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OS X Notifier App Growl Goes Closed Source
First time accepted submitter para_droid writes "Version 1.3 of the popular open source notification system for Mac OS X, Growl has surprised its users by going closed-source and only available for purchase on the Mac App Store. Any users who provide links to bugfixes and source for the previous version 1.2 are being banned from the discussion group, and their messages deleted. Could it be time for the community to create an OpenGrowl fork?"
The linked post above about bugfixes and source ends "Hopefully the Growl 1.3 branch from the official Growl maintainers
will eventually become open source again and get straightened out so
that it works for most users, but if it doesn't, a fork of the project
will be able to provide a working Growl to Mac users."
We will post source code. However, our bigger concern right now is fixing issues and providing support to folks on our discussions group, and on our support email address, and on Twitter. As soon as the flood of inbound requests slows down, we fully intend to push the 1.3 source over the wall.
On the other hand, I sure hope that won't be when they release 1.4 to the store.
Nope, it's BSD licensed. They can do whatever the hell they want.
Oh good lord, does anyone actually check stories anymore before posting? This is twice is one day!
Read the New FAQ on the site. Here's a link. Look at the last question. They are not going closed source, they just haven't packaged it up yet and released it. They will.
Hows that crowd-think working for you. Read the comments in this thread and understand the situation before you get your Apple-bash on.
http://growl.info/documentation/faq-new.php#1.3source
Why? You need to have the copyright to begin with to be able to make it closed source. And if you have the copyright, you can do pretty much anything with your software, including distribute it through the App Store while simultaneously licensing the source under any open source license you want.
This is just stupidity on the part of the Growl developers. Developers added support for Growl to their products because it was FOSS. The net effect of selling Growl and making it closed source is going to be that developers either won't support Growl, or they will support the older version of Growl that's still FOSS.
You can do anything with the GPL as long as you include sources. If you disagree with this, you don't have to contribute to it.
They both include one restriction. Which restriction is least restrictive?
One guarantees that all users will be able to fix and modify their software if there are problems. The other offeres no guarantees. In terms of enabling people to do things, which is what freedom is all about, the GPL is clearly more free. BSD only enables you to remove the freedom of others.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Just like a white American male from the South in the early 19th century, the individual developer with a piece of BSD licensed software is more free than the current white American male. He can even choose to release his code as free / have no slaves. However, just as in the south, most people with BSD software are not developers and so they lose certainty of their future freedom for nothing. The BSD society as a whole, which includes a whole bunch of Junos and OS X users, for example, is less free than the GPL society. This even feeds back to the slaver who is unable to live in a society without slavery and is much the worse for it. BSD developers are slightly luckier because there are enclaves, like OpenBSD where real freedom exists but these are always small exceptions.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
This is just stupidity on the part of the Growl developers. Developers added support for Growl to their products because it was FOSS. The net effect of selling Growl and making it closed source is going to be that developers either won't support Growl, or they will support the older version of Growl that's still FOSS.
I doubt whether Growl is or isn't FOSS matters to the vast majority of Mac developers - or Mac end users, for that matter.
If it adds useful functionality, they'll use it. If it doesn't, they won't - regardless of the license.
#DeleteChrome
It's notification software. OS X versions are all names of big cat's (tiger, leopard). Big cats growl.
I'm not saying it's the best name ever, but that's prob where the name comes form.
If what I just said sounded like a troll, it was probably just a failed attempt at humor.
BSD is more free than GPL
The BSD license is more permissive for only the upstream.
In fact, the downstream ('end-users') may ultimately get a license that is more restrictive on further developments—possibly even restrictions that might hinder the development of your own upstream work should you find yourself in some sort of downstream position relative to a fork.
Because everyone is ultimately an end-user eventually, the BSD license is quite dangerous.
Everything that you like about open source BSD-licensed projects is simply encoded for legal enforcement in the GPL. When you espouse the merits of open source, you are actually espousing the merits of the GPL.
Nope, it's BSD licensed. They can do whatever the hell they want.
Except include code with licenses that guarantee the users fundamental software freedoms.
I know it's easier to cry "freedom" than understand complex issues like licensing but BSD is more free than GPL. You can do most anything as long as you maintain copyright notices. It you disagree with this, you don't have to contribute to it.
Oh great. The scene appears to be being set for yet *another* identikit thread hijack on behalf of the GPL vs. BSD holy war.
Never mind that we've had this discussion countless times before and every possible debating point and issue has been raised and discussed exhaustively a million times. Never mind that the chances of any new insight coming out of the billionth tedious discussion of this long-established subject is next to nothing. Never mind that those involved on both sides feel the need to repeat the same entrenched positions- which mostly come down to personal philosophy and not an incomplete understanding of the issues (which everyone knows full well by now) and will therefore be unlikely to change in the face of the discussion... not that this was the point anyway.
No, the point is that those involved in every one of these pointless rehashes of the exact same to-ing and fro-ing and restatements of the same old facts and arguments on both sides know this damn well, but can't reign in their desire to indulge in the argument yet again.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Mattel and cphack. Mattel obtained an injunction barring anyone from distributing cphack which revoked the license.
Except include code with licenses that guarantee the users fundamental software freedoms.
Freedom is such an abstract term and should not be applied to software. Using the term "fundamental software freedoms" is even worse and likely means something different to each person who hears/reads it.
The real issue is limitations and this is where the two licenses (BSD+GNU) differ greatly. The BSD license has almost no limitations while the GNU license has severe limitations that extends to code that is simply linked with GNU code. The two licenses serve different purposes and as such, one is not better then the other. To compare the licenses using abstract concepts like "freedom" is ridiculous.
I am surprised how many people still get this wrong. Since they are the copyright holders of the work they can do whatever they want with it, period. As a copyright holder you don't license the software to yourself. That would be stupid.
you don't "release the source code"... what you normally do is to maintain a certain kind of website, one that most often has an URL such as http://svn.growl.info then you don't spend a single extra-minute to "release the source", you just use something called a tag. Here's the linky in case you can't google for it: http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.5/svn.branchmerge.tags.html
That's when you're talking about projects that are truly open source and don't call themselves that, just for marketing...
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
Roar?
But yes, this is the appropriate response. There apparently is a community who is willing to continue distributing patches. Growl is also useless without applications which use it -- I can't exactly see anyone paying for a notification service without apps, nor can I see an app developer deliberately requiring a proprietary notification service if an open one is available.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Hi, I'm the Project Lead for Growl. I'll be happy to respond to any questions replied to this thread, as long as they are kept nice, courteous, professional, etc.
So a few items I already know are going to be brought up.
1) We've had a large amount of inbound support requests in the last 2 weeks, more than we get in a 6 month period of time usually. http://groups.google.com/group/growldiscuss/about?hl=en_US shows the statistics about just this month alone. Bear in mind this month is not done yet, this is not our only list/group/whatever google wants to call those things. We're also fielding support requests on twitter, and a direct email address (due to popular demand).
2) Source code was planned to be pushed over the wall this weekend. Since this post is up, we're changing our plans and going to work on getting the source up today. We've tried off and on over the last two weeks, but have ran into issues with multiple unclosed heads for instance in the repo, things like that. More technical issues, less issues with regards to actually posting source because we don't want to (we do, just i.e. there are just problems). We have a deadline to meet in order to get the source posted, but we also have people who need 1.3.1 since there are problems in 1.3 (just like in every other software product ever, in every version ever)
3) This guy was banned for only a month because he was responding in a very hostile way. He was told he would be unbanned at that point. However, he seems just like an angry individual in general, and I hope he gets counseling or something in order to help with anger management issues. He was not banned because he forked Growl, I think that's kind of neat actually and the point of being open source. He was being a poisonous person, and was removed as such. I will not discuss this any further, but wanted to address this here.
4) We will be providing source in the form of our chosen vcs. If you do not know how to use a vcs but you work with oss, or want to work with oss, not learning a vcs is doing yourself a disservice. Future employers, or current oss projects, will find your knowing a vcs up front an asset, and we want to promote that. Tarball distributions will be ended as of 1.3.
Chris Forsythe
Growl Project Lead
You're so, so close to getting it, but not quite there.
GPL lets you remove the freedom of developers. GPL enables the freedom of users.
BSD lets you remove the freedom of users. BSD enables the freedom of developers.
Pro-GPL people try to argue that it's the freedom of the end user that needs to be protected. After all, making sure the users have the source enables them to fix any problems that software may have. Unfortunately, this means that the freedoms of whoever wants to write software that uses GPL'd code is limited, as they don't have the choice to keep their software proprietary.
Pro-BSD people try to argue that it's the freedom of the developers that needs to be protected. After all, making sure the developers can maintain their own copyright enables them to use your software freely. Unfortunately, this means that the freedoms of whoever wants to use a derivative work are limited, as they are not guaranteed to have the source code of the changes available.
So, now which restriction is least restrictive?
Freedom is a balancing act -- there are very few cases where enforcing the freedom of one group of people won't harm the freedom of another group. Just be careful that you don't assume the freedoms you value are more important than the freedoms that other people value.
Gnu.org don't get to own the definition of 'software freedom' any more than I get to own the definition of 'cornflake cake'. GP's point is these things are inherently subjective. Referencing someone's opinion as a definition betrays a rather closed mind.
There is nothing interesting going on at my blog
Growl is not going closed source. They just don't have releasing the source EARLY as a priority. That's their choice. As long as the source is eventually released, that's all most of us care about.
Perhaps you can point to a link on the Growl site to download source of any version, even older ones. It certainly is the developers' choice to release the source or not. As of now, they have not released the source for Growl 1.3, so it's not accurate to call Growl 1.3 Open Source. Though earlier versions were released under an Open Source license, the fact that the site doesn't provide them and those in control are trying to keep people from talking about a fork isn't a good sign.
The basementcoders interviewed Perry this week and Perry explained why he forked Growl and what happened: http://basementcoders.com/2011/10/episode-47-fork-you-growl-interview-with-perry-metzger/
LOL. Comparing BSD license to slavery?
No; comparing proprietary software to slavery and the GPL to laws against slavery. The BSD license is compared to a lack of laws against slavery.
This has got to be the stupidest pro-GPL argument I've ever seen.
That's apparently becuase you can't read; you're entertaining anyway, so let's go on.
[...]
First, I know you folks always like anthropomorphizing code, but please stop that
Now you are tilting at straw men.. Cool. But anyway, no I wasn't. I quite specifically wrote for example
The BSD society as a whole, which includes a whole bunch of Junos and OS X users
And several other things which made it very clear that I was talking about the freedom of people, not the freedom of code. Sometimes people take shortcuts and talk about the software being free, but even when they do that, and I don't, it doesn't take much intelligence to be able to translate the freedom of code they talk about into freedom of people. I didn't want to assume that all the readers would have such a level of intelligence. However, I see I still failed to aim low enough to reach everybody. I apologise and will try harder next time.
In most of the rest of the post you repeatedly stick your lance through the straw man, expecting him to scream out in pain; I think we will leave out humiliating you over that.
So, do you think you could now make your argument a bit stupider for all of us by turning it into a Nazi or holocaust reference?
Your writing is funny and angry enough that I really think you should get an account. How can I be sure you will even read this??
Imagine that a whole load of really stupid people started running around, building political parties and beginning to get involved in society. Now imagine that they did this whilst being able to completely tune out everybody's argument except their own. Imagine that they saw only the things that they wanted to see in the writings of others. Eventually, if this went on and kept increasing, they might start developing prejudices against others. They might start throwing stones through their windows; they might start attacking them in the street; eventually the situation could get more and more serious. Imagine if we completely gave up on challenging lazy stupidity.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
That would be what the GPL says.
You only have to provide source to people you provide binaries to. You are under no obligation to provide future updates of said source (other than to those to whom you distribute binaries build from the updated source).
Of course you can't prevent those you do provide the source to from distributing it to others.
You know who it will also stop cold? The many open-source programs that use Growl. They are not going to want to have anything to do with a closed-source commercial Growl, and will either dump it or fork it.
Except that with BSD, the original, unaltered source is still available. If a company, say, takes the BSD networking stack and incorporates it into their proprietary, closed-source product, any user can still go out and get the original BSD networking stack. Most analogies in these arguments imply that overall freedom is somehow reduced by BSD, but that's not true.
If you buy it then yes you are free to redistribute both the source and binaries.
If you find it on a torrent site then yes you are allowed to redistribute both the source and binaries. However, if you torrented just the binaries the person who initially seeded (and I guess everyone including you) would be violating the GPL if it didn't include source or a written offer to provide the source.