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Why I Love The GPL
Roblimo writes "'There are a lot of good reasons to like the GPL: the GNU Public License. For one thing, it's a David and Goliath kind of thing. It's the little guy standing up to the corporate behemoths that run rough-shod over our daily lives by virtue of their influence, legal and otherwise, on government. For another, it's virtuous.' These are the opening words to a NewsForge article praising the GPL by Joe Barr. Now and then we forget how much of the software we use and love is made possible by the General Public License. Thanks for reminding us, Joe. (NewsForge and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.)"
Most of the software I use is under a BSD/MIT/ISC style license, that is more free than the GPL. I think the only GPL thing I would miss is gcc. And contrary to the FUD in this article, none of the BSD style licensed software I use has been magically closed sourced on me. Just because someone can make a closed source "DNS server that's exactly like bind but not" by using the BIND code, doesn't mean everyone loses bind, its still there for everyone to use just like always.
The GPL is pretty nice ... but only for people who understand it ...
There are a lot of people who put their work under GPL but don't want others to use the Software for own projects.
Recently I wanted to use some GPL'ed work offered by someone for my very own projects and he accused me to be a pirate and thief and that he will be sueing me for having used parts of his code for my own work which he put under GPL. This has result into a little flamewar on ANN which you can read here. So using GPL'ed software written by others can indeed be dangerous because when it's offered in a way to the public by someone but not meant to be used like described in the GPL - e.g. misunderstanding.
Another thing with GPL is that it's basicly a thing where others rip off work written by others without returning anything. The operating system MorphOS for example is one of these things. Their developers are using a lot of parts from the open source world such as ixemul or libnix as well as ports of gcc, binutils and other things without offering the sources. When contacting them and asking them to hand out the code they usually reply that the code has been lost or they redirect you to older ports of the software with codesnipplets that doesn't work anymore. Most pirating of GPL'ed work done by others are done within the Amiga community as well as many other communities.
I don't say that GPL is a bad thing but I say that it's a matter of being ripped off and abused for what one has done if someone else takes everything and not caring for the work I've done and not returning anything, not even patches or code when asked.
You aren't joking. I have a powerbook (duh, see sig) and whilst OS X is pretty tolerable the thing that makes it useless to me is the fact that you have to buy every little damn thing for it. $20 for focus follows mouse, $15 for a decent trackpd driver, $10 for that, $25 for something else. It's a never ending trail of money.
After a long time using Linux it's amazing to go back into the commerical world. You get so used to being able to get so much amazing quality software in return for being part of the community that anything else seems just odd.
The biggest advantage is of course the time saved - want a app to do Y? apt-get Y-app. No hunting around, deciding f you trust them with your credit card details, or even having to walk to a store. You can try different apps - all for free and not crippled. You can add and remove at will, upgrade at will and you never have to worry about losing your license. That level of flexibility and freedom is only possible on a non-commercial platform and it's just an amazing argument for it.
Beep beep.
BSD TCP/IP was developed by the federal government to encourage cross-vendor interoperability. How is that "stealing"?
:P
Not to mention the guy who wrote BSD TCP/IP (Bill Joy) "stole" the stack from himself.
I know this is a joke, but I've actually gotten into the habit of paying for open source.
You do often get a tax deduction, but the real reason to do it is that it is such a pleasure to pay for something that is free. The developers appreciate it (or, at least, I have when people have given me a token). The money and equipment I have given has usually cost less than what it would take to buy comparable commercial software, but I feel like I've gotten much more in return.
Definitely an improvement over the old days where you had to buy every little utility.
Actually in the old days, almost everything was free or freely available. It took a law school dropout to realize how much money there was to be had by fencing the commons (regardless of whether they needed fencing) and create the SW market we have today.
This looks so much like a troll because of so many errors, but I'll answer anyway.
Furthermore, after reviewing this GPL our lawyers advised us that any products compiled with GPL'ed tools - such as gcc - would also have to its source code released.
Your lawyers are either idiots or they royally screwed you. You do NOT have to release the source code of programs compiled with GCC. There are absolutely no restrictions on GCC compiled code and even the few (GCC and Libc) libraries your app might be linked to are released under the LGPL. If I'm not seriously mistaken, even the code produced by tools like bison are also restriction free since that is only *usage* of the software and the libraries needed are probably released under the LGPL.
Although we had planned for no one outside of this company to ever use, let alone see the source code, we were now put in a difficult position.
Now you're not being clear. You say " a top online investment firm asked us to do some work using Linux." Was the software supposed to be sold/given away to the general public or only to the online investment firm who would only use it inhouse? If it was supposed to be publically distributed, then yes, you have to release the source code to any modification you have done to the kernel. That's the cost of customisability of the Linux kernel. But if it was only supposed to be given to the online investment firm who would only use it inhouse, then you don't have to distribute the source code to the public. You see, most part of the license applies to redistribution, not modification itself. If you distribute modification to a GPL'ed software to the public, then you have to release its source code. But if you only plan to use it inhouse, then you don't have to give the source code to the public. Or if you sell it to a private customer, then you only have to give the source code to the customer, NOT the public.
Instead, I had to purchase third party software and integrate that into our distribution. It is not the cost of the third party software that's the problem, but that each third party dependency destabilizes our software product and increases maintenance complexity.
Tough. Thats the cost of being a multimillion dollar proprietary software developer: paying for proprietary solutions. Don't like it? Find something else to do or some other way to license your product.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I have never programmed professionally. I've been playing around with c and some other languages for some years though. And I have been using gnu software for about as long. But it wasn't until this christmas that I really realized it's power. I've always been thinking that "sure, open source is a good thing, because then the others who know things can make changes".
But just before christmas I was playing a bit with the new transparency that xorg har brought us, and I was annoyed about the lack of functions in "transset". So I decided to take a look at its code. It turned out the program was very simple and within some hours, without any previous knowladge of Xlib and X-programming, I managed to change its behavoiur the way I wanted. (http://forchheimer.se/transset-df/)
Then I suddenly understood that you don't have to be a super guru who understands all the systems sourcecode to gain from open source. One day there will be some little thing that is bothering you that you actually CAN do something about.
(a subset, at least)
- I don't like it when my favorite apps go away. Until I have grey hair and fake kidneys I will miss the ultra-fast, ultra-simple WriteNow word processor, which was my high-school-and-college favorite, and which ran fast even on what are now pitifully slow machines. Open source apps may go away, too, but generally there are better, sleeker replacements which (kicker) open the same file formats, because the Unix philosophy and GNU have the same good things about Unix-type things in mind, including saving to plainish formats. (Often possible, rarely the default, with proprietary software).
- I like frequent upgrades and bug fixes. And while it's not the simplest thing to balance, I mostly prefer some instability (as in, trying new versions of Mozilla, especially the versions of 5 years ago, say) with the attendant improvements in the next versions than sticking with, say, Netscape. [insert your own favorite stable-but-moribund application.]
- It's nice to be able to give to friends [F/f]ree software, and to make (however minor) suggestions to developers. Some open source developers are as rude and unaccomodating as typical proprietary software makers are impersonal and stand-offish (and some proprietary makers are downright friendly!), but I've seen small text improvements made in some cases an hour or so after pointing out a spelling or grammar problem on a project web site. That's responsive in a way that giant software makers don't really have the capability to be.
- Related to that last point: I believe that developers have the right to control their invented software. I don't want to use software *against* the wishes of its creators.(1) If you want to write some software to control Whooznit Manufacturing Units (or process words), with secret source, proprietary storage formats, and a very large pricetag, then Fine. I just don't have to use it. GPL- (and BSD-, and many other licenses) licensed software is explicitly free to use and give away. No developer *has* to use such licenses -- they have a range of moral choices open to them -- but I don't want illegally install one copy of Windows on several machines, even if I find it a moral non-issue if I'm the only one using them, and they're only being used one at a time. Easier and saner to use software that is more flexible; I can have Mepis, Knoppix and Red Hat on any / all of several machines,(2) with the full consent of the makers. It's nicer to visit at a friend's place than evade an angry landowner while sleeping in his guest bedroom, especially when he doesn't have a guest bedroom.
timothy
(1) Are there edge cases, and finer points? Yes. For instance, I own DVDs which some aspect of their "creator" -- the DVDCCA that is -- wants me to be unable to watch on a Linux box. Too bad for them, their case doesn't win my mind, so unlike the case of using (for instance) a non-legit copy of Windows, I feel not bad at all about watching movies with Mplayer or Xine. Also, using software illegally is in some cases about as horrifying to me as taking the occasional shortcut through private property. You can believe in the primacy of private property without denying all shades of grey in the world.
(2) Mac OS X is a near exception here; since it's included with (nearly) all the hardware that will happily run it -- as things stand, at least! -- there is no dilemma of trying to put it on my other machines (besides my iBook, that is) without permission. And I wouldn't feel at all bad about the experimentation of running it in a virtual machine on a Linux box, and I suspect no one at Apple would either.
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
The point is I could have benefited and at the same time made a contribution back to the community if my company didn't have to give up the entire farm.
The GPL license provides freedom for the code. The freedom for the code provides future freedom for programmers (including the originator of the code). The BSD licens provides a little bit of extra freedom for the programmer (or more to the point for the company who hired the programmer) in the form of the freedom to 'enslave' the code (make it proprietary).
In the case of a large market beomoth like Microsoft, this means that they can now take that code, make minor (but incompatible) changes to it, and make their proprietary modifications the 'standard' by dint of their market force. At that point, you could be forced to pay for acccess to what is,. in fact, 99% your own code because your (free) version has been made irrelevant by MS's market force (even if the incompatible changes actually make the code inferior to your free version).
MIcrosoft did that with the BSD TCP stack, and the Kerberos code (and, I'm sure, other code with similar licenses). Apple came close to doing that with the entire BSD OS. If you like the ego bost of having a company like Microsoft take your code, close it off to you and make big money charging you (among other people) for access to your own code under their onerous EULAs, -- and if that ego boost is way more important than having your code free and useful to the entire community that uses it (and able to come back to you), then the BSD license is for you.
If you wish to ensure that everybody (including yourself) will have access to whatever version of your code people produce, then the GPL is probably a better kind of license for you.
Yes, there are other licenses, and people have investigated and used them. Some, like Sun's license force people to feed changes back to the original author so that they can make proprietary versions. This may seem good for the original author, but subsequent contributors may be wary of what will happen with their code and this may discourage contributions.
The reason why the GPL is so rampant is that it is carefully crafted to strike a very distinct balance, and it's done a good job of it so far. If a better license comes along, people will (hopefully) flock to it instead. In the menatime, the GPL is king, and I think that that's a good thing.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Not all companies have to be evil, but public companies are generally responsible to their shareholders and the management and directors will often be pushed by those same shareholders to produce maximum profit without regard to how. If that means doing evil stuff, some shareholders (especially bigger ones) often feel insulated from that effect.
It's the kind of process that allowed things like the holocaust... The people at the bottom claimed that they were only doing their job, while the people at the top claimed that they really didn't know what the people at the bottom were doing. The handfull of nastys who did the really nasty stuff could be conveniently hung out to dry from time to time, but the entire beomoth still profits from their nasty work.
You can protect some companies from the call of the dollar, but it takes a good deal of work, and gets harder if/when the company becomes more successfull (snd thus more attractive to the money-suckers).
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
I spent roughly 80 hours a week for 2 years of the prime of my life developing an application. I rewrote virtually 80% of the 150,000 line C++ codebase. In short, it was forked by very hostile and childish people who continually kry [sic] "Leave us alone" at my program's site, lol.
The hostile fork started when I was personally targeted by the MPAA for my development efforts on 23 August, 2003
The GPL provides *zero* possibilities for overcoming hostile forks. If they want to copy your CVS (and keep their's private) they can effectively publish your own code before you release your program...which technically makes it "their" code. You cannot obfuscate code in order to get an advantage because the GPL forbids this.
How they won the battle was a systemmatic assault of every website comment section (just search for "xmule and comment") on the internet, attacking both myself (Un-Thesis | HopeSeekr) and the program. When this fails my program's site (www.xmule.ws) is routinely DDoS'd, the worst occuring when our original domain (www.xmule.org) was DDoS'd for approximately THREE months and had its DNS hijacked because of it.
Use the OSSAL dual licensed with the Creative Commons License to defeat the GPL! CCL is JUST AS FREE as the GPL (including no commercialization of *straight copies*) yet doesn't have the viral clause. OSSAL License expressly prevents the use of OSSAL code in GPLd products.
For detailed description of the difference between xMule and its hostile fork, see The Coding Philosophies of aMule and xMule . For a summary of some of the most blatant attacks against xMule by this fork, see Part III: On Hostile Forks.
Sincerely,
Ted R. Smith | HopeSeekr
Promote freedom; fight fascism.
It should be pointed out to all you leftist demagogues around here that the movie "The Corporation" was in fact mostly financed by Rogers Communications, one of Canada's largest corporations. Hipocrisy and idiocy walk hand in hand in the anti-enterprise set.
Check out my foes list to see who is so retarded that they can't use the signature line!!!
I may reconsider if Linux switches its license to something a little more fair, such as Microsoft's "Shared Source"
You mean the "Shared Source" that doesn't allow you to recompile it, and only allows source code to go to a select few? I know you're a troll, but what you're talking about is BS, and could be done under a BSD license.
Furthermore, after reviewing this GPL our lawyers advised us that any products compiled with GPL'ed tools - such as gcc - would also have to its source code released.
Your lawyers are either incompetent or are trying to fuck you over.
First, I assume YOU were abiding by the GPL, and your derivative code was either in-house (not distributed) or likewise under the GPL.
... something that license gives you the right to do).
... and a little expensive)
So using GPL'ed software written by others can indeed be dangerous because when it's offered in a way to the public by someone but not meant to be used like described in the GPL - e.g. misunderstanding.
Dangerous? DANGEROUS? I do not think that word means what you think it means.
Using the GPL is very, very SAFE. If this person didn't understand the license they released their software in, they have only themselves to blame. The license is there, written in black and white, in plane English (and translated into assorted other languages). The FSF has detailed information on the GPL, how it works, what it implies, what freedoms it insures, etc.
The author was in no more danger using a license he didn't understand (the GPL) than he would have been using another license he didn't understand (a knockoff copy of Microsoft's license, edited for himself, the Artistic License, the FreeBSD license, or any of a dozen others).
You were in absolutely no more danger (other than having to endure an unpleasant social episode) than you would have been had you been using FreeBSD licensed code (if you think that idiot took exception to your using his code in your project, imagine if he'd licensed it under the FreeBSD license and you'd used it in a proprietary program
Can he sue you? In the USA, you bet! You can be sued by anyone, for any reason, and have to go through the trouble of going to court. I was sued by a dog owner who moved into our no-dog building with a pit-bull when the building decided to enforce the rules and started fining the prick. (The building had been a no dog building since the early 1980s, it was clearly stated in the condo docs, and the owner knew this. But, he was an intellectual property attorney and he knows how to bully. Not that it got him very far, but he did get to use his law partner at no cost while I and others in the building ran up legal bills defending ourselves against his frivolous suit. It was satisfying to put the nonsense to rest once and for all, however, even it the process was annoying as hell
The GPL certainly doesn't put you in any danger you aren't already in when you decide to crawl out of your home and face the public each day (or craw up to your computer and do so virtually, via the Internet), and it protects you against a great many things other licenses (mostly prorpietary ones) do not.
This doesn't mean there aren't incompetent jackasses in the world who will bluster, threaten, and maybe even sue, but implying that the license has anything whatsoever to do with their incompetence, or their litigiousness, is simply nonsense.
Oh, and by the way, if he had sued, your victory would have been a slam dunk. The GPL does offer you very potent protection, something many other licenses do not.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Right. The point that I'm making is that the bulk of the discussion (across the internet) thus far has seemed horomone-drenched. While I like the GPL, I can't warm to the 'ethical' argument track, and a broader economic analysis might just show that a variety of licensing choices in all software product categories helps everone, at the micro- and macroeconomic level.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
You're confusing SGI's 4dwm, Sun's OpenWindows, NeXTStep, and CDE with X. This is as inaccurate as confusing KDE and GNOME with X.
All of the proprietary desktops I mentioned were built on top of X. They would all run on top of a generic X, assuming they could be linked against its libraries.
Having X be GPLed would not have prevented the development and deployment of the proprietary desktops. It would simply have prevented its own adoption by computer manufacturers. Having X be LGPLed, as would be much more appropriate for an OS component, would not have forced SGI et al to open-source their desktop code either.
GPL zealots listen to each other too much. Having something fundamental be GPLed does not, in the general case, lead to the license's viral effects opening up code someone else wants to keep proprietary. IBM isn't open-sourcing their entire software portfolio. Far from it. Neither is anyone else. They sank lots of money into developing that code, and they have a (totally reasonable) expectation of seeing a return on that investment.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!