It gets much hairier once money is involved (i.e. OS code used by a company like Samsung) but the process they need to go through is no different from the due diligence that they have to do when licensing non-OS code from other bodies (commercial or otherwise).
When transitioning from pet project to commercial interest things are a bit more muddy. In the case of an individual or small company making the transition there may be some pain as they are not initially setup for this, but in the case of a commercial interest taking over (buying the project, taking over the smaller company, employing the individual specifically to work on the project, just negotiating non-OS use of the code etc.) this is again covered by the same due diligence requirements they follow when dealing with commercial code.
> I'd rather just stop publishing.
This only affects making modifications to other projects or taking some of their code to supplement your's (in both cases you are creating a derivative work), and even then only if you subsequently publish the work (i.e. it isn't purely a personal or in-house project). It shouldn't stop you publishing work that is definitely your own, just chose a license that you do understand.
If in doubt, write it yourself. For bringing in libraries (as "write it yourself" is seldom completely practical for all but the smallest projects) keep to the "soft" licenses that you understand (in no particular order this for me is: BSD, MIT, CC, LGPL, ASL) and avoid the "hard" OS licenses (GPL proper) & non-OS licenses unless you intend to stay GPL or accept the limitations of commercial/other licensing, and ignore code under other licenses unless you have time to read and understand them. Also avoid code with no clear license.
Hey, maybe Joyent can finally afford to refund the people who supported it when it was textdrive and then went back on their word! Snarky I know but I'm still bitter about how it was all handled..
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Honest question, how is anyone expected to keep up with all of this? Software licenses are not all that interesting to me, I just like making things, but now I have to also read pages and pages of legalize for every single dependency. I thought it would be good enough to know most mainstream licenses, but apparently Linux has a modified version of the GPLv2? I would never notice that, nor would I trust myself to even…
> apparently Linux has a modified version of the GPLv2? I would never notice that, nor would I trust myself to even comprehend it properly. The amendment is actually the first paragraph of the COPYING file. If you modify any of the terms of the license directy, you have to remove the preamble and refer to it as something other than the GPL. The other option for modifying the GPL is to distribute a separate LICENSE fi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Linux has a specific amendment to the GPLv2 stating that it must always be distributed under the terms of the GPLv2, not the GPLv3 or any later version.
Honest question, how is anyone expected to keep up with all of this? Software licenses are not all that interesting to me, I just like making things, but now I have to also read pages and pages of legalize for every single dependency. I thought it would be good enough to know most mainstream licenses, but apparently Linux has a modified version of the GPLv2? I would never notice that, nor would I trust myself to even…
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I worked with two project managers from their US team STA (Samsung Technologies America). One was OK. The other one was a fucking psychopath. I'm talking about needlessly and viciously backstabbing all in range. Totally unbelievable. Never seen anything like it, and god help me I hope I never see it again. Later, I visited their HQ in Korea and met some of their Indian and Korean development teams. They were competen…
Then you should see the japanese way of working, it's also quite fun! I believe this is common in most of asia. I have worked in China and it's not quite different at all from what you're saying.