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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.)"
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.
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.
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.
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