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Drafting GPL3
johns writes "In an article released yesterday, Eben Moglen and Richard Stallman outline four purposes of
the GPL, to explain the guideposts they will use in
drafting GPL3: the GPL is a worldwide copyright license, the code of
conduct for free software distributors, the constitution of the free
software movement, and the literary work of RMS. They also make this
commitment: 'The Foundation will, before it emits a first discussion
draft, publicize the process by which it intends to gather opinions
and suggestions.'"
the code of conduct for free software distributors
*THE* code of conduct? Not *A* code of conduct? I bet the BSD folks would have something to say about that.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
What problem will v3 solve?
Unless there is some sort of benefit, why would anyone use it?
Will programs under the older versions of the license automatically fall under v3, or will the author have to explicitly state that? The license isn't very clear (at least not to my non-lawyerish eyes).
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I recently had a sudden rush of blood to the wallet & in a fit of altruism (or selfish desire for more freedom and cool software) I joined both the FSF and the EFF - both excellent causes and presumably close to the heart of many slashdotters.
When the "welcome" packages arrived from each I was rather surprised to see the EFF has of the order of ten times more members than the FSF! I'm FSF member #30xx, and the docs say there are 2,1xx active members. The EFF on the other hand has 24K something members.
Not sure what the moral is, except that I wish more people donated to the FSF. Why not send em $20 and think of it as a small contribution towards the costs of glibc and gcc, two vital programs without which there'd be no Linux, no BSD and no Apple OS X.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
GPL v2 doesn't specifically address the patent problem. Anyway, here's the story on Revising the GPL.
No, the BSD folks will do what they usually do: get things done without stirring up a tempest over the politics, especially that of "who speaks for whom", the precise definitions of "Free Software", and whether a license should or should not fit on a 3x5 card.
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
They specify the four pillars of GPL3:
1) GPL is a worldwide copyright license, 2) the code of conduct for free software distributors, 3)the constitution of the free software movement, 4) and the literary work of RMS
The problem is that (1) has always been limited by the FSF's unwillingness to translate the GPL into any other language. How they plan to make it an international license without actually translating it ought to be interesting.
(2) is already pretty much taken care of. You use GPL code in your code and then distribute it, you have to open up your code under GPL conditions. I can't imagine what will change.
I'm not sure what they plan to get out of (3). The GPL is the General Public License. It may be drafted by the FSF, but it is intended for broad usage by many different people. If they want to have a constitution, they ought to make one, for their organization. Trying to pretend like their organization represents the entire movement is silly and pure hubris.
As for (4), who cares except for RMS what literary works he's published? More hubris.
It seems that like the Perl camp, the FSF can't leave good enough alone and is slowly imploding under the pressure of their own navel gazing.
GPL 2.0 is fine and clear. GPL 3 looks to be an FSF circle jerk in honor of RMS. Count me out.
what's the point in free software if you can turn it into a non-free product?
To have the freedom to do whatever you want with the code? Isn't that the ultimate freedom?
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Maybe the parent was being funny, but certainly not interesting.
I think there should be customizable skins, those make everything better.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Just because the GNU folks call it "free" doesn't mean it is free in all ways. A GNU license ensures the *user* has the most freedom, and a BSD license ensures the *developers* have the most freedom. In either case, the other group loses some freedom. A GNU license creates a situation where developers cannot merge published code with their proprietary code, while a BSD license creates a situation where some users might not have access to a particular modified variant of the published code.
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Make sure that GPL3 is human-readable, as version 2 was. I absolutely hate reading legalese. It really bothers me that so many important things in my life (such as student loans, credit cards, computer software) assume that I am capable of understanding, and hold me accountable to understand the contents of legal documents. I appreciate the simplicity of the GNU GPL, and consider it an essential feature of the license. The BSD license is even simpler.
<tangent>One thing that bothers me is when GPL software requires that you agree to the license during the install procedure. The GPL is not an end-user license; it is a distribution license. You must accept and comply with the terms of the license if you wish to redistribute GPL'ed works. End users are not required to agree to anything in order to simply use it, or even to modify it for their own use.</tangent>
Don't get me wrong. BSD is a fine license all right, but nothing special compared to the protected freedom of GPL.
While I prefer the GPL over BSD (and similar licences) -- the GPL does not work well in all situations. For example, anything that requires a reference design that you want to be widely adopted. The Ogg codecs (Vorbis, Theora, ...) for example.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
I wrote this to address exactly the mistake you are making.
GPL is not freedom for anyone. It is freedom for the software.
Bingo! You're exactly right. People should (a) stop whining and honor software licenses or (b) write better licenses. And if you write a better license, you'll have to write some better software too, so that the license will get noticed.
If you *don't* like the license your software is available under, write your own software and write your own license. That's exactly what Richard Stallman and the FSF started doing back in the 1980s. And their GPL'd software has been a phenomenal success.
BSD licensed software has also been a phenomenal success.
The fact that people whine about BSD or GPL so much is merely a reflection of their great success. Not only are the licenses widely employed, but the software thereby licensed is enormously popular too.
My bicyles
For starters, sharing, co-operation, and working for the common good is not always moral, e.g. sharing copyrighted music, co-operating with criminals, or working for your own version of the common good (which doesn't apply to everyone everywhere); those things have to be measured against some higher standard.
Finally, not everyone has choice in the matter. A vast majority of developers in this world, not RMS's, write code for corporations, and a vast majority of those corporations write closed-source software. A corporation is at no obligation to provide the source to software it's developed. Furthermore, if time and money was invested by the corporation into the development of the software, the corporation may have moral & ethical obligations to its employees and shareholds, therefore they must protect trade secrets and proprietary algorithms found in the said code.
It's not as black-and-white as RMS would have us all believe. Rather, there are equal, if not greater, moral questions on the reverse side: is it ethical forcing everyong to conform to a single license? Is it ethical condemning others who choose not to conform to the said license?
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit
Yes, I know RMS does not like this idea. But there does seem to be a lot of interest in making an "LGPL" that works the way users expect. In particular this means that you can statically-link with the library and release a closed-source version of the resulting program. Yet unlike the BSD license, you are not allowed to modify the library itself without releasing your modifications.
This license serves two purposes: first it makes your library much more popular. And it should be very good for algorithims like OGG that want to be used by closed programs, by eliminating the risk of an incompatable and secret fork.
Searching around I have seen many dozens of "exceptions to the GPL" to accomplish this, indicating that there are a lot of developers that want this. A standardized version would be very useful, with a name as recognizable as "LGPL" and "BSD".
Attached is my version, which is based on wxWindows. Paragraph 2 is changed to make it clear that you must release changes to the library itself.
Comments, anybody? What are the chances of an official version of this? As far as I can tell, the desire for this is the main force behind license proliferation.
1. As a special exception, the copyright holders of this library give
permission for additional uses of the text contained in this release of the
library as licenced under the FLTK Library Licence, applying either version 2
of the Licence, or (at your option) any later version of the Licence as
published by the copyright holders of version 2 of the Licence document.
2. The exception is that you may use, copy, link, modify and distribute, under terms of your own choice, any works based on the library (including static linking), provided that the creation of this work does not require the modification of any of the source code of the library.
3. Modifications to the source code of the library do not fall under this
exception. However you may distribute the modified library under the normal
terms of this license and then distribute a work using this modified library
using this exception.
4. If you copy code from files distributed under the terms of the GNU General
Public Licence or the GNU Library General Public Licence into a copy of this
library, as this licence permits, the exception does not apply to the code
that you add in this way. To avoid misleading anyone as to the status of such
modified files, you must delete this exception notice from such code and/or
adjust the licensing conditions notice accordingly.
5. If you write modifications of your own for this library, it is your choice
whether to permit this exception to apply to your modifications. If you do
not wish that, you must delete the exception notice from such code and/or
adjust the licensing conditions notice accordingly.
You seem to be confusing freedom with privilege. Maybe you just don't have a dictionary, so I'll clue you in. Freedom is an absence of restriction. A free end of a rope is the end that is unrestricted. Free verse is poetry unrestricted by rhyme or meter. A free man is one unrestricted by external obligation to another.
There is no freedom to own slaves, because owning a slave is a restriction on the slave. Your freedom to swing your fist ends at my nose, because once it connects with my nose you are restricting me.
There is no need to limit (restrict) freedom in order to promote freedom. Those who claim otherwise are either confused, or mistaking their privileges for freedoms. Being able to restrict how your software can be distributed is a *privilege* provided by the state via copyright, not a freedom.
While the GPL does remove a heck of a lot of restrictions from the software, its restrictions are designed to protect the exclusive *privileges* of the author. The GPL author wants the license terms to apply to third parties, so he ensures this through privilege. He does this by removing freedom.
It's sort of like after the slaves were freed in the US. Several laws were passed to retain a tiny bit of the former privilege, to ensure that former slaves didn't get to uppity and behave in ways the "liberators" didn't want them to behave. It's why we had a civil rights movement a century later. The slaves should have been freed 100% back then, just as software should be 100% free today.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!