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On Being Pro-GPL

Posted by Soulskill on from the my-license-is-licensier-than-your-license dept.

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?"

5 of 250 comments (clear)

  1. wrong wrong wrong about copyleft by ysth · · Score: 5, Informative

    Copyleft's strings say, 'you can use my stuff, as long as you give back what you make from it.'

    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"

    1. Re:wrong wrong wrong about copyleft by Todd+Knarr · · Score: 4, Informative

      That's actually only partially right. If you pass on the source code along with the binaries, you're only obligated to give the source to people you give the binaries to. But if you make an offer to provide the source, you have to provide the source to anyone who asks. That's because of 6c (GPL v3) or 3c (GPL v2) which allow those you gave binaries to to pass along those binaries and your offer of source code to others. Those bits mean those additional people are entitled to the source through your offer so you can't refuse to give people the source just because you didn't give them binaries direcetly. No, you can't bar recipients from passing along the binaries per those bits without yourself violating your license, except by including the source in what you distribute.

  2. Yea- we need the GPL or we won't get sources by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    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.

  3. Re:Being Pro-GPL Is For Cows by jones_supa · · Score: 3, Informative

    Well, we found the cow-man.

  4. Re:Being Pro-GPL Is For Cows by tepples · · Score: 1, Informative

    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.