Slashdot Mirror
Open Source Licensing Issues
msuzio writes "Web Techniques has a good editorial column this month on Open Source licensing issues. They focus on the difficulties in resolving both a single license (GPL, BSD, Apache), but also the deeper tangle of how to handle multiple licenses mixed into one project (a piece from GNU, a piece from Apache, etc). I think this issue will continue to dog efforts to bring together multiple open-source components, both in open-source and commercial projects using open-source."
True, I personally am a big fan of the BSD license although I think the perfect license would be someher in the middle of the BSD and GPL licenses, with a few of the smaller licenses added in. I think this would be a hard job, as most programmers are already dedicated to one of the licenses.....
Shit adds up at the bottom...
Well, if anyone feel that they have lost their right to be enslaved, feel free to slave for me. I will be happy to enslave you all. In fact, now that I think of it, having a bunch of negroes (or white or whatever, I'm not racist) working for me with no pay, no rights whatsoever, and no obligation from me (I may have to feed you in order to keep you for more than a few weeks, however) sounds like a pretty good idea. Please, you have not lost your rights, I'll take you all.
You (along with many others before you) have struck the nail on the head. The problem is the number of people who feel the need for convergence. IMHO, Windows is convergence -- move to it if thats what you want.
OTOH, if you are a bit of a zealot and want all software to be FSF "free", by all means, promote the GPL.
Personally, I choose licenses based on what my goals are for a given project. If I'm writing something that I'd like to give to the community and involve community help in, I make it GPL. If I wanted to release a large commercial project (like, for example, a good TCP/IP stack), I'd probably make it a BSD-style license to encourage all vendors to use it.
The FSF version of that last sentence would probably be "license it under the GPL to force other vendors to use the GPL" but that's not my attitude -- better to convince with evidence than to coerce.
"A man convinced against his will
is of the same opinion still."
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
The GPL can be successfully contested in a court of law. I can personally think of a few hundred arguments that would defeat its enforceability. I'm sure any lawyer worth $200+/hour can too.
If your compiler leaves in comments, I suggest you find another compiler :-).
By ensuring that changes remain public.
That's not freedom, that's openness.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
What in the GPL forbids you from making a profit from your work?
--
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
BTW I will join the liberterian party if and only if the CEO of firestone (or any other person in that corporation) gets the electric chair for murdering hundreds of people.
There hasn't been a trial yet, and I have not seen even a fraction of the evidence. But if hundreds (where did you get that figure?) of people died as the result of an action by the CEO, then the full weight of the law needs to descend upon him. If this action where deliberate, then the death penalty might be warranted. A negligent action should mean alengthy jail term.
But what does this have to do with your joining the libertarian party? Since when has that party stopped demanding people be held accountable for their actions?
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
My understanding of the GPL (feel free to correct me) is that you have the right to; use and modify the code as you fit, not strings attatched. However, if you redistribute that code (for a fee or gratis), then that code must also be under the GPL, (you must provide source etc).
As I said I don't think there is a problem, "big financial" companies focus on their core business and will not become vendors of ANYTHING other than financial products.
If the apps you are working on are really good they may be sold on a one off basis to a software vendor to then resell. You can bet that a prospective buyer (unless they are complete idoits) will audit the source and find the GPL'd code. They will then come back and say "that's full of GPL code it's only worth 1/10th of the price, your trying to rip us off!". You will then have to explain to your boss why you've tarnished your companies name and wasted a lot of other peoples time.
On the other hand if you are distributing your code and in violation of the GPL is not the original authors you should be worried about it's your own company. Big companies are shit scared of being sued. If the legal dept. gets wind of what your doing I'd expect to see some major shit going down in your department, remember the legal dept. has infinately more clout than "IT" (who everyone hates anyway).
When it absolutely positively has to be there.
You couldn't do that unless everyone that contributed to your code gave you the copyright on their contributions. You can always turn your own code commercial, but you can't do what you want with other's code.
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
In theory, I should release my source code to the public domain. That seems to be what this article is advocating. The problem with public domain, or the X11/new BSD licence, is many SlashDotters (partisans of the "Free Software" camp) will boycott my code because it isn't GPL'ed, and therefore "doesn't protect their rights" as a consumer. I don't personally know anyone who believes this, but I have corresponded with people holding this opinion.
If, on the other hand, I GPL my code, then partisans of the BSD camp will boycott the code because it is GPLed, and therefore can't be mixed with BSD or public domain code without "contaminating" it. I know lots of people who hold this opinion. Another problem with the GPL is that it seems to be incompatible with most other Open Source licences. According to gnu.org, the GPL is incompatible with 20 of 34 free software licences . I don't want people to boycott my software for licence incompatibility reasons, I don't want the licence on my software to used as an excuse to perpetuate another KDE debacle.
It is probably impossible for me to find any way to distribute my software that won't lead to boycotts for ideological reasons. I have considered using a dual licence, BSD + GPL. Maybe that would lead to fewer boycotts, but maybe I would be boycotted by both the BSD and the GPL partisans. I'd be interested in hearing from people who boycott software for ideological reasons comment on this idea: would you boycott dual licence BSD + GPL software on the grounds of insufficient purity, or would it be okay to use it?
Ultimately, I have no control over ideological boycotts, so maybe I shouldn't worry about it. I do have control over licence incompatibility, though, so from this point of view, I should choose public domain, the new BSD licence, or a dual BSD + GPL as mentioned earlier. All of these choices would be compatible with any other open source/free software licence.
I have written a truly remarkable program which this sig is too small to contain.
It's pretty funny, actually. I demand the right to beat up an old lady! And bomb the state capitol! Without these rights I am not truly free!
At any rate, hopefully some people got the joke (or mataphor, or whatever). It's all about balancing (conflicting) rights and responsibilities. Every right for one person has a corresponding restriction for someone else. It is impossible to say that the GPL license or the BSD license is more free, they just strike different balances between the rights of the original developers, the users, and future developers. What you give up in one place is made up for somewhere else.
Alright, this argument is getting boring. I have to get back to work now....
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
You could *suspect* a certain piece of software to infringe, but you'd need to go to a judge and go through the process of forcing the court to subpoena the source code of the product and have experts look at the open source and closed source versions and decide whether it was a justified claim. Needless to day, most people working on open source software do not have the type of money that would be required to get that far in the legal process, especially when compared to large software companies.
Also, there's the matter of these licenses never having been tested in court. RMS's lawyers can write any license they want, but until a judge has made a ruling in an infringment case, you can't say for sure whether or not the GPL (as an example) is even legally binding.
Personally, I think that license abuse is morally wrong, and also very dangerous (because there's always the off chance the company COULD get caught, and thus they might end up having to legally release the source code of their product. My guess, however, would be that most companies would be totally against using GPL code in their closed source products, but in mid-sized software shops some programmers probably sneak some GPLed code in anyway, as a way of making their jobs easier.
Perhaps some day, people will understand that enforcing freedom of assembly does not make people free to assemble. Freedom is not something which can be enforced, for if it is enforced, it is not freedom.
Perhaps some day, people will realize that trying to protect human rights does not make people free. Freedom is not something which can be forced, for if it is forced, it is not freedom.
Perhaps some day, people will realize that posting inanities in cool-sounding but meaningless slogans do not make those slogans true. Truth is not something which is meaningless, for if it is meaningless, it is not true.
Go look at the freshmeat submissions on any day, and you'll realize where developer sentiment lies.
:-) Am I being exploited? No! I have made a conscious decision to share my code with zero strings attached. If someone else can make money off of my code, my hat goes off to them, because I sure can't. There is no way in the world they can lock up my code. It's physically impossible. It's on my harddrive, on my website, and on a few others as well. No matter what they do with their copy of the code, my copy is still here untouched. You can't steal what is free.
There would be no way to find out, but it would be interesting to know how many developers chose the GPL because a) they had to in order to use some other code, or b) because they thought they had to. In the case of the latter, I've seen enough posters here on Slashdot who think the GPL is the only approved Free Software license. And I have even received an email from someone asking me to GPL my otherwise BSD licensed code because "I will only use Free Software."
Otherwise, they'd be dupes, unpaid employees working for someone else
Oooh! A direct insult
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
If, for example, I code some cool proggie with a GPL license, and a company decides to use and make money from it but doesn't even distribute the code (and without me knowingly), what can I do? It seems even with GPL when they have to distribute the source too, who knows that someone else might still our code - and produce a binary-only apps?
What's your opinion?
Freedom to succeed also means freedom to fail.
Too much of government in this age is set up to protect people from themselves.
I won't go spouting off libertarian mantra at this point...
The GPL sets up rules from which it's impossible to escape. It does so in the name of freedom, to keep code from falling into the paws of capitalists. This restraint is in the name of freedom. How can a restraint be in the name of freedom? By enabling a bigger freedom. How, though, does the GPL make anything more free than public domain? Than BSD? It doesn't make the software free. It makes the coder happier, I guess.
-Nev
Is tacking a Copyleft (GPL) in the header of your code a real way to protect it? Shouldn't it actually be copyrighted and released under the GPL, et al?
Correct. Code licensde under the GNU General Public License contains a comment at the top containing a copyright notice, a permission statement that places the program under GPL, a warranty disclaimer, and where to find a copy of the License. A shorter notice is commonly used in interactive programs' about boxes and in the "verbose" mode of command-line programs. For more information, read the end of the GNU GPL to see how to apply the License to your own code.
Tetris on drugs, NES music, and GNOME vs. KDE Bingo.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Tetris on drugs, NES music, and GNOME vs. KDE Bingo.
Will I retire or break 10K?
When all else fails, use your common sense.
1) Use the license YOU want to use on your own projects. If you don't like copyleft licenses then don't use them. If you don't like unrestricted licenses then don't use them. Easy, isn't it? But by all means, don't go creating your own new license. There are enough good ones out there that it isn't necessary. There are still some licensing niches to fill in the OSS hierarchy, but I doubt your project fits that bill. The BSD, MIT, GPL, LGPL, MPL, QPL and Artistic licenses are sufficient to meet your needs.
2) Don't get religious over licensing. The well known licenses all have their place. As soon as you say "I will never use the BSD/GPL/QPL/whatever license" you will immediately run across a situation where you will need it. I am personally not fond of copyleft, but if I were to release a commercial open source product that faced competition, you can bet you bippy that I would seriously consider using the GPL. Likewise, don't let license bigotry get in the way of your helping out on other people's projects.
3) Assign your copyrights over to the author. Don't insist on holding on to the copyright for your bug fixes and minor contributions. That's so egotistical as to be stupid. You will get mentioned in the credits, so don't worry about it. You will make the author's life so much easier. If your are the original author or project maintainer, then insist that all copyrights be assigned to the you or the project. If you want your project to be "community based", then seriously consider assigning your copyright to the FSF, creating your own non-profit org, or placing it in the public domain. Do you really want the submitter of a five line bug fix to be in control of all licensing decisions from here on out?
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Look at the link in the follow-up post. It's one of those that fills your screen with pop-up porn.
In this case, the follow-up should have been moderated down instead.
Tetris on drugs, NES music, and GNOME vs. KDE Bingo.
Will I retire or break 10K?
You illustrate one big problem with slashdot: you think differences of opinions are trolls. The previous post was not a troll. If it were it would have simply said "the GPL is not free". But that is not what it said. It said in essence "the GPL is not free and here is why...". Big difference.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
The number of new open source licenses has exploded in recent years. Oddly, the amount of open source software has also exploded in recent years, which is not what you'd expect if multiple licenses were somehow a deterrent to development. Then the argument is always pushed into the future -- eventually, a diversity of licenses will choke open source. Yeah, right.
Let's put this in proper perspective: Compared to commercial software, the handful of open source licenses out there is barely worth noticing. Every software company, and frequently every individual commercial product, has its own license. There are literally tens of thousands of commercial software licenses out there right now, and yet commercial software is a multi-billion dollar industry, growing by leaps and bounds.
Free software licenses are an annoyance at worst. In cases where they prevent an existing package from being used, they end up spurring the development of a competing package. That may be a pain in the ass for developers, but it's a good thing for users.
--
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
I doubt that Roe v. Wade would be overturned; it would be such a PR nightmare that I would suspect it would bring about the demise of the GOP.
-bugg
They have. That page was linked from the original article in Web Techniques by the guy who wrote that article in Web Techniques. -- Bret
Now I need to add file upload capability; there is a file upload component out there, but the license is weird and definitely not compatible with what I'm doing. So I'm going to have to reinvent that wheel, and I'm going to have to do it 'clean room' even though I know that there are a lot of tricky little tweaks which someone else has already sorted out...
And what a strange license that one is! Certainly you should not use it. Don't even contemplate it.
As for the 'clean room', I don't think that is necessary. You cannot copyright an algorithm. If you peer at their source code to see how they did something, it's legally okay (I am not a lawyer!). Just make doubly sure you don't implement it in the same way.
I'm increasingly of the opinion that life would be a lot simpler, and we would get a lot more innovation done, if the Intellectual Property laws (including copyright) were just scrapped.
It wouldn't make much of a difference. Most proprietary licenses, including the MSEULA, are not based on copyright or any other intellectual property. They are based on contract law instead. That's why they're called "agreements".
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
The idea that PROPRIETARY software should only be reused in PROPRIETARY software is attractive. But the viral nature of COPYRIGHT LAW means that a line of code that is copied from one project to another contaminates other code that might be used in a third project. That's the intent of COPYRIGHT LAW - to eventually encumber the entire PROPRIETARY software pool. To me, it's distasteful that a line or two of code ties the hands of developers who have written a huge project of their own and who may never have seen a line from the original COPYRIGHTED project.
WHY ARE YOU COPYING CODE IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE ENCUMBERED BY SOMEONE ELSE'S LICENSE? If you don't like my license, DON'T USE MY CODE! Why is this so hard to understand?
Thanks for all the comments on the article in Web Techniques (even the flames).
One point of the article that seems to have been largely missed here on Slashdot and in the comments sent to my personal e-mail (bret at lextext dot com), was in regard to whether there is a role to be played by the public domain in open or free software development (or any other creative endeavor for that matter), as I think we as a society benefit from a richly endowed public domain
The primary point in the article was not that we should find ways to make competing licenses compatible, but to ask whether there would come a time at which it might be appropriate to drop the "copyleft' and GPL-style licenses altogether. It could be that the answer is no, and that there are good reasons that the answer is no , but I thought it was a fair question to ask. Self-perpetuation of the movement, one of the prime reasons for a copyleft license, may no longer be threatened by dropping the license.
I appreciate the notion, expressed here and elsewhere, that there's no free speech without an enforcement mechanism and the obvious analogy to the enforcement capabilities made possible by copyleft licenses. But if there is a community of developers dedicated to contributing to the public domain, there is no regulatory force (like the state, in the free speech analogy) that is going to prevent that. Only market forces, greed and sloth, stand in the way of perpetuating and growing the public domain. Are those factors sufficiently great to warrant building in an enforcement mechanism? Are there concerns that I'm missing that warrant maintaining the licensing restrictions? If there are legitimate concerns justifying maintaining copleft licenses, might those concerns be outweighed by the potential benefits in dropping all barriers to collaboration?
These are issues that obviously can't be solved in a 2000 word column, but by raising them I hoped to get the kind of feedback that I've seen here. Thanks for that. Any additional comments on the ideas raised in my column and underscored above would be most welcome.
-- Bret
Well, people have been able to make money with my code under the GPL rules. But I never would have contributed that code without the GPL. And I care little about the copy on my hard drive. The point is the copies in other people's hands, and that's where the GPL protections are important. We would never have gotten free software into so many people's hands with different rules.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Perhaps some day, people will understand that the GPL does not make code free. Freedom is not something which can be forced, for if it is forced, it is not freedom.
-Nev
GPL - license for authors who wish to garantee that all dirivative works based on their code also be relesed under the same free software license.
The GPL doesn't guarantee this. For instance, look at clause 9. Sure, we all think the FSF are a bunch of great guys who would never dick around with anyone. Except if I was, say, Apple, releasing my source code I can't think of a single reason why I would give the FSF that kind of power.
the most important thing here, is when you combine stuff from all the different licenses, to make sure there are no extra loopholes for greedy corporate lawyers. maybe we need one unified standard to do this. as always, teamwork is the key. if licenses need to be combined, the backers of those licenses need to be determined which can and will be used.
It is too up to the original author. I can license my code under the GPL, then turn around and offer the exact same code under different terms. I can't prevent the other people from taking the GPLed code instead, but they'll have to live with the limits placed on the code by the GPL. Being the copyright holder, I can do pretty much whatever I want with it within the limits of copyright law.
The only real limit the GPL places on my power is that I cannot tell people "you can't use the GPLed version anymore, give it back".
The KDE/Qt thing was, if you look beyond all the hype, basically RMS telling the KDE guys that there could be some problems with this code at some point in the future. At least, that's the impression I got by reading things.
-RickHunter
the licence can't keep people from breaking the law. and the GPL isn't a 'free for non-commercial use' licence. the behavior described in the troll you linked to is perfectly legal provided they do not distribute the package that has your source code. if they do violate that then they have broken the licence agreement. finding the infraction really has nothing to do with the type of licence it used.
Just distribute your program as a binary only, and make the lawyers decompose it and prove that you compiled it from your source.
What are the odds of finding a judge fluent enough in assembly to appriciate that?
Do the words of the licenses actually stand up on a purely legal aspect? Is tacking a Copyleft (GPL) in the header of your code a real way to protect it? Shouldn't it actually be copyrighted and released under the GPL, et al?
This area brings a lot of ambiguity. What is the legitimacy of the Open Source licenses on a global level?
It seems that while the licenses are worded well and seem legally sound they depend a lot on good faith on the part of the user/company using the code.
The List of Grievances with Slashdot.
NT
There are 1.1... kinds of people.
The more common names for these two types of licenses are "unrestricted" and "copyleft". In a nutshell they are defined as "no restrictions on this source code" and "this must always remain free in all incarnations." Unfortunately, these are mutually exclusive, and will always be at odds with each other.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
As usual the only ones to profit are the greedy lawyers. Geeks like us are made to suffer all the jumping through hoops that go with restrictive licesnes.
More legal information can be found by searching for 'licensing' and 'software' on google.
Copyright law states that the copyright on derivitive works belong to the owner of the original. If it belongs to me, I can rescind any contract or licence that has no monetary value. Sad, but in my IANAL opinion, probably true.
Can't you say that the program can only be distributed with GPLv2, and no other version? I see stuff in clause 9 which addresses version + any later, and where no version is given, but I see nothing which says that a newer version much be accepted.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
But without meaning you cannot assign or determine truth or falsehood.
You just proved his point.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Good lord, you are so completely wrong! First off, you say the FSF doesn't aspire to make everyone use FSF solutions. Although that is true, you are twisting the original statement. The FSF's GNU license forces someone who makes modifications to GPLed software to release those modifications back to the public. This is FORCING them to do this, and taking away their freedom to keep the code written by them to themselves.
Next you get into some crap about TCP/IP. You misinterpreted Mike's statement here. He said he'd release an actual, working TCP/IP stack, not a standard or RFC, with the BSD license. This encourages vendors to use his completely free stack, which can help with compatibility for new standards, ensuring all systems use similar code.
And don't get me started about your sig...
You may see it as 'allowance' and not 'pushing', but the reality of the attitude from the inside is definately to push.
... "
How many official FSF people wouldn't push a company to use GPL'd solutions? Not hand it to them and smile, saying "here, isn't it wonderful?" but "you _should_ use this
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
If code is meant to be free, then release with BSD.
Ok, that was a bad rhyme, but the point is, short of public domain, BSD has the most permisive license I can think of. Basically, leave a copyright statement up and you're done. No need to mix and match.
With the BSD license you can take the work, modify it and keep your modifications private.
The List of Grievances with Slashdot.
There must be a Laffer Curve for software.
Now, if everything were copyleft (a Free Software advocate's dream) we'd be all the way over to the right of the curve. Likewise, if nobody had ever shared source, achievements in computer science would be very limited. We'd be all the way over to the left of the curve.
As usual, the truth is in the middle. I dislike Copyleft because it has a tendency to push us farther and farther to the right on this graph. Eventually, it may reduce the output of useful code. Despite what FSF advocates say, reducing useful output does *not* enhance freedom.
What we really need are some useful measurements of output and utility in the software industry. Maybe someday we will even be able to establish an optimum ammount of time that should be spent contributing to Open Source. However, it is likely to remain a political issue for the foreseable future--just like taxation.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
This is probably off topic... anyways, when I do open source coding I look for the ability to control the project in the short term but to put the source into public domain after a period of time. That way when my lazy butt doesn't touch the project for a long time people aren't stiffed.
Couldn't find a stock license like that so I had to write my own.
As a first approximation, you should think of the software produced under the various licenses as falling into separate equivalence classes. If you discover a "leak" between two equivalence classes that lets you use the code or components from different classes together, well and good -- but don't assume that things will work that way until it has been demonstrated.
To paraphrase another poster, decide in advance which equivalence class you want your code to be in. That tells you which license to use.
Notice that this is not notably different from proprietary software. All of Sun's secret code falls into an equivalence class separate from all of Microsoft's, and there's no a priori reason to expect that you can freely combine the two.
What I don't get is why so many people hear "open source" and think they have an intrinsic right to use the code however they please. If you use code under a license, you are bound by that license just as surely as you are bound by the controls on code coming out of Sun and Microsoft.
Granted, this forces a duplication of effort between equivalence classes. If you are working in Class A and need a widget that is only available in Class B, you have to re-implement it in your own class.
Still, the mere existence of the "open" classes has been a huge boon to code reuse, and as Open Source catches on, the number of members of each class continues to grow phenomenally. Regardless of which "open" class you release your code into, you are participating in a sharability far beyond anything you can participate in with proprietary code.
So pick a class that's large and growing, and that has a license that suits your ideals, and go with it. But don't waste your time whingeing about not being able to steal stuff out of the other classes. A license is a license, and you should take it seriously. No one promised you unrestricted access to anything you might happen to want. You might as well complain about not being able to use Microsoft's source code in your own project.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If license for code that you wish to combine are not compatible, there is a simple solution. Go ask the authors for an exemption from the license, that's all you have to do. If they give you the exemption, than so much the merrier, if they don't than that's just tough luck. It's no different than doing a license deal in commercial software. I lots of people want everyone to use the same license for simplicity's sake, but you also have to respect the wishes of the author in how the software is used. This is where these moronic license squabels start to piss me off, alot of people seem to act as if a software license is somehow ingraved in stone, or that this is really about some techical legal issue, and not about authors with similar goals failling to cooperate.
I used to use the GPL for my software because I liked the idea of having control over my code. But two points came up during the KDE/QPL dispute that made me change my mind.
1) The idea that free software should only be reused in free software is attractive. But the viral nature of the GPL means that a line of code that is copied from one project to another contaminates other code that might be used in a third project. That's the intent of the GPL - to eventually encumber the entire free software pool. To me, it's distasteful that a line or two of code ties the hands of developers who have written a huge project of their own and who may never have seen a line from the original GPL project.
2) And it's not even up to the original author. IIRC, there was no case where an author of GPL code objected to its use in KDE. (RMS's "forgiveness" notwithstanding.) As soon as the words "GPL violation" are used, the Slashdot/Technocrat/FSF lynch mob heads out, apparently in the belief that since they're Members Of The Community, they somehow get to act as the aggrieved party. I'd prefer to keep control of my code, but I'd rather see it wind up in Windows than have it used to ruin a well-intentioned project.
Case in point: If Linux were actually free software, not locked in GPL, MSFT could cull whatthey desired fromit to include in Windows without having to open Windows up.
There is the critical distinction: Free, as long as you do .... means it IS NOT FREE. It has a price, therefore it is not free.
Now, I am not talking free as in beer, but free as in first amendment (which we no longer even have in the states as long as I cannot call the state capitol and tell them I have planted 2000lbs f eplosives there and have it be legal).
No one wants freedom, we don't trust it. We all want to call our desires freedom because it sounds nice, and it might be a prettier prison, but they are very rarely, if ever, actually desires for freedom.
The GPL is a actually a much more restrive, if prettier, prison than regular proprietary source code. The reason being that with proprietary code the potential exists for it to become actually, truly free. With the GPL it is locked into the GPL in perpetuity. It is like releasing someone in the US from jail, telling them they are free, and letting em walk away. They look, feel, and think they are free, but if they try to exercise that freedom, by say smoking some bud, beating up and old lady, or calling the white house and claiming to be a sniper looking at the door at that very moment, then they find out how little freedom they have. You cannot do what you want, you are not free. You merely have a more comfy, better disguised enclosure.
Frums
> If I wanted to release a large commercial project (like, for example, a good TCP/IP stack), I'd probably make it a BSD-style license to encourage all vendors to use it. The FSF version of that last sentence would probably be "license it under the GPL to force other vendors to use the GPL" but that's not my attitude -- better to convince with evidence than to coerce.
And therein lies the misconception. The FSF doesn't aspire to make everyone use FSF solutions; they aspire to let everyone use FSF solutions.
If you want to coerce everyone into using your solution, you do that with a monopoly rather than a license.
The thing about TCP/IP isn't the choice of whose source code you use, but rather adherence to a standard. The GPL has nothing to do with standards, and since the FSF is adamantly against software patents, widespread use of the GPL implementation of something like a communications protocol will not prevent others from producing their own implementations of the same thing according to the same standard.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I have nothing against BSD (please no BSD flames), but I guess that the popularities of BSD vs. Linux today does prove you wrong. We have a free software boom today that is caused in large parts by the very GPL we're discussing (again, I'm aware of the wonders BSD-style software have caused too). My point is that we have more free software today because of the GPL, among other licenses (but the GPL is still the most popular).
The GPL preserves freedom. We wouldn't have more free software without it, on the contrary.
GNU/Linux. The Freshmaker.
Now, IANAL but it strikes me that there are verry real dangers of misunderstanding the implications of various licences and ending up locked in to an unhappy marriage to a particular licence.
The solution methinks would be to setup a 'modular' licence system wherein a developer could follow a licencing guide and select from various boilerplate terms and conditions to build a licence best suited for the open/free product. For instance a developer may want to do a mostly GPL licence, but allow other developers the right to create closed shiet linked in statically (forbidden in the LGPL), while still maintaining the actual responsibility to be open with the original code. Or perhaps someone may want to do a BSD style licence but fully lock out , for instance, hate organisations from using the software.
The idea here is to allow the developer to fine tune the 'freeness' of the software whether particular community iconoclasts agree or no.
Not really sure how it would work, but it may be quite possible to even generate a little licence generator app, that generates perhaps OSD or alternatively FSF aproved licences customised to the app, and with a hidden feature that drops SKUD missiles on anyone who choses the "Closed source" licence option :) :)
Cheers and beers!
Shayne
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
One problem... Isn't it illegal to reverse engineer stuff in parts of the USA? I *believe* that studying compiled code counts in this case as well.
I don't understand that portion of law very well as it has no direct affect on me.
Rod Taylor
While you're swimming in your little cozy thought experimenter's nirvana, practical things are happening around you like improvisation of tools for day to day tasks as problems present themselves. People depend on code being open things as a matter of barely keeping afloat. Yack all you want about perfect freedom when it's incredibly fleeting.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
If I take a piece of GPL'd code that has the usual header and the lineand then I incorporate portions of that code into my project (possibly with substantial modifications), what is the etiquette for the new copyright specification?
Do I leave his name on it? Do I replace his with mine? Do I append my name to his, to create a list of copyright holders?
The latter would seem to be most proper, and would create an interesting documented pedigree for the work, but it would surely become unwieldy after the code had been handed around through 50 authors.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
In my estimation there are basically 4 license schemes that would fill just about every niche.
1. BSD - license of choice for authors who beleive that anyone should be able to do whatever they want with free software they create.
2. GPL - license for authors who wish to garantee that all dirivative works based on their code also be relesed under the same free software license.
3. LGPL - license for people who wish to allow diferently licensed software to be linked against their code, otherwise similar to GPL
4. GPL/dual-license (e.g. qt, new mozilla license) - software licensed under GPL, but with declared provision for use not normally allowed by the GPL. This scheme works well for authors who wish to support free software, but also want to add flexibitity in licensing, and even a possible profit stream.
I can't posibly think of reason anyone whould want to use a license such as the artistic license, or a custom license, other than to be perverse, and confusing.
You don't understand that in order to have freedom and not anarchy, everyone needs to give away certain rights: for example, the right to hurt other people. The GPL is a means to do just that.
BTW, this is a pretty basic topic in political philosophy, eg. Jean-Jacques Rousseau expressed his views on it in his work "The Social Contract".
If you were really any of these things, you wouldn't have to tell us. We'd figure it out on our own. Thus we can conclude you're none of the above!
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
The limitation isn't necessarily by the developer against the developer. It maybe by the developer in as a favor to his poor dependent customer who needs to first break even and will not except any tool that doesn't allow him that.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
GNU is no different than Intel giving away its instruction set architecture.
It's needed to get work done.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Also of note would be how many karma whoring posts there are. Any article centering around open source licensing issues is a metaphorical mad-lib for the karma junkies.
--Psi
Max, in America, it's customary to drive on the right.
I say who cares about what RMS and others say. Mix and match whatever source works. Then distribute your code or use it as you please. If worse comes to worse, you could post the code anonymously or put it on FreeNet or something similar. This way you avoid legal and religious harassment of the GNU fanatics.Code was meant to be free.
This is much harder than you think, and probably impossible in the long run. Why? Because some of the licenses that your code might wind up in (like the BSD license) are specifically designed to allow incorporation of their source into non-free projects. Once your code was put into a BSD licensed project, it could then be transfered into a proprietary one. To protect your intent, they'd have to relicense the part of their project that incorporated your code under a different style of license, which specifically undermines your goal of letting your code play friendly with everyone else. It's just not possible to have code that's useable by any free software project but not by a proprietary one.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Anonymous Coward wrote:
I work for a pretty big financial company, where we steal GNU and other GPL'd code all of the time.
Who's going to do anything about it?
Since the stolen code is compiled into our software and none of you schmucks has access to the source, who is going to sue?
And even if someone discovered that we violated the GPL and stole code, who has the resources to sue us? We owe all of the idiots donating time and efforts to the 'community' big time. We have stolen thousands of man-hours worth of development work and saved our company millions!
Thanks all!
You're pretty darn right. However, what if someone finds by disassembling it? Remember, crookedness doesn't worth it. Nothing in this world can be kept as a secret forever.
It would pretty much read:
Do whatever the hell you want with this code. Use it in commercial products without releasing source. Use it in open-source code. Print it up and use it to wipe your ass. I don't care. It's "Free"!!
However, the code would not truly be free because I would have to restrict the ability to take my code, claim it as your own and then put on a new license. Ah, well.
However I will always feel that it would be great if the GNU people would realize that they are not writing "free" code and they are in fact writing code that will never be of as much use as it could be because software will never be "free". There will always be commercial software. Always. And it would be nice if the companies could benefit from the technology in the GNU stuff without having to worry about releasing the source and other licensing crap.
I've always thought of the GPL and pretty much everything RMS as the biggest hypocracy in the universe. "We want to make the code free and support open-source by putting lots of restrictions on what you can do with our code and FORCING you to make your code under the exact same license we use." Hah. What a crock. I despise the "Open-Source" movement as it currently exists.
Justin Dubs
The reason a software writer is not able to use/link with GPL code is not a technical difficulty. The authors of the GPL'd software EXPRESSLY FORBID them from doing it. The people who release GPL only, do so to make the developers who use freer licences reinvent the wheel. There is a certain amount of a 'sticking it to the man' feeling with GPL software, however, they are sticking it to the developers who write free software that is even free to other software writers.
No. I don't mean that my code could be relicensed to a BSD style license. If I wanted that I would just use BSD license.
I just want to make it possible to combine my code with all the possible free software licenses, but not all. If the license of the other piece of software said that all the code that links to it, must be licensed under BSD license, my hypothetical license would not be compatible with it. Same goes with project maintainers that want just BSD licensed codebase. My intention is to have a watered down version of GPL that is still viral.
Let me give you an example: OpenSSL is under the old-style BSD license ie. with advertising clause. Because of this, GPLd mailer programs, like Mutt cannot link to it. Trivial technical incompatibilities like this seem to plague many GPL programs with no centralized copyright holder that could change the license to have an exception. With my proposed license there would not be such a problem. The problem of course is that I would have to have a legal definition for Free Software for the license. DFSG is not intended to be one and FSF definition is not even close, so this is the tricky part.
I'm sure in the early days of communism, men felt good about dying for the Soviet Union too. However this idealism wears out rather quickly and reality sets in... then you are left with a buggy system supported by volunteers who only work when they feel like it and don't care if you like the results. We know what happened in the Soviet Union because of this; will the same happen to Linux? I think it is already happening...
Okay, let's say I have an apple orchard and I want my apples to be free. Bad analogy, I know, but bear with me...
One way to make them free is to post I sign telling the whole world, or just the passerbys, that the apples are free and to take as much as they want.
Another way is to add a license to that sign telling everyone that anything they make with the apples must also be free. Then I would go out and sue everyone who sold apple pies made with my apples. How dare they!
As bad as that analogy is, the point is that attaching strings to your code does not make it any more free than without them.
I'm not ragging on the GPL. I've seen enough bad licenses to know that it is a very good license. But what ticks me off are folks that think anything else is just for "dupes". I know scores of folks who use BSD or MIT like licenses. Jordan Hubbard, Theo De Raadt, Brian Behlendorf, David Dawes, et al. They certainly are not dupes.
Would Apache and Xfree86 have done any better if they were under the GPL? I don't think so.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Hi
As noted in this article, GPL forbids cooperation with numerous free software licenses while we hardly ever see the opposite. Most free licenses today affect only the program/parts they're set to cover. GPL doesn't.
LGPL is said by many to be the more liberal choice if GPL is too strict for you, as it allows you to link with closed source. Yeah, sure, but paragraph three (of the LGPL) says anyone can turn a LGPL project into a GPL one at any time. Also, paragraph six says that in order for you to be allowed to distribute a closed-source program built with a LGPL library, you have to offer your program as object files as well to allow people to rebuild it with new versions of the free library.
Both those paragraphs, no matter how ignored and misunderstood they are in the general pro-GNU community, effectively will prevent a lot of companies to go near GPL and thus LGPL code.
The true open and free source licenses don't spread. They're BSD, MIT/X, MPL and similar. They allow fully cooperation with any other license. Closed or open.
This might be a bit off-topic, but I think it's important that we examine our reasons (and the feelings that underpin them) for wanting software to be free.
The following was written by a musician (thus the reference to harmony) but it shows that the idea of shared software was around long before GNU:
I think that many programmers instinctively feel the way that Cage did, and are distressed that others choose to hoard software, whatever the reason. Cage was an unusual artist ("Thank God!" some folks would say), but I think he was of like mind to many creative programmers. He did not feel diminished when other people borrowed from his work. Other artists had problems with this, but it was at the heart of the "how" and "why" of his creations (and the reason why most of them were, in one form or another, collaborations).
Likewise, programmers who feel that sharing leads to increase and not to diminishment meet the same sort of resistance from those who feel that other considerations predominate. And I suspect that this difference is deeper than mere opinion. Small children understand quite well that sharing must work both ways: I'll share with you, but only if you share with me. The GPL casts this simple, bone-deep feeling in the form of a software license. I'll let you decide whether the feeling remains a fundamental one in this context, or a childish one -- and whether the difference in outlook between those who espouse it and those who oppose it is too broad a gap to bridge.
-
-
Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
> The judge doesn't order it [the source] turned over to the Court; he orders it to be turned over to a panel of independent experts chosen by the Court
Errr. Sorry, we lost the source.
This have already been done a *lot* of time.
Cheers,
--fred
1 reply beneath your current threshold.
Follow-on problem: The would-become-a-user-of-Open-Source-systems buyer has to work lots harder to get a simply installed ("works well after just a bit of configuration") desktop system, i.e. with StarOffice, Midnight Commander, et al. "right out of the box"
The real problem: That would-be user stays away from Open Source pastures...
Folks, say what you will about the proprietary licenses... they at least let third party distributors buy up the less popular stuff (i.e. make deals that let it get distributed as a "bundle") that can be installed in one fell swoop.
The difference: Money is paid (to license holders, to allow the bundling of their software) rather than "sweat equity" (i.e. on the part of the would-be users, trying to find / download / install, etc. all the bits required to make an integrated desktop system workable...
A solution: Let's get as many of the producers (or license holders) of Open Source Software to re-license it under as many licenses as possible, so that would-be distributors can (without breeching any license) bundle up a collection of software for delivery to that part of the would-be user world...
If Linux, et al. ever experience a "slump in sales" maybe that would be a good time to campaign for such re-licensing.
Of course, in the mean time, if people who normally spend some of their time -refining- their choice of license would try to survey the needs/wants of other licenses' proponents, by way of trying to incorporate as many of these needed/wanted terms as possible... just maybe... there could be a bit more compatibility, in future, between the Open Source software licensing
...and less hassles about "intermarrying" Open Source Software of different "ethnic / religious" (licensing) backgrounds... ;)
The BSD license may be better for an operation such as yours due to the intent. It allows the writer to actually sell the software and source, and anyone who makes changes to it to sell their versions. That is the primary reason a few of my friends choose the BSD license over the GPL.
The option to be able to charge is very appealing to corporate institutions who invest significant time and money into developing software. It is nice to be able to give it away, but eventually share-holders want to see some *profit*.
Red Hat's business model is flawed. They have yet to report a profit. In fact, the only internet company actually making money is Yahoo.
This is not a knock against the GPL or Red Hat, but is only an attempt to point out a flaw in the business model as you suggest. A legal disqualification of the GPL may only be one of the problems Red Hat may face.
The List of Grievances with Slashdot.
Linux is probably the first real kernel written by volunteers - BSD was written by people working on a government grant, and is derivative of ATT Unix, although later modifications are contributed by volunteers. Why do those volunteers feel good about writing free code? Because abuses are prohibited by the license. Otherwise, they'd be dupes, unpaid employees working for someone else who makes all of the money on a product and puts economic locks on that product using proprietary software, cutting out the free contributor. In that case, the free code would actually be weakening the free software movement by playing into the abuser's hands. That's why more developers choose the GPL. And it's the developers who matter here - no code? Then there's little prospect for users.
The choice is simple here, at least for me. I write BSD-licensed code when someone else is paying me to do so and they insist on the BSD license. I write LGPL or GPL-licensed code the rest of the time, and I feel good about that it's doing for the free software movement.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Are you saying that when the U.S. government made slavery illegal, that the former slaves were not actually free because they were "freed" by force?
Arguments like yours are exactly why I dislike the GPL and RMS's attempts to use his position in the community to unduly influence (some would say force) people to GPL their programs if released under competing "Open Source" as opposed to "Free Software" licenses.
The situation of blacks in the southern U.S. was practically unchanged for decades after they were "freed". They couldn't vote, own property, obtain a decent education, live in safety, obtain bank loans, or do several other things that most "free" white people take for granted. There are many who believe that in several parts of the U.S., black people are still second class citizens that can be killed by the police with impunity and are undeserving of basic human rights. Would this situation have been averted if instead of the South being forced to free the slaves by "those damned Yankees", the south reached a collective epiphany and realized that slavery was evil, willingly freed the slave and welcomed them into society? Maybe, maybe not. I personally think that in the long run it would have been better if the slaves were willingly freed instead of forcibly liberated.
As to what this has to do with Free Software and Open Source, I believe that if the GPL wins out because it was forced on the community instead of because the community and the software industry as a whole wants to use it, less will benefit. Some versions of Windows currently uses a TCP/IP stack obtained from *BSD which is only possible due to the nature of the BSD license. Windows would never have benefitted from BSDs superior TCP/IP stack if it was GPLed because microsoft would have never used GPLed code in their OS and risk having to GPL Windows.
The way I see it is if all Open Source software is GPLed without it being the will of the people we will see more stealing of GPLed code in closed source products, less involvement by people who are technically adept but also apolitical such as nyself and others who support the BSD style licenses, and less adoption of Open Source software by closed source companies.
Basically I'm trying to say; You can't force people to be good, kind-hearted and generous, and any attempts to do so are usually met with hostility and resentment.
Disclaimer: I am a black youth who lives in the southern U.S.
Grabel's Law
Now I need to add file upload capability; there is a file upload component out there, but the license is weird and definitely not compatible with what I'm doing. So I'm going to have to reinvent that wheel, and I'm going to have to do it 'clean room' even though I know that there are a lot of tricky little tweaks which someone else has already sorted out...
There's no doubt that open source licensing is a bit of a mess. I've a great deal of respect for RMS; we wouldn't be anywhere like where we are now without him. But at the same time after a lot of thought I've decided that the BSD-style licence is best for what I'm doing, because I want my work to be useful to the widest possible number of people and that explicitly includes people working in shops where they aren't realistically going to be allowed to publish their mods.
I'm increasingly of the opinion that life would be a lot simpler, and we would get a lot more innovation done, if the Intellectual Property laws (including copyright) were just scrapped. And yes, I do earn my living doing this.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
CAn you imagine a judge demanding that MS turn over Win2k code and make it a matter of public record?
There's the flaw in that argument.
They have detailed information on all the licenses currently used, the conflicts between them and describe suitable business models for each. I mention it because my friend, Jane, works there ;) It is suited perfectly to this issue.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
RMS talks about a number of different licenses here. He breaks up each license on a number of axis -- their compatibility with the GPL, whether or not they are copyleft (viral, in the rough vernacular we're so fond of here), and whether or not they are free.
He adds a small amount of his own editorializing; however, he limits his comments primarily to the free / not free axis of each license, the onerous and difficult clauses in other licenses, and the legal looseness of some licenses. He refrains from making any value judgement on the non-copyleft nature of the BSD-type license, so most of you can probably read the entire page without getting your underwear in a bunch.
It's fun to bash RMS, but he at least understands the issues, unlike the guy that wrote that wrote that article in webtechniques. Why did slashdot post this article in the first place?
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
Ideally all code would be Free, then licenses would cease to matter, and we could concentrate on constructive activities. The abolition of copyright completely would serve the same purpose.
One problem is that many software packages have a large number of authors, and it can be hard to track them all down and coordinate legal permission for an exception. Just witness the hassles that the Mozilla project is having to go through to relicense the code under the GPL (although things like this can be done, with perseverence). (It would have been much easier if they had taken RMS's advice and made the NPL/MPL GPL-compatible to begin with.)
(This is another advantage to the FSF's policy of copyright assignment: there is only a single copyright holder to deal with in case of problems.)
If a thing is not diminished by being shared, it is not rightly owned if it is only owned & not shared. S. Augustine
Sorry about that. What I meant was, how can I prevent people from stealing my GPL'ed source code (ie: they made a commercial software based on mine without redistributing the source code)? I can't spend my time disassembling other people's software.
2 02&cid=83
Here's one of the thing that I'm afraid of: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/12/17/1751
It has been said that software released under the GNU GPL is not in fact free-as-in-speech because the GPL curtails the freedom of programmers. This perspective is confused: the GNU GPL does indeed liberate the software precisely because it restricts the freedom of its developers.
The GPL establishes a new legal entity (the software) and defines its rights; that is, it describes what licensees may and may not do to the software, and further describes the obligations that they incur as a result of doing certain things to the software.
Now, the GNU GPL does not curtail the rights of the copyright holder (which include freedom) and in fact relies on the enforceability of said licensor rights; however, the GNU GPL does curtail the rights of users and developers of the software who do not hold a copyright on the entire work.
It has also been said that one's freedom ends where another's begins; according to that perspective, which is widely held even by those who object to the GNU GPL, curtailing of the freedom of developers is perfectly legitimate in the context of the GPL's goals, which include protecting the rights of software. However, while limiting freedom to guarantee freedom is probably a defensible proposition, the above argument in defense of the GPL is only tenable if one assumes that software can have unassailable rights. I propose that things do not have rights -- people have rights.
If you believe in the primacy of people's rights, it is perfectly legitimate to object to the GNU GPL; in fact, some radical libertarians believe that the very notion of copyright (and, by extension, copyleft) is flawed. In any case, this Slashdot discussion is motivated by the fact that there are talented programmers who choose to release their software under licenses that limit the freedom of people in various unpleasant ways.
When source code is released under a suitably permissive license or into the public domain, developers are free to recombine it at will, which is a Good Thing. Of course, some people choose to withhold their (modified) source code, but we should respect their right to do that because they, and not the programs, are free -- and that is a good thing.
for the GPL, having multiple copyright holders can be an advantage. If someone were to somehow influence the people running FSF or some other organization/single person holding rights over the code (bribes maybe, i dont know) that code could escape the GPL. But if hundreds of people own the copyright collectively, then it can likely never escape the GPL. (like the linux kernel)
Are you on crack?
Female Prison Rape in NY
GPL'ers want free (as both in beer and speech) software to be the norm. Many commercial entities have no objection to handing out sourcecode but want measurable benefits in doing so and so go the GPL-inspired licences route. Other commercial and non-commercial outfits just want their code out there being used. They don't care if someone profits from it - the worst that can happen is that they won't have the source code to modifications a third party has made, and that's not a big deal if you're already delighted the work you've done has made it elsewhere.
Trying to argue that we can somehow resolve these issues is, in my opinion, a waste of time. For myself, I fall into the latter group - I'd like what I write to be made use of, and if I were to write a TCP/IP stack that turned up in Windows 2010, I'd be proud as punch and pretty delighted about it. I also want access to code I don't have to be bothered about rules applying to if I make modifications. Others, I know, feel very differently, and I think they have a perfect right to feel differently and to want their code handed out under a different set of rules.
If we try to get the world of open source licences to converge, IMO, we end up disenfranchising those who want to write code under whatever conditions they feel most appropriate. And given the willingness of programmers to duplicate work they find interesting, I don't necessarily see it as something that has massive negative consequences. I also suspect that the practicality of seeing the licences converge is close to zero. People will develop under whatever conditions they find most appropriate, and, for myself, if BSD and X were to decide to incorporate the GPL conditions into their licencing models, I'd probably just move out of their licencing arena, and develop under different conditions.
--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
As long as the standards are adhered to, there should be no problem. As long as those standards are just and completely valid in their requirements for adhering to them. They should not be contradicting to the nature of the Open Source.
Many belive in a shared knowledge for all. 'Take what I know, make it work for you. Don't sell it, especially if it's based on some thing I've already done, and every thing will be fine.' .
a/s/l here. Sorry, adding domain tags to your s