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Using OSS for In-House Tools, Only?
Robert Hart writes "With people such as Microsoft and ADTI suggesting incorrectly that if you use GPL software in house (without distributing it to third parties) you must make your code publicly available, actual examples of people using GPL software internally would seem to be the best response (pragmatic examples to back up the 'theory').
I am interested in hearing about examples of corporations and government agencies, from around the world, using GPL software as part of an inhouse development effort. As there is also a potential for time/money saving by doing this, there is a possibility that this
may lead to some research to put numbers behind this."
Microsoft will come out of this smelling like roses and the OSS camp will look like a bunch of Communists. The fact of the matter is that the GPL is too complicated for the layman to understand in toto.
/. story about an FSF quiz that was designed to gauge your GPL knowledge. Just about everyone here on /. scored 70% or so. That's 30% misunderstanding. And this is among people who argue for the GPL all the time. How much less do you think the average person is going to understand the license?
Recently there was a
With regards to OSS tools, there are two choices. Use them or not. Using them entails following the GPL which adds all sorts of weird, non-obvious restrictions. Not using them means they can get on with their normal routine.
Microsoft is pushing this aspect to its limit. To understand Microsoft licenses, it's pretty straightforward. You can't copy the product to another machine. They play this up to its fullest as well.
No matter what you think of the GPL or OSS, it's underlying value system is so contrary to the American psyche that you'd need a true revolution to make any significant inroads. Such a revolution won't happen in the near future because the anger and bile that OSS zealots have for closed source products doesn't resonate with Capitalist Joe.
I have been pwned because my
Oh and if you know anyone that is looking for a large scale leasing app that runs on Linux please reply to this post with more info. We are getting ready to release an alpha and I just got eop working today ;-).
Only 'flamers' flame!
With people such as Microsoft and ADTI suggesting incorrectly that if you use GPL software in house (without distributing it to third parties) you must make your code publicly available
Can some GPL guru do us all a favor and provide an argument for why Microsoft and ADTI are incorrect here? It is my understanding that they're wrong, but I cannot back it up with a reasoned argument. I would think a reasoned argument would as important as examples: Otherwise, the examples would be of people violating the license, right?
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
We don't have to open up our proprietary code, because we understand the GPL, and our lawyers understand the GPL. We even have a way for Cisco employees to make opensource software available to the world via a variety of licenses, as long as the correct permission is obtained by the employees doing it.
If the opinion of GPL code is really that bad, why not use dual-licensing to get around it?
If you released your OSS project with a license that allowed the licensee to apply their choice of the GPL or a standard "You have no rights to redistribute" license, they might actually be more reassured. (as strange/silly as that is)
"You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help" -- Calvin
I've posted this link this morning, but here it is again:
http://research.microsoft.com/~dbwilson/
Hrmm let's see...... domain: Microsoft. body: references to GNU and GPL'd applications/code!
mod me down this time. I dare you.
HURD - Hurd's Under Research & Development
What percentage of the microsoft license do people understand?
We use all sorts of GPL tools here internally, with loads of our own proprietary modifications.
We contribute back to the community any general non-company specific modifications. otherwise they are all strictly internal use only.
i'll let someone legally allowed to speak for the company post non-anonymously. we're popular.
If my employer makes a change to gcc, and lets me use the binary, then my employer cannot restrict me from grabbing the source and posting it on the Internet. Was my employer to do that, they'd immediately lose the rights (to modify and redistribute the software) they were granted under the GPL.
(The usual way of saying this is, "They'd have to GPL their software"; which is not true, though it's the only way they could keep their redistribution rights.)
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
This is a tad off-topic, but somewhat related. I know according to the GPL you only need to provide source to the people you provide the binaries to. If you don't provide binaries to anyone outside the company, you do not need to provide source to anyone outside the company. But isn't one of the other stipulations of the GPL that anyone can redistribute the source/binaries as long as the follow the GPL? What is to stop someone within your organization from taking the source from your internal app and distributing it outside the company? OR is there some part of the GPL that I'm missing that would prevent this?
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
See the GNU GPL FAQ, they have an answer for this type of situation.
However, the Licence is legal binding, and the FAQ isn't.
The important part (i.e., all your computers are beong to us). Of course, that's also the part they're used to disregarding...
There are reasons why democracy does not work nearly as well as capitalism.
-- David D. Friedman
I think that is the crux of the issue. Modifying the code doesn't modify the license; and, according to section 2, all you really need to do is copy the modified code to trigger it:
Who doesn't make copies of their code?
So, actually, it looks like Microsoft and ADTI have it right in a sense:
Premise: Original work licensed under the GPL.
Premise: Company obtains a copy through GPL and makes modifications.
Premise: Company makes copies of modified code for internal use.
Premise: GPL, under section 7, doesn't allow additional restrictions on distribution. So, company cannot restrict distribution.
Conclusion: Anyone with access to modified source can distribute under the GPL or company cannot use GPL'd work.
Hmmmm.... Not exactly the mindset I've been working under. How did we start this conversation? Oh yeah, we we're looking for proof Microsoft and ADTI were wrong. Oops.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
In the FAQ, it states that an organization as a whole can make a modified copy and not distribute it. So the organization is the responsible body, not the individual employee.
That would imply that an employee could NOT distribute it without the permission of the organization, if the modified product was intended for in-house use only.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
its possible to "open source" your software without following the GPL, a licence which I myself do not choose when i write software.
off-on-a-tangent-time: to me, truly "free" software means adding no stipulations of any kind, unlike the GPL. therefore, short of paying a lawyer lots of $ to write the Naikrovek(tm) license, i use the BSD license for all the software i write. Fortunately for me, my entire company licenses the software they work on under the BSD license, unless its trade-secret.
there's nothing saying that you have to use the GPL for your in-house tools.
Unfortunately, I don't have mod points today. Somebody please moderate the parent up because it gets to the entire crux of the issue.
An organization is considered a single body; therefore, one can "redistribute" a GPL'd work internally ad infinitum without invoking the GPL. ("Redistribute" is in quotes because one can't technically redistribute a program to themselves; that's just copying.)
Posts to this thread are confused. An organization doesn't "give" software to its employees. Rather, the organization acquires software which is then used by employees. There's no redistribution and, therefore, the GPL isn't invoked. As such, the employee has no right to redistribute the software whatsoever. And to do so would, at a minimum, be a violation of company policy. Most likely, it would also (legally) be considered theft.
If my employer makes a change to gcc, and lets me use the binary
1. as an employee using the employer's computers.
2. as an outside individual doing something other than company business.
Seems you would have a right to the source in case 2 but not in case 1.
We run our Ambulator Point of Care Servers off a FreeBSD Xserver with about 50 clients. It works amazingly, and we run a in-house app on it for patient information and stuff.
We have never had any of the 'troubles' our CITRIX boxen do, and scheduled reboots aern't even part of the equation. Unfortnatly the more expensive CITRIX boxen are becoming more popular due to the ease of delivering applications to Windows though (which I find even more amusing, because due to that 'ease', we got hit *hard* by klez and brought our network to a crawl last week). Our network is generally a large hybrid, with about every OS you can imagine being run somewhere, even when it's not supposed to be anymore (cough Windows95 cough)
This is premised on the legal relationship between an organisation and its members (whether employees, members, volunteers, etc). This legal relationship varies from country to country - in some places it is not valid to assume a contract/license which is binding on the organisation is binding on individuals, unless they explicitly agree to the contract as well.
i-name =twylite [http://public.xdi.org/=twylite], see idcommons.net
These things are very different; there's a tonne of open source software out there that lots of people use that isn't GPL:
To constantly suggest that the GPL is the One True License is not only wrong, but very damaging, since it undermines perceived choice over licensing.
This is supposed to be a site for vaguely intelligent people; can't we at least make some effort to be more precise in our terminology?
I took the GPL quiz (I got all but one right, but that was more down to logical deduction than knowledge), and use GPL'd software in a corporate environment daily, so I feel that I should understand the license, but from the quiz I feel that I don't. In comparison with the Microsoft EULA the GPL really is inpenetrable to the layperson, with numerous "ifs" and "ors" , which is maybe not a good thing. The wording of the GPL leaves the door wide open for this kind of FUD which will no doubt be accepted as truth by many who should know better.
Perhaps what the GPL needs is an companion document that answers the FUD in plain language - the explanatory answers from the quiz would be a good place to start. The fact that the proponents of the GPL can dispel the FUD is not the point - the point is that they are being required to do so in the first place.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
You mean like this?
Well, the only way to avoid FUD is to be exactly like everyone else. The GPL proponents are, of course, geeks. Ergo, they don't desire to be like every one else---they'd rather deal with the (inevitable) FUD.
There are reasons why democracy does not work nearly as well as capitalism.
-- David D. Friedman
...though I doubt anyone here would be willing to go on the record about it in any official way.
We use Perl quite a lot, mainly in development and QA work. Sometimes we write Perl programs for customers, to extend the functionality of one of our products. (Said products are closed source, licenced in the usual proprietary way.)
One of our products used Apache as glue between two other programs that we wrote, and a couple of Perl scripts that ran as CGI programs. Did using GPL'd software (Perl, not Apache) in this way require us to GPL the source of our programs? Of course not.
Perhaps a better example of our use of GPL'd software is gzip. We use it as part of our (often futile) attempts to keep control of disk usage. Also, we often package software deliveries in .tar.gz form, both for CD-ROM and ftp. The installation script (written by us) has to call gzip as the first stage of unpacking it. To say that using gzip means that we have to GPL our software holds about as much water as saying that Adobe owns all your photos of you and your dog because you used Photoshop to save them as JPEGs.
Just another wannabe fantasy novelist...
Our development project uses open source where possible, for example our "support" tools are open source (the Mantis Bugtracker, a modified PHPWiki for collaborative documentation, tools for creating XML for the web) but we are in the situation that we are hosting a web application, so the code is never "distributed". However, we never integrate open source code into the codebase proper, so even if we did distribute it we should be fine - the tools used are not part of the resulting codebase.
Sig under construction since 1998.
To give a real life example, I did some work at one site recently who wanted some very basic network usage monitoring - the kind of stuff that would be a no brainer for MRTG. Because of the KISS argument above they were about to spend the best part of £1000 on an overkill commerical product, with additional outlay as they added additional devices because it was licensed per node. They were happy with this because they understood the license and costs, even when I said I could set up an a Linux box with an MRTG config for then in a morning and have a web configuration front-end tailored for them by the end of the same day.
(For those who want to know - they agreed to give it a shot, and I was in the local pub with it all done by 14:00 the following day. They were so happy and their license concerns sufficiently assuaged that I'm replacing their NT based mail gateway with a Linux box next month...)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Am I the only one who finds this sequence ironic?
There are reasons why democracy does not work nearly as well as capitalism.
-- David D. Friedman
Well, the NSA seems to be pretty keen on Linux. I know they're not that big or important, and they don't know much about technology or the law or anything... ;-)
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
We are working on improving a few CPAN modules, and I plan to contribute that back. But as long as we stay an ASP, we're not legally required to.