There's no need to modify the OSD to exclude the GPL; it already does not conform. By intentionally discriminating against, and attempting to destroy, a particular class of users -- commercial developers -- it violates points #5 and #6. It closes off source code by making it unavailable to these people. As Stallman himself says, the GPL is not an Open Source license. The OSI should acknowledge this.
Except that Microsoft's strategy is designed to bring them maximum profits, at the expense of the freedom of their users. But the GPL was specifically designed to provide maximum freedom to users...
Not true. The GPL makes code non-free, particularly to commercial developers (to whom it is, essentially, inaccessible).
The GPL is designed to propagate itself and increase the FSF's hoard of GPLed code, at the expense of users -- who are deprived of the choice to buy commercial software. And at the expense of developers, whose markets are destroyed by the GPL's anticompetitive and predatory tactics.
No, Red Hat has had only one profitable quarter ever. Check out the reports on edgar.sec.gov if you have any doubts about this. What's more interesting still is that the company says, on its Form 10Q, that it doesn't know if it will ever be profitiable and points out many reasons why it probably won't be.
That's right, you can't take my work for nothing. As I wrote before, why do you think you should have the right to MY hard work for nothing, when you won't recipricate?
When you publish code under the GPL, you've already given your code away to all end users, thus reducing its market value (and the market value of its functionality) to zero. Therefore, the correct price for someone to pay to use it -- whether as an end user or as a programmer incorporating it into something else -- is zero. No rational end user will pay any money either for that code or code that works like it, because he or she can get that functionality for free.
For you to withhold it from programmers when you've already given it to everyone else -- and, again, reduced its market value to nothing by doing so -- is simply spiteful. The only possible reason for such an agenda is to attempt to hurt your fellow programmers. Which is what the GPL is for. The purpose of the GPL is to destroy programmers' livelihoods. Stallman himself says so.
Alas, MandrakeSoft will never be profitable, because the GPL prevents it from adding unique value to its products and forces it to give away its work for free.
Without GPLed software, there could still be a MandrakeSoft. The company could, instead, build on BSD-licensed code, which (unlike GPLed code) is licensed ethically. Unaffected by the GPL's poison pill, it would have a much better chance of survival.
But as it is, you have no chance. The GPL is intended to assure that.
Because of the GPL, MandrakeSoft will burn its investment capital and then fold, as have so many other Linux companies. (It's sad, too, because you really deserve to get some reward for your labors from customers who will benefit from your work, rather than from investors who will lose their money.)
There's still time to turn things around if you want to. Alas, I fear that you and/or your management may be so blinded by the misleading rhetoric of Richard Stallman that you won't do that even when you recognize that you cannot make money on GPLed software. This is the tragedy of not using software that's truly open source. As Stallman himself states, GPLed software is not open source. It's sabotaged software.
Yeah, but you're free to modify the code... chump. How are you locked in?
[Nasty, ad hominem insults ignored]
You're locked into the GPLed GNU implementation once you use its unique features. Just as you're locked into Microsoft Word once your macros and files are in its format. Oh, and you can't just transplant the GPLed code into another implementation unless you want to forfeit all of your work and merely create another GPL-infected product.
RMS's embrace and extend strategy is really quite a lot like Microsoft's.
As for the name Posix: Yes, Stallman happened to be the one who coined it. So? He's also attempted to take credit for Linux by trying to get people to call it "GNU/Linux." His self-serving behavior reminds me of the old saying, "The easiest way to become a leader is to find a parade and jump in front of it."
The GPL allows us, for the small price of giving our code away too to everyone, put together, and sell, what others have created.
That's not a "small price." That's giving up your livelihood. Perhaps if you're an amateur programmer you can afford to give away everything you write -- but not if you do it for a living.
No one -- not rms, Linus, esr, et all -- demand that you to release your software under any license at all.
Not true. The GPL, written by Stallman, demands that if you use a single line of GPLed code in your own work you forfeit all of your work. And since GPLed code is at the same time insidiously undercutting you and destroying your markets, having to reimplement what the GPLed code does is likewise a losing proposition. This is the point and purpose of the GPL: to destroy programmers' livelihoods. Stallman says so, explicitly, in The GNU Manifesto and also in his public speeches.
GPLed code is not open source because it is CLOSED to the very people who can make the best use of it: commercial programmers.
Cheapbytes, like Walnut Creek CD-ROM (which was once very much in the same business), has seen its CD sales drop dramatically due to the ready availability of high bandwidth Internet connections. Cheapbytes' product is not software. It's bandwidth -- or, rather, plastic as a temporary substitute for bandwidth until everyone has broadband and/or a CD-R burner.
Unfortunately, the message above pretty much regurgitates Richard Stallman's propaganda uncritically.
The fact is, again, that the GPL does preclude authors from reaping any financial reward from their work. No company whose business strategy has been based on the sale of GPLed software has ever been profitable. (Cygnus -- now part of Red Hat -- only made money when it sold shrinkwrapped software, much of it under other licenses.) The GPL intentionally prevents companies from providing unique value and from making money.
As for Stallman's talk of "compatibility" -- it's primarily there because Stallman hopes to co-opt other software, inasmuch as he can, into GPLed software so as to further his agenda. When RMS says a license is "GPL-compatible," it means that he thinks he can get away with incorporating the code into GPLed software, thus increasing the size of his arsenal of GPLed code. Which he'll then use to attack programmers' livelihoods.
It's their code, they're entitled to place
whatever conditions on it's use they want.
Not true. The GPL, like any license, is a proferred contract. And not everything one can write into a contract is legal or enforceable. The terms of a contract can be nullified if they are unconscionable/ The GPL confiscates your rights to your own code if you include even one line of GPLed code. It hence creates a Faustian bargain which is not legal.
The GPL also constitutes copyright abuse -- the misuse of copyright for an end not specifically contemplated by the Constitution.
For all of these reasons -- and many others -- the OSI should reject the GPL and state that it simply is not an open source license. In fact, it's open source's greatest enemy. Its "poison pill" provisions are the key reason why open source has not been wholeheartedly embraced by business.
From a pragmatic perspective, removing the GPL while everyone relies on gcc is a complete non-starter.
Why? Many people would probably still use GCC, at least until it was "clean roomed" or otherwise freed from the GPL so that an open source alternative was available. It would simply be recognized that GCC isn't open source. And that's a good thing.
Even Stallman says that GPLed code -- including GCC -- isn't open source. And he effectively owns the code of GCC, since it's owned by the FSF. So, all that would happen is that the OSI would be affirming what Stallman says about his own code.
So don't use GPLed code in your project then if you don't like it. Noones forceing you to use the GPL, so stop whining already, i know why don't you go ask microsoft for some code and see if you cna modify that and distribute it you prick.
[Foul language ignored]
Ironically, I don't even have to ask for permission to do that. Microsoft grants it unilaterally and willingly. When I write a program using the Microsoft Foundation Classes or a Microsoft Visual Basic OCX control, I can sell my work and make money from it. Microsoft doesn't use a license that contaminates, or attempts to confiscate, my work if I link to their code. The GPL, by contrast, attempts to deprive me of any reward for my work.
Both the FSF and Microsoft engage in predatory practices, but in this particular case the FSF is far more anti-competitive and anti-business than Microsoft.
Neither the Open Group standard nor the proposed CIFS standard (which was really released as a political ploy to counter Sun's NFS proposal) will actually allow you to make a working server that interoperates with Windows 2000. Microsoft has shifted SMB out from under the Samba developers quite a few times. See their mailing lists.
The GPL is included for political purposes. The OSI knows that it would become a
pariah in the Free Software community if it took such a stand. OTOH, the abiding suspicion of business towards OSS would be aleviated if the right to proprietary forking were made an explicit part of the OSD.
Interesting ideas here. Do you think that the OSI would absolutely and unavoidably become a "pariah" if it stood up for its principles and admitted that the GPL does not meet its ethical standards? Or would it depend on what the OSI said about the issue and what it recommended as an alternative?
What do you think it would take to convince the OSI that principle is more important than politics and remove the GPL from its "approved" list, as it really should?
The code can be licensed for money under the GPL, and there is no limit on the price you may charge.
Not so. The GPL demands that the price charged for a copy (not a license, but the production of a physical copy) be reasonable. The charge is for the copy, not to license the code. The license for the code must be free. And after the first copy is made, the recipient can distribute the code for free. So, whatever is charged for the first copy is likely to be all that the programmer ever makes.
They're hurting to the tune of $16 million in revenue a quarter.
That's revenue, not profit. They're losing money big time. Red Hat has had only one profitable quarter since it was founded, and that was quite long ago.
The GPL, intentionally and with malice aforethought, discriminates against anyone who wishes to make a living by writing and selling software. This is one of Richard Stallman's stated goals: to make it impossible for anyone to make a living by writing software.
Note that the GPL also precludes licensing of software under OSD-compliant licenses such as the Mozilla license as well as under closed source licenses.
The purpose of the GPL is to eliminate any chance that a programmer might use the code in a way which would provide him with a financial reward for his hard work. This is, again, blatant discrimination.
The GPL discriminates against a field of endeavor and against a group of people. It therefore is not an Open Source license. Even Richard Stallman, the author of the GPL, says that "Free Software [note the caps; Stallman considers this to mean "GPLed software"] is not Open Source." The GPL is not an open source license and should not be named as one on the OSI Web site.
The phenomenon you're after is "embrace and extend." The GPL is designed to prevent it.
Actually, exactly the reverse is true. Look at the FSF's GNU utilities -- including their make, tar, man, etc. -- and what you'll see is copies of the standard UNIX/Posix utilities, extended with their own proprietary command line switches and minor changes that create incompatibilities.
The aim, as Richard Stallman himself states, is to create copies of utilities and then add extensions which lock users in. Just as Microsoft does. Users are then dependent on, and locked into, the FSF's code. Gotcha!
Actually, the quote you cite supports my statement. The copy (the disc) is commercial, but the code is not. It cannot be, since it cannot be licensed for money.
SMB is proprietary. In fact, Microsoft recently threw several new twists into the SMB protocol to make Samba incompatible with it, forcing the Samba developers to reverse engineer the changes and play "catch-up."
By the way, the URL you posted above is either not correct or not viewable by anyone who isn't running IE. I don't run IE, because I don't like security holes and don't want to encourage the development of Web pages that require Microsoft's proprietary browser extensions to view.
Richard Stallman has attempted, as part of the confusing and misleading rhetoric of the FSF, to redefine the word "proprietary" to denote any software that he has not "blessed." But the correct meaning is different.
Proprietary software is software which is incompatible with other offerings (regardless of whether these offerings are open source or not). Microsoft's incompatible extension of Kerberos is a good example.
Likewise, a proprietary protocol or file format is one which is in control of a single vendor -- and generally undocumented to preclude others from producing products that are compatible with it. SMB is an example of a proprietary protocol, and the Microsoft Word file format is a proprietary file format.
Whether or not something is proprietary has nothing to do with whether the source is open or not or whether money is charged for it. Stallman likes to use the word to refer to all non-GPLed software because it sounds nasty -- and because he can take advantage of the negative connotations which had long been associated with the original definition.
In my message, I was using the word "commercial" in exactly the way I intended and in the way in which it's defined in the dictionary. The GPL discriminates against producers of commercial software -- software which is the object of commerce. GPLed software cannot be licensed for money and hence cannot be commercial. The disk it's on can be sold for money, and so can support, but the code itself cannot according to the terms of the GPL. It therefore is not commercial.
The GPL is, by the way, a key element in the recent woes of Red Hat and other "Linux companies." It prevents them from adding unique value to their products while at the same time undercutting their sales and destroying their markets. The people at these companies are doing good work and deserve to be rewarded for it! Unfortunately, the GPL, which is designed to keep such companies from being successful, is preventing this. I think that's a shame.
People who do good creative work that benefits many people ought to be rewarded for it. I think that if the GPL were removed from the Open Source Definition's list of approved licenses we'd see this happen.
Slashdot Mirror
There's no need to modify the OSD to exclude the GPL; it already does not conform. By intentionally discriminating against, and attempting to destroy, a particular class of users -- commercial developers -- it violates points #5 and #6. It closes off source code by making it unavailable to these people. As Stallman himself says, the GPL is not an Open Source license. The OSI should acknowledge this.
Not true. The GPL makes code non-free, particularly to commercial developers (to whom it is, essentially, inaccessible).
The GPL is designed to propagate itself and increase the FSF's hoard of GPLed code, at the expense of users -- who are deprived of the choice to buy commercial software. And at the expense of developers, whose markets are destroyed by the GPL's anticompetitive and predatory tactics.
--Brett Glass
--Brett
When you publish code under the GPL, you've already given your code away to all end users, thus reducing its market value (and the market value of its functionality) to zero. Therefore, the correct price for someone to pay to use it -- whether as an end user or as a programmer incorporating it into something else -- is zero. No rational end user will pay any money either for that code or code that works like it, because he or she can get that functionality for free.
For you to withhold it from programmers when you've already given it to everyone else -- and, again, reduced its market value to nothing by doing so -- is simply spiteful. The only possible reason for such an agenda is to attempt to hurt your fellow programmers. Which is what the GPL is for. The purpose of the GPL is to destroy programmers' livelihoods. Stallman himself says so.
--Brett Glass
Without GPLed software, there could still be a MandrakeSoft. The company could, instead, build on BSD-licensed code, which (unlike GPLed code) is licensed ethically. Unaffected by the GPL's poison pill, it would have a much better chance of survival.
But as it is, you have no chance. The GPL is intended to assure that.
Because of the GPL, MandrakeSoft will burn its investment capital and then fold, as have so many other Linux companies. (It's sad, too, because you really deserve to get some reward for your labors from customers who will benefit from your work, rather than from investors who will lose their money.)
There's still time to turn things around if you want to. Alas, I fear that you and/or your management may be so blinded by the misleading rhetoric of Richard Stallman that you won't do that even when you recognize that you cannot make money on GPLed software. This is the tragedy of not using software that's truly open source. As Stallman himself states, GPLed software is not open source. It's sabotaged software.
--Brett Glass
[Nasty, ad hominem insults ignored]
You're locked into the GPLed GNU implementation once you use its unique features. Just as you're locked into Microsoft Word once your macros and files are in its format. Oh, and you can't just transplant the GPLed code into another implementation unless you want to forfeit all of your work and merely create another GPL-infected product.
RMS's embrace and extend strategy is really quite a lot like Microsoft's.
As for the name Posix: Yes, Stallman happened to be the one who coined it. So? He's also attempted to take credit for Linux by trying to get people to call it "GNU/Linux." His self-serving behavior reminds me of the old saying, "The easiest way to become a leader is to find a parade and jump in front of it."
--Brett Glass
That's not a "small price." That's giving up your livelihood. Perhaps if you're an amateur programmer you can afford to give away everything you write -- but not if you do it for a living.
--Brett Glass
Not true. The GPL, written by Stallman, demands that if you use a single line of GPLed code in your own work you forfeit all of your work. And since GPLed code is at the same time insidiously undercutting you and destroying your markets, having to reimplement what the GPLed code does is likewise a losing proposition. This is the point and purpose of the GPL: to destroy programmers' livelihoods. Stallman says so, explicitly, in The GNU Manifesto and also in his public speeches.
GPLed code is not open source because it is CLOSED to the very people who can make the best use of it: commercial programmers.
--Brett Glass
--Brett Glass
--Brett Glass
The fact is, again, that the GPL does preclude authors from reaping any financial reward from their work. No company whose business strategy has been based on the sale of GPLed software has ever been profitable. (Cygnus -- now part of Red Hat -- only made money when it sold shrinkwrapped software, much of it under other licenses.) The GPL intentionally prevents companies from providing unique value and from making money.
As for Stallman's talk of "compatibility" -- it's primarily there because Stallman hopes to co-opt other software, inasmuch as he can, into GPLed software so as to further his agenda. When RMS says a license is "GPL-compatible," it means that he thinks he can get away with incorporating the code into GPLed software, thus increasing the size of his arsenal of GPLed code. Which he'll then use to attack programmers' livelihoods.
--Brett Glass
Not true. The GPL, like any license, is a proferred contract. And not everything one can write into a contract is legal or enforceable. The terms of a contract can be nullified if they are unconscionable/ The GPL confiscates your rights to your own code if you include even one line of GPLed code. It hence creates a Faustian bargain which is not legal.
The GPL also constitutes copyright abuse -- the misuse of copyright for an end not specifically contemplated by the Constitution.
For all of these reasons -- and many others -- the OSI should reject the GPL and state that it simply is not an open source license. In fact, it's open source's greatest enemy. Its "poison pill" provisions are the key reason why open source has not been wholeheartedly embraced by business.
--Brett Glass
Why? Many people would probably still use GCC, at least until it was "clean roomed" or otherwise freed from the GPL so that an open source alternative was available. It would simply be recognized that GCC isn't open source. And that's a good thing.
Even Stallman says that GPLed code -- including GCC -- isn't open source. And he effectively owns the code of GCC, since it's owned by the FSF. So, all that would happen is that the OSI would be affirming what Stallman says about his own code.
--Brett Glass
[Foul language ignored]
Ironically, I don't even have to ask for permission to do that. Microsoft grants it unilaterally and willingly. When I write a program using the Microsoft Foundation Classes or a Microsoft Visual Basic OCX control, I can sell my work and make money from it. Microsoft doesn't use a license that contaminates, or attempts to confiscate, my work if I link to their code. The GPL, by contrast, attempts to deprive me of any reward for my work.
Both the FSF and Microsoft engage in predatory practices, but in this particular case the FSF is far more anti-competitive and anti-business than Microsoft.
--Brett Glass
Neither the Open Group standard nor the proposed CIFS standard (which was really released as a political ploy to counter Sun's NFS proposal) will actually allow you to make a working server that interoperates with Windows 2000. Microsoft has shifted SMB out from under the Samba developers quite a few times. See their mailing lists.
Interesting ideas here. Do you think that the OSI would absolutely and unavoidably become a "pariah" if it stood up for its principles and admitted that the GPL does not meet its ethical standards? Or would it depend on what the OSI said about the issue and what it recommended as an alternative?
What do you think it would take to convince the OSI that principle is more important than politics and remove the GPL from its "approved" list, as it really should?
--Brett Glass
Not so. The GPL demands that the price charged for a copy (not a license, but the production of a physical copy) be reasonable. The charge is for the copy, not to license the code. The license for the code must be free. And after the first copy is made, the recipient can distribute the code for free. So, whatever is charged for the first copy is likely to be all that the programmer ever makes.
--Brett Glass
That's revenue, not profit. They're losing money big time. Red Hat has had only one profitable quarter since it was founded, and that was quite long ago.
--Brett Glass
Note that the GPL also precludes licensing of software under OSD-compliant licenses such as the Mozilla license as well as under closed source licenses.
The purpose of the GPL is to eliminate any chance that a programmer might use the code in a way which would provide him with a financial reward for his hard work. This is, again, blatant discrimination.
The GPL discriminates against a field of endeavor and against a group of people. It therefore is not an Open Source license. Even Richard Stallman, the author of the GPL, says that "Free Software [note the caps; Stallman considers this to mean "GPLed software"] is not Open Source." The GPL is not an open source license and should not be named as one on the OSI Web site.
--Brett Glass
Actually, exactly the reverse is true. Look at the FSF's GNU utilities -- including their make, tar, man, etc. -- and what you'll see is copies of the standard UNIX/Posix utilities, extended with their own proprietary command line switches and minor changes that create incompatibilities.
The aim, as Richard Stallman himself states, is to create copies of utilities and then add extensions which lock users in. Just as Microsoft does. Users are then dependent on, and locked into, the FSF's code. Gotcha!
--Brett Glass
--Brett Glass
Actually, the quote you cite supports my statement. The copy (the disc) is commercial, but the code is not. It cannot be, since it cannot be licensed for money.
By the way, the URL you posted above is either not correct or not viewable by anyone who isn't running IE. I don't run IE, because I don't like security holes and don't want to encourage the development of Web pages that require Microsoft's proprietary browser extensions to view.
--Brett Glass
Proprietary software is software which is incompatible with other offerings (regardless of whether these offerings are open source or not). Microsoft's incompatible extension of Kerberos is a good example.
Likewise, a proprietary protocol or file format is one which is in control of a single vendor -- and generally undocumented to preclude others from producing products that are compatible with it. SMB is an example of a proprietary protocol, and the Microsoft Word file format is a proprietary file format.
Whether or not something is proprietary has nothing to do with whether the source is open or not or whether money is charged for it. Stallman likes to use the word to refer to all non-GPLed software because it sounds nasty -- and because he can take advantage of the negative connotations which had long been associated with the original definition.
In my message, I was using the word "commercial" in exactly the way I intended and in the way in which it's defined in the dictionary. The GPL discriminates against producers of commercial software -- software which is the object of commerce. GPLed software cannot be licensed for money and hence cannot be commercial. The disk it's on can be sold for money, and so can support, but the code itself cannot according to the terms of the GPL. It therefore is not commercial.
The GPL is, by the way, a key element in the recent woes of Red Hat and other "Linux companies." It prevents them from adding unique value to their products while at the same time undercutting their sales and destroying their markets. The people at these companies are doing good work and deserve to be rewarded for it! Unfortunately, the GPL, which is designed to keep such companies from being successful, is preventing this. I think that's a shame.
People who do good creative work that benefits many people ought to be rewarded for it. I think that if the GPL were removed from the Open Source Definition's list of approved licenses we'd see this happen.
--Brett
Oops.... Sorry for the typos in the above. My keyboard is sticking this evening and is due for a good cleaning.