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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."
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. He couldn't be more wrong. If people don't like the rewrite, they won't use it.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Most of us here on slashdot have an opinion on what should be going on in the GPL, but obviously most of us are not lawyers. This is, without a doubt, a legal matter, and this thing needs to be airtight. I wouldn't want this thing to be a true democracy, but hopefully they will be willing to listen to a little input here and there.
Well, he does have a point. Technical things like this should probably be written by experts on the subject matter rather than being decided by everyone who just happens to have an opinion after they read about it on Slashdot; and for that matter, nobody's being forced to use the license for anything, anyway.
And if you don't like the new GPL... feel free to modify it to your liking. There's already a few pieces of software out there that use a modified GPL v2 (typically, these are projects that are GPL'ed but grant you special permission to link with this or that non-free library even though this would otherwise not be allowed by the GPL), so you could do the same thing here.
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.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
This obsession people seem to have with democracy is silly. Do doctors and nurses in the operating room vote on how to proceed with an operation? Should pilots ask for a vote on how to land a plane?
There are plenty of things democracy is good for, but sometimes you have to leave decisions in the hands of people more qualified than the average person.
Not really. It won't require you to give up your website code for using Apache, it will require you to release the code if you base yourself off of a GPLed piece of websoftware- for existance, one of the many GPLed CMSes. Thats the exact same case as someone who releases a piece of non-web software and uses GPLed code. It levels the playing field so you can't just use GPLed code without recontributing just because you're ont he web.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Exactly! This needs to be professionally written in such a way that it has a very good chance of standing up in court. To take a vote among a group of legally unqualified geeks will not help achieve this.
And the brethren went away edified.
People will vote with their feet. The review and editing process will mold and shape the final GPL v3. Then the voting begins as people pick their licenses going forwards. Either they'll pick GPL v3 or will stick to some other license.
Voting won't change the contents of GPL v3 directly, but the fact that people will vote with their feet after it's released still means the broader community will have some impact. Either that, or FSF will demonstrate itself to be focused only on its own needs and interests, and so may alienate others. I don't think they've ever been too afraid of alienating others in the interest of maintaining ideological purity. So, it'll be interesting to see how effective the review and feedback process is, and how many people actually adopt GPL v3, and what impact that has on any follow-ons to GPL v3.
--Joe
Program Intellivision!
I for one welcome our GNU GPL overlords.
No, seriously, they are smart people and I trust they will do a good job. In the unlikely event that I don't like what they've written I won't use it for my projects.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Huh? The GPL is not and has never been promulgated as the One True License. Licensing your work under other GPL and a zillion other licenses has always been permitted. If somebody wants your code but doesn't want the license that you've chosen for it, you can arrange some other license or tell him to pound sand. You have the copyright, you do what you want. There's no subverting of the GPL if it's not used. The rights and obligations under the GPL don't change - it's just that the other party doesn't want them, so you work something else out.
>By another token, Open Source is being used by companies as a way to get individuals to create code without compensating them.
Wrong. The creators have free will - the companies don't get them to write code without compensation.
>This unfairly competes with the American software industry, and exploits ...
How is this unfair? If a company can't provide value to the customer, then it doesn't deserve to exist. The closed-source software industry does not deserve protection from the open-source software industry. I fail to see how competition creates stagnation.
The democracy comes when people adopt the new license. I predict it will be draconian, specifying that people who merely interoperate with GPL3 SW will have to publish source code. Just leveraging the market share of GPL software to force other authors to go GPL, regardless of justice, fairness, or any other consideration than Moglen and Stallman's revolutionary fervor.
Which is too bad. A sensible GPL3 that people would adopt would address interop by making only reasonable demands. Just as we got, in addition to GPL, an LGPL, we also need an AGPL for APIs and interfaces. Which require any app that interoperates with an AGPL app to open, publish and document its APIs, and carry the AGPL. That would make AGPL apps virally force developers to open interfaces. The denial of which openness is indefensible, except on the basis of programmers' rights to do anything we want, except when bound by agreement otherwise. API access is even more important than source code access, though it comes along with OSS (except for real, explicit documentation). And API access is the biggest drag on interop, where getting the rest of the source is usually just a bonus.
There's nothing magic about Moglen. He's just the expert who wrote the last GPL(s). There's no reason we can't write a forked "GPL 3.0", which merely requires the AGPL I described, even using those GPLs as the original "source" from which to produce the new version. When it proves more popular than Moglen's GPL 3.0, democracy and open source will have conspired in the market for maximum freedom, as chosen by the free.
--
make install -not war
> This license will not be foisted on anyone.
Except for everybody who exactly followed the instructions in How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs and used these terms: