Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Mandriva Businesses

MandrakeSoft Buys Bochs, LGPLs It 104

Posted by Hemos from the good-things-are-happening dept.
Direct from the mouth of Gael Duval, we've gotten word that MandrakeSoft (Yes, the folks who make Mandrake-Linux. No, it has nothing to do with Mandrake of Enlightenment fame. ) have purchased Bochs and hired Kevin Lawton. Now that Bochs is LGPLed, the Plex86 development can be speed up as well.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

MandrakeSoft Buys Bochs, LGPLs It More

MandrakeSoft Buys Bochs, LGPLs It

Comments Filter:
  • Ah, you're right, I missed the thrust of your comment; I thought you were saying that since Lawton was both Bochs' author and part of the plex86 team, the LGPL relicensing is not relevant to the 'interpollenation' of the two that the article implies is going to speed up.

    But, yeah, the fact that he didn't open it up previously, choosing instead to dangle GPL/LGPL on his site as a carrot'n'stick device to get a job, well, that's all about the money, now, innit?

    Apologies, I was off in the weeds somewhere....

    --
  • Unless I misunderstand RMS' position completely, he'd allege that the license should have been GPL all along, AND that the author should have been compensated for it -- a completely defensible position.

    I think he'd side with me on the idea that licensing terms being held hostage to promise of compensation is not OK.


    --
  • ...when not running on a real x86. So if you want to run your x86 Windows apps anywhere else, yes, this code could potentially be directly useful to WINE.

    (Building a launcher as you describe would be very tricky -- it would have to boot Windows in the virtual machine, copy the app into the VM's virtual partition and run it there -- not trivial or fast.
  • I had a pleasure talking to Kevin about bochs, Vmware, open source etc. when he was in Paris, two weeks ago. He was very happy about getting to Mandrake and about open-sourcing the bochs. The guy really likes the work he is doing, and now he can actually do it withouth having to vorry about the financials.

    Since Kevin did not take part in slashdot discussion so far, here are some of the quotes from our conversation:

    - I always wanted to go open-source, but I also wanted to live from working on bochs. I am very happy to be able to have both at the same time

    - You folks at Mandrake are really cute. The atmosphere here is so good that I may even consider moving to Paris. :-))

    - VmWare guys have asked me to have acces to bochs source code for 'educational purposes' several years ago. Later they went commercial. No idea how much bochs code (if any) they actually used for VMware.

    - I think plex86 will become actually usefull for "office" work in less than one year.

    - The speed should be comparable to VMware, and I have some very interesting ideas about the memory managment, which might even give us some advantage in multi-user env..

    - Having an open licence for bochs was very important for plex86 project. There is quite a lot of code which can be reused.

    DISCLAIMER: We had some alcohol in blood, and I was not taking notes (now, THAT would be a good one!), so do not even try to pin me (or Kevin) on details.

  • Now that the Bochs source is available, could this be used to make a library that virtualizes more of those pesky x86 instructions?

    I'd be really happy if DOSEmu and Wine finally had full protected mode support. DOSEmu has great Linux FS support, and low memory usage, and can run Win 3.1 minus the protected mode stuff. If it had that, I don't think anything would stop it from running modern Windows, or more importantly DOOM!

    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
  • Okay, okay, I'll find a *different* protected mode app to use for my examples. DOSEmu already runs a bunch of stuff, though. I just wish it did sound better...
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
  • Yeah, it's been *available*, but not for actual use in any projects, which would be the point, IMO.

    Wow, I have this source, and I can compile it non-stop for 25 days and read it, but I can't *use* any of it. It's like showing a beginning writer "Paradise Lost", and saying "study it all you want for the next month, but don't write it later, ha ha ha!".

    (okay, maybe not Paradise Lost, I mean it still crashes on Win 3.1, doesn't know what the "Grey Enter" key is, and doesn't like some of the niftier VGA modes. But still...)
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
  • Nonsense. I can sell you the source of a program I write for a gazillion dollars and make it public domain the next day if I want, since I *own* the program, and you just license it.

    In fact, I can license it to you for a gazillion dollars *after* I make it public domain, if I want.
  • I say fine. It means better software for Windows users (and there are a lot of Windows users), so it sounds all right to me. Although I'm not exactly a huge fan of copyrights, so, you know, you'd better get some salt. The actual copyright holder of Linux' ip-mask may have a different opinion, though :).

  • It's hard to go an entire day without seeing some Slashdotter raging at the RIAA for trying to protect their investments. For people here to question any other company ripping off GPL'd code is more than a little hypocritical. The typical Slashdotter is far from having the moral high ground on any IP issues.

    Excuse me? Are you simply ignorant of what the word hypocritical means, or are you just too stupid to apply the concept properly?

    The fact that you can't go a day without seeing some Slashdotter say something anti-IP does not may ones saying pro-IP things hypocrits unless it's the same person! The fact that some Slashdotters disagree with other Slashdotters is not hypocracy. And frankly, it irks me that there are so many idiots reading Slashdot that think all Slashdotters have one opinion on any issue -- we see far too many comments like the one above pointing out that some Slashdotters have opinions that are inconsistant with the opinions of other Slashdotters, and that therefore there's something hypocritical about the fact that we don't always agree on everything. And last but not least, even if you can name some individuals who have been anti-RIAA but pro-GPL, how is that hypocritical? If you think all of us who dislike the RIAA don't think they have the right and responsibility to defend their IP rights, you'd badly misunderstood what those of us who are critical of the RIAA are complaining about. It is not at all inconsistent to both acknowledge that piracy is wrong and believe that the RIAA is wrong to step on the rights of law-abiding consumers. Get a clue. If you actually bother to try to understand what the issues are, you won't be so surprised when some Slashdotters consistently defend people's rights, and thus rage about the RIAA and rage about ripping of GPL'd code. That's consistency, not hypocracy.

    --

  • And yes, I know how to spell hypocricy, I'm just not very good at it when I'm annoyed... so sue me...

    --

  • Obviously, I'm still annoyed. ;)

    (For the record, it's "hypocrisy"...)

    --

  • more? (Score:1)

    by peter ( 3389 )
    I hope we see more stories from the buy-stuff-and-give-it-away dept. in the future :) I love that move. What stuff is out there that the open-source community would like to have bought and freed? Napster? (then we could take out the part that ignores TCP congestion control, and make some other improvements, and release a new version on all platforms.)
    #define X(x,y) x##y
  • One of the most important parts of the GNU GPL is that people (and especially big companies) can't use the fruits of your labour without making their source available. The idea is that this makes it harder for closed-source stuff to be as good as the open-source stuff, so people are more likely to use the open-source stuff. Better software for Windoze users is ok, as long as it is open source. Making a closed-source project better is very much against the rules, and very much pisses off many people.
    #define X(x,y) x##y
  • DosEMU plays DOOM, DESCENT and other very well, and has played it for years. Don't try this in NT though, their dos emulator doesn't come anywhere near the quality of DosEMU. It's a shame that DOS is almost not used anymore...
    ------------------------------------------------ --------
    UNIX isn't dead, it just smells funny...
  • See! See! Those free software nuts steal every idea we corporations come up with - now they're even buying out their competition and then giving away their product. They'll collapse their revenue stream! The company will have to lay off people by the thousands! Anti-competitive moves like this will not be toler..

    *whispering*

    Are you..

    *more whispering*

    it's GPL'd? Oh, uhh.. er.. *quietly putting mouse down*

  • Hi,

    I have VMWare 1.1.2, and am very happy with it.

    I have been looking into switching my main workstation over to FreeBSD, and was dissapointed to learn that VMWare wouldn't work (well) under BSD.

    Bochs will, so what's the speed like? Is it usable? Does it network? Will it work w/ SVGA drivers, a la VMWare, and what's the status on VMWare under BSD? (I've seen encouraging posts on Deja)

    Thanks,

    Ben
  • How many years would it take to start an app (assuming you're platform isn't an Alpha cluster)?
  • Remember that it is an emulator running wine, but if yo want to run windows apps why not just use the emulator with windows?

  • Ugh... (Score:1)

    by Zico ( 14255 )

    I mistyped. I'm sure you knew what I meant, but just to clear it up, I meant to say, "I'm not saying that you download things for which you don't already own the disc..."

    Damn, I'm feeling like osu-neko now. Hopefully I won't have to reply again to correct this post. ;)

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • Hey dont knock on them. if Rhat would fix the bugs before they relase a distro the eratta wouldnt be 5 pages long for each version.

    PLus RedHat is GPL so if Mandrake wants to add some stuff and resale it its withen the Law
  • This was posted to bochs.com:
    Feb 10 2000: FreeMWare/Bochs author looking for stock in exchange for GPLing bochs/employment

    Looks like it finally happened. well almost anyway
  • This was posted to bochs.com:
    Feb 10 2000: FreeMWare/Bochs author looking for stock in exchange for GPLing bochs/employment

    Looks like it finally happened. well almost anyway
  • I think this is great.

    Agreed, this has got to be a big win for Mandrakesoft. bochs is a truly useful tool and a credible technical achievement. Plex86 will go to do more, and by being associated with it, Mandrakesoft will gain enormously.

    I think Plex86 has potential to be in the top 5 Linux apps, along with X, gcc, the WM of your choice and Netscape<duck>!</duck>

    -Cam


  • Why is this post 0? It seems very relevant to the discussion.

    Sela
  • very funny guy, but the scary thing is that such a suit could be actually passed, and even more scarier is that some stupid judge will agree to it.

  • it shouldnt be too bad. emulators usually work at 1/4 the CPU speed so a 600MHz alpha will feel like a 100Mhz pentium at worst..which is pretty usable for most stuff.
  • This is LGPLed, not GPLed. They can not only STUDY the code to their heart's content, they can actually USE it, modified or unmodified, in proprietary apps if they follow the conditions.

  • it would have to boot Windows in the virtual machine, copy the app into the VM's virtual partition and run it there -- not trivial or fast.

    Worse: It would have to boot the virtual machine. Booting WinXX is not a speedy process even without virtualization.

    --

  • wow.. I honestly didn't think he could do it. I remember sending an email to Kevin requesting that he at least guarentee that the source would remain open and that people would be able to use it for free if they contributed some development. The "I'll GPL it if someone gives me a job / stock" was a bit of a shock but it appears that it paid off. Good luck man, now where can I download? :)
  • sure, this could be important. Integrate the emulation into wine and you could run windoze binaries on non-x86 platforms.
  • Hopefully this will help speed along other Bochs related efforts, such as BeBochs [dreamhost.com].

    "...we are moving toward a Web-centric stage and our dear PC will be one of
  • Considering, of course, that Lawton didn't need to have his own source relicensed. He has always had access to his own code, and always will.

  • Maybe I'm all alone on this one, but the reason i don't adopt Qt has nothing to do with the licensing. I have one major and one minor problem with Qt. The minor issue is that it isn't themeable. So, it looks like shit, or more to the point, like windows, on my system. The major issue is that it binds to C++, and that's it. I program in C mostly, but also Perl, Python, Tcl, bash, Smalltalk, Eiffel, and every once in a great while I get forced into using C++. Gtk+, Qt's main competition in the toolkit market, suits my needs much, much more often than Qt. And it looks nice, too. =)
  • We have lots of examples of companies using their stock as leverage after the IPO but this is the first time I've seen it done prior to the company even going public.

    I don't begrudge either the developer or Mandrake. Both give back to the open source community and I hope they profit from it.

    It's kind of ironic that companies that consistently lose money (as virtually every Linux related company does so far) can not only make their owners rich but can even buy out other companies with "virtual equity". I think there's a certain justice in it. It just proves that you can gain wealth and help the community (as opposed to Microsoft who abuses the public and their competitors to achieve wealth). Maybe the good guys do get to win once in a while.

    r/

    Dave

  • To bad Sun (wasn't it sun who made WABI?) never released the source. WABI actually seemed more stable than "the real thing". And it had decent performance too. Those were the days...

  • It's because some authors put too much faith into companies. It's a virtuous thing to do, like the BSD-license, but it may also be a naive move..

    I guess some people don't mind proprietary solutions at all. After all it's good for "competition". ;-)

    - Steeltoe
  • amen, my brother.

    no excuse, no excuse.

    jon
  • I love:

    "...Great distro! These guys are the ones to watch", said Kevin Lawton.

    ... think he got some stock options he'd like to hype for? ;)

    But anyway, this is great. If this ends up running fast on the new generation of 64 bit chips, Linux could wind up being the best platform for running legacy apps on new hardware!
  • I'm thinking one thing... why the Lesser GPL as opposed to the GPL?

    If I am not mistaken, this would allow commercial products to bundle or use the Bochs codebase in their own proprietary products. The GPL does not allow this. As I recall, this confusion was a main reason why the LGPL "Library" GPL was renamed "Lesser" GPL.

  • > I don't think anything would stop it from running ... DOOM!

    Well, you probably already know this, but Linux has had a (semi-official) Doom port for quite a while. And since iD released the source, there are at least 2 more ports [doomworld.com] under active development right now.

    I'll also take this opportunity to shamelessly plug psDooM [capital.edu] again. :-)
  • ZicoKnowsShit,

    no-one's building derivative works off of MP3s. This is Zico trolling at his best.

  • This is ridiculous.

    The guy says that he uses bochs of OS developement and gets -1'd?

    What the hell?

    I for one am happy about the LGPL release of bochs, as I'm building a simulator to deconstruct linux viral code. (Oh, you're one of those people who don't believe in linux virusses.. right...)

  • I agree, this just won mandrakesoft a major point in my book.
  • I am wondering why RedHat didn't do anything to support this.. This could have been a great publicity move for them. Offcourse RedHat will probably benefit from this move too..

    Mandrake is leeching off RedHat.. So maybe this time it is RedHat's time to leech of Mandrake..

    Somewhat symbiotic relationship. In the end they all win..

  • Maybe it isn't that simple. What if he licensed a couple of thousand copies to a single entity? They would sure get pissed if he turned around and made it free. IANAL, but I think there is some FTC regs about this kind of activity - having to offer the same deal to anyone. If this is the case, he could have found himself in the position of having to make massive refunds.
  • No company, especially not one Microsoft's size, would make a specific effort to steal code from a GPL'ed program. The potential risk in bad PR, legal costs, and the 'viral' nature of the GPL isn't worth the relatively small amount of money they'd save vs doing it from scratch.

    Having said that, its difficult/impossible for large companies to completely audit all the code going into their products vs known "Open Source" code. So there's always the potential that some lazy programmer will cut and paste some GPL into his/her code and just change some variable and function names, etc.

  • x86 instruction set isn't copyrighted, else Intel wouldn't have allowed AMD and Cyrix to create and distribute CPU with x86 instruction set.

    Furthermore, if DeCSS is illegal in NY and California, that doesn't means it's illegal elsewhere in the world.

    Then, we must not forget that arguments against DeCSS are mainly based on stupidity. I won't explain why here, it should be off-topics, but with normally brained lawyers, these arguments won't be receivable.

  • Please.
  • Too bad lawyers don't donate their time and expertise like OS programmers do!

    Actually, they do. It's called working pro-bono and it seems to be something that most lawyers do at least some of the time. In fact, it might even be the case that a larger fraction of lawyers have worked pro bono at some point in their life than OS programmers!

  • Ah, now _I've_ been misunderstood. I don't think anyone should be compelled to license their code any particular way. Lawton had a source-available commercial thing going for a long time, and I didn't begrudge him that in the least.

    The part that rubbed me the wrong way was when he put "I'll change the license for this if you give me a job" on the Bochs site. Not that he's not entitled to do that, but it seems counter to the concept of the Open Source universe to use the promise of a license as a bargaining chip for the author's benefit. It kind of misses the point of the sharing thing Open Source is all about, and just feels wrong to me.

    (*shrug) I'm very happy for him, and I'm glad Bochs is LGPL'ed; I'm totally glad his work has paid off for him, in aplomb and in dollars. I just can't help feeling the whole thing is a little bit... underhanded or something.

    Hmmn, I can't find the right words, but I did want to pipe up and say that I'm _not_ an Open Source Marxist, and I totally agree with your attitude about paying the rent. I just think that there's a right way to Open-Source-license things, if you're going to go that route, and I don't think this was necessarily done in that Right Way. That's all.


    --
  • This code is LGPL'ed, so they could easily use it in a linked form, as long as they contributed back any changes that they made to it. I don't particularly care for the LGPL, in this sense - I'd just as soon people used the BSD license if they're intending to allow use in commercial apps.
    You're not making sense. You say you don't like the LGPL, but you'd want a company to give back any changes they've made to the library? A BSD license wouldn't ensure that at all! Only the LGPL allows commercial use and requires source be made available.
    -Chuck

  • It might not help WINE directly, but it might be interesting to build a smart launcher for Windows software. If the executable is known to work well under WINE, use WINE (which would be faster). Otherwise, use BOCHS, which would provide better emulation at the expense of relatively slow execution.

  • If you want to require the developer to give back changes to your code, yet still allow it to be used as part of proprietary programs without the technical difficulties of the LPGL, the MPL is a good alternative.
  • QT is themable.

    KDE2.0 adds makes it easier to theme. (with their theme engine -- allowing gradients and such.)

    As for C++, some would say that it is a benefit.

    Besides, there _are_ bindings for perl and python. There also exists some C bindings, but they are for an old version of QT.

    Once you bring KDE's xmlrpc stuff into the picture, any language can be used.

    -- Thrakkerzog
  • The fact that you can't go a day without seeing some Slashdotter say something anti-IP does not may ones saying pro-IP things hypocrits unless it's the same person!

    Most of the anti-copyright crowd do seem to be pro-GPL which strikes me as inconsistent , since the GPL is a copyright ( a lot of the anti-RIAA noise is made by people who completely oppose any kind of copyright protection ) . They usually try to push the (false) theory that the GPL wouldn't be necessary in the absence of copyright.

    So yes, there are a lot of hypocrites on slashdot ( even though you don't appear to be one of them ).

  • I think this is really great news. Emulators are important because they will allow us to access current data and programs long past the time when the hardware that ran it has stopped being made. And putting Bochs under GPL or LGPL will likely cause it to be much more widely used and ensure long term maintenance and enhancements. Great job and kudos to both Kevin and the people at Mandrake!
  • I do not debate your claim that the CPU design itself is probably copyrighted. If I tried to fab some Pentium 120s in the local pizza oven, I should expect to be sued. However, the instruction set itself is not necessarily copyrighted. Considering that it has been restated many times over in documentation, I doubt they can claim any ownership over it anymore, if they ever did.

    If Intel had such a powerful claim with regards to the x86 architecture, do you think I could be sending this from a K6-2 today?

  • It's hard to go an entire day without seeing some Slashdotter raging at the RIAA for trying to protect their investments. For people here to question any other company ripping off GPL'd code is more than a little hypocritical. The typical Slashdotter is far from having the moral high ground on any IP issues.

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • I'd be more receptive to your argument, but the premise on which you're basing it is completely false. People overall around here don't complain about the RIAA frowning on the free trade of MP3s because they're looking to collect MP3s of songs for which they already own the disc. Unless you're in denial, then you know that. They're complaining because, like warez kiddies, they think it's okay to download whatever song they feel like, artist/record company/etc. be damned. If that is the kind of ethics they have, I'm not going to stop them, but spare me the angst and tears when someone brings up the possibility of a company ripping off GPL'd code.

    Just to make it clear, I'm not saying that you download things for which you already own the disc, but you have to know that you're way in the minority around here.

    On a final note, who is the stupid gimp that marked my original post as "Offtopic?" I replied directly to the poster's comments about the possiblity of people ripping off GPL software. If you didn't mark his as offtopic, I'm curious how you decided that my post was. Oh well, for being a site where so many people profess their individuality, there sure do seem to be an awful lot of people who can't wait to squelch any posts which don't conform to the Slashdot Groupthink.

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • It isn't significant that bochs is being relicensed, it is significant that Lawton was hired.

    Actually, both are significant, but the relicensing is far more significant. Granted Lawton could do what he wanted with his code, but the rest of us couldn't. Now we can. And the fact that Mandrake purchased Bochs is extraordinarily significant. Relicensing it will greatly speed up plex86 development. There is now the potential in the near future for an open source application that can do what VMWare can do. Mandrake wants to be the complete solution for users migrating from Windows to Linux. They've done a great job thus far, and this is another step very much in line with their strategy.
    ----

  • No no, don't misunderstand me - I didn't say I'd like a company to give back changes. I just said that they'd have to give back changes on the LGPL side. I feel that if a developer wants to allow commercial applications to use his code, he might as well release it under BSD. Why? Because LGPL creates added trickery in linking and such. With the BSD there is no worries about whether or not something is being used correctly (except for the old advertisement issue). I guess it's just a matter of opinion though.

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • He means that they may have lifted some Linux code and put it in Windows 2000 either verbatim or as a derivative work. This is illegal. Linus did not illegally take any code from any Unix. The point is not that Windows 2000 lifted the "invention" from Linux but that they may have illegally taken code.

    Chris Hagar
  • Because if you run windows than there is a whole lot more going on. Look at what Corel is doing with WINE, they run their Linux Office Suite in it, and the reviews I've read say it preforms very well( although this is without using emulation). Next look at VMware, it uses up many many more system resources to get an almost perfect windows environment at about half speed, once again still no emulation. The other issue is RAM, to get VMware to run well for me I have to give it at least 64meg of RAM, while a single app would only need a fraction of that. WINE is also meant as a library for doing native ports of code, so even if you wanted to just run all of windows it's a worthwhile project to keep around.
    treke
  • You apparently didn't listen to what I said.


    Lawton owned bochs. Lawton could have relicensed bochs at any time if he felt it was needed- why didn't he? Because of the money. Lawton has to eat, and therefore stated that he'd keep bochs as a revenue source. It isn't significant that bochs is being relicensed, it is significant that Lawton was hired.

  • Too bad lawyers don't donate their time and expertise like OS programmers do!

    Isn't that what the ACLU is for? Read the THE FINANCIAL PICTURE at bottom of their info page [aclu.org]

  • I think this is great. Things like this are going to help MandrakeSoft move out from the shadow of Red Hat and distance themselves from the label of "Red Hat ripoff". They've done a lot to improve their distribution, and now it seems they are working overtime to improve the Open Source community. Projects like Bochs, Lothar [linux-mandrake.com], and DiskDrake [linux-mandrake.com] are proving that MandrakeSoft has a vested interest in Open Source and improving Linux, and not just copying Red Hat.

    I hope that in a year or two MandrakeSoft will be a major Open Source player. So far they proven to me that they are moving in the right direction.

    --
    Mike

  • Too bad lawyers don't donate their time and expertise like OS programmers do!

    Actually, they're getting around to it [harvard.edu]

  • What about commercial companies secretly pilfering code from GPL and LGPL stuff and throwing into their bins and selling it? A very Microsoft-esque thing to do, but who could stop (or even notice) it? Others have said that NAT (network address translation, read "masquerading") in Windows 2000 might have lifted a little bit from linux.src.tgz. But who can audit the code?

    Though I know VMWare would never do such a thing, I just thought I'd bring it up to see what you guys thought of the possibility.

    Too bad lawyers don't donate their time and expertise like OS programmers do!
    -Dan (danpbrowning@email.com)

  • Will this help WINE at all? (Score:3)

    by torpor ( 458 ) <ibisum@@@gmail...com> on Wednesday March 22, 2000 @02:39PM (#1181652) Homepage Journal
    Could any of the more Linux/Emulator scene savvier programmers out there give us a bit of an idea as to whether or not this will help the Wine effort at all, or is it tangential to the effort to getting Win32-code working in Linux?

    (I would think its tangential, but not sure...)

  • Re:If VMware takes the cake, who will notice? (Score:3)

    by JoeBuck ( 7947 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2000 @04:13PM (#1181653) Homepage

    It's legal to study GPLed code to determine the algorithms and protocols, and duplicate them in proprietary code, as long as the proprietary code is not a derivative work. The safe way to do this is the "cleanroom procedure": engineer A studies the code and writes up a report on how it does what it does; engineer B, who has never seen the code, writes a new version based on the report. Really paranoid companies have a lawyer check the report and filter communication between A and B.

  • Maybe we'll see more of this (Score:3)

    by hatless ( 8275 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2000 @05:03PM (#1181654)
    Companies like VA and Red Hat have the equity necessary to pull similar moves on some of the other not-quite-free software out there. Keep the engineers. Keep the other staff to continue selling support and training. And then release the code under the LGPL or a BSD-style license. Good candidates IMHO would onclude:
    • SSH [ssh.org]
    • Qt [troll.no], so the remaining apprehension over KDE can be put to rest and the GNOME and KDE projects can share more code without worries over license conflicts
    • Mainstream SCM, RAD and UML tools companies

  • Re:If VMware takes the cake, who will notice? (Score:3)

    by Foogle ( 35117 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2000 @02:13PM (#1181655) Homepage
    Well it's not like they'd need to lie about it. This code is LGPL'ed, so they could easily use it in a linked form, as long as they contributed back any changes that they made to it. I don't particularly care for the LGPL, in this sense - I'd just as soon people used the BSD license if they're intending to allow use in commercial apps.

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • bochs.com (Score:3)

    by QuantumG ( 50515 ) <qg@biodome.org> on Wednesday March 22, 2000 @02:45PM (#1181656) Homepage Journal
    make deal -> press release -> slashdot -> sign legal agreements -> update official home page

    sure, that makes sense.

  • Great for BeOS. (Score:3)

    by be-fan ( 61476 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2000 @03:22PM (#1181657)
    While Linux users are happy at the GPLing of the software, BeOS and other alternative OS users (BTW. Linux is getting to the point where BeOS is to Linux as Linux used to be to Windows :) should be happy for the code merge. Because Bochs has already been ported to many platforms (Be), if Plex86 uses bochs for the core, then it should be pretty easy to get Plex86 working on BeOS. This will have to be done by BeOS developers since Plex86 doesn't have any plans for supporting non-UNIX OSs, but I'm sure there are enough of those.

  • Oh, PLEASE let them take it... (Score:3)

    by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2000 @05:06PM (#1181658) Journal
    That's what Open Source is about, after all.

    If they take it unmodified, they're within LGPL.

    If they take it and modifiy it, they have to distribute the mods under LGPL. Under GPL it infects their code if they use more than a Fair Use worth. (Isn't that about 10 lines.)

    If they get in a situation where they are supposed to distribute all their source, and don't, they're on borrowed time. Piss off a developer and he might blow the whistle. Then the owners of the original copyright(left) can sue for the rest of the source, and use discovery to pry out internal documents to prove the case.

    Who knows how the courts will rule - but it's a big risk to the company, so they'll probably try to keep it clean, least they get raked over the coals and maybe catch fire. Courts tend to favor the little guy if his story is good and his lawyer doesn't screw up. And Copyleft is set up so anything that breaks it proabably also breaks the parts of IP law that let the proprietary software people write and license their own stuff. B-)

    Remember that copyright violation penalties, unlike most civil penalties, are puntative and draconian (at least partly to make up for the low probability of getting caught), not limited to the damages directly incurred by the copyright holder.

    Meanwhile the whole software species improves, and the proprietary shops have about a 5-to-1 disadvantage in development speed, so they'll keep falling behind even with cannibalization.

  • Bochs should be outlawed (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22, 2000 @04:06PM (#1181659)

    According to the recently-passed Digital Millenium Copyright Act, it is illegal to develop, posess, or traffick in software whose primary purpose is the subversion of copyrights. This is a known legal fact: courts in California and New York have already issued injunctions agains distributors of DeCSS, a tool designed to break the DVD encryption system. Now, the primary purpose of Bochs, and its companion plex86, seems to be the emulation of the Intel instruction set, thus alleviating the need for an actual Central Processing Unit. However, this has legal ramifications: Intel's CPU (and by extension, instruction set) is copyrighted. Using Bochs allows you to execute programs which use Intel's copyrighted instructions without an actual processor, much in the way that DeCSS allows you to view a DVD without a DVD player. It is not a giant leap therefore, to suppose that as Bochs and DeCSS serve a similar purpose, they should have the same legal status. In accordance with this principle, it becomes obvious that the possession, development, or trafficking of Bochs is illegal under the laws of the US.

    I am asking, then, that all law-abiding Slashdot readers (which are perhaps a minority given the anarchistic leanings of Linux users), to cease the use, development, and distribution of Bochs and similar copyright-defeating programs. In the end, it will probably save you from a lawsuit from Intel's (well funded) legal team. This is not a threat, but rather a warning. The Open Source Community must realize that you do not have free reign to develop just any software you please, but rather only that which is in strict accordance with he laws. MandrakeSoft is placing itself in a position which you certainly don't want to be yourself, you can bet on that.

  • Re:how significant is this? (Score:4)

    by emerson ( 419 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2000 @02:07PM (#1181660)
    It's significant because the Bochs project itself is still valid separate from plex86 -- Bochs allows x86 emulation on non-x86 platforms, while plex86 uses native x86 instructions wherever possible for the best performance.

    Bochs is very very cool, and having it Freely available is a Very Good Thing, Indeed.


    --

Slashdot Top Deals

Been Transferred Lately?

Close