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Is the GPL Really Declining?

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Re: Is the GPL Really Declining?

#101

Post by lorenzhs »

kstenerud wrote: post #81
lorenzhs wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your observations don't correlate with the actual political opinions of prominent advocates of what boils down to the ages-old free software vs open source split. You don't need to look further than ESR for a striking counterexample.

Actually, no. I'm not talking about open vs closed source. I'm talking about HOW the source is open (GPL vs BSD et al). ESR is mostly a centerist when it comes to that.

Neither was I? "Open Source vs Free Software" is exactly about BSD/MIT/... vs GPL. As a cofounder of the OSI, ESR is most certainly not a centrist on that. To quote Wikipedia on the OSI: "The Open Source Initiative chose the term "open source," in founding member Michael Tiemann's words, to "dump the moralizing and confrontational attitude that had been associated with 'free software'" and instead promote open source ideas on "pragmatic, business-case grounds.""

Re: Is the GPL Really Declining?

#102

Post by lorenzhs »

erikbye wrote: post #84
lorenzhs wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your observations don't correlate with the actual political opinions of prominent advocates of what boils down to the ages-old free software vs open source split. You don't need to look further than ESR for a striking counterexample.

Noone takes ESR seriously. At least shouldn't. And he has no influence on people working on real and useful open source projects.

Well I certainly agree that nobody should take him seriously but I'm unconvinced that that matches up with reality. His blog does get a lot of comments.

Re: Is the GPL Really Declining?

#103

Post by loup-vaillant »

erikbye wrote: post #99
josephg wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does it look like we're not working on it? Frankly, yes. I can't speak for the experience on linux, but on mac Inkscape needs to: - Support high dpi displays - It needs to scroll and zoom smoothly. (There's no reason for it to lag while scrolling and zooming on a modern computer. Every other app on my system manages it). - It needs to use the operating system's menubar instead of xquartz. - Use native controls for…

Ok. You are talking about problems with the software on a proprietary system... Sorry, I don't support closed platforms. These problems do not exist on the Linux version.

That's a bit of a problem.

Proprietary OS users are going to judge Inkscape (or Gimp, or any other Free Software) from what they see on their platform. If it lags and doesn't support High DPI on their platform, they're going to assume the same is true of the GNU/Linux version.

Some users won't switch because of this faulty assumption.

Native UI… while there is little point it catering to users who won't switch anyway, it will still reflect badly on the application. Widgets that look like "something out of the 90's" will say to the user "I am an old unmaintained app" whether that's true or not. Users are highly influenced by an application's look.

Re: Is the GPL Really Declining?

#104

Post by rbanffy »

lorenzhs wrote: post #26
rbanffy wrote: post #19

Seems to be a dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14257316 Did detection fail?

No, the dupe detector was changed about a year ago to allow for resubmission of articles that failed to gain traction. If you have questions for the mods, email them. Discussing the dupe detector is off-topic and boring.

Do you have a link to that announcement? I tried to look it up to gather more information without bothering the mods.

Re: Is the GPL Really Declining?

#105

Post by belorn »

kstenerud wrote: post #39
Anon_2017124 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you correctly say, if you want anyone to be able to do whatever, you're right with choosing a permissive (non-reciprocal) license. GPL cares about the users of the software, not only the developers, and makes sure that, if they receive some software, they also get the source.

Non-developers don't care about the source.

I recall a motorcycle which people thought was nice and cheap, but had this major problem where the motor was baked into a single block in such a way that you could not repair most things in it.

Are most motorcyclists also mechanics? No. Do most motorcyclists care about the minor details of the inner parts of the motor, or scientific methods used within? No. Most just want a motorcycle that is cheap, function properly, and yet this specific motorcycle was strongly disliked and viewed as a trap. You could not repair it when it broke and you could not recover the investment by reselling it.

So say you are a non-developer and buying a e-reader with a bunch of DRM. The publisher go busts and you want to recover your investment. At that point you do care that you own a brick rather than some general purpose computer, but its to late. You are stuck in the trap.

Re: Is the GPL Really Declining?

#106

Post by belorn »

watwut wrote: post #79

I would not use GPL for my projects, because I can not use GPL licensed libraries in work. We use plenty of Apache licensed libs, therefore when I did open source contributions I contributed back to that pool. It was no brainer to me. I also like the freedom in it - GPL is a bit about forcing people to do things your way because ideology which is attitude I find offputing. Apache is less political and more giving - h…

When your workplace distribute the software you write to their customers, what political ideology does the license force onto them?

Re: Is the GPL Really Declining?

#107

Post by belorn »

pjmlp wrote: post #36

Yes it is, in about 10 years time, Linux kernel might be one of the few surviving GPL projects in wider use. We will get back to PD and shareware days, when releasing source code was a nice feature, but not necessarily compulsory. The speed embedded OEM are replacing gcc with clang in their forks, without having to keep contributing back, is a good example of things will evolve. Or the hardware companies that bundle…

Predicting the death of Debian in 10 years is a odd call since I have not seen any indication of decline in the use of Debian and its derivatives.

Last time someone checked, projects in debian where around 90% GPL.

Re: Is the GPL Really Declining?

#108

Post by erikbye »

lorenzhs wrote: post #102
erikbye wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noone takes ESR seriously. At least shouldn't. And he has no influence on people working on real and useful open source projects.

Well I certainly agree that nobody should take him seriously but I'm unconvinced that that matches up with reality. His blog does get a lot of comments.

You are right. That was naive and wishful thinking on my part.

Re: Is the GPL Really Declining?

#109

Post by watwut »

belorn wrote: post #106
watwut wrote: post #79

I would not use GPL for my projects, because I can not use GPL licensed libraries in work. We use plenty of Apache licensed libs, therefore when I did open source contributions I contributed back to that pool. It was no brainer to me. I also like the freedom in it - GPL is a bit about forcing people to do things your way because ideology which is attitude I find offputing. Apache is less political and more giving - h…

When your workplace distribute the software you write to their customers, what political ideology does the license force onto them?

What does that have to do with anything? OSS and tech generally likes to praise itself as more rational fact based, but demagoguery is sometimes downright ridiculous.

If I distribute open source library under GPL, the advantage of GPL is supposed to be that users of my library have to provide source code to their users. Making it "viral" and preventing them to do close source business. It was written this way because of ideology authors had - treating open source as moral value.

Re: Is the GPL Really Declining?

#110

Post by pmontra »

charlesdm wrote: post #40
Symbiote wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Why not only let other people use it in their products, if they make their code available on the same basis as I released mine?

Well, guess we can have different opinions on this, but I would want the open source code I write to actually be used in cool (commercial and non-commercial) stuff. If you're pushing GPL, that is just not going to happen (often). Code in itself isn't useful. You're not improving the world by writing code. You're improving the world with the impact that code can have and the value it can deliver.

Maybe people using GPL only want their code to be used in other GPL projects and they want to improve the world in that way. For example I want people to reciprocate: if I give you some code, give back some code too.

But don't forget the LGPL, which lets GPL code to be used even inside proprietary one.

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