Is the GPL Really Declining?

Post by quadrangle » Tue, May 09, 2017, 6:30 AM UTC

greyman wrote: post #24

glogla wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPL 3 was about naking abuse and exploitation of GPL 2 harder. Seeing it as a failure shows our industry in a very sad light. This might ve a bit melodramatic way to state it, but GPL 3 failing means evil thriumphing.

It boils down to a philosophical question about whether "tivoization" is good or bad. I am with Linus on this, I believe it is nothing wrong with it and I therefore doesn't support GPL v3.

There's nothing wrong with a world in which most citizens simply cannot control and modify most of the products they own? When everything runs software and communities of people can share ideas / updates that make the products better, you think there's nothing wrong with artificial restrictions that block people from doing this?

Think of Stallman's initial story: he could program the printer upstairs to tell users over the network when it was jammed. But with the new version of the printer, he couldn't get the source code. A Tivoized printer would give him the code and then refuse to run his modification. So, you think there's nothing wrong with "screw you, you can go all day and find out only hours later that all your prints failed, even though you know how to fix this"? That's what Tivoization does, and this mild example is just a very mild one. It could be hell of a lot worse.

Post by err4nt » Sat, May 13, 2017, 2:11 AM UTC

cr0sh wrote: post #203

err4nt wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll offer a little counterpoint to that. I had known 'free software' as shareware until ~2001 when I had my first introduction to Linux. I was very curious, and took to open source software AND the ideals very easily. Because of my experience as a teenager poking around operating systems, fixing xorg.conf files after compiling nVidia drivers, and running and using thousands of different software applications - tools…

You had me up to the end of your third paragraph, then you dropped off a cliff. You're free to believe and think what you want, of course, but the whole point of the GPL is make sure that the code is "paid forward", and not locked up somewhere along the chain. The GPL is there so that future up-and-coming curious kids can see the code, and learn from it - much like you did. I grew up in a slightly different world. Th…

Well I would consider licenses like MIT, LGPL, and some of the CC licenses to be _more_ free than the GPL, so I expect more MIT and public domain code will survive and continue to be used and available for those people in 50 or 100 years :)

Re: Is the GPL Really Declining?

Re: Is the GPL Really Declining?