September 24, 1999 Web posted at: 3:37 p.m. EDT (1937 GMT) by Nicholas Petreley

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(IDG) -- Corel Corporation recently advertised for testers for a beta version of its upcoming Linux distribution, which is based on Debian GNU/Linux. The beta testing agreement specified that testers are not allowed to redistribute the beta; this caused an immediate brouhaha among open source advocates, who said that this requirement violates the GNU General Public License (GPL).

The argument between Corel and those who think that the company's beta distribution terms are a violation of the GNU GPL (the General Public License, under which Linux is released) probably boils down to a misunderstanding.

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The GPL is supposed to protect one thing, and Corel is attempting to protect another thing altogether. The GPL itself is clear. Technically, Corel cannot legally prevent anyone from redistributing any specific package that falls under the GPL, regardless of the license it uses for its beta distribution.

But, according to Corel's representatives, that was never the intent of the beta testing agreement. LinuxWorld talked with Corel's Executive Vice President of Engineering Derek Burney, Product Development Manager for Corel Linux Erich Forler, and Communications Manager Judith O'Brien to try to get to the bottom of the controversy.

They told LinuxWorld Editorial Directory Nicholas Petreley that the company is really only attempting to protect its reputation, not its additions to GPLd code. Corel doesn't want people to redistribute the collection of GPLd software and additions that constitute the future Corel Linux product -- and that restriction applies only until Corel feels that the product is no longer a beta release and ready for mass distribution.

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LinuxWorld: It seems to me this is a problem of intent. In other words, what was your intent by licensing the beta the way you did?

Forler: The whole issue we've got right now is that this is Corel's first run at doing a commercial distribution. We've been involved with Linux now for well over a year, with the Corel Computer Netwinder project, Wine, and WordPerfect, so we are not new to Linux per se, but certainly new to doing a distribution.

What we didn't want to have happen is to have a worldwide beta and have problems on a huge scale. What we wanted was to have a closed group of people give us direct feedback. They could test it on a variety of hardware in a variety of environments and confirm for us that, "Yes, what you've got currently assembled is a functional, reasonably complete product that's really ready to go out to a larger group of people."

Until then, we could do our own internal testing, and certainly we have been doing that. But we wanted to accelerate the process of getting a broader testing base happening. We felt that having a closed beta group base was the best way to accomplish that.

LinuxWorld: I guess what I meant by intent was that the intent of the GPL is to make sure that no one can take the code licensed under the GPL and make it proprietary. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that it was not your intent to make GPL code proprietary when you licensed the beta the way you did.

Forler: Yeah, you are absolutely right, certainly our intention is not to in any way try to take control over existing GPL code, or try to make it proprietary, or try to break the GPL or infringe on it or do anything against it in any way. As far as the finished product [goes] ... anything GPL that has been modified will be released as GPL code. In the case of the KDE code, which is LGPL, that will be released under the LGPL. Anything modified or added to will be released back...

The only question mark at this point [is the set of] products we have created from the ground up, such as the Corel File Manager. In those circumstances, they will be open source, but we haven't announced under which license yet.

LinuxWorld: Have you made any progress on that? Any hint on which license you will use?

Forler: We aren't prepared to say at this time. We have been looking at all of the licenses -- the GPL, FPL, QPL, and LGPL. We are looking for the license that best suits our objectives.

LinuxWorld: The Debian community is especially sensitive about licensing issues. What led you to choose Debian as your distribution?

Forler: Certainly a number of things came into play for Debian. They have a very clean code base, very well documented code. It is the best-respected distribution available right now technically, [and we liked] the package format. The ability to do online updating of the system is something we wanted to bring forward and make a much stronger feature by adding a GUI to it. [Then there is] the strength of the developer community, the largest developer base to draw upon, their experience, their reputation for having a quality distribution. It almost came down to, "Hey, there isn't even another contender."

LinuxWorld: Were you aware of the sensitivities of the differing communities? I realize that this is an overgeneralization and that there are overlaps, but the Debian fans tend to have a different mind-set than, say, the Caldera fans.

Forler: Sure, like you said, you find developers using multiple distributions, and where a distribution makes sense they'll use a different one. We're well aware of Debian's commitment to open source and the GPL; we have no problems with that, [it's] not really a concern for us. It shows that they are committed to what they are doing and dedicated to putting out a quality product. For reasons that they believe in, they are not likely to be co-opted by a any commercial organization.

Burney: The distinction that we need to draw here is that we have not released a product yet. We have expanded our in-house testing to people outside of Corel. The reality is that it is not a distributed product and it will not be released until November.

So, obviously one of the clashes is something that you have alluded to, which is the type of people that flock to the various distributions. Corel has a name and a reputation to uphold, so we cannot take a chance to having code released prior to when we feel it is ready for anyone to assume that it is released material. So we have to walk that line to preserve the commercial name of the business while paying attention to the open source rules.

Take Wine, for example. We are contributing huge amounts of resources to that community, and we believe very strongly in the whole notion of open source. But if you take the two extremes of completely proprietary software on the one hand and completely open source on the other, we seem to fall somewhere in the middle. There's nothing wrong with that or the opinions on either side of that line; it seems that we are squabbling about what the definition is as to what it means to distribute the software.

LinuxWorld: Seems to me that you can take two different approaches to rectify this. One would be to concede and change the license of the beta, and the other would be to expect the community to understand the reason that the license is written the way it is and clarify that you do not intend to try to make this proprietary code. Which will you do?

Burney: The latter. What we need to do with your help is to get the message out there. This [license] is not intended to assert ownership over anyone's code or anything along those lines. As soon as these products are released they will conform to every single license that we have got. There is no notion whatsoever that we are trying to take over anything. The reality is that we do need to protect our name and that we have to make sure that what we release is good. For that reason we have expanded the number of people that are looking at it.

LinuxWorld: There are going to be people who are religious about the GPL who are not going to like the license regardless of what your intent may be. What would you like to say to them?

Burney: There are religious wars all the time, like with GNOME, KDE, and the QT libraries. Once Linux becomes the mainstream OS that it is going to be (in the words of Linus, "It is inevitable"), people will have to climb down from their pedestals and see that everything is not black and white.

Forler: I think it's important to recognize that we often use the term communityand we often forget that within a community we have diversity, and we'll have people on either end of the spectrum. What we generally want is a consensus of what's accepted within the limits of that society. We'd like to have people agree that what we are doing is acceptable.

LinuxWorld: Is there anything else that you would like to add?

O'Brien: From our point of view, we are doing the best that we can to balance the needs of the Corel company and the open source community. We have responsibilities to our customers, to provide the best products that we can; to our shareholders, to provide the best value; and we have a responsibility to the open source community, to return our code when it is ready. And we want them to understand that we are not trying to co-opt this stuff and make it proprietary. That is not our intention at all.

Forler: You are absolutely right. Some will always take a stand one way or another. We want to make sure that people are well informed about what it is we are doing and why. This is not a formal beta yet; once we release the product the code will be open source, just like we have always said it would be.