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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.
I can't code is my excuse! Don't go messing that up for me! I have a good thing going.
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
Licensing as BSD, MIT or Creative Commons Attribution is as much valid as a way to get recognition for your work as licensing as GPL. The only thing the later adds is that not only your work can be freely (as in the 4 freedoms) distributed but also the improvements on your work must also be.
If recognition is all you want, by all means, just choose any attribution license. If having your work used by the most people is more important, use a BSD style one. Now, if your goal is to assure that your code will be always free, use GPL, LGPL or AGPL.
Zed's dead baby, Zed's dead.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
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
Oh my god, this is THAT loser?
Zed Shaw convinced me I never wanted anything to do with open source development. That very rant you just linked helped me decide it was better to use what was available then fuck off leaving open source in the dust. I concluded if you don't have complete, absolute control over your project then the Zed Shaws of the world are going to take all of your successes and mar them with whiny drama antics.
Slashdot does itself a great disservice publishing this sort of story. I suppose we shouldn't be surprised. Sometimes, no matter how bad you think a whiner is, he has supporters who want to keep hearing him whine.
Every chance I get to tell my manager that my team has used an OSS product for one thing or another, I mention it. I'm trying to get him to stop usign the term, "freeware" or "shareware" which implies something less than ideal.
Sure, we use multi-thousand dollar products for development, but there's always some tool, some image, some utility, some code that is just better and licensed under GPL or CL.
Like I always say, "why improvise when you can plagiarize."
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
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
I never heard of any of this guy's software, I don't use it, and I don't care. Sounds like he has an inflated sense of his own importance.
The way the GPL has turned out is:
You use a product written by people who didn't foresee what you were going to use it for and they end up integrating changes to benefit someone whose use they didn't foresee. By keeping the code free over the long haul you get fascinating cooperation at the code level.
Oh God! I hate whining bastards! They just WHINE WHINE WHINE!
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
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.
HR Person (to Zed): "We see on your resume that one has paid you to do rails development in the last year and a half, and that you've been writing some "mongrel" thing in your spare time. We're really looking for someone with more relevant and recent Ruby-on-Rails experience."
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.
is anything like your writing capability, it's no wonder people say you can't code.
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.
Editors. When you see something so blatant, please use [sic] after it so people will know it's not you doing the mangling the English language.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution."
"Give me six lines of C++ code written by the most competent programmer, and I will find enough in there to hang him."
Dual-licensing always seemed like a no-brainer to me.
This cannot be emphasized enough.
Businesses have money. Their sole purpose is to make it and not use it. If you give them the option to not use it, they will gladly accept. But if you don't give them that option, they will gladly pay, if what you are offering is worth the price.
Nothing is personal about a business, and it seems many GPL programmers expect some transaction on some personal level, like an IOU or something. But if you take the money element out of a business transaction, there is no human element left. Unless the law requires it, they owe you nothing, and they have better things to do than console you.
If you don't dual license your OSS, then you are not interested in making money. You are making it clear, and you cannot expect anything in return. If you do dual license, then you are asking for money from those who make it. They will review your value proposition, and either accept, or go to a competitor.
Make your intentions clear with the licenses you choose, not with your mouth or your blog.
It is that cut and dry. There really isn't much to rant about.
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.
So if I build the next great NASCAR engine, I should credit Craftsman(TM) for making the sockets I used to assemble it? Maybe these startups should also credit the RAM, mobo, and PS manufacturers for the parts in the server.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
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.
I think Zed needs to read this as he seems to have lost the spirit of open source entirely:
1. Free Redistribution
The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.
2. Source Code
The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form. Where some form of a product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost preferably, downloading via the Internet without charge. The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed. Intermediate forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed.
3. Derived Works
The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.
4. Integrity of The Author's Source Code
The license may restrict source-code from being distributed in modified form only if the license allows the distribution of "patch files" with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time. The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code. The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software.
5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.
6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.
7. Distribution of License
The rights attached to the program must apply to all to whom the program is redistributed without the need for execution of an additional license by those parties.
8. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product
The rights attached to the program must not depend on the program's being part of a particular software distribution. If the program is extracted from that distribution and used or distributed within the terms of the program's license, all parties to whom the program is redistributed should have the same rights as those that are granted in conjunction with the original software distribution.
9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software
The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open-source software.
10. License Must Be Technology-Neutral
No provision of the license may be predicated on any individual technology or style of interface.
The Open Source Definition
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.
They told themselves by taking this GPL'd code and reading the license (that allows them to take the code) and agreeing that their code should be licensed under the GPL too.
If you take the lines wholly copyrighted by you and put then in another project, YOU CAN.
The GPL isn't telling you how to license your code. It's telling you the terms if making a derived work from others' code.
Well, for instance, there's lots and lots of VB6 code out there that became obsolete when MS dropped it. The .NET version is different enough that large apps can't be translated and need to be rewritten.
Actually VB6 code is still getting written even today, but it's a dangerous proposition. There's no guarantee it'll run on future Windows versions. Especially there's no guarantee that the OCX you need will work on future Windows version.
COBOL is an exception because it was used in important systems developed entirely in-house with full source available.
But VB6 isn't like that. A vast majority of programs need some OCX or another that performs a crucial task. And the VB code itself is just glue (something every VB book likes to point out). Many VB apps are completely uninteresting and say, use an OCX to interface with some specialized piece of hardware, another OCX to present data (some fancy grid control for instance), and a database. If any of that stops working, you're screwed. And chances are those companies that made that stuff are now gone or uninterested in maintaining it.
Compare for instance, Perl or C. Perl isn't that popular anymore, but it's still actively worked on. Even if development stopped, the source would still be there.
>Tech types that think they are god and this means that they shouldn't have to be nice to anyone.
You should interact with doctors for a few years. You won't think tech nerds are socially inept or arrogant ever again.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Zed's point (IMO) is that by using the GPL he forces many businesses to transact with him for a different license. Many businesses don't want GPL code in their product line, and for those companies Zed will sell them a differently licensed copy of his software. That means he'll be doing business with those companies, and therefore getting the recognition and/or compensation he feels like he wasn't getting with his MIT licensed stuff.
I'm just saying that's what I think his argument is.
Uhhhhh....I thought that the whole point of XP Mode on Win 7 was to fix problems like that? Hell I always thought the whole point of desktop virtualization was to deal with those "mission critical" PITA apps that won't keep running on a newer OS.
Of course if you just really love the BASIC language you could move over to REALBasic. While I haven't tried moving some uber complex piece of code from VB to RB (but then again you were nuts to write something gigantic in VB in the first place) but the languages seem to be pretty similar. And the nice thing about RB is it works on Linux, Mac, AND Windows.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
"If your library is GPL-licensed, you're barring people from using it; from finding bugs and contributing patches. What open source is all about imho"
You're kidding, right?
davecb5620@gmail.com
because it was licensed under the BSD license.
Really? you couldn't make money using the BSD license on your own code but you could using the GPL? How so? I want to start a photography business, which may not be a good idea in this economy, and because I can't afford to buy all the software I'd need to run the business I want to use open source software and modify it so it's better for me. Now I figure that if I am going to tyme a considerable amount of tyme programming then maybe I could try to sell the software to other photographers as well. If I use the GPL I can not prevent them from sharing the software with others whereas with a BSD style license I can close the source and at least try to stop sharing. Now others have suggested that instead of selling the software I could sell services, but that would turn me into a software/services company not a photographer. I just want to write my own software because I can't afford the thousands of dollars commercial software for photographers cost and I may be able to make a little more money if after I spend tyme programming I sell the software.
Of course there is a negative to using a BSD license, unless the source code is open I wouldn't be able to add or bug fixes or incorporate modifications others add to it.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Actually VB6 code is still getting written even today, but it's a dangerous proposition. There's no guarantee it'll run on future Windows versions. Especially there's no guarantee that the OCX you need will work on future Windows version.
That's okay, VB6 works under WINE, and the number of supported OCX controls increases every version...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I am? I said you don't own the software?
The difference is that with BSD, if you ever release the source code (and if you didn't, who cares what license you use on it in-house?), anybody else can *also* sell it as a closed-source product.
The difference is that with the BSD you do not have to release your code, even if all you do is modify someone else's BSD code. You modify someone else's GPL code and you have to release your code if you distribute it.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
So they should have started from scratch with their own code then. If you're going to stand on the shoulders of giants, those giants must be acknowledged.
It's not complicated - if you can't agree to the license, don't use it.
Actually (as far as I'm aware), what Tivo did was within the letter of the GPL but so far outside the spirit as to be on another planet.
God: An invisible friend for grown-ups.
That is specifically what the GPL disallows. BSD gives you more freedom to close your derivatives of someone else's work.
As a FOSS writer (not that I do much, but hypothetically) I don't see why I would want that.