Lucent Public License
| Author | Lucent Technologies |
|---|---|
| Latest version | 1.02 |
| Published | 2003 |
| SPDX identifier | LPL-1.02 |
| Debian FSG compatible | Yes |
| FSF approved | Yes[1] |
| OSI approved | Yes |
| GPL compatible | No[1] |
| Copyleft | No |
| Website | plan9 |
The Lucent Public License is an open-source license created by Lucent Technologies. It has been released in two versions: Version 1.0 and 1.02.
While the Lucent Public License is not one of the more popular open-source licenses, a number of products have been released under it. Notably, the license was the only open source license available to the public for the Plan 9 from Bell Labs operating system until 2014, when the University of California, Berkeley was "authorised by Alcatel-Lucent to release all Plan 9 software previously governed by the Lucent Public License, Version 1.02 under the GNU General Public License, Version 2."
The license has been approved by the Open Source Initiative as a license meeting The Open Source Definition, while the GNU Project considers it a free software license, but suggests to eschew use of the license, stating:[1]
“This is a free software license, but it is incompatible with the GNU GPL because of its choice of law clause. We recommend that you not use this license for new software that you write, but it is ok to use and improve Plan 9 under this license.”
The second Lucent license, version, 1.02, is described[3] by Lucent as "identical the IBM Public License 1.0 except that it does not require source code to be distributed with derived works; it is non-viral."
The GNU Project's Richard Stallman, suggested several reasons why he disliked the earlier Plan 9 license, which he claimed was neither free, nor open source.[4][5] His criticism should anyway be seen in the light of his association with MIT projects which traditionally had somewhat of a longstanding antagonistic relationship with the team at Bell Labs, who also wrote UNIX — for example, see the playful antagonism of Dennis Ritchie's prefatory material in The UNIX HATERS Handbook[6] ; and in the other direction, GNU is said by Stallman to mean GNU's Not UNIX.[7] Plan 9 was subsequently released under the Lucent License 1.0, and later 1.02, created with such criticisms in mind. Some of the applicable licenses allow relicensing, to various extent, and the project has diverged 'out-of-tree',[8][9] as well as being publicly abandoned by Lucent,[10] so that a proliferation of licenses[11] may apply to different components of an assembled Plan 9 system (as is the case under many operating systems).[12]
References
- ^ a b c "Various Licenses and Comments about Them". GNU Project. Free Software Foundation. Archived from the original on 2000-08-15.
- ^ Certified Copyfree Licenses
- ^ "Plan 9 from Bell Labs : Overview". Alcatel-Lucent. 2009.
{{cite web}}:|archive-date=requires|archive-url=(help) - ^ Stallman, Richard (2000). "The Problems of the Plan 9 License". gnu.org.
- ^ Stallman, Richard (2014). "The Problems of the (Earlier) Plan 9 License". gnu.org. Retrieved 2020-08-05.
- ^ Simson Garfinkel; Daniel Weise; Steven Strassmann, eds. (1994). The UNIX-HATERS Handbook. IDG Books, Programmers Press. ISBN 1-56884-203-1.
- ^ Moffitt, Nick. "Nick Moffitt's $7 History of Unix". zork.net. Retrieved 2020-08-05.
- ^ "Plan 9 Wiki". 9p.io. 2019-11-25.
- ^ "Glendix : Bringing the beauty of Plan9 to Linux". glendix.org. Retrieved 2020-08-06.
- ^ "Object not found". 2018.
- ^ staalmannen (2010-05-26). "[9fans] license situation and OSI". marc.info.
- ^ "google / licensecheck / Add Plan 9 licenses #25". github.com. 2020-06-06. Retrieved 2020-08-06.
External links
- Lucent Public License Version 1.0
- Lucent Public License Version 1.02
- The earlier Plan 9 license [1]
- An even earlier Plan 9 licence from AT&T prior to purchase by Lucent [2]