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The GPL Impedes Linux More Than It Helps?
Anonymous Coward writes "Linux ought to be even more successful than it is. On ZDNet, Paul Murphy ponders the reasons why. For one thing: The GPL impedes Linux more than it helps. Licensing issues, coupled with patent and copyright FUD, have caused developers and VCs to think twice before committing to Linux. Murphy also suspects that desktop Linux is stuck on stupid." From the post: "Basically, legal issues, or the threat of legal issues, caused some key applications developers to back off Linux while the general negativism of Linux marketing caused many of the individuals whose innovations should have been driving Linux adoption to hang fire until MacOS X and Solaris for x86 under the CDDL came along."
The author admits that the headline was inadvertently applied from a post he intends to do tomorrow.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Click here or here.
Yes, all FUD asside (and this is mostly FUD) if linux switched NOW to another license it MAY be usable in some situations where it isn't now. But what makes Linux itself is its license. If it had a different license it would simply be another UNIX clone would it not, and most likly it would still be sitting in Linus's FTP server right where he left it many years ago.
The low profile of FreeBSD when it is used in the enterprise (I'm talking servers, not OSX) is evidence that the GPL does nothing to hinder Linux. With a BSD-style license Linux would have no advantage to developers over BSD and wouldn't be in the position it is now.
This is typical ZDNet FUD. Is there any evidence that intelligent, well-informed businesspeople (i.e. those who have clueful lawyers) have a remote concern about licensing when choosing Linux?
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Well, you know, that's kind of like saying that air impedes an airplane. That's true, but it also flows over the wings and provides lift.
Note that we could also say the same thing about proprietary, commercial software too: that licensing restrictions and costs impede its adoption. But they also create the circumstances in which that software is created.
The goal of the GPL has never been rapid adoption of software, but rather adoption under particular circumstances.
Anyway, has there ever been a time between 1991 and now when Linux and free software in general have not grown in user base?
Put identity in the browser.
For a large company looking to create software for Linux, all they need to do is write their own software and not link to any GPL'd code. This is no different than any other software (except that some might use win32 libs for gui, but I'm just guessing -I'm no programmer). There is no legal question in that, and I find it strange that a company would think there is one.
Having ethics is an impediment to success in many fields. If the GPL weren't there to enforce the ethic of keeping the source open, of course it'd be more readily adoptable.
You'd maybe see software technologies developed for linux integrated into proprietary commercial closed-source applications, just as they did with the BSD implementation of TCP/IP in MS Windows, or BSD/Darwin into Mac OS X.
It wouldn't bring about the desired effect of keeping software Free, though. What do we want Linux to be?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Even if the GPL is slowing corporate adoption, an assertion proved by nothing more than the statement "I think" and a fun little example of the post hoc fallacy, that's no reason to ditch the concept. Sure, more corporations might adopt Linux if it were a closed-source program, but why they'd want a relatively unsophisticated OS by some Scandinavian kid instead of the more robust UNIX is beyond me.
Do you see what I mean? You can't separate the success of Linux from its community and core ideal. They rise and fall together. One of the things I respect about ESR is his realization that good code alone won't win adoption for a GPL'd program. This is about ideas as much as code--and philosophers and salesmen are as much combatants against Microsoft and chattel software* as any F/OSS programmer.
*I asked RMS about that phrase. He didn't think it was all that good, but I still kind of like it. What do you think?
Stop learning! Only you can prevent esoterrorism.
Yes, Linus is a talented manager. But he also started without the tremendous codebase that BSD has always had.
Personally, I'm getting a little fed up with the anti-GPL griping. I suspect the gripers of wanting to abuse code they didn't write. People married to the commercial commodity model of software so successfully exploited by Bill Gates. I have yet to hear an objection I find balanced. Most are just "I want more".
The other thing was stability between versions. Linux is notorious for changing kernel APIs between minor versions. This is fine if all of your hardware has maintained open source drivers, but if not then upgrading becomes a game of Russian Roulette - seeing which devices will stop working (it was USB mass storage devices in our department's Linux lab last year, for about a month, with SuSE Linux). Any unmaintained drivers eventually find themselves using a no-longer-supported API and stop working, while closed drivers are often not updated often enough to notice the kernel change until users have started complaining.
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i dont think linus is to keen about the GPL, he never actively promotes it.
Yes, saying things like "Making Linux GPL'd was definitely the best thing I ever did." is almost hostile.
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
I don't think takeup would neccesarily be better with a BSD license, either - as evidenced by the fact that BSD takeup lags far behind Linux.
That's absolutely wrong. The GPL allows you to modify and to use GPLed code in any way you please. What the GPL does not give you is the right to give the GPLed code to someone else without giving that person the same rights you got.
I was reading opinions like Linux is failing because of the GPL and kept thinking "in what particular way? Give me an example where the GPL is failing Linux - a hard real example such as 'technology professional X reviewed Linux and found this failing in the GPL so decided to go with another choice'". Or the opinion that Linux should try to be something other than a WinDOAs look alike - such as what precisely? I mean it's really easy to point out flaws, but just a tad more of an undertaking to provide real answers and solutions.
Reading all this felt a bit like someone saying they think my shoes are ugly without any real information on how they could be better or why particularly they're ugly. I mean he has a right to his opinion of things but ultimately, if he was hoping to actually keep my attention, I would think he would try to at least give me something concise, with real value and of some interest to me. Ultimately I was left with the impression that he can insult Linux, and the point in that exercise is what? Was it just me who was left feeling that way?
"As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue." ~A. Einstein
While Desktop Linux has been improving, it is stuck because of a lack of interest and motivation to make it a desktop replacement. If you look at this article with Mark Shuttleworth of Ubuntu: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarkShuttleworth, it's fairly easy to see that people don't particularly care about the perspective of Linux for anyone except developers and those to whom "source code" even means something. It's generally the same thing with the GPL, where it's written from and for a programmer's perspective. Sure, I as a "user" like the source code and completely understand the "freedom" in that context because I actually appreciate and use the source code.
./configure your way to hell. I want something where there is a standard way to install something.
From a real "user's" perspective, however, source code is useless. Unless they have the technical knowledge to change something, or the resources to hire someone to change/configure something for them, it's a total non-starter. From that perspective, Windows, while bad in many respects, actually offers more "freedom" to an end user in terms of what it allows them to do by themselves without having to go through a steep learning curve and specialize in something that should be a tool.
I have been using Linux for well over thirteen years, and I absolutely *loathe* how hard it is to do simple things. I want a fully integrated GUI. Sure, I can do it the hard way, and I like that the power of the CLI is there when I *choose* to go into it, but for the most part, it completely sucks. Apt-get my !@#$.
If source code is the way, then make a completely GUI-oriented, extremely simple, build tool that will take the source as a package and install it without having to type a single command. I would say that perhaps Gentoo was on to something, but from what I understand the community is even more elitist than most.
I think he's trying to hard. He starts by asking why all of the momentum that Linux built up during the late 90's is hard to see today. I'm just going to take a guess and say that maybe a lot of that enthusiasm went down with the dot com crash. You know, when the big tech bubble burst, and pretty much everyone's hype fell through? When businesses finally realized that just throwing more and more money into their IT departments wouldn't magically increase their productivity by 600% each year, perhaps that something to do with it?
I don't think it's been a problem with Linux as much as a more realistic take on the tech industry. Plowing ahead at the blistering pace of the late 90's was fun, but it resulted in a whole lot of wasted money, and it's recent enough that people are still remembering that. It's just a little bit harder to sell that kind of hype right now, so we don't hear as much of it. Meanwhile, Linux is continuing to do what it's always done, there's plenty of development going on for it, and new people continue to adopt it. It might be a little slower right now, it's definitely quieter at the moment, but progress hasn't hit a brick wall.
I think this guy is looking for a solution to a problem that doesn't really exist.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
It's funny, that you can say I'm absolutely wrong followed directly by saying exactly wy I'm absolutely right.
It seems to me that we don't have to just speculate here -- we more or less have an example of what Linux would look like under a BSD license; just look at the FreeBSD/NetBSD/etc. Those OS's are fairly similar to Linux, and are BSD'd, not GPL'd. And it seems to me (feel free to tell me if I'm wrong) that Linux has rather more momentum/popularity/support than they do. Why is that? My feeling is that it is largely due to the GPL. Because Linux is under the GPL, people (and companies) feel more willing to contribute their time towards improving Linux, because they feel that their work is going to "the commons" and is more likely to benefit everyone and less likely to benefit only certain parties.
For example: Do you think IBM would be so willing to throw developers at Linux if they thought Microsoft could just come in and scoop up all of that nice code into the next version of Windows?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
In fact, if not for the GPL, IBM, HP, etc would never have signed on to it. They do not mind sharing source code, but they want to know that a company such as MS can not come in and hijack it.
Right now, MS could support BSD and kill the market from under Apple. That is what happened in Unix, after it was closed. The big players slowly killed off the little guys by adding closed source that was unavailable to them.
Besides, keep in mind that only Windows is a moneymaker (and that is due to the monopoly in Office). No other OS makes a direct profit. Not even Apple, or any of the linux distros.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You said "use completely freely" when you mean "use and redistribute without restriction". Perhaps in your world, bait and switch is a common or acceptable tactic, but some of us prefer to use words according to their meaning. The use of software is entirely separate from its (re-)distribution.
I think it would be worse. Would IBM or HP put out big chunks of code under BSD, where their competitors could add it to their proprietary products (like Windows or Solaris)? Nope. The GPL allows them to do so without fear it will be used against them.
I know I personally do not develop for anything that isn't GPL (or, occasionally, LGPLed). GPL is a way of using copyright law as a weapon. Company X wants to take the card I wrote, stick it in their proprietary code, then sue me when I make a copy of their program? I don't think so, I'm not playing that game. The GPL levels the playing field- if they want my code, they can have it, they just have to give theirs to me as well. If tyhey don't want to do that, they can rewrite it on their money. Sounds good to me.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
ah, the ultimate goal: Desktop Linux. He is right, its stalled. Distros like Ubuntu *almost* reach competitive usability. Almost because there is always some stuff that doesn't work properly. But this is rapidly being cured out.
/etc/fstab editing instructions, this should be possible with a nice graphical app. In fact, NOTHING regarding desktop usage should ever require xterm usage and/or configfiles editing.
Two potential reasons for the stall:
1. Lack of self-explaining software.
Software should not require the user to read the manual for the most basic tasks, the user should be able to find them out easily. KDE apps usually are self-explaining, GNOME apps too, however most other opensource projects aren't.
2. Application installation. This is a nasty one. The immediate answer is usually that the distros all have such a nice package system. Yeah, but what if software XY isn't in the package database? Tough luck, have fun compiling (if its not a binary-only version). This is where Windows is lightyears ahead: setup screens all look the same, behave the same way, and are easy to install. Linux? ahem... The only ones who got it right were Loki, who created their Loki installer. It is dead easy to install UT2004 in Linux. ALL apps should have self-extracting graphical installers, and the installation system should be *DE*centralized.
3. Hardware support. Despite the advances in the last years, hardware support still sucks sometimes. Try to get a TwinkeCam to work with Ubuntu 5.04. Its impossible unless you want to downgrade the KERNEL to a 2.4 one. Compiling the driver is not possible because of broken code that is incompatible with the 2.6 kernel (even with the 2.6 patches to the Makefile).
4. The community. Look, if you want people to choose Linux instead of Windows, you have to change something. "RTFM" is intolerable. Questions like how to mount a network share should not end in some obscure
To sum it up: People like stuff that "Just Works". Linux desktops rarely just work. The moments when they don't are far more frequent than with Windows and OSX desktops.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
BSD code is, but the *BSD OSes are not. They have much lower market penetration than Linux.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Translation: We can't take the code developed by thousands of programmers over 15 years, make it proprietary, and contribute nothing back.
Response: Yep. that's the whole fucking point!
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
BSD license aside, look at the licenses for other Unixes or other systems like Windows. You basically rent the stuff. You have to pay big bucks for it.
So, Linux has an excellent license when it comes to being able to use the great code and complete operating system components without paying a dime. If these people are really dying to write closed source applications using open source code, well, I don't know what to say. I think they could *pay* to do that, don't you?
So why didn't BSD get as popular as it is today without the GPL? Probably because corporations have been sucking out the peices they want to use and giving nothing back because they don't have to. The BSD community was never a sharing community. I don't think it is today either, although because of Linux it's become more so. Do you really think the *BSDs would be as popular now if Linux never came along?
Not to mention, most BSD systems use a heavy amount of GPL code these days, and the Linux kernel on GNU toolsets really took the GPL to the public. What would your favorite BSD look like without any of it?
Many programmers, and companies, are willing to contribute to GPL codebases because they're not willing to let the competition or some company to take their work, close source it, and sell it as something new and better to make bundles of cash. If they're going to give to the community, they want others to do the same. The GPL promotes that type of system.
People will complain about it because they want to use the code like it was public domain but it's not. Maybe this is considered "holding it back" but in my opinion we don't want that kind of thing anyways.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
When was the last time you used a BSD system? Generally speaking the only GPL programs in the base system are a handfull utilities here and there, and GCC. You better believe that once they can, the BSDs will switch to Tendra and away from GCC. OpenBSD has by far the least number of base-system GNU utils, FreeBSD the most. And still, the majority of the base system in FreeBSD is BSD licensed.
Please... _please_ stop getting "news" about Linux/OSS from zdnet blogs... they're nothing, and have as yet been nothing, but inflamitory bullshit designed to increase adhits.
Now back to your scheduled flamewar.
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.