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GPL 3 May Require Websites to Relinquish Code
Vicissidude writes "At present, companies that distribute GPL-licensed software must make the source code publicly available, including any modifications they've made. Though the rule covers many businesses that use GPL-licensed software for commercial ends, it doesn't cover Web companies that use such software to offer their services through the Web, as they're not actually distributing the software.
GPL 3, the next version of the free software license, a draft of which is expected to be released in early 2006, may close this loophole, GPL author and Free Software Foundation head Richard Stallman said in an interview."
And we've known this for how long? Granted, the story itself isn't a dupe (afaik), but every article on the GPL3 in the past few months has mentioned the idea of websites running GPL software being required to release their source code by some means. It's hardly news.
That might make life interesting for Google (and probably Yahoo) as I'd bet a large chunk of googles operations are based on FOSS code including their clustering software, mail etc.
While I can see the point of making distributors in the conventional sense having to release the source I've a nasty feeling making web service companies reveal their source might only harm the OSS movement in the longer term... Google might be Okay as they've got the bandwidth to be able to release the source code for all OSS code used internally but not sure about the smaller providers...
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
Your example is exactly where I was trying to go in my own post.
If I build a business around hosted virus scanning and the backend runs postfix,clam-av and mysql (which I've written all the gluecode myself), why the hell should I be forced to give up that glue code? I'm not selling the software, I'm selling a service, which is what they've been telling us should be the business model all along.
Someone may argue that, since I'm selling a service, I should have no problem with giving up the code but I say to those people "Why? I took and glued together three disparate products to build my solution. I'm not selling the software package to anyone, I'm keeping it internal. My development of the glue is my edge."
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
Here's what RMS said:
"Running a program in a public server is not distribution; it is public use. We're looking at an approach where programs used in this way will have to include a command for the user to download the source for the version that is running."
I don't think it's possible. As even RMS notes, running a program constitutes use, not distribution, and no "copyright license" can tell you how to use your software. Additionally, it's against the spirit of free software.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
Sounds like lots of people would simply quit using GPLed stuff then and move to one of the BSD systems. For web frameworks and platforms the vendors would have to choose. Most Java frameworks are Apache-licensed anyway, and for other GPLed project the group would have to choose either to turn into hobby-only projects or to keep the old GPL.
The hard part about this is that probably every single copyright holder under the GPL has the right to choose to upgrade to GPL3, so that only singly-owned project could choose to really stay GPL2. But IANAL.
*** Dangerous Virus ***
This is a really interesting move by the GPL board. Its clear that the target is Google. Under GPL3 they would have a tough time not releasing GoogleOS and GoogleFS and all the other enhancements that they are working on that are still in beta.
;))- but then IANAL.
The problem is that the only reason we know about either GoogleOS or GoogleFS is because it didn't cost them anything. If they knew they would have to release their IP if they decalred it as an enhancement, wouldn't they just claim that they were using Slackware through out, and no you can't see our server logs. Whats stopping them from turning round and saying, in light of the GPL3 we will now be moving to OpenBSD - ne nah ne ne nah.
How do you define a modification? If you create your own start up script for Apache, or create a custom configuration... is that a modification? Will it be defined as any modification that requires a recompilation of code? (Kernal configuration is going to be fun). How will already understaffed GPL projects be able to 1: enforce a code submission 2: handle the increased noise, as every man and a dog submits their patches?
How is this ever going to be enforcable? Thou shalt not covet thy neighbours wife - great idea, totally unenforcable in a court of law, in a libre society (it sure as hell is free as in beer - have you seen gas prices?
There is a big difference between writing a sensible, modular enhancement that you think will benefit all, and hacking together a patch that makes a project work better in your situation.
This is not a licence enhancement so much as a declaration of faith. How serious are you about FOSS?
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
To understand the GPL (version 3, but really this applies to previous versions as well) you have to stop thinking as a programmer, and start thinking as a user. (It has always surprised me that hackers (of all the people in the world?!) have been the advocates of GPL. Hackers and programmers have the least incentive, of all the population, to need this. GPL is for users.) Preferably, as a helpless user whose ass has been bitten by proprietary software. (Remember RMS and his damned printer driver in 1983.)
Imagine you are a user of proprietary software. One day, you need maintenance. Maybe you need a new feature, or maybe you need a bugfix, or maybe an update removed a feature that you still need. And imagine you're dependent on this software. You have lots of existing documents stored in a proprietary format that only this software can use. You have been trained to use this software and not trained to use its competitor. You need it.
But the company who made this software went out of business 4 years ago. Or they simply don't give a damn about you and will not customize their shrink-wrapped product for your obscure pathetic little whiney need, because you're as insignificant as a cockroach to them. Or they want to charge you $500 per hour for their work. Or the feature that you want happens to be against the law in their jurisdiction. Or they're just incompetent.
You're fucked. Nobody can (or will) help you. Do you really give a damn whether the software happens to run on your local machine (it was "distributed" to you) or on a remote machine? And get this: if it runs remotely, then even if it's Free Software instead of proprietary, then you're still fucked, unless the programmer happens to be a nice guy.
GPL is about freedom of maintenance. It should be a guarantee that you can always get maintenance. As a last resort, you can always do the work yourself or hire whoever you want who is qualified, to handle whatever you need done. GPL is a major development in safety from ever being orphaned or exploited. It forces software maintenance into a free market.
As a programmer, if you build derived works of GPLed code, and have users who merely use your software (without distributing it to them) you are creating a situation where those users are dependent on you. They are unable to modify the software or hire someone else to do that. If you die, lose interest in the project, get in a dispute with them, etc, then they're screwed. That's totally contrary to the intent of GPL, and that's why it's a loophole.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
>Web sites that do this clearly run counter to the intention of the GPL, thus it's a loophole.
Why?
Because the authors of the GPL have said so, and they are the ones who, by definition, decide their intentions when creating the GPL.
If I wrote a book using a modified version of a GPL word processor, would I have to publish the modified code?
Nope, and that would not only be a stupid requirement, and would violate the freedoms the FSF intends to promote.
The fact is that web services make the web surfer the user of the program, not the webmaster. Being the user of the code, the FSF wants them to have the rights they've outlined.
The web has created a new class of computer user which the GPL does not adequately address as per the intentions of the authors of the GPL, so they are quite rationally working to update the GPL.
Yech!
How does website owners being idiots affect the GPL? Will there be an explicit clause in the GPL saying "thou shalt not exclude Firefox/Konqueror/Opera/whatever from thy website?"
They really, *really* haven't thought about this. The existing GPL said that if the derivative code stayed in-house, then you didn't have to release your changes. Now they're saying "well, your software is staying in-house, but you have limitations on what you can do with it, depending on what data you handle or that data's source". Well screw that. That's precisely what everyone hates about DRM - it's restricting how software is allowed to use data that you already own.
Personally, I can see GPL3 getting zero use if that gets in. Or if anyone adopts it, there'll be an instant fork of that application, simply due to the licensing (Google for one are majorly unlikely to be releasing their search algorithms to the world), and all the active users will adopt the GPL2 fork, leaving a few people on a wasting-away GPL3 fork. That really doesn't help anyone.
Basically, this proposal is exactly what we all hate about closed-source software licensing - their ability to bait-and-switch. Get people using the software, with data that's tied to the software, and then change the licensing terms on your next upgrade. "Oh, you don't want this restriction? and you don't want to pay $x to keep your software? Then goodbye, and good luck getting your data back." In this case, the GPL team are doing the same with a software install base. "Don't like this new license? then forget about using Apache, GTK, etc. Oh, that screws your business which was previously using them legally? Too bad."
On the same topic of not thinking things through, consider the proposal to ban selected companies from using GPL software. This is even crazier. Again we're back to the ability of software licensors to arbitrarily revoke your license to use software and leave you high and dry.
Luckily we have the ability to keep going with the GTK2 license, which I predict will be the result - the GPL3 license will die, unused and unloved. The only result will be a permanent loss of credibility for RMS and the GPL in general, which would be a shame.
Grab.
If UltraSearch.com has a bug whereby a crafty HTTP request can allow me to download the source script instead of the output thereof, does that mean that I'm not allowed to fix the bug in derivative works?
Scenario 1: My company has a website, built in-house with GPLv3 tools and components. It is serving data to customers with web browsers. Is it required to make the code for its website software public?
Scenario 2: My company has an internal software application built in-house with GPLv3 tools and components. This software generates research data. A summary of this data is made available to its customers as, say, PDF files. How is this different from scenario 1?
Scenario 3: My company makes a business out of supplying critical stock trading services to its customers. The backend messaging servers are built on Linux, or use other GPLv3 tools. The application opens interfaces, be they proprietary, to paying customers, so that they can interact with this messaging server.
How is this different from scenario 1?
cat
Effectively this would add an option (b) to:
(a) source must be provided when distributing but modifications may be kept secret when used privately
(b) source must be provided when distributing and modifications must be made public for private usage.
I personally am against adding this option as I don't think this should be encouraged (and I used the word encouraged because authors don't have to use GPL, there are a wide range of licenses, but GPL is popular because of the simplicity and the principles behind it). imho it stifles innovation. It also hinders commercial usage as modifications would have to be publishing immediately whereas developers often have to wait for permission from the company who has paid for the developers time to allow their work to be released under GPL. Finally, if an author has chosen option (b) and others start contributing then it becomes difficult to revert to option (a) as he will need written permission from all contributers before he can change the licence.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
The FSF (well, RMS) has stated in the past that Free is more important than Good. This is where they disagree with the Open Source people, who believe that Free eventually produces Good. My personal view is that Free has a certain value, and Good has a certain value - which is more valuable depends on the individual application, and the respective quantities of each.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
That tries this stunt (if the code is in a website, publically accessed and has the option to download the source, then your derivative must have equal option). And you know what? It hurts (meaning it's not Free). Because if I want to take the code and make a derivative that is *not* a website, I can't make the option available.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
"The web has created a new class of computer user which the GPL does not adequately address as per the intentions of the authors of the GPL, so they are quite rationally working to update the GPL."
I broadly agree with you but am not sure that it's really a new class of computer user. Is there really much difference between a web application running on a remote machine which presents it's users with a browser based interface and a normal X Window System client application running on a remote machine which presents it's users with an Xt/Qt/Gtk based interface? They're just programs that run on a remote machine with different interfaces. I suppose the problem is how you define the user - is it the person responsible for setting up the remote machine or the one who interacts with the running program? I, like you, would argue the latter.
This is not true. From the GPL:
The license requires that you keep such offers intact.
The problem, though, is that you only have to agree to the license if you are redistributing it. Installing and running something on your server does not constitute redistribution.
If a default template or similar includes the offer for source code, you are forbidden from removing it by the license, and since you are forbidden from removing it, you must therefore be copying it. However, you aren't bound by the license until you start copying, so if you remove it beforehand, you won't be copying and so you won't be bound by the license at all.
I don't see how the GPL 3 can do what people are saying it will without changing from a normal Free Software license to an EULA.
But keep in mind that installing it on a public web server does not constitute copying beyond the terms described in 17 USC 117, which you don't need a license for.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
This comment regards your sig, and what you're addressing in your comment. Because they contradict each other:
Why do the folks who insist on keeping "God" in "one nation under God" want to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
You speak here of fundamental rights and freedoms in the US. Yet, it your post you say, "Freedom isn't a big deal. Who cares about it? No one. What people want is good software."
That's true. Did you know that the USSR had a 0% unemployment rate? Everyone had a job. Did you see the unemployed from capitalist, and socialist countries moving to the communist USSR? No.
Because Good just isn't good enough. At some point you have to lay down that you feel that people have a Right to your code, because you said so, and that no amount of "better" that can be tacked onto that program trumps that Right to keep seeing the source code.
Yes, it's advancing an ideology, and not advancing good software, but that's not the point. The F/OSS community doesn't have the mission statement "A computer on every desk running F/OSS." So our goal is *not* to force our software on everyone. F/OSS is driven by the goal of Free (as in Speech) Software For All Mankind.
If you don't like it, go back to using Windows, because that's Good Software. Meanwhile others who agree with the ideology will keep using Linux, because it's Free Software. Not because Linux is better than Windows, but because you feel that access to the source code should be a Right, not a Priviledge.
(Statements are my own, and do not reflect those of the company I work for.)
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
if you get the source code for the CMS and find an interesting, clever subset of it, and want to use that in your embedded application, now you can`t because you are supposed to keep (enabled) some code to download the source, which your embedded architecture do not have enough memory to keep, nor has the way to give to the user.
Just as code generated by a GPL'd compiler should not be inherently under the GPL, nor should a document created with a GPL'd word processor be automatically GPL'd, the web sites served by a GPL'd web server need not be automatically GPL'd.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)