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GPL 3 As Bonfire of the Vanities
morganew writes "Jonathan Zuck has written a CNET Op-ed stating that the GPL 3 is about returning the flock to the faith, and is reminiscent of Savonarola's 'Bonfire of the Vanities', urging true believers to burn things that took their eyes off God. From Article: 'The commercial humanists such as Lawrence Lessig with his Creative Commons initiative have turned away from the Old Testament, and the GPL 3.0 license is a call to the faithful to reject these vanities'. Given the reaction by Linus Torvalds and nearly all the OSS business community to the GPL 3, are we going to see a break in the church?"
When reading any socio-political article, be sure you know who the author works for.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
a break in the church?
I thought it was a Bazaar.
I like Microsoft so I must be going to hell in a handbasket.
Don't mod me, bro'!!!!
GPL 3: "I've created OSS Lutherans!"
Why is it that with every new or good thing someone should come, make a "cause" out of it, preferably a religion or something equally mindless, based on faith and not reason, and then wave banners of the newfound dogma in our faces while stuffing his proverbial coffers with capital.
I say its technology, and any selfrighteous sermonizing jackass that wants to make religious wars based on it can go and do it with himself, for all I care.
That has got to be the most strangled and embarrasing analogy I have ever heard. It makes me feel all dirty - like I'm in some kind of cult. Lighten up!
I meta-moderate because I care.
Aren`t we, technology advocates, above this kind of faithfull belive, and use more rational tougths and critical tougths?
I sure know that, sometimes, only very few sometimes, almost never, we the "techs" tend to be fanatics...
But this is getting creepy, GPL3 is just a license, to protect information, over one simple filosophical belive: Free of information.
Hell, reading about flocks, faith, damn... what`s next? To adore the holy chip of Intel?
Â_Â
this is like 'da vinci code' in slashdot.
1. replace the whole holy blood line thing with open source.
2. keep the random medievel church connotations
3. keep the poor taste, bad language (okay this ones better than the book)
4. ???
5. Profit!!!
Reasoning from analogies is like tying your shoes with laces made of butter.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
We believe that every user of software has four basic rights: the right to ENJOY the software, the right to STUDY how the software works, the right to SHARE the software with others and the right to ADAPT the software to their needs. We believe that these rights spring directly from the existence of software, are fundamental and can never be signed away.
THE RIGHT TO ENJOY
We believe that everyone has the right to use software that they have legitimately acquired, for any purpose: it is for the user to determine whether it is suitable for a particular application. If the supplier of a program were somehow unfairly to impose their will upon the user, perhaps by stipulating that the program should not be used for certain purposes, that would constitute an act of violence.
THE RIGHT TO STUDY
We believe that every user of a program has the right to study how that program works. If the user of a program wishes to replicate a particular piece of functionality from that program, they have the right to examine the program in order to determine how the functionality is performed. Nobody should be forced to re-invent the wheel. The supplier of a program does not have the right to keep secret from any rightful user how the program works: by allowing someone else to use the program, they have invited that person in on the secret.
If the creator of a process wishes to keep secret the details of a process, then that is their prerogative. Effectively, they are providing a service: a customer supplies the materials; the provider of the service takes them away, does something secret, and later returns a finished product to the customer. The customer has certain rights in respect of the transaction, including the right to decline the transaction altogether based upon the level of secrecy expected by the supplier. Where the right to study a program is denied, the user {customer} is expected to provide the supplier with not just the raw materials {input to the program}, but also the resources to carry out the process {computer time and disk space}. This diminishes the quid pro quo, and so is potentially an unfair transaction.
Access to the source code is highly desirable in the exercise of this right.
THE RIGHT TO SHARE
We believe that all the fruits of all human endeavour properly belong to all of humankind.
Software can be shared without being diminished by the act of sharing: if I give a copy of a program to my neighbour, I still have a copy. {Of course, I no longer have the exclusive use of that software. This exclusivity is a form of artificial scarcity.} Nobody has the right to impose their will on my neighbour and say that they should not use a particular program: to do so would be a form of violence.
THE RIGHT TO ADAPT
We believe that every user of a program has the right to adapt that program to their own needs. Nobody should be forced to adapt their method of working to suit the way that someone else believes that the job should be done that would constitute unfairly imposing one's will on another, which is a form of violence.
Access to the source code is highly desirable in the exercise of this right.
DELEGATION OF RIGHTS
We further believe that any user who is not skilled in the art of computer programming, or who simply desires to delegate the task to another, has the right to employ a competent programmer [2] of their choice and whom they trust, to assist them in the exercise of their rights to enjoy, study, share and adapt computer software; and that every competent programmer has the right to run a business based on providing such services in a free market. These services might include independent appraisal of the program to determine its suitability for a particular application {which is contingent upon the right to study}; modification to tailor the program to the customer's working
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
I like the religious schism analogy whether or not it's accurate. Does that make Microsoft the Ottoman Empire? Apple?
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
The article is clearly a troll. If the author had at least read the proposed draft of the GPLv3, he would have seen that in fact it brings more compatibility with the "pragmatism-driven" OSS world, as it will make possible to combine gplv3 works with software released under OSS licenses that are currently incompatible, like the Apache 2.0 and the Eclipse licence.
Enter Girolamo Savonarola, a Dominican priest, who came to power in Florence in 1494. He viewed all of this "humanism" as vanity, turning people's heads away from the word of God and true religion. He took a very severe stand against the new scholarship, culminating in a series of bonfires in the town square, where many great works of art and science were lost. These fires have come to be known as the "Bonfire of the Vanities."
Like Savonarola, Richard Stallman takes a similarly religious stance on software development, rather than a practical one. For Stallman, the concept that software be "free, as in freedom" is the only concern in the creation of software.
At first, I was thinking that Stallman, was the opposite of someone like Savonarola, since he encourages 'freedom' in software creation and not adhering to strict rules or religion. And freedom should include the freedom to create any software you like, totally free or hybrid - though this is not exactly what Stallman envisioned. But of course, all this 'freedom' could lead to something altogether different - 'not free' code and this could not be named 'public.'
I do not see the point of this person's article, except to stir up bad feelings against Stallman. Maybe since the guy works for the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT), he has an agenda to push - creating disdain for the concept of free software? ACT doesn't like OpenOffice, so they probably do not like Stallman either.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Many in the commercial software community call open vs. closed source a religious debate. They argue they're on the pragmatic side. The open source community often tries to portray their side as practical, not idealistic. Framing this in religious tones in not going to help. It only stokes the fires and brings this article's author more readers. I see this as just media sensationalism with some facts thrown in.
Developers: We can use your help.
I've read all sorts of contradictory stuff about GPL 3, and they can't possibly all be true. It'd be nice to read a calm, clear explanation of what it really does, and how it's different from earlier versions.
I suppose that such an explanation should go over all the various FUD stuff and explain why each specific claim is wrong (or partially right or whatever).
In any case, it seems that if I own the copyright on something, I should have the right to release it with extra permissions beyond the law's defaults. Much of the FUD seems to be based on the premise that there's something wrong with me giving away something that I own. What's so immoral, anti-social, or religious about giving someone a gift?
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
This calls his integrity into question because of his employment circumstances.
Then again, maybe we should concentrate more on getting back to the point of OSS.
Slashdot: Where anecdotes and generalizations can be freely substituted for facts, logic, or intelligence
It's the crux of the problem: how do we keep software development free and open, yet allow people to create systems/software that they can market and more importantly, protect, to allow for continued commerce. The web gets more tangled with each iteration and type of licensing, not to mention the whole patentability issue. Eventually this whole idea of intellectual property in software is going to cave in to the reality that you can't wall off code or the algorithms behind code. In the end, everything will have to be open source to be accessible, but allowances will have to made for commercial use of code.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
... will the corporate media pimp get their ho (Sen. Hatch) to make non-DRM supporting software illegal. It's not simply that content licensing should support non-DRM language, it's that programs need the same protection.
The issue really is one of freedom, and I think Stallman sees that clearly. So perhaps Linus doesn't want to sign onto GPL-v3 because he sees this possibility, and realizes that corporate installations will quickly go to zero. Does that make Linus pragmatic, or a sell-out to the cause? You decide.
In order to properly use this metaphore the following must be true:
1. A pre-reformer figured must be burned at the stake by Rome (John Huss):
2. A Luther figure must arise who, prior to converting to a 'reformed' faith beats himself with whips, sleeps on cold stone in discomfort and crawls over glass.
3. Post conversion, he nails a piece of paper to a castle-church door listing 99 problems he has with the establisment.
4. The peasants revolt in agreement with his claims, and he agrees to torture and kill them.
Oh, and finally, Chuck Norris causes the real break with a roundhouse kick....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
It's not ad hominem to point out that someone may have been paid to hold a certain opinion
Which is factually incorrect. That is ad hominem. Whether he was paid or not has absolutely no bearing on the accuracy of his statements.
You can check the accurracy of his statements and decide if they are correct. The source of funding doesn't change this.
I realize yours is a widely held belief, but it's wrong.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
This is a real question to those who have spent more time thinking about this and have a better understanding. My impression was that RMS is trying to respond to the possibility, courtesy of DRM and 'Trusted Computing', that a company could take GPL software, make (and publish) modifications, then release a version that cannot be modified further and still run. This would transform GPL software to a 'Look But Don't Tinker' variety. After a while, for example, you wouldn't be able to meaningfully branch a project. Is this about right? If so, is the fight about this goal of GPL3 or the particular methods/language it uses?
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
It's sad and intellectually lazy.
Richard Stallman correctly predicted many of the ways in which Big Corporations and Big Brother will use DRM (also known as Digital Restrictions Management, Treacherous Computing, or Handcuffware) to enslave people. Just read the essay he wrote, titled "Can you trust your computer?" and look at some of the recent Slashdot stories and you'll see that he's been all along.
I have nothing but respect for Stallman's courage to take on the powerful and wealthy interests that want to subjugate the populace. This is the time to show our gratitude for his uncompromising ideals by donating to the Free Software Foundation (which Richard Stallman founded and leads) and to the Electronic Frontiers Foundation.
If the author had at least read the proposed draft of the GPLv3
How can you be so naive? He DID read it. He was just paid to attack Stallman, since the GPL doesn't benefit Microsoft at all. Please, portraying Stallman as some kind of fundamentalist warlock who loves to burn books of art and science? Sheesh, that's falling low.
At least CNET had the decency now to say who he works for at the bottom of the article.
like Savonarola.
I'm not against free software; I use and enjoy an number of free and open source apps. Heck, I've even contributed to the documentation efforts of some projects of this type. I suppose I support, in a general way, the four freedoms in the parent article, though calling software restrictions "violence" is, IMO adolescent.
But I'm opposed on principle to any fanaticism, whether it be in favor of free software or Microsoft products. The type of rabid dogmatism propounded by Stallman is the enemy of rational thought and compromise. In my view, these (rationalism and compromise) are two requirements for the advancement of science/technology and continuance of civil society.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
Parent post is critical of Google and Apple!
This guy's the limit!
And besides, I didn't call his integrity into question. I merely provided additional information with which interested readers could make up their own minds. Additional information is never a bad thing.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Clearly GPL 1 is the "Old Testament": the original, not very popular. Settled down after an initial conversion onslaught into just a small community handing it down thru generations on conservative faith in the simplest expression of the "One License" inspiration.
GPL 2 is the "New Testament": hugely popular sequel, reforming the original and claiming its legacy. More complex, but more comprehensive to absorb adherents of other licenses. Taking over the world as the old "panoply of proprietary licenses" paradigm fades.
GPL 3 is the "Last Revelation": deriving from the first two licenses in succession, attempting to leverage the success of the second edition into total world domination among a much more diverse population. Impeded by continuing success of the second version.
This comparative license religion note brought to you by an atheist, into the public domain.
--
make install -not war
I haven't made any statements, pro or anti, about the opinions Mr Zuck expressed.
That's why its not ad hominem. For all you know, I may agree with him.
It would still be wise to consider the source: this is politics, not formal logic.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
GPL is for code, CC is for content. I don't see a schism there.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
RMS has repeatedly stated that he considers all proprietary software evil. Eben Moglen views are similar (e.g., read "Freeing the Mind : Free Software and the Death of Proprietary Culture").
These are radical views, and out of sync with many supporters of open source software. Indeed many programmers wonder how they are supposed to make a living if all proprietary software is abolished. It seems a reasonable assertion that this will eventually cause a rift in the open source movement.
The article casts Stallman as impractical. However the freedoms in the GPL are of practical importance. One might for example be using GPL software in a large organistion to get away from per seat licencing, using the freedom to share the software with multiple employees. If some "pragmatism" finds a way round GPL 2 so that you have to pay per seat for the link to the website that enables the software, that is not very practical for the users.
If you are going to do what the article does and merely assert that freedom is in opposition to practicality, you are saying nothing at all.
Nor would a major kernel fork. Linus is a smart coder, but I don't trust him on the political and legal side of things. It's a low priority for him. He could lose those freedoms (or never had had them in the first place) that allow him to continue without "political types" coming up with such things as the original GPL. Ignore bogus laws, patents, DRM at your own peril. You can't just pick and choose which parts of the total world to live in. We are very close to patenting and DRM and the DMCA and such to effectively crippling free and open source. Just standing back like he wants to do and thinking that nothing is going to happen is *more* than a touch naieve and is falling into the wishful thinking camp. If we don't fight back in advance of more bogus behavior by the big corps and governments, we could find ourselves being on the wrong side of a lot more laws, many more than what we face now.
Get with the times or move on. You can either recognize the threat, or stick your head in the late night coding sand like an ostrich and not even see the dumptrucks full of heavy rocks sneaking up on you to bury anything you might do.
How do you know you are not a brain in a vat?
...that the Universe wasn't created intact thirty seconds ago?
...that the laws of physics are the same as they were yesterday and will be tomorrow?
There's an answer, and it sure isn't 'reasoning'. Deductive logic can only carry you someplace after there are established axiomatic statements which, definitionally, must be taken on faith. In any reasonable conversation, particularly one in which one is not an expert on the subject at hand, a modicum of faith in the statement of facts is not only reasonable, but also practically necessary. How far that faith should extend is a function of trust in those sources, which I believe is what the GP argument is all about.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
I've grown tired of this exchange, but I'll say this and then end it.
Gowen has committed ad hominem, regardless of his position on the author's statements. They are verifiable or they are not.
Bringing up his motivation for making those statements is the ad hominem. Whether you beleive tham is not the consideration. I think that is where your confusion comes from. I'll say that again, it doesn't matter if you denounce/endorse the author's statements, because that is not the ad hominem, the act of bringing up the author's bias is the ad hominem.
I've said this as many ways, and as many times as I care to. Educate yourself or not, I'm finished with it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
GPL 3.0 license is a call to the faithful
I thought that open source was supposed to be a bazaar rather than a cathedral
www.wavefront-av.com
"always avoidable" - debateable
... Could I avoid it? Possibly, by staying after school, spending my hours based on the school's hours, enduring extra transportation cost since the school bus has specific operating hours, and losing the other comforts and conveniences of my own study environment. - This tradeoff is both unreasonable and unfair, and to expect people to make such concessions is unrealistic especially in low-income or underpriveldged households. This "choice" isn't really a choice. -- Well that's my opinion.
Example: I am in a publicly funded education system. To perform certain science work assignments I have to use a windows-only software on my computer. Without it I cannot complete my assignment and pass the class.
"gowen has not made any comment doubting the validity of Zuck's deduction." But I feel like I have to point out, in addition, that Zuck actually doesn't make any deductions. The piece is all rhetoric meant (as usual) to make ppl associate Stallman with religious zealotry, and an impractical unwillingness to compromise. The only inter-subjectively verifiable/falsifiable sentences are of the form "Linus has been quoted as saying ______" or "Santayana said _______"
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Let us consider some of Zucks proclamations:
Here Zucks is discrediting the "practicality" and "freedom" that the GPL provides by comparing it to his specific definition of practicality that is essentially the practicality for corporate exclusion and appropriation. As an independent programmer when an entity makes enhancements to your code base and then sells your application as a web service it may be more "practical" for your code license to include a network service clause allowing you to build on the enhancement made to your code base. Sure this limits the possibility for a company to invest in creation of the service given the uninsured rights of exclusive service, but the company can always chose not to appropriate your code or have a more liberal business model. The commons does not solely exist for appropriation and exclusion. The GPL is different from the "public domain" because it ensures derivative freedoms. Here again I believe Zuchks is making a very common rarely acknowledged assumption that the reduction of concentrated power in any way is the end all destruction of civilization as we know it... we are not so lucky it will take much more work to undo the exclusion and restrictions of freedom inherit in our current systems of control and governance.
DRM-only devices are definitely a step in the wrong direction. It gives concentrated power the ability to seriously restrict the freedoms of its "consumers". Or more essentially makes profoundly undemocratic assumptions about communication being a form of unidirectional consumption. We can already see the consequences of such cultural assumptions in the toxicity of our mental environment played out most distinctly in commercials, corporate branding and second order social consequences of depression and high usages of mood altering drugs. When people are told creativity is the exclusive right of the gifted, and the devices that mediate our world enforce this assumption we are quickly headed towards profoundly undemocratic systems of control what we could call "un-free".
If we dare use Zuchk metaphor, we can see the priests tried to hold onto their exclusive right of interpretation of the bible or the natural world and they were threatened by the de-exclusivisation on natural world interpretations. The text content they put out was now malleable and brought abut religious segmentations. If the priest could have DRM'ed their religious interpretations of the natural world it would have been a lot easier but instead all they could do is "burn" unauthorized interpretations ie trusted computing self destruct button if running non-DRM approved content. Our natural world for better or worse has become our media environment hence the strong oppostion to Trusted Computing systems.
And finally Zuchk offers us: Again I think Zuck may have a definition of freedom that includes maximizing potential for growth of capital irrespective of whether that growth is democratically accessible or via concentrated centers of power. He or anyone else is free to write their code under these conditions but (whenever possible) we chouse other conditions for our code well aware of the consequences of applicability to non-democratic commercial projects.
In the 60s and 70s, all software was free software. It was normal for people to pass on the source code with the binaries. In the 80s, some companies started a new proprietary approach, and they started using technical means (such as only distributing binaries) and legal means (applying copyright) to prevent people from helping themselves and each other.
I bet there was a army of people who posted to usenet with comments similar to your's. "Consumers will never accept that treatment" etc. etc. "there'll be a revolt, just you wait!"
Instead of waiting for everyone else to revolt, Stallman launched GNU - and the free software movement along with it. When freedom is at stake, sitting back and waiting for a revolt is never enough. This problem has to be tackled in every way we can. GPLv3 can't solve the DRM problem completely, but I'm glad that it will do all it can.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
Since when has one's labor become free? Programmers do their work for both the love of the trade and the profit it brings. Take away one of these elements and then the programmer becomes a slave. It's really no different than when it was a crime for non-appointed scribes to ply their trade in the Middle Ages. It took the 'Rebirth' of Europe to allow for free market capitalism of such scribes to work for anyone and for any price. Under GPL, especially v3, it makes it clear any profit is against the license. And I find that abhorent. It's really no different than DRM. But atleast, DRM isn't law and the same can be said for GPL. As long as neither become law, more power to them, but if they want to have a corporatist or communist revolution on my PC, they can think again.
I think it's high time programmers and businessmen take a stand against both initiatives, and bring back the freedom to where it belongs; software authors and individuals that fund them.
-- Bridget
The BSD license does not limit anyone's freedom to copy code. It allows the author of that code the freedom not to distribute any modifications he makes to it, or not to exempt his creation from restrictions imposed by copyright law. That it, it simply does not impose the obligation to distribute the code, either at all or under any particular license. Any code that is out there and distributed is still free to use, and using it in a closed project does not affect that. If I take a BSD-licensed project, modify the code, and distribute only binaries, I haven't *done* anything to the original code, locked it up, or prevented anybody from copying it.
The only restrictions being applied are to the *new* code I wrote, and those restrictions are allowable only because of existing copyright law. If you don't like those restrictions, what you need to argue against is copyright law in general, not the BSD license. While copyright laws exist, even public domain is no more "free" than the BSD license (cause I could take something in the public domain, use it in my commercial creation, and apply copying restrictions to that).
Consider an analogy of speech in the common sense. (All code is is written speech). A situation analogous to copyright would be to say that I may say something to you and require you not to repeat it, and if you do, you are guilty under the law. The opposite of this, such as the BSD license or a public domain license, would be simply to say something to you; what you do with that is entirely up to you, repeat it or not, I don't care.
GPL doesn't mesh extremely well with this analogy because there is no "speech source" vs "compiled speech", but something roughly analogous to the GPL would be *requiring* you, if you ever repeated what I said (even in modified form), to furnish the person you spoke to with a written copy of that statement. That's not freedom for anyone: that's a duty placed on you, which grants anyone you speak to (about this thing) the entitlement of a written copy of that.
In the speech case it plainly obvious what is the most free of these things: simply being able to say things to people, and they are not obligated to act or not act in any particular way about that. This is analogous to the public domain license, and a BSD type license would simply require that you attribute any repetition of that statement to me, a very slight loss of freedom. Standard copyright laws and "copyleft" laws like the GPL both impose restrictions on people and so are far less free. The only illusion of a lack of freedom in a BSD or public domain situation, with no copyleft requirements, arises because you still have copyright requirements being imposed by some people. The problem is not these middle licenses; the problem is copyright itself, the notion that you can at all "license" written speech and other creative works. The GPL is complicit in that kind of thinking, and the situation it drives toward is no more free than the one with traditional copyright.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Did you read the wikipedia article?
"Jonathan Zuck is president of the Association for Competitive Technology, a Washington, D.C.-based trade group specializing in technology issues. ACT's membership roster has some 3,000 companies including Microsoft."
This isn't even close to:
ACT was founded in 1998 in response to the Microsoft antitrust case. Its chief goals are
1. to limit government involvement in technology (such as antitrust actions or free software / open source software requirements); and
2. to support strong intellectual property rights in software.
Currently, ACT is lobbying strongly against the Massachusetts endorsement of the OpenDocument standards.
The bio in the article doesn't make it all clear that the ACT is a biased lobbying group that is hired for propaganda purposes.
"trade group specializing in technology issues" my ass.
Am I the only one who sees that this whole string of arguments is about 2 different things? Well, it looks like a few people have tried to point it out.
It is absolutely 100% correct that the accuracy of a statement has nothing to do with whether someone was paid to say it or not. Attacking the messenger or their intentions is indeed ad hominem. But that's not what the other side of the argument is here.
If you only have the statement, you don't know it's accuracy. You have absolutely nothing to judge it on with respect to "truth data". The issue here isn't the accuracy of the statement because you can't check it. The issue here is the confidence in the accuracy of the statement with no available "truth data". If it is someone with a background in presenting objective information, there is more confidence that their statements are accurate than someone who clearly has a self-interest in being subjective.
Confidence and likelihood are statistical tools and are useful for a best guess. There is no such thing as an ad hominen attack on confidence. Likelihood and confidence a part of reasoning, but it is not closed form like pure deductive reasoning.