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Moglen On Enforcing The GPL
jdavidb writes: "The GNU Project has a new essay today by Eben Moglen, general legal counsel for GNU, about enforcing the GPL. People ranting about the GPL not holding up in court should read this. Very interesting, but I felt that this paragraph looked bad: 'In such situations we work with organizations to establish GPL-compliance programs within their enterprises, led by senior managers who report to us, and directly to their enterprises' managing boards, regularly.' I'm all for the GPL, but this sounds suspiciously like an Software Publishers' Association audit. On the other hand, circumstances of something like this would be completely different, i.e., illegally taking copyright privileges over software you didn't write, as opposed to illegally copying software." Actually, I also think they sound alike in certain ways, but that it makes sense -- since both are about unauthorized reproduction of software. I like the FSF's terms a lot more. Update: 09/18 19:53 PM GMT by T : As Dr. Nonsense points out, davidb "probably meant the dreaded audits by the Business Software Alliance," rather than the SPA.
Knowledge doesn't want to be free -- knowledge has no desires of any kind. It is certain people who want knowledge to be free. I'm one of those people; where I differ from the GPL is in my definition of "freedom".
Freedom is a lack of obligation; the GPL does not define "freedom", it forces obligations on people, and uses the very Copyright they despise as a tool for control. Mod me down if you will, but I have just as much right to my opinion as they do to theirs.
I have respect for Mr. Stallman's goals, but not his tactics. He and I share many beliefs when it comes to freedom -- on the issue of GPL, though, I beg to differ.
In many ways, GPL's adherents remind me of an obnoxious slogan I once saw on a hat: "If you love something, set it free; if it doesn't come back, hunt it down and kill it." Sorry, RMS, I just don't hold with that kind of thinking.
The GPL is about power, not freedom; buy into the GPL myth, and you're just exchanging one master (Mr. Gates) for another (Mr. Stallman).
All about me
1) installing modified GPL code on a machine for a customer to evaluate -- RMS has told me that if the customer controls the machine, it is distribution, but if the code modifier controls the machine, it is not.
We ran into this when installing a system for a customer for acceptance testing.
2) Distributing binaries ahead of source (i.e. to subcontractors). RMS has made it clear to me that this is verboten. He sympathized with our plight, but could find no way that the GPL would permit this. OTOH, in practical terms, as long a source was distributed as rapidly as possible, we would likely not face allegations of violation.
We ran into this when sending "the latest, greatest build of code" to subcontractors, or potential customers for evaluation on machines we do not control. Sometimes we'd want to ship an installation CD, or download updates to someone as part of work in progress. This is a technical violation.
3) redistribution within an organization. This is a real grey area -- is the organization in control of the code or the individuals who have access to it? Personally, I have taken the former approach, but have never refused to give mods to GPL code to coworkers, when asked.
You could've hired me.
The idea of "free" with regards to software licensing is to eliminate as many restrictions as possible. Since the BSD license has far, far fewer restrictions than the GPL, the BSDL is freer.
Standard response: "it's not free if someone can take it and make it unfree".
The trouble with that standard response is that information has a special property in that you can reproduce it with absolutely no change to the original. Thus, no one can "take" the orignal. No matter how hard they try, they end up with a mere copy. Nothing anyone can do can damage the original or in any way reduce the freedom of the users of the original. If you have made a copy of my software, you copy does not belong to me. It is yours. For me to tell you what you can do with your own property is unfree in the extreme.
If someone uses a copy of my software, then licenses it in an unfree manner, it is not *my* software that is unfree. It is theirs. They cannot take any rights or permissions away from my users. They cannot alter one byte on the software or licenses in my users' possession.
Could someone out there, somewhere, end up using a derivative of my software that is not free? Of course! But that's absolutely NONE of my business. I will have no part in telling someone what they can or cannot do with software I claim to be free.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
the point is not whether the software stays free. nobody cares about the rights of software. a BSD style license allows somebody to release software that denies its users the freedom to inspect, modify, learn from, redistribute and extend that software. this freedom existed when the software was first released (under BSD), and it has been taken away from users when they are unaware that product X is derived from source code that they can freely obtain. So, by taking a BSD-licensed program, modifying it and releasing it under a proprietary license, somebody is going to take away rights, not from your users, but from their own.