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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"
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Why all the angst and false drama?
Just look at whats happened in the hardware arena. We've ended up without sources because we've let the non-free proponents in.
You didn't "let them in", you started using their products because you couldn't make your own and now you complain that they don't subscribe to your free software ideology.
Cutting edge hardware certainly seems to be incompatible with that "free software ideology", I say "seems" because you can pontificate about how it could theoretically work but we've had 30-odd years of FSF and still it's just some free software running on proprietary hardware often with proprietary firmware and proprietary drivers. If you want a free stack then you need to get cracking on hardware, but applying the free software model to hardware does not appear to be viable.
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.
That's not how it works at all, and that's how FUD starts. If you use inkscape, you don't have to give away your drawings. If you use Linux, you don't have to give away stuff you do with the OS. Hell, even if you use GCC, your code is still yours.
And if you put something on a server (minus Affero), you still don't have to give anything back.
No, the only people who have to give back are those who write something that can interoperate in certain ways with GPLed software.
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
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.
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.
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Well, we found the cow-man.
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.