One of the most controversial stories I covered at ZDNet was the update of the General Public License (GPL) from GPLv2 to GPLv3.
The process was directed by free software advocates. Their aim was to close “loopholes” in the GPL that let companies use GPL code but not give people access to it, simply by putting it in hardware. It was a process called “Tivoization” because so many video hardware outfits were using Linux and supporting Digital Rights Management (DRMs), the restriction on what you can do with content.
It's a bit like the President's health care law. They hated on it before it passed, and they still hate on it, even if the rest of us don't understand it. Never mind that the result is clearer and (from a user's perspective) more free than what came before. There are still more GPLv2 than v3 programs.
Apple, which made a grand bargain with the content companies on behalf of DRM when it introduced the iPod, and wound up reaping the benefits in terms of a near-monopoly on online music sales, is among the most aggressive of the GPLv3 haters. So when Samba, the open source project that provides interoperability among Linux, Windows and Mac files, decided to switch to GPLv3, it should have surprised no one that Apple decided to back away from it.
Yet some were surprised.
Apple Insider broke the story, carrying the company line that “a pure port of Samba would lack Apple's easy to use user interface and tight integration with other Apple software,” (in other words, everyone's going to switch Apple's way) and that the next version of OS X would include a proprietary Apple interface to Windows. (And what of Linux?)
The new Apple software will work with Windows 7 but fails to support old NT Domain Controller, something a lot of shops like. This is in keeping with Apple's corporate history. They're constantly replacing stuff and telling those who want to support old files to pound sand. Thus those who support old hardware may have no choice other than GPLv3.
Samba co-lead developer Andrew Tridgell (nickname Tridge) is one of the big names in open source and has had a long and winding career since he first began working with the project in the late 1990s. Wikipedia says he's currently employed by IBM (conspiracy theorists make of that what you will), but that's more a fellowship than an employment relationship. He lives in Canberra and teaches part-time at the Australian National University.
The whole mess is another reminder of the content-code divide that dominates open source. Code progresses best when it's shared, but free sharing is anathema to corporate copyright owners. Thus they're always trying to restrict content by letting it be used only in proprietary or semi-proprietary environments. Free software advocates (like those behind the GPL) reject the divide, while those in open source (users of licenses like Apache, Mozilla and Eclipse) try to bridge it.
The winners are companies like Black Duck, which have created a thriving industry with software designed to manage code and the legal responsibilities for it. Their latest suite does this automatically.
