Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2010/08/27/sun-rpc.html
I first became aware of the Sun RPC license in mid-2001, but my email
archives from the time indicate the issue predated my involvement with
it; it’d been an issue of consideration since 1994. I later had my
first large email thread “free-for-all” on the issue in
April 2002, which was the first of too many that I’d have before it was
all done. In December 2002,
the Debian
bug was filed, and then it became a very public debate. Late last
week, it
was finally resolved. It now ranks as the longest standing Free
Software licensing problem of my career. A cast of dozens deserve credit
for getting it resolved.
Tom “spot” Callaway does
a good job summarizing
the recent occurrences on this issue (and by recent, I mean since
2005 — it’s been going long enough that five years ago is
“recent”), and its final resolution. So, I won’t cover that
recent history, but I encourage people to read Spot’s summary. Simon
Phipps, who worked on this issue during his time as the Chief Open
Source Officer of
Sun, also
wrote about his work on the issue. For my part, I’ll try to cover
the “middle” part of the story from 2001-2005.
So, the funny thing about this license is everyone knew it was Sun’s
intention to make it Free Software. The code is so old, it dates back
to a time when the drafting of Free Software licenses weren’t well
understood (old-schoolers will, for example, remember the annoying
advertising clause in early BSD licenses). Thus, by our modern
standards, the Sun RPC license does appear on its face as trivially
non-Free, but in its historical context, the intent was actually clear,
in my opinion.
Nevertheless, by 2002, we knew how to look at licenses objectively and
critically, and it was clear to many people that the license had
problems. Competing legal theories existed, but the concerns of Debian
were enough to get everyone moving toward a solution.
For my part, I checked in regularly during 2002-2004 with Danese Cooper
(who was, effectively, Simon Phipps’ predecessor at Sun), until I was
practically begging her to pay attention to the issue. While I could
frequently get verbal assurances from Danese and other Sun officials
that it was their clear intention that glibc be permitted to include the
code under the LGPL, I could never get something in writing. I had a
hundred other things to worry about, and eventually, I stopped worrying
about it. I remember thinking at the time: well, I’ve notes on all
.
these calls and discussions I’ve had with Sun people about the license.
Worst case scenario: I’ll have to testify to this when Sun sues some
Free Software project, and there will be a good estoppel
defense
Meanwhile, around early 2004, my friend and colleague at
FSF, David “Novalis”
Turner took up the cause in earnest. I think he spent a year or two
as I did: desperately trying to get others to pay attention and solve
the problem. Eventually, he left FSF for other work, and others took up
the cause, including Brett Smith (who took over Novalis’ FSF job), and,
by that time, Spot was also paying attention to this. Both Brett and
Spot worked hard
to get
Simon Phipps attention on it, which finally happened. But around
then began that long waiting period while Oracle was preparing to buy
Sun. It stopped almost anything anyone wanted to get done with Sun, so
everyone just waited (again). It was around that time that I decided I
was pretty sure I never wanted to hear the phrase: “Sun RPC
license” again in my life.
Meanwhile, Richard Fontana had gone to work for Red Hat, and his
self-proclaimed pathological obsession with Free Software (which can
only be rivaled by my own) led him to
begin discussing
the Sun RPC issue again. He and Spot were also doing their best
negotiating with Oracle to get it fixed. They took us the last miles of
this marathon, and now the job is done.
I admit that I feel of some shame that, in recent years, I’ve had such
fatigue about this issue — a simple one that should’ve been
solved a decade and a half ago — that, since 2008, I’ve done
nothing but kibitz about the issue when people complained. I also
didn’t believe that a company as disturbing and anti-Free-Software as
Oracle could ever be convinced to change a license to be
more FaiF. Spot and
Fontana proved me wrong, and I’m glad.
Thanks to everyone in this great cast of characters that made this
ultimately beneficial production of licensing theater possible. I’ve
been honored that I shared the stage in the first few acts, and sorry
that I hid backstage for the last few. It was right to keep working on
it until the job was done. As Fontana
said: Estoppel may be
. Thanks to everyone; I’m so glad I no longer have
relevant but never enough; software freedom principle[s] should matter
as much as legal risk. …
[the] standard for FaiF can’t
simply be ‘good defense to copyright infringement
likely’
to wait in fear of a subpoena from Oracle in a lawsuit claiming
infringement of their Sun RPC copyrights.
