Brian Aker Responds To RMS On Dual Licensing

krow (Brian Aker, long-time MySQL developer) writes "Richard Stallman's comments on the Oracle Acquisition of Sun left me scratching my head over his continued support of closed-source licensing around open source software. Having spent more than a decade in the MySQL community, I feel that his understanding of the dual-license model is limited, and is at odds with his advocacy of free software. For this reason, I believe his recent statements concerning it need to be addressed. By pushing for the right to turn GPL-licensed software into the heart of a proprietary business model, he is squandering an opportunity for advocacy of open source within the European Union."

Comments

That's a new one

[Jurily]

Did someone just accuse RMS of supporting commercial licenses anywhere near Free Software?

Re:That's a new one

[nullchar]

Yeah, apparently as long as [some of?] the source remains GPL, RMS seems okay with dual licensing.

Stallman's quote:

This approach was able to provide (1) an attractive platform for developers looking to use FLOSS, and secured MySQL enormous mind share, particularly in supporting content rich web pages and other Internet applications, and (2) the ability for paying clientèle to combine and distribute MySQL in customizations that they do not want to make available to the public as free/libre software under the GPL. With excellent management and considerable trust within the user community, MySQL became the gold standard for web based FLOSS database applications.

Re:That's a new one

[__aasqbs9791]

But, but I though RMS was an insane rambling ideologue who wants all software developers to be homeless? /s

Flamebait? Trolling? Maybe, but what I'd like to point out is that some people come to hate the person from a single statement attributed to them at some point (regardless of whether they actually said it, or it was taken out of context, etc) that anything they say is automatically hated as well. This is no better than the opposite, worshiping someone such that anything they say is loved without considering the merits. I just wish people would pay attention to why they feel the way they do, rather than just associating the emotion with a person and leaving it at that.

Re:That's a new one

[DragonWriter]

Yeah, apparently as long as [some of?] the source remains GPL, RMS seems okay with dual licensing.

With the GPLv3 and its differential treatment of B2B vs. B2C software, its pretty clear that the FSF has decided to aggressively leverage the GPL's more restrictive nature, compared to other Free licenses, as a way to push business adoption of the GPL over other Free licenses, and a willingness to restructure where those restrictions cut to meet the preferences of big vendors.

Stallman's praise of the MySQL dual licensing model seems perfectly consistent with this more tribal, less ideological approach of the FSF.

OTOH, I think ultimately the fact that this restrictiveness, which creates a structurally-preferred-vendor for GPL software even if others are theoretically free to create GPL, but not proprietary, alternatives, is a big selling point of the GPL to vendors is also, in the long-term, going to turn into more of a market liability for the GPL than a strength, since its a negative from the point of both downstream developers and non-developer users, since it incorporates the same kind -- though a lesser degree -- of copyright-owner vendor lock-in to GPL-licensed products that exists with proprietary products.

Re:That's a new one

[Anonymous Coward]

developers looking to use FLOSS

Are developers should be using FLOSS, it helps with the bad coffee breath.

Re:That's a new one

[Jurily]

(2) the ability for paying clientèle to combine and distribute MySQL in customizations that they do not want to make available to the public as free/libre software under the GPL.

Umm. Isn't this exactly the reason GPL was born in the first place?

If you want to modify open code, but not contribute back, you either don't use code under GPL or you don't distribute the modified version. Did they talk this through with all the people whose code was merged under the GPL? There is a reason why FSF could move to GPL3 and why the Linux kernel can't possibly do so.

Re:That's a new one

[vagabond_gr]

Yes, but I don't think that RMS in his letter actually wanted to promote dual licensing.

The letter states his opinion on a very specific issue: the acquisition of Sun by Oracle. RMS thinks this is bad for MySQL and one of the reasons is that a source of funding, namely dual licensing, that used to be re-invested in the development of MySQL will probably stop being used that way. The point is that, if Oracle holds the copyright, sells licences, but doesn't give back to the community in terms of development of the GPL version, this will be worse than the current situation. RMS prefers that MySQL stays away from Oracle, this doesn't mean that he likes dual licensing (after all, none of the GNU software is dual licenced).

The letter was sent to the European Commission in support of blocking the acquisition. It's not the usual RMS speech.

Re:That's a new one

[MichaelSmith]

after all, none of the GNU software is dual licenced

I wish they would. It would give them money they could use to fund GNU development. In my experience companies have always chosen to redevelop libraries to work around GPL license issues, rather than GPLing their products.

Re:That's a new one

[petrus4]

With the GPLv3 and its differential treatment of B2B vs. B2C software, its pretty clear that the FSF has decided to aggressively leverage the GPL's more restrictive nature, compared to other Free licenses, as a way to push business adoption of the GPL over other Free licenses, and a willingness to restructure where those restrictions cut to meet the preferences of big vendors.

This will fail.

The entire reason why the GPL v2 has been popular with business, has been because of the suicidally anti-competitive nature of contemporary business. The GPL ensures that, while you can't have a competitive advantage yourself, nobody else can either. As a result, nobody makes money from innovation; everyone makes it from consulting/support/administration/SaaS.

The GPL v2, however, was relatively clear in terms of its' legal requirements. Version 3 is not. Version 3 also seeks to control patenting, which the marketplace most assuredly will not stand for. There is also the issue that version 3 has been declared incompatible (or at least undesirable) for use with the BSDs, as well.

Given that he is currently active in this thread, Mr Perens is of course more than welcome to attempt to refute me on this point, if he wishes. I am confident that I need offer him no counter-argument of my own. The marketplace will in time do so for me.

Re:That's a new one

[cheesybagel]

Like OpenAL?

Re:That's a new one

[discord5]

Like OpenAL?

Nice try, but that one's LGPL

Re:That's a new one

[david_thornley]

The entire reason why the GPL v2 has been popular with business, has been because of the suicidally anti-competitive nature of contemporary business. The GPL ensures that, while you can't have a competitive advantage yourself, nobody else can either.

No, you're misunderstanding the economics involved. Businesses don't strive to be competitive at everything: they strive to be competitive at things they're particularly good at, and even the playing field on others. Trying to out-compete everybody at everything is a losing strategy.

There are plenty of companies that benefit from having Linux around. Oracle sells database and business software. It's to their advantage if the platform their software runs on can be kept as inexpensive as possible. They therefore benefit from the fact that you can run Oracle on Linux. A company that packages up servers will find OS licenses to be a cost of production, and benefits from not having to pay Microsoft. Microsoft doesn't benefit from Linux, since it's a direct competitor, and forces Microsoft to sell a quality product (from some points of view) for not much money.

As a business, you want what you produce to be expensive, so you get more revenue. You want your raw materials to be cheap, so you have less cost. You want goods and services associated with your product to be cheap, to encourage people to spend money on them, thus raising revenue. If you sell ice cream, you want the cones and toppings to be cheap, because people will buy more ice cream if the total dessert is less expensive. You also want cream and sugar to be inexpensive, of course.

Therefore, lots of people and companies benefit if IBM improves Linux, including of course IBM. Similarly, IBM benefits if Oracle improves Linux. It's a win-win situation (except of course for companies like Microsoft, for which Linux is actual competition, and they don't promote Linux).

The GPL is vital to this cooperation. IBM not only helps lots of people out by improving Linux, but benefits itself from all the other improvements made by companies like Red Hat. Without the GPL, there'd be no reason why IBM would benefit from Red Hat's improvements. If companies used something like OpenBSD as a basis for an OS, they'd make their own private improvements and wouldn't share.

Therefore, IBM has an even stronger reason to improve Linux. The better Linux gets, the more people and companies that will use it, and the more they will contribute stuff that IBM can use. If IBM were to contribute the same level of effort into software without a share-and-share-alike license, they wouldn't get the same level of improvement.

IBM did have (and still has) its own brand of proprietary Unix: AIX. It presumably costs IBM a lot of money to maintain and improve it, and IBM has apparently decided that it's too expensive for the revenue it brings in. Therefore, they'd rather sell boxes running Linux, and services, and other software like the Rational suite.

At any rate, it's impossible to look at the companies supporting F/OS software and call them anticompetitive. It makes much more sense to look at them and notice how they're using all sorts of measures, including some that are counter-intuitive, to compete.

Re:That's a new one

[meregistered]

Beautifully said. Emotions are valuable, in my opinion, when understood by the person feeling them within a logical framework, i.e. Valuable emotions are based on valuable ideas/concepts...

Re:That's a new one

[__aasqbs9791]

I can't completely take credit. I had a history teacher back in college who said he wanted us to know why we felt the way we did about certain events in history. He didn't want to change them, just to make us aware of why, and then we could make a more informed choice about whether it really made sense or not.

Forgive me if I'm wrong but

[rwarfield]

Isn't there already an open source fork of MySQL? Is anybody actually paying for Sun's?

Re:Forgive me if I'm wrong but

[Anonymous Coward]

Just one random examples - I believe these guys' hardware uses licensed MySQL technology for internal databases in their hardware: http://arubanetworks.com/

Re:Forgive me if I'm wrong but

[Predius]

Yes, there is. The problem RMS is pointing out, is if Oracle basically shutters MySQL after acquiring it, as the owners of the primary license they can prevent MySQL from ever having a GPLv3 release, or any further closed source releases to fund further development. MySQL forks at that point will be locked into GPLv2 without the option of closed source releases to help fund further development.

Re:Forgive me if I'm wrong but

[Toonol]

Shouldn't they have that right? If I develop something and license it under GPLv2, I should be able to decline to ever relicense it to GPLv3.

Re:Forgive me if I'm wrong but

[mrvan]

But any FOSS software for which IP ownership is not concentrated (ie all developers kept their own copyright) is impossible to relicense, right? So MySQL is the exception because one party has IP rights, and the worst that can happen is that it becomes a normal FOSS project.

The real argument is that MySQL is developer with money acquired through the dual licensing, so that could go away. But admitting that is basically admitting that FOSS does not have a valid business model (in this case), so that's not opportune to say...

Isn't the IP of the kernel spread over all developers?

Re:Forgive me if I'm wrong but

[benjamindees]

Wow. What an incredibly weak argument. Surely someone could have suggested to separate the (legitimate) concern of Oracle's burgeoning database monopoly from Stallman's (irrelevant) interest in pushing all GPL2 software to GPL3.

I mean, I couldn't begin to guess what the EC might be inclined to do, but anti-trust regulations usually exist in order to prevent anti-competitive monopolies, not to make all software meet an extremely narrow definition of free (libre). If there is a succinct method of connecting the two, nothing linked to in the summary managed to accomplish it.

Re:Forgive me if I'm wrong but

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure unless you licensed it under "GPLv2 or later", or if you as the copyright holder decided to relicense it (for whatever reason). GPLv3 is a much better license though (it's expressed more clearly in a legal sense and closes some patent loopholes) so there's usually no good reason to avoid it. I release my software under GPLv3

Re:Forgive me if I'm wrong but

[jonbryce]

Quite a lot of the GNU software is owned by the Free Software Foundation. Apache, Mozilla, X.org and Samba are owned by their respective foundations. OpenOffice.org and MySQL are owned by Sun.

The only major project on a typical distro I can think of that is owned by the individual contributors is linux.

Re:Forgive me if I'm wrong but

[jonbryce]

The EU could make it a condition of the takeover that they sell either the Oracle Database or the MySQL Database to a third party. That sort of thing quite often happens in anti-trust investigations.

They won't be directly concerned about keeping MySQL free and open source, but they may be concerned that having two major database servers owned by the same company reduces competition.

Re:Forgive me if I'm wrong but

[nullchar]

What about this clause that is attached to the GPL in the MySQL code?

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

Re:Forgive me if I'm wrong but

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I understand MySQL is distributed under a modified GPLv2 license. The principle modification being the removal of the "any later version" clause.

Re:Forgive me if I'm wrong but

[RichardJenkins]

Wrong. You made the same mistake with the Linux kernel ( http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1406005&cid=29765325 ). The GPL states that:

"If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation."

The MySQL source is released explicitly under version 2 of the licence and *not* "any later version". Let's pick a random MySQL source file and read the copyright notice at the top:

From ./storage/myisammrg/myrg_rkey.c

"/* Copyright (C) 2000-2003, 2005 MySQL AB

      This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
      it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
      the Free Software Foundation; version 2 of the License.

      This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
      but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
      MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
      GNU General Public License for more details.

      You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
      along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
      Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA */"

Older versions of MySQL weren't tied to the GPL2. You can read the statement from when this was changed at http://blogs.mysql.com/kaj/2006/12/22/mysql-refines-its-gpl-licensing-scheme-under-mysql-50-and-mysql-51/

It's reasonable to make mistakes, but to make them repeatedly in such a condescending, impertinent tone is outrageous. Please stop telling people that you can re-licence something under the GPL3 by virtue of the fact that it is released under the GPL2 - you can only do so if the copyright holder adds the "and any later version" statement.

Re:Forgive me if I'm wrong but

[broken_chaos]

The principle modification being the removal of the "any later version" clause.

Just checked a fresh download of the MySQL 5.1.40 source. This statement is correct – the random sampling of source files I checked do not contain the "or later" clause in the licence notification.

Re:Forgive me if I'm wrong but

[pem]

Yes, and the MySQL licensing exception already allows you to link it with GPL v3 stuff. But that sticks in Stallman's craw, because it's not pure v3.

Re:Forgive me if I'm wrong but

[krow]

Perl, php, python, postgres, memcached, and many others have copyrights which are shared among multiple copyright owners. Apache is in the same boat (Rasmus continues to not sign over his rights). Mysql itself, do to Oracle owning Innodb, is in part owned Oracle as well as Sun.

Re:Forgive me if I'm wrong but

[jonadab]

> The only major project on a typical distro I can think of
> that is owned by the individual contributors is linux.

Off the top of my head?
xscreensaver, perl, ruby, cdrtools, vim, joe, fontforge, wesnoth, freeciv, ...

And quite aside from that, in the context of an entire distribution, you can view organizations like Sun and the FSF as individual contributors who hold the copyright only on the code that they (or their members or whatever) developed.

You can't put together what I would call an entire working operating system based on the open-source contributions of any one such organization. For example, if you limit yourself to only the code held by the Free Software Foundation, then to the best of my knowledge you've got no GUI, among other things.

So in a very real sense the whole thing is based on code owned by many contributors, although yes, a number of those contributors, including some of the most prominent ones, are companies and organizations.

Re:Forgive me if I'm wrong but

[jonbryce]

In the context of licence changes, which is what this is about, fsf can change the emacs licence without worrying about what the openoffice.org developers think. However if you want to change the licence of linux, you need to ask lots of individual developers. Some of them have died since making their contributions, so you have to find who inherited their copyright and ask them. Others will have used a screen name, and if their email address is dead, there is no way of contacting them.

Re:Forgive me if I'm wrong but

[Anonymous Coward]

The "or any later version" statement is part of the grant, not the license terms.

Basically, the copyright holder grants you the right to distribute his work under the "GPL v2" terms, and he also grants you the right to do so under the "GPL v3" terms, "GPL v4" terms, etcetera.

Sun allows you to distribute MySQL under the GPL v2 terms, but not the GPL v3 terms. That doesn't alter the GPL v2 terms.

Re:Forgive me if I'm wrong but

[cheesybagel]

If you prefer the GPLv2 to v3, you are perfectly fine with being fined or sued for infringing patents like mp3 and dvd player software. Nice huh?

Re:Forgive me if I'm wrong but

[nullchar]

Sorry, I was looking at the mysql client code, not the server code. The client code has these FOSS exceptions:

http://www.mysql.com/about/legal/licensing/foss-exception/

This isn't the first time this has happened.

[brennanw]

Ghostview used to have (and may still have) a dual-licensing setup -- the most up-to-date version of Ghostview was under a non-free license that could be purchased by companies that wanted Acrobat support on platforms Adobe wasn't interested in supporting, and the older versions of Ghostview were released under the GPL. I remember RMS commenting on this at the time, and his comment was "I'd rather it be all GPL, but if that's what the creator needs to do in order to support his work so be it."

Perhaps I misunderstand the article, but I don't see this as a new position or a deviation on RMS' part. I also personally disagree that it's "anti Open Source" -- first, on a pedantic level, RMS would say that the issue had nothing to do with "Open Source," rather it was about "Free Software." ;-) Second, and probably a lot more relevant, if software is licensed under the GPL, then it's licensed under the GPL. You're free to hack on it, distribute it, improve it, modify it, as much as you wish under that license, and any new work you add to that software under that license stays under that license as well. So what exactly are you losing?

Re:This isn't the first time this has happened.

[Anonymous Coward]

s/Ghostview/Ghostscript/g

s/Acrobat/Postscript/g

Yeesh.

Re:This isn't the first time this has happened.

[christurkel]

People also forget he champions free as in speech software. He's never been anti commercial.

Re:This isn't the first time this has happened.

[Anonymous Coward]

People also forget he champions free as in speech software. He's never been anti commercial.

Indeed, and not only that, he always made it clear he has no problem with people selling software. The GPL purposefully and explicitly allows that. Commercial software is fine, in his book, as long as it doesn't limit user's rights.

Dual-licensing is just one way to sell free software, so I honestly don't know why Stallman would have a problem with it. The software is still free, but some people choose to pay for a version with different requirements/freedoms. You still can't limit other people's freedoms as they have access to the original version.

What Stallman might oppose is dual-licensing where the proprietary version has additional features, or people licensing the proprietary version add features that remain proprietary. I don't know how relevant that is to MySQL.

Re:This isn't the first time this has happened.

[dangitman]

People also forget he champions free as in speech software. He's never been anti commercial.

Except, of course, for his comments that making a profit from software was unethical. How could that ever be construed as being anti-commercial?

Re:This isn't the first time this has happened.

[FauxPasIII]

[Citation Needed]

Re:This isn't the first time this has happened.

[gpuk]

>So what exactly are you losing?

From reading the letter, it seems one of the key things RMS worries about is that MySQL's GPL2 license did not include the "or later versions" clause. This effectively means that any fork of MySQL is doomed to forever remain licensed under the GPL2 while the majority of free software is expected to transition over to GPLv3 over the next few years. AFAIK, GPL3 and GPL2 code are not compatible. I think RMS worries that Oracle will cut off the commercial support and let the free version slowly rot under an old license. Ergo, MySQL with wither on the vine.

Re:This isn't the first time this has happened.

[dangitman]

Citation provided:

Audience member: [...] in this new World, and you're talking about GPL going over to the next version, how do you see proprietary software businesses making a profit?

Richard Stallman: That's unethical, they shouldn't be making any money. I hope to see all proprietary software wiped out. That's what I aim for. That would be a World in which our freedom is respected. A proprietary program is a program that is not free. That is to say, a program that does respect the user's essential rights. That's evil. A proprietary program is part of a predatory scheme where people who don't value their freedom are drawn into giving it up in order to gain some kind of practical convenience. And then once they're there, it's harder and harder to get out. Our goal is to rescue people from this.

Re:This isn't the first time this has happened.

[TrekkieGod]

Citation provided

What you cited doesn't say what you claimed it does. He doesn't say there that making a profit from software was unethical. He said making a profit from proprietary software was unethical, which should be no surprise since he considers the existence of proprietary software unethical. RMS would highly encourage you to profit from free software.

groklaw's take on this

[harlows_monkeys]

Groklaw has an interesting take on this, full of conspiracy theories.

See, for example, this comment, where PJ is talking about Monty, and says:

I have come to suspect he's a double agent. And I believe the beneficiary will be Microsoft.

Wow

Re:groklaw's take on this

[DAldredge]

That is because everything wrong in the world is the fault of Microsoft according to PJ.

Re:groklaw's take on this

[Anonymous Coward]

And anything Apple does is fine, even if it's the same as what SCO did or MS did or...

Re:groklaw's take on this

[Anonymous Coward]

Groklaw has an interesting take on this, full of conspiracy theories.

See, for example, this comment, where PJ is talking about Monty, and says:

I have come to suspect he's a double agent.
And I believe the beneficiary will be Microsoft.

Wow

Groklaw is turning into the Troofer site for the realm of technology law.

PJ did great work on shining the light of day on SCO, but damn, Groklaw is turning into the professional athlete that played about a decade too long in a futile search for former glory.

Re:groklaw's take on this

[Anonymous Coward]

PJ as a professional athlete? Is pie-eating a sport? Seriously, she's morbidly obese. And she fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down.

Re:groklaw's take on this

[davecb]

Groklaw also broke the story that MS is either one of or the complainant, that Monty is part of their (arguably bogus) open-source initiative, and that some of the legal arguing is explicitly anti-GPL.

As a business, MS has no real reason to complain that Oracle might hurt MySQL. They should be hoping that MySQL is hurt, to the advantage of the MS sql server.

I read it as an effort to distract the EC and get an easy "out" of some of the penalties that MS faces. Plus get back at Scott for all the unkind things he said about Microsoft (;-))

--dave

RMS doesn't care about open source

[harmonise]

By pushing for the right to turn GPL-licensed software into the heart of a proprietary business model, he is squandering an opportunity for advocacy of open source within the European Union.

RMS could not care less about open source. He only cares about free software. There's a difference and he will go to great pains to point out the difference if you engage him using the term "open source." If you are going to respond to him, the least you can do is use the terminology correctly. Otherwise he'll interpret what you say differently than what you probably meant.

Re:RMS doesn't care about open source

[vertinox]

RMS could not care less about open source. He only cares about free software.

Well yeah... What is the use of have access to the source code when the license forbids you to modify it?

That's the different between Open Source Software and Free Open Source Software. I mean Microsoft releases source code to 3rd parties all the time but the strings attached to the code are pretty brutal.

Re:RMS doesn't care about open source

[ceoyoyo]

Correction, RMS hates what he thinks of as open source almost as much as he hates proprietary software.

To me, open source software (OSS) seems like a clear superset of "free" software (FS). The former can be GPLed, or BSDed, or public domain, or whatever. The latter can only be licensed under the GPL or other RMS-approved-with-extra-freedom-license (TM).

To RMS there isn't a whole lot of difference between OSS and proprietary. Neither one is "free."

Re:RMS doesn't care about open source

[aztracker1]

MS-PL is pretty nice though... But most of their "Shared Source" is far from MS-PL.

Re:RMS doesn't care about open source

[Draek]

Wrong. The BSD license and its ilk *are* Free Software licenses, they're just not "copyleft" which is a desirable but not vital quality as far as RMS is concerned. The ones that are OSS-but-not-Free are those like the license of Pine which disallows redistribution of modified works, or some of Microsoft's Shared Source licenses which disallow commercial redistribution at all.

If you wish, you can educate yourself further here, and the FSF's definition of Free Software here.

Re:RMS doesn't care about open source

[ceoyoyo]

First off, I didn't say the BSD license was not "free." Read my post again. I'll admit there was a very weak implication there, but not a statement of fact. Certainly one one justifying your condescending post. Secondly, perhaps YOU should educate yourself: the original BSD license is not considered "free" (by the FSF) because it is incompatible with the GPL. The revised license is more or less acceptable to RMS:

"In the GNU project, we use copyleft to protect these freedoms legally for everyone. But non-copylefted free software also exists. We believe there are important reasons why it is better to use copyleft, but if your program is non-copylefted free software, it is still basically ethical." http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

So yeah, if you use the revised BSD license you're "still basically ethical."

Re:RMS doesn't care about open source

[DragonWriter]

The BSD license and its ilk *are* Free Software licenses, they're just not "copyleft" which is a desirable but not vital quality as far as RMS is concerned. The ones that are OSS-but-not-Free are those like the license of Pine which disallows redistribution of modified works, or some of Microsoft's Shared Source licenses which disallow commercial redistribution at all.

Those licenses are, in addition to not being "Free Software" as defined by Free Software advocates, also aren't "Open Source Software" as defined by "Open Source Software" advocates.

There is very little difference between what the Free Software community considers "Free Software" and what the Open Source Software community considers Open Source Software.

The clash between the two concepts exists primarily in what certain extreme partisans in the Free Software community calls "Open Source".

While the "Open Source" movement as such pretty explicitly adopted the label to avoid the confusion of "Free Software" with (gratis) free software, a term which certainly predates the Free Software movement, yoyu don't find many Open Source advocates pretending that the Free Software movement is about (gratis) free software, whereas you do find plenty of Free Software advocates pretending that the Open Source movement wants something that some software vendors have labelled "open source" (just making the source available under restrictive licensing terms), but which is inconsistent with the actual goals articulated by the movement.

Re:RMS doesn't care about open source

[Draek]

The original BSD license is listed under "GPL-Incompatible Free Software Licenses", while the revised one is under "GPL-Compatible Free Software Licenses" alongside RMS's own GPL so yes, both are considered Free Software licenses by the FSF.

And I can't see why it'd be wrong for RMS to claim the modified BSD license is ethical, unless you wish to imply he implies its an ethically-inferior choice compared to the GPL which as my link above proves its not the case. Stallman has said many times that the copyleft requirements of the GPL are due to practical concerns, rather than ethical ones.

Re:RMS doesn't care about open source

[Sycraft-fu]

People also have to remember that there are different kinds of freedom and they often clash. The GPL isn't the One True Free License(tm). The GPL is in fact restrictive in ways others are free. The GPL provides the maximum freedom for the original author of the code. It ensures that anyone who takes his code, modify it, and distributes the modified application has to make the code available. As such the original author has access to all those modifications. He can also dual license the code, if he wishes. However it comes at the expense of user freedom. If you want to use GPL code, you have to make your code GPL. Can't do it otherwise. You are free to use it, but only in a given way.

The BSD license has less freedom for the coder, but more for the users. Users can do what they want, more or less, with BSD code. You are free to use it in non-open projects, or projects with a different license. Only real thing you have to do is note and acknowledge the copyright of the original author. What you do with it form there is your business.

Even more free than that would be public domain. Here the author gives up ALL control over the code. It is given to the public to do with as they please.

It does get a little tiring to see people go on about how the GPL is the only "free" out there. No, it is one idea of freedom. Other people have different ideas.

Re:RMS doesn't care about open source

[firewrought]

What is the use of have access to the source code when the license forbids you to modify it?

That's the different between Open Source Software and Free Open Source Software.

Wrong. All open source software is modifiable.

The terms free software and open source are synonymous from the developer standpoint. While they originated from slightly separate cultural vantage points and carry nuances that matter to some pedantic speakers (such as RMS), they are essentially two different names for the same thing. (Unlike Microsoft's "shared source", which, as you indicate, is pretty worthless because of the restrictions.)

Re:So what

[Anonymous Coward]

what's the point of saying something i.e. "Let's not pretend that GPL software is any different" that's obviously false?

Re:So what

[Anonymous Coward]

To call Stallman a kook and crackpot would be overly flattering. He isn't concerned with "freedom", he is only interested in pushing a personal agenda. That's what the GPL is really all about. If you truly believe in software freedom then you absolutely reject the entire notion of software licensing.

Have you ever bought a book? Furniture? Clothing? A toaster, microwave or television? Did you have to agree to a license before you could use any of these items? NO. If you want software freedom, then there is only one license -- no license at all. Here's the software, you are free do do what you want.

The makers of proprietary software force you to agree to a massive, complicated license before you can use their products because they want to control and restrict what you can do. Let's not pretend that GPL software is any different.

Ah yes, the WTFPL.

Re:So what

[Microlith]

Your trollish demeanor aside, the GPL is nothing like a standard EULA.

In fact, using GPL software is much like reading a book. The issues of copyright never come into play until you get it in your head that you wish to redistribute the work in question. Copyright says "no you can't, go talk to the copyright holder" while the GPL says "yes, under these terms. If you don't like them, Copyright says no you can't, go talk to the copyright holder."

Whereas proprietary software requires you read and accept a license before using it. Completely unlike a book.

Hopefully you will understand Stallman and the GPL better now, or I will have to apologize for feeding a troll.

You're confused.

[XanC]

The GPL is not an EULA. In your book example, you can buy, read, resell, etc, the book in question. Exactly what you can do with any software, barring (possibly) an EULA.

You can certainly do all that with GPL software without ever reading or agreeing to the GPL. Agreement is not required for use.

Other actions, such as making and distributing copies, are restricted by copyright law, and apply to books as well as software regardless of license. The GPL happens to be a license which allows copying and redistribution, actions which are otherwise forbidden by copyright. You only must agree to GPL when you take action that bumps against copyright law.

Re:So what

[benjamindees]

You are conflating a "usage" license with a "distribution" license. I agree that the former is completely inane. But the latter is a necessary extension of the concept of copyright, and the basis of the GPLv2.

Re:So what

[Abcd1234]

While I agree that RMS is an ideologue of the worst kind, you're completely off base here:

Have you ever bought a book? Furniture? Clothing? A toaster, microwave or television? Did you have to agree to a license before you could use any of these items?

No. But guess what? The GPL doesn't require that, either.

The GPL, like all copyright licenses, is a *redistribution* license. ie, when you *redistribute* the software, at *that* point you are bound by the terms of the GPL, as it is under those terms that you are granted the right to redistribution.

What you're talking about is a EULA, and I don't believe it's clear that those are even enforceable (and whether or not they are almost certainly depends on the state/province/country you live in). And certainly EULAs have absolutely no grounding in copyright law (which, as I say, is concerned with redistribution).

Re:So what

[Knuckles]

Did you have to agree to a license before you could use any of these items? NO.

Are you serious? Maybe you should read the GPL before passing public judgment on it.

Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program).

      -- GPLv2

Here's what Stallman, et al, said

[harlows_monkeys]

The letter from Stallman and the others discussed two ways in which forking MySQL would be hard. One was because it is under GPLv2 without the "or later" option, so cannot mix with GPLv3 code. That a pretty irrelevant point, though, because the problem lies entirely with GPLv3's lack of compatibility wity other free licenses, such as GPLv2.

The other problem the letter mentions, though, has nothing to do with GPLv3 vs GPLv2. Here is how they describe the problem. I'll include the GPLv3 argument for completeness:

Defenders of the Oracle acquisition of its competitor naively say Oracle cannot harm MySQL, because a free version of the software is available to anyone under GNU GPL version 2.0, and if Oracle is not a good host for the GPL version of the code, future development will be taken up by other businesses and individual programmers, who could freely and easily "fork" the GPL'd code into a new platform. This defense fails for the reasons that follow.

MySQL uses the parallel licensing approach to generate revenue to continue the FLOSS development of the software. If Oracle acquired MySQL, it would then be the only entity able to release the code other than under the GPL. Oracle would not be obligated to diligently sell or reasonably price the MySQL commercial licenses. More importantly, Oracle is under no obligation to use the revenues from these licenses to advance MySQL. In making decisions in these matters, Oracle is facing an obvious conflict of interest – the continued development of a powerful, feature rich free alternative to its core product.

As only the original rights holder can sell commercial licenses, no new forked version of the code will have the ability to practice the parallel licensing approach, and will not easily generate the resources to support continued development of the MySQL platform.

The acquisition of MySQL by Oracle will be a major setback to the development of a FLOSS database platform, potentially alienating and dispersing MySQL's core community of developers. It could take several years before another database platform could rival the progress and opportunities now available to MySQL, because it will take time before any of them attract and cultivate a large enough team of developers and achieve a similar customer base.

Yet another way in which Oracle will have the ability to determine the forking of MySQL relates to the evolution of the GNU GPL license. GPL version 2.0 (GPLv2) and GPL version 3.0 (GPLv3) are different licenses and each requires that any modified program carry the same license as the original. There are fundamental and unavoidable legal obstacles to combining code from programs licensed under the different GPL versions. Today MySQL is only available to the public under GPLv2.

Many other FLOSS software projects are expected to move to GPLv3, often automatically due to the common use of the "any later version" clause. Because the current MySQL license lacks that clause, it will remain GPLv2 only and it will not be possible to combine its code with the code of many GPLv3- covered projects in the future. Given that forking of the MySQL code base will be particularly dependent on FLOSS community contributions - more so than on in-company development - the lack of a more flexible license for MySQL will present considerable barriers to a new forked development path for MySQL.

I'm assuming that hell has frozen over, because the first argument is that forking won't work because the GPL does not let the forker use the dual licensing model to make money, and that letter is signed by Stallman.

Re:Here's what Stallman, et al, said

[howlingmadhowie]

One was because it is under GPLv2 without the "or later" option, so cannot mix with GPLv3 code. That a pretty irrelevant point, though, because the problem lies entirely with GPLv3's lack of compatibility wity other free licenses, such as GPLv2.

in what way does that make the point irrelevant? the problem still exists. just because you see a way of apportioning blame does not make the problem go away.

Re:Here's what Stallman, et al, said

[harlows_monkeys]

It's irrelevant because the same objection could be raised for any pair of incompatible license. E.g., if MySQL were under GPLv3, you could object that a fork could not bring code that is GPLv2-only. There is a plenty of free software under GPLv2, and other free non-GPL licenses, that can be used with a forked MySQL.

In fact, most, if not all, significant open source databases are under licenses that, if compatible with GPLv3, are also compatible with GPLv2, and these are the most likely outside places code would come into a MySQL from.

Re:Here's what Stallman, et al, said

[petrus4]

The acquisition of MySQL by Oracle will be a major setback to the development of a FLOSS database platform, potentially alienating and dispersing MySQL's core community of developers. It could take several years before another database platform could rival the progress and opportunities now available to MySQL, because it will take time before any of them attract and cultivate a large enough team of developers and achieve a similar customer base.

I will link to PostgreSQL again, here, and probably again get modded down to -1 Redundant or Overrated, by GPL fanatics who don't want anyone to know that Postgres exists, because of the fact that it uses the BSD license.

Of course, given the way I've written the above, they will probably try and perhaps use that as an excuse to appear more legitimate, by down-modding this to -1 Troll or Flamebait, instead.

Re:Here's what Stallman, et al, said

[dkgasaway]

I'm assuming that hell has frozen over, because the first argument is that forking won't work because the GPL does not let the forker use the dual licensing model to make money

It's *copyright* that prevents the forker from using dual licensing, not the GPL. Where does Stallman blame the GPL for that?

Re:Here's what Stallman, et al, said

[hrimhari]

It seems legally unsound to me to take a product licensed under GPL2 and be able to mix it with any less permissive license without being the original copyright owner.

My understanding from the letter is that the GPL'd MySql is a great actor in the free software arena, but it gets so far thanks to its dual licensing.

From there, it says that forks would be much less successful because they would have dual licensing denied since GPL2 would not allow it and they wouldn't be the original copyright owners.

It's probably an exageration to get the attention of the EU Commission, but it seems rather obvious that Oracle acquiring MySql would not be good to users, less to free software, which justifies having Mr. Stallman's signature in that letter.

That's probably why the dual license itself is irrelevant to Mr. Stallman in this particular case -- while not irrelevant at all to the letter's argument -- and I find Mr. krow to be stretching the letter's purpose to a great extent to affirm that Mr. Stallman is defending dual licensing per se. It's a call to arms to save MySql, not dual licensing.

Dual Licensing is a good business model

[Bruce Perens]

Some of us would like to be able to support our development of Free Software directly through the software. Many of us support ourselves in other ways and don't care about this. But for those who want to get the support from the software, dual-licensing is a good way to do it.

It satisfies the folks who don't like the GPL, because it gives them a different set of rights in exchange for some cash. Both the contributions by other developers who follow the GPL and cash are ways of providing a quid-pro-quo for the original developer.

What it doesn't satisfy is the folks who want a free ride instead of Free Software, because you have to pay for a commercial license. And IMO that strikes a good balance.

Even RMS sees this. I think Brian's accusing him of being too moderate. :-)

Bruce

Re:Dual Licensing is a good business model

[DragonWriter]

What it doesn't satisfy is the folks who want a free ride instead of Free Software, because you have to pay for a commercial license.

Dual licensing under the GPL also doesn't satisfy the folks who want to maximize the primary benefit to software users of F/OSS: the guarantee that no matter what the copyright owner, original vendor, or any other single market actor does, maintenance and further development to meet the users evolving need will be viable for either the user's organization itself or third parties.

Re:Dual Licensing is a good business model

[Bruce Perens]

Yes. And this applies entirely to the MySQL server, and a TCP/IP client of that server is not a derivative work. So, I think that Monty's confused about the GPL and the MySQL server. Now, he could have a valid point regarding some MySQL client libraries, but IMO they are very easily replaced and appropriately-licensed replacements already exist.

Re:Dual Licensing is a good business model

[krow]

Hi Bruce!

Please note that I say nothing about the effectiveness of dual licensing as a business model. Pay-day loans exist as a business model, but I do not find that they are healthy for the communities that they exist in.

Richard is choosing to ignore the overall health of community interaction in order to favor a business model that is in direct conflict with "free software". This is what I find to be sad in his actions.

The fact that he is squandering his opportunity to further the cause of free/open source is shameful.

-Brian

Btw I originally replied to the wrong comment from you , hence this post. The iPhone is not the greatest interface to slashdot :)

Re:Dual Licensing is a good business model

[Chirs]

If the copyright holder chooses to license the software under a different license to a third party, the GPL'd code is still freely available under the terms of the GPL.

If the licensee then makes some modifications, they may choose to keep them proprietary. This only directly impacts those that use the modified version of the code.

The viability of the GPL'd version is in no way impacted by changes to the proprietary version. Everyone still has all the rights that they did before--it's just that the proprietary licencee now has additional rights.

Re:Dual Licensing is a good business model

[Bruce Perens]

Please note that I say nothing about the effectiveness of dual licensing as a business model.

Hi Brian,

You do, you just don't couch it in those terms. Many - certainly not all - of us need a business model to justify the production of Open Source software. Certainly that was the case for MySQL AG while Monty and you worked there. I very strongly doubt that you would have been able to operate the company while paying yourselves without the dual licensing paradigm which you and the company espoused at the time.

So, what you said was:

Dual licensing is anti-open source.

Actually, it isn't anti-Open-Source at all. It's pro-proprietary-software. You're confusing the two. It is also pro-Open-Source in that it effectively funds its development.

I am really scratching my head regarding your moral position here. It's the license model you promoted. You got paid a salary. You produced a work-for-hire and the company had all rights to it. You sold the company, and you got paid again through your stock.

IMO, what you should do is let Sun and Oracle do what they wish with the ownership of MySQL, as the GPL copy will persist forever and you have freedom to continue its development, and your customers can use that server with their proprietary software without a problem. Sun/Oracle can develop or sink their MySQL version as they like, and we don't care because our version lives on. Ignore politics on a mailing list, everybody has a right to carry it out and you can have another, moderated, list if you don't like it.

And please stop promoting the FUD that the GPL and Sun's rights block you and are somehow unfair to your business. It doesn't, and isn't, and you've been compensated so far beyond the merely "fair" that your protests sound inappropriate.

Bruce

Re:So what

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiot. GPL software restrictions are on redistribution, not usage. That's a massive different to the license shit you mentioned.

Things don't work the way you think

[Bruce Perens]

Did you have to agree to a license before you could use any of these items? NO.

Things don't work the way you think. The book you bought had a license, you simply did not have to agree to it. You're bound to it anyway.

Re:Things don't work the way you think

[aztracker1]

You don't buy a license for a book, you buy a physical copy of a book's content. Copyright law says you can't make copies of a protected work and distribute them.

Re:Things don't work the way you think

[Bruce Perens]

Although copyright is the most significant law providing protection of the book's content, it is not the only one. There is an implicit license in the publication of a book and the lawful offer of that book for sale. Without it, you'd have no right to either purchase or read the book, and could, for example, be prosecuted under trade secret law.

Re:Things don't work the way you think

[schon]

Bruce, normally I find you enlightening, but could you provide a link that backs up that statement? Because it seems pretty counterintuitive that a there is any sort of "license" involved in the sale of books.

Re:Things don't work the way you think

[Anonymous Coward]

Mr. Perens, as far as I know, you are not a licensed lawyer in any jurisdiction, therefore I strongly doubt the validity of your bold and sweeping assertions. Do you have any black-letter law references whatsoever to back them up?

Re:Things don't work the way you think

[Bruce Perens]

What I have is mostly legal theory. Appropriation of an unpublished manuscript would be prosecuted under the Uniform Trade Secrets Act in most states. You can look that up. Publication and lawful sale provide you an implicit license to no longer consider that material as a secret. If you divulge the ending of Harry Potter 8 before it's published, expect to be sued, even though you bought the book and a copyright applies to it, and you never signed an NDA.

Re:Things don't work the way you think

[Thinboy00]

I think he's just saying that there's an implicit understanding between you and the copyright holder (or whomever) that they are willfully distributing the work to you (i.e. you didn't acquire it via underhanded tactics, which might bring trade secret law into the equation).

IANAL.

Re:Things don't work the way you think

[Anonymous Coward]

That's utter nonsense! As soon as an author publishes his manuscript, or reveals it to the public, such as by holding a public reading, it is no longer a secret, BY DEFINITION! It has absolutely nothing to do with "an implicit license to no longer consider that material a secret". You are talking total rubbish, Bruce.

Re:Things don't work the way you think

[Chuck Chunder]

I don't think your argument holds.

If the book is generally available then it clearly isn't a trade secret and I wouldn't need a licence, implied or otherwise, to be protected from being (successfully) prosecuted under trade secret law.

Re:Things don't work the way you think

[Bruce Perens]

Well, the microwave oven or the TV would be a better example, because they contain software. SONY TVs come with the license for busybox at the back of the instruction manual.

Re:Things don't work the way you think

[Chuck Chunder]

SONY TVs come with the license for busybox at the back of the instruction manual.

Of, course, Sony are distributing GPLd software and would have no right to do so if they didn't obey the GPL and include that licence.

I don't think that necessarily means anything for the user though, the licence is there because Sony must include it, not because the user requires it to use the TV.

Re:Things don't work the way you think

[Bruce Perens]

Well, what happens when the user wants to sell the TV? Or even give it away? Under the GPL, the user is supposed to provide the source code, or the right to receive it for a perioud of 3 years. In practice, the user doesn't know what source code is. IMO in this sort of situation the manufacturer must covenant to all users, dealers, etc., to provide the source-code distribution service for them. Note that on SONY's site, that's just what they call it: "Source code distribution service".

Re:Things don't work the way you think

[schon]

What I have is mostly legal theory.

According to whom?

Appropriation of an unpublished manuscript would be prosecuted under the Uniform Trade Secrets Act in most states.

Trade secrets have absolutely nothing to do with either copyright or licensing of copyright.

Publication and lawful sale provide you an implicit license to no longer consider that material as a secret.

There is no "license", implied or otherwise, that something is "secret".

If you divulge the ending of Harry Potter 8 before it's published, expect to be sued, even though you bought the book and a copyright applies to it, and you never signed an NDA.

As many people here are fond of pointing out, anyone can sue anyone else for anything. Whether I would win in your (quite incomplete) example would depend on how I found out the ending. There would *still* be no "license" involved, and the copyright status of the work would be irrelevant.

Seriously, I think you're way off base here.

Re:Things don't work the way you think

[Chuck Chunder]

Well, what happens when the user wants to sell the TV? Or even give it away?

A question that's probably much easier to ask than answer definitively.

Reasonably you might expect the reseller to have to include or extend the GPL licence to the buyer.

However it's possible the first sale doctrine might poke it's nose in and give the owner of that particular copy the right to dispose of it without requiring the authority of the copyright holder (and therefore without needing a licence from them).

I imagine there could be a lot of argument about that though.

Re:Things don't work the way you think

[Bruce Perens]

This is, I think, on its way to the 9th circuit appeals court due to Vernor v. Autodesk. Given that it doesn't apply to the right to create derivative works, I don't expect it to be a problem for Free Software licenses.

Re:Things don't work the way you think

[Anonymous Coward]

'Appropriation of an unpublished manuscript' is clearly different to purchasing a book which is 'generally available'.

Re:So what

[gdshaw]

The makers of proprietary software force you to agree to a massive, complicated license before you can use their products because they want to control and restrict what you can do. Let's not pretend that GPL software is any different.

Er, have you actually read the GPL? From section 9 (GPLv3):

"You are not required to accept this License in order to receive or run a copy of the Program."

Re:So what

[wastedlife]

Erm, the GPL is a distribution license. You are free to run, modify, print and use as toilet paper, or do whatever as long as you do not distribute. If you wish to distribute the code, you need to follow the license and include your changes with it. I think even the biggest FLOSS zealots understand this. Why can't you?

As for this:

Have you ever bought a book? Furniture? Clothing? A toaster, microwave or television? Did you have to agree to a license before you could use any of these items? NO.

You don't have to with GPL code either. If you were to copy the book, or make knock-off furniture or clothing and then sold or distributed, you could likely be sued for it. If you sell or distribute GPL code, you just have to follow the license.

read between the lines

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't read here that Stallman advocates dual licensing. He is merely stating the historical situation of the mysql licensing model. Acutally, you can read between the lines of his letter to EU. His argument is that the dual license of mysql is going to kill mysql development. He says that only Oracle can hold a commercial license for mysql, and due to Oracle's conflct of interest, mysql will languish.

So, between the lines, I see a warning from Stallman to those who use dual licensing. You may get the benefit from developers contributing for free to the product, but in the end, you will be screwed if someone with big bucks becomes the one and only holder of commerical license.

Re:So what

[Anonymous Coward]

RMS is an ideologue of the best kind

Fixed that for you.

Re:So what

[vertinox]

To call Stallman a kook and crackpot would be overly flattering. He isn't concerned with "freedom", he is only interested in pushing a personal agenda.

Huh? By that definition the same thing could be said about Thomas Jefferson, Karl Marx, or any person involved in politics that was considered "radical" where they really don't even believe in their own ideas.

I mean seriously... Say what you will about RMS ideas and disagree with them if you don't like them, but to say he only does the FSF and GPL for the ladies and money is retarded at best.

I mean if he's got an agenda what is is for? To get attention from forum nerds? The lulz?

Re:So what

[dedazo]

The GPL places restrictions on distribution of derivatives of the work. It does not restrict in any way shape or form what users can do with the software, or even derivative works, so long as those never leave their hard drives.

Further, FOSS licenses grant you ownership rights over the work.

Proprietary software licenses on the other hand (I assume you're talking about EULAs and such) place restrictions on usage and distribution, and they only grant you licensee (not ownership) rights, which can be revoked at any point for any reason by the company you're getting the software from.

I might not be a big fan of Stallman and his philosophies, but if you're going to make a point like this about him, at least get the basic legalese right.

WTFPL

[Mathinker]

> If you want software freedom, then there is only one license -- no license at all.

Nope. You could license under the WTFPL, which is a recognized Open Source license, fully compatible with the GPL.

> Let's not pretend that GPL software is any different.

It is. There are absolutely no conditions imposed in order to use GPL licensed software, as long as you don't distribute it in any way. However, as you correctly point out, the average proprietary software's EULA has gobs of conditions which you have to fulfill to be allowed to even use the software as it was meant to be used. Probably one of the reasons why no one is actually sure if EULAs are enforceable.

Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[Bruce Perens]

I met with Monty a few months ago and could not convince him that he could carry out his business although the MySQL server was under the GPL. He appears to be locked into some GPL FUD that MySQL got from a lawyer in service of selling the commercial license even though - IMO - you've never needed one to run the server, just a few of the client libraries.

So, Monty is now attempting to rebel against the GPL unnecessarily because of this false conclusion.

Or perhaps his real strategy is to kill the Sun/Oracle MySQL business, leaving him and his company in an advantageous position.

What makes this doubly strange is that Monty has been paid. Something around USD $100 Million for about 10 years work - a pretty good rate, IMO. Whatever he put into MySQL, he got compensated for. And thus I don't see that he has much moral standing on this issue.

Bruce

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[krow]

Hi Bruce!

Please note that I say nothing about the effectiveness of dual licensing as a business model. Pay-day loans exist as a business model, but I do not find that they are healthy for the communities that they exist in.

Richard is choosing to ignore the overall health of community interaction in order to favor a business model that is in direct conflict with "free software". This is what I find to be sad in his actions.

The fact that he is squandering his opportunity to further the cause of free/open source is shameful.

-Brian

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[ComputerSlicer23]

I've read both the links, and it sure seems like both you and RMS came to exactly the same conclusions. You appear to be disagreeing on the justification of that if I understand it correctly. I'm not trolling, I'm honestly confused, and think that understanding would be enlightening. You appear to be saying: "Oracle should not be allowed to own MySQL" (or at the very least, it's bad for Free Software/Open Source for that to happen). From the open letter RMS signed:

Defenders of the Oracle acquisition of its competitor naively say Oracle cannot harm MySQL, because a free version of the software is available to anyone under GNU GPL version 2.0, and if Oracle is not a good host for the GPL version of the code, future development will be taken up by other businesses and individual programmers, who could freely and easily "fork" the GPL'd code into a new platform. This defense fails for the reasons that follow. MySQL uses the parallel licensing approach to generate revenue to continue the FLOSS development of the software. If Oracle acquired MySQL, it would then be the only entity able to release the code other than under the GPL. Oracle would not be obligated to diligently sell or reasonably price the MySQL commercial licenses. More importantly, Oracle is under no obligation to use the revenues from these licenses to advance MySQL. In making decisions in these matters, Oracle is facing an obvious conflict of interest – the continued development of a powerful, feature rich free alternative to its core product. ...

I think RMS is over the top, but generally follows his principle to a fault. So the assertion that he's failing the Free Software Principles strikes me as odd. You've got plenty of credibility as a major MySQL (and derivatives) developer. If I keep getting the source code, I'm not sure I see the problem. Now that somebody who isn't Free Software friendly owns the copyright seems like a crying shame (in order to upgrade to GPLv3 will take a total re-write). The fact that only Oracle will be able to sell a commercial license doesn't seem like a bad thing for Free Software. It seems like a really bad thing for all the folks that wanted to buy a commercial license to avoid being a part of the free software community. Again, I'm just trying to understand your perspective. I think you have a salient point, but I'm not able to see what the significant difference in yours and RMS's opinion is. From what I can tell, you both clearly agree on the outcome, just not the justification. I think if you can clarify this it would be enlightening to me personally, and many others.

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[krow]

Oops, wrong comment to post on.

Btw I assume you are referring to the non-sense that gpl follows protocol. Notice that with drizzle we have bsd drivers, and that many others drivers exist that are not gpl. The concept that gpl infects via protocol is absurd.

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[Bruce Perens]

Please note that I say nothing about the effectiveness of dual licensing as a business model.

Hi Brian,

You do, you just don't couch it in those terms. Many - certainly not all - of us need a business model to justify the production of Open Source software. Certainly that was the case for MySQL AG while Monty and you worked there. I very strongly doubt that you would have been able to operate the company while paying yourselves without the dual licensing paradigm which you and the company espoused at the time.

So, what you said was:

Dual licensing is anti-open source.

Actually, it isn't anti-Open-Source at all. It's pro-proprietary-software. You're confusing the two. It is also pro-Open-Source in that it effectively funds its development.

I am really scratching my head regarding your moral position here. It's the license model you promoted. You got paid a salary. You produced a work-for-hire and the company had all rights to it. You sold the company, and you got paid again through your stock.

IMO, what you should do is let Sun and Oracle do what they wish with the ownership of MySQL, as the GPL copy will persist forever and you have freedom to continue its development, and your customers can use that server with their proprietary software without a problem. Sun/Oracle can develop or sink their MySQL version as they like, and we don't care because our version lives on. Ignore politics on a mailing list, everybody has a right to carry it out and you can have another, moderated, list if you don't like it.

And please stop promoting the FUD that the GPL and Sun's rights block you and are somehow unfair to your business. It doesn't, and isn't, and you've been compensated so far beyond the merely "fair" that your protests sound inappropriate.

Bruce

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[DragonWriter]

You do, you just don't couch it in those terms. Many - certainly not all - of us need a business model to justify the production of Open Source software. Certainly that was the case for MySQL AG while Monty and you worked there. I very strongly doubt that you would have been able to operate the company while paying yourselves without the dual licensing paradigm which you and the company espoused at the time.

Based on...what? There are certainly companies that do business around F/OSS (and even F/OSS databases) that don't rely on the "we control the copyright and use the GPL so only we can dual license" MySQL model. Both the "open source + paid support" and the "open source + enhanced proprietary version" models (and often a mix of both, as, e.g., is done at EnterpriseDB) exist in the market. While MySQL surely did use the particular model it used, I can't see any evidence from which one can conclude that that is the only model they could have used.

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[Bruce Perens]

Although many small companies claim to have made money from an Open Source based business, there is no evidence that they actually have because they haven't published their financial information. We have actual evidence that only two companies have made money from an Open Source based business, MySQL, and Red Hat. Thus, MySQL accounts for 50% of the profitable companies that we have proof for.

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[sco08y]

Pay-day loans exist as a business model, but I do not find that they are healthy for the communities that they exist in.

Actually they're far less worse for those communities than the alternative: loan sharks and organized crime. Poor people are poor, not stupid.

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[DragonWriter]

Although many small companies claim to have made money from an Open Source based business, there is no evidence that they actually have because they haven't published their financial information.

Published financial information is not the only evidence that a business is making a profit. Simply remaining a going concern for an extended period of time is evidence that the business is making money. OTOH, published financial information is no more than a written claim of facts, which is no different than the claims made by other companies.

If you instead of "published their financial information" you mean "released independently audited financials as is required of public companies and certain others", which no one, profitable or not, that isn't subject to such mandates generally does, well, those are a little bit stronger evidence than bare statements (though there are certainly plenty of examples of audited financials being inaccurate, so arguably the difference between those and simple statements is one of degree rather than kind), but all that really shows is how many open source businesses are subject to audit and disclosure regulations, not how many and which are actually making money.

Even if we were to suggest the "published financials" standard and grant that MySQL and RedHat were the only ones for which there are evidence of profit:
1) The sample size of 2 wouldn't be enough to draw conclusions about what viable models are available,
2) Even if #1 wasn't true, RedHat doesn't use the MySQL-style assignment-and-dual-licensing model for most of its products (as far as I know, it uses the "open source + support" model primarily), so if, as you claim, those two companies were the entire universe of evidence of profitable open source companies that exists, and any generalization was to be drawn from that evidence, the generalization that would have to be drawn is that the MySQL model is not the only viable model, not your conclusion that the MySQL model is the only viable model.

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[Bruce Perens]

Well, given the size of the sample I think MuSQL's experience is extremely relevant. They aren't the only way to make money, just a good one.

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[krow]

Hi!

I am not sure where in histrory you will find that I have ever advocated for dual licence, since it is well known that I do not for work which I personally do (aka if you check you will find that I lean toward BSD).

Also, I believe people are free to do whatever they like with what they produce. No company doing original work should feel that they have to open source it.

What I object to is Richard's comments which I find counter to the notion at what is at the center of notion of the gpl. I seem to remember the fsf suggesting once that developers assign copyright to them to block dual license strategies. Richard's current statement seems at odds with this.

You are welcome to do whatever you like with whatever you write Bruce, but I wouldn't suggest that other developers contribute their work to you, just so that you can change the license and make a buck off them.

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[Bruce Perens]

I do not for work which I personally do (aka if you check you will find that I lean toward BSD).

Also, I believe people are free to do whatever they like with what they produce.

Oh come on. You were a company representative for how many years? You promoted MySQL to a great many different communities under the license scheme it had at the time.

And you're being self-contradictory. If people are free to do whatever they like with what they produce, why isn't the Oracle-Sun partnership free to do what they want with the copyrights that Sun bought?

What I object to is Richard's comments which I find counter to the notion at what is at the center of notion of the gpl.

I seem to remember the fsf suggesting once that developers assign copyright to them to block dual license strategies.

Richard would have much rather that Monty had donated the copyright to FSF 10 years ago. He didn't. He chose to make himself somewhere in excess of 100 Million dollars on the software through selling a dual-licensing company, and now he, through you, is complaining that he shouldn't have been allowed to do that.

Well, if Monty really thinks so he should get together some other investors and purchase the copyright.

You are welcome to do whatever you like with whatever you write Bruce, but I wouldn't suggest that other developers contribute their work to you, just so that you can change the license and make a buck off them.

Don't you realize how hypocritical this sounds? You made USD$1.1 Billion off of them!!!

Then, you sold the company, fairly, and Monty took a king's ransom in profit, and no doubt Brian took home some cash too.

I can't see that you have the slightest ethical stance to complain.

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[petrus4]

I am not sure where in histrory you will find that I have ever advocated for dual licence, since it is well known that I do not for work which I personally do (aka if you check you will find that I lean toward BSD).

If MySQL itself had used the BSD license, this particular conflict (as with so many, many others) would not be happening.

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Any comments about this? http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&sid=20091021164738392&title=Whois%3A++Monty+Widenius&type=article&order=&hideanonymous=0&pid=795299#c795327

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[Bruce Perens]

Because they wouldn't have survived very long. And none of us would be using MySQL. Don't you think that's self-defeating?

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[krow]

Hi!

So I will repeat myself one more time, you are free to do what you want with what you write.

I said nothing about what Oracle or Sun should do. I have pointed out that the dual license model is a viable business model.

What I have said is Richard has squandered an opportunity to address larger questions that exist for free/open source to support a model that is contrary to the promotion of additional open source software.

I see that you are trying to make some point, but I believe you are doing it at the expense of reading what I am writing.

Can I suggest you clearly write out the point you are trying to make? Giving you the benefit of doubt, I assume you have some other point you want to make beyond "the dual source model can make you money".

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[krow]

That was never my decision, though I have advocated it.

It is hard to say what the right solution is. I find it sad to see how in some bsd projects few of the vendors who make use of the software participate in improving the base software. On the same token having a monopoly on source changes seems to also stifle innovation.

I believe we have yet to achieve the propper balance that will eventually be required.

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[petrus4]

Because they wouldn't have survived very long. And none of us would be using MySQL. Don't you think that's self-defeating?

When you say survived very long; do you mean in economic terms, Bruce?

There are a number of large organisations of various kinds using PostgreSQL. They also had a new version released earlier this month, too...so apparently finding the resources to continue its' development isn't a problem for them.

Although I'm aware that it generally isn't considered socially acceptable to discuss this in Linux-related circles, it is actually possible to make money using BSD licensed software, you know. It seems to be working fairly well for Apple. ;)

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[MichaelSmith]

AdaCore is another. Their business model does include dual licensing but for me, their support services are of more value.

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[petrus4]

It is hard to say what the right solution is. I find it sad to see how in some bsd projects few of the vendors who make use of the software participate in improving the base software.

Some do, some don't. I've never been able to understand why allowing the choice is a problem. It is not true that none will contribute; we've already seen that.

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[krow]

I agree with you that it should be based on choice rather the be forced. What I am most interested in is providing solid reasons why it is in a companies best interest to contribute.

I would rather offer a carrot, and just skip the stick.

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[petrus4]

I agree with you that it should be based on choice rather the be forced. What I am most interested in is providing solid reasons why it is in a companies best interest to contribute.

Company X does their own bug fixing at times, presumably; if said bugs are being fixed in what they've released under the BSD license, they make a patch public as well. It doesn't need to be any greater work for them, and it earns them PR points, as well as potentially fixing problems that someone else is having as well, hence making themselves look like just another group of developers, rather than the proverbial evil, faceless corporation.

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[Bruce Perens]

It is difficult for people to face their own amorality. The point is there, you simply refuse to see it.

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

What about Trolltech?

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[Bruce Perens]

You know that anyone in a closet can make a new release, with or without money.

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[petrus4]

Does that mean that you're saying that Postgres is completely irrelevant, then?

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[Bruce Perens]

Well, I could say it's no more irrelevant than Debian. Sort of important, but not 10% as big as it might have been in other circumstances.

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[wrook]

This is a bit disingenuous. Small companies don't publish financial information because they usually aren't public. They don't have to do it, and there is no real reason to do it.

I don't know if you were thinking about Cygnus software in your examples since it was bought by Red Hat. However, I believe it is a much better example of how to make money with open source. Michael Tiemann's explanation of how they started the company on a few thousand dollars and built it without the use of dual licensing is instructive (I realize they eventually opted for dual licensing after they received VC, but I understand that was at the insistence of the VC company. After being bought out by Red Hat they immediately reverted back to single licensing). If anyone is interested they can read the description in his contribution to the book Open Sources: http://oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/tiemans.html

I am personally aware of many companies that offer services on Open Source software without dual licensing. Many of these are individual people selling customized installations to large organizations like governments. They often operate similarly to consultants. While I can't guarantee that they all make a profit, the ones I know certainly don't look like they are starving to death.

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh Bruce, if you were to make this claim about businesses in general (that only public companies proove profitability) it would seem pretty absurd. The sheer volume of activity in the market shows viability of the business model or that activity would disappear.

Speaking as CEO of a dual-license LGPL/commercial company, we're profitable, we're far more stable than any venture funded startup, but going public is a distant and not particularly enticing goal. It's difficult to explain to an underwriter that your business has many different ways of making money that can't all fail at once - they prefer to see a single, well defended profit source.

So business can be good, yet few companies are public.

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[Bruce Perens]

I interviewed at Cygnus reasonably early in the company's existence. Most of my interaction was with John Gilmore. John was a very rich man from his stock proceeds as the 4th employee of Sun Microsystems. For most of their existence he has been the main financial source behind EFF and FSF.

So, I am not sure how long Cygnus ran on "a few thousand dollars". Also, we had no proof that they were profitable, either, when picked up by Red Hat.

Yes, a private company has little incentive to publish its financials. But the corollary of this is that most of them are lying about their financial status, all of the time.

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[jjohn_h]

>>>
IMO, what you should do is let Sun and Oracle do what they wish with the ownership of MySQL, as the GPL copy will persist forever and you have freedom to continue its development...

That's fine as long it is your personal recommendation to a particular person. It surely cannot be legal or economic advice at public level. All industrialized countries have introduced anti-trust and supervising agencies in the course of the 20th century.

In the case Oracle-Sun DOJ took 5 months to approve the acquisition. Oracle submitted it to the European Commission late July when the DOJ blessing looked imminent. After the traditional August vacation, the EC managed to issue a preliminary opinion early September. They are working at breakneck speed, forget the lament about delays. And in any event Oracle can cut it short. They just need to answer ONE query, which I'll phrase in different forms as follows:

(1) Why did Oracle want to buy mySQL in 2006?
(2) Why was the initial bid by Oracle for Sun restricted to the software bussines?
(3) What do they want to do with it now?

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[Bruce Perens]

Monty Program AG is holding back the EC process with their plea for protection.

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[wrook]

Cygnus published its financials when it was bought by Red Hat. If I remember correctly they were making about 30 million a quarter in revenue. But unfortunately I can't remember if they were turning a profit. Probably the data is still out on the internet, but it's 1am here and I don't feel like looking it up. I do remember watching Red Hat's statements the quarter after acquiring Cygnus and noting that the numbers matched up pretty well (i.e., the consulting side of Red Hat magically pulled in about 30 million)

Tiemann claims in his article that they never had money problems. IIRC he said they pulled in $700K in projects in the first year. Their biggest problem was finding people to do the work. Of course he is trying to make a point in his article. And at the time he was also trying to make his company look good (they were just starting to look for VC). So certainly there could be exaggeration.

Personally, I'm not against dual licensing. But I see it as a potentially limiting move. It's difficult to participate in a dual licensed project since you will probably have to sign over your copyright to have your work included in the main distribution. I remember the author of Ghostscript complaining about the lack of contribution due to this problem.

I would rather companies focus on other business models. Possibly dual licensing is a reasonable stopgap measure, but relying on it for your bread an butter means relying on the "proprietary software" industry. I think this is something we should ideally avoid, if only for the practical reason that success in free software will diminish our revenue source.

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

You are welcome to do whatever you like with whatever you write Bruce, but I wouldn't suggest that other developers contribute their work to you, just so that you can change the license and make a buck off them.

Yeah, 'cause if there's one thing we all know, it's that Bruce Perens makes mad money changing licenses on people and stealing their work. Right.

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[Bruce Perens]

When Ghostscript was dual-licensed, the GPL version was a year-old copy of the commercial version. Nobody does it that way any longer.

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Bruce,

1. Monty started working on MySQL in 1983. So by the time MySQL was sold to Sun he had been working on it for more than 20 years.

2. Three founders cashed out together $100 Million. Monty got exactly one third of it : $33 Million

3. You could ask Monty to get this info when you met him or through email: he was pretty open on this account.

Re:Monty's laboring under a misconclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you realize how hypocritical this sounds? You made USD$1.1 Billion off of them!!!

Then, you sold the company, fairly, and Monty took a king's ransom in profit, and no doubt Brian took home some cash too.

I can't see that you have the slightest ethical stance to complain.

Bruce,

What made you think that Brian had taken home some extra cash? Any facts or any guesses? What if, in the result if this transaction, Brian was just reimbursed for an inadequate compensation for his tenure as a manager at MySQL that had required from him at least 60 hours of work every week?

Of course I can't speak for Brian, but I can speak for myself. When working at MySQL my average salary was approximately 30% lower that the average salary of an engineer of the same qualification at Microsoft (I lived in a suburb of Seattle). Practically no bonuses for 5 years (once they gave me a bonus of $500). Pretty poor benefits. 10-12 hrs long working day.

If you take my income for 5 years and add the cash I received from exercising all my options you'll get slightly more (10-15% more) than an average software developer of level 4 earned in my area for the same period of time. What was my position? What does your imagination prompt you?

I've heard that the founders got $100M. According to my estimate 20 most valuable core engineers from MySQL Server development got less than $3M by cashing out all their options.
Nobody told us where the remaining money had gone. So we could only guess.
Most probably the main bulk of them could be found in the coffers of our investors, in other words, of those people, who, starting from the spring 2006, focused exclusively on how to inflate the price of the company and ruthlessly suppressed any attempts to invest into adding real values to the product.

Taken all this into account could you explain me, please, why Brian, or I, or any other developer from MySQL have to have any moral obligation towards the company that bought MySQL?

Dual Licensing ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but I just really don't get what the problem is either... ?

Re:So what

[Toonol]

You don't agree to the GPL license to use or modify a GPL product. It is only concerned with redistribution, which would be blatantly illegal without the GPL.

Re:So what

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim or modified copies of this license document, and changing it is allowed as long as the name is changed.

That last part is the deal breaker. I was looking for a truly free license, but this still doesn't quite cut it.

Re:So what

[Anonymous Coward]

Another MS fanboi gets schooled. LOL.

No way to prevent dual licensing?

[pmontra]

If I'm the author of a GPLed piece of software I still own the software I wrote so I can decide to make a closed source fork. Did I get it wrong? If I got it right, dual licensing is a pretty normal consequence of my ownership of the code. The only way to prevent it would be to surrender the ownership of the code, but if I don't own it, how can I license it? Without an owner the code would be in the public domain where anybody can take it and use it for closed source projects. So what's the way out? Maybe a license that binds me to use the code only under its terms?

Re:No way to prevent dual licensing?

[selven]

To prevent dual licensing, you can:
1) Give the copyright to someone else
2) Release it into the public domain
3) Release it under the BSD license, so even if you dual license it everyone will simply sue the BSD version

Re:No way to prevent dual licensing?

[Wesley Felter]

If different parts of the code are copyrighted by different contributors (like the Linux kernel) then any particular contributor cannot dual-license.

Re:So what

[RichardJenkins]

You're confusing EULAs with distribution licenses. Consider:

EULA: Microsoft produces Office. Before I can use it I have to agree to certain conditions of use. Copyright law restricts me from re-distributing (or creating new works from) it without permission getting permission from MS.

GPL: Sun produces Java. They give it to me and I can use it without agreeing to any conditions limiting my use of the software*. Copyright law would restrict me from re-distributing (or creating new works from) it, but Sun has already given me permission to do this through the GPL.

Doesn't Stallman claim to want freedom for "recipients" of software to be able to use it and modify it, and not a free-for-all for developers and distributors? If those are his goals, then whether you agree with them or not presumably people who produce and distribute software under the GPL either agree with them, or don't understand the point of the license.

* I'll acknowledge that plenty of software presents a copy of the GPL and asks you to acknowledge it before installing the software. This doesn't change the fact that the GPL does not take any rights away from you, it only grants you certain rights (with regards to redistribution and modification) that you would not have otherwise. In fact the GPL itself says that "You are not required to accept this License in order to receive or run a copy of the Program"

Sorry, not a single statement

[pem]

From http://fsfe.org/projects/gplv3/bangalore-rms-transcript

Audience member: [...] in this new World, and you're talking about GPL going over to the next version, how do you see proprietary software businesses making a profit?

Richard Stallman: That's unethical, they shouldn't be making any money. I hope to see all proprietary software wiped out. That's what I aim for. That would be a World in which our freedom is respected. A proprietary program is a program that is not free. That is to say, a program that does respect the user's essential rights. That's evil. A proprietary program is part of a predatory scheme where people who don't value their freedom are drawn into giving it up in order to gain some kind of practical convenience. And then once they're there, it's harder and harder to get out. Our goal is to rescue people from this.

So, I'm an unethical evil person because I make money writing proprietary software. However, it's a requirement that MySQL be sold to a different big evil corporation that doesn't already have a database offering and that can make money off it, else they might not support it.

Sorry, my brain isn't big enough to hold the cognitive dissonance that is Stallman -- he gives me a headache.

Re:Sorry, not a single statement

[Korin43]

If I understand him right, it seems that RMS doesn't have a problem with companies selling their software, he has a problem with companies that sell software and refuse to tell people how it works. Or maybe I'm just giving him too much credit.

Re:Sorry, not a single statement

[Anonymous Coward]

Proprietary != commercial, especially in Stallman's head. He was asked, specifically, about proprietary software, and yes he believes it's unethical. In the same way that a vegetarian might deem a butcher unethical. This is by no means the same thing as a statement that no software developers should make money at it.

Re:Sorry, not a single statement

[Anonymous Coward]

But if proprietary is unethical, then making money with a proprietary license is unethical.

Re:Sorry, not a single statement

[drinkypoo]

So, I'm an unethical evil person because I make money writing proprietary software.

He didn't say that, although you could infer it. He said the software was evil. He also talks about Freedom for software, so clearly there's an element of anthropomorphism going on here. Information wants to be free!

Sorry, my brain isn't big enough to hold the cognitive dissonance that is Stallman -- he gives me a headache.

Mission accomplished.

Re:Sorry, not a single statement

[10101001 10101001]

It's the seeming paradox of the free market at work. To prevent fraud and allow competition, companies have to be transparent. This is required because without adequate information, deception can easily occur. Fraudsters want a black box to hide their deception. Non-fraudsters want a black box to effectively lock out competitors, giving them a monopolistic position. The GPL is an anti-black box, by allowing people to understand how the software works to know whether it's worth the money spent. If copyright were to be dissolved, this black box phenomenon would likely get worse. Regulation would invariably be necessary, just as more regulation is necessary in the financial markets.

Btw, this would be the seeming paradox. People treat the free market and Laissez-faire as the same. Yet, clearly, laissez-faire is what creates the black boxes that break the free market model; ie, the two ideas aren't truly compatible. The free market model presumes that people are rational; ie, they won't gamble their money or take risky ventures, like relying upon black box or overly complex models they don't understand. Since people clearly aren't rational on that standard, regulation is very much a necessity. The real issue, then, is how to well regulate the regulators from the extremes of under regulation, over regulation, and corruption.

PS - Why, yes, I did watch Frontline last night.

Re:Sorry, not a single statement

[Anonymous Coward]

He has a problem with anything he doesn't like. Which is fine, most of us live our lives that way, he just seems to believe that his preferences form some kind of universal moral imperative. You are definitely giving him too much credit.

Re:Sorry, not a single statement

[pem]

If I understand him right, it seems that RMS doesn't have a problem with companies selling their software, he has a problem with companies that sell software and refuse to tell people how it works. Or maybe I'm just giving him too much credit.

You have to step back and think a little bit harder about this one. What is the purpose of dual licensing? To make money off non-GPL customers to support your GPL activities. Why would anybody buy a non-GPL version of the software if the GPL one is there free for the taking? Why to link with their other non-GPL software, of course, to keep their stuff private.

So according to Stallman, (a) proprietary software is evil and shouldn't make any money, and (b) GPL software development requires the ability to sell non-GPL licenses of the GPL software to evil people who want to use it to speed up their own development of evil proprietary solutions.

There probably is a certain amount of logic there, but any ethicist will tell you that if you believe somebody is doing something evil and unethical with the goods you supply them, you should probably stop. Also, the final outcome of this scenario, enabling the evil proprietary company to bring software to market faster (by not having to write a proprietary equivalent of the embedded GPLed software) doesn't really square with Stallman's stated objective of removing the profit motive from proprietary software, unless he just meant that the programmer who wasn't hired to write the equivalent of the GPLed module is the one who shouldn't profit, but it's fine for the businessmen to profit.

Re:Sorry, not a single statement

[Tacvek]

You are exactly correct. AIUI, as long as he is free to exercise the four freedoms, rms is happy. He sees nothing at all wrong about offering software in a dual-licensing scheme like this. I suspect he feels that in a perfect world nobody would ever choose to use the proprietary license option, but that there is no harm in offering it.

Harm may come if somebody uses the proprietary license to create another proprietary application without a similar dual-licensing system, but that would be the fault of developer of this new application, rather than being the fault of original application/library developer.

Re:Sorry, not a single statement

[pem]

Harm may come if somebody uses the proprietary license to create another proprietary application without a similar dual-licensing system, but that would be the fault of developer of this new application, rather than being the fault of original application/library developer.

Oh, come on! Except in your and RMS's fantasy moral-relativistic framework, that's complete, utter, bullshit.

I have turned down multiple job offers because I felt the companies were immoral, and one of those times I was on unemployment (though not for long).

The only reason for someone to pay to get a non-GPL license is to turn around and sell the software to other customers, embedded in a non-open-source proprietary application. I don't personally feel that proprietary software is evil, but if I did I would certainly not be enabling others to be evil by taking money from them when I knew they were going to commit the heinous act of linking my precious software with their private stuff.

Re:Sorry, not a single statement

[Anonymous Coward]

I love when people twist Stallman's words.

He's saying its unethical for companies to profit on _proprietary_ software. Stallman has said publicly on many occasions that he's not against charging for software. He's also talking about "free" as in free speech.

Re:Sorry, not a single statement

[pem]

Stallman says:

Defenders of the Oracle acquisition of its competitor naively say Oracle cannot harm MySQL, because a free version of the software is available to anyone under GNU GPL version 2.0, and if Oracle is not a good host for the GPL version of the code, future development will be taken up by other businesses and individual programmers, who could freely and easily "fork" the GPL'd code into a new platform. This defense fails for the reasons that follow.

MySQL uses the parallel licensing approach to generate revenue to continue the FLOSS development of the software. If Oracle acquired MySQL, it would then be the only entity able to release the code other than under the GPL. Oracle would not be obligated to diligently sell or reasonably price the MySQL commercial licenses. More importantly, Oracle is under no obligation to use the revenues from these licenses to advance MySQL. In making decisions in these matters, Oracle is facing an obvious conflict of interest - the continued development of a powerful, feature rich free alternative to its core product.

As only the original rights holder can sell commercial licenses, no new forked version of the code will have the ability to practice the parallel licensing approach, and will not easily generate the resources to support continued development of the MySQL platform.

Stallman basically says that community-driven development of MySQL will fail, and that a corporate backer who can sell MySQL under a non-GPL license is required for the continuing viability of MySQL. The only reason that someone would buy MySQL under a non-GPL license is to link it with other proprietary software. So when I wrote:

So, I'm an unethical evil person because I make money writing proprietary software. However, it's a requirement that MySQL be sold to a different big evil corporation that doesn't already have a database offering and that can make money off it, else they might not support it.

there is no question that I was paraphrasing Stallman. Perhaps I was even satirizing Stallman. But I don't think I was twisting his words; just condensing them down to make the true essence of his bullshit more easily visible.

Bruce Perens on crack?

[gr8_phk]

The book you bought had a license, you simply did not have to agree to it. You're bound to it anyway.

WTF? You're bound by copyright law when you buy a book. Nothing more, nothing less. What is this license you speak of? Where do I find it? What makes it binding? How do I violate it?

Re:Bruce Perens on crack?

[Bruce Perens]

Copyright law is the main law that protects books, but not the only law. How can you show that you have a right to posess the book at all, and that you had a right to purchase it? Because it is published. That creates an implicit license. Without it, you could be prosecuted, not under copyright law but under trade secret law.

Re:Bruce Perens on crack?

[schon]

How can you show that you have a right to posess the book at all, and that you had a right to purchase it?

Mu. Last time I checked, people in the free world didn't have to go around worrying about how they would prove they owned their posessions.

Because it is published.

No. Because you had a good faith belief that it's not counterfeit.

That creates an implicit license. Without it, you could be prosecuted, not under copyright law but under trade secret law.

Never before in the history of /. was "[citation needed]" more required than after reading that.

Re:Bruce Perens on crack?

[Anonymous Coward]

Copyright law is the 'license' he speaks of. IANAL a lawyer, so the specific legal term might be otherwise. But his point is valid: When you buy a book, you are bound by copyright law. To answer your questions: You can find those laws where you find any of your country's laws. It is binding because the state makes it so, and will punish you if you violate it. You violate it if you create copies of the book not under copyright law (basically, any copies you create that are not under 'fair use').

Re:Bruce Perens on crack?

[gr8_phk]

How can you show that you have a right to posess the book at all, and that you had a right to purchase it?

Because I am innocent until proven guilty. Because possession of a book is not a crime. I also didn't need to purchase it, someone could have given it to me. In fact I could have stolen it from Walmart and I'd only be guilty of shoplifting, not copyright infringement.

Re:Bruce Perens on crack?

[gpuk]

You ARE bound to a license if you wish to resell or distribute the book though. The GPL is exactly the same. From a previous poster:

From section 9 (GPLv3):

        "You are not required to accept this License in order to receive or run a copy of the Program."

From where I'm sitting, it works the same as a book...

Someone tag this story "religiouswar"

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care about religious wars.

Why should the EU have power to stop the merger?

[metrix007]

I get that since the companies want to do business in Europe, they have to follow the regulations and be approved and such.

However, they are US companies. Not EU companies.

So what can the EU actually do? If the US OK's it, surely the resulting company can be barred from doing business in the EU or whatever..., but even that more than likely would not hold.

I understand the practicalities, but I just wonder what actual power the EU has to stop US companies from joining.

Mod parent up, GP down

[Thinboy00]

Mod parent UP as informative
Mod GP DOWN as worng

Re:Mod parent up, GP down

[RiotingPacifist]

Mod parent as
Mod GP as overrated

Re:Mod parent up, GP down

[Anonymous Coward]

We can think for ourselves, thank you.

open source?

[Jessta]

By pushing for the right to turn GPL-licensed software into the heart of a proprietary business model, he is squandering an opportunity for advocacy of open source within the European Union.

umm...RMS doesn't advocate Open Source. RMS advocates Free Software

Re:So what

[Anonymous Coward]

i think you should need a license to post such blatently wrong uninformed toss on slashdot, but there we go ...

It's a good letter and a good counterpoint

[Klync]

I just posted this Brian Krow's blog, but it's caught in moderation:

I agree with a lot of your perspective here. I somewhat have to given your own contributions to the code ecosystem. But I don't see how this is incompatible with what KEI is arguing. Their letter is about a specific event with a specific company, whereas you are discussing general notions of what is better.

I don't see how RMS et al suffered from a lack of imagination. They are making a very credible case about the likely outcome of what is going to happen here and how that might impact end users, i.e. the general public, i.e. EU citizens. I'm not as close to the issue as you might be, but their case sounds right to me. And I hope the EU takes this into consideration. KEI is arguing that what was once MySQL AB can continue as an entity - whether a subsidiary or independent company - just not fairly under ownership by Oracle.

While their letter doesn't pass judgement on the MySQL project's choice of license, I read their case as a warning for people like you and I who care about software freedom: taking out the "and future versions" clause while offering the code under another licence will inhibit future contributions from the community at large. As others have noted, many were vaguely reluctant to trust MySQL's model from the beginning.

But, that's where the project now is, and that's where the company now is, and the decision to be made isn't about whether this is a cathedral or a bazaar - it's over whether Oracle should own that company and its assets (i.e. code copyright).

To which I would add: KEI's letter says nothing about a copyright holder's right to re-issue code under multiple business licenses, nor about any interpretation of a license's suitability for any business or community organizing model.

Re:So what

[zapakh]

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim or modified copies of this license document, and changing it is allowed as long as the name is changed.

That last part is the deal breaker. I was looking for a truly free license, but this still doesn't quite cut it.

The quoted text does not pertain to works licenced under the WTFPL, but rather restricts what you can do with the license document.

In other words, the WTFPL is so free that works licensed under it are freer than the WTFPL itself!

Free software/open source diffs aids understanding

[jbn-o]

Actually, pointing out why Open Source misses the point of Free Software isn't pedantic or irrelevant, these differences are real and they explain why RMS takes the position you just pointed out.

RMS, as you rightly point out, understands that non-free software which eventually becomes free software is significantly better than non-free software that stays non-free forever because the former leads to eventually respecting our software freedom while the other can lead to our loss of software freedom. The open source movement is interested in a development methodology aimed primarily at businesses, not framing issues in terms of user's software freedom. Open source proponents aren't taught to think in terms of user's software freedom. This too can lead to the loss of software freedom. So whenever someone licenses a non-free program, open source advocates have little reason to object despite how that chips away at our freedom (from the aforementioned essay, "This attitude will reward schemes that take away our freedom, leading to its loss."). Free software activists, on the other hand, lament the disrespect for user's freedom which motivates them to support a project to develop a free replacement so that everyone can do that job whilst retaining their software freedom. Finally, as for the GPL: RMS wrote the GPL with user's freedoms in mind. The reason we enjoy the freedoms you champion at the end of your post is precisely because RMS pays attention to all computer user's software freedom. Had he taken an interest in mere development methodology instead, proprietary derivatives might be far more common than they are.

Divide and conquer

[petrus4]

RMS could not care less about open source. He only cares about free software. There's a difference and he will go to great pains to point out the difference if you engage him using the term "open source." If you are going to respond to him, the least you can do is use the terminology correctly. Otherwise he'll interpret what you say differently than what you probably meant.

That's right. Keep bringing this up. Keep treating it as important. The corporations that you're so paranoid about, love it when you do...because it means that while you're busy arguing about this, you're not providing them with any consistent form of opposition instead.

But then again, what am I saying? If you were one of the people who were actually helping Linux get somewhere, you wouldn't be on Slashdot.

Oops, I forgot to use the term, "GNU/Linux," as well. You'd better remind me not to do that next time, as well. After all, we know how critically important it is.

"Woe to you teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices -- mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law -- justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel."

-- Matthew 23:23,24

A definition of open source

[jonaskoelker]

That's the different between Open Source Software and Free Open Source Software

I don't know what dictionary you're getting your definition of open source from; but I take it you're not using http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd. It says

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.

What's your definition of Open Source?

[jonaskoelker]

See my other post: http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1414861&cid=29842015

From http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd:

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.

Also

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.

I don't think the licenses you talk about are Open Source by what we might want to call the official definition.

Not a modified GPLv2 license

[Chuck Chunder]

The specification of "any later version" isn't part of the GPLv2, it's part of the authors text describing which licence(s) the code is released under.

Re:Free software/open source diffs aids understand

[onefriedrice]

The open source movement is interested in a development methodology aimed primarily at businesses, not framing issues in terms of user's software freedom. Open source proponents aren't taught to think in terms of user's software freedom.

Umm, no. The supposed "Free" software proponents like to try to make this distinction, but unfortunately it's bogus. You think some coder has business in mind as he contributes to Apache projects or zlib/MIT/BSD licensed projects? Haha, right... He has the users of his software in mind (which probably includes himself), and that's not any different than someone who is contributing to GPL software.

If you want to make a distinction, it's that so-called "open source proponents" realize that businesses may also be users, and they don't have a problem with that or forcing users to meet certain obligations with respect to modifications and distribution. That's all. As someone who agrees with the ideals of "copyleft" and the GPL, it might stroke your ego to think that your kind are the only ones who have the user's freedoms in mind ("think of the users!"), but perhaps its good if a little truth helps deflate some of that for you.

This too can lead to the loss of software freedom.

Software licensed under Free licenses such as MIT, zlib, and BSD can become less free no easier than can GPL software. I know this may fly in the face of the dogma you've always thought concerning how the GPL is supposed to be more protective of users' freedoms. In reality, if a company cannot meet the requirements of the GPL, we are no better or worse (in terms of the amount of public code) even if said company finds some BSD-licensed code to build off of and keeps their changes proprietary. Their alternative would be to build everything in-house, and it will still be proprietary anyway. On the other hand, many companies (that are legally able) do contribute their changes back to Apache, MIT, zlib, BSD-licensed projects every day (even if they have no legal obligation), as they do GPL projects. These two facts combined with the realization that code which has been licensed freely cannot then be retracted (there will always be a public fork) should be enough to make obvious to you that the popular assumption that the GPL is legally or morally better for users' freedoms resides on shaky ground.

The GPL is a decent license, although considerably more complicated than most people and projects need. It does have one notably interesting feature, although ironically (and arguably) it is related to user freedom in a negative way, which is what this article is about: the GPL can be used alongside a proprietary one. That's not something that is easily accomplished with other Free software licenses, but I don't consider it a bad thing. It's the one unique feature that really makes the GPL worthwhile in my estimation.

Re:Free software/open source diffs aids understand

[Anonymous Coward]

The open source movement is interested in a development methodology aimed primarily at businesses, not framing issues in terms of user's software freedom. Open source proponents aren't taught to think in terms of user's software freedom. This too can lead to the loss of software freedom.

Right on.

The "Open Source Movement" AKA the "Linux Movement" advocates free software by shoveling purist ideology down people's throats whether they want it or not.
The whole "If we port it to Windows [or FOO], we will hurt Linux" concept is straight from Open Source land. "Open Source" is like a parasite, slowly strangling free software :\

Message to open source advocates:
People shouldn't be pressured to use one thing or another becauses of your beliefs. Lets keep this in the scope of software development where it belongs...

the elephant in the room

[epine]

Posts that speculate about their moderation fate induce nausea. Moderation is vicissitudinous. That's the deal. Enough with the existential shirt rending, even if I agree with you.

What I'd like to see the adoption statistics of Postgres vs MySQL after subtracting out everyone who has expressed even the vaguest warm and fuzzy business sentiment about "monetizing eyeballs". Most people I know divide by some large number whenever this term comes up, except when quoting MySQL's enormous install base. I don't get it.

MySQL's original strength was rapidly generating page views containing data that was either 1) not very important, or 2) securely stored somewhere else, or 3) not worth thinking about in the frenetic pursuit of a profitable quarter. The big bang for open source database adoption was the second half of the 1990s, when monetizing eyeballs was cliff-jumping delusion of choice. It's clear nevertheless that MySQL won class presidency by a landslide. Isn't it?

One company out there that seems to be doing quite well lately is Atlassian. They strongly support the use of Postgres in conjunction with their Tomcat application suite. They are presently offering six tools on a heavy discount for small teams: issue tracker, wiki, source code inspection tool, agile PM, continuous integration server, and an OpenID server. I can speak well of JIRA at this point, not much experience yet with the others, but I'm doing the full-on Postgres installation tour of all six.

These are applications where the customer consumes their own data, so integrity of the data outweighs page view performance. Not that there's so much difference at this point due to convergent evolution. What irks me though is that MySQL gained its initial reputation on an inflated resume. I'm just saying that MySQL's storied success on prom night should be taken with a grain of salt. Ms Nortel 1999 is now a 30-year-old crack-ho.

My investigation of the Atlassian tool suite is an exploration of the uncomfortable boundary between pure open source and commercial software with attractive low-end adoption clauses. Atlassian seems to be 100% in the Java development camp, but with no special love for Oracle. I'm sure that will cause Larry some heartache. Is freedom from the hairy arms of Bugzilla worth the risk of being BitKeepered? I don't mind using Bugzilla, but I'm loath to administrate it. Time will tell whether I've sold my soul for a bad price.

Re:the elephant in the room

[petrus4]

It's clear nevertheless that MySQL won class presidency by a landslide. Isn't it?

My "existential shirt rending," however, was in reference to that exact point. GPL licensed (as opposed to BSD licensed) software very often doesn't win on the software's actual merit. It wins because a lot of the people who support the GPL (at least those on Slashdot) are Stallmanite cultists, who as mentioned, are desperate to ensure that people don't even know that FOSS alternatives to the GPL even exist, let alone use them.

Umm, no

[pem]

Maybe a strict literal reading says the software is evil, but:

That's unethical, they shouldn't be making any money.

is a quote directly addressing the proprietary software businesses. (Read the question.)

Since, for at least part of my life, I was a sole proprietor delivering proprietary software solutions, then, according to Stallman, I was acting unethically.

I also believe that he said I was evil. I will grant you that, in parsing English grammar properly, he might have said the software was acting evilly, and not me, but at the same time, I will have to assert that IMHO you are, deliberately or not, being obtuse about what he really meant.

I mean, it's pretty fucking obvious to me that he called me evil and unethical. YMMV.

Re:Umm, no

[drinkypoo]

I mean, it's pretty fucking obvious to me that he called me evil and unethical. YMMV.

I suspect he understands that you need to eat, and that the system is evil and unethical. But I've never had a conversation with the man, and I have to infer his stance from what he's said that I've read.

Re:So what

[mlwmohawk]

While I agree that RMS is an ideologue of the worst kind

Of the "best" kind, for sure.

I think that's missing the point

[pem]

In my own daily life, I avoid, to the best of my ability, transactions with people and entities I consider evil and unethical.

Stallman is considered by some to be a pure saint. People think he lives his life without compromises. Yet, he simultaneously holds the position that proprietary software is evil, and that people who write GPLed software won't do so unless they are incented by the ability to sell non-GPLed copies of that software to evil people who are going to merge it with their proprietary software and sell it for a profit.

If I believed that someone was evil, I wouldn't have anything to do with them, and if I merely thought they were misguided, I wouldn't use that term -- it is very heavily loaded. I would almost go so far as to say Stallman is evil for using it. (See how that works?) Personally, I believe that Stallman has done some good things, but also has some stuff to answer for, and calling me evil is one of those things he will eventually have to answer for. He and his followers are not yet as single-mindedly obsessed as the Taliban or the anti-abortionists, but they are getting there.

Re:I think that's missing the point

[10101001 10101001]

In my own daily life, I avoid, to the best of my ability, transactions with people and entities I consider evil and unethical.

Then you must either have a loose definition of evil, a loose definition of unethical, or live a very closeted life.

Stallman is considered by some to be a pure saint. People think he lives his life without compromises.

Sure, some very small minority believe Stallman is a pure saint. Most recognize that he pushes an extreme ideology which is currently unlivable, so compromise is necessary to avoid living a closeted life.

Yet, he simultaneously holds the position that proprietary software is evil, and that people who write GPLed software won't do so unless they are incented by the ability to sell non-GPLed copies of that software to evil people who are going to merge it with their proprietary software and sell it for a profit.

Not quite. He holds the position that some people can't reasonably work on GPL software unless they dual-license it. This, like the LGPL, is a compromise Stallman has taken to try to foster more development in GPL or GPL-like licenses. Hopefully, even more people will realize Stallman isn't a saint.

If I believed that someone was evil, I wouldn't have anything to do with them, and if I merely thought they were misguided, I wouldn't use that term -- it is very heavily loaded. I would almost go so far as to say Stallman is evil for using it. (See how that works?)

Granted. Those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. But, such a position really works into being unable to call anyone or anything evil unless one is a pure saint. Since few to no such people exists, I don't think it's a reasonably position to take. The real issue is how overly broadly and commonly uses the word evil, not that he uses it at all.

Personally, I believe that Stallman has done some good things, but also has some stuff to answer for, and calling me evil is one of those things he will eventually have to answer for. He and his followers are not yet as single-mindedly obsessed as the Taliban or the anti-abortionists, but they are getting there.

Speaking of glass houses... Yes, there will almost certainly be those few people extreme enough willing to kill for an idea, regardless of the movement. As much as Stallman has called proprietary software evil and implicitly those who make it evil, he has never remotely advocated violence. He has instead advocated a new ideology of free software and directly put effort into developing it. To call him or his followers "as single-mindedly obsessed as the Taliban" is just as accurate as "as single-mindedly obsessed as the Civil Rights Movement". But, clearly, the latter doesn't have the same pejorative nature as the former does. Nor, clearly, are the methods or ends remotely similar.

Stallman may be very wrong in calling proprietary software evil, but trying to conflate him or his followers to violent groups is absurd and offensive. Stallman is no saint, and sainthood is no basis to believe in ideas or follow a person. If you find his ideas offensive, well that's life.

Re:I think that's missing the point

[cheesybagel]

The MySQL model was not radically different from how Aladdin Ghostscript used to be released. Stallman tolerated that licensing model as a necessary evil. So it would be non-coherent for him to be against the MySQL model. RMS is a pretty cohesive guy in his ideas. He is also more flexible about revenue creation models for free software than people give him credit for.

Re:I think that's missing the point

[pem]

In my own daily life, I avoid, to the best of my ability, transactions with people and entities I consider evil and unethical.

Then you must either have a loose definition of evil, a loose definition of unethical, or live a very closeted life.

If by "loose definition of evil" you mean that I don't think ordinary people who have slightly different moral compasses than mine aren't evil, then guilty as charged. But, judging by the rest of your comments, you and I have way different opinions of how overloaded the connotations of the actual word "evil" are. To me, it is a word that should only be used to describe that which should be exterminated without further thought or debate. That also seems to be how most people use it.

Stallman is considered by some to be a pure saint. People think he lives his life without compromises.

Sure, some very small minority believe Stallman is a pure saint. Most recognize that he pushes an extreme ideology which is currently unlivable, so compromise is necessary to avoid living a closeted life.

Yes, currently unlivable, and always unlivable, just like pure communism, pure libertarianism, etc. But, to me, he's not compromising one whit if he calls what I do for a living "evil". Sorry, don't buy it.

Yet, he simultaneously holds the position that proprietary software is evil, and that people who write GPLed software won't do so unless they are incented by the ability to sell non-GPLed copies of that software to evil people who are going to merge it with their proprietary software and sell it for a profit.

Not quite. He holds the position that some people can't reasonably work on GPL software unless they dual-license it. This, like the LGPL, is a compromise Stallman has taken to try to foster more development in GPL or GPL-like licenses. Hopefully, even more people will realize Stallman isn't a saint.

See, there again, it might just have to do with our definitions of "evil." If he used a less-loaded term like "not ideal" or "unfortunate" I could be on board. But I honestly can't see working really hard to enable behavior that I consider to be evil. Perhaps I'm just naive in that way. That's exactly what I was trying to say in the next section...

If I believed that someone was evil, I wouldn't have anything to do with them, and if I merely thought they were misguided, I wouldn't use that term -- it is very heavily loaded. I would almost go so far as to say Stallman is evil for using it. (See how that works?)

Granted. Those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. But, such a position really works into being unable to call anyone or anything evil unless one is a pure saint. Since few to no such people exists, I don't think it's a reasonably position to take. The real issue is how overly broadly and commonly uses the word evil, not that he uses it at all.

See, I don't believe that first part at all. Even without moral absolutes, you can draw a line somewhere on the bell curve and get 99% of the people to agree that what is past it is evil. You can draw a line somewhere else, and get 99% of the people to agree that, while they don't think it's evil, they can easily see how someone else would. Stallman draws the line where only about 10% of the population would agree with him.

Personally, I believe that Stallman has done some good things, but also has some stuff to answer for, and calling me evil is one of those things he will eventually have to answer for. He and his followers are not yet as single-mindedly obsessed as the Taliban or the anti-abortionists, but they are getting there.

Speaking of glass houses... Yes, there will almost certainly be those few p

Re:Free software/open source diffs aids understand

[Anonymous Coward]

-1, troll.
If you don't understand the purpose of the GNU GPL, and the significance of "embrace, extend, and extinguish", you should keep your ill-informed opinions to yourself.

Re:So what

[Anonymous Coward]

You got that right. If only all ideologues were as charitable as RMS.

Re:Free software/open source diffs aids understand

[Sycraft-fu]

Also you can modify GPL software yourself, and not release the changes so long as you don't release the software. It is legal to modify copyrighted works you own. You can draw on a painting, write on a book, etc. So a company could very well take GPL software, modify it for internal use, and never release either the changes or the finished product.

The GPL only comes in to play if you wish to redistribute GPL'd software. In that case, you have to distribute source as well as binaries. However that doesn't apply if it is something you just use yourself.

Re:Why should the EU have power to stop the merger

[sydneyfong]

Props up again.

The EU does not have any power to stop US companies from merging. But they do have the power to forbid you to do business in Europe if a US company does not comply with its regulations.

Since the EU is a major economic player in the world and Oracle and Sun both have large stakes there, this becomes an issue.

It's not a matter of the EU taking over US companies, but rather the fact that US companies need to play their game when doing business outside the US.

Re:Free software/open source diffs aids understand

[cheesybagel]

Tell that to the Wine developers.

Traitor!

[LinuxAndLube]

Now Stallman himself turns out to be a traitor too! Traitor! Traitor!

Information is power.

[jotaeleemeese]

And developers of closed source software are very well aware of this (as is anybody else really, including users of any kind of software: I have the code, I have more power; I don't have any code, I am powerless).

You may not be an evil person, but certainly the situation of complete dependency in which you put your clients could be aptly described as evil (the path to hell is paved with good intentions they say).

It is always though when somebody finds something unethical about the way you earn a living (there are many cases of this situation), but the rational answer is not pretend nothing is happening, since clearly a lot of people think they are being short changed by closed source software providers.

Re:Information is power.

[pem]

You may not be an evil person, but certainly the situation of complete dependency in which you put your clients could be aptly described as evil (the path to hell is paved with good intentions they say).

Umm, no, that wouldn't be me. The only reason I don't open-source pretty much everything I write is because of contractual obligations. (For example, right now I'm an employee, and my employer owns my production.) Both now and when I was contracting, my employers/customers typically aren't selling my software; they are using it for an internal competitive advantage, which even Stallman seems to be OK with.

Implicit license?

[jotaeleemeese]

You are really stretching it there.

There is not such a legal thing in existence.

Absolutely.

[jotaeleemeese]

And we will have nothing but what Sun wanted to give. If anything.

Remind us, what is Apple giving away as a thank you for the BSD base of OSX?

Re:Absolutely.

[Disgruntled Goats]

WebKit and GCD?

Re:Free software/open source diffs aids understand

[Tim C]

It is legal to modify copyrighted works you own.

Unless you're doing it to circumvent a copyright protection system of course...

Re:So what

[stim]

The makers of proprietary software force you to agree to a massive, complicated license before you can use their products because they want to control and restrict what you can do. Let's not pretend that GPL software is any different.

Last time I checked I didn't have to agree to ANY license agreement to use GPL software.

What's with this "extremely narrow" meme?

[Mateo_LeFou]

Every time rms is brought up, someone hauls out this phrase "extremely narrow definition of free"

Really? Narrow? *Extremely narrow?!?? How many licenses are considered free?
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html

Software is free if it respects the four freedoms. They're clear and, in my opinion, not the slightest bit narrow.

Nine times out of ten this comes from someone who prefers "permissive" licenses to copyleft ones. But these *are considered free by the FSF.

Are you just tweaked that rms and others *prefer that copyleft licenses be used? That's nothing to do with how "narrow" their definition of free is. It's a pragmatic argument about which intelligent people can disagree.

But this "extremely narrow" business serves no purpose vis-a-vis intelligent disagreement. It's a rhetorical whack meant to associate principled advocates of free software with limitations,restrictions & unfreedom.

Re:What's with this "extremely narrow" meme?

[benjamindees]

Sorry, I'm not one to nitpick about copyleft. But in this case RMS's argument does in fact appear to hinge on an "extremely narrow" definition of free. MySQL is released under the GPLv2. GNU considers GPLv2 to be free. RMS should have no problem with this, regardless of who the owner is, right?

Wrong. RMS does have a problem with it. He makes a point to mention both GPLv2 and GPLv3. Why? Because everyone knows that the GPLv2 does not include the "freedom-enhancing" restrictions on usage that the GPLv3 does, and that these restrictions are especially pertinent to web software such as MySQL. Had the developers of MySQL chosen to distribute MySQL under GPLv3 instead of GPLv2, this may well have increased competition.

But, they didn't. So I fail to see how making a pitch for (realistically) a completely unrelated license to a regulatory agency could possibly convince them to intervene. It's like writing a letter to the FTC opposing Microsoft's acquisition of some [small_competitor] because, well if only [small_competitor] had released it's code as free software, there would have been more competition. Like I said, it is simply a bad argument regardless of your views of copyleft. His concerns are legitimate. There are certainly valid arguments to be made. This simply isn't one of them.

Thank you, Bruce

[Anonymous Coward]

Of all the Big Names (TM) in FLOSS (yes, I know), why is it that Bruce always comes across as the most calm and logical? Maybe it's just the way my mind works, but I have always found Bruce to be clear and easy to understand.

Thank you, Bruce. Go get them, tiger.

Re:So what

[rwa2]

Books (and software code) fall under copyright. So it's different than a license... You can't as well copy parts out of a book and call it your own without giving due credit to the original author. That kind of attribution is what the GPL helps sort out, though.

If you want a more truly free license, than go with one of the BSD'ish ones, that allow companies to take the code and roll it into their own proprietary black box. I think philosophically the BSD license only seeks to maintain copyright so that same company can't greedily claim copyright for themselves and start suing everyone else for using the same BSD code they stole. So you see why at least /some/ licensing terms are necessary. As a contribution to society, BSD only wants to make sure that the code used by all these proprietary products has a solid foundation. Just think... if it wasn't for the BSD network stack, Microsoft OS's would probably be completely pwned off the internets by now...

GPL does take licensing quite a bit farther to make their contribution to society... it is a vendetta against proprietary lock-in (and all those poor SOBs that had to attempt to deal with bugs in proprietary code with binary fiddling and patching... I figure RMS was particularly scarred by something like this in his younger years, and fully understand how he could have gone off the deep end as a result.) Proprietary lock-in is a form of extortion, which I think most people will agree is quite unethical.

On the other hand, I think a lot of people and businesses have the misconception that the GPL automatically means "public domain"... nowhere in the GPL does it state that the GPL'd code that you modify and give to someone else also automatically has to be released back upstream too. It can stay completely private between you and your customer. It only stipulates that you have to give your customer the power to fix your code, and also that the customer can go on and give the code to the rest of the public (and all of their competition) too if they want, or they could also take it to another programmer (your competition) if they want. That's the viral freedom-as-in-libre. It's not necessarily free-as-in-gratuit / beer (though a lot of OSS code is in addition to being GPL'd).

We're transitioning from a manufacturing economy to almost a completely imaginary intellectual property economy. The ones with all the money and power will be the ones with all the licenses - also imaginary. Think about that.