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How Will Steam on GNU/Linux Affect Software Freedom?
rms has published his thoughts on Steam coming to GNU/Linux. He notes that the availability of proprietary games may very well help spread GNU/Linux (but the FSF prioritizes spreading software freedom). And, you're better off at least having a Free operating system instead of Windows: "My guess is that the direct good effect will be bigger than the direct harm. But there is also an indirect effect: what does the use of these games teach people in our community? Any GNU/Linux distro that comes with software to offer these games will teach users that the point is not freedom. Nonfree software in GNU/Linux distros already works against the goal of freedom. Adding these games to a distro would augment that effect."
Or: How will the FOSS community affect Valve? Already they've contributed a bit to the graphics stack, hired a few folks from inside the community, etc. But Steam also makes use of DRM and distributes software in ways that are opposed to the ideals of many in the FOSS community (and even the wider Free Culture community). Given Gabe Newell's professed love for openness, might we see their company culture infiltrated?
...who intentionally confuse the freedoms of the user with the freedoms of the proprietary software developer.
Linux has failed on the desktop for the past decades and will continue to fail on the desktop in the future decades.
Face it the ONLY thing bringing Linux to the desktop currently is GAMING.
Would you prefer Origins on Linux or Steam? Frankly I would prefer neither as both are VERY ANTI COMPETITIVE but Linux needs something and this could be it.
frankly, i don't see the point why some of us should be ideologues in the community. it's divisive and it may not allow for greater efficiency. I'd go with what Linus said "whatever works best"
There are plenty of free game engines out there, we don't need all of them to be free. The assets will never be free either, and that's the product in the end, that's what the game is all about.
The engine being free would make supporting the games in the future easier, but with the underlying architecture of the platform being open and well documented, it isn't impossible.
Twinstiq, game news
I say this as a free software developer: At some point, you just want software and don't care about the politics. Not everything has to be political -- just look at Chick-Fil-A as an example of how this way of thinking can backfire.
I play games for entertainment, not to make a political statement. Let's keep the two worlds separate.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Asking for information, not trolling:
What is the point of the BSD licence? Why not just go straight to public domain (for new works)?
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
It indemnifies the original author from any damages arising from use of the software.
i.e. if some company uses it and their product kills 50 people, the original author can't be held liable.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
The only freedom the GPL takes away is the freedom to take the other freedoms away. If you value other people's freedom as much as your own, the GPL takes nothing from you. If you on the other hand are someone who takes without giving, then the GPL is still the right license, to protect against you.
Free software is most certainly an admirable goal.
But if market forces and existing conditions mean that proprietary software is the most expedient way to get the software delivered to the customer, then that's what will happen.
Valve gets Linux bugs fixed, and they can make legitimate and credible arguments for things that should be changed about Linux. There is no doubt that they are contributing to the long term health and stability of linux.
If the vendor has proprietary software and the customer finds it to be the best solution, the job of the operating system is to get out of the way and allow the customer to do what he wants.
The goal of GNU and the FSF was never to lock out commercial providers, but to provide a free core system. Nothing is being broken, stolen, taken away, or rescinded.
The whole article is nothing but pseudo-pedantic flame bait.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
They actually took that clause out ..
The main point is liability. If you put something in public domain, and it ends up say, as part of the coffee maker temperature controller on an airplane, malfunctions, and leads to loss of life.. you could be liable. The BSD specifically spells out that the author is not liable.
I don't follow the politics of Linux so please bear with me. Couldn't this be a paradox because Steam coming to Linux could be a game changer, pardon the pun, for mainstream adoption but could it not open up patent claims against it? While Microsoft, for instance, is currently having a benign attitude towards Linux with their Hyper-V support in the Kernel, couldn't they go into attack mode and wheel out patent claims if they feel their MS Windows Gaming/XBox platforms threatened by Steam on Linux?
that emacs and gcc were written on HPUX systems
what's the "lesson" to be learned from these programs?
Did Google Earth for linux affect software freedom?
How about VMWare Workstation?
Do these products take away our choices?
Do they take away choices from people who don't even use them?
IIRC BSD license basically says "do what you want, but credit us".
There's also a liability limitation clause and a prohibition on changing the license or removing the copyright notice. The variation in the BSD licenses (there's a few closely related ones) mostly stems from just how much attribution is required; some want rather more than others. The difference rarely gets BSD people very worked up.
The net effect of the BSD license is to disclaim economic rights while maintaining something as close to moral rights as is recognized by US copyright law. You'd word it differently in European copyright law, where moral rights are recognized as as separate concern completely to economic rights (and aren't normally traded).
There's nothing wrong with wanting credit for one's own work. If it's in public domain, however, people can just use it, and I believe it's not illegal to claim the work is yours, though they won't have licensing/ownership rights
If something is truly in the public domain, you can do anything with it. This includes adding text to it that looks like a copyright notice. (I think this wouldn't make your copy of the work be non-PD in itself, as copyright notices in themselves are not a substantive creative element of any work, but I can't be sure. But the placing of the text there, that can be done.) There are also jurisdictions (not in the US) where the only way a work can enter the PD is by having its copyright term expire. PD is way more complicated than BSD (or the GPL variations), even though it sounds like ought to be simpler at first.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Why has it automatically "failed" simply because it's not on every Tom, Dick and Harry's desktop?
So far, GNU/Linux on the desktop has "failed" to become widespread enough that users expect to have local support options of the "carry in your PC and we'll fix it" sort. And until Valve's recent announcement, it has "failed" to attract developers of major killer apps.
I see this as a great thing because games is pretty much the last reason I have for a dual boot system. Anything serious I do under Linux as its a far better tool, but some of my favorite games are windows-only so I still need a windows partition around. Assuming they start to port most windows games to Linux too, I can finally dump my windows partition.
I know gaming won't change any minds in corporate IT depts, but at least it may encourage non-technical users to try Linux at home. It seems that a large reason corporates have for justifying continuing to force their employees onto Windows is that "everyone is more familiar with Windows than Linux". Lets hope steam on Linux can help to change that too.
I sorta know what you mean. I appreciate the 'freedom' of OSS but when people make the politics more important than the platform it gets annoying.
Ok, so BSD protects software authors from lawyers while GPL protects software users from exploiters?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
The GPL gives lots of freedom to the peole using it, it only remove the "freedom" to remove somebody else's freedom.
There are many reasons that can justify BSD type licences over GPL, but they all boil down to:
"I would like to use this software in something proprietary..."
And it would be much better to state this clearly rather than vaguely allude to the GPL "being not what I think others should want.."
I consider games not to be "software" for some time, it became part of entertainment industry, like films or music. It is created by large studios where programmers are only one ever smaller part of team. For this reason, I consider Steam equivalent of YouTube: channel that enables me to consume commercial entertainment, on my free OS, that remains fully GPL (minus GPU driver).
839*929
There is a very specific definition of "free" being used in this context; opening up the software to modders in the fashion Valve has does not qualify. The wikipedia article on the subject explains it well. The importance of this definition of "free" and what could or should be done about it is what the debate here is revolving around; the definition of what does or does not qualify is well established by this point.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
OH REALLY??? WHERE OH WHERE ARE THE INTERPRETED DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENTS FOR IOS?? NOWHERE!!! They violate the TOS and are DISALLOWED.
SO MUCH FOR "EASY DEVELOPMENT"
This is the reason I disable capslock on computers that I install...
c++;
If you put something in public domain, and it ends up say, as part of the coffee maker temperature controller on an airplane, malfunctions, and leads to loss of life.. you could be liable.
On what basis?
If you haven't received anything in return or given any sort of advice, commitment or guarantee, and someone chooses to use something that you happened to have released to the public domain in an inappropriate way, under what law(s) in what jurisdiction(s) can that affect you?
As an aside, in many places you can't effectively disclaim any liability you do have for things like causing loss of life anyway, and in some places you're likely to get a pretty rough time in court if you tried.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
In terms of software freedom, Steam won't affect much itself. The client is proprietary and as far as I know, every single game featured on Steam is proprietary (although stuff like the iD games can be run using replacement open source engines), but basically it's all one big closed-source pot. It will bring more attention to Linux and maybe some more commercial games, but that's about all.
Now, the only problem I can see is that bringing Steam into Linux will mean another selection of users will becomes used to the idea of DRM (Steam) and having games tied to a single point of failure (Steam), whereas before they were used to having installers that you could backup and install without requiring verification from a third-party. But anyone who's read my posts know I'm beating a dead horse here - I've said it all before about the dangers of keeping all your eggs in one basket, but from what I can tell, games are a special class of software in which this isn't really a concern. It's not crucial or necessary software, so a hypothetical scenario in which you can't play anything due to issues with Steam verification in a longer term scenario don't phase people much.
TL;DR : Steam on Linux will increase Linux's perception in the gaming world, increase its usage base for a bit (at least until some people go back to Windows because it runs some particular tool they didn't realize they needed before throwing away Windows after being swept away in the hype), but it won't do shit for software freedom.
Most people on Slashdot are fucking idiots.
RMS probably somewhat inadvertently made a very interesting remark.
He separates the Game Art from the Game Software...
And admits that Game Art could be "non free"...
One of my current activities is designing Gaming Maths, the way the maths are made has a strong impact on the enjoyment (or lack of) any game.
I would argue that the "artistic" as opposed to "software" component is just as great as the artistic component of the graphics.
I also think that there is a fundamental difference in Gaming apps versus Infrastructure or Activity Apps.
If I provide a text processing system or an OS or an Identity management app, all user data trapped into these applications are naturally "content" owned by the user, and it should be normal for the user to be able to share it just as s/he wants.
And it is immoral to force them to be promoter of their software if they want others to be able to read their presentation, or share files, etc...
But Gaming datas are for the most part relevant only in the game, and although some elements like "avatar design" might be usefully standardized, most parts should not been seen or manipulated outside of the game, because it would destroy the interest and artistic integrity of the game.
Having the "freedom" of adding 10000000 flogotz to my flogotz count is meaning less, and if I really want I could just lie about having found the amulet of yendor...
Reading the source code of a game is interesting, but I do believe that the social contract between a game designer and a tool designer is very different, and not just for the game graphics.
Therefore I think RMS can be assurer that at the end Valve opening to Gnu/Linux is not just neutral but a real gain.
And I think that instead avoiding to speak about it, it would be better to explain that:
There are interesting free games that you can use to play and to learn "how it is done"
There are interesting tools like Ogre3D to help you write games.
And there are non free games, it is somewhat frustrating because it might need something you do not have (if you processor is a MIPS it will probably not run), but it is very different from a non free Tool, and you are welcome to it.
And hopefully game designer will work with the various communities to make sure that the coverage is as global as possible, and not just as "economically optimal"....
If a developer chooses to restrict the choices of his/her users, the user is more than welcome to find another solution to his/her problem, leaving the user in the exact same position as if the software was never developed. The users have had nothing taken from them. (We'll leave software patents out of it, which are separate from copyright; you'll get no argument from me that software patents are a good idea. Most developers of proprietary software hate them just as much as RMS.)
I have no issues whatsoever with the GPL itself. I have no issues with the obligations it puts on distributors and re developers of the software. I DO have issues with the idea that developers should feel morally obligated to use it, or something like it. The developers should be free to choose whatever license he/she wishes, as long as the terms are disclosed to the user prior to purchase.
The "problem" is that the FOSS community is split right down the middle. On the one hand you have those that want things to "just work" and to have a true "third way" instead of only Windows and OSX, and then you have the "free as in freedom above all!" types that frankly don't give a shit how big a royal PITA the OS or software is as long as they get the source, your RMS faction.
Personally I predict that unless steam or somebody high up, say Canonical, simply forks things away from the devs you simply won't have Steam functional for very long because there are too many "source above all!" types in the kernel team. look up the ONLY major argument you get from a member of the kernel team about hardware ABIs and you'll see its a religious argument, with him going so far as to say "I hope everyone who uses binary blobs have their drivers break often!" which if that isn't religious dogma I don't know what is.
In the end as one of the Red hat devs points out the current system is completely broken and will only get worse because the current Linux philosophy simply doesn't scale, why? Because a handful of devs simply can't provide QA or QC for tens of billions of lines of code, tens of thousands of drivers, and thousands of programs in the repos, that's why. That is why you get half baked software in the repos, drivers that work in foo but not in foo+1, its not because the devs want to break shit its that there is no way in hell to test everything before release.
I just hope things like Steam on Linux will bring about real conversation and change, because I too would like a third way but at least for me and my customers Linux just isn't there yet. But if things don't change I have a feeling Valve is gonna find they need a huge dev team just to keep Steam running, much less add any new features, because it is simply too easy for someone upstream to make a change and break everything downstream.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Firstly, the article was written by Richard Stallman himself (you know, the founder of the FSF, and the architect of much of GNU); I would think he would know what its goals are.
Linus's goal is to provide a free core system. The goal of the FSF is to convince the world that proprietary software is bad and should not exist. ("GNU" is a system, and therefore cannot have goals in and of itself.) Please refer to such fine articles like "Why Software Should Not Have Owners" ( http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html ) or Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software ( http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html )
Frankly, I'm surprised that there was some non-trivial number of Slashdot mods equally ignorant of who RMS is and the goals of the FSF.
Because you can't put things in the public domain. Works fall in the public domain once copyright expires, but you cannot force copyright to expire.
That's a pretty naive statement. Your complaint should be against intrusive DRM, abuse of legal system, persecution of randomly selected people to make an example. None of which have jack shit to do with Steam which has a DRM so transparent as to be unnoticeable MOST of the time, and is developed by a company that has never been accused of the other things I mentioned. If all DRM were like Steam and all media companies like Valve, most people would have damn little to complain about. It must be sad to walk around thinking that even the guys that try to do things the right way are just as bad as the bastards. You're in for a lifetime of disappointment, stay away from computers and try knitting.
Hard to see where "no games" is a benefit to anyone
You will stay ideologically pure. To ideologues, this is a benefit.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I've worked for both TI and the games industry all my professional life. With very limited exceptions I'd say Free Software and video games are not really compatible with each other. In fact, most of the time game companies are allergic to openness out of necessity.
The video game industry is tough and fierce. Much of the competitive advantages of any large studio come directly from the propietary technology they develop for their own games or the engines they license to other studios. Unreal Engine is a very good example of this.
Game companies, from the biggest manufacturer to the smallest studio, are plagued with trade secrets, patents, copyrighted code and tools that can't just be combined easily with their open counterparts. I don't see Valve's culture 'infiltrated' anytime soon because of this.
I think it's great for Linux users to be able to play games without having to boot Windows. But that comes with a compromise: not many advanced users install Ubuntu for their primary computer and I really doubt the software components and drivers needed to run Steam will be well supported in any other distro. Fedora, RHEL and Debian, for instance, have a policy of not including proprietary drivers or patent-encumbered software in the installation disc/image. It may be harder for the users of those distros to make it work.
In conclusion, it's a big win for the Linux user community but not so for the Free Software community.
- Otaku no naka no otaku, otaking da!!!
It's strange that free software, which is supposed to have all these advantages over proprietary, is so threatened by something as simple as the availability of some games on Linux.
Steam will be in some repos and not in others, valve will make a double click installer, and the only people who will care will be "freedom zealots" and a few people who chose the wrong distro and have to google how to install steam.
There are certainly places where you wouldn't be liable either way, and others where you could regardless of any disclaimer, but there are some places were you could be liable if you don't have it, like US.
[...]anybody notice how the Anti-BSD GPLers sound a HELL of a lot like the RIAA? Both act as if copying is stealing, both come up with these giant FUD scenarios of doom which never seem to happen, and both act as if THEIR way is the only 'right" choice and frankly you are an idiot or "one of THEM!"[...]
Ok, so BSD protects software authors from lawyers while GPL protects software users from exploiters?
By 'exploiters' you just mean people who don't share your world view.
The BSD license only protects software authors from lawyers, while the GPL also protects the software itself from the lawyers as well.
No.
I mean people who would violate the spirit and intent of the shared software that I and others have developed, by closing it and making it unavailable.
This is a practical necessity, given that patents and copyrights exist as an impediment to the type of knowledge sharing that allowed luminaries such as Isaac Newton to stand on the shoulders of giants.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I don't see how you, user, can claim any sort of moral authority to do whatever you like with my hard-earned time and effort. (Assuming, of course, my time and effort isn't based on Free software.) You want to write your own software and give it away for free to all and sundry, be my guest. But do not presume that I am under an obligation of any sort to give my product away. If that's a problem for you, you are certainly Free to not use anything I (or other developer of non-Free software) have created.
You can not trust proprietary software all you like and refuse to use it; that's fine by me. Nobody's forcing software on you. Now certainly interop and standards are a big deal, but if a standard requires interop with non-Free products... well, develop your own standard. Linus wanted a UNIX kernel that was Free, so instead of whining about how mean AT&T was, he wrote one.
There are indeed many pragmatic reasons to use the GPL, and as I stated earlier, I have absolutely no issues with it. None. I can see why a developer would choose it, and I think that it's a great tool. I applaud the efforts of those who want to make sure there are viable Linux distributions free of proprietary encumbrances.
Linux "stands for" a Free OS. Nothing more. I don't recall Linus ever stating he didn't want proprietary software to run on top of it.
GPL has a requirement. All requirements remove freedom.
I suppose that's a possible interpretation of freedom, but in a more practical sense I think your confusing freedom with anarchy. Anarchy says "do what you want, no matter what harm it causes others." Freedom means "your right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins." In a world of shared resources, freedom is a balance, not an extreme. GPL and BSD just take different stances on that balance. BSD gives those that extend the code more freedom to limit their users. GPL limits the extender's freedom and instead gives more freedom to users down the line.
It's only "too restrictive" if you accept the BSD concept of "software freedom". If you accept the GNU concept of "software freedom", the BSD licenses are "too restrictive" (ie. ultimately more freedom limiting). In other words, the term "software freedom" has a completely different meaning for a GNU-ist than it does for a BSD-ist.
As to which license is ultimately more beneficial, I think it depends on the software project (and the stakeholder one is talking about). Neither are one-size-fits-all. I'm glad the linux kernel is GPL. I'm glad things like Django are BSD licensed. I think it depends on the project and situation.
No offense, but I think you are suffering from being used to one thing and missing it when you don't have it. I've worked 20 years as a programmer, about half in a Windows environment and half in an embedded/Unix environment. When programming in an embedded or Unix environment we always used the GNU tool chain because it's what all of the programmers preferred.
Anyway, I vastly prefer the available free software tools over any proprietary platform. For example, for source management, nothing beats Git (well, I can understand why some people prefer Mercurial, but that's free software too). I've used Perforce, Clear Case, and (god help me) Source Safe. They slow me down dramatically. For build management, a lot of Windows programmers use the tools built in to Visual Studio, but this makes continuous integration virtually impossible. I want a continuous build running. I want to know if a check in broke the build immediately, not a day later. All of the best continuous build tools are free software (and many of them have Visual Studio plugins in case you just can't wean yourself from it). Are there any TDD frameworks that aren't free software in existance??? I don't know of any. For build tools, if I'm writing C++ or C the Auto tools are dramatically better than anything I've ever seen on Windows (though I admit they are *very* cryptic and require time to learn). For other languages, I just tend to use whatever the language provides -- Ant for Java, Rake for Ruby, whatever. There are some IDE tools, but they only really work in Mickey Mouse situations, not in large software projects.
There are a couple of places where I'll give the nod to some of the proprietary software tools. Personally, I like vi (and even Emacs -- I'm bilingual) along with exuberant ctags. I'm dramatically more productive with that than with any IDE I've tried (and I probably have tried them all). The one place where Visual Studio excels is in refactoring tools. But in the end, not having them doesn't slow me down enough to use VS. If you are used to VS, I can see why you wouldn't want to learn anything else. Editors are really personal. It's a pity that people choose to learn tools that are only available on a single platform, but there you go...
For writing a manual.... Seriously, Word???? That's just nuts. You can't write a decent manual in Word because you just don't have the typesetting features. I suppose if it's not a professional manual (which is why a programmer is writing it)... I wouldn't use Open Office either. If I had to write a manual, it would certainly be LaTeX, which would give me good output and would be much easier to write to boot. You do have to learn, it though. Having said that, there are no particularly good typesetting packages available in free software that a documentation expert would likely want to use. But Word also fits that description.
As for having to use the command line... You *are* a programmer aren't you? Seriously, scripting is your friend. You save soooo much time. I think you are used to doing things one way and even though the new way is dramatically better, you aren't used to it. There's a reason why people used to working on Unix like systems haven't embraced the point and click programming IDE. Command line interfaces and specially built tools that do their task exceptionally well are much, much, better.
It's a pity, because I've met many programmers like you when I worked in Windows-only shops. It doesn't take that much time to show the benefit of the tools available in a free software environment. But if you don't know, then you don't know.
So it clearly is just people who have a different world view to yours.
That's an interesting way of saying "people who would take my work and disregard my goals while distributing it". I choose GPL for a reason...
Wrong, the ability to close it and make it unavailable is absolutely not a characteristic of permissive OSS licenses, that's just disingenuous fear-mongering,
BSD freedoms ARE lossy. There is BSD code in use by Microsoft and Apple that has been extended, closed and made unavailable to the community. That sort of makes BSD code long-term unsustainable.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
That's an interesting way of saying "people who would take my work and disregard my goals while distributing it".
No, it's quite clear, when i distribute code under a permissive license that is purely alturistic, do what you will, you don't have to conform to my world view if you don't want to, you're not an 'exploiter'. You only consider them 'exploiters' because they don't have the same world view as you do.
BSD freedoms ARE lossy. There is BSD code in use by Microsoft and Apple that has been extended, closed and made unavailable to the community.
Wrong again, that BSD code is not closed or unavailable.
That sort of makes BSD code long-term unsustainable.
Yes clearly Apache, Webkit, the BSD kernel, etc... aren't sustainable.
GPL is too restrictive.
I'll never understand this argument. You want people to write code that anyone can use and strip away the users rights (that is, take the code, change it, and make it proprietary, so people can't even see the new code, let alone make modifications to it, yet you don't want people to write code that people who modify it and redistribute it have to give back.
If it helps, why not use GPLed code the same way you'd use proprietary software. That is, download it, use it, and pretend that you don't have the right to distribute it at all.
My point is this: If you're okay with a license that's permissive enough to allow people to use it to make proprietary software, then you're probably also fine with proprietary software. If that's the case, what's your problem with a license that gives you more rights than proprietary software? It doesn't make any sense.
Both act as if copying is stealing, both come up with these giant FUD scenarios of doom
The FUD's on the other foot.
GPL is called Copyleft for a reason, and that's because its explicit purpose is to encourage copying and sharing. It was made necessary by efforts from others, such as the RIAA etc to lock up the creative commons and reduce the right of end-users to own and copy their own digital data and tools.
All of this effort to conflate the GPL with restriction is propaganda and doublespeak of the highest order.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I'm sure you're just trolling, but there's no single definition of "software freedom".
When developing proprietary software for a client, I've often wished some software had BSD style license, so I could just take the code and use it in a proprietary solution, even if that kinda feels like stealing, just taking somebody's work, even when they explicitly grant permission to do so. BSD license is for just letting others use your code, with almost no restrictions, also allowing what some would call exploiting your code.
For my own code, I always choose either GPL for LGPL, simply because my gut feeling is, that the "price" GPL/LGPL puts on code is fair, and anybody who thinks it's not can damn well not use the code then. Just as I have not used GPL code of others as part of my work, when my client has felt the "price" is unacceptable (though often it would have been very much ok or even benefical for the use case of my client).
But GPL is very much about the whole GPL ecosystem. Pieces of BSD-style licensed software work pretty well as part of GPL ecosystem, as can be seen by the multitude of such software, but a fully BSD-based ecosystem would simply not work. If it did, then Linux would not have pushed *BSD operating systems to the side lines, where hardly anybody cares about them.
BSD uses the "I am not truly free if I am not free to own a slave" argument of freedom while the GPL folks use the "I am not truly free if I am not free to bang your wife" argument of freedom. They are even right. The problem is that everyone cannot be truly 100% free at the same time. It just can't be done. So, one has to decide what is more important to them, societal freedom (everyone gets equal access) or personal freedom (I get to do what I want). The best version of freedom is no always clear and it is probably best that we don't have to pick one and apply it universally.
GPL is too restrictive.
I'll never understand this argument. You want people to write code that anyone can use and strip away the users rights (that is, take the code, change it, and make it proprietary, so people can't even see the new code, let alone make modifications to it, yet you don't want people to write code that people who modify it and redistribute it have to give back.
If it helps, why not use GPLed code the same way you'd use proprietary software. That is, download it, use it, and pretend that you don't have the right to distribute it at all.
My point is this: If you're okay with a license that's permissive enough to allow people to use it to make proprietary software, then you're probably also fine with proprietary software. If that's the case, what's your problem with a license that gives you more rights than proprietary software? It doesn't make any sense.
It doesn't help, when people pretend they don't understand the issue. Let's say there's a piece of GPL code you'd want to use, instead of rolling your own. Now only way to use that piece is to make your entire software GPL, usually there's no other way to do it if the piece of GPL software has more than one copyright holder, and even if there's just one copyright holder, getting a permission to use it with different license would be hours and hours of hassle, especially if copyright holder lives in a different country. Generally this makes the GPL code unusable, unless you can make your own code GPL too, and that's it. Now it's of course 100% fine, if the developer of the GPL code really wants this, if he really wants to make his code unusable unless the user is willing and able to make their code GPL too. But saying this is not restrictive is just patently false.
BSD-style license avoids this restrictiveness of GPL. The price for original coder is, that their code can be just taken and closed away, with just a trace of BSD copyright notice left visible. The reward for the the original coder is, their code might gain users which would have rejected it if it was GPL, and some of those users will give back, even if all don't.
And then LGPL offers a nice middle ground, it's a license I personally like a lot, for library-type code.
BSD is free as in "I am not free if I am not free to own a slave". GPL is free as in "I am not free if I am not free to bang your wife". BSD is about the individual being able to do what he wants with what he has in his possession. The GPL is about everyone getting to do the same stuff with what anyone has.
Really, the problem is that 100% freedom for more than one person at a time is a paradox.
See I just have to LMAO at this one, as you DO realize you are using MPAA logic, yes? The BSD code doesn't "disappear" and it isn't "stolen" and in fact any company that tries to do that for anything more than a one off product will be fucked anyway as their changes will end up farther and farther away from base until they spend more money porting than they would if they just gave the code back.
I just think its hilarious that you could change a couple of words around (user for content creator, code for content) on any rant against BSD and have a perfect MPAA letter, since the arguments are pretty much interchangeable.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
So it clearly is just people who have a different world view to yours.
That's an interesting way of saying "people who would take my work and disregard my goals while distributing it". I choose GPL for a reason...
Not that I question your choice of license, it's my preferred choice too, but it's important to realize, that when using GPL license, you're also denying use of your source code to those, who would gladly give back, but are unable to make their own code GPL.
Using GPL code of others is a bit of a hassle if everything you do is not GPL. Also the value of releasing GPL version of proprietary software is questionable, as you don't then automatically (without a copyright assignment mechanism, which is also a big hassle for everybody) get access to GPL improvements made by others for your proprietary version, ie. you gave them your software, but they might not be willing to give back to your proprietary version, which is what enables you to develop the GPL version in the first place.
This all makes BSD style license much more practical than GPL. It just avoids a lot of hassle for everybody, on the premise that defending against "exploiters" is not worth making extra trouble for anybody else.
My point was that a company can't just claim that the license is no longer BSD and is now some proprietary thing preventing existing users from using the original BSD codebase. If a company makes a proprietary fork, the OSS users can just ignore the fork.
There is BSD code in use by Microsoft and Apple that has been extended, closed and made unavailable to the community
There is. There is also a huge amount of BSD licensed code that Apple has released publicly. A lot in LLVM, and some in FreeBSD, both in the kernel and libc. Most Apple-originated code these days is Apache 2.0 licensed, but they've been willing in the past to relicense code that we (FreeBSD) want to adopt. In short, we've benefitted from their use of our code. We've also seen fairly significant contributions recently from companies like Juniper, who traditionally maintained their own fork of FreeBSD. They've learned that it's cheaper to keep their changes as small as possible: people buy hardware from them, not an OS.
That sort of makes BSD code long-term unsustainable.
Quite the reverse, it provides a transition mechanism, which is something that RMS quite often ignores the need for. You can't reach a world where all software is free without going via a world where some is free, then most is free. BSD-style licenses make it easy for software companies to incrementally transition from selling a product to selling development services. The GPL is an all-or-nothing approach. We've seen a lot of companies when faced with the GPL as the only existing option decide to start from scratch and write a proprietary replacement. In contrast, if a BSDL version exists, they'll usually take it, improve it, and push changes upstream. Upstreaming their changes gives two important benefits. The first is that it lets other people fix bugs in their code (and even do code review). The second is that it means someone else won't implement the feature they need in a different - and incompatible - way and make it very hard for them to pull in upstream changes. And, importantly, doing this with BSDL code doesn't have any implications for the rest of their stack. Once they've seen the cost savings for doing this with externally originating code, some companies then start to do it with the rest. Most software is written in-house by companies that need to use it, not by software companies, and so being able to outsource some of their development effort (often to their competitors) is a good strategy. With a BSDL approach, they can do it in small steps and see if it really does make sense for them.
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I'll never understand why people whine so much that they have the inability to sell work they didn't do themselves without at a nominal restriction.
They can sell it if they like. They just can't stop anyone else selling it (or getting it for free).
The complainers are just overly entitled, greedy and can't handle capitalism when it works the way it's supposed to.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
That's mostly just repeating what the other guy already said. My question is under which specific laws that liability would arise.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
See I just have to LMAO at this one, as you DO realize you are using MPAA logic, yes?
No.
As I responded to the other troll over here, GPL is called Copyleft for a reason, and that's because its explicit purpose is to encourage copying and sharing. It was made necessary by efforts from others, such as theMPAA/RIAA etc to lock up the creative commons and reduce the right of end-users to own and copy their own digital data and tools.
All of this effort to conflate the GPL with restriction is propaganda and doublespeak of the highest order. It's interesting to see you repeating it.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
They just can't stop anyone else selling it (or getting it for free).
If your app is GPLd, you can't even stop other people from giving away your own app for free even if you decide to charge for it in the beginning.
The entire point of the GPL is to negate software financial value.
In that sense, it's *very* Communistic (worse than socialist) and is actually anti-capitalism.
If every piece of software was ordered to be GPLd, there'd be no such thing as a professional software developer; we'd all have to be monks doing it for free.
Slashdot Valentines Beta Massacre: iT WORKED! The boycotts killed Beta!!
But the GPL also hurts the original dev as well.
In my case, for instance, I had built a thriving Linux/Mac program with an active userbase of +1 million users and 150,000 active forum participants. Then a few people forked the GPL'd application and started on an Internet-wide vicious character assault against me and my program while lauding their own fork.
They proceeded to copy all of my code for years while ceaselessly attacking my name everywhere, even non-programming comments. The end result was that all the users of my app left (believing the lies) and went to the competition.
I had no recourse under the GPL. I couldn't create code to set us apart; they'd just copy it. I couldn't mix licenses. And both SourceForge and other places threatened to end my app when i put up explicit licenses prohibiting that one project from leaching my code.
They stripped my copyright from the headers and now you wouldn't even know that the vast majority of code they took was done by my hand. It's sad, man. It was my life work from 2003-2005.
Slashdot Valentines Beta Massacre: iT WORKED! The boycotts killed Beta!!
BSD freedoms ARE lossy. There is BSD code in use by Microsoft and Apple that has been extended, closed and made unavailable to the community. That sort of makes BSD code long-term unsustainable.
What a shame, too. The *BSDs would have been so much better off if they'd had a TCP/IP stack, but Microsoft had to go and rip it off and close it on them so they couldn't use it. Oh, wait...
Seriously, how do people who are so (ostensibly) skilled in critical thinking, problem-solving, and logic (you know, the core programming skills) keep repeating this old canard without seeing it for the steaming lump of bullshit that it is?
I guess looking like they're incapable of thinking straight is preferable to the more honest "I don't want anybody doing better with MY CODE than I did without getting a cut! Software wants to be free, but this software is MINE MINE MINE!"
Sure, but there are a lot of great commercial titles with absolutely no F/OSS equivalent that comes close.
The fact that there are bad games on both sides doesn't change the fact that there are a lot of great commercial titles and only a handful of decent F/OSS ones. Really, aside from: SuperTux, Battle for Wesnoth, FreeCiv/FreeCol, and Open Arena there aren't a lot of other good open source titles. On the other hand, off the top of my head some great commercial games for the PC include: Portal, Team Fortress 2, Half Life 2, Skyrim, Fable, etc.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I think the problem you're having is that you're looking at the whole thing from the perspective of a end user. There is nothing wrong with the GPL for an end user. They can use the software however they want and if they don't modify it, there is no hassle.
The problem with the GPL for us BSD folk is entirely on the development side of things. The GPL prevents me from using code in my other projects because it requires that I change the terms of my entire project if I wish to use it. From the developer perspective, the GPL translates to software is more important than I am. The software gets the freedom, not the person.
The next problem with understanding this topic from our side is that we like it when people use our source code. We don't care if they give us code back. We just want people to use our software any way they want. It makes us feel good that people are using our software. Sometimes companies give back and sometimes they don't.
I use GPL software all the time. I do treat it similarly to commercial software. As a BSD guy, I don't have a problem with people making money on software. They have to pay the bills and so do I. Developers need a way to make money. Personally, I prefer MySQL to PostgreSQL. As an end user, it doesn't matter which license they have. I can use them as much as I want. If I ever had a need to embed a database or do some custom programming on one, I'd have to go with PostgreSQL. Why? I need the freedom to develop under my terms.
I guess when I give the bum a dollar, I don't expect him to wash my windows.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
They stripped my copyright from the headers and now you wouldn't even know that the vast majority of code they took was done by my hand.
Sections 4 and 5 of the GPL v3 (sections 1 and 2 on GPL v2) expressly prohibit that kind of activity. If they removed your copyright notices, they are in breach of the GPL and thus distributing your software illegally.
So yes, you do have recourse under the GPL in this instance, but only because they have been stupid and not adhered to the T's and C's.
Which software is it anyway? I don't want to be using any software where the original author has been treated as badly as you seem to have been.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
Pretty simple choice: Use the author's software under the author's license, or write it your own damn self.
This sounds dangerously close to those dbags who want to steal craigslist content because attracting their own advertisers is hard.
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