Free of the shackles imposed by Red Hat Inc., maintainers of the open-source eCos real-time operating system said in mid-March that version 2.0, now in beta, could be generally available around April 15. The new version will add an all-new bootloader with remote debugging and full POSIX compliance, giving it the ability to run many Linux and Unix applications with just a recompile.
eCos 2.0 Breaks Out of Red Hat Red Tape
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Eugenia Loli
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“Unlike regular GPL, in eCos you are not forced to release other programs that you distribute with eCos if they are linked with eCos. In GPL, if you link a proprietary program to a GPL library and want to release it, you can only do that if you also release the program.”
umm, maybe they should look into the LGPL?
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html
It did seem kind of stupid to make believe that RedHat was making them use the GPL instead of the LGPL. Was this really the case?
I do have one question: how are they able to suddenly relicense under the LGPL if they were under the GPL before?
I also find it funny that the _CEO_ takes a potshot at RH for “being commercial”. I didn’t realize that they were a non-profit over at eCOS now.
-Erwos
Seems like the two are the same. One still has more lawyers and the other is trying to hire them for the same tricks. The sad part is Red Hat has used the works of thousands of people who wanted the work to be open for people to use.
eCos was never GPL.
Actually the GPL protects your code from being embraced and extended by your competition. The LGPL does not.
The GPL will force your competition to give you rights to use their modifications, so although it may be more restrictive for competitive businesses (as is any form of closed source developement) it is still just as liberal as the LGPL for the end user. But you don’t have to worry about corporations like Microsoft taking your LGPL code and releasing a binary only distribution with their modifications. With the LGPL they profit, you lose.
I think the LGPL should only be used in cross-platform generic libraries. Everything that has to do with the user interface and OS should be GPL. And any applications that run on top of that can be whatever, for all I care. I just want to make sure no Microsofts can ever lock the hood shut on my desktop again. Or call my trash can a recycle bin.
I don’t want their politically correct corporate professional turbo edition. I just want version 2.6.0rc1 or whatever, as long as it works like it stays in the changelog.
Nothing is perfect, but at least OSS tries and cares about one day reaching perfection. Everyone else only seems to care about money.
The sad part is Red Hat has used the works of thousands of people who wanted the work to be open for people to use.
Funny, I didn’t realize that RedHat isn’t employing people or that their customers aren’t people either.
I always find it funny when people bitch about companies that try to make money off OSS. If you don’t want companies to use it, then don’t release it under an open source license. Or perhaps someone could create a “Communist Regime License” that could state that, prior to using or modifying a program, you must prove to its author that you are member of the proletariat and that none of your friends or relatives are bourgeois.
That might make the Anything But Commerce crowd happy.
This is at least the second, I think the third time Red hat has got out of red tape. I heard about it like 6 months ago that they were finally in the black (maybe that was a forecast). Then again, just about a month ago. Now this…
“The GPL will force your competition to give you rights to use their modifications, so although it may be more restrictive for competitive businesses (as is any form of closed source developement) it is still just as liberal as the LGPL for the end user. But you don’t have to worry about corporations like Microsoft taking your LGPL code and releasing a binary only distribution with their modifications. With the LGPL they profit, you lose.”
LGPL is just like the GPL in that any modifications to the library licensed under LGPL must be released with source code to those modifications. Microsoft can’t take LGPL code and relase a binary only distribution with their modficiations, as that would be a violation of the license. The only difference between the GPL and LGPL is that with the LGPL you can link non-GPL code with the LGPL library. You still also have to make sure that the binary you build using that LGPL code can be *relinked* with a new version of the LGPL library at some later date. In most cases people solve that by making the LGPL code into a shared library or DLL, but if you static link LGPL code into your programs, you need to make the object files and headers for your program available so the user can relink with an updated version of the LGPL code.
Kendall Bennet wrote:
You still also have to make sure that the binary you build using that LGPL code can be *relinked* with a new version of the LGPL library at some later date.
That would explain why eCos is using the GPL with the proprietary linking exception rather than the LGPL. It can be quite awkward swapping shared libraries or even just relinking in embedded systems, eCos’s target market. For instance, how would you relink your microwave?