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GPL, Copyleft Use Declining Fast
itwbennett writes "Use of the GPL, LGPL, and AGPL set of licenses is declining at an accelerating rate, according to new analysis by the 451 Group's Matthew Aslett. In fact, the 451 Group projects that GPL usage will hit 50% by September 2012. Instead, developers are licensing projects under permissive licenses such as the MIT, Apache (ASL), BSD, and Ms-PL. The shift started in 2007 and has been gathering momentum ever since. Blogger Brian Proffitt posits that 'the creation of the GPLv3 and the sometimes contentious discussion that led up to it' may be partly responsible for the move away from the GPL."
GPL caused too many problems for companies and tried to enforce all software to be open source. GPL itself was very restrictive license, and it's great to see more open licenses like BSD and Apache gaining usage fast.
I don't see why anyone would not want to use the GPL if they want their software to be free and open. Why create something, give it out for free, and then allow businesses to take your work, profit from it, and give nothing back? Maybe these developers are hoping to get bought out by a large company someday?
everything has pros and cons, we can have something good for "economics" but bad for society as a whole
That is what happens with GPL and BSD
I'm positive, don't belive me look at my karma
The alternative licenses mostly give you more freedom to make money. Making money with the GPL requires a LOT more diligence since v3 came out. But at least they won the battle...
Why create something, give it out for free, and then allow businesses to take your work, profit from it, and give nothing back?
Because if you truly want to promote freedom and free code, you also have to let people to profit from it. Freedom isn't picking who gets to enjoy that "freedom" based on some rules.
When companies realized that if they ship GPL v3 code in any way, shape, or form, a customer could demand any trade secrets from them, the legal bean counters went nuts.
An example would be a machine that skins oranges. Any GPL v3 code used in the machine would force the maker to hand over to customers on request the CAD blueprints for the mechanisms, the timing involved, down to the color of the engineer farts when the thing is put together.
I personally have seen companies who had to re-engineer a whole embedded controller from Linux to Windows CE just so they did not bump into GPL v3 issues.
RMS for some reason wants to kill all GPL projects.
Blogger Brian Proffitt posits that 'the creation of the GPLv3 and the sometimes contentious discussion that led up to it' may be partly responsible for the move away from the GPL."
Also, it may not be.
It's a rule.
Exactly. It's like saying you have freedom of speech but you can only say what I want to hear.
For personal use, not everyone is in it for the money. <shrug>
And as far as the political aspects, to most companies GPL == toxic, and they don't care about the details.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Wait... something heavily steeped in politics, flamewars, and cult of personality might not be as popular as something that "just works"? Whoa.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
there would be no pirates with pure GPL software, technology is supposed to be for the good of all, not to enrich a few guys.
And yes, I know I'm being utopic, but that is true
I'm positive, don't belive me look at my karma
Linux is not under GPLv3. Never has been. Never will be. What you speak is nonsense.
the creation of the GPLv3 and the sometimes contentious discussion that led up to it' may be partly responsible for the move away from the GPL.
I'm in business to make money. I also love OSS and have spent literally hundreds of hours personally contributing back in many different ways. The problem with GPLv3 is that I can't use it in an application I develop unless I release any changes/mods I make to the source code.
That's my secret sauce. If I'm a startup and trying to form a niche in an industry, why would I want to give my recipe away?
sysadmins and parents of newborns get the same amount of sleep.
... of Richard Stallman shedding a tear with text below: Forever alone.
Red Hat seems to have no problem profiting while selling mostly-GPL'ed code...
I have yet to see any evidence that GPL creates more benefit for society than any other FOSS licence. Can you provide anything?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
From the article, it isn't clear to me what criteria they used to include projects in their survey. It would be interesting to know the numbers based on impact of the project -- a zillion little drivers released under BSD could skew the results.
there would be no pirates with pure GPL software
Wow, that's the first convincing argument against GPL I've heard.
Are you familiar with the phrase "the exception that proves the rule" (and its etymology)?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Probably because they want their software to be used. I'm running a one man LLC and for my current work, if something relies on GPL then I simply can't use it. I do plan on making my work open source, but on my own time and schedule -- my plan is one to two years after initial release to make that version or an improved version open source. That gives me time to make money off my work (and clean up my code), while hopefully helping other devs out. Not to mention that certain parts of my code may not be legally able to be released due to platform restrictions. Using GPL code means my plan goes out the window, so GPL code can go sit off in its corner and chew its toenails as far as I'm concerned.
I agree.
In my view, BSD is real free software. You give it to the world for anyone to benefit or even profit from, as long as they give you credit for it.
GPL not only forces the user to give away their work too, but is too "viral" a license for my liking. I understand the principles behind it, and it has given us so much, but I always feel it comes at the price of personal liberty.
I can profit while using GPL code. I simply can't take and not give back.
What about the freedom to profit? It is a right for people to want to make money and why is that bad? Student loans, kids, retirement, and a car are considered basic rights and responsibilities. Aint got no money? Then you cant have any of it? Cry all you want but the grocery store doesnt care that you do great things for humanity when your kids are hungry. They just want your money.
So your rights if you own the code are important too. Thats life
Yes I advocate the BSD license.
http://saveie6.com/
Correct me if I'm wrong (and I'm sure you will), but wasn't the point of the GPL to enforce the rules of open-source while it was still emerging? The idea was that open-source projects would be more vulnerable when the open-source movement was new, and it would be more likely that some company would take BSD-licensed code and not just release it as their own, but be able to effectively relegate the open-source one to a small niche of irrelevancy. Now that pretty much every company takes open source seriously, it's not as necessary - if someone were to take Firefox, tweak the branding, and release it as their own commercial product, they wouldn't be able to take all the marketshare Firefox has simply by virtue of being a "real" company, not "a bunch of open-source basement-dwelling commie nerds".
everything has pros and cons, we can have something good for "economics" but bad for society as a whole
That is what happens with GPL and BSD
False. BSD has been incredibly good for society. UC Berkeley's sharing of their implementation of Unix is the very origin of the FOSS movement. BSD is where many original Linux developers learned how to do their thing. And where many Linux developers, to this day, find some pretty useful code.
Society generally benefits from the more open and more flexible approaches. Society usually does not benefit as much from the "this is the one and only true path" approach of the zealot.
Some developers are very happy to have their work included in something and used widely. BSD makes companies include an acknowledgement of the use of your work, so you can know you made that project happen. Presumably, if a lot of money is being made by some company that includes your free software, you've helped build something cool that people want. I think a lot of developers see GPL as a "taking my toys and going home" license which discourages free use. If you weren't going to make a million dollar idea with your software, why stop someone else?
Do you get the cash? No. Are your motives really that good if you opened your software only to make money? No. Does a commercial venture using your code prevent free projects from springing up around your work and building the same things as you could if you'd GPL'd it? No.
Because the only way to make money is to take open source software and ensure that the recipients of your modified version cannot have the source code? Or that the source code must absolutely be integrated deeply into yours?
I know, those pesky anti-DRM requirements sure make it hard to squeeze your users for money.
I think it's more related to the Political BS around GPL and the GPL3 stuff
Maybe one needs a 'new GPL' something in the spirit of it, but as simple (or at least as simple as possible) as the BSD
I understand why would someone use the GPL versus the BSD, except that for somethings it really doesn't matter
I don't see why anyone would not want to use the GPL if they want their software to be free and open. Why create something, give it out for free, and then allow businesses to take your work, profit from it, and give nothing back? Maybe these developers are hoping to get bought out by a large company someday?
Probably, not everyone values the freedoms in the same way. Some people do open source and/or Free software purely out of self-interest. Say I really don't want to develop some software, but I really want/need that software because existing solutions don't really meet my needs. So, I create an open source project, not because I want my code Free, but purely because I want other people to help maintain it. Now, some company might come along and commercialize the code. But, from my perspective, this is great. I didn't really want to lead the project in the first place. I'd rather keep using the free version, or pay a little bit for the paid version. Also, if I later want to sell out, that is good for me.
>I simply can't take and not give back.
Unless you don't distribute it. In which case you can do exactly that.
It might be, but from my perspective I think it is not. If you are developing a library, it's IMO better to not to have it GPL'ed. Actually, GPL libraries are used mostly from commercial providers , a variant of 'free for non-commercial use'. If you want to make society better with your software, do it LGPL or BSD or something like it; then ANYBODY can use it for ANY project; not only free (or some more-or-less-private) project. If more people can use it, it's better for the society than if less people can use it.
As for patches being brought back - because there is a cost involved in maintaining libraries, I believe the commercial use is giving back the patches to the community; unless they did a major rewrite - in which case the 'loss' to the community is limited, because they would have written the library completely by themselves if the license didn't allow them to rewrite it and keep it private.
Personally, I think that the downhill slide started when the GPL became more about protecting the philosophy and less about protecting the programs. Keeping open source open is all well and good, however, forcing folks to open up their goodies is not good. One person's freedom to share their code is just as valid as another person's freedom not too. Of course, having said that it is important to note that the person who does not share their code is going to have to work that much harder to ensure that their users are getting(and kniw that they are getting) a good,reliable deal. We have all seen examples of both great and sucky closed source and open source software.
In my previous job I had customers who were deathly afraid of GPL to the point where they would not allow me as their supplier to use any open source code in the products I supplied regardless of what the license was or if it saved money.
For these people anyway GPL was a real impediment to the acceptance of open source.
Agreed. I think the shift has occurred because of increasing corporate interest in open source. BSD is seen as more corporate-friendly than GPL, when in fact it should be the other way around--BSD allows your competitors to reap the fruit of your labor without giving you anything in return. Start-ups, however, are lured by the idea of being able to close-source everything once their product becomes a smash hit, while established companies face genuine legal issues preventing them from linking GPL'ed code with closed-source code from vendors.
So, start-ups really need to ditch the bait-and-switch fantasy that's driving them towards the BSD. Back in the real world, most such start-ups will fail long before they ever create a popular enough product to pull this trick, and it will partially be due to the fact that they brilliantly gave away all their work to their closed-source competitors for absolutely nothing in return.
The GPL isn't a license so much as a political agenda. You can summarize it in a couple sentences, but sit down and actually read the whole thing some time.
Many companies use software internally. They take that work, profit from it, and give nothing back. How is the GPL any better than BSD under that scenario?
I need to make a living and am currently doing that by writing iPhone apps. GPL is fine in an idealistic world, however people are not idealistic and do not give you money for being a nice guy. When I release software as open source (https://github.com/bindle/BindleKit), I do it to be helpful to others. The GPL greatly restricts the ability of some one to use my software. Just because one developer uses my library in a proprietary application does not exclude another developer for using my library as well. What is the point of software being called open source when it is not usable by developers?
Yes, I've heard similar stories many times in recent years. You see small companies that don't want anything to do with it because they're afraid of risks they don't fully understand. And you see large companies that don't want anything to do with it because their legal departments are well aware of the risks and issue company-wide bans, and you don't argue with company-wide bans from Legal.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The problem with that claim is that it's not even remotely true. For example, consider Google. They have their own private fork of Linux (GPLv2) which includes things like their own filesystem. Some changes are contributed back to the community because maintaining them in a private fork costs more than the loss of competitive advantage from sharing them. Some are kept private, because the scales tip the other way.
In contrast, Yahoo uses a private fork of FreeBSD on a lot of their systems. They employ several FreeBSD developers and contribute a lot of changes back if doing so won't give away a serious competitive advantage, but they keep some things private.
One project has a permissive license, the other has a strong copyleft license, but the behaviour of downstream users is identical in both cases. The GPL doesn't stop you using, modifying, or profiting from the code without giving anything back, it only prevents you from refusing to share the source for your modifications with anyone who receives a binary.
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Right on. BSD is the real free software license.
One of my projects was released under the WTFPL: http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/
I'm not exactly sure what this entails other than it releases me from liability if someone else uses it. There are so many hobbyist level projects these days that someone is probably replicating your project's purpose under a different codebase it doesn't really matter what you licence it under - you're lucky to get 2-3 people using your project's code. My other project got released under "the Berkeley licence" simply because my father went to school there years ago, and it was relatively short. Maybe I should make a "free licence roulette" website to help other hobbyist projects pick random licences.
TL;DR most hobbyist developers only include a licence as a formality
moox. for a new generation.
If you made something that could make you a fortune, pay for your house, student loans, and a company of your own then you would understand why.
Case in point? Look at earlier this week when someone invented something with cameras that no one else could do in /. stories? Problem was the toolkit is under GPL. How is that fair? There work was worth money but the GPL forced them to give away the algorithms to conpetitors so a whole clone of the toolkit was needed.
http://saveie6.com/
Right, because obviously nobody would redistribute GPL code without complying with the requirements. Give me a few minutes whilst I laugh at you for missing the cases where that's happened. Probably the first one to pop to mind was Pornview a graphics viewer that ultimately did just that.
Phase 1. Create software to honor RMS via GPL route !!
Phase 2. ??
Phase 3. Profit !!
to most companies GPL == toxic
In my experience, it's a little bit more complex than that. To most companies, the GPL is complicated. They can almost certainly use GPL'd code without violating the license, but their lawyers aren't 100% certain. Their lawyers are certain that they can use BSD licensed code without violating the license. Their lawyers are also certain that they can use proprietary code without violating the license, because they get a license that explicitly permits them to do what they want.
I've seen several cases of the GPL driving companies to buy proprietary solutions: given the choice between buying a proprietary license and using free GPL'd code, they'll pick the proprietary solution and limit their (perceived) liability. If there's a BSD licensed alternative, they'll use that and quite often contribute changes back (after all, it's usually cheaper than maintaining a private fork).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
It's more like having freedom of speech, but anyone who feels like it can revoke it. GPL doesn't restrict freedom, it enforces freedom.
gpl first freedom (0):
"the freedom to use the software for any purpose"
"we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can."
from http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
The cost of distributing someone else's gpl work is licensing your derivative work under the same license. The face up fairness of this deal is what appeals to so many developers. Every license has rules.
"better ways of doing things eventually just replace the inferior things" - Linus Torvalds 09-08-07
Perhaps the fact that all these new, fancy mobile devices running Android have kernel sources available. I'm sure if it were BSD we wouldn't see anything, and hacking them to do as we wish would be considerably more difficult.
Of course, this is my opinion and you are free to reject it as "invalid" if you see fit.
The statistic shows percenage of actual project count, and doesn't anyhow respect the overall usage or size ("importance/weight") of the software.
I'm therefore afraid that the plot is biased by a large amount of tiny projects that are used by 10 people and choose some cc-by-sa alternative because it's simple enough and often a "default" choice.
And the biggest abuser of GPL? Anyone? Yes, you are right, it is GOOGLE.
I see that the Microsoft Public License is grouped in with the other permissive ones like Apache and BSD. Honest question though, is the MS-PL actually a popular choice for non-Microsoft projects? I've never really seen it much, and my intuition says that a decent set of open source devs would be allergic to a Microsoft license.
Dangerous, sexy, turing complete: Femme Bots
Yes there would. Compile a program, give a less-computer-literate friend a copy of the binary. Don't give them the source, because they've no need of it (and can grab it from upstream if they really need it). Forget to include a written offer good for three years to provide the source. You've just violated the GPL, meaning that you have no license to distribute the software, and are therefore a committing copyright infringement (or 'piracy' in the vernacular).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
One reason to be for the GPL as a FOSS license is that it is there.
There often are problems with merging code and projects under different licenses,
and having more of them, isn't better.
2nd answer:
Not all popular licenses are FOSS licenses.
The BSD license is a permissive license.
Calling it a business license would be as sensible.
3rd answer:
Many good intentions have been invested in the GPL.
It is a license with a concept behind it.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
Licenses are like programming languages - the right tool for the right job. Some projects - especially those authors want adopted in a business environment - are going to want to go with more permissive licenses. A trend like this says that more and more projects feel they need to be more permissive, not that people are abandoning the GPL. The question becomes why do they need to be more permissive? I'd wager a guess that it has a lot to do with the number of corporations involves in supporting, expanding, and creating open source applications. As for myself, my next two projects are going to be using GPL 2 - but then again corporate adoption of my software is not a goal.
>I simply can't take and not give back.
Unless you don't distribute it. In which case you can do exactly that.
Just like Google does. And GPL doesn't prevent any of that, while it's essentially the same. Google also improves upon GPL'd software, but just because it's server side they don't need to give it away. You're working towards Google profiting while they have no need to give anything back. They aren't distributing the code, but end result is essentially the same.
Heh, but I don't want to, which is why I write GPL3 code.
The GPL lets me ensure payment in some form. Either I get source, or I can possibly get money in exchange for a different license.
If you're not happy with that, then of course I don't get anything, but since there's nothing in it for me if I let you use my code without benefitting from it, it doesn't really make a difference.
Err, it is true. Perhaps I wasn't specific enough, and the response before yours acknowledges the only case in which it is true.
I would have to imagine that the more the economy goes into the toilet the more independent developers (that may now be unemployed) and corporations (that may be struggling financially) are choosing to profit from their work to stay alive. The GPL and LGPL license terms have been taking a beating recently, but the acceleration of their potential demise may also be due in part to the realities of our current, global economic condition.
How is that fair?
How isn't it fair? They didn't make the toolkit, and they agreed to the license. They should've used something else if they didn't want that to happen (too bad for them if it doesn't exist).
So if I invent a robot with my own ai code but it uses GPL apis and links can I sell them? Nope
Thats redistributing. What if I onvested 5,000,000 making the code? Whoops competitors now use my code and undercut me because they didnt have to invest the 5,000,000. I go out of business.
Google gets a free ride because they are not redistributing. For everyone else who makes smart appliances you are screwed. Small business owners are too. You cant sell your company as that too counts as redistribution. People blasted Bill Gates for calling it viral but he has a point. If it links to gpl you dont own it.
Just google router xompanies? Gnu went after them
http://saveie6.com/
Because the only way to make money is to take open source software and ensure that the recipients of your modified version cannot have the source code?
Don't be ridiculous!
As Richard Stallman's personal example proves, you can also get MacArthur Fellowship grants, work in academia, and get paid to lecture and sleep on other people's couches wherever you go.
Or that the source code must absolutely be integrated deeply into yours?
And again, you are being ridicuous!
Look at the huge numbers of integrated development environments and graphical debuggers that have arisen around gdb because you don't need deep integration, and gdb itself lends itself so readily to use as a modular component via popen(3)! Why do you think it has such a sophisticated and useful macro command language, with stack variables and the ability to do shadow state locally, rather than forcing you to allocate memory on the target to store string variables?
Oh wait. Perhaps that was not the best example of a GPL'ed product from the FSF itself which can be used modularly in other software...
-- Terry
GPL is best for companies using it as a service. They can take the GPL'ed code, make proprietary changes to it, and then use that software to sell services and/or advertising to people using free services. This is the best way to profit from GPL. As long as they aren't "copying" the GPL'ed software, they have no obligation to release any changes or derived software.
And even that is not wholly correct. Perhaps this works best:
I can profit while using GPL software. I simply cannot close the source code as a means of forcing my customers into a dependency on me. Which is why the GPL was created in the first place.
Sorry, I'm not sure what you're referring to. Which google product are you accusing?
However, they're trying to get rid of GPL software in the src tree as fast as they can.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Their own filesystem implemented in the Linux kernel? Maybe your sources are better than mine, but I doubt it. If you're talking about GFS, what I have heard is that it is implemented in user mode, not the kernel. Wikipedia also says this.
I'm aware that it's a legal term, not a physical or natural law.
Does 38 have to be prime to prove the rule that there are no even primes greater than three?
So tell me, o mighty spouter of clichés, what the fuck your statement has it to do with the question at hand?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It's more like having freedom of speech, but anyone who feels like it can revoke it. GPL doesn't restrict freedom, it enforces freedom.
Yeah, except a company which decides to use and modify open source software without giving back does not revoke anyone else' right to the code... so, in other words, it's not like that at all.
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
The freedom to deny others the same freedoms you enjoy is not part of a free society.
while(!false) people.select("stallman.richard[middle_letter='m']").hair.comb(combs.grab());
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
No, it's like saying you have freedom of speech, and if you want to use it you must also let other have freedom of speech.
This text has noting to do with reality, and is all skewed and twisted with the point of directing our behavior in a certain direction. (Well, all communication is, a bit. But here, it's the only purpose.)
By the way: The problem with licenses is, that they are still a part of the "intellectual property" delusion.
There is only one way to kill that and all the organized crime that feeds off of it: NO license.
But because in reality, this means others taking your code (which itself is obviously OK), but then using "licenses" and their bought criminals in the government to sue YOU.
So to solve that, do the following:
Create a "'NO LICENSE' LICENSE". Which should only say that "YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO DO ANYTHING WITH THIS CODE. AT ALL. EVER." :)
This assumes that anyone who didn't fall for the "IP" lie, knows that licenses are by definition nonsense and never enforceable, and hence invalid and void. So we can still use that code freely however we want. But anyone who is retarded enough to have fallen for the lies, will have to adhere to this "license" and never ever use your software. Punishing himself for his stupidity, and giving natural selection a push in the right direction.
Are you aware of what the phrase actually means? The correct meaning is, that it is the unusual data (the exception) that tests (proves, old meaning) the rule (by showing whether it holds for it). In other words *not* that something that defies the rule confirms it, but something unusual that shows the rule still works.
it enforces freedom
You're gonna be free wether you like it or not!
The freedoms are rivalrous -- you're free to distribute a piece of software however you please, or you're free to extend a piece of software however you please. The first one is a commerce right, the second one is a moral right. Both of these can't always be satisfied.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
If you encapsulate all your AI code in a standalone binary and don't directly link against the GPL'd stuff, then all you need to make public are the changes you made to the GPL'd stuff. Your proprietary binary can be kept proprietary as long as you can make a case that it is not a derivative work of the GPL'd stuff.
Can I have this in the form of a car analogy please?
And if you don't acknowledge that going in, then you deserve the misery that comes to you.
Yeah, how dare the FSF go after them for copyright violation. Except the FSF virtually never sues, they try to achieve compliance first.
Good thing too, cause OpenWRT seems to be the result of such compliance and it's an awesome thing to have on my router.
GPL doesn't prevent profit. It just forces people to "pay forward" to their users the same favor they received from upstream.
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Being software programmers we tend to think about the writer of the code and assume that the user is using free code that costs nothing.
Using free code costs real money. Having machines to run it costs real money. Training people to use it costs real money. Altering it to your uses costs real money. Businesses are in the position of spending real money on something and then being told how they can and can not use it.
Would you like a free car that can only go some places? Sure you would its free except for the place to park it and gas. But if you need to go to those places without waiting for the bus you may still need a second car meaning this free car is actually costing you MORE than just having the second car, you now need to parking spaces, gas in two tanks sitting idle etc. Now what if you could buy a mostly free car that can go anywhere anytime. Business would pay for the ability NOT to use that free car because they want to use it exactly how they want it.
And thats exactly what is happening.
People want their code used widely so they can like Linus Linux get economic benefit for their free work either in the form of consulting or career advancement. So they make the tool that mosts fits what the business environment wants.
I'll give you that, but it is just as much a right to want to sleep with supermodels. However, don't confuse the right to want to with the right to have.
Those are basic responsibilities, but you don't have a basic right to them.
Okay, about the code itself. If you are the original developer and sole copyright holder, you aren't restricted by the license. The GPL could possibly be a greater way of making money because you can sell exceptions, and competitors can't distribute a proprietary version based upon the work you've done. If you licensed that same project under the BSDL, your competitors could make a proprietary version. They could keep using your beneficial changes, but you wouldn't have access to theirs. I don't see how that's beneficial to the original developer. I see how it's beneficial to the competitor that builds a proprietary version upon yours, but I don't see why we should be working to benefit those parties.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I'm a fan of the GPLv2 and have used it a few times, but it's a little on the restrictive side for my taste. I find I'm more in favour of BSD-style licensing. For me, the nail in the GPL coffin was when GPLv3 came out. The combination of more restrictions and heavier legalese insured I wouldn't use it. I guess I still can use the GPLv2 if I need to, but more and more I find if I'm sharing code people ask me, "It's not GPLed, is it?" Or "This is BSD or Apache licensed, right?" It's not a good sign when developers are actively avoiding using a license.
If you release software to people, you are sharing the code already. It is just undocumented, in a format that can only easily be converted to assembler code, and only rude people who don't care about copyright law can use it.
If someone likes your program, and wants a legit copy that he can improve, he will have to spend extra work.
So GPL'ed code saves peoples' work, and without paying for it. Naturally, business doesn't like that.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
I think the purpose of the GPL is to ensure that those that profit from your work also give back. Everyone needs to be paid, some of us just want to be paid in code. For that reason I use GPL, but BSD, MIT, Apache are all good, free, licenses, so I really don't see an issue here.
It was socialism that supposed to be transitional in Marx's writings. Communism, the great unknown of what comes about when humanity is no longer alienated from itself because class warfare has ceased to exist, is what Marx thought that socialism was supposed to help transition to.
GPL caused too many problems for companies
[citation needed]
What are these problems? What companies are saying "we won't go for GPL again because of problems in the past"? Does this actually have a significant impact on GPL usage?
It is easy to assume that companies wouldn't be happy with the GPL because it restricts what they can do, but that doesn't mean that this is actually how it works out in practice.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
It's like selling somebody a car, but then not letting them delivers pizzas because they opted for a lease.
I think developers nowadays are just more aware of the various licenses and their implications. Jump back 10 years ago, a lot of devvers were like 'i've got this great piece of code, i want to share it. let's pick a license - o, GPL was the best license, right? let's release it GPL'. And only later came to the conclusion how inconvenient said license was.
Every license gots it's place. The problem with GPL is, is that's it's walling off it's very own garden - it is only compatible with other GPL libraries.
Another differentation to make is: application versus library. For applications, GPL is often very well suited. For libraries, it's a nightmare as it restricts usage. Yes, there is LGPL and no, it hardly helps.
As (amateur) developer myself, i began to favor BSD-styled licenses, whereever possible. GPL bites too often in your toes, if you don't watch out. It's a nice license, but highly situational. And it is a restrictive license, not an open one. Restrictive in a way that only compares to closed source.
The idea about GPL is great - make sure code stays open. The practice is: is there any need for that? There are many projects with *random* licenses, that work well, just because there is a team around it, involved in active developing. The focus should more be on 'how do we get this code better' than 'how do we restrict usage'. And the power exists in the mere fact that there's a team, not a codebase.
Personally, i wish the next GPL license would be more open, in the sense of: you can protect this very piece of code, but remove the 'viral' part from it, and allow usage in any further license. Example are the BSD unices that complain how they cannot use GPL'd drivers and other code, whereas the 'linux/gnu team' can happily borrow code from them. That's up to the very GPL license to fix. Same applies to closed source - i bet a company would happily show code of a GPL library they used, and possibly modified, if it was only limited to that.
Last not least.. No, that neat piece of code you wrote in the last 3 days isn't that special. Why bother someone stealing or profiting from it in the first place. A company that profits from your code may indeed do so, the difference is, you didn't have that company, so it's a bogus comparison to start with. But it you would happen to have a company, wouldn't you be pleased to be able to use existing code? Not re-inventing wheels, and cutting costs a bit, freeing up developer time for more challenging tasks? Yet, as thousand others wrote above, you would stay away from GPL code for obvious reasons.
Why create something, give it out for free, and then allow businesses to take your work, profit from it, and give nothing back?
If you love something, let it go free.
If it does not return to you, it was never yours...
If I am truly being charitable, why NOT let someone profit from something I have made? I would like them to return something if possible but why would I wish to place that burden as a legal demand instead of a request that they can choose to honor?
A lot of times you create something for others to use simply for the joy of having something used and helping people. Letting them use it without necessarily giving back or even crediting you does not diminish that.
I like the GPL a lot, I appreciate what it is trying to do... but in real life I love to gift a gift more freely, so that others may be encouraged to give back the same gift in return.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sure. GPL (well, GPLv2) software is a car that can be copied an infinite number of times. Its original manufacturer says that anyone can use it, modify it, and repair it, as long as they let others copy it under the same terms. BSD software, on the other hand, says anyone can do anything with their car copies, since the original will always still exist—even people who want to prevent others from modifying, using, or repair their modified versions (i.e. pine-scented air fresheners, fuzzy dice, truck nuts, giant spoilers, neon lights underneath, racing stripes...)
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
You mentioned the hardware issues. Another big issues with commercial concerns is the langage on patent licensing.
But I think that the big thing was the talk of closing the "web loophole" during drafts of v3 spooked quite a few vendors. I don't think it made it into the final version but by that point I think the damage had already been done.
Another big issue is that the language in the licence that an existing version can be replaced by a future version was first given serious thought by people opposed to some of the language in the various v3 drafts. All of a sudden, Linus looked prescient for explicitly specifying v2 of the license instead of using the FSF's standard boilerplate.
Why create something, give it out for free, and then allow businesses to take your work, profit from it, and give nothing back?
Because if you truly want to promote freedom and free code, you also have to let people to profit from it. Freedom isn't picking who gets to enjoy that "freedom" based on some rules.
You post is FUD of the worst sort. The GPL in no way restricts freedom to profit from GPL code, it only restricts you from taking private the hard work of the original authors. So if walled garden is your business model, then don't use GPL code. But if your business is committed to playing well with the community, the GPL is your friend. In my opinion, the former approach belongs to the last century. Business2 is about playing well with the community, as opposed to turn-of-the-19th-century trustmaking tycoonism.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Because if you truly want to promote freedom and free code, you also have to let people to profit from it. Freedom isn't picking who gets to enjoy that "freedom" based on some rules.
You're blatantly misinterpreting what he said. The problem isn't that they profit from it -- and there is nothing in the GPL that prohibits profit. The problem is that they "take your work, profit from it, and give nothing back."
I'm sure anyone who has been paying attention has already heard this, but this is the obvious problem with BSD license: You spend a million hours creating a great program, call it Foo, and you release it under the BSD license. Someone like Microsoft comes along, takes Foo, improves it a little bit, calls it FooBar and distributes it as a binary without publishing any of the code. If the improvements are good, they can't be brought back into the main tree because the original developers don't have the source. But now FooBar, being an improved version of Foo, will take all of the Foo user base -- it has every good feature of Foo and a few more. The original developers get no bug reports. There are no longer any developer-users who can think of a great new improvement and submit a patch, because everybody is now using FooBar and nobody has the source to that. It withers as an open source project -- you might as well just assign the copyright to Microsoft for free.
Even where the original community is strong enough that it doesn't completely destroy them, it still gives them a bloody nose. You look at something like Kerberos. Who uses Kerberos? Hardly anybody. Who uses Active Directory, which Microsoft created by integrating Kerberos and LDAP with Windows and making it proprietary? Almost everybody. Which means Kerberos is finished. Everybody is already using AD, so there is no reason to adopt Kerberos, which means no community. And if you don't think so, by all means explain why Linux has a much larger community than BSD.
About the only time that a corporation adopting code licensed under the BSD license doesn't kick the crap out of the community that originally developed it is where the company that adopts it submits their changes back to the original developers -- but if they intend to do that then the developers might as well have used GPLv2.
Not if it's GPLv2. Raenex found a technicality that the FSF inadvertently left in the definition of "work based on the Program". This makes the entire contents of the robot's storage a "work based on the Program" that cannot be distributed without complete corresponding source code, especially when combined with GPLv2's failure to precisely define "mere aggregation".
What? How come every single time GPL comes up everyone automatically assumes that there is a clause that forbids you to profit from GPL-ed projects? I personally modified quite a number of GPL software and, sticking to the license provided the source code along with the binaries AND received a payment.
Tell RedHat that you cannot profit from GPL software.
And to repeat once again — BSD is about freedom of the coder, GPL is about freedom of the code.
Actually it's nothing like that but yeah great very insightful. It's more like using your freedom of speech to come up with an original saying and then having a company copyright a slightly different version and preventing preventing you from using the new version.
Google is using immense amounts of GPL software. Their data centers runs linux. Their own version of it, not shared back. Search, ads, everything Google runs is based on GPL-ed software. They can get away with it because they do not distribute their software, as technically they use it in-house, even though the results of the GPL software is what brings in the dough. They've found a giant loophole (the web) where you do not need to distribute actual software to let (a) people use it, and (b) profit from it.
So yes, the OP was right, and has an excessive flamebait mod: Google is one of the biggest abusers of GPL. Legally, they are 100% in the clear. Morally, less so.
So in the end it's THIS argument who is overly idealistic, and not the GPL. Surprise surprise!
The GPL was never about free as in "*the* real, total freedom". Total absolute freedom is something humans can't even define properly, there's always some set of rules anywhere allowing people to build and maintain a society. You have to be pushing your hands firmly over your eyes to ignore that.
GPL protects *specific* freedoms, not *all* freedoms. The specific freedoms it protects are:
Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program for any purpose. Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish. Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor. Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits.
Other freedoms, or "total freedom" whatever it may be, were never an aim for the GPL. Now repeat after me again:
GPL is not about "freedom in the general, ideal sense", nor it's about "totally free code". GPL its about the "four software freedoms stated by the FSF".
The BSD license has an excellent feature not often discussed: the right to GPL any BSD code. See where that goes over time?
Re problems caused by GPL for companies: GPL only causes problems with doing of evil.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Because they want people to use their works. If a license is restrictive that people/business don't want to use your works, then people rethink their license.
It also happens that many open source like products are used and supported by businesses. Again, they don't want to sabotage their ecosystem.
Yes. The common idiom is a complete misunderstanding of a concept based on a mistranslation from ancient latin legal terminology. It has no more place in modern discussion than begging the question, an appeal to authority, or any other logical fallacy.
Imagine all the people...
Not to invalidate the outcome of the report (though the hyperbole could do with some work) but this arbitrary 'percentage' assignment has me wondering. Could this not just reflect a new growth in say Rails projects or Javascript (the Ruby community is traditionally MIT/BSD, see too very common frameworks like jQuery). In the past code like this was rarely included, but this might just represent the true makeup of the community and fast LOC growth in one community doesn't mean the other community is jumping ship to a different license.
Everyone I know is writing iPhone and Android apps. If you want to make money, the GPL doesn't always seem like a good deal. In reality, though, the number of people who can get a project off of Sourceforge and compile it wouldn't affect sales. But I understand the mentality. I'm certainly not releasing my novels under Creative Commons or something like that...
Open Source is great for modifying existing apps.
Get Perfect Me, my Hitchhiker's Guide tribute novella for free:
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Worst. Car. Analogy. Ever.
And the GPLv3 says that, if you run a taxi service, you have to provide schematics to your patrons.
On an abstract level, this is the same (unanswered) question I've had about democracy, especially in light of the recent elections in Egypt. Can a democratic society truly be free if it requires that the society must remain democratic? Or can the people (democratically) choose to replace democracy with something less than democratic?
I'm still unsure of the answer, but I've been leaning towards the latter. If a system cannot self-sustain itself, then it can only be sustained through force and intimidation - the antithesis of freedom. If GPL's requirement to "give back if you've taken" causes it to decline in popularity, forcing people to adopt it isn't the answer.
I mean, is what you've said any different from paid software? I take something (in exchange for giving money), and that encourages me to give (in exchange for receiving money). All that's really happened is you've removed the intermediary of money and converted it into a barter system, and shifted cost in a way which makes it cheaper to acquire but harder to recoup development expenses.
I'm all for experimenting with different cost structuring systems, but if this one happens to be failing due to unpopularity, arguing that it should be more popular because it's fairer would seem to indicate the problem is with your definition of "fair", not with everyone else's definition of "fair". You cut the cake, and I pick which slice I get. It's not you cut the cake, and you pick which slice I get. You put together the GPL license in a manner in which you think is fair, and if people aren't adopting it, it must be because they don't really think it's as fair as you think it is.
As the maintainer of Net-SNMP I've received a huge number of patches that would never have been given to us if Net-SNMP used a GPL license (though in this case, the code predates the GPL). Companies that have worked on the Net-SNMP code and have given back to it do so because they want to use their cool new feature they've developed for the code base in their proprietary software or hardware. IE, the Net-SNMP libraries and applications are the base upon which they build. It's important to them to contribute their patches to the base back to the core Net-SNMP repository so they can be assured future patches will not conflict with their feature (ie, because a patch isn't accepted that breaks the existing code base). Plus it gets their name in lights (ie, the COPYING file. Not many lumens, but still "lights").
I've been told many times that if Net-SNMP was GPLed code it would never be used. But since it's not, it's used in pretty much distributed by nearly ever OS vendor except Microsoft, and is used on a ton of embedded hardware. This would not have happened if it was a GPLed code base.
(ok, Microsoft still wouldn't be distributing it and linux* still would be; but all bets on Apple, Sun, etc, would be off)
The next site to slashdot will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and start slashdotting it early!
So what do you do when companies take your GPL code and only host it on their servers, like Facebook and Google along others? Since they're not distributing it, they're not violating GPL. But they're still profiting from your code without necessarily giving anything back. They don't have to, anyway.
No. You would be promoting business, not freedom and free code. The businesses can then get the code and restrict your freedom. That's business, not freedom. Huge difference. If you want to say, making money is more important than freedom, fine. But just don't confuse the two.
BSD et. al do not address this situation, either. But GPLv2 prevents the situation from propagating beyond Google's datacenters, while those other licenses do not.
And, for the record, this situation is not permissible under GPLv3.
b.g.
Once you go web-based or "cloud", you don't have to distribute binaries any more and therefore don't have to distribute the source code. GPL vs. the other Open Source licenses is becoming more and more irrelevant for anything that doesn't have to run on the client or in the customer's environment.
That's why the EFF recommends you assign the copyright for your GPL code to them... they have big flocks of lawyers who can do that work for you. If your main concern is to get code out to the world, and for it to remain open even as others modify/improve it, then personally holding the copyright doesn't really matter to you as an individual programmer. It requires letting go of the personal instinct for ownership, but it has worked for lots of products in the past; the EFF has gone after big companies when they had the legal leverage (via the copyright) to do so.
I can't recall the story, and your poor grammar is a bit difficult to decipher; so are you saying the creator shouldn't have the right to GPL his code, or that he should have the right to take someone else's code, and apply whatever license he likes?
One project has a permissive license, the other has a strong copyleft license, but the behaviour of downstream users is identical in both cases.
That's true for the example you cite only because it is a server/back-office system. For the distribution of executable images, however, the downstream situation becomes very, very much different. As you note later in your post.
b.g.
No, it's like saying you have freedom of speech, and if you want to use it you must also let other have freedom of speech.
It's a good analogy, because when you have true freedom of speech, you are actually allowed to say that there should not be freedom of speech. If you wouldn't be allowed to say that, then there would be no freedom of speech after all. That perfectly shows that freedom of speech doesn't limit what you can say based on what others think about it, while GPL does.
Which is what I like about it. The GPL lets you get code out there for sharing and development, but blocks businesses from integrating it with their technology unless they pay for a license agreement. For my needs, GPLv3 is a near ideal publication license, supplemented by proprietary commercial licenses.
Any time I've wanted to share code without hope of revenue, I've released it under LGPL instead.
But as my wallet remains empty and the donation counter is $0, I have NO interest in letting any leeches use it anymore freely than is permitted by the GPLv3. Screw the freetards.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Your argument is only correct because you have restricted it to a certain class of downstream users - those that modify GPL projects for their own internal use and never sell their software or systems to a third party. The argument does not hold for the (presumable majority) of downstream users/developers, who take software and incorporate it into some larger software or system which they then sell to their own customers.
Consider the Android Linux kernel. Google must release it to the world because it is GPL. If your speculation is correct, then they would not do this if they could keep it private and gain competitive advantage. Hence, the kernel being GPL has led directly to the Android-modified kernel source being made available to everyone else, which is a win for everyone else.
The post you are responding to did not say one could not profit from GPL code. Nor did it say that you can not charge for distributing it.
The fact is you cannot distribute GPL code any way you want (unless you are the copyright holder and distribute it under non GPL terms as well, of course).
To amend what you are repeating BSD is about freedom of the distributor; GPL is about freedom of the code.
RH doesn't sell software, it sells services.
They aren't selling code, they are selling a service. A huge difference, as the code is by definition free, it is only their help and expertise that they make a profit from.
Start-ups, however, are lured by the idea of being able to close-source everything once their product becomes a smash hit
Then start-ups are confused. What makes people think that having distributed something under the BSD license, you can unilaterally revoke the license from existing licensees any more than you could with the GPL?
Many companies use software internally. They take that work, profit from it, and give nothing back. How is the GPL any better than BSD under that scenario?
I think the more pertinent question is, how is it any worse?
GPL allows profit but the profiteer needs to provide the source code of what they're profiting from.
I would rather see any other license than a 'no commercial use' type license. It's disgustingly restrictive.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Because I want to maximize usage of my code. I mean, if I write something truly excellent, my primary objective is not to "keep it free", but to make its usage as widespread as possible. Let me give an example: let's say that I make some freaking amazing social network software, and licence it under some GPL license. A year later, some new social network might become a runaway success thanks to some innovative idea that doesn't necessarily have a lot to do with software. I end up having to use it because all my friends use it, but unfortunately, it's kind of buggy and annoying. Well, if I had chosen a BSD licence, perhaps they'd have based their own software on it. And then the whole experience (MY experience) would be better.
I mean, as annoying as "take my work, profit from it, and give nothing back" may sound, the truth of the matter is that if they can't use my work they will use somebody else's or roll their own, and they will make basically the same profits. Since they would only pick my software if it is the best choice, the bottom line is that their product will be worse, and ultimately it is their users who will suffer.
If I make something very unique and/or extensive and/or *leagues* ahead of any alternative, then I can probably get away with using GPL, because the inconvenience of GPL would not suffice to offset the attractiveness of my software. Companies would bite the bullet to gain a competitive advantage, and everybody wins. But if I make something that's better than any alternative, but not ground-breakingly so, I'll go BSD so that inferior software doesn't end up fucking shit up all over the place.
Bottom line: I will use the most copyleft license that gets companies to use my code over any inferior alternative, and I do this for their users's sake (especially since I might end up being one of these users). Unfortunately, in most situations, that means BSD. If BSD didn't cut it, I'd outright shove it into public domain.
How can you be an "abuser" of the GPL if you are adhering to the terms of the license? Oh wait, freetards want to take away even the freedoms granted by the GPL ...
The BSD license is more free than the GPL, both for the coder, for the end user, and for everyone in between.
No. The use of non-free non-GPL licensing that does not respect the users freedom is not free.
You could release your own code under a different license and not use any open source that you could not get relicensed as closed.
My company had planned on leveraging a Linux distribution but they just did not want to weed out which license did what, what they were responsible for or to do.
I believe there is a scrubbed distribution that is a GPL, LGPL, public domain only but I never had a chance to look for it.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
If your answer is 'nope' it's only because you're choosing to not sell it. I.e. you're choosing not to sell it because you are compelled by the GPL to provide your source along with the robot.
You certainly can sell it, and many do exactly that. Sony is a good example. Their TVs, BluRay players, and cameras all have GPL code in them.
If you're careful, you use only LGPL APIs in your code, and then you're not required to provide the source to your robot.
... and they're being total hypocrites when they do, because Stallman has publicly stated that anyone who writes closed code deserves to have their code pirated. "Do as I say, not as I do." And there's the irony - under current law, anyone can make a credible claim that the copyrights assigned to the FSF were obtained through fraud.
"exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis" (lit. "the exception confirms [approves, demonstrates] the rule in cases not excepted"). His usage here seems perfectly valid, so I'm a bit confused by what you mean. Red Hat has to go through special means to profit through releasing GPL'd code. Implying there is a rule that companies cannot do so through normal means. Which is exactly what the phrase was coined to mean.
Also implying that companies that do not want to go through such exceptions should use the BSD (or similar) license.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Google has also contributed more open source code by volume than almost any other company.
And while they may not have contributed back that much of their server-based Linux changes (which neither you nor I even know how extensively changed the GPL kernel code is anyway - a lot of their work is in *new* userspace code for distribution, monitoring, etc), they *have* open sourced one of the most interesting and successful new Linux distributions in years - Android (and its 15 million odd lines of code between the kernel, drivers, userspace, APIs, etc). As you said, legally, they are 100% in the clear (so "abuse" is really not an accurate term) and morally, I'm sure they sleep just fine at night.
And even that is not wholly correct. Perhaps this works best:
I can profit while using GPL software. I simply cannot close the source code as a means of forcing my customers into a dependency on me. Which is why the GPL was created in the first place.
You can't do that with BSD software either, since you can't close the source at all. You can fail to share the source, naturally - but anyone who wants it can go and get it from the same place you got it from. You, as an individual (or company) get to decide what license your code is released in, or even if its released at all - which is the same freedom that the original author of the BSD package you're using had.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Um, because that's freedom?
Of course not! 19998 could be prime and that would be enough.
What makes people think that having distributed something under the BSD license, you can unilaterally revoke the license from existing licensees any more than you could with the GPL?
They can't revoke old code, but they can change license terms later, even if others have submitted code patches or forked it with BSD license.
You post is FUD of the worst sort. The GPL in no way restricts freedom to profit from GPL code, it only restricts you from taking private the hard work of the original authors.
So... if I write some software... and release it under a non-GPL license... and someone else uses it... you claim that they can prevent me from giving it away to anyone else?
And you're calling the GPP FUD?
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Please explain how it could be revoked in any way. If you're talking about a company taking the code and using it in a closed source product, that argument has been used countless times, and the response is always the same--the original BSD-licensed code doesn't magically disappear into thin air.
The freedom that the GPL enforces is someone else's narrow definition of freedom. That's not true freedom.
That's not what it actually means at all.
The fact that people defending the commercial viability of GPL'd software always trot out the same tiny number of examples is incredibly telling.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Therefore it's not true freedom.
Not quite.
At work, I use a closed source license. I do it because my company pays me. They want source code, I want food; it's a fair trade.
At home, I use the GPL. I write code that I like to write, and if other people want to use it, I'm happy to share with them, but in return I'd like them to share back. I don't want them to take my source code, and then prevent their users from receiving the same kindness they got. Pay it forward. Of course some people don't want to pay it forward, so they won't use my code at all.
If that bothers you, then you can use the BSD license. You can use the BSD license to let your code get as wide distribution as possible. If you think it's cool that Apple might use your project and distribute it to millions of users, then you can tell people, "I wrote code used by millions of people," then you might want to use BSD. You might not get anything out of it other than satisfaction, but you're ok with that.
The only real argument between BSD and GPL groups is which license produces better code. The answer is neither, people produce code. The license that produces the best code will be the one that attracts the most people.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I hate to disagree but it forces not enforces. MIT and BSD licenses are completely free and require nothing of someone using or contributing. GPL requires that anything one creates using GPL code must be open as well. I prefer GPL. There is nothing more annoying then say a company that makes an OS which uses an MIT licensed graphics library or a BSD licensed network stack but at the same time fights aggressively against free and open source software.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
That's ONE opinion and certainly not one that's widely shared because it takes a very expansive view of what constitutions a "work". To say that two programs that were independently developed constitution a single work simple because they are distributed together (normally considered aggregation) is a rather unique viewpoint.
Copyright has a concept of a "collective work", which constitues multiple independent works distributed together. But to Raenex, the key phrase in the GPLv2 governing collective works is this, from section 2: "the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program." Therefore, a distribution can be deemed a "work based on the Program" if it forms a "collective work" under copyright law. Immediately afterward, it appears to contradict itself with the "mere aggregation", but unlike GPLv3, GPLv2 makes no effort to define "aggregation" with any sort of precision.
Because not everyone is panicked about the fact that a company can do this. If a solitary user is allowed to use the software and give nothing back, then why can't a company do the same? Some people write software to give it away, not to promote a social movement. It isn't stealing if you let people use your software and don't want anything in return.
Right now most companies can not use GPL software libraries, period. This includes even using strings like a string package (lawyers shy away from even LGPL), or an encryption library, or device drivers, etc. GPL is kryptonite. There is zero profit to give back here anyway, it's not like they're taking a full blown application and rebranding it, instead they're taking something that's a few lines of code rather than hire a developer to re-invent a buggy C run time library. It seriously hurts embedded world where you can't always use dynamic linking.
The modern computing world was based upon the Unix and BSD model anyway. Software was given away with as few restrictions as possible. The software was developed with public funds much of the time and from companies that were given big favors by governments. FSF is just trying futilely to relive the glory days of early MIT hacking where people just passed things around all the time without worrying about how did what with the code, but GPL doesn't recreate that sense of community though it does try to make a clique.
First, your statement that "they are getting around the GPL requirements" is factually false. There is no "law" requiring anyone to be a mind reader, and somehow divine "intent" - and in the case of licenses such as the GPL (and other "contracts of adhesion"), any and all "grey areas" are to be interpreted strictly to the benefit of the recipient, and set up against the grantor.
Second, the GPL clearly states that it's okay to profit from GPL'd code - and makes NO additional restrictions about it when you do so, so that case is also covered.
Third, the FSF has, by their head (Stallman) publicly claiming that it's okay to violate copyright on closed source, put themselves in the position where anyone who chooses to vigorously litigate against the enforcement of any copyrights assigned to the FSF or the gnu project, or to demand that code they previously assigned be returned, has a good chance of winning.
The GPL won't be around within a decade or two ... the more permissive licenses, such as the bsd and mit, will be, because they better address the real world. 2011 was the year that a LOT of us woke up, smelled the coffee, and realized that the GPL is an evolutionary dead end. Thanks to the GPL, there will never be a "year of the linux desktop", because there's no economic incentive. Just look at Apple - the company with the most worth in the whole world - selling software that was built upon FreeBSD.
Better analogy. GPL says you can do anything with your car. If you sell it, you need to be sure the next owner can do anything to it that you were able to do. Non-copyleft/BSD/Apache says that you can do anything with your car, but if you sell it, you can lock it down with secret information, so that the new owner needs to only go through you to fix it.
I don't see why anyone would not want to use the GPL if they want their software to be free and open.
Broolucks has the main reason. GPL 3 gets in the way of getting people to use the code. I see posted several times, about reciprocity. I give code, then I should get something back, For a lot of programmers, having someone use your code is a benefit worth the cost of them not otherwise giving something back. Yes, it's obviously not the case for many programmers, but one shouldn't ignore the value of a group that uses your code for useful, visible stuff.
> I suspect you're thinking of the AGPL, not the GPLv3.
The AGPL is exactly my biggest problem with the GPLv3. GPLv2 was a free copyright license: You can run, use, modify and distribute it freely but you are not allowed to make it non-free. With GPLv3 you are not only allowed to make it non-free (by combining it with AGPL code) but you are also forbidden to make it copyleft, as you are no longer allowed to forbid making it non-free.
This in my opinion GPLv3 is a free anti-copyleft license.
Well, I'm not against them profiting from my code. If they used the code and never made an improvement, the end result would be the same. It's one 'bug' in the GPL license, but I don't see a need to pursue it. They are using the code internally and not distributing. Anyone that wants to make improvement and distribute, well those people will have to give back to the community. I'm not too worried about that.
Use Affero GPL for the project in question in the first place. Problem solved.
The freedom the GPL guarantees is the customer's freedom.
It means if you use something you also get to see what it is and to be able to modify it.
Programmers are not an ends in themselves.
So tell me, o mighty spouter of clichés, what the fuck your statement has it to do with the question at hand?
If you can't immediately see the answer to that question, then you could always look up the old legal concept properly and educate yourself. Here, let me Google that for you. Perhaps next time, you'll have the courtesy to do so before you resort to knee-jerk ad hominem attacks.
The point of the original legal idea was that if you start enumerating specific counter-examples then you are creating a presumption that the general case holds. In this context, while obviously we're talking about economics rather than law, the same basic idea makes sense: any time someone asks about commercial viability of GPL'd software, the same tiny number of companies that make money based around such software get trotted out as counter-examples. (Don't agree? Try Google again, this time to see how many other examples you can find by searching the history of Slashdot. It won't take you long.) Given that it is easy to cite numerous companies that make money via other means, this suggests that perhaps making money from GPL'd software really is relatively difficult, thus backing up the comment by InsightIn140Bytes above.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I work in a large multinational, and this is precisely the situation there. The lawyers do not know what to do, exactly, with the LGPL stuff, and they are deathly afraid of a lawsuit over the GPL stuff. So while on my own time I have no strong opinion regarding the copyleft as a strategy for protecting access to source code, while I am at work, MIT and BSD licenses are infinitely more palatable, as they will be pre-approved and will not require obtaining special approval.
Why would you say that? There are many very reasonable concerns about using GPL'd software that have nothing to do with Microsoft, starting with the fact that some of the most basic use cases are ambiguously specified.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
If you want to become an Eclipse project you have to use a EPL compatible license which includes EPL and APL and BSD-licenses. Therefor a lot of university projects choose EPL or APL over GPL.
Why would I want my code to be "free and open"? I want my code to contribute as much to society as possible.
In my evaluation, for the free libraries I write, I find this is best achieved by giving it away without restriction, allowing proprietary companies to incorporate it into their codebases without being obligated to give anything back. There are some companies whose companies won't let them touch GPL code. They can use my code and not give anything back (some give back anyway, even though there is no legal obligation). I think this is a net improvement for overal benefit measured over the entire world than if they couldn't.
I go further than most people at that point; I don't use MIT or BSD or any such licenses, most of which just require keeping authorship information in the code, or in the code and docs. There are some companies whose companies won't let them touch any open source code, and those companies (that I've talked to so far) are ok with public domain code (although I've heard some lawyers are scared of it, given the legal ambiguity in the US). The main practical difference between the non-viral open-source licenses and public domain is the former have legal obligation for attribution, and I just don't see the point in bringing the legal system into play just so some source code locked away in a company's safe somewhere still has my name on it.
So, personally, I believe public domain is a reasonable choice for people to make if they're trying to optimize for "maximum utility" of their code. I believe non-viral open-source licenses are reasonable if you want as much utility as you can get while still guaranteeing you receive "credit" (of some minimal kind) for your work. I believe GPL is the most reasonable choice for people who want to try to change the world to make sure that any printer they buy has drivers they can recompile (which is a rather programmer-centric view of the world, although after 30 years we've only seen mixed results).
(I don't mean "viral" in a negative way, I just like to have a simple word to distinguish that class of license.)
The common idiom is a complete misunderstanding
Of course it is. But I was using the term in its original spirit, hence the mention of etymology.
And since it's not a logical term, I'm not sure why you compare it to logical fallacies.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Let me fix that for you: BSD is about the freedom to make choices for everyone in the distribution chain. GPL is about imposing restrictions ON THE USE OF THE CODE for everyone in the distribution chain. Or have you forgotten all those "linking" arguments, including the bogus ones about how loading a template script into a runtime is somehow "linking" (people wouldn't be stupid enough to make the same argument for a spreadsheet or a word processing document, but GPL zealots have never been noted for logic).
Which is exactly why the GPLv3 is so widely rejected.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
You're gonna be free wether you like it or not!
This would be a great view of things if you could just compare BSD/MIT to GPL. Unfortunately, you have to take into account that there's also copyright and other laws which do also impose a "whether you like it or not!" situation that many people -in particular those having to deal with software development- end up very much not liking.
The GPL licenses are trying to work around various un-sane defaults in copyright. And the BSD/MIT licenses are really only deferral of all rights to the next party, which then -by default or intentionally- would just apply the very restrictive copyright as usual, or pull some shenanigans with DRM, or other things.
Either way you get a "whether you like it or not" situation. But I see the one where all people get more rights as opposed to deferral of this decision to the next person in line as the better solution.
So what are you exactly against? People using your code and improving it without giving anything back? Because that is what Google is doing. Why are you exactly against distributing modified code without source, but not against locking in that code in their own datacenters and never giving anything back? Because the end result is the same - they use the code without contributing back. In fact it's even worser, because it also locks users to their services.
I have a good example of this. I've been using Cryptoheaven as my email provider for several years. They open source their client, but not their server side code. This means you cannot actually use the code without also using them, and I've been locked to paying them because I was stupid enough to use their domains for emails while registering to all kinds of services.
I am perfectly happy with people and even big evil corporations profiting from my GPL'd code as long as I get paid in publicly available patches.
Not true. Please stop spreading these kind of lies. The GPL cannot force anything else to be GPL. Plain and simple. If you use code that is licensed under the GPL and find yourself in violation, you have 3 choices:
2. Negotiate an acceptable license with the copyright holders.
3. Write your own damn code. In other words, remove the infringing code from your project, or your operating system, or your hosting system.
It's your choice. Nothing is forced on you, though if you knowing violate the GPL you are liable for cash damages as per copyright law. But certainly the GPL cannot "infect" code. That it can is a lie plain and simple. Pleas stop spreading it. It's bad enough that MS is spreading this lie.
The only possible way you can run afoul of the GPL is if you get greedy. Just because code is offered freely on the internet doesn't grant you a right to use it however you want. The GPL is no different than any source code license. If you are unsure of your ability to use it in a commercial setting, consult a lawyer. This should be no different than if you are using code licensed from Microsoft or any other proprietary company or source. Seems to me that the recent problems with GPL violations come from companies that have, for all intents and purposes, knowingly stole code and hoped to get away with it. Unlike proprietary code theft (which I am sure is as rampant), open source code theft is sometimes easier to spot.
You can't enforce freedom, idiot.
The point here is that if I make changes to BSD software that entices you to use my variant, the original version is of little use to you unless you are capable of reimplementing the changes that I made.
And if you can't (which, presumably, is why you are using my variant) then you are dependent upon me to deliver fixes, changes, updates, etc., a situation the GPL was created explicitly to avoid.
If this was an issue with those projects in questions, they would be under Affero GPL. But since they are under vanilla GPL or LGPL, it's a non-issue.
This is why saying that the GPL is about freedom is in the same category as the classic "f***ing for virginity". GPL zealots are arguing by redefinition, and using the concept of "freedom" to mean something entirely different and wrapping themselves in its mantle.
If you want true freedom - which must always include the freedom to do things that piss others off without actually harming them - then you should choose some other license than a Stallmanite one.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
The Island of Sark was, until fairly recently, the only remaining feudal state in Europe. Not that long ago they did have an actual referendum and decided to stay like that, rather than transitioning to democracy (some time later they had another referendum and decided to make the change after all).
Its a tiny, tiny place - cars are illegal, you use bicycle or cart - so I imagine there genuinely *is* an argument that you know the people in power personally, so why would you need elections. Presumably the first time round they just couldn't see the benefit of democracy in their particular case. Not the same scale as, say, Egypt but it is a valid case of where there were sane arguments against democracy.
Tangent: when they did switch, the democracy was apparently under immediate attack. Some UK newpaper barons from neighbouring island (the Barclay Brothers, who own the Telegraph newspaper) threw their weight behind the democracy campaign and put up a candidate. They have subsequently been accused of using their muscle as a local employer to punish and manipulate the population (who voted for someone other than the Brothers' preferred candidate). A thoroughly surreal situation and bizarre to think of a state the size of a very small town / large village immediately under attack by commercial interests and pressures!
But they are still tiny, the growth in BSD style licenses (not decline in copyleft) is likely strongly linked to places like github and bitbucket where people share a lot of quick-and-dirty stuff that would have rotted in a tarball deep in an ftp tree otherwise, or not have seen the light of day.
There's no reason Google couldn't have used BSD instead if they wanted to keep it closed source. They've also open sourced more of their code base for Android than necessary. They're not as aggressively open as other companies, but they're more open than the license dictates. Seems to me that your example is, in fact, "invalid".
In contrast, Yahoo uses a private fork of FreeBSD on a lot of their systems. They employ several FreeBSD developers and contribute a lot of changes back if doing so won't give away a serious competitive advantage, but they keep some things private.
NetApp, Isilon, and Juniper also have their code based off of FreeBSD. Over time all have found that it's generally better to contribute back to the project rather than keep their patches private.
As time goes on the public project moves forward and it takes more and more effort to keep your private repository synced.
Isilon sponsored InfiniBand and in-kernel NFS work for FreeBSD and have the code made public. Isilon's innovation is their file system (and they make their money off of hardware and contracts), so that's what they keep secret; everything else is treated as the incoming tide that helps lift all boats.
Sandvine (the DPI vendor) also uses FreeBSD and has sponsored a lot of put backs (with credit in the commit messages for such work).
Just look at Apple - the company with the most worth in the whole world - selling software that was built upon FreeBSD.
And not contributing anything back to the community. Should Apple fall one day or just discontinue its BSD-based products, all their achievements will be lost. On the other hand, when a big GPL vendor falls or discontinues a product, anybody can come in and keep it alive from the last public release.
GPLv3 still allows you to run code on your servers without giving back, it's only the AGPLv3 that requires making the code available.
Using BSD or other license won't mitigate this. So why change it? Yes, this is a weakness in the GPL, but one that must be tolerated because otherwise the license would be too cumbersome.
"And not contributing any thing back to the community". libdispatch? iokit? darwin streaming server? darwin calendar server? webkit? You're entitled to your opinions, but you might at least put a bit of effort into, you know, basing them on facts.
That is definitely not a better analogy.
Because if you truly want to promote freedom and free code, you also have to let people to profit from it. Freedom isn't picking who gets to enjoy that "freedom" based on some rules.
You're completely missing the point.
The GPL allows anyone to use the software for any purpose, including to make money. It does not allow the software to become part of a product that is closed source, that a company charges money for.
The idea is to keep the code free and open.
If I write code and give it away for free with source, why should some random company that has no intention of opening its source code for the benefit of others to learn from and to use, and charges money under a license restricting the use of the software, get to benefit from my hard work and altruism?
That's the point. That's why I support and use the GPL and LGPL.
If you are happy with someone else using the code that you wrote to make money (without paying you tuppence), probably modifying your code and not giving back the changes and charging people to use a product based on it, that's up to you.
However, that sort of idea is more popular amongst the greedy and the PHB types who never wrote a line of code in their lives than those that actually write code (and use other Open Source).
Stick Men
RedHat don't make much money from selling GPL code, they make money from consulting & support. And it's hard work for them.
What is "profit from" also? If I borrow some internationalization code as part of a huge project, this saves the company money from having to buy a propriety product perhaps. More likely though it means we don't implement it ourselves and have less bugs down the road than if we rolled our own. Now does that mean we profited and the original author now gets access to every single line of our code as the GPL would imply? Even if the code is proprietary and our competitors are anxious to get a peek at it? Even if various government agencies disallow giving away the code or allowing end user customization of the machines?
With GPL the return payment is that you must also be GPL in absolutely everything you do. With BSD the return payment is that you give recognition to the author and keep the copyright notices intact. The first type of payment is too high for most companies unless they've got a software model that fits (ie, dynamic libraries, separately loaded programs, kernel modules, multiple cpus). The second payment is much easier but many companies don't know of it and they associate all free or open source software as GPL tainted. So the result is many smaller companies reinvent small pieces of code or libraries all the time, not the result desired if the author wanted to share code.
Quite the contrary - here's the source. And keep in mind that apple also hired some of the FreeBSD developers, and contributed back to the FreeBSD project with code.
Why create something, give it out for free, and then allow businesses to take your work, profit from it, and give nothing back?
Well, do you really want someone to give something back to your project because they have a gun to their head? It seems like there are a lot of commercially supported and viable BSD licensed projects, where the people profiting from the work give back simply because they profit from it, not strictly because they have to.
This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
The "give back" part if vague and confusing. With GPL you do not give anything back to the original author. Instead the author requires you to make ALL YOUR CODE available to anyone who asks if you linked with the original code. This would be ok if it were only modifications to the code you borrowed, however FSF has defined the mere process of linking to the code as making your entire existing program a derivative work. This is an absurd notion. One line of GPL code does not make 100,000 lines a derivative any more than my adding a line to a wikipedia article makes those older lines a derivative of my insightful one liner.
But back to the original point of this slashdot article. Developers are deciding not to use GPL, it is their own choice. This isn't about companies not giving back but about developers who don't care if the users don't give back. They have the freedom to decide to give away gifts if they want.
Of all the things I disagree with FSF about, the most galling is that they feel the need to lecture everyone else about how we're wrong. We're not pure enough if we don't include the restrictions, or we're naive, or misinformed, or we don't care about free software. This is amazingly patronizing. We don't need the lectures.
Do you honestly need a citation for that or are you just being a smartass? Google would yield you all the citations you need in one simple search.
Why do you think the phrase "open sores" has become so popular? Corporations do not want to even touch the stuff. Corporations are out to make money. They don't make money giving away their programs, especially with GPL3 where you need to grant use to all relevant patents covered by your programs.
Making money on GPL software is just not conducive to good business. Before someone touts out RedHat or something being so wildly successful -- they don't make good money on software. They make good money on services.
Do the Google appliances use the code? If so, isn't that distribution? I am asking honestly as I do not know the answer.
Does that mean I would sack any of my employees who use closed source code - yes, if they used it for corporate infrastructure, or had no fall back plan for the code becoming unmaintained.
Why? Because Oracle have burned me three times already.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
More like the freedom of speech only existing if you repeat everything you hear anyone else say, even if you don't want to.
Learn to love Alaska
Did you seriously just imply the only time the GPL would cause problems for companies is in acts of evil?
Wow.
As long as you do not redistribute the code, then there is no problem. I like the BSD license, and for certain projects it just works better. I don't think that one should just use one or the other, but so far, I have only needed to use the GPL license. I don't believe either one is more "free." If companies want to be misinformed, then let them be misinformed.
You might want to google "bread, circuses and Rome"
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Is that you Bill?
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
The issue is in the double standard. Have you ever read a proprietary software license? Their clearest language is the parts where they make explicit that you have no rights. You can end up in violation of the license by doing completely arbitrary things that users will never consider before doing, like some fifteen-seat satellite office using Windows XP Internet Connection Sharing with more than ten computers. Or just simple oversights like you inadvertently install a piece of volume licensed proprietary software on more computers than you bought seats for.
The answer to these problems is not to prohibit all proprietary software in the enterprise. The answer is for the lawyers to do their jobs and see to it that nobody is violating the license. And that goes no different for open source licenses.
You can't do that with BSD software either, since you can't close the source at all. You can fail to share the source, naturally - but anyone who wants it can go and get it from the same place you got it from. You, as an individual (or company) get to decide what license your code is released in, or even if its released at all - which is the same freedom that the original author of the BSD package you're using had.
Yeah, but the one killer feature that you've added to your version is not in the upstream version that others can get.
Look at it this way: In the GPL world, work can be done in both upstream and downstream but there's very little duplication of effort because different downstream branches can copy features from each other and most features quickly reach upstream when they mature. The upstream is the central point of all development. In the BSD world, upstream is nothing more than foundations for others to build on. It's very common that there are multiple proprietary products built on common upstream base but each has to reinvent the wheel independently and none of the resulting implementations will probably reach upstream.
That's why GPL software can keep up with proprietary software (built on top of BSD licensed code or not). When you want to get something done as proprietary software, you have to throw a mountain of money at it from your own pocket. When you want to get the same thing done under GPL, the mountain of money thrown will be pretty much the same size, but it's going to come from a lot more pockets.
So you use the GPL and require copyright assignment. It's not rocket science.
When you have copyleft licenses coexisting with other types of licenses, doesn't the copyleft license naturally decline in use over time?
With proprietary licenses, people working in different organizations often have to write code that does the same thing, but projects that are copylefted allow one of those companies to benefit from the work of the other. It's like a code cache; with a few exceptions, like two people disagreeing on how to implement something, you'll get more and more cache hits until almost no one writes code anymore. Theoretically.
People who are forced to use proprietary licenses are kind of like web users who are forced to have their browser cache turned off. So eventually, we'd see a decline in copyleft licenses. That's an indication that copyleft is working.
So how does Google hosted services "pay forward" to their users the same way with the GPL code that they received? Yep, they don't.
The GPL lets me ensure payment in some form. Either I get source, or I can possibly get money in exchange for a different license.
Has Google done either one of these to you while they fork your code to their servers and never give out said code?
You're completely missing the point. You can't argue that the GPL isn't "freedom" but the BSD license is, because it depends entirely on how you define freedom. A definition that makes the BSD license "more free" isn't the sole, true definition than the one that makes the GPL "more free." There is no absolute freedom. There is only a trade off between the freedom of B and C and the freedom of A and D. The GPL and the BSD license make that trade off differently. Which is "better" depends entirely on who you are and what you want.
Of course, large companies that want to take your code and use it in their own software without giving anything in return would prefer that you use the BSD license.
GPL is not incompatible with profit. You can sell GPLed software, Google sells Android which is based on GPL code (the linux kernel). It just mandates to open the source code and to keep it open.
Ask Google (or any big web company for that matter) if GPL means "no profit". BSD doesn't mean open code, it just means "free stuff"
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
You can't say something is free and demand something back for it.
I've read most of the comments here and it's easy to see how passionate everyone is from both sides of the fence.
Me, personally, do not much like the GPL. I think the BSD license is far more free in my opinion of freedom. I release everything I write with a BSD license for two reasons: the end user has absolutely no restrictions as should be the case, and neither do developers who want to use my code, except for an acknowledgement that they are using it. I don't expect any more than that. If you want to turn something I wrote and integrate it into some big commercial app then by all means, do it. Being affiliated with a big name project is (usually) a good thing. If you want to release your own changes with a similar license? Great! I'm all for that too.
The point here is I want to give everyone the chance to do what they want with my code, not feel like they have to give back. I want them to -want- to give back. I am providing my code for everyone to do with as they please. The next guy down the line should not need to do the same. Everyone is free to take my code and do what the other guy did if they really want that functionality and he hasn't offered it up already.
That's how you end up with hardware that you own, that you have to "root" or unlock in some way in order to run Linux (well, android). And that's perfectly reasonable for you?
Vote with your wallet doesn't work when *all* hardware is locked down good... think of cell phones and tablets in a few years time, when manufacturers iron out various defects that cause someone to bypass their security.
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
GPL is just too long.
I have tone some open source libs in my free time. When I do them, I just don't want to spend time thinking about complex legal issues and whatnots. I want to program. I want as many people as possible to use what I share. I want an easy license that allows me to easily and quickly deal with any legal questions I might have in the future. My free time is too precious to be devoted to dealing with murky legal aspects.
MIT or BSD allow me to get done with the legal aspects quickly and concentrate in the stuff that interests me. GPL is just not practical for me to use.
Nice. So if I download all that and build it properly, do I get a complete working MacOS X build? If the answer is "no", I rest my case.
Sorry but your post does not make any sense. If Google decide to use GPL code then that is fine. If they improve it internally but do not give it back then they can do that but they will either have to permanently fork it and lose any improvements to the GPL version or they will have to continually patch their modifications back against the GPL source tree. Even then they don't 'own' their code which can have legal ramifications down the road, for example if they decide to release a version in Android. The fact you think it locks users into their services is clueless, do you know anything at all about software?
Your example is incredibly poor. Open sourcing the client makes sense as then it can be ported to different platforms. They may not open source the server side code but the data is encrypted using standard RSA asymmetric and AES symmetric algorithms. As they keys will be stored client side you have all you need to prevent lock-in of your data. If you register for services using an email address then, er, yes, those services will expect you to have that email address. If you wish to change then simply create a new email address, and log into each service and change the registered email address. But you are obviously too lazy to do this.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Google isn't selling you GPL code. Not at least in the case you want to use to bash online service providers. If you want to make sure that your code is protected against that, there is AGPL.
But, since it is essentially the same, answer this hypothetical question: say I modify some GPL CAD software so it can drive a CNC. Should I give my clients the designs of the pieces I produce for them, or my code, just because they bought those pieces from me?
Because everyone thinks profits are bad, and closed source is bad, so since they're both bad, profits must equal closed source.
Your listing of Webkit among Apple's contributions to community is a big fail. Webkit is GPL'd and it had to be GPL'd all the way back when Apple forked it from KHTML. And if you still don't understand, I'm not talking about releasing a few apps and libraries here and there while keeping the system core proprietary. I'm talking about getting complete system build without reimplementing a proprietary decade of development history from scratch.
You don't maximize freedom by destroying it. The BSD license destroys no freedoms. The GPL does. It's truly that simple.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
Even if someone does not want to share their code with you, what on earth do you gain from not letting them use yours?
Do you feel you are getting "revenge" by making them needlessly write their own implementation instead of using the one you wrote?
Well, there's the AGPL for that. Which may be why Google doesn't seem to like it.
Yeah, some of that kind of thing may remain despite the AGPL, but it's not really practical to try to go against that. And it's probably not a good idea for a company to attempt, as the minute that makes it to the outside they may have to distribute their source.
BSD is about the freedom to make choices for everyone in the distribution chain.
And what I just remarked is what is wrong with BSD... from a GPL POV. Keeping everyone else in the distribution chain able to make their own choices (except restricting anybody else) is, for GPL advocates, more important than you losing the ability to forbid everyone to do anything with the code you "inherited".
GPL is about imposing restrictions ON THE USE OF THE CODE for everyone in the distribution chain.
And that is false. There is one restriction on distribution, and none on use. You don't use software when you distribute it. Please remember that.
Just an off-the-cuff thought, but maybe we could categorise GPL as "want to be paid" and BSD/MIT as "already been paid". With the former, it tends to be coders writing pet projects in their spare time. They want to contribute to the world but resent being exploited for free. Hence the GPL means they will be paid in code or if corporate they need to pay cash for a commercial license. With BSD/MIT the work has been funded by academia/corporations hence has already been paid for, meaning less barrier to releasing it into the wild even if plagiarized for no return. The growing percentage of corporate contributions will of course be reflected in the percentage change in licensing terms.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
If you made something that could make you a fortune, pay for your house, student loans, and a company of your own then you would understand why.
Case in point? Look at earlier this week when someone invented something with cameras that no one else could do in /. stories? Problem was the toolkit is under GPL. How is that fair? There work was worth money but the GPL forced them to give away the algorithms to conpetitors so a whole clone of the toolkit was needed.
How is "so a whole clone of the toolkit was needed" unfair? If they used a toolkit written by somebody else, then it's not all "their work"; some of it is the work of the developer of the toolkit. You don't want to be bound by the requirements of some software, don't use the software. If that means you have to write your own replacement, so it goes; it's not the rest of the universe's responsibility to give you what you want.
GPL served a useful purpose.
The reason why we don't want to use GPL is it forces us to open up parts of a project that might not be permissable opensource - for me it's not my belief for or against GPL, it's just the fact that I can't link GPL'ed software to software I buy, because I don't have the option of opening up everything.
And not contributing anything back to the community. Should Apple fall one day or just discontinue its BSD-based products, all their achievements will be lost. On the other hand, when a big GPL vendor falls or discontinues a product, anybody can come in and keep it alive from the last public release.
This is wrong. All of the BSD components Apple has modified are open sourced by Apple. The kernel of their operating system is open sourced. Some other components of the OS are open sourced e.g. IOKit, libdispatch, cflite. The printer system (CUPS) is open sourced. Bonjour is open sourced. Webkit is open sourced. Their C compiler is open sourced.
Don't say they have given nothing back, because it's bullshit.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
you also have to let people to profit from it
But they /can/ profit from it. They also have to supply back any improvements they make.
Linux would be... BSD... without GPL. So it works for some projects.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I think some blame has to be thrown at Apple and Google. But for different reasons.
Apple, with iOS has basically mandated that you can not use GPL, because every geek with a Mac will put their own version of a GPL program on the App store when nobody has the legal ownership of the software, and by extension can't sell it. If you want to put software on the App Store, it has to be under a Closed licence, however you can certainly share the sourcecode under something like a BSD licence with the stipulation that you can't put YOUR software on the App store too. It comes down to Libraries and vs whole programs. For something like zlib, libpng, etc their own open source licence allows you to compile it and redistribute in binary form the software. You can't however remove the copyrights from their libraries, hence you can't claim ownership of zlib and libpng. Thereby giving you no right to sell "libpng" on the appstore, however you can certainly sell something that can read and write to png files using libpng.
With Google, the same problem applies to their App store, but I don't offhand know of a case example as I don't use Android and follow it less closely than iOS. But Google also makes the GPL problem worse, because Google legally knows they can use the GPL as long as they aren't selling or distributing their derived versions of the software.
One of the greatests abuse of the GPL licence is in when it's used in user-generated content systems. If I were to make a game engine and make it GPL, nobody will use it because it also makes their game content GPL. OOPS, MAJOR SCREWUP there. Also, it makes it impossible to prevent cheating since anyone can just download the engine code and make their own cheat version. OOPS. The same applies to Youtube, and other video sharing sites. Because the licence for the codec libraries is LGPL, it means the software is broken if the rest of the software chain isn't open source too.
You see this with crappy software that converts flash animations into h.264. They bundle the libavcodec which is LGPL, then wrap it twice, once to bridge the LGPL to a "open source" (air quotes) module that then pipes the content to the proprietary part of the program. So all these programs are selling is a windows GUI to load the flash file into the flash player (poorly I might add) and then pipeing the image frames to the libavcodec or x264. It took me about 20 minutes to find the source code to a program that does the exact same thing. They load the activeX flash module into a hidden window, and just effectively 'screenshot' it as fast as the system CPU can handle it. It makes no effort to accurately do it.
I'm sure if libavcodec could parse flash animations, it would make converting to h264 much easier. This is why (flash animators) bitch and moan about being unable to convert their Flash9 or earlier animations to h264, because there is simply no possible way to convert a flash animation correctly without the flash player plugin, which adobe took their sweet time updating to 64-bit. Flash 9.x and later you can export to h264 on the MAC version of Flash CS4 or better because it utilizes quicktime's h264. If you lost your source code .fla project, too damn bad.
So the GPL is the wrong choice if you are developing games, or using it with user-generated content. It's the right choice when you are developing an application that the benefits of being GPL (portability and anyone can update/maintain it) outweigh the negatives of "what if someone sues me under the GPL for not releasing their changes."
Just to clarify "user generated content" I mean where the game engine or whatever is "used to make content" which itself is a form of programming, like say something that automatically generates LUA code,HTML,SVG or javascript. One could make the argument that the game engine and all it's code is GPL, thus making it impossible to sell derived games using the same engine on the app store.
This is just theories based on the political ramifications of using GPL.
The rest of your argument is based on that misinterpretation and is invalid.
Besides, the link already proved your original knee-jerk claim was totally wrong.
Besides, the real point is that Apple did, and does, continue to make contributions back to both FreeBSD and the world at large. You're free to use those contributions not just in FreeBSD, but in Linux as well.
BTW - if you download every single package from gnu.org, you STILL don't have a complete working build of an OS, so what are you complaining about, really?
You had me at "truck nuts".
That would be AGPL.
What is the point of software being called open source when it is not usable by developers?
GPLed software is usable by some developers - those who, for whatever reason, have no problem giving source away. It's not usable by those who do. The point of licensing software under the GPL is to ensure that all work done (sufficiently directly) atop your work will be be as available to others as was your original work. I consider that every bit as legitimate (no more, no less) as choosing a license that allows others to restrict the distribution of work done atop your work. If somebody chooses a GPL-like license for their software, and that's inconvenient for somebody who wants to build something atop that software, that just means they'll need to do the work to replicate the functionality of that software, get somebody else to do so under a more convenient license, or find software that offers the same functionality under a more convenient license.
If we are talking about Red Hat, it should be pointed out that a Red Hat distro includes quite a lot of software that is distributed under licences that are not GPL. For instance, many copies of RHEL are sold to provide web servers. Apache httpd is not GPL'd.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
More like the freedom of speech only existing if you are able to repeat everything you hear anyone else say, even if they don't want you to.
FTFY.
As someone who actually tried to use it to browse the web "back in the day", it was garbage. Even IE6 was better (okay, truth be told, even IE5.5 was better).
Agreed. I think the shift has occurred because of increasing corporate interest in open source. BSD is seen as more corporate-friendly than GPL, when in fact it should be the other way around--BSD allows your competitors to reap the fruit of your labor without giving you anything in return. Start-ups, however, are lured by the idea of being able to close-source everything once their product becomes a smash hit,
There may well be start-ups who are. There are other start-ups who incorporate BSD-licensed code in their software and never open-source their software in the first place. One such startup succeeded rather well.
while established companies face genuine legal issues preventing them from linking GPL'ed code with closed-source code from vendors.
Unless it's an established company that doesn't link GPL'ed code with closed-source code.
The problem with the GPL is that it is viral, that is why companies avoid it. There were loopholes in GPLv2, but now are closed in GPLv3 and companies avoid it like the plague.
Use GPL?
- Everything that links against it much be open source
- Free all your patents
- Must open all hardware so that code can be replaced (Good luck with subsidized hardware models)
Open Source Code is largely made by companies, make licenses hostile to companies and those companies will only participate in projects that have nice licenses, this explains the shift in licensing
Probably because they want their software to be used. I'm running a one man LLC and for my current work, if something relies on GPL then I simply can't use it.
You can't, for example, use Wireshark to look at networking problems on your machine if they're getting in the way of your work? Or do you just mean "I can't incorporate GPLed code in my current work"? Software can be "used" in ways other than incorporating it in other people's software projects.
Right, by users I mean "receivers of binaries". You need AGPL to cover hosted services.
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I think a lot of developers see GPL as a "taking my toys and going home" license which discourages free use. If you weren't going to make a million dollar idea with your software, why stop someone else?
Because you want all improvements to your software to be available in the same way that your software is available, regardless of whether that makes it difficult or impossible for somebody else to make money from it? I.e., because you released the software to make it widely available, in source form, and you want improvements to be equally widely available?
And I mean this completely seriously. You obviously cannot live with your projects having idealist goals, you apparently want to shove your agenda down everyone's throats. Very much like Marxists and Maoists. I guess you also advocate blowing up people for "the common good".
Just look at Apple - the company with the most worth in the whole world - selling software that was built upon FreeBSD.
And not contributing anything back to the community. Should Apple fall one day or just discontinue its BSD-based products, all their achievements will be lost. On the other hand, when a big GPL vendor falls or discontinues a product, anybody can come in and keep it alive from the last public release.
http://www.opensource.apple.com/release/mac-os-x-1072/
fuck up a good thing.
Is it then? So total anarchy, where anyone has the "freedom" to lock you in a cage forever or enslave you under threat of death is the epitome of a free society?
You post is FUD of the worst sort. The GPL in no way restricts freedom to profit from GPL code, it only restricts you from taking private the hard work of the original authors.
So... if I write some software... and release it under a non-GPL license... and someone else uses it... you claim that they can prevent me from giving it away to anyone else?
No, that's not the claim. The claim is that if you write some software, and release it under a GPL license, and somebody else makes an improved version of it, they can't refuse to make source to the improved version available and can't prohibit those who have received the source or binary of the improved version from giving it away to others.
License violation. AFAIK, FSF's exceptions to misuse are based on license violations, not copyright violations. I could be wrong ...
Hence the reason why many folks see a democratic republic as superior to a pure democracy. Of course, there aren't many pure democracies around in the form of national governments. None that I can think of, in fact.
So your rights if you own the code are important too.
Yes. This includes the right to require that anybody who takes the code you own and improves it make those improvements available, in source form, to anybody who gets the improved version in binary form, and that they allow anybody who gets either the source or binary form from you be allowed to give it to anybody they choose. Yes, that might get in the way of the "anybody who takes the code you own and improves it" making money from those improvements; that's not the problem of the person who put the code under the GPL, it's the problem of the person who wants to make money from code that they didn't write in their entirety.
Yes I advocate the BSD license.
If that means "Yes, I prefer using the BSD license in code I write", that's fine. Even if that means "Yes, I think other people should use the BSD license", that's fine, but it imposes no obligation, moral or otherwise, on people to use the BSD license. If they choose to use the GPL for code that would be convenient for a project for which the GPL isn't convenient, that's your problem, not theirs - they're not under any obligation to make things convenient for you.
For these people anyway their own stupidity was a real impediment to the acceptance of open source.
Fixt.
No, your assertion is what is false. First, the AGPL imposes restrictions on use as well as distribution. (or are you going to claim that the AGPL, which is cited as a major problem in the article, is not part of the GPL license family, as is the LGPL?)
Second, distribution IS one use of code. In fact it's the primary one for anyone who wants to sell or otherwise distribute a product, either for free, or commercially. So yes, distribution IS a use of software. It doesn't take place in some artificial vacuum (or the natural vacuum between RMS's ears).
But without the dependency, there is no profit.
Would Microsoft have all the profits they had if Windows was open source? they would not. They would have some profits from selling services, but they would be much smaller than what they are now.
I think the purpose of the GPL is to ensure that those that profit from your work also give back.
Its purpose is economic warfare against all non-copyleft software, with the ultimate goal of world domination (eliminating non-free software).
You and the parent poster are incorrect. For the parent, "open source" doesn't mean "no profit", and your analogy has only a trace of similarity.
The entire point of the GPL doesn't limit your speech in any way, it limits your ability to suddenly restrict a work marked "free" by this GPL. It ensures freedom. It is something that should naturally be codified in law for information based things instead of the insane system we currently have allowing absolutely every human right to be stripped away if they reduce potential profits.
The current information economic system and the laws around it are absolutely foul, more people must speak out against it to educate the public at large, and to get these laws changed.
You don't maximize freedom by destroying it. The BSD license destroys no freedoms. The GPL does. It's truly that simple.
I don't care. Society destroys the freedom too kill each other and I like that. That's my point.
Blind, demagogic pursue of "true freedom" is pure bullshit, SPECIALLY in the context of a society.
It's odd that they consider EULAs to be simple and the GPL to be complicated.
Please read the story of Cedega and how they used the wine project.
To me it looks like projects licensed under the GPL are more free, than those under other licenses, especially the MIT and Apache licenses. It might be fair to say that there is one restriction on vendors of GPL-licensed projects. So, when you have to choose between the GPL and other licenses, maybe prioritising the long term freedom of the project over those of vendors or developers might sway you to go with the GPL.
NB: I've never read the MIT or Apache licenses. I've (tried to) read the GPL.
... I used that open sores Linux once - with it's GPL it was a dose that was hard to get rid of.
Thankfully there was NetBSD to make it all better.
I agree completely. I am often baffled by the flamewars that start on Slashdot about what the GPL does or does not mean, does or does not permit, does or does not require in situation A, B, C. A site that is disproportionately in favor of the license can't even agree what it means -- and every single one of the people arguing end their post with "just read the license!"
How are non-technical folks going to know? Why take that risk?
If you're going to pursue that course of action, then don't call it "protecting freedom". That's a simple, bald-faced lie.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
First, the AGPL imposes restrictions on use as well as distribution. (or are you going to claim that the AGPL, which is cited as a major problem in the article, is not part of the GPL license family, as is the LGPL?)
Of course I am going to claim it, because it is true. They are similar licenses but not the same. They are designed with different objectives and as such lumping them all together is like complaining all Ford cars are gas guzzlers just because Ford SUVs may be.
Second, distribution IS one use of code. In fact it's the primary one for anyone who wants to sell or otherwise distribute a product,
No it isn't. The fact is the distributor isn't using the software: that's why commercial software licenses apply to you, the last step in the chain and _not_ to everybody else in between who didn't even open the package. Talking about a distributor using software he may not even get ahold of is like stating eBay used a scanner I just bought from someone else. They didn't, they just put the vendor and me in contact and got some money for doing so.
Basically:
GPL ensures that every single copy of the SOFTWARE remains free, even if it means putting restrictions on what PEOPLE can do with it.
BSD/Apache/etc ensures that PEOPLE remain free to do whatever they want, even if it means that some copies of the SOFTWARE become non-free.
It's no surprise that the second approach is winning out. It's actually PEOPLE who want the freedom, and that's the freedom that BSD/Apache/etc focuses on.
If you're going to pursue that course of action, then don't call it "protecting freedom". That's a simple, bald-faced lie.
After my 10th birthday I learned that the world isn't black-and-white, so of course I will call it "protecting freedom", as the GPL *does* protect freedoms.
What is a simple, bald-faced lie (and I'll repeat: "specially in the context of a society") is to correlate protection of freedoms to "allow everything". It's just not how societies work, they're all based on the premises of restrictions.
Did you seriously just imply the only time the GPL would cause problems for companies is in acts of evil?
Wow.
No, I did not imply it, I stated it clearly.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
they will have to continually patch their modifications back against the GPL source tree.
The same situation as in the common case when they do release their patches, but King Chief Committer does not consider your puny code worthy of notice and refuses to merge in your filthy changes in the pristine head branch, which is only for King Chief Committer and his inner cicrle of nerds.
You're blatantly misinterpreting what he said. The problem isn't that they profit from it -- and there is nothing in the GPL that prohibits profit. The problem is that they "take your work, profit from it, and give nothing back."
I'm sure anyone who has been paying attention has already heard this, but this is the obvious problem with BSD license: You spend a million hours creating a great program, call it Foo, and you release it under the BSD license. Someone like Microsoft comes along, takes Foo, improves it a little bit, calls it FooBar and distributes it as a binary without publishing any of the code. If the improvements are good, they can't be brought back into the main tree because the original developers don't have the source. But now FooBar, being an improved version of Foo, will take all of the Foo user base -- it has every good feature of Foo and a few more. The original developers get no bug reports. There are no longer any developer-users who can think of a great new improvement and submit a patch, because everybody is now using FooBar and nobody has the source to that. It withers as an open source project -- you might as well just assign the copyright to Microsoft for free.
Even where the original community is strong enough that it doesn't completely destroy them, it still gives them a bloody nose. You look at something like Kerberos. Who uses Kerberos? Hardly anybody. Who uses Active Directory, which Microsoft created by integrating Kerberos and LDAP with Windows and making it proprietary? Almost everybody. Which means Kerberos is finished. Everybody is already using AD, so there is no reason to adopt Kerberos, which means no community. And if you don't think so, by all means explain why Linux has a much larger community than BSD.
About the only time that a corporation adopting code licensed under the BSD license doesn't kick the crap out of the community that originally developed it is where the company that adopts it submits their changes back to the original developers -- but if they intend to do that then the developers might as well have used GPLv2.
The original developers of Foo are probably more than capable of creating their own code that implements the same features as the company's proprietary code, are they not? Lest one forget, "Unix SystemV" was proprietary code which was 'recreated' by Linus to create Linux, containing most of the features of SysV.
And last I knew, Samba relies on Kerberos for its AD authentication, so saying "there's no reason to adopt Kerberos" is rather untrue. The only way that MS has "kicked the crap" out of anything open source is, quite simply, the PATENT system - which might prevent someone from re-implementing their own version of the same thing (without getting sued).
Stop using Linux (your Red Hat reference) as an example: Linux uses a modified GPL that allows linking with non-GPL stuff.
The more and more people will want to use third-party distributors (like app stores) for their binaries, the less and less the GPL will allow that unless the store also distributes the source.
GPL was all about freedom but it turns out software is a for profit business.
GPL was created because someone assumed that if someone creates open-source code, they do it altruistically to share their ideas with the world, and wouldn't want anyone else to profit without giving back.
Both counts are wrong, there are lots more reasons, even profit oriented reasons, to open-source code, like get help with maintenance or increase client base, and turns out that most those reasons already take into account that someone might use without giving back.
Simple example I create a framework to sell tomatoes online, and I sell consulting services on that framework to third parties. I wouldn't want anyone not to use my framework because it forces them to open-source ALL code that interacts with the said framework.
The thing is, even typical proprietary software licences are better than the GPL family in some respects. You're not going to accidentally give away your code because you linked to a runtime library that came with Visual Studio, or because you wrote a Photoshop plug-in or Word macro. Call a function in a library that is GPL'd and find that someone disagreed with your assessment of how strong the linkage was (or, God forbid, call a function that ever came within 100 miles of a computer once owned by someone who read the Affero GPL in a past life) and you can find your business giving away rights it didn't intend to, named and shamed on someone's web page, or even literally in court. When that's the kind of culture that is following the FSF around, it is hardly surprising that a lot of reputable companies with cautious legal departments won't touch anything GPL-infected with a barge pole.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Why do you lie? A simple search would have shown you that the source is available.
Or are you one of the zealots that think that just because e.g. GCC devs refused to commit Apple's patches into their precious baby, that Apple did not make those patches?
The reason that GPL is dying is because the situation is exactly the opposite of what you think. I've worked on several open source (non-GPLed) software projects, including one I started myself. I started working on open source software with goals of creating or enhancing tools required for other projects I was working on at the time. The software I worked on ultimately made those projects more successful, and I have since made a lot of money consulting for other companies that are using the open source software I helped create. The reason GPL is dying is because developers don't want to spend time working on software that they can't use for their own business, or profit from consulting work because the license is too restrictive.
I can profit while using GPL code. I simply can't take and not give back.
That's just nonsense.
My employer profits nicely from avoiding license fees by running our embedded applications on a GNU/Linux based system-on-a-chip.
All of our proprietary content is locked away in our application programs, which we refuse to publish.
We take and take and take, and we don't give anything back. And it's all perfectly acceptable. There's no restriction against running proprietary applications on a GPL OS.
GPL has far too many strings attached for a lot of people. While it may be nice and fluffy in the Utopian world that RMS hangs out, in the real world where the rest of us live, it doesn't work so well.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Why? GPL does not cover neither running the software nor the output of the software. If the hosting provider could get the source if they so desired, the GPL app is fine and dandy running there.
All of the appliance source is available at GSA mirror, including the kernel source. I would presume that the appliance doesn't run exactly the same kernel as the Google internal cluster.
and somebody else distributes an improved version of it
FTFY.
From what I recall, the same thing happened with the Macsyma symbolic algebra package, and in fact that was probably part of the inspiration for creating the GPL in the first place.
I never understood what the end of copyright would bring as a benefit. It's not like people would be magically forced to release all source code.
If computer programs were ineligible for copyright, it would be perfectly lawful to disassemble, analyze, heavily comment, and disseminate software. Sort of like SMBDis except legit.
Have you had any security vulnerabilities in Net-SNMP? What proportion of vendor hardware and software shipping with it in actually received patches for them and how easy was it for users of the rest of the hardware to build their own patched version, while being sure that it wouldn't unexpectedly remove vendor-specific features? That's one of the things the GPL is designed to prevent.
And that is exactly what freedom of speech is.
Do you think free speech is without restriction?
Name one country that pemits that.
Linux kernel is under a modified GPL (so fails as an example of the FSF-GPL), and constitutes a relatively tiny (and replaceable) part of Android.
Stop using Linux (your Red Hat reference) as an example: Linux uses a modified GPL that allows linking with non-GPL stuff. The more and more people will want to use third-party distributors (like app stores) for their binaries, the less and less the GPL will allow that unless the store also distributes the source.
You do know that Red Hat distributes more tha the Linux kernel, and that a ton of their GNU apps are GPLv3? They're making a profit with G
Stop using Linux (your Red Hat reference) as an example: Linux uses a modified GPL that allows linking with non-GPL stuff. The more and more people will want to use third-party distributors (like app stores) for their binaries, the less and less the GPL will allow that unless the store also distributes the source.
You do know that Red Hat distributes more tha the Linux kernel, and that a ton of their GNU apps are GPLv3? They're making a profit with GPLv3.
The ONLY reason that to most companies GPL == Toxic is from IP attornies that haven't the foggiest about what the license REALLY entails. I've heard entirely too many outright lies told by attornies in this space. What's sad is it's simple, really.
What the GPL requires is, simply put, a royalty payment made for the rights to publish or produce derivative works yourself of the protected and licensed work. It only taints stuff when you don't pay attention to the use of the code and abide by the licensing terms (Simply put, the companies that run afoul of this would be getting sued by their suppliers in most cases...). It only becomes a problem when you don't want to abide by the licensing terms in the first place.
The attornies that lead you to believe there's "problems" are probably good litigators, but in the end, you HONESTLY don't want them because they will get you into other trouble where you'll need to be litgating things (which is precisely what in the hell a business DOESN'T want...) down the line.
The analogy you are looking for is: 'As the damn dirty used car dealership guy, while you'd like to force your customer to get all service done at your dealership, the GPL requires yout to explain to them that their car uses industry standard parts, provides the schematics to you to design your own, and tells you that the same rules must be applied to anyone you provide a copy of the car to should you decide to become a damn dirty used car salesman yourself.'
I think that about summarizes the GPL for you.
The LGPL would be the equivalent of saying 'You must provide schematics of all changes you make to the car, but so long as you don't weld any new parts to it, but instead make them bolt-on, you may keep the design of such parts proprietary.'
- vranash
GCC consultants charge hundreds per hour for their work. Their "recipe" is skilled programmers doing hard work for paying clients.
It sounds like the answer to your question is to either write all of your own code or build on some non-copylefted FLOSS licensed code. There are people out there willing to treat your business like a charity and give code to you, but GPL hackers aren't. Maybe you should choose another line of work entirely.
Digital Citizen
If companies can't or won't uphold the freedoms the GPL was designed to protect, then they shouldn't be using GPL-licensed code.
Heh... And they'll almost always "oops" on that proprietary licensed stuff. The only thing that'd be safe for them to use is to not use anything- because I've seen places like that screw up on even BSD licensed stuff. If their lawyers aren't 100% certain about compliance, they're not terribly good lawyers.
Heh... It's because it's familiar to them. The GPL is counterintuitive for most IP attornies. They're used to all sorts of usage restrictions, distribution restrictions, etc. for stuff that gets licensed to them- and along with that comes a dollar figure associated with it that's called royalties. Many of them can't wrap their heads around a non-cash royalty payment that requires the IP you derived the work from or simply redistributed, to be provided like the GPL requires. It's telling about the quality of your lawyer when they can't get a concept in their heads.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
How much code does it take to pay your mortgage?
except that the gpl doesn't prevent you from profiting. it prevents you from restraining others from getting the stuff freely, as you did.
"Freely you have received; freely give" (not that the atheist Stallman will necessarily agree with this synthesis :) )
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The original developers of Foo are probably more than capable of creating their own code that implements the same features as the company's proprietary code, are they not? Lest one forget, "Unix SystemV" was proprietary code which was 'recreated' by Linus to create Linux, containing most of the features of SysV.
Oh sure, they can waste several years worth of resources on duplicating the same functionality. I mean look at Samba: Active Directory came out with Windows 2000 in 1999. It's 2011 and Samba 4 (which implements AD) is only now at the release candidate stage. Not only that, it allows the proprietary company to dictate the direction of the software: All that effort spent writing Samba 4 to be compatible with Microsoft could have been spent on actual improvements instead of just duplication. So by the time Samba catches up to where Microsoft was, Microsoft is already somewhere new. Because that's what the BSD license does: It gives closed source the advantage, because it allows them to take all of the good from the open source community without allowing the open source community to take anything from them, which means that the open source community will always be playing catch up. Unless they use a license that doesn't allow that, which allows them to build an advantage and keep it, because they can be the ones who set the standard and make others either join the club or be the ones playing catch up themselves.
The only way that MS has "kicked the crap" out of anything open source is, quite simply, the PATENT system - which might prevent someone from re-implementing their own version of the same thing (without getting sued).
You'll not get any argument from me there, but that's a whole different problem. One thing at a time.
well, that stupid is the "piracy" meaning in these days
I'm positive, don't belive me look at my karma
Even if so - and I'd argue that - there's simply no rational basis on which to claim that the GPL is more free than the BSD license. Thus, you're destroying freedom to protect it. Tell me, is all that sex promoting virginity? The original story says that just the opposite is happening: people are, instead, actually protecting virginity.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
Did you actually check the link?
Using lies to 'win' your argument shows what a desperate GPL shill you are!
the source would still be accessible, that is the requirement of GPL, try again :P
for geeks, us around here are kind of not-so-analytic, isn't it ?
snip: that you receive source code or can get it if you want it,
I'm positive, don't belive me look at my karma
Then you are too far gone, my friend.
You're not going to accidentally give away your code
I don't think that's how the GPL works though. I mean you never actually signed anything. If the FSF comes around and says you're violating the license so release the code, you could just release the code and make it go away. Or you could claim you never agreed to the license, and then their response would be that the license is the only thing giving you a right to distribute so if you don't agree then you're infringing copyright... which is the same boat you're in when you violate a proprietary software license.
It seems like all the GPL does is give you the extra out: If you decide the code is worth less than the damages for copyright infringement then you can release the code. But I don't see how they could force you to do that if you just repudiate the license and admit to copyright infringement. Granted I'm not a lawyer, but is that not how you see it?
Reminds me of an old joke...
A guy describes the problem his car is having to a mechanic. The mechanic quotes $3000. The guy balks at the price, and the mechanic confesses it is only a $50 part if he wanted to try the repair himself.
The guy orders the part, thanks the mechanic, then asks if it isn't bad for business to give out that advice.
The mechanic smugly replies "we find we make more money if you try and fix it first".
Short of the kernel ... which they stopped releasing the source too since it kept being used to easily work around the OSX license restriction, they release the source mods to pretty much everything they use. Certainly all of their gpl stuff and various other licenses as well.
http://www.apple.com/opensource/
Who doesn't know this?
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
No, that's RMS goal. I personally like the gpl and have nothing against proprietary software, if it delivers enough value, it will always be there. Integration, vertical markets, efficient algorithms, and so on.
Proprietary stuff must have alternatives or we get back to the best win/office days. Bloated stuff, incompatibilities, forced obsolescence... that's what free software saved you from, even if you don't use it.
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The GPL doesn't "destroy freedom" in order to protect anything, it just protects some freedoms and forbids some other freedoms. I would never claim that is more free than the BSD license, but I *will* claim that it does a better job at protecting those four freedoms than the BSD license.
Like I said, I could care less if the BSD license is "more free" than the GPL. I don't care about "license freedom championships", I want my ability to use, see, modify and share the code legally protected, and the GPL is the better tool to enforce that.
Furthermore there isn't anything inherently wrong about either license. Both pursue different aims that's all. Which is "freer" is a purely demagical standpoint.
I'm not a lawyer either, but I have spent a fair bit of time working with lawyers on related matters, from which I've reached the following conclusions.
My take is that it's not the specifics of the GPL that usually cause the problems, but the ambiguities. With a proprietary library, once you've paid your cash for redistribution rights, it's reasonably clear that you're OK. With the GPL, you might think you are doing something acceptable, but unless you've got someone who understands all of the law, the GPL, and the technical details of your project -- and the world doesn't have many such people to go around -- you're never quite sure.
If you build a project that uses a GPL'd library for some significant function and then someone does come after you later, then yes, there are probably going to be options other than giving away the farm, but they are going to be seriously expensive one way or another, through disruption if not through direct costs. From a management point of view, it may well be better to pay cold, hard cash for a "real" product that controls the risk, rather than betting on a "free" product with an unquantified risk attached.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Barbara, you are obviously dealing with a GPL fanboy with his head in the sand who would rather lie to 'win' than base his arguments on fact.
The sad thing is, he may even believe he's living in this alternate universe.
There is nothing more annoying then say a company that makes an OS which uses an MIT licensed graphics library or a BSD licensed network stack but at the same time fights aggressively against free and open source software.
Apple?
Lets take your argument to the next level then?
Do you use Visual Studio at work? Hell, did you use any include statement for any program you wrote while you were in school?
Therefore MS owns all your code right? Or Oracle if it was a Java class? Under your own definition a simple link means that entity or person owns the code. Where does it end?
If I write something awesome for a specialized task with R&D then I should keep it and profit from it. Even if the toolkit was open source initially.At that point people would be writing their own operating systems, apis, and so on if they wanted to own all the code.
GPL is wrong with linking. Yes, people hate hearing viral linking but it is a real problem in business. I see you went to MIT so I wont waste your time with these arguments but R&D and development is not free and yes anything with memory in it counts as a redistribution if I sell it.
http://saveie6.com/
Distribution is most certainly involved in using the software - if you didn't receive it, how can you use it? So, restrictions on distribution most certainly affect use. I'm going to give you a -1 logic fail on that one, just 'cuz :-) but don't take it seriously - after all, the GPL is really an evolutionary dead end, and like the dinosaurs, it might still be interesting, but there's not much practical benefit from using it.
The Google code to which you refer is the base that they use to run their servers. They are not required to redistribute code when they are not distributing the OS. When a proprietary driver is made to work with Linux, there is also no requirement to redistribute.
Lets look at this as a two party agreement. Under the GPL, the only time that you have to make source available is when you redistribute code that I wrote - even if you modify it. It is my right to declare the terms under which you can / must redistribute it as I am the author and hold the copyright to my work. If I choose to use BSD, chickendance (http://supertunaman.com/cdl/cdl_v0-1.txt), proprietary, or even dual licenses, it is my right. If you do not agree to my terms, whatever they may be, don't use my code.
Starting with the description of Open Source as "Cancer" by Microsoft, the GPL often gets a bum rap from those who have never actually read the terms. This is FUD, as is the article. The number of projects and their licensing is irrelevant because it does not take into account the popularity of the projects or the fact that the competing licenses are also Open Source.
The bottom line is that the GPL has had a profound effect on the way many corporations and individuals license software. In the end the beneficiary has been the consumer.
You can think these things are just wants and live at home as an adult all you want. People everywhere are expected and looked down upon as irresponsible if they do not have these things and it is our job in life to earn them and keep them.
IN terms of GPL and competitors that is fine and dandy if you own an ISP or something, but for a real world task of making industrialized equipment as an example, I can't give that away. If I spent 2,000,000 developing the secret algorithms for something competitors do not have I then charge more for customers willing to use my product. A competitor will simply steal my code and then undersell me as he never had to fund the development. Now my product is no different than anyone elses but costs more.
I am discussing APIs here and not making modified versions of apps. That is the issue. This is problematic as MS would own 100% of all the code you ever wrote because you linked to Windows DLLS etc. That is what the GPL says and why it is BS. That is why GPL is bad and copyleft or LGPL is more appropriate for developers. If someone wants to rip off your editor app then I would be inclined to agree.
http://saveie6.com/
If you use the GPL you don't want to share code. You want software freedom. That's kind of the point.
Sure. It's like the grown-ups drive around in real cars while out in the garage the kids argue over who made what on their go-kart whose design they copied from the kid up the street.
Your model assumes companies don't improve the open source code they use, and/or that all open source software is reusable components (libraries). Here's my take, as a GPL author: I'm happy for anyone to make a profit off of my software package. It's not a library, so that generally means someone's going to run my code as a daemon: on their own servers as part of a money-making venture, on servers leased to others for the same, or perhaps even selling services provided by my daemon for a monthly fee. Whatever the case, they're free to do all of those things with my GPL-sourced daemon.
However, if they make substantial *improvements* on top of my code, I don't want them then keeping those improvements to themselves at a competitive advantage over the open source version or over other competitors. What I'm saying by licensing my daemon under the GPL is, in effect: here, take all this hard work I did and use it for your profit if you wish, but my terms are that if you come up with some interesting way to improve my code, you give the improvements back to the community you got the original from.
selflessness?
It seems his system is working for him, but even if it couldn't achieve what you request, so what? That's a vendor issue and is up to the hardware vendor to sort out. Shop around for a new vendor if you don't like the one you have. Does it bother you that this free market system works fine? RMS is just a pathetic excuse for a hacker who couldn't even disassemble and fix a shitty little printer driver and came up with some stupidly overbearing commie bullshit, called it freedom and idiots like you just ate it up like toe cheese.
This is exactly my experience. I currently work for a company that refuses to allow us to use anything GPL. However, they perceive contributing to BSD projects and the like to be positive for the company image among other benefits.
Blogger Brian Proffitt
A person well known for anti-open-source propaganda and nothing else.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
My take is that it's not the specifics of the GPL that usually cause the problems, but the ambiguities. With a proprietary library, once you've paid your cash for redistribution rights, it's reasonably clear that you're OK.
I guess that's what I'm disputing. Proprietary licenses are ambiguous too. It's pretty close to impossible to write something that isn't open to interpretation whatsoever. And if the consequences for an ambiguity going the wrong way are the same in either case (i.e. you're on the hook for copyright infringement) then I'm not sure what can justify the discrimination.
I think there is another point here though: It's probably true that if you're A) planning on distributing the thing you're using GPL code in, and B) not planning to publish your own code under the GPL, you'd probably be best off to check with the lawyers before you do it. But that is far from the only scenario under which a company might use GPL code. They could just use it as an end user without modifying it, or modify it for internal use without redistributing it, or redistribute it but under the GPL.
Even if they are considering distributing their code alongside some GPL code but not under the GPL, they're probably doing some of these other things as well. Which is why I think a blanket ban is silly. Certainly it's no less silly than a blanket ban on proprietary software because proprietary software licenses are ambiguous too.
We've had very few vulnerabilities in general, but it is not our responsibility to fix vendor's products. We announce a fix, be it generic bug or security related, and off it goes. When your code is distributed very and very wide, it's a challenging task no matter what the license is. In fact, the last critical flaw that was found a few years ago had a CERT disclosure that was leaked far in advance of the CERT defined time-line. When you notify half the world through CERT, there isn't a huge amount of chance of keeping things quiet (and if we ever have another issue, I'm no longer sure CERT is the right process to take it through).
It is not necessarily easier to ensure every linux distributor has a devoted package manager that will notice the change either. Simply put, it doesn't matter who needs to know about an issue: there are far far too many to manually track (CERT proved this last time). If downstreams can't subscribe to a low volume -announce list and push out fixes rapidly, then that branch of the world is in a serious bit of hurt.
The next site to slashdot will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and start slashdotting it early!
http://opensource.apple.com/
OS X is not based upon FreeBSD, by the way, though it does use some code from it.
By the way, tell me about "the community". What makes you a part of it?
This is what I hate. The point of these licenses is not to help prop up businesses that don't care to or can't compete in the software world. The point of the GPL is to produce software for everyone, not just businesses. What you are saying is essentially, "businesses can't steal the code [someone elses labor] and then sell it for a profit, yippeee!!". I completely fail to understand the "businesses can't profit from it so it's bad" way of thinking. I mean, honestly, is the whole reason you program for free, releasing the code for free, just so some company can sell it back to you? Am I missing something? The whole reason the BSD and MIT licenses exist is so on the off chance someone actually wants whatever crap a student produces, the University can sell it and turn a profit, it has absolutely nothing to do with free software.
Sigh, by the same absurd standard I'm sure I'd have no problem finding plenty BSD projects that don't make money either. In fact, I doubt I'd have much problem showing that very few commercial companies actually managed to make money on their code. What does that prove? Mostly that 90%+ of all ideas to make money is crap. I'd make a whole lot more sense to concentrate on those that do than those that don't....
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The app store doesn't have to distribute the source if they link to it. So just include a link in the binary. If not then the source is a data package which is a "free app".
> but it uses GPL apis
Except no such thing really exists.
Shared libraries are all licensed under the LGPL so only the library itself must remain libre. You can build whatever you want on top. That's how companies like Oracle sell very expensive GNU based software.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
And countless times BSD advocates fail to address the "in practice the original code doesn't matter" argument. The classic example is X-Windows where the same source was available and that did lots of good for OS companies but no good for Unix end users that had no way to modify the X-Windows they actually were using and actually cared about.
BSD licenses have a long history of giving people access to source that does them no good since crucial components are missing.
There are actually some copyleft licenses intended to address exactly this situation. The Affero GPL is one. It adds a provision that "requires that the complete source code be made available to any network user of the AGPL-licensed work, typically a Web application."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affero_General_Public_License
Remember, there were no nuclear weapons before women were allowed to vote.
and somebody else distributes an improved version of it
FTFY.
Yes - to clarify, you can improve GPLed software and use it only by yourself and not have to make it available to anybody, and you can improve GPLed software and use it only within your organization and not have to make it available your organization. Thanks.
Since when does Apple fight aggressively against Open Source? They have spent billions writing open source applications and distributing them. They run one of the largest open source repositories (MacPorts)...
> however FSF has defined the mere process of linking to the code
This is largely irrelevant and is only mentioned when someone doesn't really have anything meaningful to add to the discussion. Libraries are licensed under the lesser GPL to specifically avoid this problem and always have been.
While RMS may be an intolerable zealot, most of the downstream users are not.
They simply don't want to be free labor for corporations.
That's why the GPL was created BTW. It's not not some subversive attempt by RMS. It was a response to the "BSDL problem" of someone taking the source and making a closed commercial product out of it.
The GPL exists to satisfy developers.
Not everyone likes the idea of being a free labor pool for Apple without any recourse.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
a newer DOS shell CMD plus Windows gui, or CMD/Windows as I have taken to calling it. CMD is the actual DOS shell that brings the underlying GUI into foreplay with the existing environment and the muscle of this molusks holds fast to a GUI shell called Explore.exe and this makes it a verry tight setup of which not many vendors can come between them.
Except then there is of'course a GNU muscle cumming into play known as Cygwin and thus I must interjeculate again that the bivalve portion of export is the GCC-compiled dynamic binaries of which is the result of consuming turbid code into a GPL-compliant assembly that just cleans-up the environment. Only problem is the big-fish can't spawn because their eggs and plankton and algae get consumed quicker than they can mature. This is in-contrast much more treacherous than encountering a predator in deep-water environments where there is no sea floor and structure but mere MS Flotsam that doesn't assure the schooled prey cover from the approaching Caldera.
People using your code and improving it without giving anything back? Because that is what Google is doing.
Google is a massive contributor to the open source ecosystem. They contribute an insane amount of source code back to pretty much all the opensource projects they use, regardless of the license the project is distributed under.
Aside from google code (still the most popular opensource hosting site), V8 and Chromium, Google has 1295 individual projects they've opensourced. They also make heaps of patches to popular projects they use, including the linux kernel, python, eclipse, .... etc.
Saying that Google uses opensource software without giving back to the community is just plain wrong.
your example is wrong.
you would have to provide any improvement to the library you are using, but not code for other parts of the project.
Just look at Apple - the company with the most worth in the whole world - selling software that was built upon FreeBSD.
And not contributing anything back to the community. Should Apple fall one day or just discontinue its BSD-based products, all their achievements will be lost. On the other hand, when a big GPL vendor falls or discontinues a product, anybody can come in and keep it alive from the last public release.
WOW.
I knew slashdot had blinkers on, but I'm not sure how you can say "Apple does not contribute anything back to the [open source] community" with a straight face.
You may not like them, they may have some silly legal decisions, and a mobile OS that is competing with Android, but my goodness, you need to look up some actual facts.
The FSF doesn't get to define the notion of derivative work, that comes from US copyright law. And while 1 line doesn't do anything... a small block of say a dozen lines does in fact make 100,000 lines that contain them a derivative work. That is why a 150 minute movie that uses an actors image for 3 seconds needs to license it.
Of course it destroys freedom. The BSD license has a long history of destroying freedom for end users to be able to modify the code they actually care about and not some upstream reference implementation that is of no value to them.
Absolutely the GPL is a very strict software license. Commercial licenses tend to be very liberal, about link terms. Commercial licenses are strict about terms of payment but other than that impose few restrictions. If you are want to be very casual about your linking processes and very cautious in your internal licensing processes commercial is the way to go. If you want to be cautious about your linking and casual about your internal licensing then the GPL is fine.
The statutory minimum is $750 per copy! If the court finds it to be intentional they can fine as high as $150k per incident (that is per copy). So a closed source program that violates a GPL and sells a million copies is could be looking at a 3/4 billion in damages easily.
There haven't been that many GPL cases that went the distance, but most companies that have been found to violate the GPL have gone broke. In other cases with violations courts have:
a) Impounded the offending code and transfered the ownership
b) Transfered all assets of a company
c) Criminal penalties (section 2319 of title 18)
d) Destruction of all copies
e) Forfeiture of all outstanding fees
etc...
This is not like they get to say "whoops" and walk away. The FSF has been extremely kind in dealing with violators. MySQL showed what the GPL could do in the hands of a rights holder that wanted blood.
Because there is lots and lots and lots of case law on the kinds of restrictions in EULAs. And a moderately sized check solves the problem.
In the case of the GPL they are looking at clauses with little case law, that could theoretically be interpreted very very broadly. They are also going to be dealing with organizations that aren't necessarily interested in money and might be much more concerned to make a point.
As I understand it, it is more about the freedom of the software itself. No matter how often the software is forked or modified, no version of it will ever be closed to is users, and its users will always have the freedoms you mentioned.
It will get worked through via. case law. The situation is much better than it was 10 years ago.
The statutory minimum is $750 per copy! If the court finds it to be intentional they can fine as high as $150k per incident (that is per copy). So a closed source program that violates a GPL and sells a million copies is could be looking at a 3/4 billion in damages easily.
I think if you check you'll find that it's per work, not per copy.
I don't see why anyone would not want to use the GPL if they want their software to be free and open. Why create something, give it out for free, and then allow businesses to take your work, profit from it, and give nothing back?
Why require something back only from those who improve your software with bug fixes and additions, and not from all other users and distributors? Sounds more like an unfair disincentive for creating better software to me.
Why would that be a problem? You can link anything you are licensed to anything else. You can't redistribute the entire work whether the linked code was PD, GPL or BSD because you can't redistribute the commercial code.
The copyright owner can relicense code however they choose. The license makes no difference at all to the owner.
The mass use of open source as a coinciding with the adoption of the GPL/LGPL model by most free software developers.
Of course there are reasons they couldn't have used BSD. There are no BSD kernels with both the same breadth of experience on the embedded space as Linux, and in addition a healthy user space.
Lets take your argument to the next level then?
Let's not, unless the developers of the GPLed software you're complaining about do so as well; otherwise, you're just constructing a strawman.
Do you use Visual Studio at work? Hell, did you use any include statement for any program you wrote while you were in school?
Therefore MS owns all your code right?
Wrong. If, however, you include any of the "Distributable Code" in your code when you distribute it, then you must do a number of things, including "for any Distributable Code having a filename extension of .lib, distribut[ing] only the results of running such Distributable Code through a linker with your program", "distribut[ing] Distributable Code included in a setup program only as part of that setup program without modification", and not "modify[ing] or distribut[ing] the source code of any Distributable Code so that any part of it becomes subject to an Excluded License" (where "Excluded License" includes, and is probably targeted at, licenses such as the GPL).
Similarly, if you use GCC at work, the FSF doesn't ipso facto own your code. If, however, you use GPLed "distributable code" as a part of your software, they impose constraints on its redistribution.
Microsoft's terms might be less problematic for some developers than the GPL's terms, but nobody who develops software is under any moral or legal obligation to avoid the GPL's terms - don't like those terms, don't use their code. Now, you might have to pay somebody if you're buying non-GPLed code from them to use in your product (e.g., getting a "developer license" from Essential Objects for their .NET widgets, so that you can redistribute those widgets in your application), or you might have to pay somebody to write non-GPLed code, or you might have to spend time and energy writing it yourself, or you might have to spend time and energy searching for non-GPLed free-as-in-beer-at-least code, but, well, that's life.
Under your own definition a simple link means that entity or person owns the code.
No. Under the GPL, a simple link means that the entity or person who owns the code with which you're linking gets to impose certain requirements on the redistribution of your code.
If I write something awesome for a specialized task with R&D then I should keep it and profit from it. Even if the toolkit was open source initially.
No, you shouldn't - you're using somebody else's code, so it's not as if that "something awesome" was written entirely by you. If the library with which you're working is a requirement for your software being "awesome", then some of the "awesome" is due to the other software (if it's not a requirement, then you don't have to use it). (And whether you "should" profit from it is up to your prospective suppliers and customers; if your prospective customers don't think your software is "awesome" enough to pay a price for it that covers your costs and desired profits, that's just Too Damn Bad, and if your prospective suppliers are not willing to supply you with tools/components/whatever under terms, whether financial or licensing, that allow you to make your desired profit, that's also just Too Damn Bad.)
Do you believe in property rights for software? If so, if you're honest, then you must believe in the rights of developers of software to say "you want to rely on the software I developed in your application at run time, even if it's just by calling it from a library, you have to make your application available under the same terms as my software". (If not, you're in no position to whine if you make no money because your software gets pirated.)
At that point people would be writing their own operating systems, apis, and so on if they wanted to own a
I think the purpose of the GPL is to ensure that those that profit from your work also give back.
Nonsense. In fact, potentially completely the opposite. Someone who profits from distributing unmodified copies of your code doesn't have to give you anything back. But someone who tries to combine your code with code which they have previously written, and give away the combined result for free (or maybe even at a loss including their server hosting fees), is still required to send you a whole bunch of code unrelated to your work.
A commercial distribution license based on a percentage of sales would be more in line with your stated purpose. Or maybe a commercial license with a 100% discount for people who send you rights to use a number of lines of their own code equal to yours.
Actually the kernel is under the normal GPL it has an explicit statement of interpretation. That's not actually a modified form of the license.
In my observation, GPL fanatics are just more worried about a commercial vendor "hijacking" a code base and rendering the original project irrelevant. It's not about depriving people of the original project or failing to contribute, it's about a modified project becoming better than the original, so the original ends up dying. They may not say this, but that's what their behavior suggests.
This doesn't surprise me, a my observation of open source software is that it's largely driven by ego. People give code away for free, but that doesn't meant they're doing it for the common good. People can be very, very picky about what kind of work they do and what's important for the project, as opposed to what users really want or need. For example, the complete lack of standardization in the Linux community.
To an extent, I agree with this. I don't want someone to fork my project and not give anything back. However, I don't understand the people who insist that 100% of the code must be GPL. Sometimes you just want to work on something cool and not have to worry about the boring stuff.
I prefer to use multiple licenses. MIT for tools and scripts, and GPL for complete projects. Being a fanboy of one license is just narrow-minded. I don't care if people rip off my building blocks, so long as they don't try to raze my tower. Even if I can't take back the code they make, I can still learn from and build upon their ideas (assuming there's no software patents, of course).
how is it not freedom to decide how people use my work.
The article is interesting because it suggests that the big reason for the trend is the movement away from single-vendor open source projects. Vendors who want to control their own projects (MySQL AB, for example, now Oracle) LOVE the GPL because it gives them *control.* That control is lost with community developed projects, and so the calculus there is different.
I actually think that for community-developed projects, the BSD license is the way to go but for single-vendor projects the GPL is much better. In the end though the GPL also protects projects from proprietary forks when the pace of development is very slow. For projects where the pace of development is high, then the GPL offers really very little if any additional protection (as in Apache or PostgreSQL).
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
On the other hand, you *can* release your own GPL'd fork and use the GPL to tightly control what you have, and therefore force your customers into dependency on you. This is why single-vendor projects are (almost always) GPL'd....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
So if I invent a robot with my own ai code but it uses GPL apis
Presumably you mean "GPLed libraries"; I don't know of any interfaces that are GPLed in any sense, e.g. somebody could reimplement a GPLed library, duplicating all its APIs, and release it under the BSD license without violating the GPL. I guess you could see legal arguments about, say, header files for the library, but those arguments may already have come up and been resolved.
What if I onvested 5,000,000 making the code? Whoops competitors now use my code and undercut me because they didnt have to invest the 5,000,000. I go out of business.
Then whoops maybe you should have invested a little more to implement that functionality yourself, or paying somebody else to implement it, or even just to try to find a free-as-in-beer-at-least implementation with a non-GPL license, rather than using the work of somebody else who doesn't want you to use it in a fashion where you don't have to make source code available under the terms of the GPL.
Google gets a free ride because they are not redistributing. For everyone else who makes smart appliances you are screwed.
If a smart appliance maker is going to invest a lot of money in the software, they're not "screwed", they're just required to invest a little more money making or buying or finding non-GPL software. If their "secret sauce" is the hardware, and giving away the source to the software doesn't make it significantly easier for others to make that hardware - or if they have a patent on the hardware - they may not be "screwed" at all.
Small business owners are too. You cant sell your company as that too counts as redistribution.
A small business using GPLed software most definitely can sell their company. It's not as if using GPLed software GPLs your entire company, including the office desks and the software you bought to run on your computers and your customer lists and the software you've developed without incorporating GPLed code into it.
Just google router xompanies? Gnu went after them
...because they used GPLed code without complying with the requirements for doing so. A company that makes Wi-Fi access points managed to find an alternative to GPLed software for their access points.
Because if you truly want to promote freedom and free code, you also have to let people to profit from it. Freedom isn't picking who gets to enjoy that "freedom" based on some rules.
I don't need to list the many companies and individuals making a profit from Copyleft software, but I will point out that the FSF itself was the first to make money from selling copies of its own Free, Copyleft software.
There is always a trade-off of freedoms in any policy, including license choice. Permissive licenses give more freedom to the initial recipient of the code at the cost of freedom for the entire community of users and potential users. Copyleft restricts some freedoms of an initial recipient only so that everyone else gets the same freedoms. Each approach has its place and will remain important.
All my open-source code is now BSD-revised licenced, and this is precisely the behaviour I see, large corps (even IBM and national banks) have submitted patches back to me simply because it's far easier for them to do so and not have to try and maintain their own parallel edition. A lot of the time it's just the "admin" person you're dealing with and it's likely they're perfectly happy to send patches back as they're often rather pro-"OpenSource" themselves.
As for corps taking my code, modifying it and making a profit, that's great - if I didn't accept things like that occurring then I'd not have released as BSD. People should choose their release licence for their own reasons, not because it's "what everyone else is doing".
I disagree on when to chose the BSD or the GPL. Both make sense at different times, to achieve different aims. BSD is for "Total World Domination". Use BSD to get your whizzy new protocol stack used everywhere. Use BSD to get anyone and everyone to include the driver for the hardware you just released. If, on the other hand, you want hobbyists, students, researchers, and the larger GPL community to have access to your work under the terms of the GPL, but commercial interests either need to take another license from you in exchange for money (or just simply take a hike), then GPL makes good sense.
The license is simply a tool to control the distribution of your software. Choose a license the way you chose a screwdriver, not the way you chose a religion.
Agreed. I think the shift has occurred because of increasing corporate interest in open source. BSD is seen as more corporate-friendly than GPL, when in fact it should be the other way around--BSD allows your competitors to reap the fruit of your labor without giving you anything in return.
It's pretty simple if you're the developer, if you don't want this happening, use GPL. If you don't mind or don't care, use BSD.
What I find amusing is when people start trying to coerce developers into choosing a licence when in reality it's simply none of their damned business. I'm sick of receiving emails from GPL-extremists telling me that I'm ruining my life or destroying the universe because I'm letting people copy-and-profit from my code. I opted for that licence choice for my own reasons, to hell with anyone who thinks they can make my choices for me on something as trivial as software.
Fair enough, but then who is the OP complaining about?
What is "profit from" also? If I borrow some internationalization code as part of a huge project, this saves the company money from having to buy a propriety product perhaps. More likely though it means we don't implement it ourselves and have less bugs down the road than if we rolled our own. Now does that mean we profited and the original author now gets access to every single line of our code as the GPL would imply?
No, it means that (whether you profited or not), all recipients of your huge project get to give that project away to anybody they want (under the terms of the GPL, so they can't further restrict its redistribution) and get to ask for and get the source to your huge project, and that anybody they give it away to gets the same rights.
Even if the code is proprietary and our competitors are anxious to get a peek at it?
Yes, in which case you would be advised not to use GPLed internationalization code. Sorry.
Even if various government agencies disallow giving away the code or allowing end user customization of the machines?
Yes, in which case you would be advised not to use GPLed internationalization code. Sorry.
With GPL the return payment is that you must also be GPL in absolutely everything you do. With BSD the return payment is that you give recognition to the author and keep the copyright notices intact. The first type of payment is too high for most companies unless they've got a software model that fits (ie, dynamic libraries, separately loaded programs, kernel modules, multiple cpus). The second payment is much easier but many companies don't know of it and they associate all free or open source software as GPL tainted.
Then the right answer isn't "complain about the GPL", it's "promote non-GPL-style licenses and code that uses them, so that more companies know about it and use non-GPLed software in those cases where it works better for them".
So the result is many smaller companies reinvent small pieces of code or libraries all the time, not the result desired if the author wanted to share code.
Perhaps the desire of authors of at least some GPLed code isn't simply "to share code"; perhaps it's "to share code in a fashion that keeps it, and any improvements to it, under the GPL", in which case that might well be the result desired - they'd rather have people reinvent the wheel than to use their wheel design in a fashion they don't like. People who want their code used even in cases where the GPL gets in the way, including people whose sole goal is "to share code", would presumably use a BSD license or an MIT license or some other non-GPL-style license. Perhaps smaller companies might not realize that they won't get trapped by the GPL if they use that software; if so, that is, as noted, an evangelism problem.
your example is wrong.
you would have to provide any improvement to the library you are using, but not code for other parts of the project.
If the library is GPLed rather than LGPLed, you would most definitely have to provide code for parts of the project linked with it, unless it falls under the "system library exception".
And if he/she does that too much, people fork the project.
This is actually one of the things that soured a lot of embedded developers to GPLv3... the new rules seemed to be designed to force embedded programmers to open up more but did not effect web based stuff, giving the impression of preferential treatment.
I think the purpose of the GPL is to ensure that those that profit from your work also give back.
Nonsense. In fact, potentially completely the opposite. Someone who profits from distributing unmodified copies of your code doesn't have to give you anything back. But someone who tries to combine your code with code which they have previously written, and give away the combined result for free (or maybe even at a loss including their server hosting fees), is still required to send you a whole bunch of code unrelated to your work.
A commercial distribution license based on a percentage of sales would be more in line with your stated purpose. Or maybe a commercial license with a 100% discount for people who send you rights to use a number of lines of their own code equal to yours.
If "give back" means "give back directly to the "you" of "your work"", yes. If it means "give back to "the community"", not necessarily - you may not directly care about the code "unrelated to your work", but you might like your work to be used only in projects where the users can get the source, modify it, and redistribute the results under the terms of the GPL, so that somebody else could get code that's related to their work.
Big corporations don't deal with EULAs, they get licenses that their legal department negotiated with the vendor. Those licenses are written in language that has pretty much had its meaning clearly defined by case law. The GPL (especially GPLv3) has clauses that have yet to be clarified by the courts, so corporate lawyers are not yet sure what they mean. This is further complicated by the fact that the corporate lawyers don't quite know what the motivations of the copyright owners of a particular piece of software are for the clauses in the license (largely because that motivation varies from developer to developer), while they can talk to the corporate lawyers to come to an understanding of what the motivation is behind various license clauses in proprietary software.
I believe that GPLv3 was a mistake. It pushes too far too soon and has caused companies that were just starting to become comfortable with GPL code to worry about where the promoters of the GPL were going with the license.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I'm a developer working on a personal project. I will not use any GPL code because I don't want to release all my code. So I'm only using code that's under the Apache or similar licenses. And since that's what I'm getting, that's what I'll give back. I'm not willing to release all of my code, but I'm willing to release some of it. In fact, I'm happy to because I want to show it off. So I'll put it in a library and release it under the Apache license. Maybe some other developer will find it useful, and the cycle will continue. Why should I care if a commercial developer uses my code to make a profit? I won't have lost anything if they do. I don't write code with the expectation of in-kind "payment" under the terms of the GPL. I write code because I enjoy it. If your reason for licensing code under the GPL is an expectation of getting something back, then I'd say you've got a gambling problem.
And as far as the political aspects, to most companies GPL == toxic, and they don't care about the details.
Exactly. The executives will see big companies being sued over using GPL software. You think they are going to take the word of some low level coder that this isn't a legal risk? No way.
They are going to ask their legal staff, who's going to say it take X tens of thousands of $$$ (or more) in equivalent billable hours to evaluate all these lawsuits and all the potential risks, and then Y hundreds of thousands of $$$ to put in place procedures and review systems to prevent these potential lawsuits while still maximizing competitive IP value in ways that the even higher paid patent attorneys require. Management will look at these legal and procedural costs, ignore the lowly coder who hosts his own GPL source code on his free blog as knowing nothing about real business risk management.
The GPL doesn't say "'freedom' is good therefore use the GPL", it says "these specific freedoms are worth protecting, and the GPL protects them". If you want to protect other freedoms, that's your choice. But starting an argument because your definition of freedom differs from the specific freedoms the GPL enumerates is stupid.
Nobody is preventing you from profiting from GPL'ed software. Nor does it impose any licenses on your own code. The GPL prevents you from using other people's work and effectively claiming it as your own.
Furthermore, your reasoning is faulty. Several companies, including Apple, Microsoft and Sun, have taken BSD and/or MIT-licensed software, made it proprietary, and attempted to hurt both users and the originators of the software.
I am not saying that GPL is always the answer. In fact, I distribute most of my software under BSD or MIT licenses. Nevertheless, your generic statement that more permissive licenses are always better for freedom are wrong. Sometimes, the GPL is the right license.
A license like BSD doesn't take away any customer's freedom. It increases the customer's choice; use the original free version(s) of the program (exactly as with the GPL case), or buy proprietary products which include that same code (not possible under the GPL without someone breaking the law).
Thus BSD: more choice
Someone taking a piece of code and using it in a nonfree program does not destroy the free programs that are also based on that code.
If you don't like the nonfree programs, don't use them. Use and promote the free ones.
I'm never putting another thing under the GPL again. I have done so in the past, but I repent.
I'd like to comment on the graph.
1) Notice it starts in 2008. If had started in say 1995 you would see a huge drop in BSD/MIT... licenses to 70% GPL family in 2008.
2) I suspect this may have a lot to do with cell phone apps and the focus on web applications where the right to link freely and distribute might be more important.
Let me fix that for you: BSD is about the freedom to make choices for everyone in the distribution chain. GPL is about imposing restrictions ON THE USE OF THE CODE for everyone in the distribution chain.
BSD allows any stage in the distribution chain to impose whatever restrictions on distribution they want to upon all subsequent stages in the distribution chain.
GPL requires all stages in the distribution chain to impose the same restrictions on distribution upon all stages in the distribution chain.
This is the flip side of "BSD is about freedom of the distributor; GPL is about freedom of the code". Attaching "freedom" to one and only one of the licenses - regardless of whether it's a non-GPL-style license or a GPL-style license - comes across as an attempt to bias the discussion in favor of the freedoms offered by that license. Different people in the distribution chain may want different freedoms and restrictions at various stages in the chain.
I think he is talking about Microsoft.
"MIT licensed graphics library" = OpenGL which is a secondary library for Microsoft
" or a BSD licensed network stack " = that when Microsoft first released their network stack there was a lot of BSD code in it.
The programmers writing under the GPL are the ones hoping to get bought out! In fact, they are retaining more leverage for that situation, by retaining the exclusive right to make proprietary versions of the program one day. If some company wants to sell proprietary, enhanced versions of the program, they /have/ to make a deal with the copyright holders.
The author of a BSD program is only valuable to the extent that he perhaps understands the program better than anyone. That translates more to being hired in a technical role than to being bought out.
There is nothing more annoying then say a company that makes an OS which uses an MIT licensed graphics library or a BSD licensed network stack but at the same time fights aggressively against free and open source software.
Apple?
Well, maybe, except that
You can profit while using GPL-ed code that you wrote yourself by using it in proprietary programs as much as you wish. That's basically the idea behind the GPL. It wasn't Stallman's intent, of course, but that's how it is used.
Use the GPL to dump free versions of your program on the market, and try to build a proprietary business on the side.
The GPL is nto enough, which is why the Free Software Foundation uses one more tool, which is not often talked about: the official GNU projects require major contributors (e.g. people submitting patches for new features) to assign their copyright to the FSF.
Yes, GNU software is "free" not because of the GPL, but because of the GPL plus everyone signing over their copyright to the FSF, including a signed paper from their employer assuring that they have no claim on the code.
And not contributing anything back to the community. Should Apple fall one day or just discontinue its BSD-based products, all their achievements will be lost.
...with the possible exception of WebKit and clang and LLDB and their contributions to LLVM and their contributions to GCC to handle Objective-C (assuming they've been picked up by GCC) and their contributions to GDB (assuming they've been picked up by GDB) and libdispatch and launchd and other Mac OS Forge projects and any stuff people have picked up from opensource.apple.com.
The fact that a company or individual needs a lawyer just to write and distribute code makes the point -- RMS' zealous contempt for people making a living (and being sober and flea-free) have made it unreasonably onerous to use his license. Were I writing code for distribution, as a company or individual, I'd totally avoid something bloated and Byzantine beyond any rational need in favor of a license that doesn't require retaining legal counsel.
Nice. So if I download all that and build it properly, do I get a complete working MacOS X build? If the answer is "no", I rest my case.
Good, because, if you rest your case, that means we get to further attack your case and you've admitted you have no response that you can offer to further attacks. :-)
"Should Apple fall one day or just discontinue its BSD-based products, all their achievements will be lost." is, like it or not, inequivalent to "I can't build Mac OS X entirely from free software".
"Should Apple fall one day or just continue its BSD-based products, Mac OS X {and iOS} will be lost" is equivalent to "I can't build Mac OS X {or iOS} entirely from free software", but that's not what you said. If that's what you meant, you should have said it, rather than hyperbolizing with "all their achievements will be lost".
Why create something, give it out for free, and then allow businesses to take your work, profit from it, and give nothing back?
You have to view this from the context of the Marketplace.
If there is already an open source GPL project that does the same thing as my own home-built proprietary one. The only real chance I have to compete with that existing open source project, aside from using marketing dollars (which I do not have), is by making my own project even more attractive to some people than this other project.
In other words, I either have the choice of letting my project fall into abject obscurity, and in that scenario I get nothing back from it anyway, or I have the choice of letting go of it under some MIT license, and then may be -- just may be -- my software project may have a chance to become widely used by others (although, even this part is not guaranteed).
Instead of asking/b*tching/moaning and groaning, why not try it?
Presumably "it" doesn't mean "trying to build Mac OS X, in its entirety, from the stuff on opensource.apple.com", because he already knows for certain that it won't work. Apple don't open-source WindowServer or Cocoa, for example, so no Mac OS X GUI.
Besides, the link already proved your original knee-jerk claim was totally wrong.
Yes, but that's because he hyperbolized with "all their achievements will be lost". Not only will WebKit not instantly disappear, but, for example, none of the LLVM project work (which is not based on GPLed code, so it's not as if the license required Apple to make it open source) will disappear.
However, Mac OS X would be lost (unless they suddenly open-sourced it or sold it to somebody else).
BTW - if you download every single package from gnu.org, you STILL don't have a complete working build of an OS, so what are you complaining about, really?
The fact that some people insist on calling it GNU/Linux but don't insist on calling it GNU/{various other contributors}/Linux? :-)
Dude, it's "X", "X11" or "X Window System" -- not "X-Windows".
Short of the kernel ... which they stopped releasing the source too since it kept being used to easily work around the OSX license restriction
So what's this - chopped liver? They haven't released the source to Don't Steal Mac OS X, but that's another matter. :-)
They don't release the source to all kernel extensions (kernel loadable modules, for the Linux weenies in the audience).
"RH doesn't sell software, it sells services."
But then, nobody sells software.
They sell either usage licenses, or developing services, or services of a different nature, because what does "selling software" means, to start with?
What the GPL requires is, simply put, a royalty payment made for the rights to publish or produce derivative works yourself of the protected and licensed work.
Presumably by "royalty payment" you mean something other than money. Yes, some software is "dual licensed" so that you can either use it for free-as-in-beer under the terms of the GPL or can pay a licensing fee for the right to make a derivative work without the derivative work being under the GPL, but I don't think all GPLed software is dual-licensed, and some people and organizations that might want to make a derivative work from some GPLed software might not want to be obliged to make the source code available to everybody who gets the binary form of the work or to allow anybody who receives the source or binary code for the work to redistribute it freely under the terms of the GPL.
Another potential factor:
In today's crappy job market, pragmatism trumps ideology. Maybe some developers have realized that one way to improve the odds of landing that next (better) paying gig is to get your name out there, which means maximizing the number of people who are using your code. In this context, someone taking a fork of your code proprietary isn't a bad thing, as long as they've got the decency to preserve your attribution in their version of the source. If a company likes your code well enough to use it, maybe they are impressed enough with your skills to look you up and offer you a job.
I wonder if this has led to increased pressure to use more permissive licenses?
Why create something, give it out for free, and then allow businesses to take your work, profit from it, and give nothing back?
You didn't really give it out for free (as in freedom) if you retain control.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
It's more like a total crock of shit.
It's the old percentages game people. When GPL came out there was bugger all open source software and as GPL become more popular closed source proprietary software companies started launching various kinds of open source public relations licences.
Low and behold there are now a whole bunch of other types of open source licences and with proprietary closed source software companies companies playing silly buggers with public relations, breaking down programmes into modules and open sourcing the modules to ramp up the numbers, just so they can crap on about how good they are at sharing.
Just another lame arsed pathetic attack piece. Of course when you want to charge thousands of dollars for a report https://store.the451group.com/index.php?cPath=3&osCsid=gttqeg90f1go39789fobdf4nf2, you have to be pretty inflammatory to pull the mugs in.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Noooo...RMS has said repeatedly the ultimate goal of GPL is to kill proprietary software. You can look up his "GPL VS LGPL" for just one example, but there are several others out there.
We're all adults here right? so lets cut to brass tacks gentlemen, RMS is a militant and seems to get more militant as he gets older. compare GPL V1 - V3 to see how he tries his damnedest to make sure there is NO way you can use GPL unless YOUR PROGRAM is likewise GPL. He also says this in his GPL VS LGPL essay.
You have to remember folks that old RMS doesn't see this as a software thing, he sees it as some "good VS evil" battle where you are either FOR him or AGAINST him, there is no shades of grey, no compromises. Now while he is perfectly within his right to hold that view i think the numbers show that most developers don't see the world that way, otherwise the change to GPL V3 would have saw an uptick not a nosedive.
While the rational thing to do would be to sit down with developers from all walks of life, talk to them to find out what they don't like about the current GPL, and then fix it, sadly the problem with zealotry is there isn't any room for compromises like that and honestly from reading the man's writings I doubt it'd bother him in the least if he was the only one using GPL as long as it remained 'pure'. Remember we are talking about a guy who got rid of his OLPC because the BIOS wasn't GPL and is now using some rare loongson netbook simply because that was the ONLY device he could find that met his definition of GPL compliance.
So the fact that the GPL is going down the shitter as far as usage is concerned really doesn't surprise me and frankly i expect that trend to get worse not better. Life simply isn't black and white and when even Torvalds won't use GPL V3 because its too restrictive that should let you know RMS simply went too far. While i like the idea of FOSS and use it quite often i also know that companies have to make money and developers need to eat But it seems that RMS doesn't feel the same. Of course he is a self proclaimed "squatter at MIT" so he doesn't really have to worry about kids, a car, house payments, etc so its probably easier for him to live in a black and white world than it is for the rest of us.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I think the purpose of the GPL is to ensure that those that profit from your work also give back.
I think the above point is where the two sides of the debate tend to start talking past each other. If people profit from my work, fine. In fact, that's great. If I wanted that profit for myself, I would have licensed my code differently. The profit argument is like saying "But it could have been YOU raking in all that dough," as if I had a desire to rake in dough, or a desire to prevent others from doing so. I actually just don't care. This concept seems unfathomable to some people.
The GPL v2 does not in any way address how entities use the software, only how they distribute the software, ergo Google is doing nothing morally wrong. If you feel this way, however, feel free to come up with a license that addresses both distribution and use of the code. But the GPL v2 is not the license you're looking for to curtail Google's _use_ of the software in question.
He is, he just wants it to stay that way.
You can't always get what you want.
You can try sometimes, but you just might find, you get what you need.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Nope, that wasn't a fix. Your fix is incorrect. The GPL isn't about letting you repeat what you hear, but about force used to force others to repeat what they don't want to repeat.
Learn to love Alaska
including the bogus ones about how loading a template script into a runtime is somehow "linking"
Reference?
Who is the 451 Group and why do I care what they think? Oh wait! I don't!
In other news: yes the GPL utterly utterly SUCKS in some commercial applications and is totally impractical. The LGPL isnt much better. Sorry if you spent a lot of time on your widdle widdle libwawry, I spent a heck of a lot more on the kernel that makes use of it and I'm damned if I'm calling MINE a Derivative Work of YOURS - yours could be one of mine though, because mine not only dwarfs it but gives it a reason to exist in the first place.
Gawd, imagine if everything was a 'derivative work' of the TCP/IP stack. Get lost.
But sometimes the GPL is a wonderful thing, forcing code to stay out in the open for as long as it possibly can, before the inevitable Nerd Feud splits it up into a sparkling shower of shattered elements. Or just a total POS like GNOME.
Many things, including a lot of my code, use the good ole BSD and MIT licenses, because they do the only important thing: ensure that all those that have contributed code are credited, and that updated sources (NOT always a good thing - run ARCHIVES people, or I wont use your stuff) are available, and they don't impose absolutely ridiculous restrictions like showing how your base algorithm works.
And NONE of this has anything to do with the abomination of "Software Patents".
And countless times BSD advocates fail to address the "in practice the original code doesn't matter" argument. The classic example is X-Windows where the same source was available and that did lots of good for OS companies but no good for Unix end users that had no way to modify the X-Windows they actually were using and actually cared about.
BSD is simply not intended to solve that "problem". If Unix users in question wanted to modify the source, they should have used an implementation of Unix that used an open source derivative of X. By not doing so, they have explicitly made a choice to use proprietary software - why is that bad, and why it shouldn't be allowed?
But it's the most important part of the OS. It's only because the kernel is open sourced that running Ubuntu on the same hardware is even possible.
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.
And yet they seem to be trying pretty hard to dodge the bullet that is CentOS.
Yeah BSD is great to turn open source into proprietary software. woot woot.
I don't see why anyone would not want to use the GPL if they want their software to be free and open. Why create something, give it out for free, and then allow businesses to take your work, profit from it, and give nothing back?
Why require something back only from those who improve your software with bug fixes and additions, and not from all other users and distributors? Sounds more like an unfair disincentive for creating better software to me.
It's only "unfair" to people who think they should be able to use source code in the way they want, not in the way the developer of the source code wants, no matter how inconvenient the way the developer of the source code wants the software to be used is inconvenient to the person who wants to use it.
It's a disincentive to creating better software and not licensing the improvements in a fashion compatible with the GPL. That's entirely the intent of people releasing GPLed software; they are, for better or worse, willing to forego proprietary improvements being made to their software.
I don't see the problem with that. The store distributes plenty of files. There is no reason that the source can't just be included in the download.
Google are evil. Seriously tho. Google ARE evil in many ways. No matter how many great things come out. They are as evil as it gets.
Everything think about the "open" Google yet, as you point out, most of it is GPL abuse (which is legal, but not moral). It's the same for all their products, behavior, data gathering, etc.
They're also geniuses. People DO believe they're angels. They DO believe they're open, and sharing. Evil geniuses.
They had to beat iOS. Can't do that with a closed source clone that isn't as good.Can do with an open source clone that's close enough, and allow rooting (aka "jail breaking") more easily.
they will eventually close up , maybe claiming pirating issues (what matters most is control tho)
You can easily do that if you're the copyright holder.
The GPL was not created in a vacuum. It's a tool used by the FSF, together with copyright assignment.
You cannot contribute to a GNU project even if you put your contribution under the GPL, if you refuse to assign the copyright to the FSF.
The problem with the GPL is that while pretending to force you to be free, it ends up not being free at all.
There were a bunch of people on one site, many of who obviously never did an edit-compile-link in their lifetimes, who have no clue as to what a linker actually does, and they were making all sorts of silly claims about how proprietary plugins and themes are a violation of the gpl ... when of course the running of a plugin is done by the runtime engine at runtime - not the wordpress scripts.
GPL is not a contract of adhesion.
It's a conditional license without which you'd be in violation of copyright law if you modified or distributed the software.
GPL is unpopular with business because it cuts into their ability to use secret sauce to hog market share.
If I was a member of the werewolf guild I'd sure as hell not be fond of silver.
yes it is.
But your competition can't steal your code and keep it for themselves. They have to keep it just as open as you have to.
Sounds more like the work of anti-FOSS FUD than any inherent deficiency in the GPL.
So maybe the FSF should go on a public relations campaign to explain the GPL so that lawyers aren't afraid of it.
It might be the antidote to all the FUD people spread about it.
The GPL doesn't restrict you from doing anything but hogging the fruits of other people's labor for yourself.
And you are full of FUD, never mind the insults.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
And, it would seem, you have an agenda.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
The claim of BSD users is that it results in a situation that is more free. In other words it is being taken as a given that freedom for people downstream from the developers is an intrinsic good. If freedom is not an intrinsic good the whole anti-GPL argument made by the BSD camp, that the GPL reduces freedom, falls flat. Reducing freedom is no longer a bad thing.
So given that axiomatically freedom is an intrinsic good lets look at the X situation. At the time of the open systems movements there were essentially no important / useful Unixes with an open source derivative of X as their windowing system. The purpose of XFree86 was to create a free X first for Linux and BSD, they had to do this because there was none that was useful. Eventually (after about a decade) XFree86 became the reference implementation, and when this moved back to X.org the reference implementation became useful; but there was about 15 years where that wasn't the case. To this day many of the features of the proprietary X's are still not part of X.org.
Quite simply there was, in a meaningful sense no useful X that was open source. The reference implementations that existed, benefit operating system manufacturers but did not benefit the users of those operating systems. In effect there was no freedom, and since freedom is an intrinsic good that is a negative situation to be avoided.
And by the way, you're doing evil. Tangential support of my claim.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Because the bullshit lines have been fed that the GPL is 'viral'. It is 'encumbered' with problems.... standard "crowd source wisdom' [sic], is subject to steering by corporate propaganda...
Those in power love to tell others to follow the 'golden rule' -- and promote church activities for the "self sacrificing" state it helps engender, so that those in power can more easily manage the common folk...
Crowd management has been an art being refined for 1000's of years since 'bread and circuses'... Why do you think Republicans are against education initiatives and public funding for schools? They only want their own to be educated!.. Educating the masses -- you might end up with a bunch of liberals like in the 60's/70's who engage in riots and such, who were able to educated enough to understand how downtrodden we are and how illusory US freedom is. Then the media hit back with the 'me generation, and 'greed is good', to get kids back on track.
Now we have today and no signs of a reversal yet...
I wonder how you arrived at that nonsensical claim, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the GPL license. Perhaps it would be useful to remember that argument by analogy is a logical fallacy.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
The GPL was an ingenious invention. However, this is probably a good thing.
No, that's not at all what that means.
What it *does* mean is that google, when designing this tie-in to their services, decided that it was in google's interest that noone be able to make their own improvements which google couldn't share.
Had they wanted to keep it to themselves, they could have based it on NetBSD instead--and if android was the product, like MacOS, they would have made such a choice.
Android isn't the product though; it's a gateway to the google advertising behometh (and if Darwin, rather than MacOS was the product, it, too, would have a viral license).
hawk
OGRE switched away from the GPL a couple years ago, and they had this to say about it. This, in my opinion, is the strongest argument for BSD-style licenses, and totally changed my mind about open source licenses. I'd probably still use GPL for end user products, but for libraries or frameworks or what have you, I like the simplicity of BSD or MIT.
Like Obama "enforces" equality :-)
How can someone revoke your "freedom" to use your BSD code as you wish?
Laughable arguments!
You mean you signed a lifelong service commitment and you can't cancel it?
I wasn't aware of such arrangements...
Also, please enlighten us as to whether their server code was open when you signed up and then they closed it. Or you didn't bother to look?
How is that a 'loophole'? GPL is only meant to prevent you from distributing someone else's work under a different license. Using it for your own purposes is fine.
As for closing that 'loophole' every company that uses a single piece of GPL'ed software would have to release all their code, that includes mine and I'm pretty sure I'd be out of a job if that were to happen. If we made GPL4 like what you imply, any software using that would die a quick death since nobody(by nobody I mean organizations which bring in the money) will be using it.
Because if you truly want to promote freedom and free code, you also have to let people to profit from it.
The GPL doesn't prevent you from profiting on your derivative code, it simply ensures that others can do the same. GPL derivative code does not have to be free of charge.
Freedom isn't picking who gets to enjoy that "freedom" based on some rules
There is no restriction on who get's to "enjoy" that freedom, it simply says that you have to pass it on. The BSD license, for example, let's you enjoy that freedom, but doesn't not require you to pass it on, which essentially slows the spread of free (as in speech) software.
I'm talking about getting complete system build without reimplementing a proprietary decade of development history from scratch.
You're talking about STEALING Apple's product.
People using your code and improving it without giving anything back? Because that is what Google is doing.
Where? There was some controversy about Android but that code has been released.
So you are saying that you can take something from GPL v3, modify it, sell the binaries, and not distribute the source?
Learn to love Alaska
I don't get your argument about the GPL freedom.
That is exactly the reason it's share is going down.
Distribution vs. Use: doesn't GPLv3 cover the use too?
It's disingenuous to claim the GPL allows you to make a profit from your software. Not because that isn't true, but because it's only true for two extremely limited and problematic business models: "Support/Consulting" and "Donations".
Lets get the second off the table now; Donations are not a business model, they are charity.
That leaves Support, ala Red Hat and friends. The rub is that the support model explicitly incentives bad software and bad/limited documentation. The better the software is, the better the documentation is, the less support is actually needed. Ideally the software would be so good in every sense (technology, interface, etc) that support wouldn't be needed at all.
There's a reason why so much "Enterprise" software today is really a steaming load of crap. The entire business model of enterprise software products is based on support, consulting (eg glorified support), and training (more glorified "support"). It HAS to be an obtuse, complex, error prone, impossible to debug nightmare to justify the $200/hour consulting rates and $5000-10,000 "training", and $50k-500k "annual support contracts".
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As a gross generalization, GPL projects (Linux much included) have the most wiz-bang new features before anyone else. But they're also a mess (Linux much included, additionally every single distribution Red Had being a prime example).
As another gross generalization, BSD-ish products tend to be far more stable, cleanly designed, and come with far higher quality documentation (albeit needed far less because of the higher software quality to begin with). These are projects for which support is nothing but an expense, not an asset to be exploited for profit. So the users (and thus developers) tend to focus much more on the quality of code then the latest wiz-bang feature that'll be passe in a month anyway.
The GPL isn't the only reason you see BSD behind more network and similar devices then Linux. Quality and stability (in every sense, not just bs uptime numbers) is essential. Which is also why you see users giving back to BSD products; Not because the license is hammering them on the head to do so...but because it's in the user's own best interests to choose to do so. They have a vested interest in seeing these products be more stable, less prone to user error, and generally better to work with.
In contrast, GPL "support" based businesses have vested interests in seeing their products be less stable, more error prone to use, and generally as difficult to use as possible without completely alienating the customers to look for something else.
I don't see why anyone would not want to use the GPL if they want their software to be free and open. Why create something, give it out for free, and then allow businesses to take your work, profit from it, and give nothing back? Maybe these developers are hoping to get bought out by a large company someday?
There are many businesses that want to profit from their own open source projects by including them or parts of them in other, proprietary works. The GPL essentially makes that impossible.
I didn't say those weren't responsibilities. I claimed there's no such thing as a right to a car. Those are things you can get, but aren't inherently entitled to have them. Also, I don't think that people who don't have children, cars, or student loans are irresponsible. Opting to not have these things could very well be the responsible thing to do.
That would seem to take BSDL off the table for you as well. Your problem with the BSDL appears to be that you can't make use of the work other people have done and then turn around and stop other people from using your work in a similar manner. It seems you want others to use the BSDL over the GPL, not that you think BSDL is better for you to use. I don't really feel sorry for you in that situation.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Your argument assumes that kind of freedom is somehow valuable more than others.
In fact - RTFA - most people (customers) don't care.
There is nothing more complicated that an entire set of different EULAs from proprietary software which is the case many companies find themselves in. Lawyers and business have been fed a big bunch of FUD from Microsoft. Many of these companies already have contracts with Microsoft and are concerned about upsetting them, while Microsoft hates GPL because it promotes sharing technology and undermines their business model. Many lawyers are operating in fear mode, it is far easier to just keep recommending to a company to keep doing what they have always done---pay proprietary software companies large amounts of money and continuing the safe relationships. When you begin to use free and open source software you are going into direct competition with the proprietary software companies you may already have contracts with. The only problem with this mentality is that it prevents the business from obtaining the most cost effective solutions for their IT.
How successful would Google be if they had to rely on Microsoft for servers? What about IBM for supercomputing? Facebook for social networking? These innovative companies understand the benefits of the GPL and use it extensively in their IT and also in the products they sell. Any company can do the same.
If you work or operate a business and your lawyer is telling you not to use free and open source software, such as in the GPL, then you need to *fire* them and get a new lawyer that has some knowledge of technology in today's markets. Lawyers should not keep you from finding and using the most cost effective IT solutions for your company. They should be finding a way to help you do just that.
That's why the GPL was created BTW. It's not not some subversive attempt by RMS. It was a response to the "BSDL problem" of someone taking the source and making a closed commercial product out of it.
But NOT a commercial product. In fact the only correct way to phrase that is "making a closed product" and dropping the commercial aspect, because the GPL (as many many writings have gone on about) is not concerned with the commercial aspect of use - simply about the surety of others being able to use the software after modification.
Not everyone likes the idea of being a free labor pool for Apple without any recourse.
Without recourse? What the hell does that even MEAN. The whole point of releasing something GPL is that you are perfectly OK with commercial entities (ANY commercial entity) using it for free!!! You simply want changes made to come back to you, or at least be able to see them. You are happy that other people can use it for free. That is the POINT!
Well guess what - in real life those changes DO come back regardless of using GPL or BSD! Just look at Apple for example, all of the open source projects they make use of they also contribute back to - even when they do not have to (BSD licenses). Some they are even really primary developers for, like Darwin or LLVM (OK, not sure if they are primary on LLVM but they are at least heavy contributors).
So why would any company do this? The answer is one that even allows you to keep your world view of every company being nothing but greedy scoundrels - because it's CHEAPER for them to contribute back. Otherwise they have to go through all of the work of re-patching changes with every release. They would FAR RATHER not have the responsibility of maintaining that code, but get rid of it ASAP and let it fall back on the maintainers.
I don't think RMS is a zealot at all. I think he is a visionary, and I agree 100% with the goal of what he is trying to do with the GPL. I just don't think (anymore, I used to) that the GPL is the best way to reach the goal he seeks. We have enough history now to show us that the BSD/MIT license can still have the derivative code sharing effects that the GPL seeks to mandate, only with greater developer uptake when you take the less restrictive path.
Yes you can find outliers of transgression but I'll bet there are a hell of a lot of people not giving back to GPL projects the way they should either!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Some very interesting blog entries below the referenced article suggest that the entire study is a sham. A FUD attempt to discredit the GPL. The following quote is one of the more interesting ones. Makes perfect sense to me--check Savannah and sourceforge for yourself. Just exactly WHO is behind the 451 Group anyway??
"Jasper Nuyens says:
December 17, 2011 at 6:48 pm
I agree with orbit that this is propaganda = possibly sponosered by Microsoft as they are the only company publicly opposing the GPL license and funding BlackDuckSoftware.
Yet one can clearly do the math themselves. Savannah.org and sourceforge.net both allow the searching for license type. It clearly shows that the GNU GPL license is the only important remaining licence, with a big growth in the GPLv3 area the last years (wheiter you like it or not).
Sourceforge lists 1014 MIT licensed projects while over 13.000 GPL projects. Impossible that MIT license would be at 11%
AGPL licensed by sourceforge over 370, so there are only 47 projects licensed unther the AGPL and not on sourceforge? Seems unlikely!
Fear, uncertainty, doubt nice try, but no win today!"
The finer nuances of the various licenses escape me. But, to imply that by using a bit of GPL'd code internally means that you must open source everything that you or your company has ever coded borders on insane. Not to mention, dishonest.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Some people just prefer free as in free (BSD, MIT etc.) over free as in restricted (GPL).
We're all adults here right? so lets cut to brass tacks gentlemen, RMS is a militant and seems to get more militant as he gets older. compare GPL V1 - V3 to see how he tries his damnedest to make sure there is NO way you can use GPL unless YOUR PROGRAM is likewise GPL.
RMS first wrote the GPL because he couldn't change the driver code of a printer he was using, obviously if his printer had been "tivoized" to only run unmodified software that'd ruin the whole point of the GPL. It may not have been explicitly forbidden by the license until the GPLv3, but it would be the intention all the way back in 1989. It's very obvious Linus and RMS have different perspectives here, Linus wants to be able to look at the code to build a better mousetrap while RMS wants to be able to fix the mousetrap he has. You may call him militant about it, but that's what the GPL is all about to him. If some vendor can put GPL code in a product and the user can't actually and practically modify it and distribute the modifications then the GPL is a failure.
Of course vendors hate that, not only do you have to show all your secret sauce but you must give all your users the right to distribute it too. So they try all sorts of funny shims and software signing and "covenant not to sue over patents" and whatnot to try getting all the benefits of the GPL code, without actually giving users the four freedom RMS intended. If GPL code wasn't popular and valuable, why are so many working so hard to find a way around the license? Of course you can say the GPL is excessive, one line of GPL code and your whole source code must be up for grabs. But asking for anything less would make a loophole big enough for a truck to drive through, as if it didn't have enough already.
I understand why companies like other licenses, if you don't have the GPLs obligations then they're still in control and choose to go binary if and when they feel like it. If it's under the GPL and you've accepted third party contributions without copyright assignment then you're more or less trapped, you'd have to back out those changes and replace them with clean code. But that mutual commitment has been the whole basis for building a community, if not it could just go away some day like OpenSolaris did. Without anything like the GPL it's basically "so long as we feel like it".
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"a dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid" = "the exception does not break nor define the rule"
A generalization that disregards generalizations (for any reason) is a logical fallacy.
I'll save you the time Googling it; it's found under the very first entry in the list of fallacies on the aptly titled Wikipedia article "fallacy".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/fallacy
Should rather be "a generalization that disregards exceptions".
Also, the first entry under the lmgtfy search is to the Wikipedia article that mostly points out people misusing the phrase, as Anonymous Brave Guy has done. He'd be better off paying attention to the Arthur Conan Doyle quote on the page.
I didn't mean use it internally, as in letting devs use emacs. But linking to a routine and then distributing your software or device with that routines means you must abide by the GPL.
Stallman's position is clear. Proprietary software is a plague and all possible legal devices should be used against it. Free software is a benefit and it should be defended. He has, for a long time, advocated legal ju-jitsu where his enemies copyright laws should be used against them to achieve their opposite effect. You may not like this; you may find it overly simplistic, but if that is so just admit it.
Calling this hypocritical just shows you have a personal problem with Stallman. Did he reject your love or something? Not really my taste, but I guess that we should respect people who can overcome the superficial.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
This is why saying that the laws against slavery are about freedom is in the same category as the classic "f***ing for virginity". Anti-slavery zealots are arguing by redefinition, and using the concept of "freedom" to mean something entirely different and wrapping themselves in its mantle.
If you want true freedom - which must always include the freedom to do things that piss others off without actually seriously harming them - then you should choose a society where slavers can do anything they want short of permanent physical damage.
There FTFY. And yes, I can see that slavery is worse than selling people code they can't fix, but immediately we start to admit that we stop discussing absolute freedom and start to have to make proper sensible moral decisions, at which point the GPL becomes an excellent trade of for the real world.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
the fact that some of the most basic use cases are ambiguously specified.
Speaking as a person who has worked in big companies with big legal departments who understood the GPL: You are just spreading FUD. There are no problems with any standard use cases with the GPL. The opposite in fact. It explicitly protects them where most proprietary licenses do not or even actively restrict them. The GPL is one of the best licenses in existence from this point of view.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
I think the purpose of the GPL is to ensure that those that profit from your work also give back. Everyone needs to be paid, some of us just want to be paid in code. For that reason I use GPL, but BSD, MIT, Apache are all good, free, licenses, so I really don't see an issue here.
No, that's the purpose of OSI and Eric Raymond's group (used to be his, but he no longer runs it - has moved on to other things, unlike RMS). Those people are about the things you describe. People who are interested in open source due to practical agreements about the best development models ought to support the OSI. Those people are the ones working w/ companies to make the case of how open source can work for them.
But the FSF and the GPL is all purely about Stallman's ego, as Hairyfeet pointed out above. This is someone who discusses software freedom like it was food - software under non-GPL compatible licenses being the moral equivalent of e-coli in vegetables. The most damning example of his fanaticism can be found in his explanations of why all the common distros don't qualify as free, in his book. Their crime? Daring to either bundle 'non-free' software, or even point to where non-free software would be available. E.g. Debian providing a repository of non-free software, and then hosting them on its servers make it impure in the eyes of Stallman/FSF, even if it claims that that non-free software is not a part of the Debian system. After applying similar non-endorsements to every major Linux distro, they then turn around and try to insist that GNU be prefixed to Linux whenever it is used. Why, if you're not going to accept that they are free, when they are all under the GPLv2 license?
Given all that, it's indeed no surprise that GPL & copyleft are declining. I do hope that open source itself flourishes, regardless of whether the FSF does or not. RMS does not associate himself w/ open source, and that idea does not deserve to go down w/ him. I don't mind losing the concept of Free Software however, since not only is the term misleading to begin w/, but freedom 2 of the GNU - freedom to freely distribute copies to help your neighbor - essentially forces down the price of all software, even though it's theoretically correct that GPLed software can be sold for a price just like any other software.
Right; It's precisely this which takes away the benefits of open source for the startup. Everybody knows; from the moment that they start using the BSD license or demand copyright assignment that it's a bait and switch. Thus no developers commit to work with the startup because they have almost no guarantee that there will be a support community later. I think it's better for the startups if they do something like split their work into an open / copyleft part that belongs to some foundation and another secret part that they keep for themselves until launch.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
As I point out separately below, the people who do what you suggest - work w/ developers on licensing models that make the most sense for them, and keeping their corporate assets intact, is the Open Software Initiative (OSI). Those people are practical, and one can work w/ them. There is no reason to pretend that the FSF is the face of Open Source, when it states that it's not. Open Source is about solutions that people can use. 'Software freedom' is the technology equivalent of Marxism.
Not using GPLv3 is equivalent to financial idiocy,
and ultimately results in transforming developers into "slave away" gimps.
In other words it resumes to :
I'll do all the work,
you'll get all the profits and contribute nothing,
I'll be left sucking my finger.
Just because I wish to promote learning and decide to provide the source code for my application
that does not mean I have to be taken for an idiot and impaled "ad infinitum" by some set of greedy opportunists!
On the other hand if you have no problem with being impaled, feel free to use whichever license allows the stick to go further...
You're playing games. You must distribute the source as you know. And in return you get to sell software written by other people. Everybody's a winner. What's not to like?
If that little act of returning something to the community you got it from is too much for you, then don't sell that software. Simple.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
In general the idea that there is money in open source is hilarious. Yes, you, the reader, want to reply with an example of a company which makes money by using open source software. Go away. It's less than 0,1%. The rest is a huge distortion of reality. For me personally, I write open source software when I have an itch to scratch and want to do it my way, not to make money, nor to demand things back. The funny thing about the GPL is that it is self-destructive. So we have had these discussions involving GPL (and BSD etc.) before, and always they are populated with foam-mouthed GPL-zealots, talking down on the nasty people, forcing all new developers looking into open sourcing to use something else themselves, devoid of these assholes.
A lot of guys here are asking the wrong question here. GPL is not about the freedom of corporations.
It all goes back to motivation of the free-software movement: to form a free community.
And GPL's purpose is to protect the community.
Back in the real world? It's funny to see a GPL zealot use the real world as an argument for GPL propaganda. Back in the real world start ups don't create fantasy open source software to share with a community. They use it as free ingredients to create products. Back in the real world, they pick BSD exactly because of silly, unreal, foam-moathed arguments by GPL fans on sites like this.
It does not pay forward the users. It pays forward the coders IF they want to distribute their code,
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
No. Analogously, if you need to make a revolution to free the people from violent tyrants, you may use rifles and brick walls, if that is what it will take. That doesn't mean you have to sing praise to rifles or brick walls. In fact, maybe you're policy would be to abolish rifles and brick walls after the revolution, preferring flowers and gingerbread houses, but there might not be another way to fight the power than with rifles and brick walls.
The post you are responding to did not say one could not profit from GPL code. Nor did it say that you can not charge for distributing it.
While the FSF does argue that you can sell your code, the things that the GPL does keep you from doing essentially ends up having the same effect as actually limiting what one can charge.
Let's say some company V writes an HDL simulator and decides to license it under the GPL. As the FSF argues, they can charge whatever they think it's worth. Let's say they look @ the competition - Cadence and Mentor Graphics, and decides to charge something in that range, or an order of magnitude lower. Let's say, for this example, that the price of that software is $10,000.
Now, let's say that this company sells this software to another company H, that pays $10,000 for this software. Now remember, V cannot, under the GPL terms, prevent H from re-selling the software for any price, or even giving it away for free (as in beer). So H decides to re-coup its costs by re-selling this software to companies K through T @ $1,000, and re-coups what it paid.
Effective result? V, who wrote that software, could have made $100,000 by selling it to those 10 companies and beyond. Instead, its customer became its competitor, wiped out potential sales @ these 10 and converted ten $10,000 sales to zilch. And downstream, each one of them may wish to re-coup their costs, further branching out so that... So while on paper, V could have made some millions w/ that software, the GPL prevented it from becoming the only authorized seller of that product, making its customers its competition and wiping out potential business.
The FSF's solution to this? Offer services around this software. In other words, adjust your business model to fit their vision. Oh, and whereas at one time, the FSF would suggest that documentation does not need to be free, now it does, and so even that is not an acceptable activity for a company. Essentially, the GPL is a fine instrument for certain companies to license themselves out of business.
The OSI understands that companies need to stay in business. The FSF doesn't, or at least doesn't seem to.
Do you have a citation for that. Not questioning it as such, but I would like to see one.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Basicaly it is this: If you share the binaries, you must also share the source code. That's a very reasonable license.
GPL ... it enforces freedom.
GPL does the exact opposite. GPL forces you to use the GPL license. Which isn't freedom at all.
If several big companies cooperate on a project, I don't think any license other than GPL offers the same strong incentives to cooperate. GPL between companies is basically a pact against offense.
Users don't care about licenses.
Programmers do. (Or rather, they have to)
So why annoy programmers with a restrictive license such as the GPL?
The GPL and it's rules cultivates your idea of 'freedom'. If there were no GPL and only the BSD free software as we know it would have stagnated and died before it ever reached critical mass. The GPL isn't going away and talking about it in the past tense won't hurry it on it's way either. Everything has it's place and the GPL was and will continue to be a necessary component in providing a cradle in which our 'freedom' to create, persists.
"Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing." -- Salvador Dali
Oracle have burned me three times already.
Wow. Did I ever tell you the definition of insanity? :P
There are no problems with any standard use cases with the GPL.
If that were true, we would not have had two decades of debate over which of the ever-evolving technologies for combining code constituted links between independent and separate works, thus exempting part of the overall product from the GPL.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I do note the irony of great sections of the Open Source community talking about freedom of software, the GPL being as restrictive as it is, and they adhering to it. But I think it is important to think of the origins of this, and what it is that compelled people to go the GPL way.
"Economic warfare" as you so bitterly put it, is a state at which any commercial software developer finds itself by default. "World domination" is the natural next step for any of them that have won enough of those economic battles. I cannot blame anyone who'd think that it directly follows that any counterpart to this must assume a "war" posture if it wants to get a leg up in the world at all.
I have not experienced this (too much) in my own flesh, but it must have been very harsh and frustrating for developers before the GPL came along and attained a decent foothold on the world to do what they wanted - doors being closed at least for every second idea you have, because some software monger has patented the idea and some code. Now there are more options, thanks to GPL, among others.
GPL seems to be so well established now, that it is being shot down as if it was a creation paralleling Microsoft and Oracle and, in my opinion, it doesn't deserve it. Maybe it needs to evolve. Personally, I have thought of doing projects under the BSD license, since I find it beter suits the times we live in now. I would guess that GPL has been very good for at least 90% of slash-dotters over the years - do not forget this, even if it maybe (and only maybe) it is slightly outdated.
#include <obvious_correlation_causation_fallacy.h>
Hobbyists used to share their stuff as freeware, and many would provide the source code on request to anyone interested, without anyone's legalese telling them they had to do it. And of course you have things like BSD, which arguably triggered, or at least catalysed, the whole FOSS movement as we see it today.
Of course that sort of sharing happened much less often in the days when we had to type in programs from magazines or get the source off a cover disk or BBS, but the spirit was similar. If you're going to discuss the widespread adoption of Open Source projects, I would argue that this also coincided with the rise of the Internet, which in turn facilitated much easier sharing of code and ideas than ever before, and that this could just as easily explain everything without any reference to the (L)GPL.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Holy crap, I started to write a kindly note but your post is moronic enough that you deserve this one instead. See the other posts for information as to why. There really needs to be mandatory community service for writing that magnitude of inaccurate FUD, especially when coupled with a kind of arrogance like you're somehow "schooling us" on the matter, you ignorant slut.
In my free time, I like to do specialized, small libraries, for other people to use. I do it because I enjoy building something useful, and aesthetically pleasant, in its own way. I find pleasure in knowing that others use what I build to do more stuff.
MIT and BSD licenses allow me to get over with the legalese in seconds. Copy a file there, and BAM! Everyone will understand how they can use/not use the lib. I will not have to spend time answering legal questions about it in the future - or they will be very easily answered. With the GPL, I can't have that. I have read it several times, and I'm still not able to answer some questions about it.
I'm not sure a license is the right weapon to win the "fight for freedom" any more. Just like DRM is not the way to fight piracy. Convenience & usability are much more effective tools IMHO. Don't give me a 5-pages length document to read. Allow me to do what I want with one button. Give me a carrot, not a stick.
Sorry; I thought we were talking about use cases; not development. Obviously, if you are attempting to circumvent the GPL by distributing proprietary software based on it but pretending it isn't based on it then you are going to have problems. If you have a legitimate reason to do something similar, just give the copyright owner a call and see if you can work it out. Alternatively, just license your software under the GPL and you also won't have a problem.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
they famously do not allow any open source software in their app store.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
gpl furthers only its own prevalance, like a virus.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
Proprietary licenses are ambiguous too. It's pretty close to impossible to write something that isn't open to interpretation whatsoever.
I completely agree with you that removing all scope for ambiguity in legal terms is hard. To me, the distinction is transparent motivation.
If you're going to link with a commercial library, then the library vendor wants you to pay for it. They have nothing to gain from harassing legitimate customers who pay their dues. It's mostly a black-and-white requirement, and you can usually resolve any ambiguity that might exist in advance by simply asking the library vendor how much you need to pay in your particular circumstances. Companies are well used to keeping track of such agreements and of what they have paid for, so there is a clear record and everyone knows what the deal is.
On the other hand, if you're going to link with something in Open Source land, then the motivation of the people giving it to you is more abstract. The licence includes words like "reasonable" and "customarily" that are deliberately subject to interpretation. Moreover, because you are not directly giving them anything in return, from a legal point of view the contractual situation is completely different. Now the company is necessarily in a legal grey area, which in turn means lawyers and technical people need to do serious risk assessments, take steps to mitigate any fall-out if they do get it wrong in the eyes of a court considering the question later, etc. Or they could just save the fortune that exercise would cost and spend the money on a commercial solution instead, which is what a lot of places do.
It's probably true that if you're A) planning on distributing the thing you're using GPL code in, and B) not planning to publish your own code under the GPL, you'd probably be best off to check with the lawyers before you do it. But that is far from the only scenario under which a company might use GPL code.
Sure. I'm restricting my comments to the scenario originally set out by the eric conspiracy in the post I originally replied to. He was talking about including Open Source code in products he was supplying, which I am assuming means we're talking about software development rather than end user products here.
Which is why I think a blanket ban is silly.
I think the point is not whether a legal/technical analysis would find using some variation of GPL'd code to be acceptable. Given unlimited time and money to explore the implications for a particular project, it might well do. The point is that the costs to perform that analysis, determine those implications, and risk getting it wrong, are higher than for a typical commercial deal and often they simply aren't worth it. The inherent ambiguity in using the GPL, as I set out above, carries a heavy cost and "prices the GPL'd code out of the market".
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
oh! so now its about the "community". i thought gpl was about freedom, silly me.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
I think a lot of developers see GPL as a "taking my toys and going home" license which discourages free use. If you weren't going to make a million dollar idea with your software, why stop someone else?
Because you want all improvements to your software to be available in the same way that your software is available, regardless of whether that makes it difficult or impossible for somebody else to make money from it? I.e., because you released the software to make it widely available, in source form, and you want improvements to be equally widely available?
so you just simply want code that some other guy worked hard on, even if he doesn't want to give it to you.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
I thought we were talking about use cases; not development.
I'm talking about the context set up by the eric conspiracy in the post early in this thread to which I originally replied, which I assumed to mean we were talking about development.
Obviously, if you are attempting to circumvent the GPL by distributing proprietary software based on it but pretending it isn't based on it then you are going to have problems.
My point is that, particularly in the case of library-like code, "based on it" is often ambiguous. As new ways to connect code together evolve, it is not necessarily clear even whether the original authors who chose a GPL-family licence would approve of a particular usage, and certainly not clear whether the licence legally permits it. This sort of uncontrollable risk is anathema to lawyers, and therefore many businesses will simply walk away rather than risk any contact with GPL-infected code (or spend a lot of time and money checking out the implications for each specific project before approving the use of that GPL'd code).
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
So maybe the FSF should go on a public relations campaign to explain the GPL so that lawyers aren't afraid of it.
It won't make any difference. The only thing that matters is the words in the licence. Once they've finished writing the licence and other people start using it, the FSF's opinion or interpretation is irrelevant, and every lawyer knows this.
It might be the antidote to all the FUD people spread about it.
The thing is, there is uncertainty and doubt in the GPL. It's specifically written that way. For example, the GPLv2 uses several words that lawyers choose very carefully to leave scope for interpretation in individual cases, the exact meaning of which in any given case will be determined by a court if necessary.
That style might match the philosophy of the FSF/GPL crowd very well. It might work effectively for the kinds of project they are hoping to support, where everyone is obviously compliant and happy to share all of their own code under the GPL anyway. On the other hand, it creates genuine legal concerns for businesses who need to know exactly where the boundaries fall, and there are consequences to doing that.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Because you want all improvements to your software to be available in the same way that your software is available, regardless of whether that makes it difficult or impossible for somebody else to make money from it? I.e., because you released the software to make it widely available, in source form, and you want improvements to be equally widely available?
so you just simply want code that some other guy worked hard on, even if he doesn't want to give it to you.
No. The "other guy" simply wants to use some GPLed code its developer worked hard on, and not release his changes to that code under a GPL-compatible license, even if the code's original developer wants him to. The original developer is, probably, quite happy for the "other guy" not to work on the code in the first place, and thus not to have any code of his own, if the "other guy" isn't willing to make his work available under the GPL.
Okay; I guess your use of the word "use" was ambiguous and I got the other meaning of it. As I read Eric when he says "to use any open source code in the products I supplied" he would even mean e.g. including an open source "ls" or "ping" utility bundled in the product but even where there was no derivation from it. Please be a little more careful with these terms since there's lots of FUD being spread around about the other case.
I kind of agree with your point in many cases. If the original author meant the code to be built on top of by non GPL software they should have used the LGPL. To be honest I can't really see that the cost of sending an email to get clarification about a specific case is anywhere near as high as the cost I see when bringing in any other proprietary software element. That's what I would do. Otherwise, just do the simple thing. GPL the code which is on top of the GPL utility and use open / clearly independent interfaces to other code such as sending out a flat file over a pipe.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
The GPL traditionally can't deal with any language "above" assembly and maybe C. As soon as a language allows "modern" features like generics or even crazy stuff like open classes, it becomes impossible to draw a clear line between projects. This effectively means that GPLed code really becomes a fast-spreading plague.
Stuff like the Asshole GPL don't really help acceptance, creating infection vectors across service boundaries.
All in all, it was fun while it lasted. Some highly encapsulated projects like the Linux kernel may stick with an old, benign version of the license, but it doesn't have a future in today's environment.
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
The reason for why you think so is most likely because there's only one GPL (2, if you count versions as different licenses), while there are hundreds of EULAs.
Most EULAs I've read (yes, I read them) are straight-forward. Once you browse through the chapters only containing the mandatory paragraphs (blahblah, henceforth referred to as "the company"), the remaining paragraphs actually describing something useful are quite small.
However, I am still most familiar with GPL, simply because I've read it more carefully and because it's so popular. It's not that different, complexity-wise, than most EULAs.
I have heard of this argument that everything that touches GPL is and also must be GPL but that legally is just not true, simply because of the law of Intellectual Property people forget that property not given freely cannot be taken away by another persons interpretation of a legal concept.
Just because some one prints, "Echo" holy batman the sky is purple, does not mean in fact that the sky is purple, what it means is that someone might say that, because they are free to say what they want to say but opinion is not law.
GPLed software is usable by some developers - those who, for whatever reason, have no problem giving source away. It's not usable by those who do.
Wrong. I'm a developer of BSD-licensed software which is freely available on the internet, so obviously I have no problem giving source away. But I can't use GPL code in my software unless I'm willing to change the license, which I'm not.
That would be a nice theory except for the fact that open source was the norm in the 1950s and 60s. The internet, 1973, coincides with the collapse of open source as a norm. If you mean the mass use of internet for home, 1995/6, your problem is the modern open source movement takes off in 1994 with LAMP. The next phase of it takes place primarily in corporations. Open source for home never really takes off. Corporations had networks prior to 1995/6.
So no I don't think networking is the cause. As for BSD, BSD came out in 1977. BSD was part of the whole move of universities creating code which corporations put in their proprietary Unix products that were closed source. You can argue that BSD was part of the open systems movement, i.e. shared standards but I see no evidence it had anything to do with open source, open source was collapsing into irrelevance under BSD. Which BTW is precisely the GPL argument that the BSD license leads to widespread adoption of extended versions with closed copyright.
You are right. OK so statutory minimums aren't a problem.
I would consider any of these
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/
an open source license, since others do.
Yes, BSD can sometimes be substituted with the GPL, since it is more permissive, and by that I mean that you can do more with BSD licensed source code, for example merge it with business source code in one binary.
However, the same is not true for program binaries distributed under the BSD license, because these may contain components that you will not get a license for.
So, if you want to improve a binary that includes BSD as a customer, you are bound to violate licensing terms.
The BSD license is not the main target of my arguments in the previous post, but other licenses are, which are completely incompatible with the GPL, both regarding source and binary.
The GPL concept comes from a time when a few companies like IBM, which were used to selling "big" mainframes, also owned the software on these machines. If these companies had successfully cornered the personal software market, even more people still would be stuck in using proprietary software.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
I work with a large company that would not touch GPL with the proverbial ten foot pole, not only because its language is faulty and does not comply with existing legal concepts but because it seeks to take away the rights of others, any license model that seeks to take away another persons Intellectual Property and thus his mind by implication, is Evil.
I fully realize that some people think that GPL is the God of the universe, and bow down before it daily, however, it is not what we do nor what we say we will do it is how we live every day that his what defines us, If I choose to apply my Intellect, to a project that should be my choice, if I decide to draw the line and say this far and no farther, I have that right you cannot forcefully take it from me, because it is a product of my mind.
To say that something becomes a part of the whole because it is touching the whole is ignorant and oppressive.
It seeks to rob the user of their choices, in favor of some weird "mission" that no one fully understands, after all have you read the thing, I mean really read and understood every word every line, every concept that the GPL seeks to repress and oppress its theory and views of life upon the masses.
Electronic Socialism, is what this is and everywhere this theory of socialism has been tried it has failed.
When the Wall came down people cheered, they watched as years of oppression came crashing down, I will also cheer when GPL dies and can I say lets get a shovel and bury this thing because it is stupid to keep something around that is so complex that no one fully understands it, even those that wrote it do not understand it, when the good do nothing evil triumphs, GPL is evil in that it seeks to take away the rights of others.
Intellectual property is not free, it is the mind that is free.
Free to dream, Free to create new thoughts and concepts, when you say join us or die, is it not the same as give me your mind and the contents thereof else you die? I know it sounds crazy yes and of course it would, but is that not what GPL is really all about, taking away the right to do as we would do.
Freedom is about choices, people make them every day, in life in love in liberty, we have a choice, we can choose to eat a certain meal or drink a certain beverage, imagine a world where, you could not choose to drink the beverage of your choice, because someone else decided for you that you had no choice in the matter.
What if someone said, sorry but it is no longer allowed that you can drink a beer, it is become part of the whole and so therefore it is now the property of the whole.
"Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated?" The droning insistence, of the robot mentality, Truly the GPL is the BORG, and what they seek is evil.
Next point:
Distribution is most certainly involved in using the software - if you didn't receive it, how can you use it?
No, distribution is involved in distributing the software. Otherwise, every Internet network involved in allowing me to access the software is bound by its license terms. And that doesn't happen. Your logic fails again, sorry: "a implies b" doesn't mean "b implies a". Having a distribution chain so I can use something doesn't mean the distributors use it. Once again, does eBay use an item when they only intermediated between the vendor and the buyer? How, if the item never was in eBay's posession?
So, restrictions on distribution most certainly affect use.
They affect _your_ use. The distributor never opened the box, never used the software in it, possibly never even had access to it.
Oh, since GPL is a dead end, I guess all that GPL software like the Linux kernel, Gnome, KDE or Qt will magically disappear and be substituted with something else. Keep on wishing.
Apple requires that someone submitting an app have either:
1) Copyright
2) A valid license which allows them to grant permission to Apple to redistribute per the app store mechanism.
You have to be legally entitled to grant Apple permission to redistribute. That is the law and has nothing to do with open source. Most people creating GPLed versions of apps don't have either (1) or (2). The FSF and Apple both agree the app store mechanism does not comply with the GPLv2 so people don't get (2) from the app being GPLed they need copyright or another license.
I'm not sure how Apple is fighting open source here. They are unable to comply with the terms of the license and thus are fully honoring the license by failing to redistribute. A copyright holder would be absolutely allowed to distribute a GPL app from the Apple Store.
It doesn't AFAIK. At most you could consider the license termination clauses which forbide you from conveying the software to other users either in original or modified form unless you comply with the license. Since distribution isn't use, I consider it isn't covered. You can do whatever you want with the code as long as you don't turn copies of it to other people: it is then when you need to check compliance.
How you are not "repeating" what others say when you sell the software they made, even if modified? GPL allows me, when I buy GPL software from you, to repeat (read publish/sell) what you have "said" even if you don't want me to, the same right you had when you received it. GPL doesn't force you to repeat anything: you can use your GPL software in-house and never tell anyone about it.
GPL3 specifically does not allow what you are proposing. ALL modified code but be sent back. Even code you only use for internal projects. (GPL2 can be used the say you are saying. See Tivo, Google, etc...)
Please stop putting words in my mouth. "FTFY" is just a sign that you are unable to argue coherently without changing the argument you're replying to.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
If the user doesn't want to have code he can't modify, then he has other options. Similarly, if the user wants to have code that functions better for him and doesn't care about the right to modify it, he has the right to make that choice - a right the Stallmanites would deny him.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
Granted, this is more difficult post- Berne Copyrigt Convention.
Webkit was built by Apple. It did not exist before Apple. Some of the core libraries were forked from LGPL code produced by the KDE project, KHTML and KJS. Apple was under no obligation to open source Webkit. Only the LGPL libraries they used. The original fork was made in 2000. In 2005 then open sourced the whole thing under a mix of LGPL, (for code which was already LGPL,) and BSD for the rest of the code.
Ultimately, even KDE themselves switched over to fully support WebKit instead of their own KHTML.
Users/coders is a false dichotomy.
Original Devs -> Redistributors -> Users.
The GPL forces the Redistributors to pay forward the rights to the Users they got from the Original devs. Whether those Users are coders and/or redistributors is irrelevant.
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Tangent: when they did switch, the democracy was apparently under immediate attack. Some UK newpaper barons from neighbouring island (the Barclay Brothers, who own the Telegraph newspaper) threw their weight behind the democracy campaign and put up a candidate. They have subsequently been accused of using their muscle as a local employer to punish and manipulate the population (who voted for someone other than the Brothers' preferred candidate). A thoroughly surreal situation and bizarre to think of a state the size of a very small town / large village immediately under attack by commercial interests and pressures!
Thats exactly what democracy does; it empowers commercial interests (especially media) to take control of government. Virtually all democracies are immediately subverted by corporate control over the means by which the population forms opinions on how to spend their vote. Democracy is the favored form of government in capitalism because it places political control alongside control of capital.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
In a democracy, the politicians who are voted for are not the people who are in power. The people who are in power in democracy are those who arrange for favorable or unfavorable media representations of those politicians.
The act of voting in a democracy changes nothing, in terms of the distribution of political power. It is pure theater. Not because voting for this or that political actor wouldn't change anything but because to bring about real change via vote depends on statistically significant numbers of people acting in concert. But advertising -- media manipulation of public opinion -- works just as well for political parties as it does for soft drinks and fast food. People are, in general and en masse, highly susceptible to suggestion.
Any political actor who might bring about political change which 'the media' would not like are effectively destroyed by either negative advertising or lack of positive advertising.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
This is a BSD vs. GPL argument about which license better promotes code freedom. You are making a different argument which is about commercial vs. open source that end users should have the right to use closed source code that accomplishes their objectives. I think most people agree with you. I also think that is entirely irrelevant to the discussion of whether the BSD or GPL license better promotes code freedom.
Try again - the GPL is most definitely a contact of adhesion. Licenses are contracts,
I've never heard of any virus that asks if you want to be infected. You're free not to redistribute any GPL licensed software.
By the way,
(...) viruses helped make us who we are today just as surely as other genes did. I am not certain that we would have survived as a species without them.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/03/071203fa_fact_specter
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And no, my problem with Stallman is that he's a liar and a hypocrite.
That's okay - I've discovered several loopholes in the GPL, including one that allows almost any program to use GPL code w/o violating the GPL license :-)
{{citation needed}}; and I mean a citation of someone actually willing to do it and stand up and say that they're doing it. There have always been loads of speculation about ways around things, but all of these have failed when they actually came into real use. Take for example the people who said that busybox's license was invalid.
BTW. The obvious loophole is to provide a program which fully exposes the library as a program with a completely open interface and can be linked in to equivalent proprietary libraries (to demonstrate that it isn't really depending on specifics of the internals of a GPL like piece of code). I would not call this a loophole but actually a contribution but others might see this differently, so if that's your case I won't argue.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Funny you should mention that because what really turned me off of RMS was his fawning over communist leaders and talking about "software freedom' in places where strongmen like Chavez would happily crack your head in for actually asking for REAL freedom but to hear RMS tell it these places were paradises.
I have to wonder after reading some of his treaties about how his ultimate goal is to completely destroy all proprietary software that old RMS doesn't actually believe a communist utopia is possible. After all having true freedom means having the right to choose something that others may not like but RMS makes it clear you shouldn't have THAT freedom, only the freedom to use "free software" that fits HIS definition of free.
Like I said when the man is so damned militant he first tosses the Wifi in his OLPC because it has non free firmware before ditching the OLPC completely because its BIOS isn't free enough, only to replace it with some uber rare Loongson (who is sponsored by the Chinese government BTW) netbook because according to him that is the ONLY device on the planet that meets his definition of free? Well I have to think the man has gone so militant that including him in discussions about the future of FOSS would be like calling Fred Phelps to be a part of a conference on inter-faith cooperation. And of course there is this video which shows as the man gets older he is obviously getting a little...off. I mean seriously doesn't he realize that video is a MSFT salesman's wet dream? He makes the whole FOSS movement look batshit!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
RMS is a militant and seems to get more militant as he gets older
You have a point, but I wouldn't lay (all or most of) the blame for militancy at RMS' feet. Its the commercial interests that have escalated the conflict. And not "only just"... they are doing it in spades.
You can say that GPL adoption is "going down the shitter" or can say equally that its emerging from a fad that led to a lot of abuse.
Life simply isn't black and white and when even Torvalds won't use GPL V3 because its too restrictive...
blah blah blah
Got your breath back yet? Torvalds is an example of why you are overreacting. The Linux kernel is still doing fine with GPL V2 and there is no harm by adding V3. In a black and white world, there would only be proprietary and BSD-like licenses.
GPL advocates itself as the agent of "freedom". However, what it brings is nothing close to freedom as far I can perceive - once you use GPLed code, you have no "freedom" what to do with your own code, but to make your code open-sourced, even in the case that large portion of it is completely unrelated to the GPLed code you've used, and what's more, your contribution is automatically GPLed, which makes the beast stronger, even you don't like or may even hate that. To me, it's "subjective-morality-enforcement" - forcing others to accept and comply what *you think* is right. Well, it is completely your freedom to believe that "Every piece of software should be open-sourced.", but you should not force others to accept and believe that philosophy, because it's subject to debate at least (while I personally think that statement is wrong). You _can_ use GPL as a weapon to achieve what you believe is right just as you can use AK47 to kill somebody who you think deserves bullets, but to say doing that is for "freedom", is absurd and hypocrite to me.
GPL is about imposing restrictions ON THE USE OF THE CODE for everyone in the distribution chain.
And that is false. There is one restriction on distribution, and none on use. You don't use software when you distribute it. Please remember that.
Since running a program makes a copy in memory, the GPL most certainly kicks in on use.
I'm not putting words into your mouth; precisely the opposite. I'm showing something you would obviously never say because it makes it clear how wrong your argument is. There is no such thing as absolute freedom. Your freedom to play with chemical weapons inhibits your neighbour's freedom to live. A developer's freedom to close up a license inhibits his user's freedom to fix the code in the user's system. A slaver's freedom to keep slaves inhibits the slaves freedom. Everywhere we need to trade freedom of one person for freedom of another and the GPL is an excellent tool for doing that. Overall, because many more people use software than develop it, it increases freedom. Even in the case of developers, it doesn't decrease any freedom except their freedom to reduce other people's freedom. The developers can still write any software they want.
Allowing people who don't know about software to buy software without the source code harms those people. Allowing a market in which most software is sold without source code harms everyone. We are starting to run into lots of problems where old software written by dead people ends up needing mission critical patching.
Furthermore, if you are the original developer of the code there is everything to gain and nothing to lose from going copyleft; if you want to grant broader licenses or more possibilities to some people you can always do that later. If you realise, like the developers of Wine, for example, that allowing people to close your code was a mistake, it's very hard to take back later. For that reason projects should always start with AGPLv3 and then choose other licenses later only if they find a real benefit from doing so.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
That's wrong because the GPL only spells out the copyright terms of the work. It does not restrict usage of the work.
Please learn the difference between "you're" and "your", mkay?
The GPL won't be around in 20 years. Even Linus has said he expects Linux to be replaced with something else. And let's face it, all those other examples you give? Not even 1% of the market, and declining. And Qt IS crap.
People make distribution contracts all the time - wholesalers, distributors, whatever - none of these has anything to do with the final usage of the product - they're distribution agreements. Contracts. Same as the GPL is an agreement on the terms of distribution.
Second, every program that uses a runtime, since there is no linking in such cases (this includes java class files, since there is no "edit-compile-link" cycle - it's just "edit-compile"). This is easily proven by writing 2 classes, on of which calls the other (for example, to show a dialog). Edit the second class to change the dialog, for example, to be larger, a different color, and have different contents. Now run the first class again - it continues to run fine, but calling the new code instead. This demonstrates that no linking was ever done between the two classes. It's all just the runtime using the classes as raw data.
The third way, of course, is to get the original authors to change their licensing, or, where they have assigned the copyright to either the FSF or gnu, to demand it be returned because of fraudulent inducement. It's easy enough to demonstrate that the benefits Stallman promised have not materialized.
but ms has made special provisions for open source apps. so you can put up gpl'd apps on the in phone app store. apple could have done something similar, but chose not to.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
Um. No. The vast majority of software used at Google was written by Google engineers. Google does use linux workstations for development, a linux kernel in the datacenter, and open sourced compilers. That's about it. They contribute changes back to the community where it makes sense. In the case of the datacenter kernel, the changes would be of no value to the community at large, since they are targeted at a VERY specific environment.
Well, there's the AGPL for that
Nope, that only applies for customer-facing things. If Google takes, say, the Linux kernel and adds a filesystem driver and some performance optimisations, and runs it in their datacentres, then there is absolutely nothing in GPLv2 or v3 requiring them to share the code with anyone. As the author of the original code, you would get nothing: no money, no code.
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Sure.
With a BSD car, you can give put in a fancy carburetor and give someone a ride. You can even sell them the car later!
With a GPL car, you can still soup up the carb, but if you give someone a ride, he gets to keep the cr. :)
hawk
I knew Microsoft used the BSD network stack, but I didn't know Microsoft used the MIT graphics library. Thanks.
In today's news, microsoft was hit with a CentOs bullet aimed directly at its heart.
MicRosoft is reportedly quite irritated about having to straighten out a fold in its silk pocket handkerchief that was missed by the bullet.
hawk
You spend a million hours creating a great program, call it Foo, and you release it under the BSD license. Someone like Microsoft comes along, takes Foo, improves it a little bit, calls it FooBar and distributes it as a binary without publishing any of the code
Your reasoning ignores the fact that off-the-shelf software is a tiny niche - it's responsible for employing about 10% of software developers. For most types of software, there is no Microsoft. There is no big company that will sell you a license to use an existing product. There are, however, lots of companies that will look at your business needs and provide you with some software that addresses them.
The GPL does nothing to protect you from this kind of competition. Let's say you release an improvement to the Linux kernel or a piece of GPL'd software that runs on Linux. When someone wants a Linux-based system, are they likely to go to you, or to a company like Red Hat or IBM? These companies will happily take your code, modify it, and charge their customers for the modifications (actually, charge the customer for the finished product, but typically less than they'd charge for writing it from scratch). The customer then receives the code under the GPL, but has no obligation to share the modifications with you, or with anyone else - indeed, if they give the provide a competitive advantage then they may persuade Red Hat or IBM to keep the modifications private.
All the GPL does for you here is stop you getting in the door at a lot of companies, who won't touch your code at all because of the license, but would happily use (and contribute back changes they make to) a BSD licensed project.
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their contributions to GCC to handle Objective-C
This was NeXT, and it is a case study in the failure of the GPL. Initially, NeXT released their Objective-C front end as a binary-only front end for GCC. The FSF threatened them with lawyers and forced them to release the source. There were just two problems:
Unfortunately, after trumpeting the 'success' of the GPL in forcing NeXT to release the code, they were forced to integrate it with GCC or lose face. They then hacked in some ugly changes to support their own runtime (changes which NeXT / Apple imported into their own branch). If they'd started from scratch and written their own Objective-C front end (which was only about 10KLoC back then), then they'd almost certainly have ended up with better code.
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Whoever modded this insightful should grow a clue. The GPL in no way prohibits profiting from code, it only prohibits the distribution of binary-only code. If the parent was following that line of reasoning, he should have made it explicit, even if that would have exceeded 140 bytes. Besides, "free code" is doublespeak and I wish people would stop using it. You have gratis code (BSD) versus liberated code (GPL).
On-topic: I think much of the trend is because of an aversion to law. I stamp GPLv2+ on everything I write, but I have no intention of ever lawyering up to defend my code. Releasing as BSD-like would make that more explicit (social enforcement vs legal enforcement.), and would probably increase the attractiveness of the code from a business point of view. But that deterrent effect is exactly why I keep using GPL: if you need a team of lawyers to figure out how to best make use of my code, I'd rather you do not use it at all.
Since the GPL specifically lets you make verbatim copies (as long as you don't distribute them), GPL doesn't restrict your use of the software when you run it (making a copy of it in memory, as you say).
Your comment is interesting in two ways: what it answers (would you please reference Linus' assertion?) and what it doesn't (everything else). Excuse me for not trusting your expert opinion on software quality, by the way ;)
except a company which decides to use and modify open source software without giving back does not revoke anyone else' right to the code
Oh yes it does: their customers are on the short end of the stick.
Really, people. These discussions are over twenty years old. You'd have thought that everyone understood the basics by now: the GPL enforces freedom for the end user, not whatever intermediate schmuck you perceive yourself to be.
The GPL does nothing to protect you from this kind of competition. Let's say you release an improvement to the Linux kernel or a piece of GPL'd software that runs on Linux. When someone wants a Linux-based system, are they likely to go to you, or to a company like Red Hat or IBM? These companies will happily take your code, modify it, and charge their customers for the modifications (actually, charge the customer for the finished product, but typically less than they'd charge for writing it from scratch).
Red Hat or IBM can do exactly the same thing if you distribute your code under the BSD license, so how is that supposed to protect you any better?
The customer then receives the code under the GPL, but has no obligation to share the modifications with you, or with anyone else - indeed, if they give the provide a competitive advantage then they may persuade Red Hat or IBM to keep the modifications private.
OK...so you're what, promoting the Affero GPL then?
All the GPL does for you here is stop you getting in the door at a lot of companies, who won't touch your code at all because of the license, but would happily use (and contribute back changes they make to) a BSD licensed project.
If your intent is to contribute back changes, there is no disadvantage to the GPL. If your intent is to not distribute your changes whatsoever, there is no disadvantage to the GPL.
Is it your argument that companies irrationally believe the Microsoft propaganda about the GPL, and for that reason nobody should use it? Because my response to that would be that we ought to help those companies overcome their unjustified fear, uncertainty and doubt.
Why create something, give it out for free, and then allow businesses to take your work, profit from it, and give nothing back?
As for myself, the few not too popular GitHub projects I work randomly with, are licensed under Apache license as I don't even expect to get anything back. Rationale for such decision is the fact I am not even trying to develop 100% "out of box" working libraries/applications that were ready for commercial usage. But instead keep them on simple "proof-of-concept" -kind of level - and most importantly - do testing on only one device I happen to develop on.
Now, if someone finds my code usable, it requires quite much work before releasing it as part of a commercial application. And I see absolutely no reason why this hardest, and most time consuming, part should be pushed back for everyone to use. My part includes only something I find interesting to do research/testing on during my spare time.
I know, those pesky anti-DRM requirements sure make it hard to squeeze your users for money.
It's not just that - DRM really doesn't work in corporate software and isn't a major issue. The core issue is the one that's been there all along, which is the viral nature of it. So you get the insanity of, "here's this great, 'free' way to render widget x, which we can't use because then we'd have to FOSS the entire project, so we'll have to reinvent the wheel instead."
Since we rely on software that we've gotten that has proprietary licensing, and we can't release that because we don't have the rights to do so, we're effectively locked out. You can't be 99% proprietary and 1% free in Stallman's world, even if you're not making any real modifications to the GPL'd work. You want to use it as-is, no mods, no forks, just get something in there that works and does what it is supposed to do. Too bad, it's GPL'd, it is freewalled, and you get to reinvent the wheel or pay someone else to reinvent the wheel the moment you incorporate that code.
Sorry but your post does not make any sense. If any company decide to use MIT code then that is fine. If they improve it internally but do not give it back then they can do that but they will either have to permanently fork it and lose any improvements to the MIT version or they will have to continually patch their modifications back against the MIT source tree. Even then they don't 'own' their code which can have legal ramifications down the road, for example if they decide to release a version in Android. The fact you think it locks users into their services is clueless, do you know anything at all about software?
Your example is incredibly poor. Open sourcing the client makes sense as then it can be ported to different platforms. They may not open source the server side code but the data is encrypted using standard RSA asymmetric and AES symmetric algorithms. As they keys will be stored client side you have all you need to prevent lock-in of your data. If you register for services using an email address then, er, yes, those services will expect you to have that email address. If you wish to change then simply create a new email address, and log into each service and change the registered email address. But you are obviously too lazy to do this.
Marcin
No it doesn't, any more than the rules of soccer apply to tennis.
In legal usage - the only correct one - the meaning boils down to "why did they write it, then?". So if a law states that you may drive the wrong way down a one-way street if it's blocked, and you do cautiously yada yada yada, that implies that there is a law stating that you may not drive the wrong way down a one way street; if there was no general prohibition there'd be no need for a specific permission.
This is obviously not the same as claiming that the existence of black swans somehow strengthens the assertion that all swans are white. It does quite the opposite.
Pity google doesn't supply understanding. Shall I drop you a new shovel?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Actually it is. The consumers of code are the ones who are hurt. Look at Tivo and how it corrupted open source. Free and Open code should remain free and open code. Period. The heart and soul of open source is protection of the CONSUMER freedom, not the creators who will always want to artificially cripple software and monetize every feature possible and sell those crippled features back to you.
Digital is, by definition, imperfect. Analog is the way to go.
That's not what it actually means at all.
The fact that people defending the commercial viability of GPL'd software always trot out the same tiny number of examples is incredibly telling.
In 'The Sign of Four', Sherlock Holmes said to Watson 'I never make exceptions - an exception disproves a rule'.
It's mostly a black-and-white requirement, and you can usually resolve any ambiguity that might exist in advance by simply asking the library vendor how much you need to pay in your particular circumstances.
Which is really where the double standard comes in. Why can't you do the same thing, and send an email to the developers of the GPL'd package asking whether your specific use case is acceptable? I kind of doubt they would have much luck accusing you of violating the license by doing the thing they explicitly told you wasn't a violation of the license.
In addition to that, you're essentially arguing that companies have to perform due diligence if they want to use the GPL but not otherwise. That is probably not a good idea. If there is enough money on the table that a screw up is going to cost you big, you're going to want to break out the lawyers regardless of the license. There is plenty that can go wrong, not least of which is that the company you paid to license it had itself licensed part of it from someone else, and you've suddenly got some third party coming after you out of nowhere. Conversely, if you're doing some small potatoes thing, I'm not sure why you feel it's necessary to do more than clear it with the developers ahead of time.
You realize we're talking about source code and not human rights, right?
There is a distinction.
GPL does allow almost all businesses to use and profit from the software. Unless they are in the software industry of course.
Why allow a hairdresser to profit from GPL'd code, but not a programmer? It's arbitrary, unfair and unhealthy for the community.
After years of working on GPL code, I now put it in the same category as media companies, happy for me to watch a game on free to air tv, but god forbid I watch it on YouTube.
I would much rather some company use my code and not contribute anything back to the project, than not use my code at all.
To make matters worse, derivative code must also be GPL and license changes require permission from everyone who ever committed code, even if their code was refactored and thrown out years ago. Getting hold of everyone in a large project is hard. We have been working on it for almost 2 years now, and still haven't reached everyone.
My newest open source project is public domain (unlicense). I had to turn down tens of thousands of lines of code, all written by a close friend of mine, because legally it might (i am not a lawyer) be derived from other GPL code.
It will take me a year or so to implement all the features I could just copy/paste if it was in a permissive license. But it's worth it, because I don't ever want to commit another line of code to any GPL project. Years of doing so have burned me.
Except it doesn't work that way in the real world. Instead of profiting from my work and contributing back, they always choose not to touch my work at all.
As far as they are concerned, it is worse than closed source. At least if my work was closed they could pay a few hundred grand for a license. But if it's GPL they need permission from everyone who ever committed code (all but impossible for a 15+ year old project). Or they have to release all their own intellectual property under GPL. Tip: they are not going to do either.
Even companies who are perfectly happy to report bugs, submit fixes, or even contribute hundreds of thousands of lines of code, will almost always choose not to do so if it's a GPL project, but if it's a permissive license or closed source, they can do all that.
Sure they can! It's only if they distribute it that they have to expose its innards.
What? How come every single time GPL comes up everyone automatically assumes that there is a clause that forbids you to profit from GPL-ed projects?
Sure, you can profit from GPL'd code. As long as you don't profit from code written in any other license (proprietary or open source).
If you are a hairdresser, you can profit from gpl'd code. If you are a tech support company, you can profit from gpl'd code. But if you sell games for all the iPod touches sitting under a christmass tree right now, piss off. You can't use our gpl'd code.
Even open source projects in other licenses aren't allowed to use GPL'd code.
Only if there is a single owner. Most non-trivial projects have multiple contributors. I've released code under an MIT license and had some fairly significant improvements contributed back. I am free to use the resulting version of the project in any way I want. There are no restrictions on what I can do with it. If I'd GPL'd the original, then people would have given me GPL'd patches and I would only have been able to use the improved version in accordance with the GPL, although I could use the original version under any terms I wanted.
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Please see my other post for my thoughts on why no copyright on software would lead to de facto universal copyleft.
They don't use X11 much because they have another window layer that is older, more stable, and more modern (the one they bought with NeXT).
That's a bad example of Apple's involvement in open source. It's a minor feature added to keep a couple of people happy by adding compatibility for software almost no-one uses.
WebKit is a better example. Apple turned a buggy and incomplete rendering engine into the best (IMHO) and most widely deployed (if you include mobile) rendering engine out there.
In legal usage - the only correct one
analogy, n. a similarity between like features of two things, on which a comparison may be based.
I was simply trying to make a point concisely. If I'd known this many people would nitpick the metaphor rather than get the point, I would have just made the point longhand, as I've now done several times anyway. And the point itself is valid, regardless of whether you like the parallel I drew between the legal idea and the tendency for people defending making money from GPL'd software to cite the same tiny number of examples without ever showing a viable generalisation.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Why can't you do the same thing, and send an email to the developers of the GPL'd package asking whether your specific use case is acceptable?
Given that the entire point of the GPL is to encourage sharing and collectively-developed code, is it not reasonable to assume that in general there may be many contributors in such a scenario, each of whom would need to be contacted individually for their view, and all of whose views would then need to be reconciled?
In addition to that, you're essentially arguing that companies have to perform due diligence if they want to use the GPL but not otherwise.
No, I'm arguing that the cost of performing that due diligence is often prohibitively high in the GPL case, while it is typically very low in a typical commercial deal.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
It's not about freedom for people, it's about freedom for the code. To make the *code* free.
We encounter it every day where I work. Say I'm working on a project for a client, and they want me to write a feature to resize an image.
I'm not going to write my own jpeg decompression code, write my own image resize algorithm, and my own jpeg compressor. I will search for some third party library. If its GPL, I will not touch it, if it's LGPL I will be extremely hesitant to touch it. If its almost anything else (open source or commercial) then I will grab it, and my client will be happy not to pay $300,000 for me to write it from scratch.
Maybe I can use the GPL code. But it would be cheaper to write it myself (only $300,000) than to risk a lawsuit that could very well bankrupt the company even if we win.
I have seen a few comments allude to this, but I thought I would focus on this particular issue. Most of the arguments about licensing assume that coding is a isolated act of creativity with no ambiguities creeping in because people make mistakes. Lets say you are running a company with a software development group and assume that there are five errors per significant body of work (for those who want a precise stat: two hundred lines of code, five mistakes in logic or detail). In other words, assume your developers are human and makes mistakes because of ignorance, losing track of details, or just the general confusion of working on such as large complex project. Now, many of the mistakes that are perceived by end users are scrubbed out (for the most part) by the QA department. But that still means that mistakes of every other conceivable sort are still in the code base.
Now assume that at least some of your code in your company is under a proprietary license (maybe you bought a 3rd party library to incorporate in your deliverable -- or you just want to not have competitors popping with a codebase cloned from yours)), could you contemplate even for a moment in using GPL (or even LGPL) code in your suite of products? Even if you assume that a large part of your product base could be shipped with a GPL license with no significant impact to your bottom line, would you still do it given the fallibility of programmers? Given the errors programmers tend to make, is it not highly likely that GPL code would end up being incorporated in software projects which were meant to be closed source? Isn't it true that given the error prone nature of humans, GPL is truly a virus in its ability to replicate and introduce itself into foreign hosts? No wonder legal departments at companies view it with such hostility.
GPL allows me, when I buy GPL software from you, to repeat (read publish/sell) what you have "said" even if you don't want me to, the same right you had when you received it.
No, it doesn't. It doesn't give anything to the buyer, but requires things of the seller. There's a difference. That reality doesn't agree with what you'd like your analogy to look like doesn't change the fact that it's a burden on the seller/distributor, and not a grant of extra rights to the buyer/consumer.
GPL doesn't force you to repeat anything: you can use your GPL software in-house and never tell anyone about it.
But if you distribute it, you are, required to distribute. The GPL exerts force on the sellers. That's how it works. Otherwise, how do you "repeat (read publish/sell) what you have "said" even if you don't want me to" when I don't provide the source?
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Given that the entire point of the GPL is to encourage sharing and collectively-developed code, is it not reasonable to assume that in general there may be many contributors in such a scenario, each of whom would need to be contacted individually for their view, and all of whose views would then need to be reconciled?
Certainly not in the case where the maintainers require copyright assignment.
Even for those that don't, you're getting into low probability scenarios here. Are you aware of it ever happening that the maintainers of a project OKed a particular use and then some small time contributor decided they wanted to litigate over it? It certainly isn't common.
No, I'm arguing that the cost of performing that due diligence is often prohibitively high in the GPL case, while it is typically very low in a typical commercial deal.
I don't know if I can agree with that. I mean the cost of doing the same amount of research is obviously going to be the same, so it can only be that the risk assessment for a dispute is lower. But is it? Nobody wants to have to sue their customers -- neither do the GPL developers -- but it happens. And it probably happens more with proprietary software, whenever a company you licensed from (which already has lawyers on staff) starts having business problems and turns to litigation out of desperation, or just realizes that they gave you way too favorable a deal. If you count the number of lawsuits that come out of proprietary software licensing disputes, I think you're going to find that it completely dwarfs the number that come out of GPL disputes.
If that little act of returning something to the community you got it from is too much for you, then don't sell that software. Simple.
What does this have to do with me? The question is about why the GPL is on the decline, and I worded what happens in a clear way that some people take it. The GPL threatens force to require distribution of trade secrets.
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Yesterday it worked; today it is not working; Windows is like that...
Well first off lets not jump ahead. Microsoft's preliminary version of their store license agreement has some terms which indicate they may permit open source app to share without being entirely clear about mechanism. So we know that at least some people in Microsoft are thinking about that, that's different than Microsoft having fully worked through GPL issues.
Second, I'm not sure we fully understand the Microsoft security model. They may not be facing the same problems. Moreover if Microsoft does have the same problem and Apple and works through a solution Apple might adopt it. Apple, along with the FSF have rejected Tivo's theory about what is permitted under the GPLv2, and certainly the GPLv3 doesn't allow Tivo's approach. If Microsoft has a solution, one that they are willing to defend in court, Apple would have no reason not to fall in with their approach.
Third, the original claim was that Apple, "fights aggressively against free and open source software" which is a different criticism than "they don't spend time and effort creating an entire alternative mechanism to facilitate GPL software".
It depends what you mean by "contributing patches back". If they retain copyright and only grant you a GPL license then absolutely, those patches would lock the entire project. If they assign copyright or grant you an unlimited / unrestricted license then you can use them in a commercial version.
Assignment is fairly common for many large open source projects even when there are multiple contributors. Even if you don't intend to ever license under anything but one license creating ambiguous standing can be a major hinderance in enforcing copyright. For MIT there isn't much to enforce but for GPL it really matters. I have serious question as to how well small chunks of KDE or the Linux kernel could even be defended in court.
... from BSD licensed code, you preserve the copyright notice and the license, right?
Thought not, although that's about all the license requires you to do if you redistribute the code.
People seem to think BSD carries no obligations whatsoever. I guess I've never heard of anyone suing for violation of the license.
I'm glad someone noticed.
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"Just like Google does. And GPL doesn't prevent any of that, while it's essentially the same. Google also improves upon GPL'd software, but just because it's server side they don't need to give it away."
Yes, and for simply following the terms of GPL and doing what it required, people like Stallman decided Google was being a bunch of rat bastards.
That kind of goalpost-moving is, I think, a significant factor in causing people to turn away from GPL. You never know when some ideologue might decide that it's time to tighten the screws again, to prevent some behavior that used to be okay but is now counter-revolutionary.
Granted, projects probably won't be required to adopt the latest version of the GPL. But projects that use GPL will likely have to spend the time to examine the new license, perhaps get legal advice, field likely questions about license compatibility, and deal with requests and fanatical demands that the project adopt the new license, etc.
Who needs the hassle?
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
"You look at something like Kerberos. Who uses Kerberos? Hardly anybody"
Um, Apple?
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
You mean the company that had so few sales that they discontinued the product (xserve) that they used it in?
Giving out something and expecting return, itself, is a business. Programmers are sometimes artists. They just want to express themselves via beautiful and useful codes. They just want to share, not expecting any return. Isn't that beautiful?
Hang on, nobody said (under the GPL) you can't profit from it. It is explicit in the text of the GPL that people are allowed to profit from the work or use it commercially (to say otherwise would be restricting your freedoms). The GP said "profit from it, and give nothing back". The point of the GPL is the "give back" part.
The key is "you are free to do whatever you want, but you must grant others the same freedom." The GPL doesn't pick who does and who doesn't enjoy that freedom -- everybody is granted the same freedoms (another explicit clause in the GPL -- you may not discriminate). The rules are, grant your users the same freedom we granted you. What is unfair about that?
I realise that Slashdotters love car analogies, but really, is there any point to having a car analogy that involves infinitely copyable cars? It seems more appropriate to use a software analogy.
It's hard to say whether it is a moral violation or not, but clearly, use of modified GPL software on the server is not a "loophole". If it were, they would have fixed it in GPLv3. It is a well-known and intended consequence of the GPL that it permits you to make local modifications and use them for any purpose. (The preamble of the AGPL, also by the FSF, states "The GNU General Public License permits making a modified version and letting the public access it on a server without ever releasing its source code to the public.") If you don't like this, release your code under the AGPL, which is designed to close this supposed "loophole". The GPL does not have anything to say about use -- only distribution. Google is not distributing their modifications, ergo, they are acting exactly as the software creators intended.
Are you saying that it is morally wrong to use "the results of GPL software" to make money? So if I use GIMP to draw artwork and then sell that artwork, is it morally wrong? What if I modified the source code to the GIMP and then made artwork based on that? Am I morally obliged to release my modification to the community? Isn't it the whole point of free software that I be allowed to change it to suit my purposes? Wouldn't it be infringing upon my rights to do so if every time I made a private modification, I was required to release that modification? What Google is doing (running privately modified GPL software to produce server responses) is no different from what I described (running privately modified GPL software to produce artworks) -- the AGPL makes a special case for network servers but other than that, the two cases are the same.
The important point is that there is a big difference between private use of modifications, and distribution of modified versions without source, and that is the distinction made by the GPL. Let's compare Google's use of Linux in a) Android and b) their server farm. In Android, they are selling me a copy of Linux, and because that was licensed to them under the GPL, it would be morally wrong (and against the license) if they didn't let me modify it in turn. In their servers, I am not actually using Linux. It isn't running on my machine (I'm running a web browser), I couldn't run a modified version even if I had the source, and it is a private detail of how they do their business. So they shouldn't be required to disclose the source.
Lastly, you could argue that Google uses it for Evil by locking you in to their web software, but the GPL doesn't say it can't be used for evil. They could also be running Linux in a giant robot sent to destroy humanity, and that wouldn't be a violation of the GPL either.
The problem is not the GPL. The problem is that your chosen operating system is so broken, so unfriendly to developers, so non-free, that it is fundamentally incompatible with any license that says "you need to give users the right to modify the code on their own device." The GPL is a developer-friendly license, in that it promotes maximum sharing of software. If you want to develop for iPhone, then you are in an environment specifically designed to prevent sharing, so of course the GPL will not be appropriate there.
Firstly, it isn't called "open source", it's called "free software". If you read the writings of Richard Stallman, you will find he never uses the term "open source" to refer to GPL code. One of his big points is that that term is misleading, because it implies that the most important thing is the access to the source code. It isn't. When you use the GPL, what is important is that everyone share their code with one another, and nobody restricts access (access to the source code is a necessary precondition for this, but it isn't the point). Secondly, GPL code is perfectly usable by developers who are willing to share. If you aren't willing to share (or, again, you are on a platform that explicitly prevents you from sharing), then it isn't usable. That's the point -- if you are going to be selfish, then you can't use code designed for sharing.
But the GPL *DOES* restrict other people. Its mythology that it doesn't.
The GPL is viral and ties to force me to make my code fall under GPL if I use GPL code with it. RMS has stated many, many times that this is his goal. People need to quit pretending otherwise.
There are many valid situations where I cannot give source back or make it open, and the GPL interferes with this all the time. It is not evil or bad to restrict source, there are times when this is a necessary and positive thing.
GPL is not freedom, it is giving up freedom in exchange for what some people think are more important freedoms. Its also incorrect to state that GPL is about the freedom of the code. It greatly impacts the freedom of the coder, you can't neatly separate that out like it doesn't matter.
Even if you agree that the GPL freedoms are more important than the ones you give up, at least admit that's what is happening.
They profit because (mostly) they can distribute GPL code without running into the issues it presents.
What if Red Hat wanted to create an MMO? If you released the source, people would cheat with it. That's a prime example of a time when not having the source is good for (most of) the users. Yes, its probably not all that common, but it exists.
The real problems come in situations close to that, where for various reasons you need to use various bits of code and cannot use the GPL license or provide all of your modifications. You simply can't use the GPL. What makes this worse is if you are required to or desire to support a GPL operating system and/or API and the viral nature of the GPL tries to force you to use that license for your own code. This situation is very common.
Sure in an ideal and perfect world it would be great of all code could be free, much like it would be great if we could all do without door locks and other "restrictions on freedom". We don't live in that world.
There are some uses of GPL which I agree with, some of the ideas, like trying to promote open source and various freedoms for users. However, in pragmatic terms it causes a lot more problems than many proponents want to admit, and many of them don't agree with the extremists like Stallman. The problem with that is his extremism is codified in the GPL, at least the later versions.
What I want, what I need, is to be able to release under GPL when that's OK, and otherwise use a different license. Ideally I'd try to keep software open, but I should not be forced to. That's real freedom. A lot of the drive behing the GPL does not want to allow it. Its about a lot more than customer freedom and the things I see mentioned here, its about trying to shove a particular ideology down people's throats and that's wrong, even if that particular road to hell is paved with a few good intentions.
This is fair to a point, but the truth is that when a GPL projects gets abandoned, its much the same thing. Over 99% of users can't do a thing with the code, and a good number of coding professionals can't either for various reasons.
This is really a human social/engineering issue that isn't solved with licenses. GPL, BSD... whatever you can solve this issue by managing projects properly.
GNU can make sure GPL projects don't stagnate, and Apple can have a plan for what to do if they die. The licenses don't matter near as much as the management.
and not a grant of extra rights to the buyer/consumer.
No, of course not. The buyer/consumer is entitled to doing anything with the software, like making copies, modifying it, reverse engineering it... oops, copyright law requires the author to allow me to do that. If GPL isn't granting extra rights to the consumer then copyright law is taking them away (and GPL is reinstating them).
But if you distribute it, you are, required to distribute. The GPL exerts force on the sellers
You are not forced to distribute. You are forced to distribute in a specific way. But distribution is not use.
But the GPL *DOES* restrict other people. Its mythology that it doesn't.
Congratulations. Did I say at any time that GPL doesn't restrict people? Didn't think so: I have said several times it restricts distribution in order to keep allowing use. And this thread is all about the misconception of GPL restricting use when it doesn't.
The GPL is viral and ties to force me to make my code fall under GPL if I use GPL code with it. RMS has stated many, many times that this is his goal. People need to quit pretending otherwise.
No. Your code can be under any license you want _unless_ you distribute it. You are just required to distribute it under GPL.
There are many valid situations where I cannot give source back or make it open, and the GPL interferes with this all the time. It is not evil or bad to restrict source, there are times when this is a necessary and positive thing.
Not all the time, mind you. Just when you wish your right to ignore my conditions was more important than my requirements that you don't. By the way, I would like you to provide some examples of the positive side of restricting source code.
GPL is not freedom, it is giving up freedom in exchange for what some people think are more important freedoms. Its also incorrect to state that GPL is about the freedom of the code. It greatly impacts the freedom of the coder, you can't neatly separate that out like it doesn't matter.
There is not absolute freedom. GPL isn't absolutely free, BSD isn't absolutely free, Public Domain isn't absolutely free. And they aren't absolutely free because there is more than one person on the planet to use them, so some people won't be able to get what they want. GPL is free to use: you don't have to abide to any restriction as long as you just use it. And I, personally, consider GPL better than BSD because it will continue to be free: there is no option for anyone (besides the original authors, of course) to close the source down.
Yup; and its exactly this kind of issue that has corporate lawyers looking at it and saying, "Nah, we'd probably be fine, but just buying that COTS package is only $22k which is cheaper than our costs to investigate it, plus auditing for years, plus potential liability."
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
While the rational thing to do would be to sit down with developers from all walks of life, talk to them to find out what they don't like about the current GPL, and then fix it
That is *precisely* what the massive GPL3 consultations were.
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I'm not talking about releasing a few apps and libraries here and there while keeping the system core proprietary. I'm talking about getting complete system build without reimplementing a proprietary decade of development history from scratch.
Way to move the goalposts, there. Your original statement was that Apple was "not contributing anything back to the community", and that's clearly not the case.
Apropos of this discussion, look at one of the lists and see what sorts of licenses those projects are licensed under. The majority are APSL, which means that they're Apple-developed code which was released to the wider community without any requirement to do so. Of the remaining, about one third are BSD licensed, a third are GPL, and the rest are a variety of other licenses.
Note that the BSD-licensed code doesn't carry any requirement for Apple to release their source code, either. You might wish that Apple would release more of their code under an Open Source license, but that doesn't mean they're benefitting from Open Source without contributing back.
Why create something, give it out for free, and then allow businesses to take your work, profit from it, and give nothing back?
Because I want my stuff to be free and open.
It is not free and open if I'm telling people they can't do what they want with it.
Who cares if he is a communist or not?
I'm an Adam Smith style capitalist, and I think Lemote's Loongson is a great step forwards for geeks and especially for engineer-run small business. This can put engineers in charge of their own destiny.
It may seem slightly silly to me the reasons that RMS chose a Yeeloong notebook for the first and only computer he's actually owned himself. However the motherboard is amazing. Not only does Lemote give you the source, they sell high quality dev boards for each subsystem, with all the dev tools open source too! You can get a complete open toolchain, this is exactly the missing pieces. I don't care what their politics are, they free me vendor lock; they have no more power over me than anyone else. The only reason to keep buying their product is if they manufacture it well and sell it at a good price, and if you design your own product, they're confident they can manufacture it for you at a competitive rate.
Customers are what rewards this, and I'm happy that RMS and many others are rewarding this kind of access.
You're introducing low-information crackpots from the interwebs as proof that... low information claims are an important part of the discussion?
Take your meds, gramps.
It was over 10 years ago that Linus said he hoped people were using something else in 10 years, too. Doesn't mean it went away this year. Doesn't mean it will go away in another 10, either.
For somebody who has made so many posts to these types of stories, I am surprised that your basic logic is so faulty that you would think it would somehow not "be around in 20 years." Surely since there is software that is already GPL, that does not have a single author, there is no way for the license on that software ever to change to anything else. Even if you had 100% consensus among the authors that you could locate, in many cases that would still leave out the people you couldn't contact. But you'd never have that many people wanting to switch. Many of them chose the GPL intentionally, knowingly. You don't like it, so what? Who cares? Use something else for yourself.
There is nothing you can do to take the GPL away. You are not King of the World. We chose the GPL, we choose the GPL, we will choose the GPL.
Not exactly. The problem is that even here on slashdot, there's a lot of people who don't understand the difference between compiling (transforming something from one form to another) and linking (patching an object file so that the jmp instructions go to the right addresses.
It's why you'll see whiners claiming that php, java, and other byte-code-interpreted languages are somehow "linked in", even though there is no linking step, as in the conventional edit-compile-link cycle.
The java ones are the worst - they'll point to the JIT and say "see - it's compiled." So when you point out that the spec makes it clear that it doesn't EVER have to be run through a JIT, and that if it is, it's not part of the class file, but something done by the interpreter (which then discards the class file, so the class file is definitely never linked in), they get all in a tizzy. How DARE anyone suggest they actually READ THE SPEC?
And then you have goofballs like RMS trying to change the meaning of linking retroactively to include any dynamic linking as viral, whereas copyright law (and the courts in Galoob vs Nintendo - 9th Circuit Court of Appeals) said that a derivative work must have "'form or permanence" and that "the infringing work must incorporate a portion of the copyrighted work in some form". Since this isn't the case with any dynamically linked code, RMS is, like usual, seeing things the way he wants instead of the way things are. So, when you speak of low-information crackpots, you have to include a lot of the "free-is-what-we-say-it-is-and-nothing-else" cult leaders such as RMS and the jokers at the SFLC (who were still claim that the Internet is not a "usual method of distributing software" on their web site a couple of months ago, even though it's the #1 way to distribute software, both closed and open (patch Tuesdays, anyone :-), world-wide).
Obviously you're wrong in your final conclusion, because the GPL is in sharp descendancy, and many companies, including RedHat, are working to replace ALL core GPL components with alternatives. Just look at the work going on with LLVM as one example.
GCC already died once, when Stallman found he had alienated too many people, who had gone on to develop EGCS. He had to take their code and rename it to GCC and let them take over development. However, GCC is really long in the tooth now, so LLVM will replace it within the decade - and LLVM is not GPL.
By then, expect a lot of the other utilities in the toolchain to have been made over from scratch with more permissive licenses as well. People are simply sick and tired of dealing with nutcases like Stallman, and his crazy claims (for example, that dynamic linking creates a derivative work, contrary to the appeal courts ruling in Galoob vs Nintendo that a derivative work must have form or permanance, or his FUD about linux being bad because it's gplv2 and not gpl v3, and as such, a threat to android ).
MIT and BSD licenses are completely free and require nothing of someone using or contributing.
You miss the entire point of the MIT and BSD style licenses, which is to force you to include copyright notices, and to force you to require people you distribute the code to also to include copyright notices.
All these licenses force specific conditions onto downstream recipients, it is just a difference in what conditions are required.
If you have a "trade secret" that requires being part of GPL code, are you sure that:
A) it is a secret
and
B) it is your secret?
Google provides me with lots of GPL software, and Open Source using other licenses, too. And where their software is proprietary they give me beautiful, documented APIs allowing me to connect GPL or other programs to the service.
You're just like, "Google have money, money bad, google bad! Uga Uga! Stan not have money. Money bad!"
I can see how if you're extremist that wants only GPL software, they might be an enemy since they insist on releasing libraries under whatever license users are likely to expect in that particular developer community. But that isn't the same as claiming they "abuse" the GPL. In reality, they "follow" the GPL.
the FSF has, by their head (Stallman) publicly claiming that it's okay to violate copyright on closed source, put themselves in the position where anyone who chooses to vigorously litigate against the enforcement of any copyrights assigned to the FSF or the gnu project, or to demand that code they previously assigned be returned, has a good chance of winning.
That is complete poppycock. Professing the morals of breaking a law when it violates other moral principles and you have to balance between conflicting principles of right and wrong in no way prejudices you under the law. It does not, and it can not, it is protected "pure speech." The same actual law still applies, regardless of which side of it you're on in the courtroom.
Even if you say, "theft should be legal" you are still entitled to claim relief later when somebody actually steals from you.
Or the more extreme example, if you say that dueling to the death should be legal, that in no way makes it legal for me to run you through. And if do, and you live, you might still sue me...
CUPS alone is worth tolerating their idiot fanbois IMO.
You are not forced to distribute. You are forced to distribute in a specific way.
I must be confused. You are saying that if someone takes from GPL, modifies it, then distributes it, that they are *not* required to distribute the source, but that you are allowed to violate any license they attach (if any). Because that's what you are saying, and I'm pretty sure that's not what you mean. GPL uses threat of force against the distributor.
If GPL isn't granting extra rights to the consumer then copyright law is taking them away (and GPL is reinstating them).
GPL isn't reinstating them. GPL is forcing distributors to follow "extra" rules. And that is why it is hated. I'm not arguing it's bad or good. I'm just confused how you think the GPL "gives" anything to the consumer. In fact, if GPL is violated, the consumer is not even allowed to sue, the only one who can is the "upstream" contributor. According to the courts, the end user "lost" nothing.
It feels more like you are arguing that "here's how I feel and how I justify my personal opinion, and isn't a discussion about what happens or how it works in law or such."
Learn to love Alaska
So... if I write some software... and release it under a non-GPL license... and someone else uses it... you claim that they can prevent me from giving it away to anyone else?
No, that's not the claim. The claim is that if you write some software, and release it under a GPL license, and somebody else makes an improved version of it, they can't refuse to make source to the improved version available and can't prohibit those who have received the source or binary of the improved version from giving it away to others.
Totally agree with that. But what the GPP actually said was: "The GPL... restricts you from taking private the hard work of the original authors." My point was that it does no such thing - the original authors (or current copywrite holders) are always allowed to keep their work public if they so desire. The GPL restricts you from taking private your work, in that if you wish to redistribute it at all you have to include your full source. A BSD license allows you to keep your modified source private, but gives you no power to make the unmodified code private.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Yeah, but the one killer feature that you've added to your version is not in the upstream version that others can get.
And if enough people value free software over the "killer feature", it won't matter or it will get re-implemented. And if they don't, well then, it seems a little unreasonable to attempt to "legislate" things otherwise. After all, if that one feature is more valuable to the masses then a properly open and supported piece of software, then either the original wasn't very good, or someone would simply engineer the new feature in a new package anyway.
I'm a fan of free software. I'm also a fan of the BSD/Apache licenses. Freedom includes the freedom to take the consequences.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
In many contraries, having sex with a kid over 14 is legal, as long as it is by mutual agreement. Now, do you have the slightest idea of what the word "abuse" means, or you need a power point presentation for better assimilation? Also, try to find out what is the difference between "the spirit of..." and " the letter of...", and when you finish your second grade, come and post something more meaningful.
I must be confused. You are saying that if someone takes from GPL, modifies it, then distributes it, that they are *not* required to distribute the source, but that you are allowed to violate any license they attach (if any).
Perhaps I didn't explain it right. I wanted to say that you aren't force to distribute your product at all, and if you decide to distribute it you must do it in a specific way (making the source code available to those that the software is finally delivered).
GPL isn't reinstating them. GPL is forcing distributors to follow "extra" rules.
Either GPL is giving the end user extra rights or it is reinstating them, because you certainly can not modify the software according to current copyright law unless the author allows you to. The distributors can choose either follow the extra rule (no plural there) or not distribute... like they would have under the basic copyright law. But, of course, GPL wants to protect use, and distribution is not it.
It feels more like you are arguing that "here's how I feel and how I justify my personal opinion, and isn't a discussion about what happens or how it works in law or such."
Ad hominems aside, the facts are that basic copyright law doesn't allow you to use or distribute the software as you want, BSD doesn't guarantee your recipients' ability to use the software as they want and GPL does. In contrast, BSD allows you to distribute as you like (even denying the right to use and distribute to those that receive your version) and GPL doesn't in order to keep the freedom to use the software and, mostly, the freedom to distribute it. And I think giving the buyer/recipient the ability of using the software as he wants independently of the wishes of the seller/originator is quite something.
But what the GPP actually said was: "The GPL... restricts you from taking private the hard work of the original authors." My point was that it does no such thing - the original authors (or current copywrite holders) are always allowed to keep their work public if they so desire. The GPL restricts you from taking private your work, in that if you wish to redistribute it at all you have to include your full source. A BSD license allows you to keep your modified source private, but gives you no power to make the unmodified code private.
I guess it's a question of what the person who said "The GPL... restricts you from taking private the hard work of the original authors."
If they meant that literally, it's true, but it's also true of most if not all other free-software licenses - and, yes, that's a point of confusion in anti-non-GPL-style license arguments. In that case, either they were confused about what non-copyleft licenses do or were, indeed, spreading FUD (by falsely stating that the BSD license allows somebody to take the work upon which they based their work private, not just to keep their derived work private).
If they meant it more loosely, as in "The GPL restricts you from taking private work that builds on the hard work of the original authors", that's true of copyleft licenses, but not other licenses. In that case, either they didn't take enough care when stating it or they were, again, spreading FUD (by overstating the case).
It's in OS X 10.7, server and non-server.
modok:~ jon$ apropos kerberos
kadmin(8) - Kerberos administration utility
kadmin.local(8) - compatiblity shim for MIT Kerberos kadmin.local
kadmind(8) - server for administrative access to Kerberos database
kdc(8) - Kerberos 5 server
klist(1) - list Kerberos credentials
kpasswd(1) - Kerberos 5 password changing program
kpasswdd(8) - Kerberos 5 password changing server
krb5.conf(5) - configuration file for Kerberos 5
ktutil(8) - manage Kerberos keytabs
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
If you spend 2 million developing some software algorithm, then you really ought to charge more than 2 million when you sell the software. The GPL doesn't prevent people from selling software.
And if enough people value free software over the "killer feature", it won't matter or it will get re-implemented. And if they don't, well then, it seems a little unreasonable to attempt to "legislate" things otherwise.
Complete waste of time and resources. That's my point you're apparently not getting. Why have a handful of developers working on upstream and gazillion developers working on closed forks each twice the size of upstream when we could have gazillion developers working more or less directly on upstream?
It's more like having freedom of speech, but anyone who feels like it can revoke it.
No they can't, if you think that's analogous to the permissive vs restrictive license debate you clearly don't understand the licensing issues at all. If i release code under a permissive license who can revoke the rights granted in the license?
The GPL doesn't prevent you from profiting on your derivative code, it simply ensures that others can do the same. GPL derivative code does not have to be free of charge.
It has to be available free of charge at some point so why pay for something when for the same effort you can get it for free.
"It's included" and "people use it" are two different things.
Yes I do. Specifically we're talking about the right of the software users to modify the software they are using. People who like a BSD type license enjoy the right to modify software they get from others, but do not want to offer that option to other people. So no, I'm not talking about human rights, I'm talking about hypocrisy.
It has nothing to do with "protected speech", so get off your amendments. They do not apply. You might want to check up on the doctrine of unclean hands.
Example: If you put go around saying that you believe nobody should have to pay to park, and then you try to send me a bill for parking in your driveway, I have every right to invoke your public stance as an expectation that you would not bill me - even if you also have a sign up saying that parking is $10 a day. And I'll win, because a reasonable person has an expectation of being able to rely on your public statements, any signage to the contrary; even more so when there either is no contract, or the contract is one of adhesion.
To make it a bit simpler - same situation as above - I go to park, and you say, "sure, nobody should have to pay to park." You then send me a bill. I contest it and bring 3 witnesses who heard you.
The only difference between the two is when you made the statement about people being free to park, and that's irrelevant if you're well-known (notorious) for saying it publicly. This is Stallman's situation, and why any copyright assignments to gnu.org or the fsf can be undone - it is easy to argue that Stallman obtained those assignments with both unclean hands and fraudulent inducement.
Not only no but hell no, because the phrase "allowing people to close your code" is a lie. Nobody can ever close my code, no matter what license I release it under. They can close *their* code, and I have no right to tell them they may not.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
Complete nonsense. If you own a parking lot, and you propose a bill in government to ban charging money for parking, and say nobody should have to pay, and it fails, and your parking lot still has signs up saying how much it costs, guess what... customers still have to pay. Your political position will never, can never, change how the law covers you and your right to copyright protections. Or parking fees.
lol the GPL is dead because you looked into a crystal ball and saw a GCC killer. And you cite as supporting evidence EGCS, also know as GCC. Total fail. Kill gcc, then you can have a gcc-killer.
For one thing, it would need to be better at compiling C/C++ than gcc is. Good luck with that!
Actually LLVM does a great job with C... via gcc. ;) lol
Yes, you managed to work in the two quotes from Galoob vs Nintendo that wikipedia cites, but you fail to also mention their conclusion regarding linking: "but there have been no clear court decisions to resolve this particular conflict."
So when I speak of low-information crackpots, you're making a good case for yourself to be one of them.
We're not talking about government bills - we're talking about an affirmative defense in equity. Been there, done that, produced 2 witnesses, won the case.
Same thing happened with his emacs code. He p*ssed too many people off, they continued to work on their xemacs fork instead, and eventually he had to abandon emacs, and import their code and rename it emacs.
You might want to consider that even Larry Rosen (general counsel for the Open Source Initiative) agrees that you are free to link to gpl code without creating a derivative work. Heck, he goes further - if you make a straight verbatim copy (no modifications), you can do the same with any gpl code, because the GPL only considers distribution of MODIFIED code. No mods, no need to distribute the source.
So, is Rosen a low-information crackpot?
Given that the copyleft licenses can't be revoked, the amount of copyleft software will never decrease.
Also given rapid growth of Android I can't believe that the use of copyleft software has decreased in absolute terms.
A better headline may be that the growth of permissive licenses is starting to outstrip the growth of copyleft licenses.
GPL is truly a nasty piece of work. If forces software distributors to provide the source code. (See GPLV2 section 3)
This is a massive BURDEN on software distributors. For example If i give away or sell a Linux "distro" with 4.7gb of "object code" (binaries etc), then I would need to provide the equivalent source for every single GPL component. Can you imagine the hastles, problems and burden involved in trying to obtain equivalent source code for 4.7gb worth of "object code", that could be hundreds of individual source packages I have to provide.
If I sell Linux PCs then I need to provide the source for every gpl component and also the source for updates and any additional software I install in addition to the base distro.
This is just unacceptable for distribution. And I don't like the idea of providing a "written offer" for 3 years. What happens if the "Linux PC" business closes? I'm still expected to provide the sources for 3 years after my last sale?
The GPL is a self defeating.
Before you release GPL code, THINK of the massive burden you put on software distributors. This can only cripple Linux' (or any other software under GPL) potential.
The reality is, people want to distribute binary distributions, not the source code. The proof is in the pudding.
The rampant GPL violations prove this.
I dare say GPL is COMMUNIST or a form of contractual communism. It forces software to be free, which is basically what communism tries to do (forces things to be free) but ends up creating a nightmare of regulations and loss of freedom, like the GPL.
I'm also beginning to believe that GPL software is a TROJAN HORSE that infects companies and destroys them.
I'm sorry. I should have pointed that out specifically. The copyright notices in most BSD/MIT licensed binaries contain the copyright in the binary itself. Unless you know how to look you will never know they were there. I should have said, "Outside of hiding the copyright were few people know how to find it, someone using or contributing to the code are completely free to do whatever they wish". It has been a long time since I've used Windows, let alone 98/2000, but you should be able to see the copyright on the unix like command line tools using the /h switch. eg. telnet /h or ftp /h I'm banging my head against the monitor trying to get out what one did to see the BSD copyright info from the TCP/IP stack but can't remember to save my life.
Before I get a lot of responses about how Microsoft didn't use BSD's TCP/IP stack I'm aware that they didn't rip it off. They paid someone else to do it.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
What it has to do with you, is that you are a FUDster. Please get a life. Shoot a puppy or something, it would look better on you.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Nah, I'll just be like you and run around lying about what the GPL does.
Learn to love Alaska
People couldn't use it if Apple didn't include it. Anyway, you're moving goalposts.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
People couldn't use it if Apple didn't include it.
People don't use it even though they do.
Anyway, you're moving goalposts.
I said nobody really uses Kerberos. You said Apple uses it. But they don't use it; they're not users. They're distributors. They package it with their OS, so that users can use it. And then the users, by a large majority, don't. So few that the product (xserve) that it was originally included for was cancelled, and OS X Server is now only sold on non-rackmount desktop hardware as a gesture to the few people who want an upgrade path.