Is GPL Licensing In Decline?

GMGruman writes "Simon Phipps writes, "As Apache licenses proliferate, two warring camps have formed over whether the GPL is or isn't falling out of favor in favor of the Apache License." But as he explores the issues on both sides, he shows how the binary thinking on the issue is misplaced, and that the truth is more nuanced, with Apache License gaining in commercially focused efforts but GPL appearing to increase in software-freedom-oriented efforts. In other words, it depends on the style of open source."

Comments

Deja Vu

[msclrhd]

Didn't we have this story last week?

Re:Deja Vu

[AliasMarlowe]

Yep. It was this one. And even that was a repeat posting, possibly by a troll or astroturfer.

Re:Deja Vu

[hairyfeet]

It is just Slashdot doing what it does best on a slow news week, they be trolling. They know those that treat anything RMS says as word of God will get all butthurt when they see this and will go apeshit and hilarious flames will ensue, but really if one thinks logically it is easy to explain.

1.- GPL V3 went too anti-business, with RMS going so far as to target one business specifically, 2.- Businesses and those that are working for them were the ones writing much of the GPL code, 3.-RMS refuses to change a line or compromise, 4.-Everyone votes with their feet by going to a different license.

See how simple that is? Now watch those followers of St iGNUicious have a living shitfit because i dared to point out not only reality, but that freedom works BOTH ways! Hell isn't the whole point of FOSS is "If things don't go the way the majority believe, then fork it" so that no one person can dictate what the majority have to have? Well that is what we are seeing here, RMS went too far and spooked a lot of people with his militant anti-business attitude so they are choosing a different license, that's all. If RMS weren't such a militant he would come to the table with developers and Torvalds and ask "What is wrong with the license? What do I need to change to get you on board?" but we know he'll never do that so instead people choose something else. Looks like FOSS is doing exactly as it always has, routing around damage.

Re:Deja Vu

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't we have this story last week?

Yeah, but "last week's" article was actually from December of 2011.

Re:Deja Vu

[TheRaven64]

I have done a study on this, and I can now publish my findings, exclusively on Slashdot, for the first time:

Since this time last year, instances of the GPL in Slashdot dupes are now up by 300%, while instances of the Apache and BSD licenses remain at a constant level.

Flamewars about the merits of the GPL vs the BSDL are at an all-time high. In February, for the first time since 2010, they passed the number of Android vs iOS flamewars, and are currently recorded at over 11 on the vi vs emacs scale.

Comparisons between the FSF and the Nazis are up by 20%, but still significantly lower than any major tech company or political party. Apple, Microsoft and Google are all at record high levels on the Godwin scale, but Oracle has passed all three, with a stunning 400% increase after the takeover of Sun. IBM's record from the '80s is still unsurpassed.

Re:Deja Vu

[larry bagina]

The real question is: "Are Slashdot Supes in Decline?"

Re:Deja Vu

[Microlith]

And then the people who can't help but throw around ad-hominems against things they hate show up.

They know those that treat anything RMS says as word of God will get all butthurt when they see this and will go apeshit and hilarious flames will ensue, but really if one thinks logically it is easy to explain

Except the original article was itself flawed.

1.- GPL V3 went too anti-business, with RMS going so far as to target one business specifically, 2.- Businesses and those that are working for them were the ones writing much of the GPL code, 3.-RMS refuses to change a line or compromise, 4.-Everyone votes with their feet by going to a different license.

Care to go into detail on this? It'd back your argumetn up.

Now watch those followers of St iGNUicious have a living shitfit because i dared to point out not only reality, but that freedom works BOTH ways!

Back up your statements, otherwise you're just throwing shit at the wall.

Re:Deja Vu

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot (it's editors) are the trolls. They are driving traffic.

Re:Deja Vu

[jhoegl]

So then... is slashdot on the decline?

Re:Deja Vu

[hairyfeet]

All one has to do is look at the before and after numbers friend, the data doesn't lie. Right up until GPL V3 the numbers were consistent, it was going up quarter by quarter, after GPL V3 the numbers were flat for the first quarter (as businesses looked it over) and then it has been a straight down curve ever since. look up the numbers yourself, it makes a pretty little bell curve.

But you see posts like yours, where yes you did get all butthurt EXACTLY as I predicted, is why I separate FOSS advocates from FOSSies. A FOSS advocate uses FOSS because it is the best tool for a particular job they have, FOSSies look upon it as a religion, FOSS advocates argue their position with the pros and cons, FOSSies see everything as a personal attack on their Deity. This phenomena isn't exactly a secret, it is why we have comics like this and this and actual syndromes like this one. If you would like to see an example of this syndrome BTW, please go to linux Insider and look up anything posted by pogson, its soo funny to watch a FOSSie as he keeps saying "That other OS" or M$ because he's sure that if he types the actual word then MSFT Ninjas will get him, hilarious!

So whether you like it or not frankly means nothing to me, I honestly don't care, i just love to LMAO at loons and lately FOSSies have been funny as hell. I mean can you even picture a Mac user typing "the OS from Redmond ooohhh" or a windows user typing "The kernel that must not be named' its just too damned funny the kind of batshit crazy that RMS attracts, hell its comedy gold!

Re:Deja Vu

[Anonymous Coward]

So then... is slashdot on the decline?

Yes - and it always has been.

Re:Deja Vu

[Bill_the_Engineer]

There seems to be a glitch in the matrix.

Re:Deja Vu

[Anonymous Coward]

But you see posts like yours, where yes you did get all butthurt EXACTLY as I predicted

You know this from his short post? You're fairly good at reading minds.

Re:Deja Vu

[johnwbyrd]

Parent seemed looked like a troll, sounded like a troll and smelled like a troll, but there's actually some careful causal reasoning in there. Mod parent up please.

Re:Deja Vu

[KiloByte]

This is the fifth story[1] based on a single article by one single shill. If this were mere trolling, I'd be grudgingly impressed. As this is a commercial scheme, I hate the guy with passion.

[1]. counting only those I noticed and remember, so there's probably more.

Re:Deja Vu

[rtfa-troll]

This is the fifth story[1] based on a single article by one single shill. If this were mere trolling, I'd be grudgingly impressed. As this is a commercial scheme, I hate the guy with passion.

[1]. counting only those I noticed and remember, so there's probably more.

100% true. The way this keeps coming up is a very clear message. That message is:

Microsoft and Apple hate the GPL because it represents a chance to break their duopoly on personal computing by creating a complete independent environment.

Whenever we have this discussion it gets pointed out repeatedly that Apple must love F/OSS because they use so much of it. What doesn't get pointed out is that the OpenDarwin project to build a system based on Apple's open source failed for lack of cooperaton from Apple and lack of involvement from their developers. This is symptomatic of Apple's attitude; they will take whatever you give them. They will even co-operate wherever they see clear profit. They will never support things which give their users freedom to work in ways that Apple doesn't approve of. Microsoft's hatred of the GPL is so well documented in their own words that nobody even tries to claim otherwise, except for a few "Microsoft has changed" voices that we have been hearing for years without seeing anything actually changing. Note, however, that Microsoft has quite happily used BSD software all over their system.

Microsoft and Apple don't mind F/OSS as long as it is a box and they can charge you for the use of the box and limit what goes in and out of it. They fear GPL based open source as something which might allow you to create your own box and choose what you want to allow in and out of there. They are doing that by making sure that whatever you do with a computer you have to go through one of their systems. They are aiming to head back to the bad days of the 1980s when you didn't just pay for your compiler software; you actually paid run time licenses for the libraries you used. This is what app stores and their percentage taxes are about. This is what the GPL threatens by giving every computer programmer the chance to contribute to and modify the code.

These stories keep coming up because the various PR shills here want to make people behave differently from their own interests. Remember that and choose the GPL whenever you have the option.

Re:Deja Vu

[Anonymous Coward]

But you see posts like yours, where yes you did get all butthurt EXACTLY as I predicted

So anyone who disagrees with you must be "butthurt", it's not as if you could possibly be wrong or anything? Sounds like you're the religious one.

Re:Deja Vu

[Microlith]

So there are more projects overall, but less of the new projects use GPL. That isn't bad in the slightest, quite frankly. It'd be more telling if projects were relicensing away from the GPL, but they aren't.

Right up until GPL V3 the numbers were consistent, it was going up quarter by quarter, after GPL V3 the numbers were flat for the first quarter (as businesses looked it over) and then it has been a straight down curve ever since. look up the numbers yourself, it makes a pretty little bell curve.

Why not just link to those numbers right now?

But you see posts like yours, where yes you did get all butthurt EXACTLY as I predicted

No I didn't, I told you to cite some sources rather than throw around ad-hominems and "anyone that disagrees with me is just butthurt" 4-chan style arguments.

A FOSS advocate uses FOSS because it is the best tool for a particular job they have, FOSSies look upon it as a religion, FOSS advocates argue their position with the pros and cons, FOSSies see everything as a personal attack on their Deity.

So anyone that disagrees with you is immediately slotted into the second category, right? Cause that's what you're doing now.

This phenomena isn't exactly a secret, it is why we have comics like this and this and actual syndromes like this one.

So two webcomics and some arbitrary website that appears to be anti-Linux hate site. Seriously, that's what the third site you linked comes across as. It's almost insane in how curled back on itself that site is with hatred. That's as bad as calling Linux insecure and linking to three bugs, two of which were over FOUR YEARS OLD. Your hatred is almost as irrational and insane as the "worship" you ascribe others as having.

If you would like to see an example of this syndrome BTW, please go to linux Insider and look up anything posted by pogson, its soo funny to watch a FOSSie as he keeps saying "That other OS" or M$ because he's sure that if he types the actual word then MSFT Ninjas will get him, hilarious!

Because one guy is representative of everyone.

Eventually you'll realize that you're at least as crazy and irrational as the people you claim to rail against.

Re:Deja Vu

[Anonymous Coward]

At one time, free software advocates made a big deal out of what they called "Freedom Zero" - the right to run software however one pleases. They hated restrictions and EULAs and developers who made moral judgements

As time went on, FSF decided they didn't like Freedom Zero anymore. Users like Apple were using the software the "wrong way" by not contributing to FSF community ecosystem, danceline, and parade floats. So they rewrote the license to restrict Freedom Zero rights... now you can't run software unless I can run it too.

That is fine, but Apple is perfectly within their rights to stick with GPL2, which protects their Freedom Zero rights as originally outlined by RMS.

Re:Deja Vu

[Microlith]

Hairyfeet isn't who I'd go to for "criticizing Linux on the technical level." He's great for 4-chan style "butthurt" arguments though.

the latest excuse on the lack of a stable/standardized API/ABI, "it's not Torvalds fault." What do you say to that?

There's no stable ABI because the kernel developers, as a whole, decided they weren't interested in tying their hands for the sake of vendors that refuse to release open source drivers or vendors that refuse to push their drivers upstream.

There's no "excuse" because, frankly, there's nothing to excuse.

Re:Deja Vu

[Microlith]

No, he rejects the notion that sharing is wrong. He also suggests that if you do share, you shouldn't feel bad because, as he said, the EULAs have no moral force, only legal.

since he publicly states that neither copyright laws nor software licenses should have any force, anyone can pirate a GPL program and use his statements as promisory estoppel.

Hardly. His statements are for him alone and do not apply to any and all GPL programs.

And then you wrap up with an ad-hominem. Man, you FOSS/GPL haters are real clever with your arguments, y'know?

Re:Deja Vu

[andrew3]

As time went on, FSF decided they didn't like Freedom Zero anymore. Users like Apple were using the software the "wrong way" by not contributing to FSF community ecosystem, danceline, and parade floats. So they rewrote the license to restrict Freedom Zero rights... now you can't run software unless I can run it too.

That is incorrect. You do not have to accept the terms of the GPL to run the program alone. Let me cite the GPLv3 itself:

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

Re:Deja Vu

[Alex Belits]

Everything you just claimed is false.

Re:Deja Vu

[andrew3]

That is fine, but Apple is perfectly within their rights to stick with GPL2, which protects their Freedom Zero rights as originally outlined by RMS.

Sorry, am I missing something? I didn't know Apple used the GPLv2?

Re:Deja Vu

[TheRaven64]

Whenever we have this discussion it gets pointed out repeatedly that Apple must love F/OSS because they use so much of it

No, its pointed out that Apple must love F/OSS because they contribute to so much of it. Take a look at LLVM, WebKit, CUPS, and a number of other projects and see how many contributions are funded by Apple. They contribute to F/OSS for exactly the right reason: If two or more companies need the same thing, it's cheaper if they cooperate on implementing the same thing than if they each implement their own (incompatible) ones and keeping them private. Apple has ridiculous amounts of money, enough to easily fund developing their own compiler suite and HTML rendering engine, but if they contribute to LLVM and WebKit then the same amount of effort is added to the work by Google and others and the result is even better.

Re:Deja Vu

[ClickOnThis]

RMS is himself a "hater", so what's good for the goose is good for the gander. He is on record as advocating that people pirate proprietary/closed source programs rather than pay for them - in other words, copyright law be damned when it doesn't support his flawed vision, because copyright that supports closed source is "morally wrong".

No, that's not what RMS is saying at all. Let's look at the paragraph that appears to upset you the most.

Many users unconsciously recognize the wrong of refusing to share, so they decide to ignore the licenses and laws, and share programs anyway. But they often feel guilty about doing so. They know that they must break the laws in order to be good neighbors, but they still consider the laws authoritative, and they conclude that being a good neighbor (which they are) is naughty or shameful. That is also a kind of psychosocial harm, but one can escape it by deciding that these licenses and laws have no moral force.

In this paragraph, RMS is not avocating that people pirate proprietary software. Rather, he is illustrating the cognitive dissonance faced by a "good neighbor" who wishes to share, but is stopped from doing so by licenses on proprietary software. His point is that one can assuage that cognitive dissonance by assuming the laws have "no moral force." See the difference?

If you actually look at the rest of his essay, it is abundantly clear that what he does advocate is having programmers release the source code of their programs, and allowing others the freedom to use and modify the program as they wish, provided they do not stop others from enjoying the same freedom. Pirating proprietary software (with no source-code available) obviously is an impediment to that, so why should he support it?

The funny part - since he publicly states that neither copyright laws nor software licenses should have any force, anyone can pirate a GPL program and use his statements as promisory estoppel.

Good luck with that. The GPL has held up in court against its violators on many occasions.

Re:Deja Vu

[rtfa-troll]

At one time, free software advocates made a big deal out of what they called "Freedom Zero" - the right to run software however one pleases. They hated restrictions and EULAs and developers who made moral judgements

. Users like Apple were using the software the "wrong way" by not contributing to FSF community ecosystem, danceline, and parade floats. So they rewrote the license to restrict Freedom Zero rights... now you can't run software unless I can run it too.

That is fine, but Apple is perfectly within their rights to stick with GPL2, which protects their Freedom Zero rights as originally outlined by RMS.

I think this response to my post really bears reading. It's quite cool and really backs up my point). There's a whole load of random strange vitriol being thrown about. More or less in the "throw enough mud and some of it is bound to stick" frame of mind. Let's just look at how wierd this post is.

The poster says:

As time went on, FSF decided they didn't like Freedom Zero anymore

then later

now you can't run software unless I can run it too.

the GPLv3 actually contains (in section 2. Basic Permissions.) this explicit clause:

This License explicitly affirms your unlimited permission to run the unmodified Program

This is after making it clear that since it's a copyright licence it has nothing to do with your usage; only your distribution of the software. You can't get a more explicit affirmation of freedom zero than that. Why pretend otherwise? Someone is afraid you will protect your software and your users with the GPLv3. Why are they afraid of that? The logical explanation seems to me that they want to screw you and are afraid the GPLv3 will stop them. Let's look at some more of the post:

That is fine, but Apple is perfectly within their rights to stick with GPL2, which protects their Freedom Zero rights as originally outlined by RMS.

This is a reply to a post which advocated the GPL without reference to version. Where nobody ever suggested apple shouldn't use the GPLv2 if they want to. It seems like a simple non-sequiteur, yet it isn't. This is dead simple. In setting out to destroy your freedom and their chance of competition, Microsoft and Apple want to reduce the GPL as much as possible since it is the likely source of that competition. The GPLv3 represents a more effective GPL. FUD must be spread to stop it.

Fundamental take home: when someone is lying this hard to try to get you to stop doing something, it's time to start thinking if you shouldn't be doing exactly what they tell you not to do.. I'm personally becoming convinced that the GPLv3 should really be a priority for everybody who cares about the freedom to program as they want.

Re:Deja Vu

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

Yes, we did, and I'll just re-post what I post every time this bullshit comes up:

This is bullshit. It's counting by project, not by importance or size. I'm sure if we counted by lines of code, the GPL would still be #1.

What's happening is that we are seeing new "projects" being created at an alarming rate, most of this projects being wordpress plugins that do nothing important, collections of shitty javascript functions, and themes for various CMS, forums, etc.

Sure, it's full of kids that "just learned" the latest "cool" language (you know the type, Ruby, Python, etc) and just create some project that is either trivial, or is going nowhere past "we uploaded a readme and a roadmap to sourceforge". Half of sourceforge is dead projects.

The truth is that projects aren't jumping ships. No GPL projects are trying to change their license.

I could report "The earth is getting smaller and less important", but the truth is that the inflation of the universe doesn't change the size of the earth, just what percentage of the universe it represents.

Re:Deja Vu

[ArcadeNut]

Citation please.

and dupe it 4 times.

Re:Deja Vu

[Anonymous Coward]

RedHat does support a stable kernel ABI for binary drivers. It's one of the key value-adds that allows them to stay in business.

The thing to keep in mind is that its a lot of work: backporting patches, QA/regression testing, etc. Nobody owes it to you for free.

Re:Deja Vu

[SpaceLifeForm]

In other words, there is a lot of FUD going around.

Re:Deja Vu

[Microlith]

Notice how many simply insult?

I'm not sure if you're referring to something I didn't see, or are just talking past me. If you are, that's pretty rude. Oh and for the record, I haven't insulted you once.

That is how you can spot a butthurt FOSSie BTW, they have NO arguments so all they can do is insult.

This is called projecting. You fling ad-hominem attacks constantly and accuse others of doing it to you.

Imagine I am a hardware manufacturer, I can go Linux, which means i either have to throw the stability and reputation of my company's products to some kernel dev who may or may not give a shit

Oh please, this has to be the dumbest argument I've ever heard. If you're a hardware manufacturer, the quality of your driver and your reputation depend on their ability to code their way out of a paper bag. I invite you to highlight how a kernel dev could harm your reputation or your driver. It sounds to me like you're making shit up rather than relating actual experience.

I can "pull an Nvidia" and pay an entire team to do nothing but deal with Torlvald's breakage by constantly updating the drivers

Which is a tradeoff: you keep your sources closed, but in turn no one fixes the "breakage" for you. You also don't get any bugfixes.

or I can just write FOUR little drivers and be finished until 2022.

But why should an open source project be obligated to support your closed source driver until 2022? Oh right, because they should be like Microsoft and only release a new kernel once every several years rather than constantly iterating on it.

It is THIS reason why Linux is crippled without an ABI, because any manufacturer can cover Windows from 1999-2022 with a single CD and that's it, you are done.

That's a bunch of nonsensical hyperbole and you know it.

Your entire argument boils down to: Linux should stop being so flexible for the sake of those poor, poor hardware vendors that want to keep their drivers proprietary for whatever reason, and they should support them forever!

Which is utter nonsense.

But instead because there are so many FOSSies, which again treat the OS as religion and thus all edicts as religious dogma, instead you'll get excuses or insults.

You have received no insults or excuses.

Even the one kernel dev they constantly post in rebuttal is a FOSSie, who even writes in his rebuttal "And I hope all of those that use non free drivers have them break constantly!"

Who posts this in rebuttal? What kernel dev is this? Can you cite anything you post? With something having a shred more credibility than anti-Linux hate sites?

Note to all: Hairyfeet cannot post a real argument. He can only throw out ad-hominems, unsubstantiated arguments, ridiculous arguments, and "sources" of questionable veracity.

Re:Deja Vu

[Anonymous Coward]

A good neighbor keeps the rock music down to a reasonable volume at night, calls 911 when the house is on fire, pays for the broken window their child broke when playing baseball in the backyard, things of that sort. Going out of bounds and claiming that not being permitted to share a select piece of software code bars someone from being able to fulfill the role of a good neighbor is idiotic stupidity. To such a degree that someone who believes such a claim would probably make THEM a bad neighbor. Don't we inherit enough stupidity from politics and region? We needed Richard, I don't surf the web, Stallman to give us more?

Re:Deja Vu

[Microlith]

Before Hairyfeet decides to troll again over a typo, a correction:

Oh please, this has to be the dumbest argument I've ever heard. If you're a hardware manufacturer, the quality of your driver and your reputation depend on their ability to code their way out of a paper bag.

That should read:

Oh please, this has to be the dumbest argument I've ever heard. If you're a hardware manufacturer, the quality of your driver and your reputation depend on your developer's ability to code their way out of a paper bag.

Re:Deja Vu

[beelsebob]

You're right, apple are terrible open source citizens. They didn't give you the entire source to clang, CSA, libdispatch, ALAC, CalDAV, Darwin Streaming Server, Mac Ports, Mac Ruby, launchd, ... for free... >.<

Re:Deja Vu

[Barbara, not Barbie]

His statements, as head of the FSF, can be used as a defense for any business decides to argue prommisory estoppel the next time they're sued for violating the GPL on all software copyrights assigned to the FSF.

Re:Deja Vu

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux, and unix-like OS's as a whole don't have a stable ABI, and you go through dependency hell (or dll-hell in windows-land) trying to make most FOSS software work because they depend on system libraries that only exist on X version of Y Distro.

For the most part Windows and MacOS solve this problem by having most applications just come with their own copy of the libraries they use and only falling back on the system library in absence of the packaged one. This has it's own pitfalls (see zlib exploit) but is more tolerable than the time wasted in *nix-land in recompiling everything in dependency order and having brain-dead system tools as part of the compiler tool chain (here's looking at you Perl, Python and Ruby.) There's a sheer amount of blind expectations in the land of FOSS that scares more people away from using it.

GPL is just one of them. GPL is decidedly anti-business, and politically hostile. It's more a political statement than a software licence. Dependency hell due to the not wanting to create licence violations is another. Ultimately Linux is used in many places where it's extremely high maintenance where Windows or OS X are maintenance-free just because software licences are more straight forward. On Linux you might have to spend several hours updating the system before installing a new program. Windows and OSX will work out of the box.

If there was one consistent (think LLVM cross-compiling) way of half-compiling a binary so that it can be finalized on a target, things would be much better, but we'll never see this happen due to the huge mess of prohibition regarding FOSS licence redistribution, and not having to rely on the OS vendor to keep the third party libraries updated. Imagine exploits never having the huge window of opportunity they do now if a third party library vendor could just sign and push a new binary that everyone gets at the same time, regardless of OS.

Re:Deja Vu

[Microlith]

I guess Slashdot is the target of a concerted anti-GPL effort.

Linux, and unix-like OS's as a whole don't have a stable ABI, and you go through dependency hell (or dll-hell in windows-land) trying to make most FOSS software work because they depend on system libraries that only exist on X version of Y Distro.

Really? So apt-get install <package> doesn't work for you? Of course, if you're building something then I'd assume you were familiar with what you're actually building.

For the most part Windows and MacOS solve this problem by having most applications just come with their own copy of the libraries they use and only falling back on the system library in absence of the packaged one.

This results in large .app packages on OS X and the duplication of libraries, and on Windows you either run into compatibility issues outright or you have the Microsoft workaround called "WinSxS."

GPL is decidedly anti-business, and politically hostile.

So pro-consumer = anti-business, and freedom is "politically hostile."

Dependency hell due to the not wanting to create licence violations is another.

This is an empty statement unless you can clarify what you mean.

Ultimately Linux is used in many places where it's extremely high maintenance where Windows or OS X are maintenance-free just because software licences are more straight forward.

This is an outright fabrication, honestly. OS X's licensing, if you can call it that, is infinitely more hostile than the GPL.

On Linux you might have to spend several hours updating the system before installing a new program. Windows and OSX will work out of the box.

Blatant lie, sorry.

The rest of your post is, frankly, keyword gibberish.

Re:Deja Vu

[Barbara, not Barbie]

There's an easier way to get around the GPL - load an unmodified copy into ram, then patch it. Copyright only applies to software when it is in a fixed form, such as on a hard disk, or a DVD. This is why it is not a violation of copyright to make a copy of a program when you load it into ram.

So, no need to do a TIVOization to use a modified Linux kernel - just load the stock kernel, patch the ram image with your own proprietary code, and there's no obligation to distribute the source for either the patch OR the code that does the patching.

Nintendo lost when they tried to argue that Game Genie was making an unauthorized copy by patching code in memory - the courts ruled that the law simply doesn't apply to transient copies in ram, just to copies that have some modicum of "permanence."

The same loophole applies to ANY GPL code. Copies patched in ram are untouchable.

Also, it is the "forced got to give back the changes" that has resulted in too many forks, which is one of the reasons you'll never see a "year of the linux desktop." It's also why for most users even the latest linux desktops can't compete with 10-year-old XP - all the energy that could have gone into fixing the problems if there were only one or two distros has been dissipated (wasted) in generating a dysfunctional ecosystem of over 1,000 "me-too" distros. Plus, since there's very little opportunity to actually make money fixing the problems, they don't get fixed. Only a freetard will continue to argue otherwise when even Vista has more users, and works better. You know linux on the desktop sucks when you can't even GIVE it away.

It has its' place - on servers, in supercomputers, or with the fugliness hidden away under a runtime like Android, but that's about it.

Re:Deja Vu

[Microlith]

His statements, as head of the FSF, can be used as a defense for any business decides to argue prommisory estoppel the next time they're sued for violating the GPL on all software copyrights assigned to the FSF.

Unlikely. As you've already been told, he's not saying that "you should pirate proprietary software." He's saying "you shouldn't feel guilty if you share, because the license carries no moral weight." It still carries legal weight however, thus you shouldn't pirate anyway. Then I'm sure he'd tell you, if you asked, that you should use Free Software rather than pirate, because piracy just furthers the use of non-free software.

Re:Deja Vu

[Grishnakh]

No, "religious" isn't the right term. "Arrogant" is.

Re:Deja Vu

[Anonymous Coward]

> Linux, and unix-like OS's as a whole don't have a stable ABI

Total bullshit, Solaris certainly has one.

Re:Deja Vu

[Grishnakh]

The thing to keep in mind is that its a lot of work

Exactly, which is why the kernel devs don't do it, and are completely against it. They'd rather shift the work to the vendors (rightfully so), and also promote the open-sourcing of drivers.

Stable and non-stable ABIs both have their advantages and disadvantages. Shills like hairyfeet like to pretend that there's no downsides to a stable ABI, but there are, and they're huge. A stable ABI works fine for MS because they can afford to employ armies of programmers to maintain that ABI and do all the backporting and regression testing you mention, and they want to make it easy for vendors to get their hardware working on their OS without having to disclose any source code. The Linux kernel devs have completely different motivations and lesser resources, so an unstable ABI works much better for them, but it hurts vendors who refuse to open their driver source code (gee darn). Most vendors don't have a problem with it; just look at Intel. They've got tons of open-source driver code in the kernel and elsewhere, including GPU drivers. You don't see them whining about it and trying to keep secrets; as long as they're selling lots of silicon, they're happy.

Re:Deja Vu

[Barbara, not Barbie]

Try again - you have the right to depend on the public statements of people. Take a look at Oracle vs Google - Google is going to argue that the public statements of Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz that Sun was just fine with Google Android preclude Oracle from successfully claiming damages, or that at the most they should be much lower because of this. Millions, not billions.

Re:Deja Vu

[Microlith]

you have the right to depend on the public statements of people.

But not deliberate misinterpretations or wishful extrapolations.

Take a look at Oracle vs Google - Google is going to argue that the public statements of Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz that Sun was just fine with Google Android preclude Oracle from successfully claiming damages, or that at the most they should be much lower because of this.

That's because he was the CEO making public statements explicitly to the effect that he was fine with it, and encouraged it. Stallman said NOTHING, not one damned thing, like what you suggest.

Re:Deja Vu

[PuZZleDucK]

Yes [...] What's happening [...] at an alarming rate, [...] Half of sourceforge is [...] jumping ships. [...] GPL projects are trying to change their license. [...] "The earth is getting smaller and less important", [...] the inflation of the universe [...] the size of the earth, [...]

Wow... you shoud submit this to Slashdot ;)

Re:Deja Vu

[ilguido]

after GPL V3 the numbers were flat for the first quarter (as businesses looked it over) and then it has been a straight down curve ever since. look up the numbers yourself, it makes a pretty little bell curve.

OK, let's see: in december GPL+LGPL+AGPL were at 57% according to the Black Duck report on the decline of the GPL. Now, according to the daily updated data by Black Duck, GPL2/3+LGPL2.1/3 are at 56.33%, put in AGPL and older GPL lincences and you get to 57%.

OMG!!111!! That's the flattest bell curve I've ever seen!

Re:Deja Vu

[Microlith]

There's an easier way to get around the GPL - load an unmodified copy into ram, then patch it.

Dubious. The GPL is a license, much like any other.

Copyright only applies to software when it is in a fixed form, such as on a hard disk, or a DVD. This is why it is not a violation of copyright to make a copy of a program when you load it into ram.

Do you have anything to cite that will back this up other than your Nintendo argument? How does a work suddenly exit copyright once it ends up in RAM?

patch the ram image with your own proprietary code, and there's no obligation to distribute the source for either the patch OR the code that does the patching.

Do you spend lots of time thinking about ways to violate the GPL? Is your spite so ingrained that you exert effort trying to screw people over?

Nintendo lost when they tried to argue that Game Genie was making an unauthorized copy by patching code in memory - the courts ruled that the law simply doesn't apply to transient copies in ram, just to copies that have some modicum of "permanence."

The difference being that, unlike your spiteful bypass, the Game Genie does not include any of the code in question that is to be modified. Effectively, the end-user takes it upon themselves to acquire and apply the modification. Whereas your "solution" distributes both the GPL work and the modification to be applied. This hasn't been tested in court, though I suspect that it would fall foul, especially since the combined work of the local library AND patch are effectively a derivative work.

Not that modifying a kernel in-memory is going to be a safe or easy thing to do. Easier to just merge upstream instead of thinking your shit smells like flowers and is special or something. Even TiVO fucking did that.

Also, it is the "forced got to give back the changes" that has resulted in too many forks,

It has? Too many forks? How so? No wait, you'll just parrot the same old junk back at me.

if there were only one or two distros has been dissipated (wasted) in generating a dysfunctional ecosystem of over 1,000 "me-too" distros

Except there are only a handful of distros that really matter. Not that there's such a thing as "fragmentation" when all of your software is open source. You don't have the problems you do with Android and its attempts to support closed source software.

Plus, since there's very little opportunity to actually make money fixing the problems, they don't get fixed.

Of course not, desktop Linux is a futile effort because Microsoft's legacy is too big and the monopoly too strong. Can you point out what other "problems" there are that are actually problems and not just heavily biased opinion?

Only a freetard will continue to argue otherwise when even Vista has more users, and works better.

1. Ad-hominem. FOSS haters seem to be utterly unable to make a single post that doesn't attack someone
2. "works better" is subjective.

Re:Deja Vu

[Anonymous Coward]

There's an easier way to get around the GPL - load an unmodified copy into ram, then patch it. Copyright only applies to software when it is in a fixed form, such as on a hard disk, or a DVD. This is why it is not a violation of copyright to make a copy of a program when you load it into ram.

So, no need to do a TIVOization to use a modified Linux kernel - just load the stock kernel, patch the ram image with your own proprietary code, and there's no obligation to distribute the source for either the patch OR the code that does the patching.

Nintendo lost when they tried to argue that Game Genie was making an unauthorized copy by patching code in memory - the courts ruled that the law simply doesn't apply to transient copies in ram, just to copies that have some modicum of "permanence."

The same loophole applies to ANY GPL code. Copies patched in ram are untouchable.

Citations with links please? You have said so many things already in this thread that are flat-out wrong and refuted by other posters, that there is simply no reason to trust what you say at face value anymore. You'll need to prove it.

[...] since there's very little opportunity to actually make money fixing the problems, they don't get fixed. Only a freetard will continue to argue otherwise when even Vista has more users, and works better. You know linux on the desktop sucks when you can't even GIVE it away.

My my, what a condescending and insulting tone you have. You sound like a frustrated, underpaid shill. Anyway...

It's seriously debatable whether Vista works better than Linux. As for it having more users, well, what do you expect with the inertia Microsoft has on the desktop? That's not an argument for it being better.

And by the way, lots of companies can and do give away desktop linux distros. Some even charge for it, in exchange for service. Linux on the desktop may not be as ubiquitous as MS Windows, but it's a non sequitur to claim that mean it sucks.

Re:Deja Vu

[kiwimate]

Someone's drunk the Kool-Aid...

Looking at that paragraph, I suppose you can at a stretch state that RMS is not actively telling people to pirate software. In fact, he starts with the arrogant premise that anyone who doesn't want to share software is wrong. Wow. In other words, "f*** you if you don't agree with my principles, I'm better than you." Nice.

He then proceeds to explain how people who feel guilty about sharing software, despite knowing they're breaking the law, can make themselves feel better about it.

You're really reaching to explain away this garbage. I'd be a lot more impressed if people who claim to be so high and mighty on principles would actually show some backbone and say "I don't agree with your licenses, so I'm going to boycott your software", instead of "I don't agree with your licenses, but, umm, it's stuff I want, so I'm gonna pirate it. And if you don't like it I'll hold my breath until I turn blue!!! Nyah nyah sucks!"

Re:Deja Vu

[mug funky]

btw, linux is not an OS. it's part of one. not making excuses, just pointing out your unfair comparison.

windows has done the driver thing really well. i actually feel a little sorry for MS's current state - they've had their reputation mangled because of the difficulty of pleasing everyone - backward compatibility meant lots more security holes, but kept everyone using their old (buggy) programs. their ABI meant that a bad driver could BSOD the system (and everyone would blame the system for being unstable). running windows would be rock solid as long as you never bought any hardware... the MacOS family had no excuse for their instability in this case. the OS, hardware and much of the software were made by the same company, and yet those buggers crash just as often as windows and linux boxes (i've taken to sending a crash report each and every time something fucks out, just because i like the thought of some bugger at Apple being bogged down with endless core dumps).

Linux hasn't done the driver thing terribly well, but it's getting better.

what you fail to understand (and mislabel as religion many things that can be seen as philosophies or political motives) is that a lot of people who went to Linux did so not because they were looking for something better than windows, but were looking for something that was an alternative. linux has given us freedom of choice primarily. freedom to own your own computer, and if you can stand the forum hunts for fixes, a knowledge of how it all works, what can be done. if you watch the changelogs, it's quite a nice experience - everything's always getting better, there's always good news :)

Re:Deja Vu

[mug funky]

well, in their defence... i just tried to update ubuntu 10.10 to 12.04, and it was a saga and a half for precisely that reason. dependencies, different versions of stuff, repos that 404'd.

also, a photo management program i am quite fond of i typically compile from source. i'm not a dev, so git pulling is about all i can do, as well as running the build scripts. if i want to stay up to date with this program, i have to upgrade from 10.10, which i've not yet been able to do (graphics are broken at the moment.. no fun).

i'm using linux because i want to. but we all have to acknowledge that sometimes it could be a much smoother ride.

Re:Deja Vu

[mug funky]

the next time they're sued? i'm sure the courts are chocker-block full of cashed up OSS developers suing those poor companies that are using their code without permission.

the worst i've seen is a passive-aggressive "hall-of-shame" style list on a website.

Re:Deja Vu

[Barbara, not Barbie]

It's not dubious in any shape, matter, or form. NO license can over-ride copyright law and court jurisprudence, just like you can't have a license that states you'll give your firtst-born up as a slave.

The Game Genie decision is 100% applicable. The GPL is holed below the water-line and won't last out the decade.

You should actually READ the GPL - you have a license to distribute with every copy. The GPL can't over-ride that by saying you can't exercise your legal right to modify a copy in RAM - not only that, but it makes absolutely NO mention of it - it specifically limits itself to your rights and obligations wrt distributing MODIFIED versions of the code.

Distributing both the unmodified code (say, for example, the kernel), and patches to modify a copy of it ONLY in memory is allowed because copyright laws do not apply to works NOT in a fixed medium.

Such a "combined work" is free of any copyright considerations until such time as you save it to a fixed medium, which won't happen when done my way. You're free to create such "derived works" in memory - you change the in-memory image every time you run a program that does anything, since you have to set some variables, if only a pointer to a buffer .

Since the GPL (all versions) can only apply to the distribution of modified works saved in a FIXED MEDIUM, you're free to distribute both the original unmodified work, with the source, and only the binary of any hypervisor and patch code that only affects the in-memory copy.

You may not like it, but copyright law isn't patent law. Programs protected by copyright cannot place limitations on what you do with the in-memory image. Now, if you then save that in-memory image to a hard disk or CD, then THAT copy becomes a derived work within the jurisdiction of copyright. The easiest way to avoid even the possibility of that happening is to simply run without swap. Linux works better, and faster, w/o swap, and this has been the case with systems since well before linux. Swap is a nasty hack that is no longer needed.

Re:Deja Vu

[Barbara, not Barbie]

The only shill here is you - I've been using linux since slackware 3x, and finally decided this month that it's simply not worth wasting any more of my time as a primary OS, not when every update breaks something. So I dug out the old XP disk, and all my problems disappeared. Right now, I use a knoppix disk to surf the net, set to save a persistent overlay image of my data on one drive, because this way no update can hose my data like opensuse did, or render the machine unbootable, like fedora did, or leak memory like crazy, like both fedora and debian did.

All linux distros are ultimately craptops in comparison. And that's sad. 15 years using linux, and in the end it was a waste of time and energy. So when people ask, now I tell them to get a mac, or if its a server, to run freebsd, which doesn't curl up in an ugly ball and die when you have to log in remotely to a machine 500 miles away and upgrade from, for example, version 4.7 to version 7.0 without rebooting more than once, and works with no problems after, so the machine is off-line less than 30 seconds total.

It makes even the latest linux look like a consumer-level toy OS in comparison, and until everyone takes the need for a stable ABI and a proper upgrade process as the absolute minimum, that won't change.

Re:Deja Vu

[ClickOnThis]

Someone's drunk the Kool-Aid...

I don't drink RMS's "kool-aid." I happen to agree with him on many points, but not all. I'm free to do that, as even he would have to acknowledge, although he might not like it. (Frankly, I don't care whether he would agree with me or not.)

Looking at that paragraph, I suppose you can at a stretch state that RMS is not actively telling people to pirate software. In fact, he starts with the arrogant premise that anyone who doesn't want to share software is wrong. Wow. In other words, "f*** you if you don't agree with my principles, I'm better than you." Nice.

Apparently you're not accustomed to reading something that advocates a particular position. You start with a premise that you happen to think is correct, and then defend it. Your claim that this constitutes a "f*** you if you don't agree" is just sophomoric.

He then proceeds to explain how people who feel guilty about sharing software, despite knowing they're breaking the law, can make themselves feel better about it.

And then if you took the time to read the rest of his essay, you would note that he doesn't want people to have to face that dilemma. He wants people to share software (and most particularly source code) within the law, not pirate it.

You're really reaching to explain away this garbage. I'd be a lot more impressed if people who claim to be so high and mighty on principles would actually show some backbone and say "I don't agree with your licenses, so I'm going to boycott your software", instead of "I don't agree with your licenses, but, umm, it's stuff I want, so I'm gonna pirate it. And if you don't like it I'll hold my breath until I turn blue!!! Nyah nyah sucks!"

No, I'm not reaching. And you're just plain wrong. His message is clear if you read the entire essay, instead of forcing a misinterpretation of a single paragraph. RMS has more "backbone" on the subject of software freedom than you could ever possibly understand.

It would be correct to say that RMS's position is "I don't agree with your licenses, but I'm going to follow them when I use your software, as a means to the end of writing my own software to replace it." That's how he treated proprietary Unix vendors such as Sun Microsystems while he was writing Gnu.

Re:Deja Vu

[Microlith]

Your entire argument is irrelevant because I just realized that your "solution" is to patch the image with proprietary code. Effectively, your work is derivative. The Game Genie isn't derivative because it's basically a blind hex editor with a book full of individual offsets and values.

Now then, let's reset our point of argument here. No one's bitching about about proprietary kernel modules not being possible because people are already aware that you can load such binary blobs without issue, except that you'll get no support if a bug occurs while that module is loaded.

I'm pretty sure if you violated the FSF's copyrights by applying such a halfass "workaround" to say, GCC, I'm pretty sure they'd be knocking on your door in short order once they discovered it, and they'd probably win.

The GPL is holed below the water-line and won't last out the decade.

Thick on hate, thin on reason.

Re:Deja Vu

[Microlith]

we all have to acknowledge that sometimes it could be a much smoother ride.

I won't argue this, but Hairyfeet and the rest of the people responding to this aren't after anything resembling a "smoother ride."

Re:Deja Vu

[unixisc]

Yup, it had just been hashed out in that thread, only that the title was something about 'Open source project licenses trending towards open rather than free' - which even the original submitter did not use in his description.

It does help if /. editors don't re-write the headline, so that they don't end up re-posting articles.

Re:Deja Vu

[Anonymous Coward]

The only shill here is you - I've been using linux since slackware 3x, and finally decided this month that it's simply not worth wasting any more of my time as a primary OS, not when every update breaks something. So I dug out the old XP disk, and all my problems disappeared. Right now, I use a knoppix disk to surf the net, set to save a persistent overlay image of my data on one drive, because this way no update can hose my data like opensuse did, or render the machine unbootable, like fedora did, or leak memory like crazy, like both fedora and debian did.

All linux distros are ultimately craptops in comparison. And that's sad. 15 years using linux, and in the end it was a waste of time and energy. So when people ask, now I tell them to get a mac, or if its a server, to run freebsd, which doesn't curl up in an ugly ball and die when you have to log in remotely to a machine 500 miles away and upgrade from, for example, version 4.7 to version 7.0 without rebooting more than once, and works with no problems after, so the machine is off-line less than 30 seconds total.

It makes even the latest linux look like a consumer-level toy OS in comparison, and until everyone takes the need for a stable ABI and a proper upgrade process as the absolute minimum, that won't change.

What's the use. Your claims are so off-the-wall hyperbolic when compared to my own experience (and those of others) of these distros, that I truly have to reaffirm that you are a frustrated, (under)paid shill. There's no point going any further with this discussion. Stick to XP, Barbie. You and it have what you deserve: each other. Bye.

Re:Deja Vu

[rtfa-troll]

No, its pointed out that Apple must love F/OSS because they contribute to so much of it.

No, actually, looking at the old discussions, for example the only references to Apple I can find are to their use of open source. You may be right that their contributions should be discussed more, but that's not what happens.

Interestingly enough; it seems to me that this is exactly the situation where the GPL shines through. You want contributions to your project? Put it under the GPL and accept contributions which are under the GPL. Then everybody knows you aren't planning to cheat them. You want to choose a project and contribut to it? Choose one under the GPL; then you know that your contributions and the fixes people make to them will come back to you.

Re:Deja Vu

[unixisc]

From the same article of 'Why software should be free'

The economic argument goes like this: “I want to get rich (usually described inaccurately as ‘making a living’), and if you don't allow me to get rich by programming, then I won't program.

Priceless comment coming from someone who is a squatter, and doesn't have to bother about paying rent, or anything of that sort. For such a person, if you want to be able to pay your rent, utility bills, get your kids swimming lessons and so on, you'll want to get rich - or at least have to'. And then people wonder why he's thought of as a Marxist.

Sad thing is that so many good people in the FOSS community take him seriously, when there are so many better alternatives.

Re:Deja Vu

[TheRaven64]

Interestingly enough; it seems to me that this is exactly the situation where the GPL shines through

Not at all. This is precisely the situation where the GPL is in decline. A lot of companies (Apple is the most prominent example, but since they're the tech company with the largest market cap, they're the most prominent example of a lot of things) are happy to open source everything that is not part of their core business, but not everything. Apple, for example, does not want to open source their IDE, but they do want to use the same parser in their IDE as in their compiler. GCC is GPL'd, so they can't do this. Older versions of XCode had to license EDG to parse C/C++ and had a custom Objective-C parser for syntax highlighting and autocompletion. With clang, Apple gets to use the code anywhere they want, so do Google and Adobe, and so do all other contributors, including me.

Now, in an ideal world, Apple would open source their IDE as well as their compiler, and that's the idea behind the GPL. Unfortunately, that's not how things tend to work in the real world. Given the choice between using some GPL'd code and open sourcing their own stuff and just writing a proprietary replacement, most companies will pick option 2: it's simpler and has less potential for hidden liability.

In theory, Apple could now take a fork of LLVM and Clang proprietary, but given the speed at which the internal APIs change they'd spend a massive amount of effort keeping it in sync with the mainline. In fact, we've seen some companies do exactly that with their OpenCL stack. Over the past year, almost all of them have given up, ditched their proprietary version, and started contributing to the mainline. If Apple started a proprietary fork, then the other contributors would just ignore it and it would quickly become the crappy Apple version, where anyone who really cared would get the mainline version.

Choose one under the GPL; then you know that your contributions and the fixes people make to them will come back to you.

Nope, only the fixes that people intend to distribute, and there's the other major problem: 90% of all software developers are employed writing code that is never distributed, it is just used in house. A lot of companies are willing to use a BSD licensed library in their in-house software and contribute back changes, but they're nervous about the GPL. Even though it doesn't require them to give anything back (see the GoogleFS in Linux. Or, rather, not in Linux, just in Google's in-house version of Linux), there is a perception that it requires them to open source everything it touches. So they either won't touch it at all, or they'll keep their use of it secret for fear of liability and not contribute anything back.

I work on a number of permissively licensed projects and a very common reaction to patches is to look at the company name of the sender and think 'WTF do you use this stuff for?' You'd be surprised where a lot of code ends up and who is willing to give things back without any fanfare...

Re:Deja Vu

[unixisc]

In that case, how is it that BSD doesn't have a problem providing a stable ABI? Also, same question for Solaris/OpenIndiana? I see nothing in FOSS that precludes an FOSS OS from having a stable ABI. This particular issue has less to do w/ the GPL, but more to do w/ Linus' design philosophy.

Honestly, if every GPL OS - Linux, Hurd - had an ABI that supported the driver model independently of the version# of the underlying kernel, there wouldn't be a problem. All that backporting and regression testing would be there, but that has to be there on the kernel anyway. If Linux is so good at fixing bugs (albeit not all), there is no reason it can't have a dedicated team that does just that.

Re:Deja Vu

[Anonymous Coward]

This bullshit here again? But..why?!

Re:Deja Vu

[JonJ]

In that case, how is it that BSD doesn't have a problem providing a stable ABI?

Different philosophies, and the 4 drivers the BSD guys have are easier to keep stable.

Re:Deja Vu

[Sigg3.net]

In plain English: anti-piracy laws prohibit natural behavior that we perceive as good actions, and they are ipso facto bad or satanic law.

Re:Deja Vu

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember to choose xyz whenever I get a chance to choose? Why? I am not your tool.
Just like Apple and MS I will choose what suits me the best. BSD probably.
Thank you.

Re:Deja Vu

[Anonymous Coward]

And I've got videos of your mother at a wild party with a pony. But I erased the tape with copies of the World Series, then the Superbowl. Can you help me find a copy to prove my point?

I bet I can make video of your mother before you can find a copy of RMS saying something that stupid.

Re:Deja Vu

[geminidomino]

There's an easier way to get around the GPL - load an unmodified copy into ram, then patch it. Copyright only applies to software when it is in a fixed form, such as on a hard disk, or a DVD. This is why it is not a violation of copyright to make a copy of a program when you load it into ram.

Pretty sure you're wrong there. IIRC, it's been ruled (in US courts, at least) that loading a program into memory DOES constitute making a copy, and that the EULA is the only thing that gives you the right to do so. It's the entire theory behind the legal force of EULAs.

I don't have the citation on me, nor the time to dig it up, but I'm sure some helpful slashdotter will be along shortly to enlighten us.

Re:Deja Vu

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow what a load of bullshit!

Re:Deja Vu

[unixisc]

Does this article work for you - 'Why software should not have owners'?

As a computer user today, you may find yourself using a proprietary program. If your friend asks to make a copy, it would be wrong to refuse. Cooperation is more important than copyright.

Says it right here! Nothing here that suggests that he advocates obeying the law - he just goes on his usual sanctimonious diatribe against the law.

Re:Deja Vu

[Barbara, not Barbie]

You still don't get it - copyright law says you do NOT create a derivative work until the "work" is fixed in some permanent media, such as saved to hard disk or DVD or other permanent storage. Neither the GPL nor any other license can get around what copyright law allows.

What is copyright?
Copyright is a form of protection grounded in the U.S. Constitution and granted by law for original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression. Copyright covers both published and unpublished works.

The key word is FIXED. Saving to ram is not FIXED - it's transient. Patching in ram is not a violation of the copyright act, never was, and since it's part of the original Constitution, unless and until you can amend the Constitution, never will be.

So bring it on - the only "half-assed" here is you refusing to read up even a teeny tiny bit on copyright law and court decisions, and "talking out of your nether regions", to put it politely.

So, to summarize:

1. Ship unmodified binary;
2. Load binary image into ram;
3. Patch binary image in ram with proprietary code - no "derived work" under copyright law since copyright only covers the actual image on disk - "fixed in a permanent medium" - not a transient copy loaded into ram.
4. When someone wrongfully complains "you're violating the license", point out that you do not ship modified binaries, nor is the ram image "fixed in a tangible meadium of expression" such as print, hd, or other non-transient storage, as required within the meaning of the copyright act;
5. If they sue, counter-sue and demand demand their copyrights be assigned as part of any settlement;
6. PROFIT!

Now note that since there is no "derivative work" within the meaning of the copyright act, there is no requirement to ship the source for any in-memory patches. Any attempt to impose such a requrement through some modification of the license is outside the scope of the law, the same as you can't make a license to own a slave.

The GPL won't be around by the end of the decade, because it really is "holed below the waterline" and even version 3 fails to address this gaping hole. And with the availability of hypervisors and gobs of cheap ram, it's no big deal to patch binaries on the fly and cache them in memory.

So anyone can take the kernel, or an open-source database, or even closed-source code (as per Goolab v Nintendo, where Nintendo had to pony up $15 million), and patch it in ram. As long as you hold a valid license to the original, the in-ram copy is perfectly legit, and you can patch it as mutch as you want gratis of any requirement to ship the code for the patches.

Re:Deja Vu

[Barbara, not Barbie]

So explain why linux usage went from 2.5% a decade ago to under 1.5% now, if linux is oh so great?

And why you can't even give it away?

I bought a multi-function printer that said on the box that it was supported by linux. It wasn't - not unless you were running one specific version of one specific distro. The lack of a proper and stable ABI in linux is a serious design flaw, which is why everything breaks all the time, and why energy that could be devoted to improving the desktop instead goes to fixing the latest set of incompatibilties.

The other problem is licensing - it discourages investment that could fix some of these problems. You know - money to pay for the stuff nobody wants to do, like fixing the 136 memory leaks in firefox. Can't do that because they have to stick with a stupid "rapid release" schedule.

And then you wonder why people opt for a mac?

Re:Deja Vu

[Barbara, not Barbie]

The other thing is that he can't code for s***. Both the current GCC and Emacs were actually forks written by others (EGCS and Xemacs) because they got fed up with Stallman and his crap. To save face, in both cases he had to "bless" both forks as the official versions.

Of course, he's never properly explained why he's not allowed to use a web browser on the Internet either. Or why the GPL violates the 4 freedoms listed on the fsf home page (in a graphic so that it's not indexed).

Re:Deja Vu

[Barbara, not Barbie]

Congrats. You nailed it in one!

It's funny, things like food, shelter, and medical treatment are all more important than code, but nobody is advocating that the people who labour to produce these things shouldn't be properly compensated, or that they should all be free for everyone.

Re:Deja Vu

[Barbara, not Barbie]

It's an authorized copy. You're allowed to make it as per the license. Once it's in ram, it can be modified as per copyright law, which makes it clear that the copy in ram is not protected from modification since it is not "fixed in a tangible medium of expression", and in fact almost every program WILL be modified by running it - you have variables that have to be modified to do anything, such as set up a system call, write a value, do a loop.

The confusion arises because there are two separate issues - the license to the original, and the use of the in-memory copy. Where the license to the original allows a single copy of it to be loaded into memory, so as long as the original is validly licensed, you can load ONE copy into ram. Licenses that don't place restrictions on the number of copies that can be loaded into ram, such as the gpl, don't even face this restriction.

So, now that you have a legit image in ram, can you modify it? Of course - just running the program w/o any patches will modify the in-memory image of it if it does anything, such as input or output, or a loop, or pretty much anything else but a bunch of NOPs.

So the question is, can you patch the in-memory image with additional functionality, or remove or alter existing functionality - and Goolab v Nintendo says yes, you can.

"But isn't the in-memory image protected from modification by copyright?"

The Constitution says no

What is copyright?
Copyright is a form of protection grounded in the U.S. Constitution and granted by law for original works of authorship <b>fixed in a tangible medium of expression.</b>

As long as you don't create a new copy of the code "fixed in a tangible medium of expression", you have not violated copyright law. So, as long as you don't save that in-memory image to disk or any other method that results in a copy "fixed in tangible medium of expression", you have not violated the authors' rights under copyright law.

It's really not all that complicated.

In fact, when it comes to programs that do something but don't have any runtime-modified variables, I've only written one program that didn't actually have any local variables that were modified at run-time - and it was just to patch a bios at runtime for one program - 12 bytes of assembler.

Re:Deja Vu

[DemonGenius]

I think "ignorant" is an even better word

Re:Deja Vu

[micheas]

So how come Linux supports more hardware than any other kernel?

FreeBSD has a stable ABI, and supports many fewer devices than Linux. The evidence supports the hypotheses that having a stable ABI encourages proprietary drivers which is a short term win, while reducing the number of universal drivers that work on many devices that are substantially similar, resulting in the stable ABI supporting fewer devices over the long run.

Re:Deja Vu

[geminidomino]

It's an authorized copy. You're allowed to make it as per the license. Once it's in ram, it can be modified as per copyright law, which makes it clear that the copy in ram is not protected from modification since it is not "fixed in a tangible medium of expression", and in fact almost every program WILL be modified by running it - you have variables that have to be modified to do anything, such as set up a system call, write a value, do a loop.

Read that license. The same one that makes it an "authorized copy" makes it an "unauthorized copy" as soon as you decide to futz with it.

Not saying it's right or even technologically sound, but in legalese, you're wrong.

The Constitution says no

And the courts say "yes." If you've got the time and money to get it before SCOTUS and get that overturned, then I'm sure we'll all root for you. Until that day, though, pragmatism trumps the Constitution. Sad, but true.

Re:Deja Vu

[micheas]

What do you mean linux hasn't done the driver thing terribly well? Back in 2008 Linux had more device support than any other OS and I really don't see that changing. http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2008/10/how-linux-supports-more-device.html

Re:Deja Vu

[Barbara, not Barbie]

Please get your facts straight - the courts also said "no". Goolab v Nintendo. Nintendo paid $15 million because Goolab WAS allowed to modify proprietary code in ram.

Read that license. The same one that makes it an "authorized copy" makes it an "unauthorized copy" as soon as you decide to futz with it.

No it doesn't. At no point do you modify the original binary image stored on disk - and that's the only copy that you have to distribute. The GPL is a distribution license, no an end-use license.

I'm even free to futz with the copy on disk, provided I don't distribute it, but that's another issue entirely.

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

So think carefully - if I only distribute unmodified copies of the program in binary form, I am fully in compliance with the restrictions of the gpl. How I run the program is not restricted, and since I am not modifying the program as it resides on the disk drive (the "original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression" that are covered by copyright), but only the in-memory image, which I am permitted to do under both copyright law and court precedent.

To the extent that you or anyone else argues that modifying the in-memory copy is "creating a derived work", you are wrong - while it may be "derived" in the common-sense meaning of the term, that is not within the meaning or scope of copyright law, and ultimately it's the law that applies.

Simply put, copyright only applies to the copy on the hard disk since it is stored in a fixed tangible medium of expression. The ram copy might be a "tangible medium of expression", but it is not "fixed", so you are free to mod it at will. Both the courts and the Constitution say so. Any restriction in a license that attempts to say otherwise is void.

Re:Deja Vu

[geminidomino]

No it doesn't. At no point do you modify the original binary image stored on disk - and that's the only copy that you have to distribute. The GPL is a distribution license, no an end-use license.

I specifically was talking about EULA's, not the GPL. You can modify whatever you want, on disk or in RAM, under no terms provided you don't distribute it. This does not hold true for software distributed under a EULA, which was implicitly included in your (currently false) blanket statement.

Re:Deja Vu

[tlhIngan]

I've seen a remarkable change in business use of open-source once the GPLv3 came out, which may explain why.

Businesses were pretty much ambivalent towards open-source - it was neat, it was nifty, and as long as they provided source, they could stay on the right side of the license.

Then the GPLv3 came out, and suddenly their obligations became much greater and businesses got worried that GPLv3 may "taint" everything.

Suddenly open-source usage policies started becoming the norm - and by usage, it includes both internal use (build tools, etc) and using code in the product. Open-source projects now need to be "reviewed" by legal for license compliance in all usage (because internal tools may be shared with outside contractors) and other such business.

Some have gotten to the point where there's a narrow subset of what's allowed (pre-approved software and versions), and explicitly banned some licenses - BSD and MIT licenses are A-OK, Apache is iffy, and GPLv3 is a definite cannot use don't even ask. Heck, even the GPL can be iffy since GPLv2+ code can be GPLV3 in some instances because of what code is included (exception - v2-only code is OK because that code cannot be v3 at all - GPLv2-only is incompatible with GPLv3).

Even Apple have been moving away from GPL - they ditched GCC after the patches to support Grand Central Dispatch for LLVM, among other things.

Re:Deja Vu

[hairyfeet]

Give it up Barbara, the logical hoop jumping they will attempt to "prove" that black equals white just isn't worth dealing with. I can post 200 links by the people that actually built the things showing what arrogant little shits many of them are, show link after link of even the largest OEMs having to jump through flaming hoops because a lack of an ABI makes Linux as brittle as can be, but nope, won't matter, because just like the "party faithful" of any religion or political group they will NEVER believe their own eyes, you just need to be drinking a little more kool aid and join in the crazy, that's all.

This is why frankly I have given up. I block Linux posts on every forum I go to, I no longer download distros, because even though I can post screencaps with a half a dozen PCs being broken by even simple updates nope, didn't happen, you MUST be a shill. So it doesn't matter how many years you had being a Linux admin Barbara, doesn't matter how many nights you've dealt with their bullshit, unless you join in the groupthink and lies then you MUST be a M$ Ninja!

So just give it up, its like talking to a bunch of insane people and expecting an intelligent discussion, just ain't gonna happen. I can't wait to see what kind of logical hoop jumping they will go through when Canonical folds from lack of operating capital, I'll unblock Linux posts to LMAO at that one. it'll be they didn't follow party doctrine or they didn't listen to the "community" which wasn't giving them a dime in the first place, why it can't be that the Linux model simply doesn't work in desktops, nope, can't be that at all. BTW want cherry or grape kool aid? I swear these nutters that have taken over Linux remind me of the Mad Hatter, where the discussions go round and round without actually making any sense or reason.

Re:Deja Vu

[Barbara, not Barbie]

Actually, it does - see Goolab v Nintendo. You can in fact modify the in-memory image of software - even proprietary closed-source software - without violating the rights granted by law to the copyright holder. Any attempt by an EULA to say otherwise is void and without effect, since it goes beyond the scope of what's permitted under restrictions that copyright holders are granted by copyright law.

Re:Deja Vu

[geminidomino]

You keep going back to Galoob v. Nintendo (9th Circuit Appeals -1992) , but you're still wrong. It obviously wasn't binding since the same court decided, a year later, loading a copy into ram is a "fixed copy" and subject to copyright enforcement.

I've found the citation: MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc.

Re:Deja Vu

[hairyfeet]

This is why I have been arguing for years why glaring problems in Linux, the driver ABI problem, stability problems, beta or worse quality code like Pulseaudio or the horrible wireless subsystem, simply don't get fixed. the ONLY way we have seen the GPL model to "work" is the services model, where some corp hires the developer to fix problems they have which of course doesn't work with desktops because corps have no interest in them (for them Windows or Macs work fine, since they don't care about dogma) and now with GPL V3 corps really have no reason to support GPL either since RMS' Marxism has gotten so bad the new license is VERY anti business. And if anyone doesn't believe RMS is a Marxist one only has to go to Stallman.org and look up what the man says about Chavez and Castro, he practically squees.

The problem with FOSS in general and Linux in particular is that unless you simply care ONLY about dogma there is simply no compelling reason to deal with the bullshit. As a retailer I can tell you the broken driver model will cost me more than a copy of Windows will and that is with me only charging $35 an hour. A single broken driver can cost me 3 to 5 hours hunting for fixes and trying to tweak said fixes so they work, a copy of Win 7 Home? $89. So a single broken driver costs MORE than Windows. My customers of course have NO desire to learn bash or jump through hoops so it takes even less for Windows to be the better deal.

So to get Linux to the masses means these problems will have to be fixed, but how much will it cost? Well Google has spent a billion on Android but just for the sake of argument lets say Linux is 90% there (bullshit but I'm being generous for the sake of argument) so that will only cost 10% of Android, so that's 100 million. Where do you get the money? You can't sell it as Mandriva and Linspire found out, also anyone can come along and leech off what you have done for free as Canonical found out with Mint. OEMs? Nope even the highest estimates have OEMs paying $25 for Starter and $50 for Home and the cost of support for Linux will make it a non starter, especially when the OEMs make on average $10 per unit on the low end which is their biggest sellers. Walmart found this out when they tried selling gOS Linux desktops and laptops.

And THIS my friend is why Linux will remain a niche, because you need tens of millions to fix the problems and the money simply isn't there. Despite all the FUD from the community for the vast majority Windows is pretty hassle free and they have gotten used to the "It just works" of Windows and OSX on desktops, not to mention to them windows is "free' because it is included in the cost of their new OEM machine. Hell even Shuttleworth has figured this out as he refuses to sink good money after bad by sinking more into Canonical

. In the end communism simply doesn't work, and people, especially top notch coders, simply won't spend years of their lives fixing something when all they are gonna get is a pat on the head. I have to say I do LMAO to see so many defend the FOSS ideal...while they head into jobs where they get paid. Why not tell your boss you'll work "for the good of the community"? I bet he'd appreciate it, may even give you a pat on the head. Of course i bet you can't squat at MIT and be given free flights to conferences and all the other perks RMS gets either.

Re:Deja Vu

[Barbara, not Barbie]

I know, it feels like tilting at whindmills ... or working in the Fox Fact-Free Zone.

Just look at the mess of the "latest and greatest" video card support from 2 weeks ago. Stability problems, locking up, memory corruption, across-the-board lack of functionality ... this all points to a serious design flaw in the kernel itself. Every cpu since the 386 has supported 4 "rings", or levels of access and process/memory protection. Why implementers only use two of them, and insist on running graphics drivers in the kernel is a holdover from the past when context switches were more expensive in terms of "wall clock time".

People also forget that one of the reasons that DOS was a $15 billion product was because they bent over to maintain backward compatibility between versions. There was even code to make sure that newer versions of DOS specifically didn't break SimCity.

We hear all the screaming about how "Linux needs games", "Linux needs applications" (and not just clone-wanna-be work-alikes) but nobody's doing the dirty work. Everyone's just playing around with making a "shinier desktop experience." A lot of that has to do with the problems with interacting with gpl-licensed code. Nobody wants the headaches from the zealot hordes.

Re:Deja Vu

[Microlith]

Since you're back (and still wrong) let's go over this.

copyright law says you do NOT create a derivative work until the "work" is fixed in some permanent media

The binary patch that you read to apply in memory is itself a derivative work. It is, in effect, linked against the binary and applied dynamically at runtime. Not the in memory copy, the patch itself. The Game Genie ruling doesn't even apply here.

Unless you're suggesting that, somehow, the patch in question is never itself fixed to a medium, but then how the hell do you get it to users.

Your hatred is incredible, and your attitude towards people who counter your arguments prove you are no better than those you claim to hate.

Re:Deja Vu

[unixisc]

The co-relation ain't there. Linux supports more hardware b'cos there are a lot more people working on it. The BSDs are far more restrictive in who they allow in.

The stable ABI has nothng to do w/ whether drivers can be closed-source or not - one can provide the source code of drivers w/ or w/o an ABI. Just that w/ an ABI being the target of a driver, rather than each combination of a kernel and processor and any other variables, a driver can be written and compiled to just that ABI, and would run on any Linux platform - the platform just needs to support the ABI. And it's not like Linux can't do it - as someone pointed out, Red Hat does have an ABI for Linux.

Note that this argument is completely tangential to the main article about GPL - one can have ABIs or not be it w/ GPL based OSs or w/ proprietary and closed source OSs.

Re:Deja Vu

[unixisc]

That's not the point. The point is that if a driver works w/ one version of Linux, it's very unlikely to work w/ a subsequent or previous version of Linux. So if someone has a laptop where one version of Linux supported everything - wi-fi, printer, sound, etc, and then upgraded the kernel, there is a good chance the thing would break - either the sound not working, the wi-fi no longer being recognized and so on.

In Windows, except for major architectural leaps such as Windows 98 to 2000, or XP to Vista, drivers written for one version of the OS typically worked w/ subsequent versions. If one had a printer w/ a driver written for Windows 2000, it would normally work w/ XP as well. XP to Vista was a major change, partly due to Vista dropping all support for win16 ABI, as well as the new introduction of win64, so it's been one exception where lot of things are disrupted b/w generations, but this has been an exception. Otherwise, a driver written for Vista would work on 7, and so on.

This is a lot less maintenance than having a gazillion drivers written for every combination of the OS kernel, the libraries and various devices. The sheer number of combinations would alone drive anybody batty. When Linux goes from 3.3 to 3.4, don't be surprised if a lot of drivers break, and need to be re-written. Maybe there are the programmers to write it, but that shouldn't be necessary at all - if a driver works w/ one version of the Linux kernel, it should work w/ the next minor upgrades, and only need an upgrade when the kernel undergoes a major overhaul.

Re:Deja Vu

[unixisc]

He can't use a web browser? Why, doesn't emacs have one built in? Couldn't he have used Epiphany (now Gnome Web), where GNOME and all GNOME apps could well go GPL3, if they ain't already, and he can have a field day w/ them? Or even use elinks? How else does he run stallman.org, where he maintains a directory of all Leftist activism that's on not just in the US, but worldwide?

On the FSF graphic, are you talking about this one?

You deserve to use software that is:-
free from restriction
free to share and copy
free to learn and adapt
free to work with others
You deserve free software

Re:Deja Vu

[Barbara, not Barbie]

Sorry, but you need to re-read the judgment - MAI never had a license to run the software in the first place - they were piggy-backing on their client's license. Apples vs Oranges. So, want to try for a third strike?

Re:Deja Vu

[Barbara, not Barbie]

Sorry - typo ... s/MAI/Peak/;

Peak never had a license to the software. So, since they didn't have a license to use it, any use was a violation of copyright.

Also, all but the simplest programs are modified by running them - that's a simple fact that you can't get around. Variables and pointers to variables are modified at runtime. Everyone has the right to do so..

In addition, if the modified program is transformative in nature, it's covered by fair use - see todays' closing arguments in the first portion of Oracle v Google.

Re:Deja Vu

[Barbara, not Barbie]

RMS says:

For personal reasons, I do not browse the web from my computer. (I
also have not net connection much of the time.) To look at page I
send mail to a demon which runs wget and mails the page back to me.
It is very efficient use of my time, but it is slow in real time.

This doesn't even compute ... how can he send an email to a demon and get back an email w/o an internet connection?

Personally, I think it has to do with his history of mysogenistic comments, attitudes and behaviour. Maybe he got nailed with a permanent injuntion not to "browse the web", and this is his "work-around." Or maybe he just harrassed the wrong person one time too many. Who knows - you can go nuts trying to understand crazy people.

Re:Deja Vu

[hairyfeet]

That is why I have just given up. I no longer download distros and even block linux articles from showing up on /. because i just tired of dealing with the crazy. things are NOT getting better, in fact with the DEs being gutted and pulseaudio if anything things are more unstable than they were even 5 years ago!

That's why you ought to try Win 7, i got into Linux when the crapfest that was Vista came out but frankly i never had as many bugs with Vista as i did with Linux, but 7 is as stable as a rock and purrs like a kitten, be it on my cheap ass $350 netbook or my hexacore gaming PC it "just works" without crashes or bugs or hassle. Hell for shits and giggles I even stuck in on a 1.8GHz Sempron with 1.5Gb of RAM just to see how it runs and you know what? it runs quite well, I just don't have Aero (which i turn off anyway) but other than Aero its smooth and responsive.

But as long as you are on XP you might want to check out Comodo Internet Security along with Ninite, both are free (I'd give you the link to CIS but the URL is crazy long) and I use these along with Comodo Dragon on my XP boxes I sell and frankly not a single bug yet. the nice thing about CIS is it will sandbox the browser of your choice and scan all pages before load so that you don't have to worry about any malware links, even if you are on XP.

But this is why i have given up even attempting to discuss anything with them anymore, they just won't listen. last time i loaded up one of the Linux articles it was nothing but a giant groupthink circle jerk, with everyone trying to top each other in the crazy dept. But as long as nobody will stand up as a group and tell the devs that the itch scratching BS is over then things will never get any better, only worse.

You are right nobody will do the work but i think its much worse than that, i mean look at how many help files are just CLI lists or "to do" placeholders? without any monetary motivations the devs don't listen to anyone, and with so many of the FOSSies pushing out the FOSS advocates nobody will ever call them out over it. i mean look at how many here worship RMS and he's a fricking squatter at MIT that doesn't even use the Internet! I mean how do you get through to people that will actually listen to and deify a guy that thinks its okay to squat on a campus and even worse pull off his shoes and socks ON STAGE and eat some toe funk?

if you want to keep trying to talk to them Barbara go right ahead, but as you saw with that one you posted the chapter and verse on copyright law for only to have him continue to argue black is white its like trying to explain evolution to someone that believes Noah rode a dinosaur, you just can't penetrate the dogma. All they will do is tune you out and keep spouting their religious beliefs. kinda sad that free software now is treated like religion, but frankly the nutters have taken over the tent and all you can do is pack up and move on before they make you a nutter too.

Re:Deja Vu

[unixisc]

I agree w/ almost everything above except one point - Mint doesn't leech off Canonical: it offers everything that Canonical doesn't. Canonical offers Ubuntu w/ the choices of Unity, GNOME3 or GNOME fallback mode. Mint doesn't offer any of them - it offers the choices of MATE (GNOME2), Cinnamon (GNOME2 in GTK3) or MGSE. Essentially, Mint took a look at why people were leaving Ubuntu for Mint, and came out w/ solutions accordingly.

That's just w/ GNOME. W/ KDE, Kubuntu takes the approach of integrating KDE and KDE apps so as to give a full KDE experience, while Lubuntu and Xubuntu do something similar for LXDE and XFCE. Mint, OTOH, doesn't try to do all that w/ KDE or any of the others - it just uses them to offer w/ the distro. Leeching would have been Mint taking *ubuntu, tweaking each as per their users, and then maintaining them.

I'd argue that Mint represents much of what's right about FOSS and forking software - they look at what's not working for their 'customers' and fix them. If Canonical were to offer the sort of solutions that Mint is offering, nobody would think of going to Mint. For servers, Mint is not even looking at Ubuntu - they have the Mint Debian Edition for that purpose.

Re:Deja Vu

[geminidomino]

The closing arguments in Oracle v Google don't matter until the case has been ruled on. Until then, it's just lawyer's talking shit. And you're still letting the technical facts get in the way of the unpleasant reality: judges and lawmakers don't know what any of that means, they don't know what a "pointer" is, and even if they did, they don't give a flying fuck at a rolling donut.

Galoob v. Nintendo has been ignored (or declared "non-binding") elsewhere. Same court, 1998: Microstar v. FormGen, re user-created levels for Duke 3D. User made-levels declared "derivative works." They'd make the same argument about the copy in RAM, technically correct or not, and probably win.

The legal landscape has changed on the IP front in 20 years. Galoob v. Nintendo was declared non-binding after 5. If you're still counting on it to cover your ass, you're going to need lots of lawyer money.

Re:Deja Vu

[hairyfeet]

Well I was recently informed that MATE was due to mint so I will be the first to admit being mistaken and give credit where credit is due. I probably should have used CentOS as an example since they are a classic example of a "leech" in that they USED to buy RHEL for their hardware devices that they sold but then figured it was cheaper to rip out the copyrights and sell their hardware with RH without actually having to pay for it, therefor a classic leech.

But in the end, and i hope you do see this and agree, the home user market simply won't accept what many take for granted in the Linux world. the whole hunting forums for fixes, often having to use Bash to apply said fixes, the need to tweak said fixes because the broken driver model is so damned picky that if a fix is designed for version B rev C firmware D and you have version B rev D firmware G the damned thing won't work, and of course that isn't counting the placeholder help files, really shitty wireless subsystem, graphics, especially anything that involves X, being total shit. I mean I have seen Linux crap itself just because I had a web page and a video at the same time, and I haven't seen that kind of crap with Windows since Win9X! it wasn't just me either, look up the head of OSNews who wrote a really nice article on why he found X Server to be shit.

The problem is that just like in party politics the fringe have taken over the tent. point out ANY of these problems and watch how quickly they mass to attack. I have actually had FOSSies argue up and down to me that I should teach, on my own time without compensation mind you, my customers to "embrace the power of CLI" like its the God damned force! And for what? What do they gain? The freedom to tinker, something they will NEVER use? The "fun" of having drivers break every 6 months and having to have a second unit so they can Google for fixes when the first breaks?

In the end the reality they refuse to accept and will sling FUD all day trying to disprove, is that for the vast majority Windows runs problem free. I have customers that are on the same XP install 8 years later with ZERO bugs or problems, simply by having a good free AV (Avast or Comodo both work well in this regard) and a teeny tiny bit of common sense like not opening strange emails, which frankly webmail has eliminated as a threat for most anyway. in its current form to use a /. car analogy Linux on the desktop is like that rusting dodge you see in a field somewhere. IF you spend the time restoring it, learning all its quirks, and are willing to spend a LOT of time under the hood? Sure it'll make a decent car, you may even be able to turn it into a hot rod. But the VAST majority have NO desire to do all that bullshit and just want something that works OOTB and more importantly KEEPS WORKING which sadly does NOT describe Linux with its shite on a crusty roll driver situation.

I would never wish ill upon him but frankly as long as Torvalds is in charge things will NEVER get any better because he will never allow an ABI, simple as that, and the current model ONLY works on servers, and only then because the hardware for many of the subsystems is practically ancient (like I said many servers still use ATI Rage chips for video) and the few new items are supported by companies spending millions to keep their drivers functional. With the razor thin margins of desktops that simply won't happen so without an ABI so companies can "write once, use for years" it will stay completely pointless and a non starter. Like I said a single driver fuckup can easily cost me more than Windows Home, and every suggestion I have seen, such as buy support (Minimum $200 a year), only buy hardware specifically listed as supported (Lists are often out of date, supported today does NOT mean working tomorrow, and workstation quality gear prices most out of the market) or supporting the fixes myself (home users won't buy support contracts so I would go bankrupt in a year) are ALL completely unacceptable.

Lets face it, no matte

Re:Deja Vu

[unixisc]

On this front, I do hope that PC-BSD, which does feature an ABI, does not encounter these problems. As Windows 8 gets nearer and the expiry of XP does as well, all those computers that have been running XP would be perfect candidates for PC-BSD. It's not run by Torvalds, doesn't have the issues of GPL, and is backed by FreeBSD, which in turn, gets a lot of contributions from Apple. In fact, I've sometimes wondered what exactly does Apple get from the old Nextstep/XNU kernel that it couldn't get from simply using FreeBSD, and putting Quartz on top of it? But as another post put it, OS-X provides everything that a Unix user could possibly want, coupled w/ the ease of use (although many people do prefer the Windows interface). If it weren't warranteed only w/ Mac hardware, there would be no reason for there to be either a separate BSD or Linux.

Re:Deja Vu

[hairyfeet]

I have a feeling that too many are banking on Win 8 biting MSFT in the ass when in reality it will just be Vista all over again. remember what MSFT did when that turned out to be a stinker? it just quietly kept XP on the shelves. I don't know if you caught it or not but win 7 had its EOL raised for ALL versions to Apr 2020 recently so even some of the guys at MSFT don't think Win 8 is gonna fly.

I bet there is something else you don't know, something that MSFT has been keeping WAY on the down low but all the pirate sites have already gotten wind of...psst...Win 7 copy protection has been obliterated for over a year now, and it looks like there is nothing being done about it! That is why you look on any Craigslist you'll see $100 PCs with $300 Win 7 Ultimate on them, because some pirates are tarded and not smart enough to realize putting a $300 OS on a $100 box is obvious piracy. But the rest will just be getting all these XP boxes with win 7 HP which BTW the pirate edition gets FULL updates now! MSFT says "It doesn't want pirated Windows spreading worms" but we all know the score, they are worried when XP dies that all those millions of boxes will go elsewhere. I predict a few months before XP goes EOL you'll see "XP Upgrade Specials" offered by MSFT, most likely Win 7 and 8 HP at $50. At $50 a pop nobody will care about learning a new OS when they can just stick with Windows for less than going to see a 3D movie for 4 nowadays.

And while I agree with you that PC-BSD is a nice OS, the problem is frankly the insane rate of hardware releases and trying to keep up. what PC-BSD is someone to reach out to the hardware manufacturers and show them they can write once and use for years with them like they can with Windows, but until you can get one or more major OEMs to at least make a token offering I just don't see the momentum. that is one thing I will give to the FOSSies, they will bitch their living asses off at OEMs like Dell until they throw a couple of units at them to get them to stop blogging, the BSD guys are just too nice and polite for their own good.

As for Apple? mark these words friend and mark them well...Apple out of the PC business within 5 years. They have already stopped refreshing the Mac pro line on any kind of reasonable timetable and all but ran off the Hollywood pros by turning FCP into iMovie II, and I believe this is a part of a bigger strategy by Cook. You look at his movies before and after becoming head of Apple and he was buying the living hell out of all the chips used in its ARM devices, Intel? Practically ignored. telling is the fact they didn't even attempt to strong arm Intel to allow other chipsets even though they knew that the Intel GPUs just wouldn't cut it, why? In the past they used threats of going to AMD to get Intel to bend and AMD has a nice 4 core APU in Liano that DOES have killer graphics, yet not a peep, again why?

Because Cook is gonna abandon the Mac line and stick with the uber high profits of the consumer devices where they practically own the market, that's why. He sees the price of PCs is going nowhere but down, hell you can buy $400 laptops that have the same or better power than a nice Macbook had just 2 years ago so to keep ahead of the curve would take a shitload of work, or he can just quietly exit that downward spiral for a market where his brand is king, really its a no brainer. Sure the old Mac guys will bitch but so what? they are maybe 4% of the product line and as i pointed out it will cost more and more to keep Apple at the top, especially with Intel making sure its just them and AMD in the chipset business.

So what i truly believe is MSFT will "wink wink" at piracy and/or offer a dirt cheap Windows home to keep those XP boxes running MSFT software, Apple will leave the flatline X86 market to Windows, and ARM will be split between Google which will own the low end and Apple which will own the high. Linux and BSD will keep a nice niche in servers and embedded and MSFT will become the new IBM, owners of a market that frankly won'

Re:Deja Vu

[unixisc]

If that's what Apple plans to do, one thing it could do is to offer OS-X - currently costing what, $40? - to install on PCs. If they want to avoid support issues, just give PC vendors the supported reference platforms on which it would work (which chipsets, motherboards, wi-fi's, GPUs, etc) that it will work, and ask them to bundle such computers for users who want them.

Given what MS has announced for Windows 8, my suspicion is that RT will just gain a reputation as something that does not do Windows, but Windows 8 will go nowhere if they don't at release time offer people the option of going w/ the traditional Windows 7 UI. I doubt that there will be a long beeline for new laptops just b'cos XP goes dead - more likely, people will try out 7, and if it won't run, they may just switch to tablets.

Re:Deja Vu

[hairyfeet]

Apple won't do that because 1.-They would have to deal with too much support and 2.-That would put them in MSFT country and if you have watched the moves of late, such as the lawsuit by Nokia not mentioning Apple, then you know Apple and MSFT are being friends now. Makes sense, Apple doesn't give a crap about low margin sales and those are MSFT's bread and butter, so they can take the low end with WinRT in mobile and Apple wouldn't give a shit because it will never have the rep of the iPad.

As for what happens with win 8 and XP? I think its a tempest in a teacup, MSFT will let the OEMs put win 7 on the non touch based laptops and desktops along with a Win 8 DVD if they wish to "upgrade" and then MSFT can count those as win 8 sales and save face. the fact that Win 7 has been cracked for over a year and one only needs to block a single update (which Windows helpfully hides and never mentions again) tells me what MSFT is expecting to happen, they will "wink wink" let all the mom & pop shops refurb those XP units into Win 7 units without saying a word, and they'll offer Win 7 and Win 8 for $50 just to make sure those that care about a sticker have one. I can tell you one thing they got right in Win 7 is resource management as just for shits and giggles I put win 7 on a 1.8GHz Sempron with 1.5Gb of RAM and an 80Gb HDD and it ran just fine, I even got Aero after slapping a $30 X1650 ATI card I had lying around in it.

So while you are probably right and some will switch to tablets, I personally bet that number is small. At least with my customers the pad like the netbook is a niche device they only use in certain situations while they still have a main PC in the office or den. So just like with Vista where every XP sale counted as a Vista sale because they included a 20c Vista DVD (I think I still have a pile of those somewhere in the shop, nobody wanted the damned things) so too will Win 7 keep being sold with win 8 "upgrade" discs in the box which I'm sure MSFT will spin into "We are giving the user time to switch" or some BS that will last until win 9 which will probably split winRT and WinDesktop. There will be a $50 Win 7 HP and for those on XP that don't want to spend the bux there will be former XP machines with Win 7 Pirate edition on every Craigslist for cheap.

I really think those that are betting win 8 will be another Vista seem to forget that MSFT only had a VERY OLD product to fall back on then, now with Win 7 MSFT has a product that is still "new" for many people and is well liked, so they can afford to practically give it away rather than let Linux or BSD take a hold on the low end. Its like netbooks, Vista wouldn't run so Linux had a shot when suddenly XP came back, only now they can offer Win 7 starter for say $25 and that will run on any box that ran XP no problem. As much as so many people want it to be so I seriously doubt MSFT will make the same mistake twice, it'll be win 7 on the desktop and winRT 8 on touchscreens.

Personally I don't care either way, I just built the oldest a hexacore, the youngest has a quad, I have a hexacore and the rest of the family has from duals to quads and we all have Win 7 so other than having to wipe it at the shop for Win 7 frankly it won't be no skin off my nose, hell I'd probably be rolling in cash for a year and a half as i was wiping Vista for XP. Its just a shame the Linux devs didn't listen and put out a product for the masses, but the ship has done sailed, it'll be MSFT on the desk and lap, Apple owning ARM, and what's left getting the scraps.

Moonlighting

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Simon Phipps moonlighting for Ric Romero now?

App stores

[kthreadd]

Like it or not, but the fact that GPL is prohibited in many app stores is probably what discourages authors of FLOSS from using it as their license. Some authors may also feel that they don't want to use it even if it works fine for them now since they don't know what will happen in the future, as contributions are accepted from other authors it becomes much harder to change license. It's not 1991 anymore.

Re:App stores

[Microlith]

All "open source" is prohibited in many app stores. Primarily because all the app stores and the platforms they service are extremely anti-open source and locked down.

iOS and WP are antithetical to the concept of Free Software, let alone open source.

Re:App stores

[Anonymous Coward]

it works fine in the ubuntu software center. :-)

Re:App stores

[kthreadd]

Truth be told I'm not entirely familiar with the process of submitting software to either iOS or WP but in what way are they anti-open source? I have never heard anything that suggests that it's not possible to submit software released under more permissive licenses, only that GPL is not compatible with their licensing terms.

Re:App stores

[Anonymous Coward]

iOS uses a ton of open source. just not GPL.

Re:App stores

[jellomizer]

That and combined with the GPL is becoming more and more anti-business. Even if you do not want to profit off your software, Most. People want it used widely. If your software is designed for business use if you GPL it you have already alienated your user base, as when it is GPL there is a responsibly, that you need to maintain that other license don't have. Especially if you choose to use parts of the software with the product you are making, you need to make sure that you are in compliance. And with the most vocal GPL supporters begin very anti-capitalistic, means that GPL code is becoming more and more off limits for business.
So it comes down to the fact a lot of software written today which can be open source are business use systems. Thus are not being released under the GPL as it isn't business friendly.
Back in the late 90's early 2000's the GPL wasn't enforced so strictly so companies felt more comfortable using and supporting GPL software. However the late 2000's the GPL community has been much more active to enforce the GPL, as well GPL 3 was created as a response to punish companies like TiVo who found loopholes in the GPL to their advantage.
So if the company has a product that they want to open source (they have a lot of good reasons to do so) they will choose other licenses that is less risky to them.

Re:App stores

[gl4ss]

well, suppose you have a license that requires the users to be given source they can recompile and run. now, usually that kind of license would require that you don't need a 3rd party - or hacking your device - to be able to do that - like paying apple or ms a hundred bucks to be able to upload the recompiled binary to your device(and in both cases getting a license for operating system to run the compiler in and a license for the compiler, which both do provide though, I think it's possible to weasel a free license for the os too out of both too).

also while developer unlocks for devices do give the ability to install random sw, they're not meant for doing that(with matching eulas).

(I'm not an apple dev, but apples thing might have specific limitations for gpl code to be submitted too, however that sounds sketchy - NOW if you're wondering why they would do that is that they, apple, or ms, are the software distributor, they take a _cut_ out of the buying profits so they'd be responsible for sharing the code too, no?).

Re:App stores

[Anonymous Coward]

All "open source" is prohibited in many app stores.

And what app stores would those be? It's certainly not the iOS App store.

Doom is GPL Licensed
Doom is in the App Store
The Source for for iOS Doom

Re:App stores

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, don't come here breaking his bubble.

Re:App stores

[Anonymous Coward]

All "open source" is prohibited in many app stores.

http://maniacdev.com/2010/06/35-open-source-iphone-app-store-apps-updated-with-10-new-apps/

Re:App stores

[swillden]

Like it or not, but the fact that GPL is prohibited in many app stores is probably what discourages authors of FLOSS from using it as their license. Some authors may also feel that they don't want to use it even if it works fine for them now since they don't know what will happen in the future, as contributions are accepted from other authors it becomes much harder to change license. It's not 1991 anymore.

What app stores other than Apple's have terms incompatible with the GPL? Google Play doesn't. Amazon Appstore doesn't. Nook Store doesn't.

(BTW, the problem with Apple's terms isn't that they ban the GPL, it's that they require that apps be licensed on a per user basis, with no sub-licensing or re-distribution permitted, even if the licensing cost is zero. The GPL requires that everyone have redistribution rights, which is incompatible with per-user licensing. Google doesn't constraint the app developer's licensing choices, and AFAICT the other Android stores have followed suit.)

Re:App stores

[Richard_at_work]

To be GPL compliant, they would have to distribute the source code to your app, as you are not the distributer - they are. linking to the code is not enough. I don't know of one app store which actually does this.

Re:App stores

[Anonymous Coward]

That's great, too bad Android itself is such a closed platform.

Re:App stores

[Anonymous Coward]

All "open source" is prohibited in many app stores. Primarily because all the app stores and the platforms they service are extremely anti-open source and locked down.

iOS and WP are antithetical to the concept of Free Software, let alone open source.

If only there was a way, as the copyright owner of a project, to license an application favorable to app stores and at the same time release the source code under whatever license you wish...

Re:App stores

[Anonymous Coward]

Doom is dual-licensed. The app store version is not GPL.

Re:App stores

[Anonymous Coward]

If only there was a way, as the copyright owner of a project, to license an application favorable to app stores and at the same time release the source code under whatever license you wish...

We should consult some people at Berkley see what they have to say about all this.

Re:App stores

[swillden]

That's great, too bad Android itself is such a closed platform.

FUD. Android is 100% open source. Google has some apps which are closed, and there are many apps in the store which are closed, but Android is 100% open. Including Honeycomb.

Re:App stores

[Anonymous Coward]

Doom is dual-licensed. The app store version is not GPL.

Dual licensing doesn't work that way.

The source code says differently.
https://github.com/id-Software/DOOM-iOS/blob/master/gpl.txt

John Carmack used version of already open sourced Wolfenstein to do the iOS port. Most likely the Doom did the same.
http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/45679/John-Carmack-Releases-Open-Source-Wolfenstein-iPhone-Port

Re:App stores

[jkflying]

Heard of AOSP?

Re:App stores

[Dr_Barnowl]

Linux distribution repositories - the original central app store - do this. But alas, they are not so common on phones.

Re:App stores

[BasilBrush]

All "open source" is prohibited in many app stores. Primarily because all the app stores and the platforms they service are extremely anti-open source and locked down.

Bullshit. There's no rule in the iOS App Store to prevent any kind of open source. It's the terms of the GPL that prevent it. RMS is doing the prohibiting, not the app store. Because he's extremely anti-business.

Re:App stores

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why is it developed in the dark?
Then why can't almost anyone update to it once it is open?
Then why are all problems solved with "if you root your device..."?

Re:App stores

[rtfa-troll]

When you first listen to the "the GPL is declining because it's users sue too much" that sort of seems like a reasonable argument for people who are afraid of lawsuits and can't afford the lawyers to understand the licenses.

Then you think about it. The person who is choosing the license is the author of the software. By a strange coincidence, that's also the person who gets to decide whether to sue or not. There is nothing in the GPL which could ever force them to start a lawsuit. The most it can ever do is give them the choice to do so, and even then, only in the situation where someone is cheating on their open source quid pro quo.

Seems to me that this argument is being spread about by the proprietary software houses who want to sucker programmers into allowing them to build private versions without having to pay anything or contribute anything back to the community. Just remember; if there turns out to be a good reason to do so, you can always relicense your GPL code with no protectuion under something like the X11 license. Going the other way is much more risky and difficult.

Re:App stores

[Anonymous Coward]

Because carriers are evil fucks.

Re:App stores

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you'd care to:
1) Point to the term(s) in the GPL that prevent software licenced under it from being distributed on Apple's app store
2) Explain why you think said terms are "extremely anti-business"

Re:App stores

[Anonymous Coward]

The source code says differently.
https://github.com/id-Software/DOOM-iOS/blob/master/gpl.txt

So the code is being distributed through GitHub under the GPL license, as well as through the App Store under Apple's proprietary license. ID Software still owns copyright to Doom and Wolfenstein; having made a GPL release does not prohibit them from also doing proprietary releases.

However, if you were to make your own game out of the GPL Doom code, you could release this derived work (under the GPL) for Linux, Windows, or even Mac OS, but not for iOS.

Re:App stores

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why is it developed in the dark?

Development methodology is irrelevant.

Then why can't almost anyone update to it once it is open?

I see some words, but I can't make out what they're trying to say....

Then why are all problems solved with "if you root your device..."?

The software being open source doesn't mean you can magically do whatever you want with the device. You still need to somehow aquire a level of privilege that allows whatever it is you're trying to do. Otherwise it would be rather foolish to run open source software on any machine that will be in any way accessible to other people.

Re:App stores

[Anonymous Coward]

Gosh, people actually think they are on the good side when they use Android. Just because it uses a Linux kernel doesn't mean that it is a great thing. If you found a machine gun based on Linux you would shoot yourself in the foot because it was freedom right? I don't understand, how can people glorify this Google (don't be evil, yeah right) os?

Re:App stores

[Microlith]

It's the terms of the GPL that prevent it.

Yes, because the iTunes store places additional restrictions on end users, while the GPL directly opposes that.

RMS is doing the prohibiting, not the app store.

RMS isn't doing shit. The developer that chose the GPL decided to place that restriction.

Because he's extremely anti-business.

He's also anti-lockdown and pro-freedom. Again, iOS/WP are very anti-freedom and pro-lockdown.

Re:App stores

[Microlith]

And if those apps were put on the store they can choose to waive the GPL for the release. Effectively, the version you get via the store isn't GPL as Apple has replaced it with their own overbearing terms, with the author's implicit permission.

Re:App stores

[thetoadwarrior]

As far as I know it's only the iOS and WP app stores that are anti-GPL. You can submit GPL'ed software to the Mac App store so Apple as a company doesn't even fully ban it.

Re:App stores

[jbolden]

The problem for the Apple app store is that Apple is acting as distributor. Apple doesn't have a mechanism for providing source. Apple doesn't allow individuals without a developer's SDK to make changes to a program and then install. It creates a nebulous area. If Apple wanted to push it they could, but so far they haven't wanted to they have just asked the open source distributor to give them a less nebulous license.

Re:App stores

[jbolden]

First off companies are more friendly towards all open source than they were 15 years ago. But even more importantly, a company that wants to release its own software isn't bound by the GPL they have a copyright.

Re:App stores

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the GPL allows you to place, in the documentation, an offer to send the source code. Putting such an offer in a help screen would suffice. Source code isn't the problem. The problem is that iOS runs afoul of GPLv3's anti-Tivoization clause.

Re:App stores

[andrew3]

App stores often have ridiculous terms. The fact that some devices won't even let its users install software is just dumb.

Re:App stores

[TheRaven64]

Well, unless you count any of the drivers required to actually use Android on any shipping phone...

Re:App stores

[andrew3]

Android is 100% open source.

Last time I checked Android contains a lot of proprietary software, including drivers. That's the main reason why the FSF does not approve of it.

Re:App stores

[Anonymous Coward]

And if those apps were put on the store they can choose to waive the GPL for the release. Effectively, the version you get via the store isn't GPL as Apple has replaced it with their own overbearing terms, with the author's implicit permission.

"open source" != GPL

Re:App stores

[syzler]

Why do you think open source is prohibited on many app stores?

I recently released an LDAP administrator for the iPad which is built around the OpenLDAP libraries. In the about section of the app, I clearly state that the app uses OpenLDAP, OpenSSL, and Cyrus-SASL libraries. I also provide links to a framework on github which I developed to provide the visual elements and convenience classes used within the app. When submitting the app to Apple, I disclosed that the app uses OpenSSL.

The app was approved in less than a week by Apple. If they were anti open source, would they have approved an app that makes liberal use of open source libraries?

Further more, how is it anti ethical to use open source software in iOS? I release the parts of my software I think might be useful to others under a modified BSD license and fully expect others to use it in both proprietary and open solutions.

Re:App stores

[Microlith]

Ok ok, assuming the license is GPL. Same effect if it's BSD though, the version you receive is effectively proprietary as you can't modify and replace the version on your iPhone without getting Apple's permission or violating their EULA.

Re:App stores

[Anonymous Coward]

So what? I have open access to the source code. That's all open source means.

Re:App stores

[Microlith]

Well great, enjoy not really being able to use it because your platform treats you like a hostile entity.

Re:App stores

[Anonymous Coward]

I can modify it and post my own version on the App store. How am I not able to use it?

Re:App stores

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this supposed to be in any way relevant to my post?

Re:App stores

[SpaceLifeForm]

GPL is prohibited in many app stores

How many app stores are there outside of Android?

More of the same, more FUD.

Re:App stores

[Microlith]

You have to pay Apple $99 and hope that they will allow you to use it. You can't simply install it on your handset.

(Yes I know you can install software on your handset as a developer, but it still costs $99 and only lasts for 120 days. Exerting control over users for self-serving purposes is actually unethical, IMO.)

Re:App stores

[jellomizer]

True, however with the GPL being stricter, and knowledge of alternative licenses, the GPL is less viable.

Re:App stores

[BasilBrush]

"It's the terms of the GPL that prevent it."
Yes

So it's not the App Store. The history of this, if you're unaware, is that the App Store has always been happy to have GPL software. VLC for example was put on the App Store by some of it's developers. However one VLC developer was unhappy and complained that that was contrary to GPL. And so it was removed from the App Store by someone from the open source community, not be Apple.

As I said your claim that this is Apple's attitude that prevents it is false. It's entirely to do with the GPL terms as decided by RMS - and as you say the developers that originally chose to put a particular project under that license. And to take it back to the original topic, this may be one reason while fewer projects are choosing GPL these days.

Re:App stores

[hairyfeet]

Are any parts of your app GPL V3? I would guess not. You see what the appstores and even Android do NOT allow is GPL V3 because its anti-business, hell RMS even went out of his way to target a specific business that pissed him off (TiVo) so naturally businesses don't want to have anything to do with GPL V3. the problem is too many think "Open Source equals GPL" when you can enjoy any number of licenses and still be open source, just as you yourself did when you chose BSD.

So the appstores are NOT anti-open source, they are anti-GPL V3. What amazes me is how many here are getting pissed off, well what did you expect? RMS makes an anti-business license, the businesses refuse to have anything to do with it, developers want to sell their programs to businesses and users through the appstores, ergo they don't use GPL V3 and the GPL numbers fall. What is so hard to figure out here?

Re:App stores

[hairyfeet]

There is a flaw in your thinking friend, and it is thus: Many projects are made by more than a single person therefor if you have multiple developers and only ONE refuses to use anything but GPL? you are screwed unless you go in and rip out all of that persons contributions which often won't be simple and may require significant rewrites. See VLC as an example of this.

So there are plenty of reason to use a FOSS license just NOT the GPL. Its not like there aren't choices that aren't hateful to businesses, there is BSD, MPL, shared source, Apache, etc. I would argue THAT is why you are seeing a decline in GPL. If one has a project where you allow multiple people to contribute you'd be hamstringing yourself to use GPL but you could use any of these other licenses and not have any problems getting your program into appstores.

Re:App stores

[syzler]

My comment was in response to a comment which stated that

All "open source" is prohibited in many app stores.

Speaking from my experience, you are spot on. A few years ago I started migrating the few libraries I have written from the LGPL to a modified BSD license just for this reason. It is also why I am more inclined to hunt down bugs and submit patches for non-GPL/LGPL software packages.

Re:App stores

[SETIGuy]

You all need to read the license more carefully. Some of the most important freedoms the GPL gives you is the freedom to redistribute the unmodified binary and the freedom run it on other devices, both of are denied by the the App Store store. Another problem is that the terms of GPL v2 would force Apple to be the distributor of the source code because Apple is the distributor of the binary and the distribution is commercial. (Apple could only distribute the offer of the author to provide source in the case of non-commercial distribution, GPL v2 Sec 3.c). I wouldn't even be surprised if the App Store terms make it a violation to allow a source offer displayed on an iPhone screen to be transferred to a third party.

Re:App stores

[Microlith]

You always crawl out of the woodwork to defend Apple and hold them blameless.

So it's not the App Store.

It's a bit of both, really. The App Store imposes odius terms upon the user on top of whatever license the developer supplies, that directly contradict the GPL.

the App Store has always been happy to have GPL software. VLC for example was put on the App Store by some of it's developers. However one VLC developer was unhappy and complained that that was contrary to GPL.

The App Store is happy to have any software that furthers Apple's goals. They don't want to deal with licensing issues such as the one pointed out by the VLC developer.

As I said your claim that this is Apple's attitude that prevents it is false.

Apple's attitude does prevent it, as it makes it impossible to put software on the platform that complies with the GPL.

And to take it back to the original topic, this may be one reason while fewer projects are choosing GPL these days.

Possibly. But it's foolish and serves only to kowtow to Apple's pro-lockdown fetish.

Re:App stores

[SETIGuy]

Well, you could release it for iOS, but you couldn't provide any way for somebody to run it on an apple product without violating the iOS development terms. Anyone who did modify it in a way that would allow it to run could not distribute the modified binary.

I could release a random binary blob under the GPL, too. It it wouldn't be much use to anyone.

Re:App stores

[PuZZleDucK]

You have to pay Apple $99 and hope that they will allow you to use it. You can't simply install it on your handset.

(Yes I know you can install software on your handset as a developer, but it still costs $99 and only lasts for 120 days. Exerting control over users for self-serving purposes is actually unethical, IMO.)

Ok. but I'm still with AC above, I'd even go further and just say "I can modify it and post my own version" (who cares where you can post it). I'm quite sure no one who has licensed their code GPL would begrudge someone for being stuck in a hideous ecosystem (laugh at them yes, pity maybe). Yes apples "Walled Garden"(tm) is unethical but within that horrible place a developer can strive to achieve the same effective rights. Apart from the restrictions imposed by Apple I'm actually quite impressed how well some developers have achieved this in practice.

Re:App stores

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to pay Apple $99

So? If I down load the source for an Android App, I have to pay $$$$ for a handset and data plan to use it. So what? You have to buy a computer to do anything with the source. "Open Source" has nothing to do with cost.

Re:App stores

[SETIGuy]

At least spell Berkeley right. Most of us at Berkeley think the BSD license sucks, and either use the highest applicable GPL revision allowed by libraries we're linking in, LGPL when necessary, or a proprietary license when we think a company is going to buy the copyright to something very specific to their business, but without widespread application.

GPL is very useful when you know someone is going to try to patent your work a decade from now and assumes nobody can use Google for a prior art search. I've also seen it to be useful in "non-compete clause" cases (which are illegal in California anyway). "If you didn't consider it competition for him to work on this GPL project when you were paying him, how could it be competition now that the project itself is paying him?"

The University has great lawyers, and I'm happy to have never been on the opposite side of table.

Re:App stores

[SETIGuy]

The terms of the GPL predate the AppStore by a couple decades or so, and the AppStore terms were written in ways to be contrary to the GPL, so it's the AppStore's problem. Anyone who receives a GPL binary must be able to redistribute it. If they aren't able to do so, that's a GPL violation. Anyone who distributes a GPL binary must include source or an offer that allows the recipient to get the source from the distributor. Apple could have built the AppStore in such a way that binaries for GPL apps could be redistributed and source could be distributed, but they chose not to. Every Linux distribution's RPM or dpgk or tgz repository does so. Are Apple programmers that incapable, or does Apple just feel the need to control everything their users do?

You do realize, of course, that VLC uses GPL libraries, so it doesn't matter what one VLC programmer thinks. They need to get the permission of every contributor to every library that VLC uses and every contributor to VLC to agree to change the license to one that is AppStore compatible. Not going to happen, so one of the many prices that Apple customers pay for Apple's draconian Terms of Service is no VLC. Ever.

As an aside, the licenses of VLC and FFMPEG are among the most violated. Search for video capture or video editing or video format conversion or dvd ripping software online, and it will probably be a bad GUI over ffmpeg or VLC. And they'll charge you $50 for a one year license, and they won't offer access to the source, or even tell you that ffmpeg or VLC is there. And you'll send you $50 to the Ukranian mafia or the Russian mafia or a Nigerian scam artist rather than sending $5 to VLC or FFMPEG. Do you understand why some people don't like license violations?

Re:App stores

[SETIGuy]

It's not Apple's job to make sure you aren't violating the licenses of OpenLDAP, OpenSSL, and Cyrus-SASL. Do you think lawyers are making those decisions?

Re:App stores

[Anonymous Coward]

GPL is very useful when you know someone is going to try to patent your work a decade from now and assumes nobody can use Google for a prior art search.

Why don't you patent your own work? Oh I know why. You have no work worth patenting and have an overinflated sense of your own worth. That's why you use the GPL. In the mean time, projects that actually get used don't use the GPL.

Re:App stores

[Microlith]

There's a distinct difference between buying a device (and data plan, but not all Android devices are handsets) and having to pay EXTRA on top to run software on it. You have to buy an iPhone/iPad and an Android device. You have to pay extra to run your own software on the handset, and hope Apple blesses you if you want to do so for more than 120 days.

"Open Source" has nothing to do with cost.

Correct, but you're off base with your suggestion. And we're off topic. This is an anti-GPL bitch session, not lockdown bitch session.

Re:App stores

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a distinct difference between buying a device (and data plan, but not all Android devices are handsets) and having to pay EXTRA on top to run software on it.

No there isn't. You assume that your platform has a free compiler or other such Bull Shit. I have released plenty of open source LabView software. But that's useless to you if you haven't paid the $1000 or so dollars for a copy of LabView. That doesn't make it right, wrong, free, not free, etc... That's just the way the real world is.

The original claim was

All "open source" is prohibited in many app stores.

This has been shown to be wrong on so many levels.

Re:App stores

[Microlith]

Except you're completely off base again. For your example to hold water, you would have to pay LabView an extra fee on top of the $1000 for a license, and if you then had to beg them permission for others to be able to use the things you wrote for it AND anything you wrote only worked for 120 days.

This has been shown to be wrong on so many levels.

Very well then. It's only explicitly prohibited in the Microsoft store, and in the stores you "can" use it the "open" or "free" parts are revoked by the store operator for the sake of their DRM.

Re:App stores

[Richard_at_work]

And guess who has to fulfill that promise? Apple, as they distributed the binary and promise through their store, not you. You are not the distributor to your users, Apple is...

And thats my point.

Re:App stores

[Anonymous Coward]

Development methodology is irrelevant.

Open source is a software development method. The benefits of public development is THE justification for releasing source code and permitting others to do likewise. Don't confuse open source software to mean "source code is visible"

Re:App stores

[hairyfeet]

Thanks but what I have noticed in FOSS is the same thing that has happened in politics, the "party faithful" aka batshit have taken over the tents and therefor discussion is no longer allowed. it would be like trying to point out a bad spot on the platform to a hardcore D or R all you get is being accused of being "one of THEM!" when you are pointing out something that is so damned obvious a child can see it.

Take what I'm sure you have noticed about GPL, that GPL V3 is anti-business. this is pretty obvious, I mean the man even targeted a business that pissed him off specifically which of course would make ANY business wary of being the target of GPL V4 so naturally they ain't gonna want to go near it, right? yet look at the responses I received, nothing but hatred and mod downs because i refuse to pretend that reality is the big bad world picking on poor old RMS. I mean if you follow the FOSSie faction I'm supposedly getting checks from MSFT, Apple, Comodo,TiVo, and AMD. Why do I have to work 6 days a week then? Hell their logic isn't even consistent, because AMD open sourced their drivers yet I'm "working to destroy FOSS"? Does that make ANY logical sense?

So in the end devs like you will quietly switch to BSD and guys like me will just block Linux in the prefs and let the party faithful pretend reality is nothing like the real world. its no wonder GPL and Linux are going nowhere, nobody will look at reality and fix what's broken!

Re:App stores

[swillden]

Open source is a software development method. The benefits of public development is THE justification for releasing source code and permitting others to do likewise.

Nonsense. Public development is only one of the possible reasons for releasing source under an OSS license.

Re:App stores

[Anonymous Coward]

I did not intend to imply that it is Apple's job. I was merely responding to the comment that "open source" is prohibited by most app stores and that it is anti-ethical to use open source code in apps.

Re:App stores

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, unless you count any of the drivers required to actually use Android on any shipping phone...

How does this differ from binary blob drivers in Linux? Or any other OS, for that matter?

Re:App stores

[unixisc]

In GPL3, RMS took on an 'issue' he called 'Tivoization', which completely bears you out. I'll bet that in GPL4, he'll take on the 'issue' of 'Androidization', which will be something 'non-free' about Android that pisses him off. Like I noted in the previous thread about this same topic, there's not one company doing GPL work that he actually supports. Just go to the GNU page, then to the Download GNU link and then to the one about why they don't endorse some common distros, such as Red Hat, Debian, Suse, Canonical et al, and you'll find that he has nothing good to say about any of them.

And honestly, I never figured out what's the problem w/ 'Tivoization'. After all, Tivo is not distributing software per se - they're selling a set top box that can be used to pause live TV, and they use Linux to run it, but lock the firmware, since they're not about one using freedoms 0, 1 and 3. Sure, you can get the source code to the thing, but not change anything in it w/o voiding the warranty, which conveniently, all licenses disclaim in their print, but which would never do for a company that's charging good money for a product that uses such a software.

I am a supporter of open-source w/ a caveat - I support freedoms 0 and 1, oppose freedom 2, and oppose the freedom 2 part of freedom 3, but otherwise support freedom 3. I admire esr, have read the 'Cathedral and the Bazaar', and agree w/ it. I root for open-source software, such as ReactOS and OSFree, as well as the BSDs. And while I don't support the 'free-software' or 'libre-software' or whatever they call it, nobody does more damage to this cause than RMS and the FSF.

Re:App stores

[harlows_monkeys]

Actually, the GPL allows you to place, in the documentation, an offer to send the source code. Putting such an offer in a help screen would suffice. Source code isn't the problem. The problem is that iOS runs afoul of GPLv3's anti-Tivoization clause.

The GPLv3 anti-Tivoization clause only applies to software distributed with the device, as part of a transaction in which the right of possession and use of the the device is transferred to the recipient in perpetuity or for a fixed term. In other words, it would apply to any GPLv3 that Apple ships with the phone or iPad. It does not apply to any software that Apple distributes separately, which includes all software Apple distributes via the app store. The anti-Tivoization clause was very narrowly tailored to take out Tivoization and nothing else.

The GPL (both v2 and v3) are incompatibility with the Apple app store is due to the app store terms and condition. As a condition of using the app store, the end user must agree to not redistribute downloaded apps or to reverse engineer them. This counts as additional terms under GPL, and GPL forbids that.

Re:App stores

[TheRaven64]

On x86, at least, the basic drivers for getting things like interrupt and DMA controllers up and getting a VESA frame buffer and access to common HIDs (USB and PS/2 keyboards and mice, for example) are all open source. You may not be able to use the snazziest features of your hardware with open drivers, but you can at least use it. In contrast, most Android phones have blobs for the touchscreen, meaning you can't even use the standard input and output device with an open source build. The network (WiFi and cellular) drivers are also often blobs, and the sound drivers fairly often are. On a lot of pre-Cortex A9 devices, even the DMA and interrupt controllers use blobs. This means that you can't even get part way through the boot process with a completely open source build.

Perhaps it's just me, but I see a pretty big difference between 'can't get full performance from the 3D hardware without a blob driver' and 'can't boot without a blob driver'.

Re:App stores

[brianmat]

Not true. You can run an Android app through the SDK emulator all at no cost. Also, to follow your argument you would pay $99 to Apple plus $$$$$^2 for an iOS device plus $$$ for a Mac platform to build the app.

Re:App stores

[Vegemeister]

If it is anti-business to say that businesses who profit from free software without passing that freedom on to their end-users can go fuck themsleves, then I am anti-business.

Some Personal Experiences

[interval1066]

I've had recent occasion to talk to a few SAAS providers and other software producers who are employing OSS tech in some of their products and the consensus was the GPL was too constrictive, so their using other schemes. I'm also noticing others around the web sticking to GPL 2.0, and dismissing 3.0. I'm just a messenger, just what I've seen.

Re:Some Personal Experiences

[Attila Dimedici]

I have felt from the time it came out that GPL 3.0 was a step too far. With any attempt to write a legally binding document (whether a license like the GPL or a law) that applies to people you have never met you have to make a choice between one of two options. You can either write it so that no one can ever abuse it, or you can write it so that it is flexible and can be applied in innovative ways to solve problems that it never occurred to you might be connected to it somehow. If you do the first one, the document will, at best, be unusable in situations that are outside of what you considered possible when you wrote it, but more likely will actually restrain innovation in any area where your document applies. GPL 3.0 does this.

Re:Some Personal Experiences

[Microlith]

Of course SaaS providers would object to the GPLv3, it eliminated the ability for them to exploit GPL software, subsequently used by their customers, without distributing the sources. Much like the anti-tivoization clause, it's another patch to fix the loopholes that companies exploit.

Re:Some Personal Experiences

[interval1066]

Distributing source was not the objection I heard. It was more along the lines of the license itself... anyway, if you use it are you exploiting it? You kind of sound like ANY use of OSS is exploitation. If so, why release it? Just keep it in a vault if no one can use it.

Re:Some Personal Experiences

[Anonymous Coward]

The primary objective of the GPL and free software was not innovation; it was freedom. Freedom for the little guy. RMS has underlined again and again that some software might not be so shiny because of that freedom, or proprietary products might have more features. This however, has always been a non-issue; the primary objective has always been the four freedoms, regardless of how others might want to use or abuse the software or the essential right to freedom.

Re:Some Personal Experiences

[Anonymous Coward]

The GPL puts no restrictions on mere use of the software, even by a for-profit entity. What it restricts is attempts to redistribute the software locked down so that their users don't enjoy the same freedom they got themselves. People who want to take away freedom from their users don't like this.

Re:Some Personal Experiences

[swillden]

Distributing source was not the objection I heard. It was more along the lines of the license itself.

That doesn't make any sense. The license distribution of source and giving permission to re-distributed. That's the essence of "license itself".

.. anyway, if you use it are you exploiting it? You kind of sound like ANY use of OSS is exploitation.

"Exploiting" isn't a word that has any meaning in this context. You can use GPLv2 and GPLv3 software in any way you like, consistent with the terms of the license. In the case of v2, that basically boils down to "if you distribute binaries, you also have to distribute source, and whoever gets the source from you is likewise free to redistributed it under the same terms." In the case of v3, there are some additional restrictions around patent licensing hardware embedding, and there's an optional clause (actually a different version of the license with an additional clause) that software authors can choose to add that restricts use of the software in SaaS contexts.

Re:Some Personal Experiences

[TheRaven64]

Of course SaaS providers would object to the GPLv3, it eliminated the ability for them to exploit GPL software

No it doesn't. The AGPL does, the GPLv3 still allows, for example, Google to use GPLv3 software on their servers for everything and not release any of the source code.

Re:Some Personal Experiences

[caseih]

I have zero sympathy for SAAS providers whining about the inability to use GPLv3 in their for-profit service. If they want to use a GPLv3 app, negotiate a commercial license for the code. Whining about the GPL being so restrictive just tells me they want to continue to be able to leach off of free software developers. If the software is so useful, pay the GPL developers!

Re:Some Personal Experiences

[jbolden]

It is not use, it is SaaS a version you modified without releasing changes that is objectionable.

Re:Some Personal Experiences

[Billly Gates]

Here is a hairy situation that is quoted by those who do not like the GPL at work.

What if you use GPL v 3 software and make it as your own internally. The owner wants to sell the company. What then? Sorry the GPL v3 counts that as a redistribution. They would have to release their crown jewels to competitors. What if it is a private organization and wants to go public. Oops can't disolve and reform as a public company because that also counts as redistribution under Sarbines Oxley. A few people wont give a shit in a small private company, but sarbines Oxley is a must for any public company in the US. Auditors would have a field day.

Software very seldomly stays anymore. If you work in China you need to redistribute your code to Chinese authories. Sometimes supplies and vendors need access to it so they can become partners. Maybe the owners might want to sell their technology and have others use it like Amazon does with its cloud?

BSD is much nicer. Remember GNU is friendly to its users but not to its owners. It is really nice to have something that is yours and you no longer own it if its licensed under any freeware license.

Re:Some Personal Experiences

[Alex Belits]

I'm just a messenger, just what I've seen.

First of all, you have no proof of that. SAAS, as restrictive as it is, is not affected by GPL at all.
Second, go fuck yourself anyway. We write software, we distribute it under licenses that parasites like your "few SAAS providers and other software producers" are afraid of. If they don't like it, they can always ask Oracle to buy their shitty companies.

Re:Some Personal Experiences

[Billly Gates]

2 people leach in any business transaction. The price is the point of compromise for both or a contract in a niche case such as this. The GPL is great for the users, and worst for the owners. A proprietary license is the best for the owner and worse for the user. Windows is a prime example. BSD, MIT, Apache and others are in between.

A developer has a right to their own code they paid for or developed himself. You are right they should pay, but it is well within the companys right to use a BSD solution that is more friendly to a compromise or make their own and refuse to even use your product. Profit is very very nice if you are the one receiving it and providing something a user wants so much they are willing to pay for.

The issue I have and I agree with SAAS is much of the api's and frameworks out there are GPL instead of copyleft. Free not to use you say? What if I make my own expensive proprietary code and some intern downloads a GPL api that compromises just 5% of the code in my product?

Whoops the rest of the 95% just went GPL as well. GPL is better meant for products rather than libraries and this is what SAAS and others are bitching about. Copyleft is prefectly more appropriete as many would love to give credit to others but still retain ownership of the 95% of the code. Companies are going anti GPL for these reasons.

Re:Some Personal Experiences

[serviscope_minor]

2 people leach in any business transaction.

WTF?

The GPL is great for the users, and worst for the owners.

Then why would any owners ever use the GPL?

What if I make my own expensive proprietary code and some intern downloads a GPL api that compromises just 5% of the code in my product?

Same as if the intern used the same license key to use install two copies of Windows.

Whoops the rest of the 95% just went GPL as well.

No, that's not how it works. That's one way of complying. The other way of complying is to remove the GPLd code.

Please, stop spreading FUD.

Re:Some Personal Experiences

[Anonymous Coward]

The owner wants to sell the company. What then? Sorry the GPL v3 counts that as a redistribution.

So, they must give the source code to the person they're selling it to. Wouldn't they be doing that anyway?

The GPL only says, if you redistribute the code, you must make the source available to the people you're redistributing it to. It does not say you must make it available to the public, unless you're redistributing to the public. There are plenty of Linux ports for embedded platforms out there, for example, for which the source is not public.

The idea that using GPL software could force a company to release its internal secrets is just FUD spread by certain other companies which have an anti-free-software agenda to push.

Re:Some Personal Experiences

[interval1066]

Second, go fuck yourself anyway.

Nice. You kiss your dog with that mouth?

Re:Some Personal Experiences

[Billly Gates]

It is not fud and it doesnt matter if you agree with it.

This is the opinion of lawyers if you work in any organization. The viral mouthpiece is considered a problem if you talked to non biased lawyers. Most owners who use GPL do it for free and not for software that makes them money.

Businesses do not care about ideals or cool stuff. They only care about profit. Minimizing liability even if it is imagined and maximizing returns is the game and explains why business has slowed to GPL adoption. SCO/MS did lots of damage. Its just not even considered.

Re:Some Personal Experiences

[caseih]

No it is FUD. Because it is untrue.

Any lawyer who says the GPL could infect your code is incompetent. More likely you are simply misunderstanding him. There's nothing magical about the GPL. It's no different than a license that Microsoft would give you access to Windows 7 source code under as far as how copyright law sees it. Either you follow the terms or you don't, and then you find yourself paying damages. If a company is unable to determine the difference between public domain and free software, then I fear for the company.

The key point here: Anyone who says the GPL can "infect" your code and make you open source your code is lying, plain and simple.

Shipping a product with a GPL violation *does* place you in a damages situation, as described in the copyright act. And Developers or the FSF regularly do sue for GPL compliance because they know companies using the GPL'd code want to keep using the code, thus they need to comply with the license as nothing else in law grants them rights to use the code.

However companies who slip in GPL code could very well replace the code, or if it was worth enough, buy a proprietary license. This is just as you would do if you were found to be violating the copyright of someone's proprietary code. In fact, linksys could have bought a license for busybox if it so chose. Buying a license for linux is more problematic because despite what SCO says, no one person has a right to license the kernel under something other than the GPLv2. In fact some GPL'd code could never be relicensed because the copyright holders cannot all be found and asked.

Please explain how you think the GPL is magically different than any other copyright license? The copyright act certainly does not have provision for infecting the copyrighted property of others.

Re:Some Personal Experiences

[tapspace]

I have felt from the time it came out that GPL 3.0 was a step too far. With any attempt to write a legally binding document (whether a license like the GPL or a law) that applies to people you have never met you have to make a choice between one of two options. You can either write it so that no one can ever abuse it, or you can write it so that it is flexible and can be applied in innovative ways to solve problems that it never occurred to you might be connected to it somehow. If you do the first one, the document will, at best, be unusable in situations that are outside of what you considered possible when you wrote it, but more likely will actually restrain innovation in any area where your document applies. GPL 3.0 does this.

The primary objective of the GPL and free software was not innovation; it was freedom. Freedom for the little guy. RMS has underlined again and again that some software might not be so shiny because of that freedom, or proprietary products might have more features. This however, has always been a non-issue; the primary objective has always been the four freedoms, regardless of how others might want to use or abuse the software or the essential right to freedom.

GPL 3.0 is less free because in the strictest sense. Regardless, thinking practically, GPL 3.0 seems to me like a hollow victory. It's too idealistic. Freedom for the little guy? How many GPL projects are supported by companies and corporations who use the open source project to make money. This seems like the best of both worlds. You create an incentive to make the open source project better, and it will be a better product for us all, open and free. The GPL 3.0 just seems to destroy this symbiosis and I can't see how it's freer in any sense.

Re:Some Personal Experiences

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't see how it's freer in any sense.

This is because you completely misunderstand what freedom means to the FSF. Let me give a hint to you:

“Free software” means software that respects users' freedom and community. Roughly, the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. With these freedoms, the users (both individually and collectively) control the program and what it does for them.

Think about what this means. Let me give another hint about what this means:

When users don't control the program, the program controls the users. The developer controls the program, and through it controls the users.

To put it another way, freedom means the user has control and not the developer controlling the user.

Re:Some Personal Experiences

[swillden]

What if you use GPL v 3 software and make it as your own internally. The owner wants to sell the company. What then? Sorry the GPL v3 counts that as a redistribution.

Which means that you have to give the source code to the buyer. So what?

They would have to release their crown jewels to competitors.

Why in the world would they have to do that? The GPL certainly wouldn't obligate them to.

What if it is a private organization and wants to go public. Oops can't disolve and reform as a public company because that also counts as redistribution under Sarbines Oxley

It's Sarbanes Oxley, not Sarbines Oxley.

The public company would have to receive source along with the binary. So what? That would be expected anyway.

Auditors would have a field day.

Doing what?

It seems to me that all of your arguments stem from the same fundamental misunderstanding of the GPL. The GPL does notrequire you to distribute source to the whole world, only to whoever you distribute the binary to. It also requires you to allow the recipient to redistribute at will (under the same terms), but it does not require the recipient to redistribute -- if the recipient has a vested interest in keeping it to themselves, they can do so!

BSD is much nicer. Remember GNU is friendly to its users but not to its owners.

Neither license puts any restrictions at all on the owners of the software. If you own the copyright, you are free to license or not as you will, and having previously licensed it one way does not prevent you from doing something else with it later.

Trust the FOSS community

[Anonymous Coward]

to start a holy war on the subject. Both are open licences, so who cares?

Metasploit Framework

[smileygladhands]

The Metasploit Framework, for instance, only accepts code licensed with BSD (or BSD compatible).

Real war is Copyleft vs. Open Source

[Anonymous Coward]

GPL is still the most popular Copyleft license.

People that keep pushing that the GPL is loosing market share tend to be the ones that want to push open source in favor of the ideals of Copyleft and Free Software. The GPL is not designed to win the popularity war for people that refuse the ideals of Free Software in favor of open source. The majority of licenses accepted by the OSI should really be called Closing Source as several of those licenses allows anyone to modify or redistribute the code without the source code. Only a Copyleft license is designed to keep the software under Free terms.

BSD

[Zamphatta]

Personally, I prefer the BSD licenses. There's more freedom in it. Although, I can see why people like the GPL & Apache licenses, I think they're a little too restrictive.

Re:BSD

[andydread]

There may be more freedom in it for the distributor of the software to not disclose source code but it does not guarantee code freedom. It does not guarantee that the code remains free. BSD is not a free software license. It's open source not free software.

Re:BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Of cause BSD guarantees that the code remain free! It just does not extends the "free-to-use" clause to any derived code,
or any application that want to link to it.

Our lab uses half dozens closed third part software (libraries for special devices and image processing.) We don't
have the freedom to use GPLed software in our system as there is noway to ask our software vendors to open source their
libraries.

Re:BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Of cause BSD guarantees that the code remain free! It just does not extends the "free-to-use" clause to any derived code,
or any application that want to link to it.

LGPL.

Our lab uses half dozens closed third part software (libraries for special devices and image processing.) We don't
have the freedom to use GPLed software in our system as there is noway to ask our software vendors to open source their
libraries.

I'm quite sure you can link with non-free libs from GPL code.

Re:BSD

[Edam]

Personally, I prefer the BSD licenses. There's more freedom in it.

This is a matter of perspective, though. Those extra restrictions in the GPL are there to prevent you from restricting others; you don't have the freedom to deny other people's freedoms. In the same way as in a free society you are not free to go around killing people. So, from that perspective, you could argue that, while more restrictive to the individual in receipt of the licensed material, the GPL has more freedom in it from the point of view of society.

Re:BSD

[Lando]

Heh, I agree with you in that it is less restrictive to those that want to use the code. Personally, I don't use BSD licensing because if I put something out on the market, I don't want someone else taking my work, hiding the code, extend it and resell it without other having the opportunity to do the same. That being said, there is no reason that you need to use GPL over BSD everyone is entitled to their own opinion and beliefs, just because it differs from mine, doesn't automatically make it wrong.

Re:BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

The modern software patent nonsense is hideously dangerous to developers and their employers, and neither the BSD nor Apache licenses provide any significant help with it. The GPLv3 now does.

Different tools for different tasks

[swillden]

Who'd a thunk it?

Internet is Growing Up, Becoming Square

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Personally, I think the whole open source gig is fading away. The next generation of programmers have been raised to live and program in flashy iDink walled gardens and have neither the interest or the inclination in releasing or collaborating on code.

In their world, code is something that is packaged into an app, approved by Apple, and then sold for profit. It is not something which can even be freely compiled and run on their devices, let alone shared and co-written.

Ultimately computers and the Internet are growing up, moving out into suburbia, and accepting pre-packaged convenience over creative potential. People want shiny and slick, and really couldn't care less freedom, code, control, or innovation. There's probably an App for feelings like that anyway.

The Internet is becoming squaresville, one settled Mac user at a time.

Re:Internet is Growing Up, Becoming Square

[swillden]

Personally, I think the whole open source gig is fading away. The next generation of programmers have been raised to live and program in flashy iDink walled gardens and have neither the interest or the inclination in releasing or collaborating on code.

This happened 30 years ago, except then it was the DOS and then Windows world. The F/LOSS movement largely came from a later generation of programmers who realized that walling everything up sucks and impedes progress. And, although it was before my time, I understand there was a similar dynamic a couple of decades before that. Seems like just another turn of the wheel -- assuming you're even right, which I doubt.

Re:Internet is Growing Up, Becoming Square

[gutnor]

People want shiny and slick, and really couldn't care less freedom, code, control, or innovation.

People never cared, only programmer and hacker ever did. OpenSource never delivered anything to the masses before they were packaged "for the masses" (Android, OSX).

The next generation of programmers have been raised to live and program in flashy iDink walled gardens and have neither the interest or the inclination in releasing or collaborating on code.

OpenSource is not a choice you make nowadays. You must use OpenSource or you don't deliver as fast as your competitor. If you create a framework, you must open source or you will never reach critical masses. You must participate in open source project, because that is too costly to maintain your own private fork and nobody care about your references if they are not commit id on github. And all of that is not counting the problem you have recruiting developers to develop your proprietary applications.

OpenSource has won in the development world. Unlike the previous generation, the current generation are not paid to develop closed source software, so forget them not too feel like rebels.

Re:Internet is Growing Up, Becoming Square

[Alex Belits]

There is enough embedded systems and in-house development to make the opinions of all all dinky app-store-bound developers completely irrelevant. The last time around with DOS software, a negligible minority of individual developers were able support themselves by writing anything sold to consumers -- that market, with exception of games, was quickly monopolized by Microsoft and Adobe. This time, things are shaping up in exactly the same way. Meanwhile, embedded systems and large IT/Internet-basdd services were developed with constantly growing percentage of Open Source and specifically GPL licensed software, and successfull thwarted at least two waves of Microsoft attacks on them.

Re:Internet is Growing Up, Becoming Square

[smellotron]

nobody care about your references if they are not commit id on github

That's an absurd thought. Plenty of code is written and not open-sourced or otherwise distributed to the public. This will remain true until we reach the Star Trek level of technology and culture.

Re:Internet is Growing Up, Becoming Square

[Anonymous Coward]

Programmers have to make a living. Those "flashy iDink walled gardens" you are so dismissive of are quite literally the best thing that has happened to American programmers since Y2K put all the old timers back to work as consultants. Not so long ago, we were all outsourced and discarded; now we can open our own shop, go independent, and actually succeed without working for a corporation. You're watching the evolution of the greatest cottage industry that has ever existed. It's a beautiful thing.

When you put the ideology of open source before the right of a programmer to earn a living, you lose, because it is the programmer who writes the code and decides what license to use. Don't tell us fairy stories about how you can "charge for support" because unless you're Red Hat, that's not going to happen. Don't tell us about alternate licensing schemes, because they don't work. The app store approach is the best one that has arisen in the past twenty years, and it will continue to be used.

Don't get me wrong. I love open source. For people who have lovely corporate jobs that allow them to participate, I'm sure it's very rewarding. For people who can afford to program on their own time as a hobby, I'm sure it's equally fun. I've released some open source libraries myself.

But at the end of the day, someone's gotta write a paycheck or you starve. SOME applications HAVE to be closed source so we can pay our bills. And we don't care whether you like it or not.

 

I've noticed one big difference

[msobkow]

Apache licenses are favoured by projects which have corporate sponsorship and funding.

GPL licenses are favoured by "grass roots" efforts which have no funding.

The question is the funding a cause or an effect of the choice of license?

Re:I've noticed one big difference

[Nadir]

Apache licenses are favoured by projects which have corporate sponsorship and funding.
</p><p>
GPL licenses are favoured by "grass roots" efforts which have no funding.
</p><p>
The question is the funding a cause or an effect of the choice of license?</p></quote>
Yes, like the first $1 billion open source company in the world... not! All of Red Hat's stuff is LGPL.

Re:I've noticed one big difference

[msobkow]

RedHat neither owns nor pays sponsorship to most of the projects they contribute to.

I'm thinking in terms of groups like Mozilla which receive actual cash funding from companies like Google for their work, not companies which have found a way to leverage the work of others to turn a profit. Or the actual Apache projects, which receive funding from some of the biggest IT firms in the world to develop and maintain "core infrastructure" components for the web world. Another one that comes to mind is Eclipse, with their IBM sponsorship.

Projects like the core GNU tools, on the other hand, were developed without the goal of sponsorship or turning a profit on the tools themselves.

I'm not saying either model or license is "better". Just wondering about the chicken-and-egg question: Did they receive funding because of the license, or did they choose the license because of the funding and influence of the companies involved?

Indeed, why GPL ?

[Anonymous Coward]

(I know TFT is a dupe post, but I'll post my comments anyway)

I do a lot of open-source. Most of my projects are either extremely small, small, or mid-range. Those projects are broad, ranging from small functions to small libraries, to full working applications and to full working systems. Some of those projects are indeed appreciated, but so far I can tell you that less than 1% of the code (either software, or HDL) came from third parties. So, people are likely to use, but less likely to contribute (most of them do not have the knowledge to contribute, so only a small part can effectively do it).

But why do so ?

Let me just make an overview here, we'll get to GPL later.

A few things can happen to an open-source project:
a) People love it, they are hackers, they want to improve it, you're a nice guy, they contribute. All thing gets merged in.
b) People love it, they don't know how to program, they want to improve it but don't have the means. They provide important feedback.
c) People love it, they hate you, they fork your project and follow like a).
d) People don't like it, or just ignore it, you're off. Nothing to see here.

So, how are you to license a project of your own ? If you go closed source (freeware, shareware) you get b) and d). Indeed these are the most common.
If you go open-source, chances are you get d) and b). Only in very specific situations you get a).

So, why would you release your project as GPL ? Why not Apache licenses, why not CC, why not BSD ?

That will depend on your expectations, and whether you allow commercial use (mean, give it *really* away for free without any reserve)

I don't recommend GPL unless for a), which indeed is the most uncommon. If indeed your project becomes popular, c) is going to happen. GPL is nice for community-based projects, it's not that nice for personal projects, because you either lose control of it (others fork it if they dislike you) or you don't have contributions at all.

I still use GPL for some of my projects (software), but not for hardware ones (I use BSD).

If you're starting a new project, think twice - although remember it's your own work - if no one contributes to your "mainline", you can change it's license at your own will (but previously released versions will keep the license in which they were released).

Also, GPL became so complex that people avoid using it. BSD and variants are easier to read and understand.

Alvie

Some ideas on GPL / Freedom etc

[jtotheh]

To restate the obvious:
There are two paradoxical possible twists to an open source license.
1. The user is allowed to use the source as part of a closed source product (which is a kind of freedom)
2. The user is obliged to make derivatives available as source (which ensures the greater freedom of other users/developers) (this is a restriction on the actions of user 1)

Neither one is complete freedom. They are both giving up something - the possible work of the downstream user or the business motivation of the first user.

The GPL's origin is in RMS' desire to be able to modify software that was produced by companies. It takes this to the extreme, basically by prohibiting closed source products based on GPL.

The benefit of this is mostly to developers, and within that, to developers who are independent. Software companies share code / secrets a lot as part of business, but under NDAs. The FSF has as a slogan "you deserve software that is free" but how many users want to exercise the freedom to modify and recompile their software?

More and more, FOSS is produced in a dual stream approach - Redhat/Fedora, Jboss community/pro, other things work this way like Jasper reports etc

The reality of this is that the code that is run in production is not "free" in an active way. When you pay for a supported version of RHEL or whatever you do not generally modify anything very deep inside it and then demand support for your modified version. The fact that you are paying for a supported version is a disincentive to using a modifed version, your own or anyone else's.

Also consider that the Linux kernel is largely developed by people working for IBM, Suse, Redhat, etc.

So while the lone developer wanting to add his improvements to the commercially produced and defective printer driver is a convincing story to argue for the GPL, the reality as it is today is different - it's more like the millions of Linux users who wish their hardware was supported but do not produce a driver for it. And I know they may not have access to the necessary information from the hardware maker, etc. Still, the number of people able and motivated to write OS-level code is small. I know I don't know enough to do it.

Nonetheless, the existence of (mostly) GPL OSes is an amazing thing. The access to knowledge for developers that that provides is awesome. But a lot of the requirements to stay GPL-pure do not sound like freedoms to me- requiring you not to buy certain(most) products, visit certain sites - it's ironic when, in the name of freedom, your freedom to act as you wish must be limited.

Re:Some ideas on GPL / Freedom etc

[Dr_Barnowl]

But a lot of the requirements to stay GPL-pure do not sound like freedoms to me- requiring you not to buy certain(most) products, visit certain sites

Could you cite examples of websites and products you must avoid? I'm aware that you must avoid certain source code if you wish to develop software with a corresponding function on the other side of the OSS divide, but I'm not aware of products I must avoid to be able to continue to use GPL?

Re:Some ideas on GPL / Freedom etc

[Anonymous Coward]

I asume that the author talks about being pure to the ideas of GPL, not the requirements to be GPL compliant.

Re:Some ideas on GPL / Freedom etc

[jtotheh]

I'm not talking about things that you are legally or practically blocked from using with GNU. I'm talking about what you do if you are really committed to the GNU philosophy. If you look at the all-in point of view of FSF/GNU, you should not run any software that is not free. So the Flash plugin for browsers is off limits. I guess you can visit youtube without flash, I don't think it'll work. (maybe I'm out of date here, but when youtube videos were in flash, that was the deal) Sites that use what is considered non-free software include Google Docs, Gmail , Dropbox. (Javascript apps that are obfuscated or sites that are tied to closed source programs etc)

Non-free products include any hardware for which the driver uses closed source "blobs" like broadcom wifi, some intel wifi, video cards - also video card drivers are a problem. "Most products" might be too extreme a word. But products that you need non-GNU software to use are pretty commonplace. Or the GNU software may not be equal in functionality to the proprietary ones.

Of course any OS that uses a kernel that is not free (meaning non-Linux,non-BSD, non Hurd) would be off limits.

Don't get me wrong, the GNU guys and girls are doing noble work - and many of their programs are BETTER than the proprietary ones or very innovative. I'm just trying to make the point that the word freedom is used to demand restrictions on behavior, which I find ironic.

Re:Some ideas on GPL / Freedom etc

[Alex Belits]

By this logic, any Monarchist in US has an obligation to kill himself.

Re:Some ideas on GPL / Freedom etc

[Dr_Barnowl]

the word freedom is used to demand restrictions on behavior

Everything you describe would be a personal choice though - the exercise of the freedom that you claim is being eroded. What's more, as an informed choice, it's a better choice. I admire Stallman for his moral fortitude, but even he bows to practicality and will fly on airplanes, etc, even though these things involve compromise. He will go much further out of his way to make a choice that he is morally comfortable with, electing to travel by train whenever practical (to avoid tracking of his movements), buying hardware with an open BIOS, etc, even when these involve compromise (I think the laptop in question is quite an underpowered netbook).

The GPL itself is a compromise. Yes, it keeps one key right from you - the right to take a piece of source code, build a program from it, and then hide the source for that program from people to whom you distribute it. This is in contrast to the BSD-style licenses which permit you just this right. GPL demands only that you sow as ye reaped. Both license grant rights that you would otherwise not have for copyrighted works - GPL just grants one less.

GPL doesn't demand that you give up your choice, it just demands that you grant the same choice to those that come after you. If you don't want to, you don't get to use GPL code in your program - and that choice is laid out for you beforehand.

Who Cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

You ask me: "Is GPL Licensing In Decline?"
I ask you: "Who Cares?"

if the GPL fits your goals (personal, business, etc.), then use it.
If the GPL doesn't fit your goals, then don't use it.

If the whole world goes GPL or I am the last person on Earth releasing code under the GPL license .. does it really matter, if we're all meeting our goals?

Natural tendency towards freedom

[StripedCow]

Of course, any library published with a restrictive license (GPL) will eventually be supplanted by a library with a more liberal license (BSD, etc)
The value proposition is simply better.

Re:Natural tendency towards freedom

[HuguesT]

Value proposition for whom ? I can see plenty of GPL software not about to be replace anytime soon. I can see some libraries and packages being reimplemented for the BSD O/Ses, but not all.

Can you give some examples ?

Re:Natural tendency towards freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

Anti-GPL forces have got you doing a nice Overton shift there, but plenty disagree that the GPL is more restrictive than BSD. I get that both perspectives can make a strong case, but your claim's fundamental truth is in your second sentence's underlying premise: Someone OTHER than the original author of code CAN RECAPTURE A MARKET ADVANTAGE FOR FINANCIAL GAIN UNDER BSD.

An ability to lock up source code for financial gain is a far different critter than code being truly unrestricted.

Re:Natural tendency towards freedom

[midicase]

I don't think so. I have found that BSD based software tends to lags in "bleeding edge" features (not that is is better or worse) since the people that use, customize and enhance BSD licensed software are not legally required to disclose these changes as it is required by GPL.

GPL is considered a liability

[Billly Gates]

Many banks and other companies that received threatening letters from SCO and MS salesmen have anti gnu or freeware policies in their organization. A famous Canadian bank even licenses for an obsolete version of SSH because BSD *might* be gnu. Funny, that the corporation just downloads the BSD one and repackages to the customer as its own for $$$.

Lawyers are afraid of it in big companies after several court cases with companies like Netgear being accused of copyright infringement for including Linux without the source in some of their embedded products.

I could turn this into a BSD vs GPL flameware but wont. There are many such as myself who feel comfortable using free software at work but would feel better modifying and shipping BSD versions which are more business friendly to customers and suppliers. Remember you are asking the company to ship its crown jewels away if they license it with GPL. It is true it may protect you agaisn't getting ripped off, but you have no way to know for sure.

Businesses do not like risk or to give away free things. They own them if they paid for the labor so why the risk?

Re:GPL is considered a liability

[Alex Belits]

Remember you are asking the company to ship its crown jewels away if they license it with GPL.

No. Just no.
I work for a company that uses embedded Linux, running all kinds of proprietary software. Linux and utilities are GPL, proprietary software is not, the latter runs on the former without any problems.

Now, if "crown jewels" were someone's extra-special version of GPL software, I wouldn't want to use it for reasons other than licensing -- the motivation would be suspect.

Re:GPL is considered a liability

[Anonymous Coward]

How can you say with a straight face that big companies are afraid of it (GPL software), when multi-billion dollar enterprises, including some of the largest IT companies in the world, such as Google and Facebook are built entirely on servers running the GPL Linux OS?

Re:GPL is considered a liability

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, the antiGPL astroturfers are out in force today. A lot of your claims are unsubstantiated hyperbole (being asked to ship the crown jewels away? When the lone example of hardware you mentioned probably saved 7 figures of OS/driver/app development costs by adopting Linux? Or 6 figures of licensing fees for some crufty proprietary appliance software? Bwah-hah-hah, you makes me larf.)

Not sure what provoked the whole rhetorical question even appearing on slashdot, but the answer's easy enough: Nope. Still writing and deploying GPL. It's eating proprietary's market by larger and larger percentages. And SCO hasn't sent a scary letter to a corporation threatening infringement in HOW many years???

Re:GPL is considered a liability

[Billly Gates]

Not an astroturfer at all.

Just explaining the thought processes in HR and legal departments in many workplaces. No you can't use a call to a library that is GPL and many of the programmers are not aware of the problem.

It is a risk and any risk is not necessary to take and why give away software at all? That gives teh users too much power and not enough leverage for the producer. If you do not want to give away your secrets and IP in your modified version of Linux then you have a problem. A BSD kernel is a better pick in such a scenario.

Re:GPL is considered a liability

[Billly Gates]

I hope you do not sell your embedded linux with the changes to customers without giving out the source code? That would count for redistribution unless you only use it internally.

Your lawyers and HR will not appreciate giving out million or hundreds of thousands of labor they made to competitors and various exploit writers.

Re:GPL is considered a liability

[Microlith]

Or you're making things up. Your credibility is such that it could go either way, really.

Re:GPL is considered a liability

[Alex Belits]

I hope you do not sell your embedded linux with the changes to customers without giving out the source code? That would count for redistribution unless you only use it internally.

We distribute all changes to Linux in sources. There is nothing (nor there should be) proprietary in there, Linux is a wonderful, flexible OS, it provides a foundation for all kinds of software without a need to be contaminated by application logic.

Your lawyers and HR will not appreciate giving out million or hundreds of thousands of labor they made to competitors and various exploit writers.

Our lawyers have no problems with that, as we comply with all licenses and contracts involved -- of all things, GPL is among the most straightforward ones. Our HR department has nothing to do with licensing.

Re:GPL is considered a liability

[Billly Gates]

No go ask any company who has a "No GNU" policy?

In your ideal world you are right. In the real world liability risks are considered in any major decision and the proof is of the article listed that GPL licensing in decline. Corporations do not care about freedom and you can't use an include to a GPL library unless the whole program is free. It is a fact. Go read the GPL? RMS specifically included that on purpose

Re:GPL is considered a liability

[Microlith]

No go ask any company who has a "No GNU" policy?

Dunno, I certainly don't work for one. Any company that has a "No GNU" policy either has lazy lawyers or PHBs that bought into FUD like is being spammed all over this thread.

you can't use an include to a GPL library unless the whole program is free.

Obviously. Do you have a less FUD-filled point to make?

Re:GPL is considered a liability

[Billly Gates]

No go ask any company who has a "No GNU" policy?

Dunno, I certainly don't work for one. Any company that has a "No GNU" policy either has lazy lawyers or PHBs that bought into FUD like is being spammed all over this thread.

you can't use an include to a GPL library unless the whole program is free.

Obviously. Do you have a less FUD-filled point to make?

So you just admitted my point that you can't link to a GPL api in your program. You can't use a GPL library for private use if you wish to retain ownership.

Copyleft and BSD like licenses are your only bet then. That was my point and why software companies shake their heads listening to free GNU zealots on how they can easily use an include statement without issue. You simply can't.

Re:GPL is considered a liability

[Microlith]

So you just admitted my point that you can't link to a GPL api in your program.

Admit nothing, it's obvious by virtue of the license.

You can't use a GPL library for private use if you wish to retain ownership.

Please be specific. Do you mean for private use or for use in a work you distribute?

That was my point and why software companies shake their heads listening to free GNU zealots on how they can easily use an include statement without issue. You simply can't.

I don't recall ever having read someone say this, anywhere. To suggest that this is a reason to not use GNU software in a private company is patently ridiculous, unless your lawyers are incompetent and can't discern the difference between the GPL and LGPL.

Re:GPL is considered a liability

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying either (a) this famous Canadian bank doesn't know how to read a copyright statement of the 3rd party's software, (b) they don't actually care that it's BSD + 3rd party copyright, or (c) that the 3rd party re-packaging the BSD version is violating copyright by removing the BSD copyright statement.

One of these must be true. And the sad part that none of them are favorable for the bank: (a) implies the bank is incompetent, (b) implies the bank is lying (e.g. maybe they were just looking for a way to pay the CEO's friend a hefty chunk of change?), and (c) admits impropriety and the bank is probably complicit.

GPL didn't do what people really wanted.

[91degrees]

The thing is, what coders wanted most of all was for people to use their code. They felt that under the GPL they'd also encourage other people to share. Instead it put people off using their code.

Other licences still don't allow people to close the existing code. Only the changes. Many companies who want to hang on to a few of their proprietary modifications of code are still often happy to give back something to the community so a more liberal licence will actually encourage more development.

No.

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

Stop the lie that GPL can infect your code

[caseih]

Whoops you just showed how ignorant you are of copyright law. If some intern puts in GPL code into your app, and you don't wish to GPL your app, then you are in a copyright violation situation. At this point you are liable for damages. But this would be the same situation as when your intern puts in code from any other unauthorized and unlicensed source. You have 3 options, after settling the damages part: 1. Remove the offending code. 2. GPL the rest of the code so as to comply with the license, or 3. purchase a commercial license for the offending code in terms you negotiate that are better for you.

Please stop streaming the lie that GPL can magically infect your proprietary code. It's companies that lie and then get caught that end up in a world of hurt when they've shipped out a product with thousands of units and then find themselves in a copyright violation situation. At that point I have no sympathy for them. They know the law, and they know that copyright gives them zero access to other peoples' code, except under license from the copyright holder.

Re:Stop the lie that GPL can infect your code

[caseih]

Ahem. The hazards of relying on a spell-checker. That should be "spreading" not "streaming," though in today's media world maybe the latter verb works.

Also, I should say that while there is such thing as a public domain, and there is code out there given to the public domain, most code, open source or not, free or not, is not in the public domain, and should be treated with proper care and caution, consulting your lawyers when there are questions. As a matter of policy, companies should treat open source code when developing software the same as code from any proprietary source. Licenses must be checked and terms abided by. Perhaps all companies are cavalier with their copyright compliance. Or maybe some are just with open source because it's "free." In the old days copyright violation was pretty hard to detect. Now, since open source code can be actually looked at by others, its signature can be found in binaries readily. Maybe only now are companies finally being caught for treating copyright with such contempt.

Linux doesn't have a stable API?

[dgharmon]

"my brother .. insisting that .. Linux doesn't have a stable ABI and API", Crosshair84

I hadn't realized that Linux doesn't have a stable ABI and API. Please explain how this negatively affects its performance on the desktop and in server space.

GPL is prohibited in many app stores

[dgharmon]

"GPL is prohibited in many app stores"

Which apps stores prohibit GPL software and what reasons do they provide?

Re:Linux doesn't have a stable ABI?

[unixisc]

Linux does very much have an API - that's not the problem. The ABI part - it's important when it's a question of having Linux (or any OS) recognized by the hardware that it needs to use - be it the sound, the wi-fi, the printer and any other hardware that needs to be accessed. Problem in Linux is that different versions of drivers work only w/ particular versions of the OS - you cannot mix and match driver versions and kernel versions. I found that out the hard way on Linux - I found an ALSA driver that would work w/ my RHEL5. Later, when that file system crapped on me and died and I had to do a re-install, I decided to install a different RHEL based distro, which had a few more software titles I was interested in. Getting the sound to work here was problematic - the ALSA version that I had did not work, and I had to, through trial and error, find the one that did. The sound quality was mediocre.

An ABI would have ensured that any driver written to it would work on any version of Linux (okay, I'll be reasonable and not insist that it works from Linux 1.0 to 2.0, but when it has problems b/w 2.1 and 2.3, that's unacceptable.) Otherwise, one has, what - some 17 revisions of the linux kernel times 9 revisions of ALSA, which would be what - some 150 different combinations one would have to try out? Who in the world has the time for all that?

This was just the sound - now, repeat the same exercise for Wi-Fi (which one has to have if one is going to go online to download anything that Linux advocates suggest getting in order to have one's system working. I never had Wi-Fi working w/ any of my Linux distros. I've pretty much given up on Linux, and would be trying out PC-BSD whenever I get it.

Debian joins OSI

[unixisc]

Yeah, and it's time to discuss something new. I didn't submit the following story, since it's now a month old, but I did find it interesting that Debian, which has always spoken the language of Free Software, decided to join the OSI.

Why? Debian itself has what it calls its 'Free software guidelines', and in it, Debian follows pretty much the same language as the FSF. However, the FSF refuses to recognize Debian as free software. Why? B'cos Debian 'also provides a repository of nonfree software. According to the project, this software is “not part of the Debian system,” but the repository is hosted on many of the project's main servers, and people can readily learn about these nonfree packages by browsing Debian's online package database.'

In other words, b'cos Debian decides to give its users the choice of using 'non-Free' software if they want to, the FSF blacklists them and doesn't endorse their distro. I fully agree w/ Hairy and Barbara above that this is a religion, and nothing illustrates my point better than this. It's not enought that an organization provide 'the community' w/ 'free software' - it's also necessary that they not provide anyone - not even those who want it - w/ non-Free software. This is what makes the FSF a bunch of fanatics who sane people would avoid.

Debian has done a good first step in joining OSI - something that IMO they should have done many moons ago. Next thing I hope they do is substitute the deceptive term 'free software' w/ 'open-source' wherever they can. Like they say in the announcement, they needn't embrace every license that the OSI has accepted as Open-Source, but at least, by being more business friendly than the FSF, and using more industry accepted terminology, they can get more monetary backing for Debian from the industry.

Mac Ports? Max Ruby?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, Apple are great because, to allow coders using Ruby to code their stuff to use Apple products, they write a ruby port.

Yeah.

Darwin Streaming Server? Ever heard of VLC? Another lock-in.

Remember, GPL2 doesn't specifically cite GPL licensing of patents. As to the other stuff? Never once heard of it.

Have you heard of CUPS? KHTML?

Re:Mac Ports? Max Ruby?

[beelsebob]

What about CUPS and KHTML? Both are projects Apple is contributing lots of code to, one is a project Apple owns; what point are you trying to make?

Why use GPL?

[eternaldoctorwho]

Why would anyone use GPL? A much better license is [license name]. It is obvious to anyone that the advantages include [arbitrary reasons]. In fact, [ad hominem]. When I was faced with this situation, I [irrelevant anecdote].
--
Vote Ron Paul, because [thinly veiled "I said so"].

Repeat a lie enough times...

[Requiem18th]

Not this shit again. How many times are going to have the same article over and over and over? Can we just move on please? This is getting stupid.

GPL on the rise

[MSG]

From an earlier Slashdot post:
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/03/03/142229/gpl-copyleft-on-the-rise

"Is Copyleft Being Framed?"

As we've seen something like 5 Slashdot posts based one 1 study, I would say that there is substantial evidence that the answer is "yes".

How interesting.

[BootysnapChristAlive]

Yeah, it's true.