Slashdot Mirror
We Don't Need the GPL Anymore
jpkunst writes "In a lengthy interview with Eric S. Raymond by Federico Biancuzzi at O'Reilly's onlamp.com, ESR defends his position that 'Open source would be succeeding faster if the GPL didn't make lots of people nervous about adopting it.'" From the article: "I don't think the GPL is the principal reason for Linux's success. Rather, I believe it's because in 1991 Linus was the first person to find the right social architecture for distributed software development. It wasn't possible much before then because it required cheap internet; and after Linux, most people who might otherwise have founded OS projects found that the minimum-energy route to what they wanted was to improve Linux. The GPL helped, but I think mainly as a sort of social signal rather than as a legal document with teeth."
I'm not a great fan of ESR. I think the OSI almost passed into irrelevence under his reign (and was staggered after they choose Russ Nelson to succeed him to find out Nelson, at the time at least, was "more of the same, only with even less tact and social skills") While "Open Source" made an impact with the name, the OSI itself seemed to have relatively few successes under its belt, with often the most promoted successors being absurdly controvertial. It's interesting that one of the first messes Nelson and his successors had to deal with, for example, were the number of incompatible licenses.
Why were there incompatible licenses? Because, under ESR's active encouragement, every major business dipping a toe in the water were producing their own customized licenses that usually only minimally furfilled the requirements of the Open Source definition, usually being some form of "copyleft for you, proprietary if we want it for us." This severely damaged the usability of much of the code entering the Free Software world. The worst case were the original APSL (Apple) "Open Source" licenses, which even contained provisions allowing Apple to arbitrarily stop people from distributing APSL licensed code in the future. Only after heavy lobbying from the FSF and a war within the OSI did Apple fix this and other headline issues.
Raymond's saying the GPL isn't necessary now. I can't say I agree. The GPL remains the perfect license for both Open Source and the wider area of Free Software. A company that releases code under it knows any competitor using it will have to contribute any advances they make back. In the real world, where 90% of commercial programming is done in-house to create in-house applications, no license comes closer to meeting corporate requirements. And Raymond's wrong about Linux. The problem with Linux is not that it's protected under the GPL, it's that it hasn't been protected strongly enough - that is, there's not enough enforcement of the GPL when it comes to Linux. There are still frequent attempts to sneak proprietary device drivers into the kernel, for example. This directly hurts free software, because information about how those drivers work becomes unavailable. Users aren't able to fix bugs. Users of other, less famous, free operating systems are unable to create compatible drivers themselves.
One can probably make a whole bunch of ad-hominem comments here about why he isn't supportive about the GPL, but ultimately, it doesn't matter. We're going through problem after problem caused by people thinking they're being "practical" and screwing it up for everyone else. Linus adopts Bitkeeper. X11 users use nVidea drivers. If no-one else will, at least we'll always have the FSF to "get it" if those who like little centralized pockets of meritless power don't.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Oh wait, we never needed him, only him thought so.
This guy has 0% credibility from my point of vue, just like any stoopid politician who tries to push his agenda while telling you he's defending your freedom or whatever...
Get a job, and stop annoying us.