On Mon, May 13, 2024 at 5:53 AM ibrahim via 9fans <9fans@9fans.net> wrote:
... > The reasoning is simple : p9f owns the rights for the final release and Nokia > has made this release available under a MIT license. Every one who uses plan9 > not only to toy around or his/her personal use but also as a system which > he/she distributes like I do can't afford risks with code integrated from > sources like 9front. There are some libraries taken from 9front derived from > other open source projects like freetype (truetype) where copyright notices > are absent and this isn't the only library where in code comments the sources > are named but the original copyright notices are absent. if you notice missing copyright messages: please send a patch. i have no clue what is required, but if you represent freetype or truetype or can imagine their legal requirements, please help us out there. it will be highly appreciated. btw, i hear about this for the first time. > plan9 as represented by p9f has a clear license all parts which are not MIT > licensed are marked as such but code back ported from other forks like 9front > contain code where I have doubts if those are really under an MIT license huh? which files exactly do you have doubts about? > I respect your fork 9front but I won't and can't use it. 9front isn't plan9 > from my perspective. Plan 9 is the final release with patches for the files > from sources I can be sure that those aren't taken from open source projects > by copy and paste. The moment I and others who use plan9 for distribution or > embed it on systems we have to be absolutely sure about the sources of the > code. I can trust Bell Labs, Nokia, p9f but I won't trust some guys who toy > around with their fork of plan9. the department in bell labs/nokia that you like to trust here doesn't exist any more. maybe you can contribute to 9front to make it more trustable. > The first thing I am doing after downloading an iso from 9 legacy is to > remove all files which were not part of the final plan9 release. The second > thing I have always to do is removing all patches from the iso which came > from sources I can't be sure if they really followed licensing rules. The > third thing I have to do before distributing my fork of plan9 is to remove > fonts ghostscript diff page and other parts of the system which would infect > the distribution media to make sure the created system is not depending on > viral licensed code. I am glad that you have such important production systems running that you have to consider even license legalities. i hope more companies will make serious money (and be able to afford such other related overheads as legal advice) using excellent software like plan9 in the future. to me plan9 is indeed a toy. i wish it was otherwise. though it's a toy that is to me personally much more useful than most "professional" software. > My fork isn't the only one which gets distributed. I'm sure there exist > millions of devices with plan9 integrated without anyone noticing except for > those who look into the documentation where the MIT licensed copyright is > placed. how is your fork called? where can i find it? where can i find hints to what these millions of devices might be? i would love to have a commercial plan9 device. > If people from forks like 9front are talking about numbers of their users I > always have to laugh. My fork is right now used by about 500 people per > semester more users. And be assured this is an unimportant number. This is great for the whole community. I hope we can find out more. I don't see it as competition at all, and please relax yourself, too! :) Thank you for making it possible for so many people to learn from Plan 9. > Not a single developer who uses plan9 for distributed systems, commercial > products will dare to use a system like 9front as the sources. The reason is > quite simple : > > You ignore copyrights as you please and distributed 9front under an MIT > license long before Nokia as the owner of it decided to do so. You did that > at a time when plan9 was placed under GPL. That is a lie. We never ignored the license that plan9 was placed under - and it was the lucent public license, which is extremely permissive. We completely ignored the work done later (by others) around dual-licensing the GPL bec. we don't consider that an acceptably permissive license and we disagree with that philosophy. > 9front is a fork your fork I respect your work. But all your commits and > enhancements are absolutly useless for people who intend or use plan9 not > only to play around with this system but make professional use of it. The > first thing such people have to check is the way you handle licenses. Do not contribute to 9front if you are not ok with the MIT license. To me this is why 9front is useful, but everybody has different legal interpretations, so i'm only sorry that you can not see it's worth. > Therefore 9front is a fork but p9f's provided final release is the real thing > with a clear ownership and license. 9legacy would be the right choice as the > current plan9 but it contains code from sources which bare the risk of > infecting a MIT licensed plan9 if no measures are taken regarding these > problems. I don't think p9f has ever provided anything apart from that misleading website and some kind of money transfers to people that i don't know. 9legacy has both 9front and 4th edition code, as you already said. and many other people contributed stuff to both 9legacy and 9front, and other forks. ------------------------------------------ 9fans: 9fans Permalink: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/Tcf128fa955b8aafc-M581f98bbf673b7c4571fed1a Delivery options: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/subscription
