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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."
It would be nice if a balance could be struck between the ideals of the GPL (which I don't oppose) and some other licenses. For example, it would be nice to see compatibility with the Eclipse Public License (which the FSF doesn't seem to think poorly of, it just happens to be incompatible). Please note, I'm *NOT* seeking an FSF sell out of their ideals here, I ascribe to them myself in my private Open Source contributions, but rather consideration of how not to have the GPL be an impediment to projects that don't violate those ideals, but happen to be using other licenses.
By another token, Open Source is being used by companies as a way to get individuals to create code without compensating them. This unfairly competes with the American software industry, and exploits what was intended to be a reliable means of assuring access to code to effectively outsource a whole chunk of what used to be paying jobs -- thus stagnating the future creation of code.
So hopefully the new (GNU?) GPL will address some of these concerns as well as the issues software patents create for the individual developer.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Ok. So what if I release a GPLv2 project, and a splinter group takes the code and re-releases it as a GPLv3 project ... and I want to fold in some of the derivative code into my GPLv2 project .... what then?
It's as open source as Red Hat. You are free to reuse the code but not the trademark. If you modify it, rename it.
Beside, this non-democracy is exactly how it should be. People having a clue about law get together to write a legal bullet proof license. They will take comments from the community to improve it but there won't be any vote.
It's the same way open source projects works. Do you think Linux is a democracy ?
What keeps developers (and license writers) honest is that if they go too far, someone can fork.
Slashdot anagrams to "Sad Sloth"
Moglen I think sometimes goes too far. Isn't he the one that feels that if a GPL'd program is used to _produce_ code that that code should be gpl'd also. I don't remember the details but I think it had something to do with companys using open source products to produce web sites that interact with the public.
It seems to me that if we aren't careful we won't be able to use gcc or any other open source compilers to produce non-GPL'd code even if they are linked only to non-GPL'd libraries. Don't get me wrong, GPL'd code is great but Linux should be a platform that allows both open and closed source applications.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
To make it easier to start using v3 when it is available.
The problem is that you have to trust the FSF not to go nuts and do only good things with the next versions.
You don't have to add that one line to your program though, you could just release it under one specific version. Only problem than is that when a new version comes out and it is good you and everyone who has contributed to it in the mean time would have to agree to the relicensing.
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
You described demagogy. Here in Mexico City, governor wants to use polls for everything, so that the easily-manipulable people will vote in favor of whatever the government tells them. The same thing is done by Hugo Chavez. All decisions aren't taken by him, but by the uninformed / misinformed people.
A true democracy, however, is about the people choosing someone who will take the decisions, whether the people like it or not. They chose him to take responsibility for his actions.
And certainly I think that Richard Stallman would be the person I'd vote for. In any case, the experts are already deciding for us. And that's good.
The proposed change would thwart removal of a button to download software that an author put in, not make a download button manditory. This interesting and mild idea is being considered carefully to avoid problems it might cause if abused by contributors.
There's more, but it's not worth the trouble to detail. That last Slashdot story was just more BS from another Wintel rag.
If you have a real objection to a real proposed change, let's hear it.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
AGain, you confiuse govenrnment and economic systems. Government is about how you enact laws. Economic systems is about who owns property and how its distributed. A democracy can very easily be a communism- they just have to vote to be one. In fact, its the most natural form of a communism, since in a communism everyone is supposed to have equal ownership- equal votes. Thus the "dictatorship of the proletariat" is similar to the "tyranny of the masses" normally caused by pure democracies.
Democracy most notably does NOT mean free, in any sense of the word. Its quite possible to have a democracy where you vote to take away freedom (or even the life) of certain groups or certain people. In fact, the first democracy, Athens, did just that on a regular basis. It was called the lottery. Thats the major problem wiht pure democracies- 50%+1 wins, even if it screws over a sizable minority. Its one of the reasomns why the US is a republic instead.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
There are (for the purpose of this post) innumerable possible licenses out there. Only one of them will be called GPL3.0, but if you don't like the one arbitrarily named GPL3.0 you are perfectly free to use one of the others. Keep using GPL2.0, for instance. The democracy in the GPL3.0 is VOLUNTARY ADOPTION. This license will not be foisted on anyone.
The real problem is that lots of people may dislike GPL3.0, and they will likely go with plan B, which may not be the same license as everyone else. Then we will all have to read the fine print again. Of course, upon rejection of the GPL3.0 license, these same dissenters can (and probably will) wish they had an acceptible GPL, which provides the perfect motivation for a GPL3.1 fork. We all have to choose between the LGPL and the GPL as things stand, because there was a bifurcation in the types of GPL software, their users and their respective licensing needs. It isn't clear whether this situation is more or less dangerous than the debate that led to the LGPL. The implied message is clear: "GPL3.0 may not be any good."
The expression that GPL3.0 might be bad is meaningless because it doesn't exist yet. Communicating this to a mass audience is FUD. The purpose is to stir up demand for participation in the GPL3.0 drafting process, which will complicate it, and slow it down, and sacrifice the quality of the final product (even if only the timeliness). If there was real reason for concern, people would already be embroiled in an Internet wide debate on what needs to be fixed with the GPL. Maybe that is already happening, and it's just the people most qualified and or interested that are participating in the debate, at a quiet level compared to Slashdot controversy. If I wanted to derail those people, the best tool at my disposal is to try and discredit them and force them to spend their valuable time defending themselves and their work from angry mobs of mouth-breathers who refuse to Google the issue themselves.
Here's a hint: if you ever get a feeling of righteous indignation, you're playing the victim, and you're ignoring your real opportunity to do something positive.
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
BTW, Karl Marx has been definitively proven wrong. One of the base tenets of his theory leading to communism is that as capitalistic economies progress, the people that own the means of production take all the profits, leaving nothing for the workers. It turns out that the division of profit between labor and capital is and has been ~75% labor, ~25% capital for as long as we can measure. This turns out to be a direct consequence of the ratio between the marginal productivity of labor and the marginal productivity of capital.
Interesting stuff!
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
Now, tell me which system you live in. In many cases, what we think is free market really isn't.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Read over COPYING in some GPLd package, it details out how to use the GPL and that this is allowed.
Yes. The only problem with that is that he's done a piss-poor job regarding the GFDL. There is an anti-DRM provision so vague that it doesn't allow you to store GFDL documents on systems with login security and file permissions. If you look into that, you find that RMS actually doesn't approve of login security, so that might even be deliberate. That's the license that applies to the entire Wikipedia, and those folks don't yet realize how messed up the license is.
The most galling aspect has been RMS total unwillingness to come to the table with the Debian developers who wanted to work that out.
Eben says Richard knows that GPL 3 is more important than GFDL, and that he'll behave.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
With the keep the button to output the sourcecode requirement RMS and the FSF are trying to license the output of their application. Especially since the HTML put out by a web application is the output. In addition they're removing freedoms as to how applications are used, something the FSF have stated many time that they are against.
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-sw.html/- The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
- The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
- The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
- The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.htmAttempts, and suggestions to restrict the way people change and use software, expecially the prosed get source functions, violate freedom 0.
In addition the attempt to controll the output of the application, and changed application go against the GPL FAQ on Liscensing GPL output.
Whatever the FSF decides to do with GPL-3 they need to stick to these principles.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.