[ILUG] Plan9

[Caolan McNamara]

At 15:37 08.06.00 +0100, Martin Donlon wrote:
>On Thu, 8 Jun 2000, McDaid, Aaron wrote:
>
> > > Anyone interested in
> > > using Plan 9 may download the system,
> > > including source code and documentation, from
> > > <http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9dist/>
> >
> > Is it a "proper" Open Source license?
>No
>
>Well depends how you define proper. You can view the source, not to sure
>what you can do with the source, but you can't submit changes.


Hold on now, http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9dist/license.html

You are granted "license to use, reproduce, modify, execute,
display, perform, distribute and sublicense, the Original Software
(with or without Modifications) in Source Code form and/or Object
Code form for commercial and/or non-commercial purposes."

Any modifications you ..

"create or to which You contribute are governed by the terms of
this Agreement and must be made available under the terms of this
Agreement"

So for all intents and purposes this is an extemely GPLlike licence)
except for the following features...

"You agree to provide the Original Contributor, at its request,
with a copy of the complete Source Code version, Object Code version
and related documentation for Modifications created or contributed
to by You if used for any purpose"

The GPL allows you to modify private versions of GPLed software and
not release the source code as long as you don't distribute your
modified binaries. Allowing commercial companies to create
proprietry versions of GNU software inhouse. This Plan9 licence
would force the code to be released in this case.

The other issue is what happens to your source afterwards, the next
section is a little buggy methinks. Im think the purpose might be
to reserve for lucent the ability to relicence plan9 under a different
licence if it wants to and to be able to relicence submitted code as
part of its program. Or it might just be to ensure that contributers
know that this submitted code will be relicenced under the exact terms
of this licence.

"Original Contributor and/or other Contributors shall have unrestricted,
nonexclusive,worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free rights, to use,
reproduce, modify, display, perform, sublicense and distribute Your
Modifications, and to grant third parties the right to do so, including
without limitation as a part of or with the Licensed Software; and
Original Contributor and/or other Contributors shall have the right to
license or to otherwise transfer to third parties Your Modifications
without notice, obligation or recourse to You.

I don't see any section which prohibits lucent from relicencing plan9 with
your modifications under a different licence. As you have granted them
rights to sublicence it. Though as a nonlawyer Im probably just misreading
it.

All in all it reads fairly well. The real proof in the pudding for me
is if it would be possible to put GPLed code into plan9 and/or viceversa.
We'll have to wait on RMS to consider this relationship.

Comparing to the GPL at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

points 1 2 & 3 are compatible,
point 4 is the one which the above quoted section has glossed over, the GPL
expressly forbids sneaky relicensing.
5 6 & 7 are ok
8 9 10 11 12 are just foo

So I think its a good licence, Id like to clarify the relicensing issue.
Personally I wouldn't have a serious problem with lucent being allowing
to relicence plan9 when they wanted to, as long as the code being
relicenced remained simultaneously under the old licence.

C.