Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is the GPL Really Declining?

meshedinsights.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 242 posts

Re: Is the GPL Really Declining?

#211

Post by acuozzo »

avar wrote: post #16

The main reason for this in my opinion is that the fear free software had of permissive licenses in the 90s by an large didn't come true. The GPL is excellent to guard against the sort of embrace, extend and close that the GPL prevented when it came to GCC, Emacs etc. back in its day, but would likely have otherwise happened. Times are different now, and while there's still some of that going on (e.g. Sony with FreeB…

> Times are different now

This is perhaps due in part to the impact of widespread use of the GPL within the then-emerging FOSS community.

Re: Is the GPL Really Declining?

#212

Post by eropple »

thesuitonym wrote: post #190
snovv_crash wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False. If I take a BSD/MIT library and fork it, I don't need to contribute the changes back. The MPL(v2) forces forks to be open source, but any files added to the project can remain closed source allowing it to be used as a library for closed source applications.

Okay but that's not what I was replying to. The post I replied to made no mention of reciprocity, only saying that the original code was available.

He explicitly calls out "copyleft source code." That means reciprocity.

Re: Is the GPL Really Declining?

#213

Post by yellowapple »

phkahler wrote: post #118
libeclipse wrote: post #4

I think there's two split types of developers. When I was younger, mostly hanging around on IRC servers and forums, coding just my own cool projects, I strongly believed in the GPL. All of my projects had it, and I wouldn't even dream of allowing someone to use my code without making their entire project open too. That's the first type I think. The second type is the more HN-style professional programmer. Now as I've…

>> I want anyone to be able to do whatever they want to with my code. That includes developers wanting to create a proprietary application. Telling them they can't is not freedom. You emphasized anyone but by allowing developers to take the code proprietary, their users (which are using your code) are being denied the freedom you promote. This is of course the distinction between GPL and BSD-type licenses. One gives…

> their users (which are using your code) are being denied the freedom you promote.

This is often asserted, but unless those proprietary software developers are somehow able to magically erase your own claim to copyright, the user is no less free when using your original version.

My code is not denying anyone's freedom. Someone downstream might be denying their users' freedom, but those are their users, not mine. Downstream use of my code for evil purposes is outside of the scope of my own development.

What is in scope, however, is the idea that a downstream developer should either contribute code back to me (whether privately or via license reciprocation) or not claim one's own product to be equivalent to my code. The Artistic License 2.0 does a decent job at that.

Re: Is the GPL Really Declining?

#214

Post by watwut »

dagw wrote: post #18

Comparing the mid to late 90s with today it seems hackers have on the whole become more commercially minded. Back in the 90s there was a more idealistic and 'punk' ethos surrounding the hacker scene with documents like the Hacker Manifesto being a thing people actually believed in and aspired to. The GPL fit right into that. Then the world changed a bit and all of a sudden people realized that you could become both a…

Not everyone was Hacker Manifesto kind of hacker, majority of people were not - including those into open source. While Hacker Manifesto is attractive to some, it was also off-puting to others.

For one, these kind of people would hide `rm -rf` into advice to clueless newbie that just happened to be around. I have seen enough in this category to have no illusions about them being driven by curiosity. Basically, if I would be hanging around them and bad things happen to me, it would be my own fault cause I knew it may happen. For the other, I preferred less arrogant engineers to hang around.

I mean, they had no problem harming someone they don't know for their own fun, but oh my god someone else wants earn money by working. Nah, when they catch him hacking atm machine, they just hate him cause he outsmarted them. Nothing to do with missing money.

I know that FBI went overboard multiple times and is not exactly clean in its methods. I know that FBI attempted to criminalize stuff that should not be criminal. But hackers were not just curious innocent kids.

Re: Is the GPL Really Declining?

#215

Post by WorldMaker »

joshuamorton wrote: post #195
phkahler wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> This makes no sense. The source code of what I did will still be around, and still be attributed. Dying doesn't make my work disappear into the ether. Yes it does, unless someone keeps it online or somehow available. But again, just because it technically exists somewhere doesn't mean a user of the derived work will know how to find it, nor what parts that work are actually covered by your code prior to finding it…

>But again, just because it technically exists somewhere doesn't mean a user of the derived work will know how to find it This sounds pretty ridiculous to me. Can you cite an example of abandonware that completely disappeared from the public internet but continued to be used by some user-facing product? It seems to me that if development stagnates on a project entirely, its almost a certainty that the project is unus…

I think this is partly why the GPL makes much more sense pre-internet in the eras of floppy and CD distribution. (It shouldn't be surprising that the GPL 3 still has physical media requirements.) With the internet it is hard not to think that source code is "merely" a search away.

Re: Is the GPL Really Declining?

#216

Post by watwut »

wiz21c wrote: post #54
kstenerud wrote: post #49

I've always likened GPL promoters and promoters of the more permissive licenses to conservatives vs liberals. GPL users are more worried about someone taking and not giving back. Other license users are more worried about lost opportunity to proliferate. In the same way, conservatives are more worried about bad behavior among their fellow citizens, whereas liberals are more worried about lost opportunities for their…

To put it in a more positive way : GPL users think about others first and themselves second. Anti-GPL people think the other way around. I wouldn't say either is good or bad, but I'd say they sure don't mix well together.

Yeah, all those people releasing software under Apache or MIT or Eclipse or ... license are so selfish.

Re: Is the GPL Really Declining?

#217

Post by faragon »

BSD/Apache-like licenses are getting most of the traction, because of GPL "viral" issues, e.g. you can not ship GPLv3 Ghostscript with your product, even being "free", as it is not redistributable (the option is to tell the customer that Ghostscript is a "pre-requisite"). Although I have to recognize that 20 years ago I was more idealist than now, I'm not against the GPL, but against using the GPL not for freedom or sharing back modifications, but as a maquivelic vendor lock-in (e.g. spending $$$ in legal advice and some times not being 100% sure if using something is safe or not because of contradictory things).

Re: Is the GPL Really Declining?

#218

Post by joshuamorton »

WorldMaker wrote: post #215
joshuamorton wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But again, just because it technically exists somewhere doesn't mean a user of the derived work will know how to find it This sounds pretty ridiculous to me. Can you cite an example of abandonware that completely disappeared from the public internet but continued to be used by some user-facing product? It seems to me that if development stagnates on a project entirely, its almost a certainty that the project is unus…

I think this is partly why the GPL makes much more sense pre-internet in the eras of floppy and CD distribution. (It shouldn't be surprising that the GPL 3 still has physical media requirements.) With the internet it is hard not to think that source code is "merely" a search away.

This is fair, and admittedly I'm young. By the time I started writing code, github already existed. I can't really fathom a situation where all versions of a library could fall out of public access, unless that library was truly and completely unused.

Re: Is the GPL Really Declining?

#219

Post by ycmbntrthrwaway »

libeclipse wrote: post #4

I think there's two split types of developers. When I was younger, mostly hanging around on IRC servers and forums, coding just my own cool projects, I strongly believed in the GPL. All of my projects had it, and I wouldn't even dream of allowing someone to use my code without making their entire project open too. That's the first type I think. The second type is the more HN-style professional programmer. Now as I've…

> I want anyone to be able to do whatever they want to with my code. That includes developers wanting to create a proprietary application. Telling them they can't is not freedom.

In a perfect environment without any means of coercion it would make sense. Nobody can be forced to release his source code if he wants to distribute binary. Anyone who wants to have source code is free not to use programs and their forks it if the source code is not provided.

The problem is that we live in a world with copyright and patent laws which allow someone not only to fork your source code and distribute it in binary form, but also to attach various restrictions to it and make governments impose those restrictions on you by means of force, literally. For example, they can prohibit reverse engineering or add some feature which you can't reproduce due to patents, place trademarks all over the place and add copyrighted art in case of games.

That is why less permissive licenses may make our world more free, as in reducing coercion. Apache-2.0 prevents patents abuse, but does not restrict new contributors. GPL not only grants patent license, but prevents others from abusing patents and copyright law. Thus, despite forcing attribution and releasing source code, it brings us closer to the perfect coercion-free world.

Re: Is the GPL Really Declining?

#220

Post by ex_amazon_sde »

buserror wrote: post #17
libeclipse wrote: post #4

I think there's two split types of developers. When I was younger, mostly hanging around on IRC servers and forums, coding just my own cool projects, I strongly believed in the GPL. All of my projects had it, and I wouldn't even dream of allowing someone to use my code without making their entire project open too. That's the first type I think. The second type is the more HN-style professional programmer. Now as I've…

I tend to agree, up to a point, however I still use the GPL because it at least gives me a leg to stand on for people actually ripping your code and selling it as is... (What I call the packagers) I'm sure that if Linux wasn't GPL, you'd have 'vendors' selling 'HP Linux' and 'Corp Linux' to their locked in customers in no time at all. The only reason Linux grew up to this point is that the vendors are forced to contr…

I've been in few famous tech $megacorp. I've seen Open Source projects with many companies behind them perform poorly because of BSD/MIT.

It's in the best interest of a large company to contribute until the project gains a large userbase willing to pay for extra features, while selling forks (with added proprietary features).

Then a company quietly pulls out of upstream development to focus on developing and selling their fork. Chain reaction and the other companies quickly follow the example.

Customers trusted that they were using a "mostly" Open Source project but suddenly end up having to choose between proprietary products with an open core.

Post reply on HN