The GPL was created because someone scrutinized licenses that existed and didn't like what was around. They then created their own that suited them and others aoround them.
Not true at all. See my posting earlier in this discussion for the true story of the GPL, as substantiated by Richard Stallman's own writings.
It was so nice that millions flocked to use it. Also not true. Most of those whose software is licensed under the GPL have no choice as to the licensing, because they are contributing to a project whose code has been "infected" by the GPL. Once this happens, there is no turning back. There are also other reasons why people use the GPL even though it is programmer-hostile; again, see my earlier posting.
--Brett Glass
No smart person will pay to license GPLed code.
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Here's why. When a GPLed application becomes available, the market value of its functionality becomes zero. (This is a tautology. If you can get something for free, and know you can, you're foolish to pay money for it.) So, a person who pays money to license GPLed source code (if he can; the developer is often an ideologue who won't allow it) is paying money to license something that has no market value. He's starting out in the hole. If you can find someone with so little business acumen that he's willing to pay you money to license your GPLed code, you have, indeed, lucked out.
This is why it's fair to allow commercial developers to re-use open source code (as the X11 and BSD licenses do). Any money they make from the resulting product will be the result of their value added, because the original product was available to anyone for free. If people are willing to pay money for the derivative work, it must have added value that justifies paying that amoung of money. The author has likely worked quite hard; let him or her profit from that work! It's only fair. And it's UNfair for the GPL to attempt to deprive the author of that reward -- which people are perfectly willing to pay. (If they aren't, he won't make a dime.)
--Brett Glass
P.S. -- By the way, GhostScript is licensed under the one license I've seen that's nastier to commercial developers than the GPL. It contaminates other products on the same media.
Re:The GPL has much bigger problems than this.
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The purpose of the GPL is to bolster the free code base.
By forcing commercial software companies out of business and competing with them unfairly. This is a mean-spirited and destructive agenda. But, as I've mentioned, it's intentional. A key purpose of the GPL is to turn open source -- otherwise a good thing -- into a weapon against programmers' livelihoods.
The GPL says, "If you'll give back to the community, you can take and use these things that we have built. If you won't pass on your modifications to the code base to others under the same terms with which you got the base itself, you'll have to roll your own."
One of the most absurd claims made by GPL proponents is that there's some sort of "community" out there to which one is "giving back." In fact, that's not so. The GPL requires that one must give away one's code to everyone -- the entire world -- not just the authors of the code. And thus forfeit any chance to make an honest living.
Heh. Unix fell to pieces and nearly died of being taken proprietary.
Oh? I did not notice that Sun was having any trouble making money on UNIX systems. Nor IBM. In fact, both were (and are!) doing quite well.
It's only of late, with the rise of the free Linux and *BSD, that it has returned to vitality.
Being free of charge does tend to make software more popular.
A license that fosters a common free code base (and discourages proprietary forking) is a Good Thing.
Not so. Commercial use of the code is also a very good thing and should be encouraged. It furthers progress and avoids wasteful re-implementation of what has already been coded. The development of specialized implementations (what you are calling "forking") is likewise a good thing, as it produces systems which are well optimized for specific tasks.
Well, then it sounds like [Microsoft is] hurt to the tune of several million dollars every time they have to reimplement something they could've had for free if they'd work with the community (like Redhat) instead of against it.
Not so; they can do it considerably more cheaply than that in most cases. But even if they were hurt that badly, it'd be a bad thing. Wasting money is never good.
Or, they could just release under the GPL. This does not entail "giving away the farm." Redhat + Cygnus, Aladdin, et al. all do very well
Red Hat has never made a dime and may never do so. This is not "doing well." Aladdin has made some money for its founder but not a lot. Cygnus has made money from consulting but not from software.
and get to stand on the shoulders of the community.
Again, this putative community. Sorry, but this does not wash.
In short, why should I let you stand on my shoulders if you won't let me stand on yours? Bad analogy. It's fine to stand on one another's shoulders, but the GPL demands that I place a stake through my heart in order to stand on your shoulders. If I'm foolish enough to agree to this, I'll soon be dead and thus incapable of standing on anyone's shoulders.
But this is the point of the GPL, of course. As explained earlier, the explicit intent of the GPL is to destroy commercial developers.
As for political propaganda - well, I guess it forces you to redistribute the source, which can empower those who normally wouldn't have it, but apart from that I don't know what you are talking about.
In that case, you have never read the GPL and should not be commenting on it.
The GPL requires that it -- including the manifesto which it euphemistically calls a "preamble" -- be attached whenever the code is distributed. As Bruce Perens states, this is a political statement which many justifiably feel is inappropriate to attach to their work.
That means that if a company wants to make some advance then with Linux they have to release the code (ignoring Binary Kernel Modules) while with *BSD they don't.
Which means they have a strong disincentive to doing it. And the advance may be lost forever.
Oh, and incidentally -- Mitre and CTC are both what's called FFRDC's -- Federally funded research and development corporations. This category of organization is considered to be eligible for 501(c)(3) status. The FSF is not.
There are two major problems with this license, IMHO.
First, it allows code to be "infected" by the GPL. Not a good thing. The GPL zealots will immediatly produce GPLed versions of all of your products with little or no change, just for spite.
Second, you're submitting it to the FSF for approval. Bad move. The FSF's stated position is that any commercial software (they use the word "proprietary," but incorrectly) is "the enemy" (this is a direct quote), and that even the LGPL should not be used.
Bzzzt! While you quote some of the right texts, your bias leads you to a very wrong conclusion.
The FSF is not charitable, because the development of software is not a recognized charitable activity. Also, its benefits are not reserved for those in need.
It is not scientific, as it does not do research, publish papers, etc. In fact, it is devoted to implementing copies of existing works.
It is not educational, as it is not accredited, awards no degrees, and has no curriculum or faculty.
In fact, it flunks the tests for every category of 501(c)(3) organization, as laid out by IRS examiners.
What's more, it is organized specifically to engage in an activity normally carried out by for-profit businesses. Ask any IRS examiner: this is not allowed.
For these reasons, I stand by my belief that the FSF's claim to be eligible for 501(c)(3) status is bogus.
--Brett Glass
Re:The GPL has much bigger problems than this.
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I was appreciating your reply up until this point. I was not aware of the history of the GPL, and will have to do some research myself, but regardless of its intentions, it is, IMO, still a Good Thing.
Unfortunately, the GPL brings about many negative consequences that other licenses, such as the X11 license, do not.
Perhaps the biggest problem the GPL causes is that it promotes fragmentation and incompatibility by preventing commercial developers from using the same code base as those who are publishing open source.
If code for important functions such as encryption algorithms and network protocols is published under a license that allows commercial reuse, it will be incorporated into commercial products as well as free ones, and closed source products as well as open source ones. This will promote standardization, as did UC Berkeley's release of the BSD TCP/IP stack. (The fact that the BSD TCP/IP stack was released for commercial as well as non-commercial use is often said to be responsible for the ubiquity of the Internet today.)
I believe the purpose of the GPL is to protect code from proprietership(word?)
The notion that code must be "protected" from being "taken proprietary" is one of the most common bogeymen raised by RMS and other advocates of the GPL. In fact, it's not a worry. Just because someone uses the code in his or her own work does not mean that the original is not available for someone else to use. It's still public! The only code which might not be available is the new and original code which that person may build around the open source he or she started with. And that's fair. Any added value in the new code will be the product of that person's labors, and he or she deserves to be able to give it away or not give it away. We should be glad to give such folk shoulders to stand on. (As Brian Reid once said, "Scientists stand on one another's shoulders; programmers stand on one another's feet.")
...and foster a community of open and shared innovation.
Other licenses which do not contain the GPL an anti-commercial "poison pill" (so to speak) also foster communities of open and shared innovation (FreeBSD and Apache are good examples). From these projects we can see that the GPL's spiteful denial of the code to commercial developers is not necessary. Since it is not a good idea (and not ethical) to undermine our colleagues' livelihoods or hurt standardization, we should not do so.
Perhaps his actions were not justifiable (if what you say is true, I don't think they were) but you can't overlook everything that GPL'ed code has accomplished just because of the sketchy nature of its origin.
It can be argued that GPLed code has done some good despite the GPL, not because of it. (Red Hat and Be, Inc., to name two companies, both exploit loopholes in the GPL.) But others -- in particular small developers -- will be badly hurt because they cannot do this.
Microsoft, the favorite target of invective from the open source community, isn't hurt by the GPL's "copyleft" provisions one bit. Why? Because it doesn't need to use anyone else's code. All it needs to do is wave a few million dollars, and programmers will implement (or reimplement) anything it wants! Microsoft's competitors, however, may not have those resources. Thus, the young upstarts, in order to keep from having to give away the farm, will have to spend hours recoding algorithms for which tested code already exists. This hurts their chances of success and diverts them from the new creative work they're trying to accomplish. If they can't advance the state of the art, we all lose.
Re:The GPL has much bigger problems than this.
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You've got to be kidding me. I wonder why it was written by an incredibly brilliant and well respected programmer,
I have seen no evidence that RMS is a particularly good coder. (I've been told, in fact, by some of the folks who worked on GCC for Cygnus that RMS's original code for the compiler was slow and rife with bugs, and that they pretty much tore the guts out of it and rewrote it from scratch.)
But, be that as it may, the GPL is specifically designed to hurt programmers. To understand why, you need to understand how the GPL came to be. I've written about this in another Slashdot discussion, but I'll repost it here.
Many years ago, when Richard Stallman was a young programmer at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, a number of the computer scientists there thought it was time to use the abstract knowledge they'd developed at the Lab to create commercial products that would benefit everyone. They formed a company called Symbolics, whose first product would be the "LISP Machine" -- a computer specifically designed to run AI programs.
The young RMS, a "tenured" graduate student who wanted to stay in the Lab forever, saw this as a threat to his intellectual paradise and vowed vengeance.
Richard explicitly stated this when interviewed by a reporter for a recent article in Forbes magazine. The article said:
[Stallman] retaliated [against the computer scientists who left the MIT AI Lab to form Symbolics] by sabotaging his former colleagues' sophisticated commercial programs for powerful computers, singlehandedly hacking up his own versions and giving them away. "They accused me of costing them millions of dollars," he says. "I hope it's true."
[Side note: Ironically, Richard's strategy was very much akin to the strategy adopted by Microsoft -- a company which he reviles -- in its successful campaign to destroy companies such as Netscape and Quarterdeck.]
Other statements made by Richard confirm that the GPL is the result of Richard's personal anti-commercial bent -- and of a grudge which he has nursed since those early days at the MIT AI Lab. In his essay "The GNU Manifesto," cited above, Richard states explicitly his goal of hurting programmers' livelihoods:
"For more than ten years, many of the world's best programmers worked at the Artificial Intelligence Lab for far less money than they could have had anywhere else. They got many kinds of non-monetary rewards: fame and appreciation, for example. And creativity is also fun, a reward in itself.
Then most of them left when offered a chance to do the same interesting work for a lot of money.
What the facts show is that people will program for reasons other than riches; but if given a chance to make a lot of money as well, they will come to expect and demand it. Low-paying organizations do poorly in competition with high-paying ones, but they do not have to do badly if the high-paying ones are banned."
--Richard Stallman, The GNU Manifesto
In the above passage, Richard characterizes the new company as if it were Nirvana for his departing colleagues: all of the fun and interesting work of the AI Lab, but with decent pay, too! Yet Richard, a creature of academia, really could not come along. Angry and spiteful, he begrudged his colleagues their good fortune. He literally advocated "banning" higher pay for programmers than they could get in academia. He vowed revenge not only on Symbolics, but on all commercial ventures of its kind and on programmers who desired to make a better salary than they could at the Lab.
Thus, the GPL was born.
The reasons why programmers place the GPL on their code despite this are many. Among them:
1. They do not understand the GPL's origins;
2. They believe the misleading rhetoric of the GPL's "preamble" and on Richard's Web site, both of which are designed to disguise the GPL's true agenda;
3. They assume that since Linux bears the GPL, the GPL must be "the" license for open source;
4. They project which they join is using the GPL already, and there's no turning back; or
5. Richard's misleading rhetoric, and/or that of others, has misled them, causing them to share Richard's spite and malice against commercial developers. In their zeal, they forget somehow that in this vendetta, "the enemy is us."
The story of the GPL is a sad one, and I would like to see it draw to a close. Hopefully, this will happen as programmers recognize the true intent of the GPL: to pit colleague agaisnt colleague, and to transform open source from a public good into a weapon directed against those who engage in activities of which Richard Stallman personally does not approve.
--Brett Glass
The GPL has much bigger problems than this.
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In particular, it's doubtful that "copyleft" is in any way enforceable. Which is a good thing; the GPL is harmful and was designed explicitly to harm programmers.
It's not me who is labeling these organizations as charities. It's the IRS. You have to apply for and receive 501(c)(3) status.
Again, you're showing your ignorance of tax law. Not all 501(c)(3) corporations are charities. Certain corporations which perform specific activities for the government, as specified by Congress, may also be classified as tax-exempt under 501(c)(3). But they're not charities; they merely qualify for a tax exemption under other provisions in that same part of the Tax Code.
For information, see IRS Publication 557.
--Brett Glass Mitretek, one of the 501(c)(3) corporations that spawned from Mitre does considerable consulting for the IRS. It would think that they would understand very clearly their roles and responsibilities under the tax codes. What's more, the Internal Revenue Code explicitly states that a tax-exempt charity may only derive a small percentage of its income from activities unrelated to its charitable purpose, and that all of this income must support activities which are charitable. The FSF does not meet either of these qualifications. Chapter and verse, please. I've produced a number of examples to refute your claim that a 501(c)(3) must only engage in non-competitive "charitable" purposes. I'd like to see some substantiation of your claims. I believe that a non-profit only has to engage in the work that it was chartered to perform. "Charitable" is broadly defined by the IRS as being non-profit work that meets their charter. The FSF meets these qualifications. If this is not the case, how does Mitre qualify for it's 501(c)(3) status performing C3I for the military?
It's clear that you are labeling entities as "charitable" that do not perform any charitable function whatsoever.
What's more, the Internal Revenue Code explicitly states that a tax-exempt charity may only derive a small percentage of its income from activities unrelated to its charitable purpose, and that all of this income must support activities which are charitable. The FSF does not meet either of these qualifications.
The Holy Grail of Software Engineering for 40 years has been reuse, reuse, reuse. These artificial scarcities have served to make software reuse very spotty and poorly practiced. The GPL is the only license that enforces a discipline of software reuse.
Dead wrong. The GPL prevents the reuse of code by those who could most benefit (and benefit others!) by reusing it. The GPL's game of "keep-away" from commercial programmers is more than nasty and spiteful; it's destructive.
I nominate Ceren, the BSD "Daemon Girl" who appeared at COMDEX. With red leather pants, a trident, a red leotard, and cute little horns, she was the star of the Linux pavilion....
Mitre (a 501(c)(3) corporation) submits competitive bids, and often wins, against other Defense contractors.
Mitre is not a 501(c)(3) non-profit nor does it claim to be a charity. It is a "not-for-profit" corporation, which means that it attempts to avoid taxes by spending a sufficiently large amount of what it makes to avoid income tax. If you contributed money to Mitre (And who would?) your contribution would not be tax deductible.
Another company that I'm familiar with, CTC (Concurrent Technology Corporation...
Is likewise not a charity and does not claim to be.
What's wrong with a bit of Marxism, anyway? It sure makes programmming easier - which is what I care about.
No, it makes programming much harder by imposing a long, complex, baroque, restrictive license -- loaded with political baggage -- upon the code. The GPL is to open source software what Soviet Communism was to socialism -- a scheme which claimed to be idealistic but in fact had much more base motivations. Want programming to be easier? Want to see the state of the art advance? Use an open source license that makes the source truly available for reuse by all with virtually no strings attached. The GPL is not that license.
Glad to see someone is watching out for the poor IRS!
I'm not just watching out for the IRS; I'm watching out for anyone who pays taxes or contributes to United Way. By dubbing itself a "charity," the FSF has extracted money both from the taxpayers and from people who believed they were making donations to truly charitable causes. The FSF is not a charity, since it does not reserve its work for those in need and because its primary purpose is to compete directly with for-profit businesses.
Where does RMS state that the GPL "is designed to reduce programmer's salaries and compromise their livelihoods."?
Here:
"For more than ten years, many of the world's best programmers worked at the Artificial Intelligence Lab for far less money than they could have had anywhere else. They got many kinds of non-monetary rewards: fame and appreciation, for example. And creativity is also fun, a reward in itself.
Then most of them left when offered a chance to do the same interesting work for a lot of money.
What the facts show is that people will program for reasons other than riches; but if given a chance to make a lot of money as well, they will come to expect and demand it. Low-paying organizations do poorly in competition with high-paying ones, but they do not have to do badly if the high-paying ones are banned." --Richard Stallman, The GNU Manifesto
This passage shows Richard's angry response to the formation of Symbolics. Richard characterizes the new company as if it were Nirvana for his departing colleagues: all of the fun and interesting work of the AI Lab, but with decent pay, too! Yet Richard, a creature of academia, really could not come along. Angry and spiteful, he begrudged his colleagues their good fortune. He literally advocated "banning" higher pay for programmers than they could get in academia. He vowed revenge not only on Symbolics, but on all commercial ventures of its kind.
Perhaps libeled is a bit strong. You do see RMS alternately called a communist, a Svengali a fraud and a number of other things. He generally is not criticized in a way that could legally be termed libel.
None of the labels you mention is entirely off base. His writings definitely do borrow rhetorical techniques and concepts from those of Marxism. I don't know about "Svengali," but there is some legitimacy to the claims that he is a fraud. I personally believe that the FSF's 501(c)(3) tax exemption was obtained fraudulently, because the purpose of the FSF is (and always has been) to compete directly with for-profit businesses. This is not allowed, and since he intended to do this from the start, it may well be that he could be accused of defrauding the IRS.
Let's see, every single OS vendor has a compiler suite which they heavily support.
Yes, let's look at this. BeOS? Hmm.... They use GCC. BSD UNIX? Also GCC. In fact, GCC has usurped virtually all of the compiler business except for a few embedded niches and Microsoft Windows. It has done this via predatory pricing -- an explicitly intended activity of the FSF. Why is this any more justified than Microsoft "cutting off Netscape's air supply?" The answer: It's not.
The GPL is shorter than most EULAs
Actually, the preamble of the GPL by itself -- which is essentially a manifesto designed to "come along for the ride" with all software encumbered by the GPL -- is longer than most EULAs.
...and it only really places one restriction on the code; You can't take advantage of this community work unless you are willing to participate in the community by giving back.
Not just by "giving back" -- that's commonly done under other licenses such as the MIT X and BSD licenses. Rather, the GPL demands that the author give up any prospect of licensing his or her work for money. He or she must give the code not only to the original developers but to everyone for free. This is an onerous requirement which, as Richard Stallman himself states, is designed to reduce programmers' salaries and compromise their livelihoods.
The GPL is far less restrictive than any commercial license with which I'm familiar.
Not true. I can pay a fee to license a commercial, royalty-free software library and use it in my work without being forced to compromise my livelihood as a programmer.
[RMS] unfairly gets called all kinds of names.
From what I have observed, what you call name calling is usually very justifiable and deserved criticism. I have rarely, if ever, seen RMS "called names" for no reason.
A reasoned discussion of issues of various "free" licenses is met with "RMS isn't God, GNU isn't a religion and the FSF isn't a bunch of prophets." and absolutely no substantive arguments
RMS's discussion of such licenses isn't reasoned. It's demagoguery which is designed to deceive and to hide his true intent.
and Stallman's agenda is one of spite and malice?
Absolutely. Check your history. It is historical fact, verifiable from RMS's own writings and from his remarks in public and in print, that the GPL was conceived as an instrument of spite against Symbolics -- a commercial spinoff of the MIT AI Lab. And all other companies of its ilk.
This "unsung hero" of editors has just the right combination of features for the busy UNIX system administrator. All of the keystrokes of the original EMACS, a non-modal and easy-to-learn interface, almost instantaneous startup, a great tutorial, and a tiny, tiny fraction of the footprint of the bloated GNU Emacs. Once I've told them it's available and explained what it does, the majority of our GNU Emacs users have switched. (The only holdouts are the ones that use GNU Emacs for functions for which dedicated programs are really better -- for example, to read mail, news, etc.)
Agree. Perens and RMS have both harmed the reputation of open source. To the rest of the world, they make it appear that its supporters are anti-business, anti-commercial zealots. They do not deserve to be rewarded for this behavior.
While other open source projects have advanced incrementally, OpenBSD is the only open source project to date which has gone back and painstakingly examined every line of the already existing code, cleaning up bugs and assiduously eliminating situations in which buffer overflows and other problems even might occur. OpenBSD's recent security audit has gained it universal recognition as the most secure operating system on the planet, bar none.
If the award were either for the best new project and/or for the one that added the largest number of feeping creatures (er, I mean creeping features), other candidates might be considered. But OpenBSD is the only project which has placed excellence and code correctness above featuritis. Because it has set this example, it is the project most deserving of a "most improved" award.
Slashdot Mirror
Not true at all. See my posting earlier in this discussion for the true story of the GPL, as substantiated by Richard Stallman's own writings.
It was so nice that millions flocked to use it. Also not true. Most of those whose software is licensed under the GPL have no choice as to the licensing, because they are contributing to a project whose code has been "infected" by the GPL. Once this happens, there is no turning back. There are also other reasons why people use the GPL even though it is programmer-hostile; again, see my earlier posting.
--Brett Glass
This is why it's fair to allow commercial developers to re-use open source code (as the X11 and BSD licenses do). Any money they make from the resulting product will be the result of their value added, because the original product was available to anyone for free. If people are willing to pay money for the derivative work, it must have added value that justifies paying that amoung of money. The author has likely worked quite hard; let him or her profit from that work! It's only fair. And it's UNfair for the GPL to attempt to deprive the author of that reward -- which people are perfectly willing to pay. (If they aren't, he won't make a dime.)
--Brett Glass
P.S. -- By the way, GhostScript is licensed under the one license I've seen that's nastier to commercial developers than the GPL. It contaminates other products on the same media.
By forcing commercial software companies out of business and competing with them unfairly. This is a mean-spirited and destructive agenda. But, as I've mentioned, it's intentional. A key purpose of the GPL is to turn open source -- otherwise a good thing -- into a weapon against programmers' livelihoods.
The GPL says, "If you'll give back to the community, you can take and use these things that we have built. If you won't pass on your modifications to the code base to others under the same terms with which you got the base itself, you'll have to roll your own."
One of the most absurd claims made by GPL proponents is that there's some sort of "community" out there to which one is "giving back." In fact, that's not so. The GPL requires that one must give away one's code to everyone -- the entire world -- not just the authors of the code. And thus forfeit any chance to make an honest living.
Heh. Unix fell to pieces and nearly died of being taken proprietary.
Oh? I did not notice that Sun was having any trouble making money on UNIX systems. Nor IBM. In fact, both were (and are!) doing quite well.
It's only of late, with the rise of the free Linux and *BSD, that it has returned to vitality.
Being free of charge does tend to make software more popular.
A license that fosters a common free code base (and discourages proprietary forking) is a Good Thing.
Not so. Commercial use of the code is also a very good thing and should be encouraged. It furthers progress and avoids wasteful re-implementation of what has already been coded. The development of specialized implementations (what you are calling "forking") is likewise a good thing, as it produces systems which are well optimized for specific tasks.
Well, then it sounds like [Microsoft is] hurt to the tune of several million dollars every time they have to reimplement something they could've had for free if they'd work with the community (like Redhat) instead of against it.
Not so; they can do it considerably more cheaply than that in most cases. But even if they were hurt that badly, it'd be a bad thing. Wasting money is never good.
Or, they could just release under the GPL. This does not entail "giving away the farm." Redhat + Cygnus, Aladdin, et al. all do very well
Red Hat has never made a dime and may never do so. This is not "doing well." Aladdin has made some money for its founder but not a lot. Cygnus has made money from consulting but not from software.
and get to stand on the shoulders of the community.
Again, this putative community. Sorry, but this does not wash.
In short, why should I let you stand on my shoulders if you won't let me stand on yours? Bad analogy. It's fine to stand on one another's shoulders, but the GPL demands that I place a stake through my heart in order to stand on your shoulders. If I'm foolish enough to agree to this, I'll soon be dead and thus incapable of standing on anyone's shoulders.
But this is the point of the GPL, of course. As explained earlier, the explicit intent of the GPL is to destroy commercial developers.
--Brett Glass
In that case, you have never read the GPL and should not be commenting on it.
The GPL requires that it -- including the manifesto which it euphemistically calls a "preamble" -- be attached whenever the code is distributed. As Bruce Perens states, this is a political statement which many justifiably feel is inappropriate to attach to their work.
--Brett Glass
Which means they have a strong disincentive to doing it. And the advance may be lost forever.
--Brett Glass
--Brett Glass
First, it allows code to be "infected" by the GPL. Not a good thing. The GPL zealots will immediatly produce GPLed versions of all of your products with little or no change, just for spite.
Second, you're submitting it to the FSF for approval. Bad move. The FSF's stated position is that any commercial software (they use the word "proprietary," but incorrectly) is "the enemy" (this is a direct quote), and that even the LGPL should not be used.
--Brett Glass
The FSF is not charitable, because the development of software is not a recognized charitable activity. Also, its benefits are not reserved for those in need.
It is not scientific, as it does not do research, publish papers, etc. In fact, it is devoted to implementing copies of existing works.
It is not educational, as it is not accredited, awards no degrees, and has no curriculum or faculty.
In fact, it flunks the tests for every category of 501(c)(3) organization, as laid out by IRS examiners.
What's more, it is organized specifically to engage in an activity normally carried out by for-profit businesses. Ask any IRS examiner: this is not allowed.
For these reasons, I stand by my belief that the FSF's claim to be eligible for 501(c)(3) status is bogus.
--Brett Glass
Unfortunately, the GPL brings about many negative consequences that other licenses, such as the X11 license, do not.
Perhaps the biggest problem the GPL causes is that it promotes fragmentation and incompatibility by preventing commercial developers from using the same code base as those who are publishing open source.
If code for important functions such as encryption algorithms and network protocols is published under a license that allows commercial reuse, it will be incorporated into commercial products as well as free ones, and closed source products as well as open source ones. This will promote standardization, as did UC Berkeley's release of the BSD TCP/IP stack. (The fact that the BSD TCP/IP stack was released for commercial as well as non-commercial use is often said to be responsible for the ubiquity of the Internet today.)
I believe the purpose of the GPL is to protect code from proprietership(word?)
The notion that code must be "protected" from being "taken proprietary" is one of the most common bogeymen raised by RMS and other advocates of the GPL. In fact, it's not a worry. Just because someone uses the code in his or her own work does not mean that the original is not available for someone else to use. It's still public! The only code which might not be available is the new and original code which that person may build around the open source he or she started with. And that's fair. Any added value in the new code will be the product of that person's labors, and he or she deserves to be able to give it away or not give it away. We should be glad to give such folk shoulders to stand on. (As Brian Reid once said, "Scientists stand on one another's shoulders; programmers stand on one another's feet.")
Other licenses which do not contain the GPL an anti-commercial "poison pill" (so to speak) also foster communities of open and shared innovation (FreeBSD and Apache are good examples). From these projects we can see that the GPL's spiteful denial of the code to commercial developers is not necessary. Since it is not a good idea (and not ethical) to undermine our colleagues' livelihoods or hurt standardization, we should not do so.
Perhaps his actions were not justifiable (if what you say is true, I don't think they were) but you can't overlook everything that GPL'ed code has accomplished just because of the sketchy nature of its origin.
It can be argued that GPLed code has done some good despite the GPL, not because of it. (Red Hat and Be, Inc., to name two companies, both exploit loopholes in the GPL.) But others -- in particular small developers -- will be badly hurt because they cannot do this.
Microsoft, the favorite target of invective from the open source community, isn't hurt by the GPL's "copyleft" provisions one bit. Why? Because it doesn't need to use anyone else's code. All it needs to do is wave a few million dollars, and programmers will implement (or reimplement) anything it wants! Microsoft's competitors, however, may not have those resources. Thus, the young upstarts, in order to keep from having to give away the farm, will have to spend hours recoding algorithms for which tested code already exists. This hurts their chances of success and diverts them from the new creative work they're trying to accomplish. If they can't advance the state of the art, we all lose.
I have seen no evidence that RMS is a particularly good coder. (I've been told, in fact, by some of the folks who worked on GCC for Cygnus that RMS's original code for the compiler was slow and rife with bugs, and that they pretty much tore the guts out of it and rewrote it from scratch.)
But, be that as it may, the GPL is specifically designed to hurt programmers. To understand why, you need to understand how the GPL came to be. I've written about this in another Slashdot discussion, but I'll repost it here.
Many years ago, when Richard Stallman was a young programmer at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, a number of the computer scientists there thought it was time to use the abstract knowledge they'd developed at the Lab to create commercial products that would benefit everyone. They formed a company called Symbolics, whose first product would be the "LISP Machine" -- a computer specifically designed to run AI programs.
The young RMS, a "tenured" graduate student who wanted to stay in the Lab forever, saw this as a threat to his intellectual paradise and vowed vengeance.
Richard explicitly stated this when interviewed by a reporter for a recent article in Forbes magazine. The article said:
(For the full text of the article, see http://www.forbes.com/forbes/98/0 810/6203094a.htm.)
[Side note: Ironically, Richard's strategy was very much akin to the strategy adopted by Microsoft -- a company which he reviles -- in its successful campaign to destroy companies such as Netscape and Quarterdeck.]
Other statements made by Richard confirm that the GPL is the result of Richard's personal anti-commercial bent -- and of a grudge which he has nursed since those early days at the MIT AI Lab. In his essay "The GNU Manifesto," cited above, Richard states explicitly his goal of hurting programmers' livelihoods:
In the above passage, Richard characterizes the new company as if it were Nirvana for his departing colleagues: all of the fun and interesting work of the AI Lab, but with decent pay, too! Yet Richard, a creature of academia, really could not come along. Angry and spiteful, he begrudged his colleagues their good fortune. He literally advocated "banning" higher pay for programmers than they could get in academia. He vowed revenge not only on Symbolics, but on all commercial ventures of its kind and on programmers who desired to make a better salary than they could at the Lab.
Thus, the GPL was born.
The reasons why programmers place the GPL on their code despite this are many. Among them:
1. They do not understand the GPL's origins;
2. They believe the misleading rhetoric of the GPL's "preamble" and on Richard's Web site, both of which are designed to disguise the GPL's true agenda;
3. They assume that since Linux bears the GPL, the GPL must be "the" license for open source;
4. They project which they join is using the GPL already, and there's no turning back; or
5. Richard's misleading rhetoric, and/or that of others, has misled them, causing them to share Richard's spite and malice against commercial developers. In their zeal, they forget somehow that in this vendetta, "the enemy is us."
The story of the GPL is a sad one, and I would like to see it draw to a close. Hopefully, this will happen as programmers recognize the true intent of the GPL: to pit colleague agaisnt colleague, and to transform open source from a public good into a weapon directed against those who engage in activities of which Richard Stallman personally does not approve.
--Brett Glass
--Brett Glass
Again, you're showing your ignorance of tax law. Not all 501(c)(3) corporations are charities. Certain corporations which perform specific activities for the government, as specified by Congress, may also be classified as tax-exempt under 501(c)(3). But they're not charities; they merely qualify for a tax exemption under other provisions in that same part of the Tax Code.
For information, see IRS Publication 557.
--Brett Glass Mitretek, one of the 501(c)(3) corporations that spawned from Mitre does considerable consulting for the IRS. It would think that they would understand very clearly their roles and responsibilities under the tax codes. What's more, the Internal Revenue Code explicitly states that a tax-exempt charity may only derive a small percentage of its income from activities unrelated to its charitable purpose, and that all of this income must support activities which are charitable. The FSF does not meet either of these qualifications. Chapter and verse, please. I've produced a number of examples to refute your claim that a 501(c)(3) must only engage in non-competitive "charitable" purposes. I'd like to see some substantiation of your claims. I believe that a non-profit only has to engage in the work that it was chartered to perform. "Charitable" is broadly defined by the IRS as being non-profit work that meets their charter. The FSF meets these qualifications. If this is not the case, how does Mitre qualify for it's 501(c)(3) status performing C3I for the military?
Then what's your excuse?
It's clear that you are labeling entities as "charitable" that do not perform any charitable function whatsoever.
What's more, the Internal Revenue Code explicitly states that a tax-exempt charity may only derive a small percentage of its income from activities unrelated to its charitable purpose, and that all of this income must support activities which are charitable. The FSF does not meet either of these qualifications.
--Brett Glass
Dead wrong. The GPL prevents the reuse of code by those who could most benefit (and benefit others!) by reusing it. The GPL's game of "keep-away" from commercial programmers is more than nasty and spiteful; it's destructive.
--Brett Glass
Then look at FreeBSD and OpenBSD.
--Brett Glass
For a picture, see http://www.gci-net.com/~users/f/fluke/comdex/bsdgi rl1.jpg
I nominate Ceren, the BSD "Daemon Girl" who appeared at COMDEX. With red leather pants, a trident, a red leotard, and cute little horns, she was the star of the Linux pavilion....
Mitre is not a 501(c)(3) non-profit nor does it claim to be a charity. It is a "not-for-profit" corporation, which means that it attempts to avoid taxes by spending a sufficiently large amount of what it makes to avoid income tax. If you contributed money to Mitre (And who would?) your contribution would not be tax deductible.
Another company that I'm familiar with, CTC (Concurrent Technology Corporation...
Is likewise not a charity and does not claim to be.
Better get your facts straight.
--Brett Glass
No, it makes programming much harder by imposing a long, complex, baroque, restrictive license -- loaded with political baggage -- upon the code. The GPL is to open source software what Soviet Communism was to socialism -- a scheme which claimed to be idealistic but in fact had much more base motivations. Want programming to be easier? Want to see the state of the art advance? Use an open source license that makes the source truly available for reuse by all with virtually no strings attached. The GPL is not that license.
Glad to see someone is watching out for the poor IRS!
I'm not just watching out for the IRS; I'm watching out for anyone who pays taxes or contributes to United Way. By dubbing itself a "charity," the FSF has extracted money both from the taxpayers and from people who believed they were making donations to truly charitable causes. The FSF is not a charity, since it does not reserve its work for those in need and because its primary purpose is to compete directly with for-profit businesses.
--Brett Glass
Here:
This passage shows Richard's angry response to the formation of Symbolics. Richard characterizes the new company as if it were Nirvana for his departing colleagues: all of the fun and interesting work of the AI Lab, but with decent pay, too! Yet Richard, a creature of academia, really could not come along. Angry and spiteful, he begrudged his colleagues their good fortune. He literally advocated "banning" higher pay for programmers than they could get in academia. He vowed revenge not only on Symbolics, but on all commercial ventures of its kind.
Thus, the GPL was born.
--Brett Glass
None of the labels you mention is entirely off base. His writings definitely do borrow rhetorical techniques and concepts from those of Marxism. I don't know about "Svengali," but there is some legitimacy to the claims that he is a fraud. I personally believe that the FSF's 501(c)(3) tax exemption was obtained fraudulently, because the purpose of the FSF is (and always has been) to compete directly with for-profit businesses. This is not allowed, and since he intended to do this from the start, it may well be that he could be accused of defrauding the IRS.
Let's see, every single OS vendor has a compiler suite which they heavily support.
Yes, let's look at this. BeOS? Hmm.... They use GCC. BSD UNIX? Also GCC. In fact, GCC has usurped virtually all of the compiler business except for a few embedded niches and Microsoft Windows. It has done this via predatory pricing -- an explicitly intended activity of the FSF. Why is this any more justified than Microsoft "cutting off Netscape's air supply?" The answer: It's not.
The GPL is shorter than most EULAs
Actually, the preamble of the GPL by itself -- which is essentially a manifesto designed to "come along for the ride" with all software encumbered by the GPL -- is longer than most EULAs.
Not just by "giving back" -- that's commonly done under other licenses such as the MIT X and BSD licenses. Rather, the GPL demands that the author give up any prospect of licensing his or her work for money. He or she must give the code not only to the original developers but to everyone for free. This is an onerous requirement which, as Richard Stallman himself states, is designed to reduce programmers' salaries and compromise their livelihoods.
The GPL is far less restrictive than any commercial license with which I'm familiar.
Not true. I can pay a fee to license a commercial, royalty-free software library and use it in my work without being forced to compromise my livelihood as a programmer.
[RMS] unfairly gets called all kinds of names.
From what I have observed, what you call name calling is usually very justifiable and deserved criticism. I have rarely, if ever, seen RMS "called names" for no reason.
A reasoned discussion of issues of various "free" licenses is met with "RMS isn't God, GNU isn't a religion and the FSF isn't a bunch of prophets." and absolutely no substantive arguments
RMS's discussion of such licenses isn't reasoned. It's demagoguery which is designed to deceive and to hide his true intent.
and Stallman's agenda is one of spite and malice?
Absolutely. Check your history. It is historical fact, verifiable from RMS's own writings and from his remarks in public and in print, that the GPL was conceived as an instrument of spite against Symbolics -- a commercial spinoff of the MIT AI Lab. And all other companies of its ilk.
--Brett Glass
--Brett Glass
--Brett Glass
If the award were either for the best new project and/or for the one that added the largest number of feeping creatures (er, I mean creeping features), other candidates might be considered. But OpenBSD is the only project which has placed excellence and code correctness above featuritis. Because it has set this example, it is the project most deserving of a "most improved" award.
--Brett Glass
How about extending this category to include the best driver or module for any OS, such as FreeBSD?