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On Being Pro-GPL
just_another_sean writes: Christopher Allan Webber, recently returned from OSCON, shares his thoughts on the GPL and why he dislikes people pitting one type of software license against another. He says, "I am not only pro-copyleft, I am also pro-permissive licensing. The difference between these is tactics: the first tactic is towards guaranteeing user freedom, the second tactic is toward pushing adoption. I am generally pro-freedom, but sometimes pushing adoption is important, especially if you're pushing standards and the like. But let's step back for a moment. One thing that's true is that over the last many years we've seen an explosion of free and open source software... at the same time that computers have become more locked down than ever before! How can this be?
And notice... the rise of the arguments for permissive/lax licensing have grown simultaneously with this trend. ...The fastest way to develop software which locks down users for maximum monetary extraction is to use free software as a base. And this is where the anti-copyleft argument comes in, because copyleft may effectively force an entity to give back at this stage... and they might not want to. ... Copyleft's strings say, 'you can use my stuff, as long as you give back what you make from it.' But the proprietary differentiation strategy's strings say, 'I will use your stuff, and then add terms which forbid you to ever share or modify the things I build on top of it.' Don't be fooled: both attach strings. But which strings are worse?"
And notice... the rise of the arguments for permissive/lax licensing have grown simultaneously with this trend. ...The fastest way to develop software which locks down users for maximum monetary extraction is to use free software as a base. And this is where the anti-copyleft argument comes in, because copyleft may effectively force an entity to give back at this stage... and they might not want to. ... Copyleft's strings say, 'you can use my stuff, as long as you give back what you make from it.' But the proprietary differentiation strategy's strings say, 'I will use your stuff, and then add terms which forbid you to ever share or modify the things I build on top of it.' Don't be fooled: both attach strings. But which strings are worse?"
Over and over this is repeated. It is false. A better statement would be: "you can use my stuff, as long as you pass along your freedoms to anyone you give it to if you modify it"
FTFA:
>One thing that's true is that over the last many years we've seen an explosion of free and open source software
Linux on all supercomputers, here on slashdot, Google, Amazon, The International Space Station, world governments, Android (eys, it's Linux) on the best phones, etc.
People like better more than they like expensive come to find out.
distrowatch.com
Just look at whats happened in the hardware arena. We've ended up without sources because we've let the non-free proponents in. Are there not bugs in firmware? The reality there are a lot more bugs in the firmware that we can't fix. Be it binary blobs loaded by the Linux kernel or BIOS related. Some of these bugs open up huge security holes which have allowed third parties to remotely access systems too. It's scary that EVERY system is vulnerable and we can't even take one of them and begin fixing these holes.
When you say you're "pro-copyleft" you're implicitly saying you're pro-copyright, because you're necessarily using copyright law to say "we reserve the authority to restrict distribution and sue you if you don't follow our requirements (i.e. distribute the source)"
Well... two wrongs don't make a right. When you talk about getting sued by supposedly "free" software projects... it doesn't make you look too good.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
I guess people can learn about society, thinking about music rights and torrent software.
.
Why all the angst and false drama?
FTFA:
>One thing that's true is that over the last many years we've seen an explosion of use of screws
Screws in all houses, here on my desk, kitchens, door hinges, The International Space Station, government buildings, even on Android phones, etc.
People like screws in so many places therefore they must be applicable in all places therefore nails are death knell!
besttoolforthejob.com
Ironically, it seems to be the permissive crowd that does most of the division and pitting. You'd think the permissive folks would be more laid back, but they are constantly spreading FUD about GPL specifically GPLv3. The FSF, who has a vested interest in pushing GPL goes out of there way to recommend the Apache 2.0 license and extol its virtues, while Apache's site takes a very negative tone towards GPL.
The GPL is fine if it accomplishes what you want in a license, but really,
there isn't anything particularly good about the GPL. It isn't bad (usually),
it just isn't that great. And it's definitely overrated.
It doesn't prevent proprietary forks.
It violates KISS, a cherished engineering principle. Licensing is complicated
and technical (from a legal standpoint), but at least licenses like the BSD and
MIT can be read and understood quickly by laypersons.
The GPL is wrought with complicated incompatibilities with other reasonable
open source licenses and with other versions of itself. In this case, the GPL
really is kind of bad.
It tries to solve a problem that doesn't really exist; many companies actively
contribute to non-copyleft projects without needing a mandate from RMS.
It doesn't even support the ideals of the Four Freedoms any better than other
licenses. A company that owns the copyright of a GPL project can make it
closed-source just as easily as if it had any other license, and a non-GPL
project can be forked just as easily as a GPL project if that happens.
The GPL often gets credit for the success of a few great open source projects,
especially the Linux kernel. However, the role of the GPL in those projects'
success is far from clear, and it certainly discounts those projects; the
kernel really is a quality project regardless of licensing terms. It could
also be said that those projects were successful despite the GPL. It
would be difficult to prove either way.
I'm glad for RMS. He has done a lot of good with GNU software, especially
GCC. The GPL just really isn't one of his better accomplishments.
"you can use my stuff, as long as you give back what you make from it"
I've read the GPL, and I feel that this is by far the most beautifully to-the-point and most honest real-world representation about the requirements of the GPL that was ever put down in a single, brief sentence.
Some people might disagree with this, and I'm sure those people who do would also argue that the act of jumping of a 1000ft cliff without a parachute being fatal is a bald-faced lie (because technically, it's the a priori sudden stop that kills you; so you're really just spreading FUD about jumping from great heights, as jumping itself has no immediate requirement of death).
I've long believed the GPL has a major flaw that excludes it from wide adoption: there are too few ways to monetize GPL code. Now I'm sure some people are thinking "good, that's what the GPL is about", but they'd be wrong. The GPL is about freedom, and it's flaws force those interested in being paid for their work to often reinvent GPL code to monetize the software; closing it up entirely.
This problem is especially prelevant in industries like computer games, and hardware drivers; coincidentally two of the areas GPL code has constantly lagged behind. To fix this I would propose a provision, or perhaps a sub license that would allow a person or organisation to keep secret their source modifications for a period of time. Perhaps something like 1 or 2 years. This would give incentive to enterprise to build their products upon current GPL code as they could save money by not "reinventing the wheel", while also ensuring that their modifications would have a monetization period.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
this is by far the most beautifully to-the-point and most honest real-world representation about the requirements of the GPL that was ever put down in a single, brief sentence.
too bad it's not correct.
you aren't obligated to give anyone anything if you use GPL licensed software. Only if you try to sell the binaries of the code you took.
they use a BSD license and laugh all the way to the bank
(rather conspicuous lack of Apple wouldn't you say?)
At least the GPL requires people to give *something* back.
Oops, sexconker forgot to check the AC box. That said, free software is for tucows!
it is a purely commercial product with no pretensions of ideological purity or political correctness.
No pretentions of political correctness? My goodness, you really know NOTHING about Microsoft.
Computers are being locked down
yeah that's funny, with about 40 operating systems and 10 different hardware platforms to choose from, computers have never been less locked down. As a consumer you've never had such an opportunity to purchase so many different kinds of computers with so many different kinds of operating systems. You can buy a locked down windows system for your kids that won't let them surf porn, or you can get hacking gear that will find vulnerabilities in your systems. You can set up a linux system by compiling every single program yourself. You can buy computers and cell phones that are virtually all free software, every byte. Face it, computers have never been so unlocked and so easy for people to work with.
in a population this size more users are taking shelter in walled gardens of more manageable size
Meanwhile, back in reality, google, youtube and facebook are more popular than ever before.
Isn't it fun how the students who've never had to earn their own living without mommy paying their credit card bills keep getting it wrong?
It's "free as in speech", people. The GPL: protects it. Apache/Perl/my-favorite-martian license does *not* protect developers from having their work proprietezied and locked away.
Because the number one thing openness generates is chaos and multiple competing claims about reality. Say, many Linux distributions, each claiming to be great, and in fact, many variants of Linux distributions often with many versions and many wrinkles, and many varations of packages, libraries, and so on.
If you want to build or customize things, openness is great. If you just one to pick something up, use it, and move on, a huge amount of confusion, overhead, and pain is involved in trying to pick the "right" version (particularly if you're unfamiliar with openness and wrongheadedly looking for the "real" version, as many early Linux dabblers were) and get it to work quickly and easily.
There is thus a huge amount of value added by anyone that quells the chaos—even in a tiny sphere or product—and that can quickly, clearly, and succinctly explain to users just what their version does, without ambiguity either within itself as an instance or over time. The nature of the beast—this value is the result of "closing the openness," if you will, means that it can't be opened, or the value will be lost.
End users want operating systems and devices that are not open systems with unclear edges that bleed into the ecosystem, but rather a single, coherent, object or product that they can acquire, use in predictable and stable ways, and then lay down once again. They want systems and devices about which books can be written (and bought, and referred to months down the road) without quickly becoming obsolete, and with the minimal risk that this book or that add-on that they purchase will fail to work becuase they'd misconstrued the incredibly subtle differences and variations in product naming, versioning, and so on.
In short, massive openness is incredibly generative and creative, but leaves in place a systems/software/hardware version of the "last mile problem" for computing. Having a fabulous network is one thing, but consumers just want one wire coming into the house, they want it to work, they want it to be predictable and compatible with what they have, and they want to know just where it is and what its properties, limits, and costs are. They are not interested in becoming engineers, the technology they use is only useful to them as a single, tiny, and managable facet of the larger ecosystem that is their life.
This "last mile problem" cannot be solved with openness in hardware or software any more than the last mile problem for wired providers can be solved by opening up all of urban geography to any comers and saying "lay all the cable you want, anywhere you want, to and from any building or system!" First off, it would result in a mess of wires (not un-analagous to what we see across much of free software's development space) and next because most consumers wouldn't be able to make heads or tails of it, much less make a choice, and they'd probably resent the complexity in their backyard and try to do away with it.
Openness leads to closedness because to the extent that openness dominates in the development and engineering space, closedness increases as critical need for carrying whatever is developed to the average consumer space, in precisely the same measure.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Systems have only become more closed to NON-TECHNICAL users. iPhones can still be jailbroken and you can do anything with them. Hack, even non-jailbroken iPhones you can do quite a lot with simply by running your own locally developed app on your device (which anyone can do for free now BTW).
This is useful because we have seen historically that systems that are more open to non-technical users lead to a lot of self-harm. They simply do not have any way to filter what is reasonable and what is not as to what they are putting in the system.
In reality all computing systems are more open and hackable than ever before thanks to connectivity. When a hacker on his couch can stop a Jeep driving down the road, you don't have to worry that systems are too closed.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Some people think GPL means you can use my stuff as long as you put my name in the credits and keep my stuff free. But GPL means,"If you use my stuff, you can't charge for your stuff and have to make all your code public." So if I write a 100,000 line of code game, and I am on opengameart.org and want to use someone's pretty butterfly picture under GPL, I can't use that picture unless I release years worth of source code. Thankfully there is a work around of contacting artists directly and asking for a different license. Some get surprised they didn't pick a friendly license to begin with since GPL gets pushed so much as the correct for sharing license.
God spoke to me
"The fastest way to develop software which locks down users for maximum monetary extraction is to use free software as a base"
Care to produce the names of any company, entity or individual user that were locked into an onerous monetary contract - though the use of free software?
Gift-style licensing like BSD licensing is for when you want everyone to use your code so badly that you don't care what they do with it. If you have an economic reason for that, fine. But it can create harm if you don't have your economics straight. Heartbleed was an economic failure of gift-style licensing. Very wealthy companies used OpenSSL and didn't contribute to its maintenance. There was some astronomical amount of economic damage in result. I think we all would have been better off had OpenSSL been dual-licensed and paid for by some folks, even if it had fewer users that way. And maybe that way its original developers would not have had to go to work for RSA, who prohibited them from ever touching their old code again. That's why we still have Eric Young's old, old license with the attribution clause nobody else uses any longer. He can't touch it.
GPL IMO does work best with dual licensing, because people who just hate the GPL can get what they want, and pay for making more Free Software. But if you don't care about money and don't want to use dual licensing, the growth effect you get from GPL is a lot better than making yourself some very rich company's unpaid employee by giving them all possible rights except for a very limited attribution.
Some people should pay. Some should get stuff for free. They aren't in general the same people, and they self-classify.
Bruce Perens.
I help GPL violators clean up their act, it's my main business.
Every one has had a total lack of due diligence. I will come in and find that they have violated the licenses of 21 proprietary software companies (this is a real customer example) by integrating their code into their main product, just like the GPL code. Some of them only had an "evaluation" license, some not even that, some wildly violated the terms of any license they got.
Most of them are in silicon valley. They seem to have the attitude that they will clean up their legal problems when they're rich, and nothing but getting their product out of the door matters until then.
They don't ask me to feel sorry for them. I bill them a lot, and in the end, they're clean and legal.
Bruce Perens.
FTFA:
>One thing that's true is that over the last many years we've seen an explosion of use of screws
Screws in all houses, here on my desk, kitchens, door hinges, The International Space Station, government buildings, even on Android phones, etc.
People like screws in so many places therefore they must be applicable in all places therefore nails are death knell!
besttoolforthejob.com
[ Windows is death knell. ]
Soon only tools will use Windows.
Lol this guy...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GU5uv28a3I
I see videos already of Windows 10 sucks and Windows 10 is gonna suck on YouTube.
www.youtube.com is of course running on Linux as well.
http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report/?url=www.youtube.com
But hey, maybe you are better at banging nails and selling nails? Meanwhile smart IT people use Linux at work and at home.
Keep trying to explain how Windows didn't suck before Linux existed. Too late. Current Linux is superior to every version of Windows COMBINED. distrowatch.org
suggest: avoid Ubuntu (third world Linux) and Redhat/Fedora (Microsoft wannabe's beginning at version 8.0)
thank me later.
Some confusion of concepts is evidenced by OP's indirect contrasting of "freedom" with "permissiveness". Freedom is permissiveness; the more you are permitted to do, the more free you are. More permissive licenses are thus by definition more free than less permissive ones.
One way to illustrate this is to consider what would happen if all copyright law suddenly went away. The permissive licenses that already let you do whatever you want would effectively still be in effect, because they were doing nothing but creating an exception to prohibitions put in place by that copyright law. The GPL, on the other hand, only allows those exceptions on the condition of accepting certain obligations; if copyright law went away entirely, there would be no prohibitions to need exceptions to, and thus no need to accept the obligations imposed as conditions to those exceptions by the license, and GPL licensing would collapse to completely permissive licensing.
The obvious balance point between the two would be a license that only imposes the obligation to permit the same exceptions to the prohibitions imposed by copyright law, because in that case if copyright law went away, nobody would have the ability to violate the required obligations, and would thus automatically meet the conditions of the license. Basically "I'll pretend copyright law doesn't exist if you do too; I won't sue you for distributing my copyrighted work if you won't sue anyone for distributing your derivatives of it". A lot of people seem to think that that's all GPL does, but it's not, because it treats binaries and source code as separate things with separate conditions. If we were talking just about source code and binaries weren't a thing at all, then GPL would be this kind of license: "you can copy and distribute this code, so long as you let anyone else copy and distribute any modifications you make to this code". If copyright went away, then you would be automatically permitted to copy and distribute it no matter what, but everyone else would be automatically permitted to copy and distribute any modifications you made too, so it would just be like everything was under such a license.
But with regards to binaries, GPL doesn't work like that. You can't just copy, modify, and distribute the binary files themselves without also accepting the obligation to provide source code with them, which means that without copyright law, people would be more permitted to do things than they would be under GPL; they would be more free. The GPL is withholding some freedom that it could grant, with the goal of making source code more widely available. And while the amount of freedom it withholds is minor, the benefits of withholding them are minor too; if you weren't allowed to withhold license of your modifications of the code you made, which would include binaries made from your modified code, then people would be free to copy your binaries, which is what end-users really pirate anyway, and what might make a financial difference, so what would be the point of withholding the source code? There would be no financial advantage to it, and I don't expect many companies would really bother, since it would make no difference in whether or not people were copying their finished product, the binaries.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Why would a home user/consumer want there to be a monetization strategy? I get a whole OS that is totally free commodity. It has everything I could ever need, for free. Any extra money spent, would be wasted.
The only exception I can think of, where spending extra money doesn't necessarily mean I am getting needlessly and pointlessly fucked over in exchange for no extra value at all, would be non-essential stuff like games. And I'm fine with that being non-GPL anyway. So GPL doesn't need to address monetization.
As a user, GPL can cover everything that is important, guaranteeing that necessary maintenance remain available. And fluff (which can be nice; I'm not putting it down) can be proprietary, since if a game doesn't get maintenance, nobody really gets fucked over all that hard, because hey, it's just a game.
And yet Windows 10 on release day will have more users than Linux has gotten in 22 fricking years LOL.
BTW you are simply trading one master for another, as Google is in the process of pulling a EEE on Android, they have also cut off the funding they were giving to AOSP and if you bother to look online their OEM contracts make MSFT contracts of the 90s look like the GPL. And funny that so many talk about how "open" Google is yet I can take any bog standard Windows laptop right off the shelf at Walmart and be dual booting anything from BSD to Haiku in under 10 minutesyet on the exact same hardware thanks to Google DRM a ChromeOS "laptop" can ONLY boot a handful of Linux distros that have been specially modified to run on ChromeOS hardware (even though its made from standard laptop parts) and even then ONLY if you put in a page and a half of CLI bullshit AND completely wipe ChromeOS, no dual booting allowed...yet MSFT is supposed to be the "DRM happy" company and Google "open"...DaFuq?
I've said it before and I'll say it again, Google should give the guy that wrote "don't be evil" a fucking BMWer as so many otherwise logical geeks have bought that bullshit hook, line, and sinker, that it makes Apple's hipster marketing look as amateur as New Coke. "Think Different" ain't got shit on them, no siree bob!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The definition of 'open platform' in terms of hardware primarily means the ability to load your own software, not on how many locked down options there are on the market.
The fact is, the majority of systems on the market now are closed. Examples include game consoles, cell phones, tablets, and embedded machines in consumer products of all types. The only exception is the desktop PC, and even there, many are now shipping with UEFI locked bootloaders, and we have only the 'magnanimous' promise from Microsoft to continue offering their signed stubs for use in loading alternative OSs. Initially, the ability to shut off signed loads was mandated, but MS has now changed that policy. It's really only a matter of time before most PCs are locked down with the OS they shipped with. Today, the open system is the minority, not the majority.
Popularity is often not a good measure of quality, openness, or freedom. It's just a measure of dominance. Youtube is dominant because it was one of the first, not because it is now the best. Even if it was the best when it launched, continued dominance does not imply that it continues to be the best.
computers have never been less locked down.
That's simply flat-out wrong. The ability to purchase a wide variety of locked down systems does not make those systems less locked down.
The most common computers for sale now (smartphones and tablets) are far more locked down than their laptop and desktop bretheren. There is no way to install another OS on an iPhone without having to bypass tools designed to prevent you from doing so. Likewise the majority of android phones sold.
A decade ago, the majority of computers for sale were PCs. They would and mostly still do boot any old crap you stick on them.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Don't be evil (r)(TM)(c) [1][2][3]
Terms and conditions apply. May be void worldwide.
[1] Unless there's money to be made
[2] or we coudn't be bothered to think of a better way
[3] or unless it's just too much fun
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Tactics are what you do to get some end point win. What are your tactics going to accomplish? How will it work?
Well, we found the cow-man.
When you say you're "pro-copyleft" you're implicitly saying you're pro-copyright
Being "pro-copyright" doesn't necessarily mean supporting the status quo of present copyright law, including inability to follow ownership throughout the entire copyright term and anti-circumvention provisions that make interoperability legally risky.
It was me, not sexconker. Fail.
And it's denoted as AC, so therefore if it HAD been sexconker, they would have had to click the AC box. Double fail.
I have asked about video games a few times, and the most common reply has been to make the engine free and the assets proprietary. Assets include anything that is not legally a "computer program", such as textures, meshes, maps, and audio. Several first-person shooters from Id Software have gone to this model a few years after release.
The summary is completely confusing and decontextualized.
A few days ago at OSCON Shane Curcuru of Apache Foundation gave a talk: Why I don’t use the GPL which gave the standard BSD defense: I won’t use the GPL for new software, and you maybe shouldn’t either. “Heretic”, comes the cry from the back of the room! But no – I bleed and believe in open source and the public good as much as you do. The difference is, I want to share my code with everyone not just the believers.
Christopher Allan Webber is the creator of MediaGoblin. MediaGoblin is a free software media publishing platform that anyone can run. You can think of it as a decentralized alternative to Flickr, YouTube, SoundCloud, etc. http://mediagoblin.org/
He wrote an article in response to Corcuru's talk where he addressed the big failure of the BSD argument its now over 30 year track record including recently of creating platforms that are unfree using BSD software as a base. He also argued against pitting licenses against one another which is odd since he's defending a license. Webber's position is the standard GPL defense. Here is a longer article not specific to Curcuru. http://dustycloud.org/blog/fie...
Anyway the standard time tested argument but the summary was terribly unclear about who was talking to whom.
No, we found one bull. Just as there are proponents of /etc/hosts as a component of layered security other than APK, I don't think sexconker is the only bull here.
Do you know of ANY hardware manufacturer who SELLS their drivers to people???
I remember reading horror stories somewhere about Creative Labs distributing only patches through the Internet. The full driver was available only on the original disc, and replacements cost money. In addition, third-party drivers for well-known input devices may cost money, such as drivers to use the Wii Remote and Dual Shock 3 controller with an Android device.
Between embedded systems and servers Linux has about 10b systems running using it. Windows 10 total sales are likely to be in the order of a few hundred million over the course of the entire year, much less first day so well under 4% of the user base. First day you are at a fraction of that, so something like .1%. Moreover the user base for Linux during that time will skyrocket probably by a couple more billion which will knock the high point for Windows 10 to around 2% or so. Your statistics are BS.
But GPL means,"If you use my stuff, you can't charge for your stuff
I could explain everything that's false about that statement, but I'll let the FSF explain in the essay titled "Selling Free Software".
So why hasn't GnuTLS gained more traction? Do developers of applications that use TLS see something wrong with the LGPL?
if copyright law went away entirely [...] GPL licensing would collapse to completely permissive licensing.
If copyright law went away entirely, it would also become lawful to produce and distribute commented disassemblies of any proprietary program. A "commented disassembly" is created when a person takes executable code, figures out how it works, and transforms it into a preferred form for making modifications. This already happens underground: look for "SMBDis" on RomHacking.net.
The FSF and RMS in particular never advocated for freedom for hardware.
Other than the "Respects Your Freedom" certification program, which lets computer hardware makers designate their products as compatible with free software.
This is why a free operating system for a mobile phone would need to be collected into a "distribution" just as one for a PC. In a world without locked bootloaders and undocumented chipsets, there would be a few distributions of Replicant OS that one could install on any given phone to replace the pack-in operating system.
I agree with your point entirely ethically.
However... I'm just going to nitpick. The hardware definition of open platform is a combination of interoperability, portability, and open software standards that allow you to have supplier choice. It has nothing to do with you personally being one of those vendors. The relative ease of being able to join the Android ecosystem (i.e. it becomes practical at a few hundred thousand units) makes it an open platform regardless of how locked down each of those units is individually. You may not like the definition but that is the definition.
I'd also like to mention three area you forgot which is incredibly open.
1) Clouds especially IaaS. Those are running lightweight OSes designed to freely run all sorts of client OSes. That's a huge area of freedom replacing the big box proprietary systems. .NET (if Microsoft wanted it which they are playing with) and Xiaomi's business model is based on this.
2) Moreover this server based technology scales down nicely to both server and desktop. So that while you may not be able to freely run different base OSes you can freely run different client OSes and those are free distributed on free VM managers.
3) Finally on phones Android itself is constructed to allow for different environments, Google Play is replaceable or combinable. You can have Android
This is NOT a complaint about the GPL, or any other license. An author of a work is free to choose whatever license they want to offer their work under, including a closed source license. Merely an observation.
IMO . . . when someone offers a Library, that is, a black box of code with well defined API that offers some useful capability, and offers it under the GPL, the author is deliberately trying to RESTRICT what the users of that library can do with their own code. The author is effectively saying that I only want authors of other GPL applications to use my library. If the library author were only trying to protect the freedom of his library and nothing more, then he would have used the LGPL. The LGPL protects the freedom of the library, as well as protects the freedom of the user of a closed source application to be able to re-link the application against a newer version of the library without access to the source code of the application.
I'm not saying this is right, or wrong, or anything else. It is merely an observation.
A library author that offers a library under GPL license has an ulterior motive. Usually a commercial motive to ensure they can make money from users of applications that are not under the GPL. This seems to be exactly the opposite of what the GPL was intended to do in spirit. A library offered under the GPL typically offers a "Commercial License" for applications that are not under the GPL.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
This is a copy/paste of this post: http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
He didn't respond to my response to it, but *someone* did mod my reply to it down. This post really is worthless-- a disingenuous and half-hearted hit piece on the GPL , crammed full of vaguely reasonable-sounding disclaimers "I'm glad for RMS" and praise for GCC so that people will take it more seriously.
My original reply is given below. I acknowledge there is probably room for valid and reasonable debate on many of these points, but if you begin the debate by posting A/C and then modding down anyone who points out the massive effects the GPL has had... well, that's not a debate. It's a troll.
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I'm not sure what you expect to prove by listing a bunch of non-sequitur aphorisms. We have the facts in front of us, and it is very easy to imagine how the alternate universe would work by substituting "BSD" in place of "Linux". Does "Red Hat BSD" give away virtually their entire operating system for free, including modification and rebranding? No. No they fucking do not, and you cannot be taken seriously if you try to claim otherwise. I'm not talking about a minor permissive-licensed project (such as the kind that Apple or Google have been known to support) that doesn't affect the bottom line; we are talking about a software company open sourcing the lion's share of the code they write for their main/only product. There isn't a large, for-profit corporation in the world that does that kind of thing without some kind of legal compulsion. (Or perhaps you'd like to point out a sizable BSD-based for-profit distro that doesn't try to close source? They've had decades to come out with one.) So, admitting the absurdity of "Red Hat BSD" is step one.
Step two is admitting that while there are a number of decent home-grown options today, corporate-originated apps and sometimes core components are still very commonplace in your average distro and 10+ years ago they were even more prominent and important, particularly for business and other semi-technical users. Without corporate contributions, particularly from Linux-centric businesses like RHAT, Linux would be a pale shadow of what it is today, not just because it's hard to find full time volunteers but also because the whole thing needed a sustained kickstart before it reached a level where it was useful and appealing to people who weren't already hardcore Unix enthusiasts.
And... that's it. Admit those two things, and it's self-evidently true that the GPL was and is critical to Linux's success. This isn't philosophy any more; this is proven history. BSD gave us Apple's unholy reincarnation. GPL gave us Red Hat, Canonical, Novell, IBM, and dozens of other companies paying hundreds of developers to work on Linux full time, and every step along the way made perfect logical sense. There is no mystery as to why it happened this way.
If you want to argue otherwise, you're going to have to do a lot better than what you wrote there. For starters, you could try referring to reality once in a while.
Hi sexconcker, glad to see you found the Post Anonymously checkbox.
Lucky you came up with such an intelligent and credible rebuttal so quickly! That was close!
To an extent you make a valid point, but it's still extremely misleading to claim that "the GPL doesn't prevent proprietary forks". In a very large number of cases it can--if a company goes bust and another group picks up development, there is no longer any way to make a proprietary fork, because the entity that owned the original codebase are no longer around to consent to a non-GPL re-license. Similarly, any project that has more than one major contributor (even a now-inactive past contributor) is virtually immune to an attempted proprietary fork. This has huge ramifications. This is why so much of Android is/was GPL (though they're trying like mad to replace GPL components with Apache), this is why Linksys was forced to open source on their WRT router firmware, this is why Red Hat is open source, etc.
Finally, even in the case of a single entity controlling 100% of the code that goes into a project, the GPL does indeed prevent proprietary forks by third parties (such as NeXtSTEP, the proprietary fork of BSD Unix that eventually became Apple's OS X.) I happen to think this is a good thing--some people argue it's bad, and to a point I can respect that point of view. But what you cannot do is try to imply that the GPL simply fails at what it sets out to do and is therefore just a bit of unnecessary complication layered on top of what is ultimately a permissive license. It is not. We have dozens of high profile examples of the GPL's copyleft provisions in practice, and a good number of open source projects (not the least of which is the Linux kernel) are for all intents and purposes permanently GPL, with no possibility of a fork due to the sheer number of contributors involved.
Whatinthehell did I just read?
I've reread that post three times, and although I think he came down in favor of the GPL, that doesn't actually match what little I could get out of the meandering stream of consciousness of that post.
Why is that here?
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
Just like with languages, use the best license for the job.
Of course you need to understand your tools and licenses in order to make a wise decision.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Sigh...you forgot routers and watches, why don't you throw those in as well?
This is why we love to make fun of you FOSSies so damned much, not only can you not follow a conversation (We are talking about the desktop and laptops sparky, NOT your toaster, not your Rpi toy nobody gives a fuck about, and not your shitty email server, mmmkay?) but you keep bringing up form factors nobody outside of a teeny tiny niche gives two wet shits about. Think anybody outside of server admins give a fuck about servers? The Rpi sold to...what? 0.03% of the population? yet what does damned near every single person in the developed world have? A PC...running Windows. Man that HAS to fucking BURN, don't it?
Of course we know what you are REALLY doing, its no different than when you talk to a Scientologist about Clambake or Xenu and suddenly they try to switch the topic to NarcAnon, its called "moving the goalposts" and is not only so obvious Ray Charles could see through it but it makes you look either moronic (in that you can't follow a simple conversation) or a cultist (in that you know you can't win the argument so you try to switch the topic to an argument you think you can win)...so which are you? Cultist or moron?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
There are orders of magnitude more embedded devices than laptops and desktops. There are also more servers than desktop or laptops. So you can't make an appeal to quantity and then argue for desktops and laptops. Relative to those two categories the ones you are talking about are niche.
There are also far more Android tablets which appear to be replacing much of the consumer laptop / desktop space. There are more smartphones and even the Apple this year will outsell PCs Android having crossed years ago.
As for people in the developing world even excluding smartphones and tables given sales data and longer longevity about 20% are running Macs. In terms of profits Macs take about 85-92% for many years. So I'm not sure what the burn is. Windows is the dominant player in a large niche which is rapidly shrinking being successfully attacked from both above and below.
There were until recently niches were OS/2 thrived. You can always define things narrowly, but using most broad based metrics not constructed specifically to be a niche Windows is not dominant.
Android. It's the single most popular mobile OS in the world by a large margin (although not the most profitable), and the most popular OS, and if you add a detachable keyboard an Android tablet is perfectly adequate for the needs of a very large number of people. The desktop and laptop roles are slowly becoming less widespread. They'll continue to be with us, like IBM mainframes are, and they'll never be niche products in the same way mainframes are, but their heyday is past.
Android is a Linux variant, same kernel but much different stuff on top of it.
Does it burn you to know that Microsoft is making almost no headway in mobile, which is the coming thing?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You've been here a fair number of years, and yet when it comes to understanding computers, you're still fresh and new.
Routers and watches are already counted under "embedded systems and servers." Routers, of course, bridging that gap completely.
Maybe the average user doesn't know to care about servers, but that is not the same thing as saying they're not important. There is lots of equipment in an ambulance that the average person doesn't know to value, even if it already saved their life.
If you're saying that linux users should care about how non-users feel about how many linux systems of value are in use, I'd have to say that even after all these years you don't understand the basics of why people use linux and where the value they claim to get is coming from. Notice, you don't have to agree to understand these things. You just have to know what you're arguing against. It seems to me like you've been here long to figure out, embedded systems using linux improves the system stability and general quality of linux systems. It is way more valuable than whatever Joe User has on his desktop. If there is some bug that affects that embedded system, an actual engineer from the company that makes it will file a bug report, and likely even submit a patch. I don't want a new paradigm, I don't want popular software, I want systems that work as reliably as an ATM or router.
As far as Scientology, this is just like it in the sense that you're badmouthing them both for no good reason. Even your proposed dialog that you place in the mouth of a Scientologist is just a fake conversation where you want to raise issues about their Faith in order to attack them, and they want to change the subject to something they think might provide common ground, or otherwise be more productive. A reader need not like or approve of Scientology in order to feel sympathetic to their imagined situation. And indeed, I doubt Ray Charles would have had any trouble rejecting arguments based in hatred and pejorative.
As for the last bit, you don't appear to be a cultist.
The arstechnica article is bull. AOSP is alive and well, and in no way is Google trying to extinguish it. The complaints in the arstechnica article mostly boil down to the fact that Google provides components that interact with its cloud services which aren't open source because they aren't useful except as an interface to those services. They're useful, but not essential to the operating system.
http://arstechnica.com/informa...
If I write a library and GPL it, I'm depriving you of the freedom to use it in a proprietary application. That's a restriction. If I write a library and BSD it, you can deprive other people of the freedom to use your modifications. That's a restriction. There is no one license that's more free under all circumstances, and an author has to choose which freedoms are more important to him or her.
Somebody using the GPL for a library may have an ulterior motive, or they may have used a license they're familiar with. The ulterior motive is usually not to dual-license, GPL and proprietary (which Stallman encourages, by the way), but to encourage other people to make their software GPLed. If you look at early Gnu software, if it was better than its proprietary counterparts the FSF wanted it under the GPL, while other software was under more permissive licenses, typically GPL or LGPL plus additional granted freedoms. For example, Bison (a replacement for YACC) includes a fair amount of Bison code in the parsers it generates. There was nothing to be gained in restricting Bison to GPL use only, so the Gnu project put additional permissions so that a user of Bison was allowed to produce a parser, with the originally GPLed code, and not have the output be GPLed.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Android. It's the single most popular mobile OS in the world by a large margin (although not the most profitable), and the most popular OS, and if you add a detachable keyboard an Android tablet is perfectly adequate for the needs of a very large number of people.
The problem with Android is that when it comes to freedom it is even worse than Windows. While you were all shouting about how "Android is free" you were just frogs sitting in slowly boiling water, you haven't even noticed the bait-and-switch Google is pulling on you. No more AOSP funding, all those FOSS applications on Android have been abandoned and Google is preinstalling their proprietary ones instead, new features are not being added to AOSP anymore and instead are added to the proprietary blob called Google Play Services as a way to make applications written for Google's Android incompatible with AOSP. Then of course there is the draconian non-compete clauses in their contract that prevent OEMs from using non-Google Android versions.
Android was a good idea (well it still is a decent OS in technical terms), the community was given the full source that Google was shipping but they did nothing with it so Google has now abandoned that in favor of its proprietary blobs.
Android is a Linux variant, same kernel but much different stuff on top of it.
Right, which is why you dont put Android as a competitor to say Ubuntu. Different tools for different jobs, is it willful ignorance or do you actually not understand that?
Does it burn you to know that Microsoft is making almost no headway in mobile, which is the coming thing?
There are millions of laptops, tablets and convertibles running Windows that can still run all your legacy applications just as they always have run. Smartphones are a device you have in addition because nobody wants to run desktop applications on a smartphone.
So cultist, good to know. Would you like to blather on about the Rpi now? or maybe about the "soon to be as open as a TiVo" Android OS?
Ya know what is sad? Its the fact nobody can even talk about fucking DESKTOPS here without some FOSSies trying to move the goalposts, why do they feel they have to do that? Oh yeah just like Scientology they are a teeny tiny itsy bitsy minority, so small that most OS statistics now list Linux under "other" along with other hobbyist desktops like ReactOS and Haiku. Meanwhile the Hairyfeet Challenge is proudly celebrating 8 years of Linux not being able to pass simple tests like "can it update without shitting on its own drivers" and in its current direction I have ZERO doubt that if you are here in 12 years you can help me celebrate 20 years of Linux failure!
BTW be sure to get a little party hat and blow a noisemaker in celebration of the Hairyfeet Challenge lasting so long, after all it was guys like you making excuses and moving the goalposts that have let Linux devs get away with such sub par shite for so long so the challenge couldn't have lasted as long as it has without guys like you, thanks.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
And yet Windows 10 on release day will have more users than Linux has gotten in 22 fricking years LOL.
Well I figured some screwball would show up to attempt to defend Windows and fail. It was you. I read the other posts below and you seem sufficiently clowned already. There is no need to really rub it in your face any more.
You played to emotions with "fricking" and "LOL" but you just look like a dickhead. Everything else you said just indicates you were slobbering when you typed it.
Windows 10? LMFAO
The other people who ate your lunch made some interesting points that no matter how much you try to ridicule, still make you look even stupider.
"DaFuq" and "hipster" and "BMWer" and "no sirree bob!" and a page and a half of "CLI bullshit"
You are a douche.
Windows is death knell. Even Microsoft's new "Edge" browser is retarded. We already have full functioning web standard compliant browsers. Nobody is lacking a web browser. There are MANY on every platform. Firefox costs nothing and handles everything. It is also open source and cross-platform and has excellent extensions. That's a VERY big deal. We don't need any more propriety Microsoft brainstorms either like Silverlight. Windows media player tried to dominate by proprietary force for years. I can't remember the last time I opened it. Internet Explorer? It is renowned worldwide as the least secure thing in Cyberspace. It is good for one thing... to download Firefox. There are many ways around that too. "Edge" is a nice marketing name some Microsoft dummy decided on to give them the marketing "Edge". nah. Sorry, it's weak.
Windows?.. gtfo. Game developers can send microsoft.com to archive.org simply by compiling all games to run on Linux.
Nobody is saying you have to switch from Windows to Linux either. We are saying use both. Anybody can. Microsoft literally tried to make it hard to do by implementing secure boot, but that's been handled. Linux is free. But ohhh what do we know about this? People will flee to quality.
Linux is far superior RIGHT NOW than every edition of Windows COMBINED. It's also a no brainer to anybody with a Mac. You can theme KDE to look just like your Mac fisher price desktop. Mac OSX gives you a bash shell (CLI) and Linux gives you a bash shell (CLI). And you can switch back and forth to any shell you want as many times as you want.
Windows is death knell. A registry is a wish list for weddings not some efficient way to store OS parameters. NTFS? lmao. NTFS = GTFO. There are many better filesystems than Windows filesystems. All of them are Linux/BSD come to find out.
Again, everybody already clowned you. www.microsoft.com runs on Linux. This is not a small clue. This is a ton of bricks on your head.
How many no-shit-sherlocks can you pretend not to see? It is really time to stop shipping OEM PC's with Windows and give consumers a smarter OS. At the very least, Linux and Windows should ship dual-installed on new PC's. Windows for your old ass legacy software and some games. Linux to actually enjoy your PC and cyberspace.
The market headlocks like .pdf and .doc and .wmv support that Microsoft used for decades to hold consumers hostage to their piece of shit operating system... ***are gone***. You can use PDF's and DOC's and even WMV's in Linux immediately and for free, including MANY other superior (and free) formats.
Guess what? Windows is death knell. Now reply and cry I like to see Windows dummies get fussy.
> If I write a library and GPL it, I'm depriving you of the freedom to use it in a proprietary application. That's a restriction.
No. If I write a library, copyright law deprives you of the freedom to use it in a proprietary application. GPL doesn't restrict your right to use my code; it conditionally grants you some rights to use the code - which you otherwise don't have.
Ya know what is sad? Its the fact nobody can even talk about fucking DESKTOPS here without some FOSSies trying to move the goalposts
Actually people can talk about fucking DESKTOPS, if they fucking make it clear they are talking about fucking DESKTOPS. If you see the your post which you thought was talking about fucking DESKTOPS, it didn't fucking mention fucking DESKTOPS. Its parent didn't, nor grandparent. Grandparent's grandparent mentioned
Linux on all supercomputers, here on slashdot, Google, Amazon, The International Space Station, world governments, Android (eys, it's Linux) on the best phones, etc
- the only post in the ancestry of your post to define any context at all.
TFS and TFA also don't limit themselves to desktops. So it was you who fucking moved the fucking goalposts.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Right.
So you're wafer thin alibi is that someone else is cow-trolling every article as an AC, and you came to this article and found the cow-troll had forgot to do his work, so you did it for him. But just this one time.
My suspicion is that you are all sexconcker. Sexconker says cows say moo. (moo moo moo, moo-trolls say moo). You cow-troll!
Help build the anti-software-patent wiki
So cultist, good to know. Would you like to blather on about the Rpi now? or maybe about the "soon to be as open as a TiVo" Android OS?
Ya know what is sad? Its the fact nobody can even talk about fucking DESKTOPS here without some FOSSies trying to move the goalposts, why do they feel they have to do that? Oh yeah just like Scientology they are a teeny tiny itsy bitsy minority, so small that most OS statistics now list Linux under "other" along with other hobbyist desktops like ReactOS and Haiku. Meanwhile the Hairyfeet Challenge is proudly celebrating 8 years of Linux not being able to pass simple tests like "can it update without shitting on its own drivers" and in its current direction I have ZERO doubt that if you are here in 12 years you can help me celebrate 20 years of Linux failure!
BTW be sure to get a little party hat and blow a noisemaker in celebration of the Hairyfeet Challenge lasting so long, after all it was guys like you making excuses and moving the goalposts that have let Linux devs get away with such sub par shite for so long so the challenge couldn't have lasted as long as it has without guys like you, thanks.
Damn. I came back to see if anybody commented. hairyfeet, you are a total fucking dickhead.
"FOSSies"? Seriously cunt?
You are on a website running on Linux. Slashdot runs CentOS. If you go to www.microsoft.com you will be accessing a website running on LINUX.
The only people who don't use Linux are fucking idiots. Android is way way better than Apple's iShit.
Supercomputers? Go to top500.org and see what they are running on. Billions and billions of dollars of equipment... running on Linux. None on Windows or Mac. International Space Station? Linux. Amazon? etc etc. Fuck you for being this stupid.
You really think supercomputers have downtime EVER because Linux can't update without "shitting on it's drivers"?
Were you drunk or high when you wrote that? You look like a moron. Everything you said was this OH NOES I'M A BITCH emotional chaos.
Fuck you 1000x. You must have been mad at your life then thought you would unleash those emotions in defense of Windows.
Go to google.com (you know, the #1 search engine which also happens to be running worldwide on Linux) ... and search for windows sucks. "windows sucks" or windows sucks.
Get it? Windows sucks.
You are a dumb bitch on your best day. Maybe you make your living on Microsoft shit. Well if so, I want to give a special LMFAO to you and your future starving family. Maybe you can regroup and make some sales at a flea market.
Windows is death knell.