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GPL 3.0 Rewrite Drive Is No Democracy
linumax writes "Users will be free to comment on the upcoming complex and technical draft versions of the GNU General Public License 3.0 in an easy way, according to Eben Moglen, general counsel for the Free Software Foundation. However, Moglen said Wednesday, speaking at the Open Source Business Conference here, the rewrite of the GPL is not an election and there will be no voting on its clauses. In a session entitled GPL 3.0: Directions, Implications, Casualties, Moglen said that when GPL 2.0 was promulgated some 14 years ago, very few people cared about it. On the advice of a few dozen people and a couple of lawyers, it was written and released. "That was a fine system then. It is not a fine system now. I expect the process around GPL 3.0, when it begins in some 60 to 90 days' time, to collect a great deal of comment from people on the draft documents... ", He said."
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
Everybody's free to leave that out when applying the license to a new program.
I went to a lecture that Stallman gave once. Your description is accurate. Though I would definitely add "zealot" to that as well. Not necessarily a bad thing (some zealots are always needed), but he does come on pretty strong.
The notice that you are supposed to attach to each file covered by the GPL (2.0) includes the following text:
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
So you can choose to be bound by a later licence if you like, or stick with the version that you agreed to.
Suck figs.
You guys DO realize that you can't make a coherent legal document by voting on clauses, right? You're more liable to wind up with some popular but ineffective mish-mash of rubbish and nonsense that can't stand up in court. And the WHOLE POINT of a license is a document that stands up in court!
Anyhow, you don't need to vote. If you don't want your stuff licensed under GPL 3, only distribute it with a license for GPL v. 2, or by some other license. Hell, if you're stubborn and want to take your own legal advice just write your own version of the GPL 3.0 with whatever clauses you do or do not want.
If it's yours to license, YOU get to choose what to license it as. There's no one with a gun to your head saying you have to "upgrade" to version three!
True, some authors have licensed their work with GPL 2 "or higher" clauses, but the licensee, NOT the licensor, gets to choose which version of the GPL (including an "old" one) they're accepting! So if you download GPL 2+ licensed works, you can choose to abide by the GPL 2 *OR* by the GPL 3, at your option. Now, you can't mix and match, but you still don't have to accept the GPL 3 from anything unless and until people start distributing their works under "GPL 3 or higher" licenses. In which case you can ask the authors to license it under your terms, or distribute some other software. Yes, *distribute* NOT "use"--the GPL explicitly does not cover mere use of the software. It's not a EULA. Read it some time if you don't believe me.
And if they're totally out to lunch here, guess what? Someone will "fork" the unpopular GPL 3.0, rewrite it the popular way, and people will use the DemoGPL v1337 or whatever to license their works under. Just don't expect Eben Moglen to write it for you, and don't expect it to stand up in court if you decided to write it by having random non-lawyers design it by committee...
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By reading this post, you agree that I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice even if I'm merely rehashing what actual lawyers (including Eben Moglen himself) have said, and to write your own damn license instead of complaining that you don't like a license you haven't even read yet. In the event of a material breech of this license, your only recourse is to STFU. That is all.
Why is this presented as a netgative?
This is how it works, voting!=good decisions. There are more than enough examples that just having the 'right' to vote is of no real benefit. Recent history being an example. The point is responsibility. Not 'rights'. Rights do not come free of charge, they come with responsibility. Simply because you are not accustomed to recognizing that responsibility and think its 'absence' is some sort of melevolant action, is quite frankly, naive.
If you think you have something important to CONTRIBUTE to this license that is being developed, then get off your fat ass and make yourself heard. They are ASKING for you to do that if you simply read the statements of the organizers. But since nobody ever does... here it is; This will also be a very public and watched process and so we need those leaders in the community to step forward and play an important role. It is also rare that we get to see a license under development and to get involved in that process," she said.
It just isnt possible that there is nobody competent enough on slashdot, who has editor status, who can write an article that presents the IMPORTANT parts of the story, and not the sensationalist parts...
Im just guessing that the editor is american, because nobody else is so disconnected from the responsibilities that come with voting as americans seem to be.
And to those who'll reply now and tell me that I can't modify the GPL because the license as such is itself copyrighted to the FSF... I insist that that's irrelevant, as a license is not a creative work but rather a technical description of the terms the author offers you the software under.
L
Whether you legally have the right to modify licenses by default is irrelevant, as it is explicitly permitted for the GPL.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#ModifyGP
You're going to get chargrilled for that comment, but I have something more or less constructive to say in response to it anyway. :D
I've tried the BSDs as well as a huge amount of Linux distros. Linux distros have better hardware support than BSDs. I can't even get BSD to boot (some don't even install) on any of my computers. Linux on the other hand (slackware) boots fine, requires a minimum of driver installation - alsaconf and ndiswrapper - and I'm productive. For my purposes, Linux is the right choice for the job.
However, I'm sure you know perfectly well that sweeping statements arent meant to be 100%
Anyway, is this saying well known in the BSD community? I'm curious. It's like you guys have your own little sub-sub-culture. I think I can see where the idea comes from. BSD licensing allows anyone to use the code, meaning the focus is just on getting good code out there, whereas the GPL is actively anti closed source, which explains why from the BSD viewpoint it looks like we "hate windows".
Having said all this, I'm not particularly supportive of any particular licence. If I were to release software ever - I guess it's not inconceivable - I would probably write a short licence saying that you can do whatever you want with this code as long as you don't try to stop me using, developing, or distributing it... come to think of it... is that BSD?
Actually, you're the one not describing democracy. Democracy is one man, one vote, like old-style Athens. New England town meeting style government, where the whole town gets together to vote on matters is true democracy. What you're describing (and what the US currently has) is a representative republic. Republican government (as in the style of government, not the US political party) is where the people directly elect representatives to make all the decisions. It's basically democracy-by-proxy, except your particular proxy isn't always the one you would have liked to have had.
-- Dave
Making fun of dumb people since 2009
Socialism is a hard to define bastard term- it originally was an offshoot of communism, but now tends to be used to describe economic systems where the government (not the people!) control the means of production.
No...A socialist more honestly (in my observation, at least) is usually a closet Communist who doesn't want to admit such to himself or other people. (usually because he's scared that nobody will listen to his opinions if he does) The term "progressive" is another such euphemism for closet Communism. Most of the authors on commondreams.org (as but one example of "progressive" closet Communist websites) would protest violently if accused of being Communist, but yet the site hosts blatant Marxist advocacy such as this.
Ditto for the Nazis. (Although they were fascists, not Commies) They used the term "national socialist" because it combined connotations of nationalism/patriotism, and socialism...both terms which they thought would appeal to the population and sound like what they wanted to hear.
There's never been a bigger lie told than the one about Communism dying with the collapse of the Soviet Union. What that lie has done has been to make Communism far more palatable...because it enables Communists to maintain and propogate their existing belief systems under such euphemisms as the above.
Microsoft were correct to call Stallman a Communist. By definition, he is...because he insists that the means of production (source code/tools for creating programs in this case) be owned/freely usable by the workers. (programmers) You might say that there is a distinction between end users and programmers (the "workers" in this context) but the UNIX paradigm in particular makes no such distinction. Whether or not it is a good or bad thing is a subject for another debate, but it is true that the paradigms Stallman advocates put capitalism (at least where software is concerned) on the endangered species list. The reason why is because Stallman has the attitude that his way is the *only* correct or acceptable way...he is completely intolerant of views differing from his own.
In some situations, I do actually think that a Communist-like economic approach can be a good thing...for intangibles like power generation, net access, software, and so on. But for physical objects it doesn't work.
Capitalism works on the presumption of the creation of a monopoly, or the *scarcity* of a given commodity...so for physical non-renewables like oil, precious metals, and even agriculture, it works well. Economic Communism on the other hand does have some viable applications, but is much more favourable to dealing with intangible commodities that are abundant/inexhaustible. (Which is why software piracy/trading is as prevalent as it is, and why open source itself can work) This is repugnant to the exclusively capitalistic mind because it does not involve hard fiat currency changing hands, but what such capitalist fanatics are missing is that trade still takes place, just not in monetary form...if you have a file that I want, and I have a file that you want, we both upload, and we both get what we want. So in that sense it's closer to barter. Capitalism is hostile to barter/non-liquid forms of trade because it holds the use of liquid (capital) to be the catalyst which starts/enables its reaction, if you like.
The trick is to be willing to accept both Capitalism and economic Communism on an emotional as well as an intellectual level, and to be able to determine which paradigm is likely to be more viable in each situation. They're both part of the ecosystem, and they can both work to solve different economic problems...the real problem is when people start insisting that only one of them should exist at the expense/exclusion of the other.
You got it all right until the end. Being a republic is orthogonal to being democratic. Republic is the opposite of monarchy, and it refers to nation that have a res publica, something which is not owned by anybody (in particular the King) and is therefor property of everybody/nobody. A republic does not have to be democratic in any way.
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
A proposal that doesn't involve enforcing features.