Re: NEWS Puppet Developer Considers Bailing on GPL

On Sat, 09 Aug 2008 16:29:39 +0200, Alexander Terekhov wrote:

> http://www.dreamnotoftoday.com/?p=893
>
> ------
> Puppet Developer Considers Bailing on GPL
>
> Tags: gpl, linuxworld, luke kanies, open source, puppet, ubuntu
> Post by Rob Spectre. Filed under Technology.
>
> In the graveyard that constituted the 2008 LinuxWorld Expo in San
> Francisco, real news was scarce. The open source conference notoriously
> swallowed by commercial interests served for many geeks as little more
> than an unwelcome sales pitch than a technical gathering of FOSS
> enthusiasts. The buzz in the hallways and aisles of the expo rarely
> touched on a new release or remarkable demonstration, but rather
> begrudged the conspicuous absence of deep dish technical presentations
> and involvement from community heavyweights (Red Hat and MySQL both
> notably absent). “LinuxWorld is dead,” said many, abandoning hopes of
> catching any hot news or controversy.
>
> So when Luke Kanies announced he was giving strong consideration to
> jerking his configuration management project Puppet from the GNU Public
> License, the vendor weary dozen in the audience shook slowly from its
> marketing induced trance. With Puppet’s exploding popularity among
> system administrators globally, the license change would represent yet
> another high profile departure from GPLv2. Kanies made the bombshell
> announcement of the project’s active pursuit of a “BSD-style license” as
> a reaction to a growing set of customers for whom the license represents
> a barrier of entry.
>
> “We have several potentially big customers say they won’t use Puppet
> because of the GPL,” said Kanies. “However, they have said that they
> would work with us if we had a BSD-style license.” Kanies added, “Plus
> I wouldn’t mind ****ing off Stallman.”
>
> When pressed for details on the seriousness of the project’s effort to
> move from the GPL, Kanies flatly denied commercial gain as a principal
> motivation, but rather a growing frustration with the license’s
> philosophy and practical application.
>
> “We don’t have any customers who say they wouldn’t work with us if we
> were BSD instead of GPL. We do have many who say they wouldn’t if we
> were GPL instead of BSD. For us, we would prefer for a license to be
> less controversial, not more.”
>
> Kanies further described a recent encounter with Richard M. Stallman at
> MIT. Kanies alleged that much of the disillusionment with the license
> came from the incident, which Kanies said involved Stallman screaming
> and spitting in his face over his use of the phrase “open source.”
>
> Kanies indicated that the project was “researching” an appropriate
> license and offered no timetable on when Puppet might switch.
>
> » You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.
>
> Testosterone and Ballet Distilled - Rob Spectre, 26 March 2008
> Filesystem Lock - Rob Spectre, 29 June 2007
> Sex, Murder and Journaling Filesystems - Rob Spectre, 28 April 2008
>
>
> One Comment
>
> Gary F. Says:
>
> August 8th, 2008 at 10:12am
>
> Kanies added, “Plus I wouldn’t mind ****ing off Stallman.”
>
> I can wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment. As an occasional
> OpenSource contributer and a former member of the XEmacs dev team, I’ve
> dealt with Stallman before when he wanted some of the stuff I
> contributed to XEmacs as part of FSF/GNU Emacs. I can say that the man
> is definitely unpleasant to deal with, intractable, hypocritical and an
> all around douchebag. The opportunity to **** RMS off is oftentimes a
> driving force in the decisionmaking process more times than people will
> admit.
>
> Leave a Comment
> ------
>
> regards,
> alexander.

Now how on earth did Roy Schestowitz miss that?
Hmmmm...


--
Moshe Goldfarb
Collector of soaps from around the globe.
Please visit The Hall of Linux Idiots:
http://linuxidiots.blogspot.com/

On 2008-08-09, Moshe Goldfarb. <> wrote:
>> So when Luke Kanies announced he was giving strong consideration to
>> jerking his configuration management project Puppet from the GNU Public
>> License, the vendor weary dozen in the audience shook slowly from its
>> marketing induced trance. With Puppet’s exploding popularity among
>> system administrators globally, the license change would represent yet
>> another high profile departure from GPLv2. Kanies made the bombshell
>> announcement of the project’s active pursuit of a “BSD-style license” as
>> a reaction to a growing set of customers for whom the license represents
>> a barrier of entry.

I release everything under the GPL. So I may be biased. But I cannot
see what is the big anti-open-source story is here. Kanies is changing
a free license for another free license (that is not as good in my
opinion). He is not taking it to be closed source.

i

On Sun, 10 Aug 2008 11:29:21 -0500, Ignoramus6985 wrote:

>>> Kanies made the bombshell
>>> announcement of the project’s active pursuit of a “BSD-style
>>> license”
>>> as a reaction to a growing set of customers for whom the license
>>> represents a barrier of entry.
>
> I release everything under the GPL. So I may be biased. But I cannot see
> what is the big anti-open-source story is here. Kanies is changing a
> free license for another free license (that is not as good in my
> opinion). He is not taking it to be closed source.


His *customers* will, essentially, take it closed source. Furthermore,
his "customers" won't even need to pay him. I don't see how it's a win
for him, but it's not my business.


-Thufir

["Followup-To:" header set to comp.os.linux.advocacy.]
thufir <> espoused:
> On Sun, 10 Aug 2008 11:29:21 -0500, Ignoramus6985 wrote:
>
>>>> Kanies made the bombshell
>>>> announcement of the project’s active pursuit of a “BSD-style
>>>> license”
>>>> as a reaction to a growing set of customers for whom the license
>>>> represents a barrier of entry.
>>
>> I release everything under the GPL. So I may be biased. But I cannot see
>> what is the big anti-open-source story is here. Kanies is changing a
>> free license for another free license (that is not as good in my
>> opinion). He is not taking it to be closed source.
>
>
> His *customers* will, essentially, take it closed source. Furthermore,
> his "customers" won't even need to pay him. I don't see how it's a win
> for him, but it's not my business.
>

No doubt they'll tell him to "fork off". Allowing others to take your
work for free with no requirement to contribute back does seem to be
more than a little, well, short-sighted.

You'd need an amazingly naive view of people to think that they'll be
grateful to you in any commercially viable way.

Still, time will tell.

--
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