Posted by
chrisd
on from the vim-is-the-one-true-editor dept.
vimbigot writes "A nice summary of where Vim 6.0 has come from, with some insights into Bram Moolenaar's thoughts on Open Source, Charityware and large cooperative software projects. (a bit of irony in the `powered by emacs logo at the bottom !')"
Re:ViM Author has seen the light
by
Carl
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
The charity-ware is a nice idea. It does build awareness. Very, very, nice.
But he doesn't seem to get the real idea behind Free Software and the GPL.
The GNU General Public Licence (GPL) is more restrictive. Although it claims to ascertain the freedom of software, it restricts the changes you can make. That is, you can make changes, but when you distribute the modified software, you must make the modified sources available as well. Thus people are not free to keep these changes to themselves. I would say this in fact restricts your freedom. On the other hand, allowing anybody to make changes and keep those changes a secret, even though they profit from the part of the program that wasn't changed, also doesn't sound fair. That's why I decided to add the condition that the changes must be made available to me. I can then decide that these changes are useful for most people, and include them in Vim. Or decide that these changes have only a very small audience, and allow a company to make a bit of money from their work. After all, if the source code of a program must be freely available, it is quite difficult to require users to pay money and make a living out of your work.
With the GPL everybody is equal. If you make a little modification to a GPLed program and distribute that to your friends your friends can ask you for the source of the program and your modifications. But that does not mean anybody else can come in and demand all your modifications to their program. But with his license he gets far more power then anybody else that works on VIM. That might seem fair now since he has done a lot (a very lot) of work on it. But this may come back and hunt you after 20 years when someone else is maintaining (a fork) of the program, since for example Bram doesn't like to maintain it anymore, and he suddenly demands that all changes are handed over to him again.
Although respecting peoples privacy is not a very strong requirement for free software it does seem strange that a license that gives the original author more rights then any other authors can be considered Free Software. I really like the fact that the GPL gives alll contributors equal powers and the fact that it only forces you to play nice with people you actually distribute copies to. Having some god like person that can always demand all source code that I changed doesn't sound very free.
I do appreciate his idea that it is unfair that someone can close down the source code and profit from the fact that most the code was free and not sharing improvements is unsocial. But appointing one person to make the "right" decissions what parts of "my" code should be handed over to him doesn't sound fair either. IMHO making everybody equal by using the GPL and giving everybody (including the original maintainer) the same rights or by using the simple MIT/Modern BSD license and risking that someone/everyone closes down the source seems more fair.
Re:ViM Author has seen the light
by
dangermouse
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
No, he knows exactly what he's doing. He said specifically that he wants to have the power to decide whether or not someone who's made modifications (and intends to distribute the resulting binaries) has to release the source for their modifications or not.
The GPL does not allow him to decide... if the program is GPLed and someone modifies it and releases binaries, they have to give out source as well.
He doesn't think that's always reasonable, so he came up with a license that allows him to decide on a case-by-case basis whether it's fair for someone to profit by keeping their changes to themselves or the changes should be made public.
Whether it's well-implemented or not is perhaps debatable, but don't go away with the impression that he doesn't understand the GPL. He clearly does.
Slashdot Mirror
But he doesn't seem to get the real idea behind Free Software and the GPL.
The GNU General Public Licence (GPL) is more restrictive. Although it claims to ascertain the freedom of software, it restricts the changes you can make. That is, you can make changes, but when you distribute the modified software, you must make the modified sources available as well. Thus people are not free to keep these changes to themselves. I would say this in fact restricts your freedom. On the other hand, allowing anybody to make changes and keep those changes a secret, even though they profit from the part of the program that wasn't changed, also doesn't sound fair. That's why I decided to add the condition that the changes must be made available to me. I can then decide that these changes are useful for most people, and include them in Vim. Or decide that these changes have only a very small audience, and allow a company to make a bit of money from their work. After all, if the source code of a program must be freely available, it is quite difficult to require users to pay money and make a living out of your work.
With the GPL everybody is equal. If you make a little modification to a GPLed program and distribute that to your friends your friends can ask you for the source of the program and your modifications. But that does not mean anybody else can come in and demand all your modifications to their program. But with his license he gets far more power then anybody else that works on VIM. That might seem fair now since he has done a lot (a very lot) of work on it. But this may come back and hunt you after 20 years when someone else is maintaining (a fork) of the program, since for example Bram doesn't like to maintain it anymore, and he suddenly demands that all changes are handed over to him again.
Although respecting peoples privacy is not a very strong requirement for free software it does seem strange that a license that gives the original author more rights then any other authors can be considered Free Software. I really like the fact that the GPL gives alll contributors equal powers and the fact that it only forces you to play nice with people you actually distribute copies to. Having some god like person that can always demand all source code that I changed doesn't sound very free.
I do appreciate his idea that it is unfair that someone can close down the source code and profit from the fact that most the code was free and not sharing improvements is unsocial. But appointing one person to make the "right" decissions what parts of "my" code should be handed over to him doesn't sound fair either. IMHO making everybody equal by using the GPL and giving everybody (including the original maintainer) the same rights or by using the simple MIT/Modern BSD license and risking that someone/everyone closes down the source seems more fair.
The GPL does not allow him to decide... if the program is GPLed and someone modifies it and releases binaries, they have to give out source as well.
He doesn't think that's always reasonable, so he came up with a license that allows him to decide on a case-by-case basis whether it's fair for someone to profit by keeping their changes to themselves or the changes should be made public.
Whether it's well-implemented or not is perhaps debatable, but don't go away with the impression that he doesn't understand the GPL. He clearly does.