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Linus Loves GPL, But Hates GPL Lawsuits (cio.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader sfcrazy writes: During LinuxCon, Torvalds was full of praise for GNU GPL: "The GPL ensures that nobody is ever going to take advantage of your code. It will remain free and nobody can take that away from you. I think that's a big deal for community management... FSF [Free Software Foundation] and I don't have a loving relationship, but I love GPL v2. I really think the license has been one of the defining factors in the success of Linux because it enforced that you have to give back, which meant that the fragmentation has never been something that has been viable from a technical standpoint."
And he thinks the BSD license is bad for everyone: "Over the years, I've become convinced that the BSD license is great for code you don't care about," Torvalds said.
But Linus also addressed the issue of enforcing the GPL on the Linux foundation mailing list when someone proposed a discussion of it at Linuxcon. "I think the whole GPL enforcement issue is absolutely something that should be discussed, but it should be discussed with the working title 'Lawyers: poisonous to openness, poisonous to community, poisonous to projects'... quite apart from the risk of loss in a court, the real risk is something that happens whether you win or lose, and in fact whether you go to court or just threaten: the loss of community, and in particular exactly the kind of community that can (and does) help. You lose your friends."
And he thinks the BSD license is bad for everyone: "Over the years, I've become convinced that the BSD license is great for code you don't care about," Torvalds said.
But Linus also addressed the issue of enforcing the GPL on the Linux foundation mailing list when someone proposed a discussion of it at Linuxcon. "I think the whole GPL enforcement issue is absolutely something that should be discussed, but it should be discussed with the working title 'Lawyers: poisonous to openness, poisonous to community, poisonous to projects'... quite apart from the risk of loss in a court, the real risk is something that happens whether you win or lose, and in fact whether you go to court or just threaten: the loss of community, and in particular exactly the kind of community that can (and does) help. You lose your friends."
You can do whatever you want with your code. Linus just thinks that the BSD license is only good for code you don't care about... but, dude, that's, like, just his opinion, man.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
I have always preferred permissive licenses like MIT and BSD. However, Linus has created the world's most successful open-source software, so perhaps it's worth considering how the license has helped shape the software and its supporting community.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
I think if you want to build an empire around your projects, that BSD is probably not the best way to go. It's too easy for anyone to setup a business and overshadow your contributions. (it's why the wine project switch to GPL)
I tend to use ISC, MIT, or BSD myself. But I'm not looking to be the be in charge of the next Linux, GIMP, GTK, etc.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
then soon every greedy capitalist in the software industry would be scalping code and using it in their products and selling it for top dollar and without releasing the source code, people like microsoft, apple, google, oracle, etc... they would all be raping your code for profits if the threat of litigation did not hang over their heads
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
The only restriction the GPL imposes is to prevent you to take away freedom. Thus, the GPL is only "non-free" to those who want to restrict or remove freedom.
Well there is one exception of course, its compatibility with other copyleft licenses. See the whole ZFS license debacle. But that's a negative side effect, and not what the GPL was designed for (however precisely what the CDDL was designed for, but thats a different story).
Each open source license has its goals and principles, and none is "bad" or "evil" from itself.
[...] You can't have freedom if there's a "but only if..." attached to it, [...]
I'm free to swing my fist, but only if I don't hit you.
Now, based on this example, please explain again what kind of freedom you are looking for that has no "but only if ..." attached to it.
The point of the GPL is to make the code free, not the coders. When starting, you're free to choose the GPL or not, and thus the GPL never revokes that initial freedom from you. GPL code can never be reverted to a less free state, whereas code under other licenses, such as BSD, can.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
Its the freedom to enter a fair agreement: you can use my software as long as you treat others the same way I'm treating you.
Is that as free as "do whatever you want"? No. But it's as free as a fair-minded person needs it to be.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The GPL ensures that nobody is ever going to take advantage of your code.
Is that like how laws against murder ensure that no-one ever gets murdered?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
The GPL isnt about YOU having freedom, its about the SOFTWARE having freedom despite you.
Yup, it's his [incorrect] opinion of how I think about my code. :)
ROTFL. That's your opinion.
I Found it notable Linus felt it important to indicate which version of the GPL met with his approval.
#DeleteChrome
... unless you can, and do, enforce it.
Lots of entities would share their code in that circumstance because its in their best interests to do so. But a lot MORE companies (especially companies running Linux on all kinds of embedded hardware like routers and phones and tablets and such) wouldn't share if they didn't have to because its in THEIR best interests NOT to share their code.
Me personally, I think there should be MORE enforcement (via lawsuits if talking directly to the company that is violating the license doesn't work) of the GPL against companies who use the Linux kernel and dont share their code when legally required to.
Plenty of companies violate the GPL on the Linux kernel and many companies are well known as repeat offenders (taking months or even longer to release the source code corresponding to a new device or a new firmware update, releasing code that is incomplete or wont compile, releasing code that doesn't match the binaries or otherwise not properly following the GPL)
They aren't. They are concerned about derivative works of THEIR OWN code, concerns that they are legally entitled to have by virtue of having the copyright on the code that they wrote. The fact that a derivative work might have your own code in it is entirely superfluous, if it is a derivative work then you still need the original copyright holder's permission to do something with it. The GPL outlines the terms necessary to receive such permission. Nothing more, and nothing less.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The freedom of the people who receive those modifications is affected. And if those people want features and bug fixes, your freedom to provide it for them is diminished because you don't know if it's your code or the proprietary code that needs to change and how to change it.
It's completely okay to not care about flow on effects, but please admit you're not thinking about the big picture.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
Just as we come closer to ensuring no murders when we enforce laws against murder, we come closer to ensuring the software freedom described in the GPL when we enforce the GPL.
It's telling that Linus Torvalds said "I really think the license has been one of the defining factors in the success of Linux because it enforced that you have to give back, which meant that the fragmentation has never been something that has been viable from a technical standpoint." and hates enforcement ("Lawyers: poisonous to openness..."). The fork of the Linux kernel Torvalds distributes contains the "fragmentation" he claims isn't viable—Torvalds' variant of Linux contains proprietary binaries in it. These blobs of code are removed in the fully-free GNU Linux-libre kernel.
Linus Torvalds' position is more easily understood when you consider that Torvalds is a fan of the right-wing, proprietor-friendly open source movement which is a reaction to the older free software movement. The difference between the two movements has been described in writing (older essay, newer essay) and in every RMS speech for years.
You can see that difference playing out in Linus Torvalds' dig against GPL enforcement. Brad Kuhn, President and Distinguished Technologist of the Software Freedom Conservancy talked about the value of GPL enforcement in his most recent talk on the issue at linux.conf.au in 2016 in his talk "Copyleft For the Next Decade: A Comprehensive Plan", "Copyleft is not magic pixie dust; you don't sprinkle it on some code and then suddenly your code is liberated forever. I wish that were true but that's not how the world works." (9m2s). The way Torvalds talks about the GPLv2 you'd think the GPLv2 were magic pixie dust because that's what he wants Linux kernel copyright holders to believe—an unenforced GPL is fine—because Torvalds, like any good sycophant for proprietary software, knows what Kuhn reminds us of in Kuhn's talk, (around 13m1s), "If a copyleft license is not enforced it's indistinguishable from a non-copylefted license in practice.". But where Torvalds takes that as an instruction to not act in defense of the GPL, Kuhn says that as a warning against software proprietarism. Conservancy is the group doing that enforcement work to help assure all computer users actually get the freedoms of free software the GPL describes. That work includes GPL enforcement, specifically a coordinated compliance effort across multiple Conservancy projects.
Digital Citizen
quite apart from the risk of loss in a court, the real risk is something that happens whether you win or lose, and in fact whether you go to court or just threaten: the loss of community, and in particular exactly the kind of community that can (and does) help. You lose your friends."
Lawsuits always create divisions and force people to take sides. It can be really fun. But it's also probably something you shouldn't do to colleagues and friends because computer science is a small world.
It sounds very, VERY theoretical. Particularly since they'd have to show that YOU had access to THEIR work. Not to mention why are they bothering to track the people whose work they are using in order to sue them? It's a bit like saying that every 60 million years a killer asteroid shows up, so we better spend our days looking up at the sky, just in case. There are more worthwhile things to worry about.
Actually, it only directly implies that people who use BSD licensing think less about derivative works from their code than people who use the GPL. This is perfectly fine, but since derivative works would typically contain substantial portions of the original code, by extension, the lack of care about derivative works of their ccde thereby reduces to a lack of care about their own code, from that perspective.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
People DO spend their days looking up at the sky just in case.
You missed the point about the American system. They can have the flimsiest of cases but they can still threaten to bankrupt you without trying to win.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
If I was building a Tivo today I'd probably start with a BSD license. It's what Sony did with the PlayStation 4.
Having actually seen that done, both with Linux and FreeBSD (as operating systems in routers), I can tell you a) that I would choose Linux every time and that b) the reason is the license and the lawyers.
For the first year or so you will be concentrating on adding features. Making things you probably benefit from keeping private. With Linux you make these in user space which might occasionally make things more difficult. You will eventually want to add some low level functionality and add it to the kernel.
At the point you start low level work, if you used a BSD licensed kernel, there will be a discussion between lawyers and management and likely you end up keeping your functionality private a) because you can and b) because your competition might use it otherwise. If you have a GPL licensed kernel, you will likely decide to publish and push upstream a) because the license pushes you to and b) because even if your competition uses it you will get the benefit back.
After some time, if you don't contribute upstream, you will find that you have incompatibilities with new software versions and you will stick to a stable version. Eventually you will stop benefiting from the evolution of the upstream software. Long term this is a nightmare for the developers. You lose a tiny bit by being "forced" to contribute back. You actually gain a huge amount back from the community because they continue working on your software.
This has happened often; commercial derivatives of BSD operating systems either fork completely or die. 386BSD, JunOS, OSX, IPSO etc. etc. It's very hard to do long term commercial contributions into a complex BSD environment because technically you are giving away shareholder value with no visible recompense.
The only extra restriction the GPL has over BSD is "you can't add more restrictions to this code". Saying BSD is more free than GPL is a bit like saying anarchy is more free than democracy because you can imprison/enslave whoever you like. In practice you end up being less free with anarchy.
Well I have no idea what that's about. There's no minimum quality bar for GPLed code; go for it.
Because it affects everyone, or perhaps more to the point it affects them a lot more than it affects you (because you can always do whatever you like with your own code).
Ultimately it's your call, of course. It would just be nice if your call contributed to the network effects of open-and-will-stay-open code.
"Some people love the BSD license. Some people love the proprietary licenses. I understand that. If you want to make a program and you want to feed your kids, it makes a lot of sense to have a proprietary license and sell binaries. I think it makes less sense today, but I really understand the argument. I don't want to judge. I'm just giving my view on licensing."
Elen sìla lùmenn' omentielvo
If I was building a Tivo today I'd probably start with a BSD license. It's what Sony did with the PlayStation 4.
Having actually seen that done, both with Linux and FreeBSD (as operating systems in routers), I can tell you a) that I would choose Linux every time and that b) the reason is the license and the lawyers.
For the first year or so you will be concentrating on adding features. Making things you probably benefit from keeping private. With Linux you make these in user space which might occasionally make things more difficult. You will eventually want to add some low level functionality and add it to the kernel.
At the point you start low level work, if you used a BSD licensed kernel, there will be a discussion between lawyers and management and likely you end up keeping your functionality private a) because you can and b) because your competition might use it otherwise. If you have a GPL licensed kernel, you will likely decide to publish and push upstream a) because the license pushes you to and b) because even if your competition uses it you will get the benefit back.
After some time, if you don't contribute upstream, you will find that you have incompatibilities with new software versions and you will stick to a stable version. Eventually you will stop benefiting from the evolution of the upstream software. Long term this is a nightmare for the developers. You lose a tiny bit by being "forced" to contribute back. You actually gain a huge amount back from the community because they continue working on your software.
This has happened often; commercial derivatives of BSD operating systems either fork completely or die. 386BSD, JunOS, OSX, IPSO etc. etc. It's very hard to do long term commercial contributions into a complex BSD environment because technically you are giving away shareholder value with no visible recompense.
Um yeah a competitor won't use it? bahaha. They rip off Linux code all the time which is why the point of lawyers are brought up. Shoot some companies like banks have ANTI GNU policies to protect themselves. Linux can not be used as a simple link to GPL infects the whole program making it viral. Look it up? I am not a troll here. PRoblem is most GNU geeks do not know the difference between GPL and LGPL and assume anyone can use their API. It is not true and it pisses me off.
Sorry the BSD/MIT license is the only free one that is business friendly. One is ideal the other is based on reality. Unless you have big pockets you can not guarantee someone won't steal your work.
Now add in licensing agreements and contracts with vendors and customers and it is a can of worms. Look at Java before Oracle bought it? Xerox were assholes and prevented AWT and SWING to be GPL. IcedTea had missing functionality for years.
Under a BSD/MIT license I can write code and do not have to share it. Investors agree and so the lawyers that this is the best option
http://saveie6.com/