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6 Reasons To License Software Under the (A/L)GPL
Henry V .009 writes with a link to Zed Shaw's "newest rant," which gives a cogent description of his reasons for choosing the not-always-popular GPL for his own code: "Honestly, how many of you people who use open source tell your boss what you're using? How many of you tell investors that your entire operation is based on something one guy wrote in a few months? How many of you out there go to management and say, 'Hey, you know there's this guy Zed who wrote the software I'm using, why don't we hire him as a consultant?' You don't. None of you. You take the software, and use it like Excalibur to slay your dragon and then take the credit for it. You don't give out any credit, and in fact, I've ran into a vast majority of you who constantly try to say that I can't code as a way of covering your ass."
Zed, man, we gotta talk. Your site has changed since Slashdot last led me to it. Back then I thought it was black and had huge scrawled letters over the top of it that said "Zed's So Fucking Awesome!" So what happened to ZSFA? Also, now when I click that link you seemed to have replaced your badass rant against people with an apologetic explanation of your "parody" and you won't grant poermission to publish it? That's a shame I quoted the best part on the Slashdot story.
What happened to you, man? You used to be cool! Where's all the in your face swearing and abrasiveness? You used to be hardcore! Your 'music' is so alive with raw power but now your site is somehow more respectable.
And now in your latest rant you're complaining that by writing Mongrel you weren't given a consulting job? You weren't handed a company to destroy? Well, way to stick it to the man, my friend. You seem to enjoy bashing the hell out of developers trying to get a job done for not standing up and screaming "Zed's So Fucking Awesome" but now you are complaining that didn't win you a job.
You, are a great software developer. Much better than I in all probability. You are a complete and utter asshole in nearly every other respect (yes, even in your music) and it should come as no surprise that you cannot land a job on a team. I would not pay money for your projects since I don't use them but I will send you $20 to stay in a hole, write software and restrict yourself from communicating with the outside world. Really, the world would be a better place.
My work here is dung.
But the days of quick-flip corporations and ingrate programmers making money on my software are over. My new motto is:
Open source to open source, corporation to corporation.
If you do open source, youâ(TM)re my hero and I support you. If youâ(TM)re a corporation, letâ(TM)s talk business.
A very sensible position, IMHO. Dual-licensing always seemed like a no-brainer to me.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Have you ever stopped to think that if you have fantastic technical skills and nobody will hire you, perhaps it isn't your technical skills that need work?
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Here's some good advice for anybody who does anything creative, be it programming,art, writing a story, anything...
Do _not_ create something and then expect the masses upon which you bestow your baby to be happy.
I've seen tons of open source coders quit because their public was only complaining about features and bugs. So don't start out with such expectations. You should create something because _you_ want to make something. If anybody praises you afterward then count your lucky stars. But the only way how you can remain a creative person is by doing it for yourself in the first place.
I'm sure some of my code/programs are being used in the wild. And that makes me happy. I haven't gotten a lot of positive feedback, but that's ok. I'm happy because writing it made me happy.
This is nothing more than typical programmer entitlement EGO issues.
I want credit for this, I want credit for that, I want a job at your company, because I made XXX.
But what about the OTHER people who made YYY, so YOU could do XXX?
What about all the other libraries, API's, and documentation YOU used? Did you give credit to them?
Get off the high-horse, and get rid of all this entitlement you THINK you deserve.
You don't. None of you. You take the software, and use it like Excalibur to slay your dragon and then take the credit for it.
No, asshole, some of us think it's important for our employer to know which third party libraries and tools we're using (whether they are open source or not), so they aren't blindsided with a lawsuit. I conjecture that you're projecting your own need to be the hero onto the rest of us.
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
The BSD, MIT licenses (even if more open) are for mugs who end up having their code "stolen" !
You claim this but the BSDs get countless contributions back from people and corporations that use their code. This is just GPL FUD.
Let me tell you a little secret. Proprietary software developers are just as big assholes.
Sometimes even worse, because sociopathic bosses and the economy make their contribution as well.
In the closed source world you almost never have complete control of your project. What happens if the OS, language, or vital module of your project is dropped by the maker? If you work on .NET for instance, then one day it could be abandoned, to be replaced by something newer and shinier. In comparison, C and Perl are ancient and aren't going anywhere.
He says: 'I Dont Want To Be Ignored Again'.
Well then maybe you shouldn't release your software with no marketing what-so-ever?
First of all: You wrote a HTTP library for Ruby. Big fat hairy deal. Frankly, I never knew and I couldn't care less. Second of all: The Rails crowd gained traction and scored bizar amounts of hype for one reason - and one reason *only*: They had, by standards of open source - a massive marketing campaign to push Rails into the FOSS webdev field. They have a website that, for *once* in the FOSS field, didn't look like shit (and changed the FOSS-Project-Website & Enduser Awareness Game for ever - God bless them!), they pratically invented the concept of screencasts to showcase their FOSS webkit in short understandable fashion and they abandoned all snotty-nosed elitist crap in favour of building a community for webdevs while at the same time doing huge inroads into the Java & academic community who needed Ruby to boost their ego and to seperate themselves from the PHP crowd. And who, until the rails hype, weren't aware of any FOSS webkits. Of which Rails, btw., isn't a particuarly new, good or innovative one anyway. Other kits from ages ago are still leading the field by far technology wise - with nobody careing. Due to, guess what?, no marketing.
Your conclusions are wrong, Mr. Shaw. People care squat about what you licence your software under. If you want money, you demand money. If you want attention, you demand attention. Rails did it, you didn't. Your Mongrel site isn't bad, by FOSS standards that is, but it doesn't look particuarly interesting either. Learn you lesson, licence with whatever you want - wether it's the GPL or not *nobody* of *any* importance fucking cares - and do a little marketing and reasearch before you push your next FOSS tool. That, and nothing else, will enable a business on top of it.
My 2 Euros.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
From the article:
That's my first reason I use the GPL:
Because I want to, and if you disagree with it then don't use my software. It's as simple as that.
You know Zed, that's all you have to say. The rest was at best... silly.
A dual-licensed version opens up the possibility of forking and taking business away from me, which I find unacceptable. I can fix bugs just as well as they can, and make money off of it. And because my good name is invested in the product and there is no community for me to foist bugs off onto, I am encouraged to make sure those bugs are addressed myself, to my own standards.
So, in other words--yes, I am better off.
I open-source what I don't intend to use for commercial purposes, or what is based on other open-source components with copyleft licensing terms. What makes me money stays closed.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
The problem with the freedom for who, coders vs users question is that is draws a line between the two. By being focused on only the current coders and users. Users become coders - if they have the means.
Yes, the BSDL offers one more freedom, for THAT coder, the right the close the source.
The GPL offers that coder one less freedom, but offers all the rest to everyone else in perpetuity. Not only do they have access to the code you originally wrote, but to anything current which is based on it. Not just some neat old code, but code to THE binaries they're currently running.
But frankly, I've never seen a 'GPL is bad/BSD good' post that was anything other than an entitlement whine. "I should be able to close-source your code or I can't really use it, wah."
To anyone who feels this way, good. I mean great. Any license that keeps you from profiting and being stingy is doing its job.
This is a tempest in a tea-pot though. I challenge anyone to point out a real developer (other than Microsoft) with this GPL-bad attitude. The reality is that the GPL is no-more viral than a proprietary license. By mixing your code with someone else's you no-longer have full control over it. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to sell you something.
I've certainly never seen a prominent BSD community member with this attitude. Not that BSDers love the GPL, but that no real open-source BSD dev is whining about their inability to close-source some GPL'd project. Their complaints are that our (GPLers) caring about what they see as a minor issue harms open-source in general by preventing BSD/GPL mixing.
Real coders and users don't fight over the BSD/GPL, because they benefit from both - whiners are never happy and will lie about their reasons (greed).