>So, throwing Microsoft name on the mix only reinforces my point, this submission is nothing but a flamebait
Nonsense. Microsoft's power and influence alone justifies concern about whatever they do. The same could be said of China. Your point is thus totally lost on me.
Your position entails a degradation of Freedom 0, then. It's that simple. It's ironic, because elsewhere you have asserted that the GPL3's provisions degrade Freedom 0 in some other way that escapes me. The only thing I see is that there is the GPL3 standing for the Four Freedoms on the one side, and on the other those who want to sacrifice it for, say, Tivo's sake. Sadly, the GPL3 has tried to pacify that corporate lobby by sacrificing protection for the freedoms.
>GPL 3 does limit what you do with the software, regardless of your passing on the same freedom to others, by placing limits on the hardware you are allowed to use.
I don't understand how the GPL3 limits the hardware you are allowed to use. OTOH, If you are distributing (or "conveying") the software via hardware, well then, that's a little different, isn't it?
The distributor can inflict Tivoization upon you, passing on to you only part of Freedom 0 that he was granted via the GPL. I believe the latest draft allows this within organizations and businesses so that its members have reduced freedoms. So what are you asking for, that Freedom 0 be even less protected than it already is in the latest draft? This degrading Freedom 0 for the sake of Tivoization goes against the ideals that FSF began with. Why would any free software person support this?
You can just state that your software is a available under the "GPL version 3" and nothing FSF can do will then change the license. It is only if you add "GPL version 3 or later" that you have to trust FSF.
More precisely, you have to trust everyone, since anyone has the option of taking such software under "or later" and putting it under a future version.
FSF cultists, take note. I am aware that a war is currently being waged for people's minds, with the stakes being whether or not each individual who uses open source will recognise the truth and rid themselves of the iron fist of Richard Stallman.
Nonfree software apologists, take note. I am aware that a war is currently being waged for people's code, with the stakes being whether or not each individual who writes free software will recognize the truth and rid themselves of that giant sucking sound of nonfree-software-luvin, patent-crazed parasites such as Microsoft, who want to "build bridges" to you so that they might better put your code into their nonfree ecosystem and take the exploitation profits to outdo anything you might have had in mind.
They are serious, too, proclaiming that the GPLv3 will interfere with their special brand of bridges. However, since they know that their reputation in the free software world is even worse right now than anyone could have foreseen, they are counting on a revival of the anti-GPL troll ecosystem to do some of their dirty work. Of course, they have always bought some media for this purpose.
>well, it seems the slashbot group think only sees GPL and MS. Lets ignore Macs and the BSDs. Even though i explicitly mention that as my other choice.
A choice that you had already made years ago, an "inconvenient" that fact you conceal in order to dramatize your "GPL3 fiasco" fiction into some kind of revelation. I am considering updating the Wikipedia entry on trolling. Would you mind parting with any more techniques? Of course, whatever identities and examples that I might use, I will just make up, just like you did with your "surprise revelation".
OK, I have hated $X for years but I am unable to use reason against $X, so I act like some new thing about $X has pushed me over the edge, even though I was pushed long ago. I will then slip in $Y, which otherwise is passed over in favor of $X.
The new thing about $X should serve as a wakeup call about...fire....brimstone...hell breaking loose...illuminati starting new world government...
This has got me seriously looking at $Y instead of $X.(Like I had not already made up my mind about this years ago.) We will probably shift to blahblah which uses $Y. (As if blahblah has no other qualities which would explain it.) I see the new thing about $X as the beginning of the end. (Like I have not been proclaiming $X's demise for years.)
I cannot help but wonder, is there a term for this kind of troll?
P2P has too much potential at stake to just being associated with massive copyright infringements and now botnets.
These associations will only be used as excuses to involve clueless regulators to inflict even more damage than they already do.
P2P also is used to distribute OS images, large collections of data, etc. Companies and organizations--especially involved with free software--need to get on the ball and rely more on P2P. There's more than just bandwidth savings at stake.
Had the deal been with Red Hat, IBM, or whoever, Novell would still be rightly shunned. The patent agreement itself is what stinks. (Although Microsoft admittedly adds stink in their own unparalleled way.)
>I consider unreleased, custom code which is considered proprietary to the company owning it and not for redistribution to be nonfree.
Ah--OK, thanks for causing me to think about it some more. The following definition comes from an interesting page at gnu.org :
Private software
Private or custom software is software developed for one user (typically an organization or company). That user keeps it and uses it, and does not release it to the public either as source code or as binaries.
A private program is free software in a trivial sense if its unique user has full rights to it. However, in a deeper sense, it does not really make sense to pose the question of whether such a program is free software or not.
In general we do not believe it is wrong to develop a program and not release it. There are occasions when a program is so useful that withholding it from release is treating humanity badly. However, most programs are not that marvelous, and withholding them is not particularly harmful. Thus, there is no conflict between the development of private or custom software and the principles of the free software movement.
Nearly all employment for programmers is in development of custom software; therefore most programming jobs are, or could be, done in a way compatible with the free software movement.
Yes, we agree, and I will state a more precise belief that I believe you will share. Most free software development is done by people who are not paid to work on nonfree (shrink wrap for resale) code. So this includes the large group I cited, whether performing such (free software) work on the job or on their own time. It also includes a sizable group of other people who do it on their own time.
My reply to ClosedSource cites the conventional wisdom, that most paid programming work is custom and not for general resale. Your experience must be evaluated in light of this fact, so the GP's claim is hardly obvious on balance.
Perhaps if we consider also, say, the sysadmins who work on nonfree and then write free, then it's more interesting, but it is still a far cry from being able to claim, as did the GP apparently did, that most free software development is done by programmers creating something proprietary.
>The GP was suggesting that closed source projects are supporting an ecosystem of programmers some of whom contribute to open source projects on their own time...
Right, that was my understanding also, and I highly doubt it was, is, or ever will, be true. The very activities around nonfree software you have in mind are simply not big enough to be the main driver. Doing a search on who pays programmers only confirms what has always been my understanding about how most programming is paid for, e.g., (http://www.hostingforum.ca/113080-re-two-percent- desktops-who-cares-3.html): ------ Actually, there are surveys galore that show that most software development is custom work and not for general resale. That certainly matches with my experience. I've done my share of work on embedded projects that were resold, but the rest of my work has been implementation of internal business logic.
A few years old but very comprehensive and still pertinent. It shows that most software falls into the custom or semi-custom category. Less than one quarter falls into the application category that most consumers think of when you mention software, and even less falls into the system and embedded space. The Enterprise market dwarfs all other categories, which is hardly a surprise to me as that is still where most of my business comes from. On a related note, the enterprise market continues to be where Linux enjoys its strongest growth.
The take away here is that most software development is custom development work for big enterprise clients and not the final-form shrinkwrap stuff that gets the most attention in the press. --------
>The GPL has nothing to do with altruism. Like all licensing, the GPL is intended to protect the interests of the owner.
Such an intention does not at all rule out altruistic motive. On the contrary, one interest of the owner may be in promoting freedoms that others may want, i.e., an altruistic interest. The GPL promotes four such freedoms. Therefore, the GPL is a tool that promotes this altruistic intent.
I myself believe that most open source is
ultimately funded by closed-source projects, by programmers who are
able to create open source in their spare time because somebody
else is paying them to create something private.
There are some crucial distinctions that are likely lost here; that's one of the problems of the term "open source". Using "free software", it might be that you believe that most free software is ultimately funded by projects whose source code is not distributed. However, the key distinction is that those projects are not necessarily proprietary, or nonfree, software projects, i.e., projects which distribute only binaries to those outside the project.
That belief is probably correct; after all, it is conventional wisdom that most programming is done for private modification, not to be distributed. Now if you are claiming that most free software (or open source) is funded by nonfree (or proprietary) software, I will not hold my breath on any substantiation for it.
You are implying that I agree with whatever Stallman says, which is just false. You seem to depend on ad hominem in place of a legitimate argument against free software. It's like a Democrat without any arguments calling a Republican a Bush drone. To the extent that the world will depend on fairly evaluating arguments, your position will dwindle. Good day.
Sorry to belabor this point, but there are other indications that, regardless of what the FSF may believe, it intends that developers should be able to choose a number of licenses. One such indication is simply having _provided_ any number of licenses to choose from, including any of version of the GPL as well as the LGPL. Another is advocating exception clauses when appropriate, such as the linking exception in the GNU C Library and GNU Guile and having a system of permissions and restrictions in the GPL3 drafts.
Again, the FSF in effect advocates a right to choose licenses, as long as they conform to the four freedoms.
>You do realize that's a choice FSF doesn't believe you as a developer, have a right to make? Just read what Freed wrote in reply to your message, or some of the quotes from Kuhn or Stallman.
Of course, by "have a right" you mean "should have a right". In Freedom or Power? they write:
However, one so-called freedom that we do not advocate is the "freedom to choose any license you want for software you write". We reject this because it is really a form of power, not a freedom.
It seems they merely reject advocating the power, especially as a freedom, the same way I might reject advocating the power to punch a stranger in the nose (excepting self-defense, etc.). If, in the above phrase, "license" were modified to "license that respects the four freedoms", then I would bet that Stallman and Kuhn would see it as a legitimate choice.
Stallman himself is also on record as saying that he does not care whether proprietary software is ever made illegal. Thus, he does not particularly care about constraining developers _through the law_. The GPL, of course, is no such constraint because no one is forced by law to either use it or use GPL software(*). In any case, regardless of Kuhn's and Stallman's beliefs about a developer's right to choose their software license, such a right has been and will remain outside the scope of the work of the FSF, including the licenses of the FSF.
(*): Various national or local governments around the world have mandated use of free software within that governmental body. Whether or not this is decided through a democratic process has nothing to do with the FSF. Indeed, given FSF's meager finances, such mandates in the typical climate of monied lobbying are remarkable.
I see where you are coming from. There are professional constraints, yes, but we often have discretion to solve these in a number of ways using free software. Moreover, outside a restrictive job, I choose for myself only free software with one exception. If there is nonfree software that I need to study in order to help develop a free workalike, then I will obtain a license for it and study it. It is funny to go on about how we might be a Stallman-bot, but, of course it is plainly a matter of ethics.
>Guess you haven't read Why Software Should Be Free or Kuhn's response to the Slashdot interview. Both men believes the choice of license is not something the developer should be allowed to decide.
Thanks for the links. However, calling the power to choose one's license inappropriate does not imply that no license but the GPL should exist. Instead, in Freedom or Power? Kuhn and Stallman argue that, given today's laws, the _ethical_ choice is a free software license:
We believe you should decide what to do with the software you use; however, that is not what today's law says. Current copyright law places us in the position of power over users of our code, whether we like it or not. The ethical response to this situation is to proclaim freedom for each user, just as the Bill of Rights was supposed to exercise government power by guaranteeing each citizen's freedoms. That is what the GNU GPL is for: it puts you in control of your usage of the software, while protecting you from others who would like to take control of your decisions.
>that Novell would have to suffer though? Sure they earned money from m$ but is that so bad? they shouldnt have gpl3 hurt novell imho.
Money from MS in itself has nothing to do with it. Indeed, of the three parts of the deal--business, technical, and patent, it is just the patent agreement that is the problem. Fixing the loophole that it exploited is far more important than the fates of corporations, particularly ones that have shown willingness to exploit find and exploit such loopholes.
If you are unconvinced about the badness of the patent agreement, just do a search--microsoft novell patent agreement--to find links of outrage about it.
Bottom line is that he who writes the code chooses the license. That is TRUE freedom whether apparent fascists such as yourself like it or not.
If we take freedom to be the ability to make decisions that mainly affect you, and power to be the ability to make decisions that mainly affect others, then we could say that the choice of license is an exercise of power. For more on this opinion, see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/freedom-or-power.htm l
Right now it's still voluntary, yes...but if you know anything about Stallman and/or Bradley Kuhn, then you also know that they are very adamant in their belief that the GPL is the only license with the right to exist. You can be very sure that if Stallman had any ability whatsoever to dictate that the GPL were the only scenario under which software could be distributed or used at all, he would exercise it with great enthusiasm.
Where did Stallman or Kuhn ever say that the GPL is the only license with a right to exist?
Is there ever a moment when you are _not_ talking out of your ass?
As long as...great great tinkerers need to worry about the freedom to tinker, http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/; ...the powerful such as Bill Gates keep investing in long-term research on how to lock people down; ...we leave it to the U.S. government to following the Constitution, including recovering the real purpose of copyright and patents by, e.g., repealing the DMCA; We will need the likes of the GPL3 to give an option to reduce the inevitable temptation of vested interests to use DRM to subjugate people.
Slashdot Mirror
>So, throwing Microsoft name on the mix only reinforces my point, this submission is nothing but a flamebait
Nonsense. Microsoft's power and influence alone justifies concern about whatever they do. The same could be said of China. Your point is thus totally lost on me.
Your position entails a degradation of Freedom 0, then. It's that simple. It's ironic, because elsewhere you have asserted that the GPL3's provisions degrade Freedom 0 in some other way that escapes me. The only thing I see is that there is the GPL3 standing for the Four Freedoms on the one side, and on the other those who want to sacrifice it for, say, Tivo's sake. Sadly, the GPL3 has tried to pacify that corporate lobby by sacrificing protection for the freedoms.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
>GPL 3 does limit what you do with the software, regardless of your passing on the same freedom to others, by placing limits on the hardware you are allowed to use.
I don't understand how the GPL3 limits the hardware you are allowed to use. OTOH, If you are distributing (or "conveying") the software via hardware, well then, that's a little different, isn't it?
The distributor can inflict Tivoization upon you, passing on to you only part of Freedom 0 that he was granted via the GPL. I believe the latest draft allows this within organizations and businesses so that its members have reduced freedoms. So what are you asking for, that Freedom 0 be even less protected than it already is in the latest draft? This degrading Freedom 0 for the sake of Tivoization goes against the ideals that FSF began with. Why would any free software person support this?
More precisely, you have to trust everyone, since anyone has the option of taking such software under "or later" and putting it under a future version.
Nonfree software apologists, take note. I am aware that a war is currently being waged for people's code, with the stakes being whether or not each individual who writes free software will recognize the truth and rid themselves of that giant sucking sound of nonfree-software-luvin, patent-crazed parasites such as Microsoft, who want to "build bridges" to you so that they might better put your code into their nonfree ecosystem and take the exploitation profits to outdo anything you might have had in mind.
They are serious, too, proclaiming that the GPLv3 will interfere with their special brand of bridges. However, since they know that their reputation in the free software world is even worse right now than anyone could have foreseen, they are counting on a revival of the anti-GPL troll ecosystem to do some of their dirty work. Of course, they have always bought some media for this purpose.
These trolls seem to be like Renfields.
>well, it seems the slashbot group think only sees GPL and MS. Lets ignore Macs and the BSDs. Even though i explicitly mention that as my other choice.
A choice that you had already made years ago, an "inconvenient" that fact you conceal in order to dramatize your "GPL3 fiasco" fiction into some kind of revelation. I am considering updating the Wikipedia entry on trolling. Would you mind parting with any more techniques? Of course, whatever identities and examples that I might use, I will just make up, just like you did with your "surprise revelation".
OK, I have hated $X for years but I am unable to use reason against $X, so I act like some new thing about $X has pushed me over the edge, even though I was pushed long ago. I will then slip in $Y, which otherwise is passed over in favor of $X.
The new thing about $X should serve as a wakeup call about...fire....brimstone...hell breaking loose...illuminati starting new world government...
This has got me seriously looking at $Y instead of $X. (Like I had not already made up my mind about this years ago.)
We will probably shift to blahblah which uses $Y. (As if blahblah has no other qualities which would explain it.)
I see the new thing about $X as the beginning of the end. (Like I have not been proclaiming $X's demise for years.)
I cannot help but wonder, is there a term for this kind of troll?
P2P has too much potential at stake to just being associated with massive copyright infringements and now botnets.
These associations will only be used as excuses to involve clueless regulators to inflict even more damage than they already do.
P2P also is used to distribute OS images, large collections of data, etc. Companies and organizations--especially involved with free software--need to get on the ball and rely more on P2P. There's more than just bandwidth savings at stake.
Had the deal been with Red Hat, IBM, or whoever, Novell would still be rightly shunned. The patent agreement itself is what stinks. (Although Microsoft admittedly adds stink in their own unparalleled way.)
>open source is open source, with or without a license... i generally dont really care about licenses...
Democracy is democracy, with or without laws...i generally don't really care about laws...
>I consider unreleased, custom code which is considered proprietary to the company owning it and not for redistribution to be nonfree.
Ah--OK, thanks for causing me to think about it some more. The following definition comes from an interesting page at gnu.org :
Private software
Private or custom software is software developed for one user (typically an organization or company). That user keeps it and uses it, and does not release it to the public either as source code or as binaries.
A private program is free software in a trivial sense if its unique user has full rights to it. However, in a deeper sense, it does not really make sense to pose the question of whether such a program is free software or not.
In general we do not believe it is wrong to develop a program and not release it. There are occasions when a program is so useful that withholding it from release is treating humanity badly. However, most programs are not that marvelous, and withholding them is not particularly harmful. Thus, there is no conflict between the development of private or custom software and the principles of the free software movement.
Nearly all employment for programmers is in development of custom software; therefore most programming jobs are, or could be, done in a way compatible with the free software movement.
Yes, we agree, and I will state a more precise belief that I believe you will share. Most free software development is done by people who are not paid to work on nonfree (shrink wrap for resale) code. So this includes the large group I cited, whether performing such (free software) work on the job or on their own time. It also includes a sizable group of other people who do it on their own time.
My reply to ClosedSource cites the conventional wisdom, that most paid programming work is custom and not for general resale. Your experience must be evaluated in light of this fact, so the GP's claim is hardly obvious on balance.
Perhaps if we consider also, say, the sysadmins who work on nonfree and then write free, then it's more interesting, but it is still a far cry from being able to claim, as did the GP apparently did, that most free software development is done by programmers creating something proprietary.
>The GP was suggesting that closed source projects are supporting an ecosystem of programmers some of whom contribute to open source projects on their own time...
- desktops-who-cares-3.html):
m ano_Intl_Comp.pdf
Right, that was my understanding also, and I highly doubt it was, is, or ever will, be true. The very activities around nonfree software you have in mind are simply not big enough to be the main driver. Doing a search on who pays programmers only confirms what has always been my understanding about how most programming is paid for, e.g., (http://www.hostingforum.ca/113080-re-two-percent
------
Actually, there are surveys galore that show that most software
development is custom work and not for general resale. That certainly
matches with my experience. I've done my share of work on embedded
projects that were resold, but the rest of my work has been
implementation of internal business logic.
Take a look at this report:
http://ebusiness.mit.edu/research/papers/178_Cusu
A few years old but very comprehensive and still pertinent. It shows
that most software falls into the custom or semi-custom category. Less
than one quarter falls into the application category that most consumers
think of when you mention software, and even less falls into the system
and embedded space. The Enterprise market dwarfs all other categories,
which is hardly a surprise to me as that is still where most of my
business comes from. On a related note, the enterprise market continues
to be where Linux enjoys its strongest growth.
The take away here is that most software development is custom
development work for big enterprise clients and not the final-form
shrinkwrap stuff that gets the most attention in the press.
--------
>The GPL has nothing to do with altruism. Like all licensing, the GPL is intended to protect the interests of the owner.
Such an intention does not at all rule out altruistic motive. On the contrary, one interest of the owner may be in promoting freedoms that others may want, i.e., an altruistic interest. The GPL promotes four such freedoms. Therefore, the GPL is a tool that promotes this altruistic intent.
There are some crucial distinctions that are likely lost here; that's one of the problems of the term "open source". Using "free software", it might be that you believe that most free software is ultimately funded by projects whose source code is not distributed. However, the key distinction is that those projects are not necessarily proprietary, or nonfree, software projects, i.e., projects which distribute only binaries to those outside the project.
That belief is probably correct; after all, it is conventional wisdom that most programming is done for private modification, not to be distributed. Now if you are claiming that most free software (or open source) is funded by nonfree (or proprietary) software, I will not hold my breath on any substantiation for it.
>You are a Stallmanite drone...
You are implying that I agree with whatever Stallman says, which is just false. You seem to depend on ad hominem in place of a legitimate argument against free software. It's like a Democrat without any arguments calling a Republican a Bush drone. To the extent that the world will depend on fairly evaluating arguments, your position will dwindle. Good day.
Sorry to belabor this point, but there are other indications that, regardless of what the FSF may believe, it intends that developers should be able to choose a number of licenses. One such indication is simply having _provided_ any number of licenses to choose from, including any of version of the GPL as well as the LGPL. Another is advocating exception clauses when appropriate, such as the linking exception in the GNU C Library and GNU Guile and having a system of permissions and restrictions in the GPL3 drafts.
Again, the FSF in effect advocates a right to choose licenses, as long as they conform to the four freedoms.
Of course, by "have a right" you mean "should have a right". In Freedom or Power? they write:
It seems they merely reject advocating the power, especially as a freedom, the same way I might reject advocating the power to punch a stranger in the nose (excepting self-defense, etc.). If, in the above phrase, "license" were modified to "license that respects the four freedoms", then I would bet that Stallman and Kuhn would see it as a legitimate choice.
Stallman himself is also on record as saying that he does not care whether proprietary software is ever made illegal. Thus, he does not particularly care about constraining developers _through the law_. The GPL, of course, is no such constraint because no one is forced by law to either use it or use GPL software(*). In any case, regardless of Kuhn's and Stallman's beliefs about a developer's right to choose their software license, such a right has been and will remain outside the scope of the work of the FSF, including the licenses of the FSF.
(*): Various national or local governments around the world have mandated use of free software within that governmental body. Whether or not this is decided through a democratic process has nothing to do with the FSF. Indeed, given FSF's meager finances, such mandates in the typical climate of monied lobbying are remarkable.
I see where you are coming from. There are professional constraints, yes, but we often have discretion to solve these in a number of ways using free software. Moreover, outside a restrictive job, I choose for myself only free software with one exception. If there is nonfree software that I need to study in order to help develop a free workalike, then I will obtain a license for it and study it. It is funny to go on about how we might be a Stallman-bot, but, of course it is plainly a matter of ethics.
Thanks for the links. However, calling the power to choose one's license inappropriate does not imply that no license but the GPL should exist. Instead, in Freedom or Power? Kuhn and Stallman argue that, given today's laws, the _ethical_ choice is a free software license:
Unsurprisingly they _suggest_ the GPL.
>that Novell would have to suffer though? Sure they earned money from m$ but is that so bad? they shouldnt have gpl3 hurt novell imho.
Money from MS in itself has nothing to do with it. Indeed, of the three parts of the deal--business, technical, and patent, it is just the patent agreement that is the problem. Fixing the loophole that it exploited is far more important than the fates of corporations, particularly ones that have shown willingness to exploit find and exploit such loopholes.
If you are unconvinced about the badness of the patent agreement, just do a search--microsoft novell patent agreement--to find links of outrage about it.
If we take freedom to be the ability to make decisions that mainly affect you, and power to be the ability to make decisions that mainly affect others, then we could say that the choice of license is an exercise of power. For more on this opinion, see
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/freedom-or-power.ht
Where did Stallman or Kuhn ever say that the GPL is the only license with a right to exist?
Is there ever a moment when you are _not_ talking out of your ass?
As long as...great great tinkerers need to worry about the freedom to tinker, http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/;
...the powerful such as Bill Gates keep investing in long-term research on how to lock people down;
...we leave it to the U.S. government to following the Constitution, including recovering the real purpose of copyright and patents by, e.g., repealing the DMCA;
We will need the likes of the GPL3 to give an option to reduce the inevitable temptation of vested interests to use DRM to subjugate people.