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Open Source License Comparison
rbb writes "Bryce Wilcox-O'Hearn, aka Zooko, has put together a simple chart that in just a few lines displays the characteristics of each of the most popular Open Source licenses. The table, which is currently in version 0.8.3, makes it easy to see in a glance how the licenses compare to one another." Easily digestible information - good for PHB [?] s.
So, I had a look at your page. While it's nice that you are doing this, won't you end up with this when you are done? I kinda missed the why bit.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
We now return you regularly.
Tina Gasperson
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OK, every once in a while I see a post that says something like "Free as in beer", but not free as in ??. Anyway, since the topic is licenses could someone please clarify the free as in X statements. Its been something I have not understood for a while. One of the few Slashdot things I've been out of the loop on.. hehe.. Thanks in advance.
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty
Bill Gates prepared a chart of how much money his closed-source license has made him, N*Sync prepared a chart of how much money their CD sales have earned, and an unnamed open-source programmer made a sign that says "will prepare charts for food."
Zooko O'Whielacronx? Zooko O'Whielacronx? Other than Zaphod Beeblebrox that has to be the coolest name ever. How do I get one? That's awesome! (Is it Welsh, by any chance? I've always wanted to be a Welshman. I love it when there are 5 or 6 consonants in a row, and it looks totally unpronouncable, and then this fair-skinned beauty says it, and it's like music.)
I guess I'm rambling again. Must be off my meds. Miss Teschmacher!!
Apparently the only way to be safe against the accusation of having given "legal advice" is to write with such ambiguity and obfuscation that nobody can learn anything from what you've written
:P
Well from my experience the more complicated it looks, the more like legal advice it becomes!
And judging from the wars on this site, most of us write like this anyway
is here. I wrote it about 3 years ago, right about when ESR formed OSI. Best, Clark
Hi folks. The License Quick Ref is definitely a work in progress. I am no lawyer and there are a lot of question marks and probably a lot of inaccuracies or other bugs.
Please e-mail <zooko@zooko.com> with suggestions for improvement. Thanks!
If you send me flames, I may elect to post them to my web log. :-)
http://zooko.com/.
Regards,
Zooko
Kudos to Zooko for producing this, but I have to point out that if you didn't already know this stuff, you're not going to learn much of anything useful here because there's not enough basic introduction, and if you did already know it, you're not going to learn much of anything useful here, because there's not enough detail.
And what on earth is the point in posting your opinion on legal issues, then disclaiming that opinion as being worthless? Again, no disrespect to Zooko, but his opinion isn't worth any more than mine or yours.
Let's keep pressing for IAAL advice, or better yet, get some of these licenses tested in court, proactively and preemptively if necessary. I'd happily help fund a FSF case to have a declaratory decision made on the validity and limitations of the GPL.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Duh. Scroll down or something.
Based on "license_quick_ref.html", originally written by Zooko in 2001 and posted to "http://zooko.com/license_quick_ref.html".
written in 2001 by Zooko; You may copy and use this document in unmodified form. Alternatively, you may copy and use this document in modified form, provided that you remove this line (that begins: 'written in 2001 by Zooko...') and retain the line above (that begins: 'Based on "license_quick_ref.html"...').
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
I read your explaination of why the author chose questions that would show GPL as better. You've probably heard these arguments before but I thought I'd provide a personal example of why I think there might be better questions.
I'm a video game programmer. I think video game programmers are generally at the opposite extreme in terms of whether open source code is useful for game code development or not. Meaning for example it's clearly worked for OSes and for Web servers but it gets arguably gets less useful for apps and maybe even more for games. (I could explain this but I'm trying to keep this short)
Anyway, the point is, if you make the assumption that basically game companies will probably never GPL their game code for an inproduction game (vs tool code) then GPL code is NOT generally useful to commerical game programmers. So, in my personal example, if I wrote some cool 3D engine or quaterion code or collision code or physics engine and I GPLed it, most likely, none of my friends in the industry who are also commerical game developers could use my code to help their jobs, make their lives easier etc. If I BSDed it they can. AND most likely they can also contribute (most companies are not completely stupid) to BSD style but not to GPL.
So, although the author suggested the question "Can redistribute proprietary version" where *proprietary* is arguably the word GPL advocates see as bad, I would suggest one which I think they might find more palettable. "Is useful to ALL my programming friends" vs "Is useful only to friends that can GPL their code" or maybe even simpler, "can be used by ALL programmers" vs GPL which is "can only be used by programmers that can GPL their code". Since sharing code seems to be a major reason to open source code and since in my person situation, BSDing allows me to share with more people than GPL. I choose BSD style.
It's in this sense of wanting to help people, most of whom are not in a position to use GPL that I find BSD style more useful because it helps MORE people.
To get off that issue and directly into "anti" GPL stuff. I see GPL as kind of like volunteering to help the poor only if they promise to help you back where as BSD is just like real volunteering. You don't expect anything back except karma and good will. But, I also see that by real world example, people have contributed just fine to BSD style licensed projects (FreeBSD, Apache) so the arguement that you need to GPL your code to make sure you get other peoples contributions seems not really to hold up where as the arguement that GPLed code is useful to less people than FreeBSD code is arguably provable.
You know, I've been playing Dungeons & Dragons for over 15 years and I can tell you the Player's Hand Book is confusing enough will all it's charts and tables. Added this chart will just frustrate DMs like myself when the players say "Look, that Dragon falls under the GNU GPL so it must share it's source of wealth!!"
So kill me if you must -- thereby putting me out of my misery as slavishly devoted to a do-or-die AI Project, but first I would like to raise the perhaps feeble argument that we human beings have a right to know exactly what we are and how we function as both minds and bodies.
As for your lead-in statement that you don't believe this project will succeed, think again, because it is not the admittedly amateurish AI source code propelling the AI Mind to success (i.e., proliferation), but rather the SourceForge/ Mind/ Docs/ Theory of Cognition that will inexorably introduce True Good Old Fashained AI (GOFAI) unless stopped by a nefarious military/government/Microsoft/_whatever_, because the Mentifex AI theory is the free, public-domain distillate of thirteen years of slavish agonizing over all possible roads to its now uniquely magisterial Theory of Mind -- and you can't stop an idea whose time has come.
If the U.S. or other military does take over an Open Source AI Mind project, they are not going to announc it to the world here on Slashdot. They are going to pick a place like Los Alamos, New Mexico, and develope the End-Of-Humanity in secret. The only way to thwart the forces of evil is to let _them_ sweat a lot about who _else_ has the plans for the Superintelligence.
The community he is referring to does not consist solely of the Linux and GNU communities. He is referring to the Open Source community at large. That community includes XFree86 developers, BSD developers, Apache developers, Perl and Python developers, etc., etc. The GPL is accepted by the community as a valid and useful standard for copyleft-style licenses. But it is not universally accepted as a Good Thing(tm). You may disagree, but you are not the community, only a very small part of it.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
You should have an automated test suite with examples that check to see if they have been correctly calculated. Every time a bug is found you should add a check to your test suite for it.
[assuming you are concerned about changes to Python]
You state with your program that it has been verified to run with Python version foo.
You should warn that versions of Python other than foo may break your program and it should be fully tested before deployement.
You personally check against your test suite.
[assuming you are concerned about updates to your code breaking it]
1: don't incorporate patches unless you know they are safe for use.
2: verify patches against the test suite you built earlier before accepting.
You have no protection against someone forking your code and making a competing product with it, however, you also aren't liable if the competing product screws up since you don't sell / support / acknowledge it.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
You seem to have a strong opinion in favor of the GPL and, from what I can determine, it looks like a fantastic concept that is applicable to more than just computer code. However, I am somewhat inexperienced with open licenses and have a few questions as I consider publishing software that I am currently developing. Short story is as follows, the program I'm working on is being coded in Python (latest GPL OK version). It is designed for accessing damage and/or fatigue life for aging commercial aircraft. The math engine is developed by myself and I'd like to make it available to other experts in the field so that it can grow. I would also like input from experienced programmers since I am self taught (this is in fact my first Python program). On the other hand, I need to keep that math model under tight control. I am concerned that someone who is a good programmer but not experienced in aircraft fatigue my modify the math engine in such a way as to make it unsafe for use. Can the GPL protect from this scenario?
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Exactly when did the Soviets destroy the West? I must have missed that.
I guess all their preparations were for nothing...
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
*Prepared* to destroy...
They didn't, but that was largely because they'd have been destroyed as well.
The USA was fairly close, after WW2, to making a bunch more nukes and carrying the war to the soviets. They were stopped partially because they couldn't afford the manpower to actually hold the country once it had been broken.
The USSR was fairly obviously looking to become the only superpower, and that would have been most quickly accomplished by destroying the USA.
Why do you think they didn't?
You may not like this, but war is a fact of life. As long as someone else desires violence, or is willing to use violence to get what they want, you have to be prepared to match them, or there's nothing stopping them.
Having an army, and building weapons of aggression, is required, unless you are so confident of your strength that you can rely 100% on defensive weapons. Do you want to risk your life on a missile defense system?
What we really need is an answer to the question: "Which licenses scare MS?" If they don't stop at least MS from appropriating the software, then what use is such an OS license?
He seems to be unsure whether "the community" likes to accept code under the GPL. If he means the business community, maybe I can understand his uncertainty, but I thought he meant the hacker community.
He actually stated "a hypothetical open source/free software hacker may prefer to create source code under the GPL, but may prefer to use source code licensed to her under a license that permits her to combine the licensed source code with proprietary source code." Are we that hypocritical?
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Find free books.
07/Aug/2001:07:22:58 - pentagon.mil - /~mentifex/jsaimind.html /~mentifex/aisource.html /~mentifex/jsaimind.html /~mentifex/index.html /~mentifex/ /~mentifex/aisource.html /~mentifex/aisource.html
07/Aug/2001:14:44:12 - af.mil -
07/Aug/2001:14:44:16 - af.mil -
07/Aug/2001:14:48:19 - af.mil -
08/Aug/2001:11:21:48 - army.mil -
08/Aug/2001:11:22:02 - army.mil -
08/Aug/2001:22:18:15 - nosc.mil -
Check this out:
Peter Lowe has written an interactive version of the License Quick Ref which shows you the table in a way that reflects your own biases. Ha!
http://yoyo.org/~pgl/lqr/
Regards,
Zooko
P.S. Despite my fears of massive slashdot flamage, there has actually been pretty much no flames, except for one from a certain unnamed Linux world journalist. Maybe the community is growing up! After all, Linux itself is 10 years old, so the first generation of Linux hackers are now in their late 20's at least.
...I must state my opinion that its goals are monstrous and evil.
An attempt to create a general purpose artificial intelligence -- and specifically one which is more intelligent than any human AND one intended to be loaded into robots! -- which acts from self-interest, rather than to fulfill some specific function, is nothing less than an attempt to destroy humanity.
People who make this attempt should be killed, and their work destroyed. Collaborators should be killed, sympathizers should be killed. It is unclear whether it is wiser to do it publicly, to discourage attempts, or covertly, to keep attempts public and make them easier to catch.
The creation of free AI is the one true threat to the survival of humanity (or will be once we get a few viable colonies off-planet); nothing else would hunt people into remote areas or through space. No preventative measure is too extreme.
This is not a joke, this is not a troll. True artificial intelligence should only be approached with the greatest caution, in a carefully contained environment, by people who take the threat seriously and who are ready to abandon it and destroy their work at the first sign of danger. The idea of rights for an AI should never be seriously considered. Perhaps the only justifiable purpose of creating an AI would be to destroy other AIs, and the potential problems are obvious.
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You'd be surprised at the broadband connection available to things crawling around in your hair.
But surely only Microsoft can authorise the use of their Shared Source license, meaning you can't just tag it to your latest 'leet project.
Probably the same reason that the Sun Community license is missing, and the dreaded MS EULA!
So you're telling me we should all be willing to listen to and debate with someone on the merits of his attempts to disembowel children, and anyone who simply judges him as evil should be disregarded as irrational.
Don't be an ass. Not everything is a debate.
Of course it makes no sense for people I judge to be monstrous and evil to argue with me over my belief. I'm not interested in debating with them, I'm interested in stopping them. I don't write to communicate with them, but to communicate with others who share my belief, or might be persuaded to. It's a call to arms, and strong language is appropriate.
Not every communication is a logical argument, meant to persuade impartial judges. Assertion of one's belief is neither logical argument nor logical fallacy, it is a statement of fact about oneself.
I'm not interested in arguing over whether a free AI would destroy humanity. That is not something we can know until it is done. It is enough that a free, superior AI would have humanity at its mercy, that it would be the introduction of a totally unnecessary, totally avoidable threat.
Others do not value humanity so highly; they consider any intelligence their equal kindred. There is no logical argument against that, you must simply judge for yourself whether you stand with them or against them. There are no moderates: you either find the extinction of humanity acceptable in some avoidable situation, or you don't.
I don't, and I won't sit and listen to people plot the annihilation of the human race without at least stating my unequivocal objection.
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You'd be surprised at the broadband connection available to things crawling around in your hair.