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What Have We Learned from This Open Source Project?

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Re: What Have We Learned from This Open Source Project?

#41

Post by cyphar »

skybrian wrote: post #29
anc84 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about missing guarantee of future freedom rather but I am sure you know that.

It's kind of funny how people want guarantees about the licenses of future releases that don't actually exist. There's no guarantee that a random open source project will have any new releases at all. In that case, what good is a promise about its license? Or if they do happen, the code might change in a way that's backward-incompatible so you can no longer use it. The only guarantee you can count on is that if the c…

It also guarantees freedom no matter who packages the software. This is what I care about when making large projects.

Re: What Have We Learned from This Open Source Project?

#43

Post by cyphar »

reitanqild wrote: post #33
cyphar wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory yes, in practice you couldn't even hope to get all of the copyright holders' permission. You'd have to surgically remove the code of everyone who didn't consent to the relicensing (good luck) and everybody would hate you for it.

Well, then you have code written for a company on company and code written under a contributor agreement. A lot of code that ended up under free licenses has been proprietary first and while they cannot revoke the free licenses from already released code they can make their next release non-free as long as they haven't accepted outside contributions without a suitable contributor agreement.

> Well, then you have code written for a company on company and code written under a contributor agreement.

Not all contributor agreements are equal, and I would recommend choosing which projects you will not contribute to based on their CLAs. If they ask you to give them copyright without good reason, they are preparing to fuck you over. Ironically, this is why I will not contribute to GNU because they require copyright assignment so they have a higher chance of winning conservancy cases (IANAL, but I have one in my family and this is bullshit in my country but may be true in the US, so I feel conflicted about it).

> A lot of code that ended up under free licenses has been proprietary first and while they cannot revoke the free licenses from already released code they can make their next release non-free as long as they haven't accepted outside contributions without a suitable contributor agreement.

The only example I can think of is OpenSolaris (which required contributors to sign a CLA that assigned copyright to Sun/Oracle). Most modern projects don't work like that, and if you have a copyleft license, a company could not legally create a proprietary fork and distribute it.

Besides, if that happens you end up with free software forks (illumos in the OpenSolaris case) and everyone moves to using that.

Re: What Have We Learned from This Open Source Project?

#44

Post by cyphar »

mwfunk wrote: post #12
webkike wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just use the other licenses that have those restrictions? What's the joke?

The joke is that permissive licenses allow you to make less permissive forks, whether that's proprietary or copyleft or anything else. So it's hard to see what the problem is. Anytime someone complains about the license for this or that project being too permissive, it's ironic because: (a) it's someone trying to force their values on someone else in the name of "freedom" (in scare quotes because it's a very specific…

> So it's hard to see what the problem is.

The problem is that allowing proprietary forks is shooting yourself in the foot if you believe in free software being a net benefit to society. Allowing proprietary forks of your software to exist means that you are fighting against yourself to produce free software. Not to mention that it means that users of your software might not have the freedom you intended them to have if someone else packaged your software.

> "freedom" (in scare quotes because it's a very specific definition of the term that requires political buy-in to even see it as a form of freedom)

Which of the four freedoms do you think are restricting users? If you're referring to copyleft (this is not the same thing as freedom), then please understand that copyleft software ensures that all users that receive the software will have the benefits of free software. That's the whole point.

> ... The ability to do this is one of the reasons people choose permissive licenses in the first place.

It also allows for proprietary forks, which is why some people have a problem with it.

> I don't care if people choose freedom or "freedom" or anything in between-

Seems like you do. I don't get why you quote the word "freedom" when referring to copyleft but don't quote it when referring to the "freedom" to make proprietary forks of free software. It should be the other way around IMO.

Re: What Have We Learned from This Open Source Project?

#46

Post by kuschku »

wingerlang wrote: post #34
kuschku wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why many people now have automated bug reporting tools. Which is sad.

What's wrong with automated bug reporting tools? I am very grateful for the 100/1000s of automated reports we get, they would be near impossible to shake out of even a technical user.

Because then the whole free software crowd starts marking your app as "Evil" and containing non-free antifeatures.

It’s hard to find a good solution.

Re: What Have We Learned from This Open Source Project?

#47

Post by kuschku »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #36
kuschku wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why many people now have automated bug reporting tools. Which is sad.

I'm not sure what you mean, what kind of tools, that are sad?

Because now your only solution is sharing as much information as is necessary for understanding the bug with your own server.

Which a lot of people in the free software crowd dislike, because of privacy implications. I, personally, dislike it, too.

Re: What Have We Learned from This Open Source Project?

#48

Post by belorn »

mwfunk wrote: post #12
webkike wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just use the other licenses that have those restrictions? What's the joke?

The joke is that permissive licenses allow you to make less permissive forks, whether that's proprietary or copyleft or anything else. So it's hard to see what the problem is. Anytime someone complains about the license for this or that project being too permissive, it's ironic because: (a) it's someone trying to force their values on someone else in the name of "freedom" (in scare quotes because it's a very specific…

I use the term freedom as established by all major philosophers in the last 300 years or so. No one really believes that the true definition of freedom is the law of the jungle where anyone is "free" (scare quotes indeed) to do what they want with no restrictions.

John Locke describe freedom as a synonym to agency, where none is under any restrictions except the standing rules to live by that are common to everyone in the society. Share and share alike a perfectly fine example of a rule that is common to everyone where no individual are be subjected to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, and arbitrary wills of others.

Re: What Have We Learned from This Open Source Project?

#49

Post by schoen »

cyphar wrote: post #40
schoen wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... although there are still proprietary forks, especially in embedded systems, because of limited resources (and apparently sometimes appetite) for GPL enforcement. (Conservancy, one of a tiny number of organizations that does this work, has been having a lot of financial troubles lately: https://sfconservancy.org/ )

> ... although there are still proprietary forks, especially in embedded systems, because of limited resources (and apparently sometimes appetite) for GPL enforcement. As you said the software freedom conservancy is having financial troubles (why the Linux foundation doesn't just cut them a cheque is beyond me). However, a lot of embedded systems use BSD and other such systems. And ultimately, that's not the point I…

I agree with you about this, just noting that the benefits aren't as automatic or as universal as we might expect due to compliance problems. But it seems that more often than not it works as designed.

(I guess another question is to what extent there are people actively scouting for useful stuff to merge upstream; are there kernel trees with useful fixes or enhancements that are published never merged into the mainline kernel because nobody notices?)

Re: What Have We Learned from This Open Source Project?

#50

Post by lotyrin »

cyphar wrote: post #26
lotyrin wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Open source seldom realizes it needs the same infrastructure as a commercial product: separate project management issue queue and support issue queue. What are we doing next, what version did we fix Y in, what VCS branch are we working on Z in, who is working on X, etc. are separate from Who reported problem, what version of the product do they report having used, what did they expect and what did they get, is…

If I used your software, I would totally fork your project and have a less totalitarian view of the project's leadership. You're free to think you "own" your community, but as Oracle and many other examples have told us, that's not the case and the community will make sure you learn your lesson.

I'm not advocating for anything other than community ownership of projects, only a few formalities. Thinking that everything has to be absolute anarchy in order to be "free" (even that open source's goal has to be to maximise "freedom" over any other kinds of social utility) is a kind of absolutism/idealism that I wish open source communities could leave in high-school where it belongs.
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