Re: JFS

[David Terrell <dbt@meat.net>]

On Thu, Feb 03, 2000 at 10:46:12AM -1000, Clifton Royston wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 03, 2000 at 03:30:21AM +0000, Jack J. Woehr wrote:
> > Have you filesys gurus seen
> > 
> >     http://oss.software.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/jfs/
> > 
> > Is this something the likes of which is likely to migrate to BSD?
> 
> Followup to my earlier comment (naturally I found the URL immediately
> after sending it): 
> 
> IBM is using, for JFS as well as other products, the "IBM Public
> License 1.0", found at:
> <http://oss.software.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/license10.html>
> 
> It's not quite like either GPL or BSD-style, but maybe a little closer
> to the latter.  It does allow for object-only distribution, without
> warranties, and excludes "separate modules of software distributed
> in conjunction with the Program under their own license agreement".

The IBM Public Source License is rather excellent.  It's pretty BSD-like
with some mention of patents (if you release code under the IBM PSL,
you also release any patents you own to be used by anyone who uses said
code in compliance with the license).  This license was written for the 
Postfix mailer, written by Wietse Venema.

The JFS source code has, unfortunately, been released under the GPL.  
While this makes some business sense for IBM (their code cannot be 
directly coopted by competitors, though this doesn't prevent complete
rewrites), it does prevent convenient BSD adoption.

-- 
David Terrell            | "the only part about medicinal marijuana that 
Prime Minister, Nebcorp  | bothers me is that, when I started chemo, all of 
dbt@meat.net             | my children and grandchildren told me they could 
http://wwn.nebcorp.com/  | get some for me if I needed it." -mrw's grandfather