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Advocacy Prompts Reconsideration of Anti-GPL Letter
As far as I can tell, it started with this Newsforge story (Newsforge is also part of OSDN, Slashdot's corporate parent). The Newsforge story was excerpted and copied by an Australian newspaper, and from there, it was off and spreading. The headline chosen, "Washington State Congressman attempts to outlaw GPL", is not particularly accurate, but it did a great job at stirring up outrage. Outlaw the GPL! Over my dead keyboard!
From there it really started making the rounds. It was repeatedly submitted to Slashdot with all sorts of flaming, incorrect commentary - in fact, after reading a dozen different submissions, I didn't think any of them were even close to accurate. I picked one and posted it, trying to do my best to a) provide an accurate headline and b) provide an accurate summary of the issue at stake in a few sentences. To recap again: when the Federal government creates computer code (or any copyrightable work) directly, it gets no copyright whatsoever and the work is true public domain (quirk of the U.S. copyright laws - the 50 states, corporations, individuals, and other legal entities all get copyrights automatically, but the Federal government does not). If you want to copy, reproduce, or sell an .mp3 of the U.S. Congress singing "God Bless America" after September 11, go right ahead: there is no copyright on it whatsoever. (Actually, the song itself is still under copyright, but Congress' performance of it wouldn't be...)
However, when the Federal government hires a non-employee to create code or copyrighted works, there is no clear rule regarding the copyright status of the work. Sometimes the contract calls for rights to the work to be assigned to the Federal government (the Feds don't get original copyrights, but if someone else gets an original copyright, the Feds can acquire it). Sometimes the contractor keeps the copyright and gets to do whatever they want with it. Sometimes the contract doesn't specify. Note that this is NOT a BSD-vs.-GPL dispute, not by a long shot. Very little code financed by the Federal government is ever licensed under either of these two licenses - the choice is basically agency-proprietary (the Federal agency asked for the rights in the contract, and kept them) or company-proprietary (the agency didn't ask for the rights, and the contractor kept them).
And most of the time it doesn't matter. I've written code for the Federal government as both a contractor and an employee, and 99% of it was so specific and customized that it would be of use to no one else, regardless of its licensing or copyright status. Probably the majority of code written for the Federal government falls into that category - internal use software for very specific needs.
But some of it is undoubtedly useful. Some major projects funded by the government in conjunction with academia have escaped from licensing purgatory, typically through the efforts of the researchers working on them who approach the issue from an academic freedom viewpoint and want to see their work widely adopted. GRASS is one major one that I know of. A commenter pointed out ADA as an example. For code which is useful to others, either a BSD-like or GPL-like license would be truly beneficial and easily defensible as a public policy choice. In the non-code world, the government makes choices like that all the time - it might choose to purchase a particular piece of land and commit to making it available to everyone forever by declaring it a National Park and committing to maintain it, a GPL-like philosophy; alternately, it might choose to just dump a particular piece of property on the market, putting it up for auction and letting the purchaser do what he wills with it, a BSD-like philosophy.[1] Either of these two options might be optimal; but paying for code which ends up remaining proprietary is like buying a new stadium to benefit a very specific corporation which owns a very specific sports team: the type of use of public funds which is generally seen as sleazy and the opposite of good governance.
Either of the first two choices can be appropriate in certain situations. What does not seem appropriate is paying for proprietary code, although this is generally what happens when the government contracts for code. Since the government has the ability to provide a benefit to the public (open code) at essentially zero cost, it should do so. An example which has struck me several times over the past few years: every airport in the world has the same problem, coordinating planes taking off and landing and keeping them from running into each other. Yet each nation (and often each airport) solves the problem over and over, paying heavily for custom-designed, one-shot software development. Imagine if the world's airports could simply install GNU-AirTrafficControl 2.7, and have a complete, working, bug-free and cost-free air traffic control system. It would cost every nation less to do it this way, but it would also make a lot less money for the consultants retained to develop these systems.
But leave off the advocacy for moment - I was following the story itself. As noted above, the outcry has prompted many of the other Representatives who originally signed the letter to reconsider. The AP story even suggests that some of the signatories were actively misled - that the letter they thought they were signing didn't mention the GPL at all. However it actually played out, some good has been done.
That's good. What's not so good is that much of the outcry was probably generated by stories titled "Washington State Congressman attempts to outlaw GPL". The right outcome occurred, but for the wrong reasons and in the wrong manner. I am left wondering whether the community would have made the same sort of response on this issue if every story that had been posted about it was 100% accurate and non-inflammatory.
[1] If you're not familiar with the BSD-like and GPL-like classes of software licenses, this won't make a lot of sense to you, so please read up if necessary.
Let's look at two cases:
1) A company invests a lot of research and spends 3 years writing supersoftware X, and sells it under a proprietary license.
2) A company finds an agency that needs supersoftware X, spends 3 years writing it on contract, and then sells it under a proprietary license.
Case 1 is the typical copyrighted software situation; collectively we gave up the rights to make copies of that code, so that the company would have the incentive to write it in the first place. Then we pay. We pay 2 times: once with our right to copy it, whether we use it or not, and once with our money, if we actually use it.
Case 2 is also unfortunately typical. In this case we pay for our software 3 times: once when we paid to have it written, once when we gave up our rights to copy it, and once when we bought it.
How many times do I have to pay for what is essentially MY SOFTWARE since MY MONEY paid to create it ?
I want tax-funded software under the GPL, so that I will never face a copy of MY OWN CODE wrapped up in a new interface being sold to me for $500 under an oppressive EULA.
There is another issue in this:
Copyright is only constitutional in the US as long as it creates an incentive to create more works. Since software written for a government contract is going to be written whether there is coyright or not, there is no new incentive created. Therefore, prosecuting someone for copying and selling software written under government contract is unconstitutional.
Now, since as a society we seem to have collectively decided to ignore that document, maybe constitutionality has no bearing. But if you buy into that constitution stuff, the government can't release it under the GPL because that's a copyrighted license; they can only simply release it. However, including any part of it into a proprietary work, or making a derived work from it, may also place that work outside the scope of copyrightable material.
Lessig has some good commentary on this in his blog. Basically, he says that if you follow the argument of the New Democrats, then proprietary code should not be allowed either, and only code that goes straight to the Public Domain should be sanctioned by the government, as it could then be used by anyone.
Interesting
In Vino Veritas
A small comment on your 99% to 1% example: if a programmer is unwilling to rewrite 1% of their code in order to achieve ownership, one must assume that 1% was *extremely* valuable. If the programmer wishes to use some other license and can't replace that 1% him or herself, then he or she should start shopping for replacement code and negotiate licenses and prices with those who *can* replace that code.
Your example doesn't seem particularly strong to me. If a programmer includes *any* GPL'd code, then "paying" the "price" of respecting the GPL is "fair". Let the programmer find a cheaper/better source if they can't afford the GPL.
I agree that the National Park analogy wasn't so good, either. Maybe something like a perpetual land grant would have been better, but the underlying problem is the nature of licensing, code, and ideas. As has been requoted so often,
"If I have an apple, and give you the apple, I
have no apples. If I have an idea, and give
it to you, we both have the idea."
I don't remember the source of this quote, nor do I know if the source is truly known.
-Paul Komarek
Ok you have missed the point entirely. The GPL issue is not the same as making an open source government. The issue is that government contractors should be forced to license the software to the government under the GPL. All the GPL says is that if you get the binary you can have the source and the license be changed to stop you from propagating it. Nowhere does is say you must release the software into the wild; it only addresses what happens IF you chose to do that.
For security sensitive software there could be additional contract terms about the distribution of any of it. The contractor can be hired under a contract that keeps their lips buttoned about what the software they write does. The government can then have other contractors build on the government's licensed copies of the software where that's useful. The real question is whether the second contractor who is developing against the copy licensed by the government is bound by the GPL, or can the contracts be written to be stronger than the GPL. I think they can, contract law always allows you to give away more of your freedoms to get the job.
Finally, if there are sections of code determined to be useful and the decision is made to release that to the public, getting the licenses release is a no-op. The idea is that the government is paying for software -- it should be licensed to them in a manner that can be used for the public good. This is why GPL is a good choice for government.
I was offended by the text of the letter, let alone the purpose. I wrote to two congressmen about it because the letter was glaringly, factually wrong but was signed by leaders in our country.
-Paul Komarek
While I agree that some pieces of software that have security concerns for one reason or another might not be best released as open code, but the vast majority of government funded code is for more mundane applications and could be useful to the general public without potential harm from security issues. I have spent the last couple of months working on a piece of software for a government contract that has been written literally dozens of times before but is considered proprietary by the contractors that developed it. The cost and inefficiency is staggering. That is my opinion at least.
Sig? What if I prefer Glock?
Now consider how tiny the NSF and NASA are in the grand scheme of things. Consider all the software written for a much larger agency like the US Navy. Think you will ever see any chunk of the Yorktown's propulsion system software? Not m a chance, but think of how huge a project that was. Now consider all the Navy's work from design to implementiation. Now consider that the Navy is just one branch of the enormous US Military, which literally supports whole cities of people on land and at sea. Then consider that the US Military only accounts for one fourth of the US Federal Budget and realize how much software goes to the federal government each year that you will never see, but will pay for again and again.
Very little can be thought of as vast but visible next to the incomprehsibly large.
Darn those academicians who seek to educate and otherwise benifit the public by frank and honest publications! Public libraries, hurt publishers. Free software hurts software vendors who would sell us the same crap forever. Yep, they love the GPL. So should the rest of us.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
You are clearly a troll, but your post is a good springboard for two important memes.
.sig points out, a nonviral guarantee of *your* freedom to restrict the freedoms of everyone else. In this way, it's more like a freedom annhilator than a freedom virus.
1. GPL is a vaccine against proprietary vendor lock-in. It ensures that once code has been released for public use, it is not extinguished by proprietary extensions that render the original obsolete. This benefits all players, from free software purveyors to large commercial companies. Ask IBM.
2. The BSD license allows you to do whatever you like, for good or for ill. It is, as my
The more people who are vaccinated against a contagious disease, the fewer people will catch it. GPL is definitely a vaccine rather than a virus.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
How many times do I have to pay for what is essentially MY SOFTWARE since MY MONEY paid to create it ?
Do you complain if the waitress whom you tipped buys crack with your tip money? Or something else that you're offended by? After all, it was your money that paid for it....
The federal government's funds are not "your money" or "my money." They're "our money," and we elect a president, two senators and a representative to see that OUR MONEY gets spent in the way that best helps "us."
Copyright is only constitutional in the US as long as it creates an incentive to create more works. Since software written for a government contract is going to be written whether there is coyright or not, there is no new incentive created. Therefore, prosecuting someone for copying and selling software written under government contract is unconstitutional.
Hardly. Copyright creates a general state where creative works are profitable. There's no compelling reason why government-funded projects cannot create copyright; if there were, the national endowment for the arts would be unconstitional in its very idea.
Now, since as a society we seem to have collectively decided to ignore that document, maybe constitutionality has no bearing.
No, we haven't. We don't recite it every morning or study it every sunday, but we do keep it in mind as the defining element of the federal government.
But if you buy into that constitution stuff, the government can't release it under the GPL because that's a copyrighted license; they can only simply release it. However, including any part of it into a proprietary work, or making a derived work from it, may also place that work outside the scope of copyrightable material.
If a work cannot be copywritten, then any derivitive work made from that is evalutated on its owm merits.
As far as the law goes, a translation of "Dantes Inferno" might as well be an original work.
not be "poisoned" such that businesses and individual programmers would lose their own work, and the rewards from it, if
they used it.
BZZZT! Wrong! You have just stated that the government has the ability to violate copyright law and public-domain something that was copyrighted. This is not true.
You have to realize that the GPL is a granting of additional rights. It lets you do more than you normally can with a copyrighted work. Therefore somebody cannot take GPL code and turn it into BSD code because they are violating copyright and not using one of the exceptions the GPL allows.
Also for this reason I think any code produced by the government must be BSD, becasue apparently the government cannot copyright anything, therefore they do not have the ability to put any of the restrictions on the code allowed by copyright but not by the GPL. However if the government uses GPL code and modifies it, the result must be GPL, since doing that is the only right they have to use the GPL code. They could also go to the original author and ask for the right to BSD it.
Regarding your first point, the OSD reads, "The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons." Any person or company can make use of GPL'ed software according to the terms of the GPL. In that way, it's completely non-discriminatory. You're complaining that the GPL doesn't allow commercial software creators to use the code in any way they see fit, which is a misinterpretation of the real intent.
Now, if the license expressly stated, "Microsoft cannot use this code for any purpose," or "This code may only be used by the Church of Scientology," then such a license would fail to meet the OSD.
On the second point, the OSD reads, "The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research." Again, you misinterpret the OSD. For one thing, the restriction is talking about "making use of a program," not redistributing a program. Which means that Adobe could run their development on CVS and GCC, but couldn't sell their own versions without complying with the GPL. For another thing, in order to bring the GPL into compliance with your interpretation of the OSD, they would have to be granted special exemptions.
IOW, proprietary software developers aren't being being discriminated against.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!