FTFA, American Red Cross is refunding without being asked, as a matter of principle, and frequently to people who didn't even realize they'd been defrauded.
Gub gub gub. You're still stuck on this? FAMILY DEVELOPED FOR DIFFERENT REASON THAN NEW MEMBER. NEW MEMBER DEVELOPED FOR DIFFERENT REASON THAN FAMILY. With apologies to Kelso, the helmet really needs to go to you now.
I would have thought the combustion engine example would have made it clear enough. I tried it on the six year old at the pool; he got it. Maybe you should quit being so angry and start thinking about the possibility that you made a mistake.
No, dear. That's called flamebaiting. Trolling is when someone says something like "lolol stfu fag" and invokes Godwin's law, then talks about the GNAA and finishes off with some ascii art spelling out a yo momma hot grits joke.
Of course, what I actually did was to cite my opinions in a clear, reasonable manner. If you think that's going to "attract predictable flames," well, then you think mostly about the parts of slashdot I tend to ignore. Your statement notwithstanding, I did in fact get some very interesting conversations from what I said, and there was a mutual friending in one branch of the tree.
Just because you can't imagine being civil doesn't mean the rest of us can't. And really, if you don't know the difference between (-1, troll) and (-1, flamebait), maybe you should hold off on the moderation personally.
Meaningful measures are e.g. marketshare, total number of users or total number of installed systems.
If you say so, though since we're talking expressly about corporate interests, there's good reason to disagree. Nonetheless, if those are the figures you'd prefer to use, I say have fun; they tell the same story. Linux just isn't dominant.
Your GPL is costing you tremendously.
No it doesn't. Any GPL project can incorporate BSD code, but not the other way around.
There is a tremendous level of naivete involved in assuming that code can be ripped out of one project and injected into another project. It's usually faster and lower defect rate to start from scratch; try reading some PSP/TSP or RAND data some time.
But besides, this is exactly my point. I decline to work on a GPL project because I'm unable to legally, meaning I work on BSD projects instead, and all the GPL guy hears is "oh, then I can copy that code." Of course you can, but you won't. Very little of the code I donate to projects can be moved between projects, because if it's simple enough to be project portable, someone's almost always done it already. I don't usually get involved until there's something difficult at hand, because I know nobody else will write it for me, and when you're dealing with something like that, the actual likelihood that the code can be brought over, before you even consider may, is virtually nil.
It obviously didn't occur to you that it might be the Nintendo NDA which is bogus and broken.
The Nintendo NDA is industry normal. The same problems occur with the XBox SDK NDA, the PS2/PS3 SDK NDA, the BREW SDK NDA, and even your google ad user agreement, if you'd take the time to look at it (think I'm kidding?)
I've written commercial games for eleven consoles. The GPL cannot be used with any of those licenses. It also can't be used with Department of Defense or Office of Navy code, and I presume that probably means the other branches of the armed forces and intelligence community are off limits too (with the notable exception of the NSA.) The LA County School System insurance contract won't allow GPL code. I'm sure there are tons of examples, but I've only had so many jobs.
Am I saying Nintendo's license is great? No. But I can use my Nintendo license with essentially every license that's listed on wikipedia except GPL and GPL derivatives, as well as the like-minded Creative Commons variants, and those same licenses cause problems on every console and in every government contract I've ever gotten.
I've been dealing with the Nintendo NDA for more than three years. Believe me, there's been no shortage of times I've thought about its problems. Please stop basing your comments on guesses about what I may or may not have thought of, in contrast to what was actually said.
NDAs for APIs are just plain stupid
Yeah, you're obviously in a position to judge corporate needs, if you don't understand why something like that is important. "No no, I understand, they're just stupid." Yeah, that's what everyone who doesn't understand something and is only interested in winning instead of learning says. Please come up with something more detailed, such as a justification of why they're stupid. Otherwise, it's nothing more than clueless preaching.
simply refuse to develop for a plattform with such a hostile policy.
I do. That's why none of my code is GPL. I refuse to develop for any platform with a hostile policy. Of course, since GPL is involved in all the "can't do it legally," and since none of the other licenses have any problems with anything but GPL or its derivatives, obviously it's... everyone else's fault.
Man, you're going to love entering the workplace.
If you don't (be it by choice or by necessity), you reinfor
Uh, if you're doing that under the BSD then every one of those lines can be used in GPL'ed software.
Sure, if someone takes the time to convert them from working in project #1 to project #2, which is often more work than just starting over, and which is also often impossible. Furthermore, that kind of makes my point in another direction: BSD code can be used in GPL code, but not vice versa. That's an asinine limitation.
None of the modifications I've made to AXIOM would work in any of the algebra engines I evaluated. Just because the license I chose doesn't prohibit you from using my code doesn't mean it's technically feasable. Only one of the GPL solvers I found can do what my extensions do, and I wouldn't have used it anyway, since its RAM footprint was too large for the DS; as such, there's a GPL algebra solver out there which lost out on the work I donated to AXIOM because of its choice of license.
It's cute to reduce things to tautological non-examples, but when the real world intrudes, things change.
You just can't use the future GPL'ed derivations in your software - just as you can't use the bazillion commercialized copies of your code.
You're losing track of what belongs to who. The code isn't mine, it's an external BSD licensed application. And yes, in fact, I can use the bazillion commercialized copies of my code, because many other companies have donated in exactly the same way that mine has.
You really shouldn't base your arguments on assumptions; when those assumptions turn out to be wrong, you're left empty handed.
However, if one of those corporations wants to use MY code they're going to pay me for it - either by giving me some improved code back, or by giving me cash for a license.
Yeah, yeah, that's what they all say. You see any corporations knocking on your door? That's a fantasy based on delusions of grandeur. Companies don't want to use your code badly enough to pay you. If you made it BSD, they might use it. When they used it, they might extend it (they might not; it might be usable as is.) If they extended it, they'd usually give you the extensions back, because even though you're weird and paranoid about other people, most of us aren't, and when someone does us a favor, we return the favor.
Write a web crawler, and index the developer size and productivity index of GPL and BSD projects on sourceforge. The pattern is really quite shocking. Take a look at the difference in per-developer productivity. I mean, it's great to go "omg the great evil corporation wants to steal from me," but dude, no, they really don't, your code isn't that important.
There's a huge gap between interesting enough to buy and worth ignoring. You're sealing that gap. Either they pay you for it or they go away. Nobody's going to use it otherwise; when a company evaluates a library, it almost never knows whether it's going to extend the product, and they're not going to start using some GPL thing if they're worried they might have to pay down the line.
Of course, none of what you said actually follows from the GPL at all. Y'see, the GPL doesn't protect you from the situation you describe in any way. All the GPL requires for a company to use your code is for that company to redistribute your code. Period. That's it. They can use it without paying you a red cent and without giving you a single line of code.
In the meantime, you're sealing off that gap between useful enough to pay for and not worth having. BSD licenses don't do that. I'll give you an example. I started using an excellent C++ rendering library several years back called AntiGrain Graphics. I wrote several large batches of code and had several more commissioned for it, because it was under MIT license at the time. When I went back, ready to donate, the author had switched to GPL. Because my code was dependant on the DS API, I no longer could legally donate my code to him,
Actually, you're making my point for me. Trolltech's business model cannot exist under straight GPL, which is why they dual license. Maybe you could show me a case where not only does a company want what GPL does, but also doesn't have to throw it away when it's time to make money and pay the bills?
Giving an example of a company which cannot tolerate pure GPL, man, I don't know why you thought that'd be a good idea.
The benefit the GPL provides is that other people can use your source code AT ALL. If you didn't release the software under an open-source license than nobody could redistribute it AT ALL. So, the GPL clearly PROVIDES something.
And with all due respect, under what situation can you imagine a company other than a Linux ISR/ISV wanting to release code but to limit its use? I mean, yes, I do understand what the GPL intends to achieve, which is what you just told me. That's not a benefit, that's a goal.
A benefit explains why that actually does the company some good, instead of just assuming they want it. If I ask you what the benefit is to a diving outfit to own a new Jeep, explaining the four wheel offroad power is silly - it misses the point of the question. I'm not asking to recite what the GPL is for.
The reason I asked the question was to find a situation in which someone other than a Linux ISR/ISV would actually gain from this specific kind of limitation. I don't need an explanation of what the GPL does, just why anyone would want what it does.
And, it can result in less headaches to the person who wrote the software in the first place
I believe I've been quite repeatedly clear that I am interested only in the motivations of companies, which in context are all that are germane. I'm quite aware of why individuals do it; very few GPL people fail to jump at what they see as a chance to preach about the GPL's abilities, as you did above.
It's pretty frustrating when I go to the effort of saying "dude, that's not what I asked," and someone else chimes in with also not what I asked. I mean, you're not even close to the kind of stuff I was talking about. I realize you're trying to make a point, but it had absolutely nothing to do with what I was saying.
A company can open things up without giving away the store to their more closed competitors. MySQL, Trolltech, and others have a business model made possible by the GPL. You may believe they could get even richer if they did things your way but it seems they are actually businessmen too and that they like you seem to know what they are doing. Others like IBM can make improvements to useful codebases without again handing free gifts to their competitors. A competitor can make use of the code but only with the reciprocity the GPL enforces. There are valid choices other than the total giveaway of BSD/MIT and the anal retentiveness of an MS EULA. I've always found it interesting that hardcore BSD advocates find both of those utterly acceptable yet the GPL and other copyleft is utter anathema.
First off, I was pretty careful to be clear that the answer I wanted would be about what benefit the license provides, rather than the problems it doesn't cause. I don't see you answering that. I just see you repeating what problems you've thought of which won't happen.
Second off, I'm not a "hardcore BSD advocate." I use several licenses - different licenses for different jobs. I've been pretty clear with you that I would like for you to stop attempting to pigeonhole or stereotype me. I am speaking against GPL, not for any particular license; I simply used BSD as an example.
I've put no words in your mouth.
Nonsense. You made many claims about what I wanted that were neither in what I said nor were correct; indeed you've done that twice in this post alone. Just because you didn't realize you were doing it doesn't mean it isn't true. When you say "you want XXX," and I didn't ever say XXX, that's you putting words in my mouth. Try looking at your previous post, and actually reading my response to it. You did it quite a few times, whether you're willing to face that or not.
I find your responses quite distressing. You're avoiding every question I asked, and in the face of my protesting you saying I want things that I don't actually want, in one hand you insist you don't do that and in the other you do it again.
I don't discuss with zealots, and that's the kind of person with whom I now believe I'm dealing. I may be wrong; I don't know you. What I do know is that you've managed to either ignore or fail to understand everything I have to say, and you've repeatedly characterized me as someone with whom, if I knew them as a seperate person, I would actually have a very serious problem with.
I'm sorry that you don't understand why your behavior is offensive, because that means you won't learn to repair it; however, just because you're not willing to face how you make other people feel doesn't mean it's any less true. I find you insulting, and I no longer choose to speak to you.
Actually, I think you would do well to rethink that position. You might be shocked to learn who's given away more source code than anyone else on this planet. Have a look around MSDN. There's a lot of stuff up there.
Am I saying they're goodbear? Hell, no. But this is one place in which hating Microsoft doesn't work at all. Sure, they're doing it because it's good for their bottom line, but that aside, Microsoft has given away two point three metric buttloads of code, and it's all under extremely generous licensure.
I know what the word bait means. Citing my opinions isn't bait. I'm sorry you've confused your grudges and your stereotypes for people spoiling for a fight, but it turns out that people can disagree with you on a specific basis without being in the mood for a tussle.
Indeed, five years ago when I posted messages like that, I used to get really good discussions. Unfortunately, as the size of a userbase grows, the signal to noise ratio drops, and eventually you get ACs making nasty comments that don't make sense (such as yourself.)
I stay here because I still like the signal, but I sure understand why so many old hands have left. You're part of that.
Wait, linux mmep() allows allocation at null pointer? I find that hard to believe - even Windows 3.1 gets that kind of thing right. That's a remarkably naïve security hole, and with a userbase the size of Linux', I can't imagine that hasn't been fixed.
Heh. Well, of course, I could be wrong. That said, what I'm looking at is a bunch of the people I know personally who used to be GPL advocates changing their minds. Maybe it's temporary, and maybe the people I know are just clustered against chance. Those things do happen. Still, v3 is a big change over v2 in subtle ways, and among those people I know, there is a whole lot of discontent.
Combine that with that those same people - again, maybe this is chance - finally realizing that corporations aren't just stealing code without donating back, because it's bad business (corporations using community code donate to community code because that encourages other corporations to do so, dramatically lowering their total development and maintenance cost, which basically every manager with any college training knows) - and you start seeing a pretty big shift in behavior.
Again, maybe I just know a statistically unlikely cluster of people. But, the cluster's pretty big, and that sets my opinions pretty firmly. I could be wrong, but my belief is that the GPL is now in decline, and whereas like DOS it's never actually going away, in my opinion, a massive reduction would be a huge win for everyone.
It's just what I believe. Time will vet or clown me. We'll see.
Who do you think was in the bi-weekly meetings with Eben Moglen et al. for the past 18 months working on the GPL drafts?
Tqwenty one software vendors, apparently. Or did you think that "most corporations" is a small enough group that 21 companies means I'm wrong? Maybe there are only 150 companies in America?
I refer you to part of a transcript from a recent speech
Okay, I read it. I don't understand what point you're trying to make. Now, since you've not actually put down a link to the thing you're talking about, I can't investigate it, but as a participant in the mailing lists, I believe that virtually every company to which you refer is either a linux vendor or a linux user. I tried looking for a list, but couldn't find one; that said, when I made a list of the companies I could identify (14 of the 21,) there are no standalone developers in the list at all, and it's obviously the standalone vendors about whom I'm talking, if you'd bother to read that to which you replied.
So, yeah, 21 arbitrary companies which may or may not have any bearing on the situation, out of more than three hundred thousand tech companies in America alone, disagree with the thing I said I believed that most companies felt. Wow. That's almost 0.007%; surely the word "most" isn't warranted there, right?
Oh, wait: but of those 21, at least half are Linux vendors, and two of those companies - Sun and MySQL AB - have spoken out about serious concerns about the structure of GPLv3. So, it turns out that simply attending a conference doesn't actually mean you don't have reservations about a license, eh?
Being vague makes weak arguments appear less weak. Unfortunately, it also means they don't hold up to the very slightest of scrutiny. I suggest you look up "argumentum ad verecundiam" before you start debating on basis of what less than two dozen attendees to a conference might mean.
So, maybe you could speak for yourself and just explain what you believe, instead of letting Eben speak for you? I'm not trying to be rude; I really just don't understand what you're getting at. I don't see how what any of you said applies to what I actually said instead of what you wanted to hear; all I said was that I disliked the GPL, that I found the ramifications of some of its decisions sad, and that I was of the opinion that it was in its decline.
Where does any of what you said impact any of those things? I'm citing opinions. Get off of the soapbox.
But the GPL in both v2 and v3 trim isn't going to just go away because you and your company don't like it.
Don't I know it. If things went away because I disliked them, this would be a very different world in which we both live, and GPL never would have made it to v2 in the first place. (I've been releasing open source since before GPL existed, y'see, which is a big part of why I find it so offensive. GPL people seem to believe that the GPL created open source, but there were several vendors selling OSes built on BSD years before Linux had even been thought up.)
Nonetheless the GPL (both forms) are also more suitable for some purposes and many of those are business purposes.
It's funny - people say that, but then they never explain how a business would ever want these restrictions in place. When I ask for an explanation, people usually point out some business they can think up which isn't hurt by these limitations, or point out a GPL company. Well, yay for you. The problem is, in neither of those cases does the GPL actually do good for the company, so that doesn't actually support the claim.
If and when you can show me a company where GPL is a significant asset over BSD/MIT, great, please fill me in. Until then, I respectfully disagree, as a businessman who's had to deal with these things. Making the statement is easy. Defending it isn't.
The reality is that GPL code for all intents and purposes isn't available for those of your frame of mind to use; it isn't the end of world and no amount of sour grapes will change the fact that developers with other goals have just as much right to use the GPL as you have to use proprietary and BSD code.
... what?
Dude, when did I ever say anyone didn't have the right to GPL? You're ranting about correcting something I didn't actually say. At no point did I ever imply that people didn't have the right to release their own source under whatever license they wanted. I respect that people have that right, and with all due apologies to Voltaire, "sir, I may disagree with your choice of license, but I shall defend to the death your right to choose it."
That doesn't mean I can't explain why I disagree with it. Please stop putting words into my mouth. All I said was that the limitations that the GPL imposes have significant costs to projects which use it, and that I find the ramifications thereof sad. At no point did I say any of the things you just attempted to shame me for.
Why is it that any time I speak on behalf of the BSD, GPL people start arguing with fantasies and blaming me for what their imaginations said?
Perhaps, you should consider the idea that real men don't use other people's work to get themselves rich without giving anything back.
I agree. Funny how you assume that because I advocate the BSD license, that I don't donate. I actually donate quite a bit more than almost anyone I know. I really wish you GPL goons would quit pretending I was a thief; it's really, really offensive.
Try googling my nick some time. When you realize that the several thousand dollar bounty I arranged for the Nintendo DS TCP stack has no use to me, since you can't use it in the commercial kit and since I'm a commercial developer, maybe you'll start to understand why I find it so offensive that you all assume I don't give back. I give back a hell of a lot, and I dislike being insulted by people who almost certainly don't do anywhere near as much for their communities as I do just because I find the paranoid limitations of the GPL distasteful, and just because I point out what a tremendous amount of work those limitations throw away.
Linux is the fastest growing unix-ish operating system out there.
If you mean in terms of raw sales, it's OsX, not Linux. If you mean in terms of percentage userbase growth, it's QNX, not Linux. Please stop citing factoids that are actually just guesses. Linux is neither the fastest growing nor the most pervasive unix on the market, and it's unlikely that it ever will be (before OsX put BSD in that seat, it was Solaris.)
If that operating system was BSD, a company, such as Microsoft, could just take all the code, write a better version, and begin selling it.
Yep. That's basically what Apple did, and it's been an enormous benefit to the BSD codebase.
The GPL is important, because it doesn't allow that.
The GPL is fundamentally broken because it doesn't allow that. I know, you hate corporations blindly. The problem is, GPL advocates don't seem to understand just how much effort they're losing because they shut out most corporations. With all these linux user groups, with all these communities, with all these news sources and events, with all this press, there's still more activity in BSD.
Why do you think that is? I'll give you a hint: my company only donates to free-as-in-free open source, and we donate tens of thousands of lines of code a month. We're not alone. Your GPL is costing you tremendously.
You want to use someone else's code without allowing them to see how you used it.
No I don't. Please don't start accusing me of things you don't know about me. Chances are good I've donated more source to open source than everyone you've ever met in real life put together. I just want stuff I can use legally. I'm not trying to not return my contributions. However, my license with Nintendo forbids me from exposing their API.
With a BSD project, I just decline to release one object, the one that wraps the API interface. Anyone who wants to use my code on any other platform than the DS would have to replace that object anyway; it's not costing anyone any extra work unless they're also on the DS, and if they're also on the DS they can get the object from the official developer boards where I posted it.
However, with GPL, it's illegal for me to refuse even to release one line of source. So, even though there's no actual reason for me to release it, even though it doesn't do anyone any good to have the object, I'm stuck: I can't release the object because of my Nintendo NDA, and I can't refuse to release the object because then I'm in violation of the GPL.
It's not that I'm trying to cheat and get away with stuff. It's that the nonsense in the GPL means I really can't use GPL code. Ever. No matter what. No matter how much I may want to. No matter how open I am to giving away code. The GPL forbids me from even using GPL stuff if I donate the 99.99% of my work that I legally am able to, because it's all or nothing, nevermind that the limitation is pointless in this case, and robbing GPL products of all my donated work.
There are fourteen algebraic math solvers that I'm aware of under open source licenses. I didn't make my DS calculator for four months because for a long time, every single solver I found was GPL or LGPL, meaning I couldn't use it. Then, eventually I found AXIOM. I now use AXIOM. I've donated significantly to AXIOM. There are better works out there than AXIOM, and many which would be much easier for me to use, more appropriate in context, with a smaller footprint. But I can't use them, because GPL is so ridiculously paranoid.
Yes, I know, you want to pretend we're all corporate vampires. We aren't, and it's shameful for you to assume that of your fellow man. I've earned my place in open source. Have you?
here are sources for that, but a large amount of freely available code is licensed such that you can not just gain from the arrangement, but also have to give back.
Yeah, that's a great way to look at it. Microsoft released a PR that said "we're not at threat." Surely that means a license which hasn't even been tested in court has "won." By the by, Microsoft is an enormous corporation with many, many lawyers. If you get lazy and start assuming you've won, then you've lost, no matter how strong your current position is.
Besides, in the long run, the camp which really won was BSD, because most large corporations are sick to death of the hoops they have to jump through for the GPL. I know, I'm going to get modded flamebait (even though I'm not flaming anyone) and troll (even though I'm not trolling) for saying this, since this is GPL love central, but in the long run, the love you get is equal to the love you give.
And MIT/BSD license gives out a hell of a lot more love than GPL. I know because my company started on the back of BSD code, and that code has more than doubled in size due to my contributions.
I'm not alone. GPL throws too much away. I believe GPLv3 is GPL's swan song, and I can't be happier that it's going away. It's time for people who write open source to stop closing it. Corporations donate an enormous amount of work to code, and GPL makes many market presences completely impossible. (Yeah yeah, linking, source release, aroo, don't care. I write Nintendo games, and it is literally impossible to use GPL code under the Nintendo license. This is a lot more common than zealots want to believe.)
Most government agencies can't use GPL. Anyone working on protected API hardware can't use GPL. Anyone working on protected hardware without a dynamic linker can't even use LGPL, which pretends it's supposed to fix these problems (hence the sweeping changes to FLTK's license.) On and on it goes.
Tons of ways. One of the most common and easily explained is a denial of service attack. People tend to think that DoS just means hammering the line into submission; it's a broader topic than that. If that kernel memory leak can be triggered by any outside signal, then anyone who wants to bring that box down just needs to trigger it over and over until the box has run out of RAM and swap. On a high speed network, that can often be done shockingly quickly - on the order of tens of minutes, occasionally faster.
If you're interested in these things, in my opinion, the best thing you can do is read a good operating system book - in my opinion you're best off with either Tanenbaum or Silberschatz - those books describe these problems in detail in terms of debugging your work, but in many cases, compromising a system is about leveraging unfixed bugs (enbugging, if you'll pardon the coining;) as such, a book meant to teach one to fix these is a great way to learn what needs to be protected against, as well as why.
Right. And if the original reason for MDMA had been something other than what I said, I wouldn't have said it. Are you seriously still unable to tell the difference between the family of chemicals and one member of the family?
Slashdot Mirror
FTFA, American Red Cross is refunding without being asked, as a matter of principle, and frequently to people who didn't even realize they'd been defrauded.
Gub gub gub. You're still stuck on this? FAMILY DEVELOPED FOR DIFFERENT REASON THAN NEW MEMBER. NEW MEMBER DEVELOPED FOR DIFFERENT REASON THAN FAMILY. With apologies to Kelso, the helmet really needs to go to you now.
I would have thought the combustion engine example would have made it clear enough. I tried it on the six year old at the pool; he got it. Maybe you should quit being so angry and start thinking about the possibility that you made a mistake.
No, dear. That's called flamebaiting. Trolling is when someone says something like "lolol stfu fag" and invokes Godwin's law, then talks about the GNAA and finishes off with some ascii art spelling out a yo momma hot grits joke.
Of course, what I actually did was to cite my opinions in a clear, reasonable manner. If you think that's going to "attract predictable flames," well, then you think mostly about the parts of slashdot I tend to ignore. Your statement notwithstanding, I did in fact get some very interesting conversations from what I said, and there was a mutual friending in one branch of the tree.
Just because you can't imagine being civil doesn't mean the rest of us can't. And really, if you don't know the difference between (-1, troll) and (-1, flamebait), maybe you should hold off on the moderation personally.
If you say so, though since we're talking expressly about corporate interests, there's good reason to disagree. Nonetheless, if those are the figures you'd prefer to use, I say have fun; they tell the same story. Linux just isn't dominant.
There is a tremendous level of naivete involved in assuming that code can be ripped out of one project and injected into another project. It's usually faster and lower defect rate to start from scratch; try reading some PSP/TSP or RAND data some time.
But besides, this is exactly my point. I decline to work on a GPL project because I'm unable to legally, meaning I work on BSD projects instead, and all the GPL guy hears is "oh, then I can copy that code." Of course you can, but you won't. Very little of the code I donate to projects can be moved between projects, because if it's simple enough to be project portable, someone's almost always done it already. I don't usually get involved until there's something difficult at hand, because I know nobody else will write it for me, and when you're dealing with something like that, the actual likelihood that the code can be brought over, before you even consider may, is virtually nil.
The Nintendo NDA is industry normal. The same problems occur with the XBox SDK NDA, the PS2/PS3 SDK NDA, the BREW SDK NDA, and even your google ad user agreement, if you'd take the time to look at it (think I'm kidding?)
I've written commercial games for eleven consoles. The GPL cannot be used with any of those licenses. It also can't be used with Department of Defense or Office of Navy code, and I presume that probably means the other branches of the armed forces and intelligence community are off limits too (with the notable exception of the NSA.) The LA County School System insurance contract won't allow GPL code. I'm sure there are tons of examples, but I've only had so many jobs.
Am I saying Nintendo's license is great? No. But I can use my Nintendo license with essentially every license that's listed on wikipedia except GPL and GPL derivatives, as well as the like-minded Creative Commons variants, and those same licenses cause problems on every console and in every government contract I've ever gotten.
I've been dealing with the Nintendo NDA for more than three years. Believe me, there's been no shortage of times I've thought about its problems. Please stop basing your comments on guesses about what I may or may not have thought of, in contrast to what was actually said.
Yeah, you're obviously in a position to judge corporate needs, if you don't understand why something like that is important. "No no, I understand, they're just stupid." Yeah, that's what everyone who doesn't understand something and is only interested in winning instead of learning says. Please come up with something more detailed, such as a justification of why they're stupid. Otherwise, it's nothing more than clueless preaching.
I do. That's why none of my code is GPL. I refuse to develop for any platform with a hostile policy. Of course, since GPL is involved in all the "can't do it legally," and since none of the other licenses have any problems with anything but GPL or its derivatives, obviously it's ... everyone else's fault.
Man, you're going to love entering the workplace.
Sure, if someone takes the time to convert them from working in project #1 to project #2, which is often more work than just starting over, and which is also often impossible. Furthermore, that kind of makes my point in another direction: BSD code can be used in GPL code, but not vice versa. That's an asinine limitation.
None of the modifications I've made to AXIOM would work in any of the algebra engines I evaluated. Just because the license I chose doesn't prohibit you from using my code doesn't mean it's technically feasable. Only one of the GPL solvers I found can do what my extensions do, and I wouldn't have used it anyway, since its RAM footprint was too large for the DS; as such, there's a GPL algebra solver out there which lost out on the work I donated to AXIOM because of its choice of license.
It's cute to reduce things to tautological non-examples, but when the real world intrudes, things change.
You're losing track of what belongs to who. The code isn't mine, it's an external BSD licensed application. And yes, in fact, I can use the bazillion commercialized copies of my code, because many other companies have donated in exactly the same way that mine has.
You really shouldn't base your arguments on assumptions; when those assumptions turn out to be wrong, you're left empty handed.
Yeah, yeah, that's what they all say. You see any corporations knocking on your door? That's a fantasy based on delusions of grandeur. Companies don't want to use your code badly enough to pay you. If you made it BSD, they might use it. When they used it, they might extend it (they might not; it might be usable as is.) If they extended it, they'd usually give you the extensions back, because even though you're weird and paranoid about other people, most of us aren't, and when someone does us a favor, we return the favor.
Write a web crawler, and index the developer size and productivity index of GPL and BSD projects on sourceforge. The pattern is really quite shocking. Take a look at the difference in per-developer productivity. I mean, it's great to go "omg the great evil corporation wants to steal from me," but dude, no, they really don't, your code isn't that important.
There's a huge gap between interesting enough to buy and worth ignoring. You're sealing that gap. Either they pay you for it or they go away. Nobody's going to use it otherwise; when a company evaluates a library, it almost never knows whether it's going to extend the product, and they're not going to start using some GPL thing if they're worried they might have to pay down the line.
Of course, none of what you said actually follows from the GPL at all. Y'see, the GPL doesn't protect you from the situation you describe in any way. All the GPL requires for a company to use your code is for that company to redistribute your code. Period. That's it. They can use it without paying you a red cent and without giving you a single line of code.
In the meantime, you're sealing off that gap between useful enough to pay for and not worth having. BSD licenses don't do that. I'll give you an example. I started using an excellent C++ rendering library several years back called AntiGrain Graphics. I wrote several large batches of code and had several more commissioned for it, because it was under MIT license at the time. When I went back, ready to donate, the author had switched to GPL. Because my code was dependant on the DS API, I no longer could legally donate my code to him,
Actually, you're making my point for me. Trolltech's business model cannot exist under straight GPL, which is why they dual license. Maybe you could show me a case where not only does a company want what GPL does, but also doesn't have to throw it away when it's time to make money and pay the bills?
Giving an example of a company which cannot tolerate pure GPL, man, I don't know why you thought that'd be a good idea.
A benefit explains why that actually does the company some good, instead of just assuming they want it. If I ask you what the benefit is to a diving outfit to own a new Jeep, explaining the four wheel offroad power is silly - it misses the point of the question. I'm not asking to recite what the GPL is for.
The reason I asked the question was to find a situation in which someone other than a Linux ISR/ISV would actually gain from this specific kind of limitation. I don't need an explanation of what the GPL does, just why anyone would want what it does.I believe I've been quite repeatedly clear that I am interested only in the motivations of companies, which in context are all that are germane. I'm quite aware of why individuals do it; very few GPL people fail to jump at what they see as a chance to preach about the GPL's abilities, as you did above.
It's pretty frustrating when I go to the effort of saying "dude, that's not what I asked," and someone else chimes in with also not what I asked. I mean, you're not even close to the kind of stuff I was talking about. I realize you're trying to make a point, but it had absolutely nothing to do with what I was saying.
Second off, I'm not a "hardcore BSD advocate." I use several licenses - different licenses for different jobs. I've been pretty clear with you that I would like for you to stop attempting to pigeonhole or stereotype me. I am speaking against GPL, not for any particular license; I simply used BSD as an example.Nonsense. You made many claims about what I wanted that were neither in what I said nor were correct; indeed you've done that twice in this post alone. Just because you didn't realize you were doing it doesn't mean it isn't true. When you say "you want XXX," and I didn't ever say XXX, that's you putting words in my mouth. Try looking at your previous post, and actually reading my response to it. You did it quite a few times, whether you're willing to face that or not.
I find your responses quite distressing. You're avoiding every question I asked, and in the face of my protesting you saying I want things that I don't actually want, in one hand you insist you don't do that and in the other you do it again.
I don't discuss with zealots, and that's the kind of person with whom I now believe I'm dealing. I may be wrong; I don't know you. What I do know is that you've managed to either ignore or fail to understand everything I have to say, and you've repeatedly characterized me as someone with whom, if I knew them as a seperate person, I would actually have a very serious problem with.
I'm sorry that you don't understand why your behavior is offensive, because that means you won't learn to repair it; however, just because you're not willing to face how you make other people feel doesn't mean it's any less true. I find you insulting, and I no longer choose to speak to you.
Respond if you must. It'll fall on deaf ears.
Actually, I think you would do well to rethink that position. You might be shocked to learn who's given away more source code than anyone else on this planet. Have a look around MSDN. There's a lot of stuff up there.
Am I saying they're goodbear? Hell, no. But this is one place in which hating Microsoft doesn't work at all. Sure, they're doing it because it's good for their bottom line, but that aside, Microsoft has given away two point three metric buttloads of code, and it's all under extremely generous licensure.
I know what the word bait means. Citing my opinions isn't bait. I'm sorry you've confused your grudges and your stereotypes for people spoiling for a fight, but it turns out that people can disagree with you on a specific basis without being in the mood for a tussle.
Indeed, five years ago when I posted messages like that, I used to get really good discussions. Unfortunately, as the size of a userbase grows, the signal to noise ratio drops, and eventually you get ACs making nasty comments that don't make sense (such as yourself.)
I stay here because I still like the signal, but I sure understand why so many old hands have left. You're part of that.
... wow. Thanks. I'm not used to ACs sticking up for me. Feels pretty good, actually.
Wait, linux mmep() allows allocation at null pointer? I find that hard to believe - even Windows 3.1 gets that kind of thing right. That's a remarkably naïve security hole, and with a userbase the size of Linux', I can't imagine that hasn't been fixed.
Heh. Well, of course, I could be wrong. That said, what I'm looking at is a bunch of the people I know personally who used to be GPL advocates changing their minds. Maybe it's temporary, and maybe the people I know are just clustered against chance. Those things do happen. Still, v3 is a big change over v2 in subtle ways, and among those people I know, there is a whole lot of discontent.
Combine that with that those same people - again, maybe this is chance - finally realizing that corporations aren't just stealing code without donating back, because it's bad business (corporations using community code donate to community code because that encourages other corporations to do so, dramatically lowering their total development and maintenance cost, which basically every manager with any college training knows) - and you start seeing a pretty big shift in behavior.
Again, maybe I just know a statistically unlikely cluster of people. But, the cluster's pretty big, and that sets my opinions pretty firmly. I could be wrong, but my belief is that the GPL is now in decline, and whereas like DOS it's never actually going away, in my opinion, a massive reduction would be a huge win for everyone.
It's just what I believe. Time will vet or clown me. We'll see.
Eep. You did link it. I'm sorry, I missed that during my first reply. Please ignore my suggestion that you did not; I was in error.
So, yeah, 21 arbitrary companies which may or may not have any bearing on the situation, out of more than three hundred thousand tech companies in America alone, disagree with the thing I said I believed that most companies felt. Wow. That's almost 0.007%; surely the word "most" isn't warranted there, right?
Oh, wait: but of those 21, at least half are Linux vendors, and two of those companies - Sun and MySQL AB - have spoken out about serious concerns about the structure of GPLv3. So, it turns out that simply attending a conference doesn't actually mean you don't have reservations about a license, eh?
Being vague makes weak arguments appear less weak. Unfortunately, it also means they don't hold up to the very slightest of scrutiny. I suggest you look up "argumentum ad verecundiam" before you start debating on basis of what less than two dozen attendees to a conference might mean.
So, maybe you could speak for yourself and just explain what you believe, instead of letting Eben speak for you? I'm not trying to be rude; I really just don't understand what you're getting at. I don't see how what any of you said applies to what I actually said instead of what you wanted to hear; all I said was that I disliked the GPL, that I found the ramifications of some of its decisions sad, and that I was of the opinion that it was in its decline.
Where does any of what you said impact any of those things? I'm citing opinions. Get off of the soapbox.
If and when you can show me a company where GPL is a significant asset over BSD/MIT, great, please fill me in. Until then, I respectfully disagree, as a businessman who's had to deal with these things. Making the statement is easy. Defending it isn't.... what?
Dude, when did I ever say anyone didn't have the right to GPL? You're ranting about correcting something I didn't actually say. At no point did I ever imply that people didn't have the right to release their own source under whatever license they wanted. I respect that people have that right, and with all due apologies to Voltaire, "sir, I may disagree with your choice of license, but I shall defend to the death your right to choose it."
That doesn't mean I can't explain why I disagree with it. Please stop putting words into my mouth. All I said was that the limitations that the GPL imposes have significant costs to projects which use it, and that I find the ramifications thereof sad. At no point did I say any of the things you just attempted to shame me for.
Why is it that any time I speak on behalf of the BSD, GPL people start arguing with fantasies and blaming me for what their imaginations said?
Try googling my nick some time. When you realize that the several thousand dollar bounty I arranged for the Nintendo DS TCP stack has no use to me, since you can't use it in the commercial kit and since I'm a commercial developer, maybe you'll start to understand why I find it so offensive that you all assume I don't give back. I give back a hell of a lot, and I dislike being insulted by people who almost certainly don't do anywhere near as much for their communities as I do just because I find the paranoid limitations of the GPL distasteful, and just because I point out what a tremendous amount of work those limitations throw away.
Please stop being such a bigot.
If you mean in terms of raw sales, it's OsX, not Linux. If you mean in terms of percentage userbase growth, it's QNX, not Linux. Please stop citing factoids that are actually just guesses. Linux is neither the fastest growing nor the most pervasive unix on the market, and it's unlikely that it ever will be (before OsX put BSD in that seat, it was Solaris.)
Yep. That's basically what Apple did, and it's been an enormous benefit to the BSD codebase.
The GPL is fundamentally broken because it doesn't allow that. I know, you hate corporations blindly. The problem is, GPL advocates don't seem to understand just how much effort they're losing because they shut out most corporations. With all these linux user groups, with all these communities, with all these news sources and events, with all this press, there's still more activity in BSD.
Why do you think that is? I'll give you a hint: my company only donates to free-as-in-free open source, and we donate tens of thousands of lines of code a month. We're not alone. Your GPL is costing you tremendously.
No I don't. Please don't start accusing me of things you don't know about me. Chances are good I've donated more source to open source than everyone you've ever met in real life put together. I just want stuff I can use legally. I'm not trying to not return my contributions. However, my license with Nintendo forbids me from exposing their API.
With a BSD project, I just decline to release one object, the one that wraps the API interface. Anyone who wants to use my code on any other platform than the DS would have to replace that object anyway; it's not costing anyone any extra work unless they're also on the DS, and if they're also on the DS they can get the object from the official developer boards where I posted it.
However, with GPL, it's illegal for me to refuse even to release one line of source. So, even though there's no actual reason for me to release it, even though it doesn't do anyone any good to have the object, I'm stuck: I can't release the object because of my Nintendo NDA, and I can't refuse to release the object because then I'm in violation of the GPL.
It's not that I'm trying to cheat and get away with stuff. It's that the nonsense in the GPL means I really can't use GPL code. Ever. No matter what. No matter how much I may want to. No matter how open I am to giving away code. The GPL forbids me from even using GPL stuff if I donate the 99.99% of my work that I legally am able to, because it's all or nothing, nevermind that the limitation is pointless in this case, and robbing GPL products of all my donated work.
There are fourteen algebraic math solvers that I'm aware of under open source licenses. I didn't make my DS calculator for four months because for a long time, every single solver I found was GPL or LGPL, meaning I couldn't use it. Then, eventually I found AXIOM. I now use AXIOM. I've donated significantly to AXIOM. There are better works out there than AXIOM, and many which would be much easier for me to use, more appropriate in context, with a smaller footprint. But I can't use them, because GPL is so ridiculously paranoid.
Yes, I know, you want to pretend we're all corporate vampires. We aren't, and it's shameful for you to assume that of your fellow man. I've earned my place in open source. Have you?
You just made me laugh so hard I almost shit myself. Friended.
Yeah, that's a great way to look at it. Microsoft released a PR that said "we're not at threat." Surely that means a license which hasn't even been tested in court has "won." By the by, Microsoft is an enormous corporation with many, many lawyers. If you get lazy and start assuming you've won, then you've lost, no matter how strong your current position is.
Besides, in the long run, the camp which really won was BSD, because most large corporations are sick to death of the hoops they have to jump through for the GPL. I know, I'm going to get modded flamebait (even though I'm not flaming anyone) and troll (even though I'm not trolling) for saying this, since this is GPL love central, but in the long run, the love you get is equal to the love you give.
And MIT/BSD license gives out a hell of a lot more love than GPL. I know because my company started on the back of BSD code, and that code has more than doubled in size due to my contributions.
I'm not alone. GPL throws too much away. I believe GPLv3 is GPL's swan song, and I can't be happier that it's going away. It's time for people who write open source to stop closing it. Corporations donate an enormous amount of work to code, and GPL makes many market presences completely impossible. (Yeah yeah, linking, source release, aroo, don't care. I write Nintendo games, and it is literally impossible to use GPL code under the Nintendo license. This is a lot more common than zealots want to believe.)
Most government agencies can't use GPL. Anyone working on protected API hardware can't use GPL. Anyone working on protected hardware without a dynamic linker can't even use LGPL, which pretends it's supposed to fix these problems (hence the sweeping changes to FLTK's license.) On and on it goes.
Real men don't give code to just some people.
Tons of ways. One of the most common and easily explained is a denial of service attack. People tend to think that DoS just means hammering the line into submission; it's a broader topic than that. If that kernel memory leak can be triggered by any outside signal, then anyone who wants to bring that box down just needs to trigger it over and over until the box has run out of RAM and swap. On a high speed network, that can often be done shockingly quickly - on the order of tens of minutes, occasionally faster.
If you're interested in these things, in my opinion, the best thing you can do is read a good operating system book - in my opinion you're best off with either Tanenbaum or Silberschatz - those books describe these problems in detail in terms of debugging your work, but in many cases, compromising a system is about leveraging unfixed bugs (enbugging, if you'll pardon the coining;) as such, a book meant to teach one to fix these is a great way to learn what needs to be protected against, as well as why.
Right. And if the original reason for MDMA had been something other than what I said, I wouldn't have said it. Are you seriously still unable to tell the difference between the family of chemicals and one member of the family?
I wash my hands of you.
No; it's what ExampleCorp Farms puts into every pound of mouthwatering sandwich meat.
WHAT was that? I couldn't HEAR you. Please speak UP.