Difference between revisions of "Licensing"

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Short Answer: Everything is GPL and LGPL where appropriate. See the directories and individual source files for the specific license.
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In general, new, original software developed under the ZeptoOS project is distributed under the GNU GPL / LGPL licenses (version 2), as appropriate. Those licenses can be found in the top-level directory of the ZeptoOS tarball. If you are not familiar with LGPL or GPL licensing, please see the files above and also visit http://www.gnu.org/.
  
Rather than carry around all the license headers in each file, ZeptoOS software contains a short comment at the top of the file providing the license type and version number. For example:
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However, ZeptoOS is a collection of many existing software components, packaged and distributed under a number of free/open source licenses, such as:
  
#      ZeptoOS_License: GPL
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; GPL/LGPL
 
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: Linux kernel, GNU libc, FUSE, PVFS, BusyBox, iptables, NBD, psmisc,
There is also a section that explains this, for example:
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; CPL (Common Public License)
 
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: DCMF, SPI,
# ZEPTOOS:zepto-gpl
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; BSD
#      Copyright: Argonne National Laboratory, Department of Energy,
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: MPICH, TAU (note that TAU is distributed separately from the ZeptoOS tarball), netkit-rsh
#                  and UChicago Argonne, LLC.  2004, 2005, 2006, 2007
 
#      ZeptoOS License: GPL
 
 
#      This software is free.  See the file ZeptoOS/misc/license.GPL
 
#      for complete details on your rights to copy, modify, and use this
 
#      software.
 
# ZEPTOOS:zepto-gpl
 
 
 
Those license files can be found in ZeptoOS/misc. If you are not familiar with LGPL or GPL licensing, please see the files above and also visit www.gnu.org.
 
 
 
Long Answer: As always, this is a tricky issue. As a general rule, we like to release software BSD, since it provides the most freedom to end users and companies. However, several companies that produce HPC products take Open Source BSD code from the community but do not voluntarily distribute their modified changes back to the community. This makes the software a dead end for computer science research, severing the relationship betweeen HPC scientists and vendors. To remedy this, we have decided to release all code under GPL or LPGL licenses, so we can partner with those vendors who actually want to collaborate on shared, Open Source code created by the HPC community.
 
  
 
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[[ZeptoOS_Documentation|Top]]
 
[[ZeptoOS_Documentation|Top]]

Revision as of 14:26, 5 May 2009

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In general, new, original software developed under the ZeptoOS project is distributed under the GNU GPL / LGPL licenses (version 2), as appropriate. Those licenses can be found in the top-level directory of the ZeptoOS tarball. If you are not familiar with LGPL or GPL licensing, please see the files above and also visit http://www.gnu.org/.

However, ZeptoOS is a collection of many existing software components, packaged and distributed under a number of free/open source licenses, such as:

GPL/LGPL
Linux kernel, GNU libc, FUSE, PVFS, BusyBox, iptables, NBD, psmisc,
CPL (Common Public License)
DCMF, SPI,
BSD
MPICH, TAU (note that TAU is distributed separately from the ZeptoOS tarball), netkit-rsh

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