Slashdot Mirror
Why the GPL Licensing Cops Are the Good Guys
Reader rtfa-troll writes: "'GPL enforcement by Software Freedom Conservancy puts electronics makers on notice, leaves business users untouched,' says Infoworld, going on to explain 'You are several orders of magnitude more likely to be raided by your proprietary suppliers, in the form of the Business Software Alliance, than to ever hear from SFC, let alone face any action. License compliance is a major and costly issue for proprietary software, but the case concerns an end-user license agreement (EULA), not a source license.' The article gives a good summary of why having GPL licenses enforced helps everybody, except for 'hardware manufacturers — typically those creating low-cost consumer and business electronics' who need to verify that they pass on the same rights to others as they received with the original code."
The people who support your ideal are the good guys, the people who don't are the bad guys.
The issue I have always had was the double standard that a lot of people in the Open Source Community have. It is OK to pirate Closed Source tool, but if a company breaks a rule in the GPL they should be fully punished. That is the most damaging part, because in order for the GPL to be respected the GPL community needs to respect the other Licenses out there.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Out of curiosity, If APIs cannot be copyrighted, does this mean they cannot also be covered by the GPL? This would seem to be a fairly major implication of the Oracle vs. Google case. (Speaking strictly about API definitions/header files.)
No licensing cops necessary. End of story.
You're welcome.
Then any cops you pay for are the good guys. It all boils down to control. And trying to keep control while releasing your 1's and 0's to the world.
I support violating software in any way shape or form you can imagine.
Your pattern of 1's and 0's deserves no special protection no matter what license you use.
Sometimes chaos is simpler and more acceptable.
Another job well-done, by the alleged editors. That link goes to the second page of a two-page article.
First page.
How do you know those are GPL advocates?
Dilbert RSS feed
And follow-up: how do you know those few dozen "commenters" that post in a single story are average /. "commenters"? Maybe pro-file-sharing advocates are more likely to post in file-sharing stories...
Dilbert RSS feed
I think the double standard come from the simple fact that no "serious" GPL advocate has ever tried to sue or extort money from mere users of GPL programs. On the other hand, the "evil" studios or their henchmen (army of lawyer types) appear hellbent on making every freeloading downloader pay. Typical targets of GPL "threats" tend to be companies not individual users.
the typical argument is 'we are robbing those evil studios so its ok'.
No, that's just a straw man. I suspect most people here wouldn't even call it "robbing." And there are people who are against copyright in general but believe that as long as copyright should exist, so should the GPL. I know simplifying the matter makes it easier to attack your opponents, but do lay off the straw men.
Also the merits of any given argument are not invalidated by the company in which they are held by individuals.
When you use laws to advance your agenda, you will find that the effects are not what you intended. These "good guys" appear to believe that enforcing the GPL would result in more mobile devices with all software on them open sourced. But that, of course, isn't going to happen. If a company does not want to release the source code now, it will not release the source code in the face of legal sanctions either. It will simply stop shipping the product. Then it will purge all GPL software from any future devices. Linux is not the only OS available, you know. Thus the end result of GPL enforcement is not more open source devices, but fewer. It is true that none of them will be "stealing" the work of GPL programmers, but is that really of any concern to anybody but them? The result for users is fewer available choices, each running on a proprietary OS with weird UIs. Is that what you are really after?
There was a time when it was common for most slashdot readers to be GPL advocates who wouldn't touch Windows with a 10 foot pole. That was long ago. Now, there are many, many Windows users. Some of them are GPL advocates, and others hate Linux. Nobody knows what the split is, since the vast majority of Slashdot readers don't post very often if at all.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
is not a serious GPL advocate?
Oh my god, is it really that hard to write an entire sentence in one place? It's a massive interruption to the reading process to have to think "what the fuck is he trying to say there?" for several seconds until you realise that the first half is hidden away in the subject line.
Well, the "average Slashdot commenter" is a fictional entity - an average between trolls, spammers, real commenters, with massive variation in how informed they are. There are all kinds here - conservatives, liberals, die-hard anarchists, windows users, mac users, linux people, and most importantly for this discussion, supporters of every single license ever made by man or troll!
If you could show a statistical correlation between the people here (or elsewhere) who advocate GPL and those who advocate infringement of proprietary software, I'd accept your point. Until then, it's hearsay and borderline slander.
Anyway, by "serious", I meant people like Stallman and Eben Moglen, who are actually doing the advocacy in a long-term, sustained manner.
Most importantly, the people running this operation are SFLC, FSF and others, who are definitely in the "use free alternatives, don't pirate" camp.
I think the double standard come from the simple fact that no "serious" GPL advocate has ever tried to sue or extort money from mere users of GPL programs. On the other hand, the "evil" studios or their henchmen (army of lawyer types) appear hellbent on making every freeloading downloader pay. Typical targets of GPL "threats" tend to be companies not individual users.
The GPL is not a EULA (End User License Agreement) which is funny because I have seen several GPL'ed products display the GPL on the installation screen. What am I supposed to do with that license? The installer does not install the source code and I am not compiling anything. The GPL is a "source" license, not an end user agreement. While the GPL might try to impose conditions on the original compiler and distributor of the binary derived from that code base, I am under no obligation to follow the GPL since I will not use the source code. I think it's fine to include the GPL as a separate file and references to the GPL in the program about screen but it is not an agreement that I should have to agree to on the installer wizard.
I may have a compiler on my computer and know how to use it but GPL advocates should pretend that any recipient of a binary has no interest in the source code.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
That screen is for information. In fact, several rights (and duties) are conferred on you when you accept the GPL. It's not only a source license - you received a binary of the software, and in that action, you received certain rights to the software. You should be informed of your rights and obligations under the GPL, same as under any other license.
It's hilarious that the people in favor of forcing "freedom" for software on everybody else define freedom to mean that everyone should do things according to THEIR rules. If code is truly free, release it in the public domain. Of course, THAT would mean that you can't control what people do with it later -- and control is what the GPL is all about, despite the pretensions of its fans. They care about getting the outcomes they want, not about individuals having freedom to do whatever they choose.
I never quite understood why many hardware producers do not provide linux drivers, or at least the means for third parties to write them. They simply have to conceal the fact that they are stealing from the open source community!
troll feeding mode: The real question is - is MyCleanPC licensed under GPLv3? You see, I'd like to see the source code to this available, so that if it is, as one suspects, a virus, one can alter it to become a real anti-virus and release it that way. And if any virus-authors get hold of it and want to make a virus out of it, they can do it, but they must release the source code to this baby. It should also not be on any locked-down hardware - freedom 3 of GNU - the freedom to modify and distribute the changes - should be there. Assure me that MyCleanPC is completely GPLv3 liberated software, and I'll be more than happy to look @ it. /troll feeding mode
While it's true that the FSF and the SFLC have advocated 'Use liberated alternatives', don't pirate has never been explicitly urged by any of them. In fact, in one of his essays (which I reproduced from the GNU website in a recent GPL thread on /.), Stallman clearly says that if your neighbor asks your for a software that you use, it would be wrong not to give it to him, under the 'help your neighbor' pretext. Nowhere does her ever urge people to stick to the terms of any agreement - he only argues on whether those agreements are ethical in the first place or not.
Stallman makes it a point to argue that the GPL is not about 'open-source', but rather, about the liberation of software. As in the 4 GNU freedoms. Your conflation of the GPL w/ open-source misses the point about why a lot of people - not just businesses, but non commercial software projects, want nothing to do w/ the GPL, even if they are convinced and have embraced the principle of open source.
On this one issue, even though I think they're being anal, I agree w/ Stallman and the FSF. Open Source is not so much a philosophy, as much as it's a development methodology, described @ length by ESR in 'The Cathedral and the Bazaar', so that a software project can leverage all the external help that it can get, in terms of peer review and what not, and ultimately release a software using terms and conditions it feels are most suitable to its goals. Some of the assumptions are over-optimistic, such as the 'millions of eyes' argument, since more often than not, the only people reviewing the source code of a program are the project members themselves, and maybe a handful of downstream users most interested in it. Otherwise, every open source program out there would be as excellent as Mozilla used to be. But the goal of the Open Source movement is just that - to ensure that source code accompanies the binaries of all software that changes hands. Now, whether the hands have to be changed or not, or whether the creators can impose other restrictions on the software not having to do w/ source code release - that's a different issue altogether.
What the FSF and Stallman advocate, and what the GPL protects, is something they misleadingly call 'Software Freedom', but which I more accurately describe as the 'Liberation of Software'. In Open Source, you can have licenses that restrict the distribution of software downstream, which most businesses that make their money from it would likely want to do, even if they like using Open Source while developing their apps. However, under the GPL, there's no way one can do that, since that would run afoul of Freedom 2 of the GPL, and even Freedom 3. Similarly, on the issue of 'Tivoization', Open Source doesn't have a problem w/ a company making a device in which the software is locked down, as it is in the case of Tivo. However, the FSF does have a big problem w/ that, which is one of the reasons they changed the GPL to come up w/ version 3, since it violates Freedom 3 of the GNU.
On the issue above of whether it's hypocritical or not to respect FOSS licenses while disregarding proprietary ones, the argument that the OP of this thread was making was if the GPL people cannot respect proprietary licenses and stay off software that uses licenses that they dislike, then they have no business complaining when other people violate the GPL while distributing GPLed software.
Yeah, seriously! What a nub!
Slashdot Valentines Beta Massacre: iT WORKED! The boycotts killed Beta!!
Slashdot has a large community of posters, but a community does not hold double standards, only individuals may do so. So, Slashdot has a (fairly large) set of community members promoting the GPL and similar licenses, and Slashdot has a set of community members advocating copyright infringement. But since we do not have any information about whether these sets overlap or not, we cannot accuse anyone of holding double standards.
The sets may be completely disjoint (i.e. have no common members), or they may overlap to an unknown extent. But even if they overlap, there is no "average poster" that can be accused of anything, all you have is a set of individuals holding double standards. Only if those sets are almost the same, you can reasonably accuse the "Slashdot GPL advocates" of double standards. But since we have no such information, no conclusions can be drawn, and there is no point in continuing this discussion until someone actually collects and compiles the positions held by a large number of Slashdot posters, so that we have some real data to discuss.
Did you ever consider that this partition may be what remains of the operating system shipped with the computer?
Define 'community'. 99% of all software is proprietary, and so if anybody has the statistical right to use that term, it'd be people like Windows users, OS-X users and so on. People who use GPLed software are an asterisk - and even the overwhelming majority of Android users, which is what gives Linux their numbers, don't care about source code. Or 'software freedom'. When someone can show statistical data that demonstrates that a majority of computer users know programming or people who do and want access to the source code for anytime they'd want something fixed, then start talking to us about the 'community'.
Then you should get out of your basement.
Really? Why is there a agree/not agree radio button before I can proceed? Exactly like the EULA software installers.
If it's for information, why must you click the "I Agree" button to continue?
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
But a community is made up of individuals. For instance, the KKK is a "community", and they certainly hold double standards. A political party is a "community" and I don't know of any organized political party that doesn't have double standards.
Communities have beliefs shared by most of the community.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
Why don't you actually read the fucking licence and realize why people still need to "agree" when installing software.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Friday (UNN) — Russian hackers have accepted €800,000 in donations from customers of Nordea, Sweden's largest bank, after a sophisticated "phishing" campaign recruited customers into downloading a Trojan horse program that recorded their account login details.
The Russians had looked up the definition of "hacker" in the Jargon File and been inspired to leverage the creative power of open source Free Software. The first campaign took place in August 2006 and was detected a month later, having affected around 250 Nordea customers.
The emails claimed to be from the Nordea Open Trojan Foundation, telling recipients to install an anti-spam and donation tool. Their computers were then infected by the Trojan HaxDoor.RMS.w32, which installs itself in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 and sends your passwords to its creators, but only after you have read through and accepted the GNU General Public License and checked the README file for known problems. The email also included full source code.
Swedish police traced the attacks to Russia by looking at the contact details, including address and phone number, included in the README. They have filed over 100 bugs on the creators' SourceForge project and joined the mailing lists on the grass-roots marketing and publicity site SpreadHaxDoor.com.
A Nordea spokesman said the attacks have "quietened down" after the initial influx last Autumn. "We are constantly looking at the security of our online banking and many different measures are taken. We are updating our systems behind the scenes. Many already run on enterprise Linux distributions, but we will be moving desktops to Linux as well for more efficient funds transfer with less reverse engineering required, and may recommend that our customers do the same."
The Trojan only affects computers running Windows. "For unsupported platforms, we have an 'honor system' which gives our details so you can send some money in," said a spokesman for the hacker group. "We hope this will help and encourage contributors interested in porting the Trojan to other operating environments."
http://rocknerd.co.uk
That's a piece of software. There is no such thing as "a software," "a hardware," or "a clothing."
Why don't you pop a Xanax and calm the fuck down?
Slashdot Valentines Beta Massacre: iT WORKED! The boycotts killed Beta!!
Between all the ad hominems and non sequitars in this article's comments, I'm shocked at the lack of logical thinking the FSF proponents are using!
Slashdot Valentines Beta Massacre: iT WORKED! The boycotts killed Beta!!
The only other case where it makes (less) sense is if a standard is coded, and one wants it to be open. If the goal is to encourage its use, BSD is better, but if the gual is to have it just as a teaching tool but not commercially viable, then GPL is right for it.
What? Was I trying to be logical?
Maybe we could simply encourage the companies to put their code changes in a repo, such as GitHub and just provide a link to their profile?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Because whoever made the installer did it wrong. When presented with the GPL in an installer, the button should read "Next" or "Continue".
You do not need to accept the GPL just to use GPLed software.
I would suggest that YOU actually read the fucking license. I have. Many times.
You do not need to agree to anything in the GPL in order to install or use the software. In fact, the license itself says you don't have to agree to it.
But a ton of GPL'd software requires you to click the "I Agree" to install.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
Dude, the GPL is one of the most simple licenses out there. Perhaps this isn't an issue with the other licenses because everyone just assumes that they will not be enforced, which strikes me as odd. But I still do not get how people miscontstrue the GPL in such a variety of ways.
If you make an image with GIMP the image does not need to be released under the GPL! You are free to use the GPLed program, in this case GIMP for any purpose (seriously, for *any purpose*). An image created using GIMP is not a derivative work of GIMP, since no part of GIMP exists in the image. If you were to modify the source code of GIMP, then that would be a derivative work, but so long as that work is not distributed, you still do not have any oblications under the GPL. If you release your modification of GIMP then you must provide the source code licensed under the GPL and not use patents/copyrights to sue anyone over their use of your modified GIMP.
So the GPL is completely viable for software that is used to create content, because it has absolutely no restrictions on that created content. You do not need to give people a copy of GIMP with every image you create with it, that is not what the text of the license says. Seriously, where did you get that idea? And just in case you need a citation, behold the GPL FAQ!
Seriously, where do you get this sort of misinformation?
On a side note, the ffmpeg issue is not as clear cut as you claim, since they don't use a normal GPL, but use a modified LGPL v2. I haven't read the ffmpeg license, but the LGPL allows linking, so they don't have to distribute ffmpeg, and it most likely doesn't properly exist in their software product anyways (remember, linking).
Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
GPL has nothing to do with a very different issue which is the surveillance society that the media industry is trying to foster on us.
The only "interface" is when this industry is trying to use DRM which cannot be implemented with a GPL license (as it would be trivial to make a small modification which would then bypass the control and redistribute it).
Then the GPL supporters are aligning themselves with the "piratebay" users.
The wast majority of the "pirates" are windows or macox users, do you think that Apple and Microsoft are "pro piracy" ?
Getting the "GPL" at installation point is just a way or the "packagers" who provide you with the software to inform you that you might, if you'd wish get the source.
Of course they would put it in a separate file, and some do, but it's useful to educate people about the existence of this file, and a spash screen is an easy way.
So that you know that you cannot duplicate this software, slap a price on it, and distribute it while witholding the source.
You cannot just do a binary patch changing the license into : "please send me money"...
Just plain not true, you can use gcc to write non GPL software, and emacs to write a non CC nor FDL book.
You are bound by the GPL only if you redistribute the GPL code (modified or not), in the case of the GCC it even says explicitelly that the "chunks of code" it might reuse in the generated code are not GPL, since they are just a "traduction" of your "code"..
The patent issue that you allude to in the video media comment is just the main reason the GPL V3 was created to avoid that people on one hand create liberties using GPL code, and then take them away with software patents..
The issue there is not the GPL but the minefield the US Patent code has created for IT, software patents are always a bad idea.
What is interesting is that you should be allowed to install and use the program -- WHETHER OR NOT you accept the GPL.
If you say "No", you have can use the program, but not distribute it. If you say "Yes", you can distribute the program as well.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
Damn, I knew I missed something on my computer, I have no win anything partition...
But then it's my bad I'm not playing video games, which is the usual excuse...
And if i did have a partition, it would be one I paid with my computer (although I would have prefered not to pay it but in practice had no choice, so I delete about 100$ when I cleaned my disk...
And did you ever wonder, why they "had" to have such a partition ? (usually not pirated because it's unfortunately not necessary ?)
For instance a friend of mine has an "educational management application" that only runs under windows that she is forced to use because the school she is working for has been conned into a agreement by the local microsoft "partner"....
Does that make her an hypocrite, or somebody who has the choice between keeping her job or not ?
My guess is that the GPL originated before content creation products were ever thought of being done in an open source way
You mean like that "emacs" thing?
While users can "benefit" from the GPL, they can't break the GPL. Only people who redistribute the software with changes. This tends to be companies. In music cases, no companies are involved. And the end users are actually doing the dirty work.
The reasoning is that the created content is a derivative of the software,
I'm not a big fan of GPL, v2 or v3 (or v1). But this is so not true. The software is a tool. You can'y convince anyone, that the final result is a derivative of the tool.
So if you see a copyrighted work without a licence...you assume you can do these things?
Greed is good, It always has been always will.
Laziness, I would assume...
"Agree" is probably in a lot of license-screen templates, and people don't bother changing it. And besides, you've got to agree to a license, right? Right?
People who make the installer probably don't even understand what's correct there. Anyway, that's a pretty trivial issue.
How do you know those are GPL advocates?
He doesn't, that seems to be the question he's asking: ... is not a serious GPL advocate?
so the avg slashdot commenter
Slap a price on it is very much allowed, and even encouraged by the GPL. However, what isn't allowed is restricting any re-distribution, and that's what acts as a price dampener for the software being covered.
Yeah, that's why I wrote my follow-up question below: how does parent know they're "average slashdot commenters"?
Dilbert RSS feed
of course not, since the default "license" on copyright work requires you to ask the right holder.
The issue with software is that people expect it to be "different" from another "written work", although there is no real reason for it, except that what you use is typically the "binary" and not the source, this makes it somewhat less obvious (yes I know at the end the only difference between the source and the binary is "cosmetic", but that is not obvious for most users).
So people who do add a "say yes" on the GPL try to make the conditions obvious to their users.
Moreover by offering an "EULA" like user experience, they try to communicate that this is not just a "freebee" but a real part of the economy, yes it works differently, but nevertheless it's an economical agent just like any other.
The "crux" of the debate is really the following: about 85% of all software is "bespoken"; 15% is "licenced somehow".
Free Software in an industrial setup main business model is to extract part of this 85% and put it in the 15% pot, the rational being that since it has to be paid anyway, and since typically it is not worthwhile for one company to spin off a small software activity because the launch cost are to high to leverage just the piece that it built, it is a rational choice to "give it away", and hope that the general development of software will accelerate because we do not need to reinvent the wheel so much.
That's not a problem. I agree to the text, meaning I agree that I do not have to agree to the *other* parts of the text.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#ClickThrough
I disagree. There are situations (eg: looking for a library to use with a propretary product) where I sadly cannot use the GPL. In those cases, I'd rather find out before fully installing the sources, so that if I end up needing to reimplement the library myself, I can honestly say I never even unloaded the GPL source code on my machine.
Couple of questions I've always had about the GPL: a) Do developers understand the GPL when they license their code with it? b) Do open source projects choose the GPL as a default because its the most common open source license? Do they understand the alternatives like Apache or BSD, for example? c) Do companies using open source GPL code understand their obligations? My general comment on use of commercial use of open source is that often, especially where its embedded in products, companies are using it because it's perceived to be free (as in free cost but also free-to-do-what-you-want.) Often companies don't understand the viral nature when GPL code is embedded in a product and that their obligations under the license extend to each and every product they ship. Many of the cases of chasing after infringers have been related to redistribution in products where the main vendor is unaware of the implications (Cisco/Linksys, Westinghouse HDTV.) The important point is that most (all?) open source software is licensed and thus carries obligations.
The good ol' days :).
I'm not fond of the GPL in the context of GPLv3, since v3 tries to assert rights that make it legally impossible to use in a business.
Untrue.
The grey area comes from GPL programs that create content (eg the GCC compiler, Gimp, Inkscape, and various other content creation tools) since in a legal context there is no difference between source code and content when it comes to copyright.
Untrue.
So oddly, enough the reason you can't get people to use the Gimp, or Inkscape over photoshop and illustrator.
Untrue.
the GPL licence requires them to release their original files if it was created in the program.
Untrue.
Ok, you are right in those cases. But they differ from .e.g. Slashdot in that Slashdot has a large community with very diverse opinions about almost everything, which is not really comparable to a political party, which more or less requires that everyone subscribe to the same set of values and the same political agenda.
You need to accept some kind of license in order to use it. What legal basis do you have right to use the software then ? (you need to answer this without referring back to the GPL, as you say you don't need to accept the terms to use the software)
By default Copyright alone does not grant you any right to use software and the ONLY license available (and on offer to you) is the GPL.
The GPL just so happens to also grant you even more rights than just the right to use.