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Making the GPL more scary

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Re: Making the GPL more scary

#91

Post by sytse »

pdpi wrote: post #25
amingilani wrote: post #9

I'm probably going to get a lot of flak for this, but here's an opinion supporting the MongoDB license. Two things: 1. MongoDB has the right to do whatever they like ------------------------------------------------------ The creator of a product: 1. Has a rational interest in maximizing their returns 2. Owns all the rights to their products (barring existing IP restrictions) And if they choose to open source their co…

They're allowed to license Mongo on whatever terms they see fit, but we're also allowed to judge them on the licence terms they choose. If they had a source-provided, not-for-commercial-use hobbyist/educational licence and a proprietary licence, nobody would bat an eyelid. What they seem to be doing instead (this might or might not be correct, but is definitely the point the article is making) is burdening their "ope…

I think that it is interesting that this is enabled by a CLA. If the project would have used a Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO) this relicensing would not have been possible. When Debian started to use GitLab they asked us to replace our CLA for the open source code to a DCO. They saw the risk of relicensing and addressed it.

Re: Making the GPL more scary

#92

Post by zhte415 »

antt wrote: post #78
nbsd4life wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so you want a non-commercial use license. these aren't seen as open source by most people, but perhaps they'll be accepted by users. calling it open source is harming actual open source projects by making people fear adopting them.

No, I want a non-commercial license for non-human entities. I don't care if someone is using my software in their family bakery. If anything I'd be super happy about that. What I do mind is someone using my software in their multinational baking conglomerate without me ever seeing a cent for the work, while at the same time keeping other developers from ever being paid for developing the software in house.

> Bakery

> multinational baking conglomerate

> keeping other developers from ever being paid for developing the software in house

Sorry if miss-logicing in these quotes. Please do correct if you thing they're taken out-of-place.

A bakery is commercial. They software they use is baked into the oven and POS. 'family bakery' - do you mind a family member in the store, do you mind them logging it with your name? Do you mind them using a camera to recognise when you come in? Do you mind a staff member recognising you when you come in? Is tallying today's weather vs sandwiches sales OK? Credit card promotion? Different level of Personally Identifiable Identification.

> What I do mind is someone using my software in their multinational baking conglomerate without me ever seeing a cent for the work

Why not? What's the license? Assume in Github. Ask for comments. The people in these companies are hackers too and not cold-blooded fuck-the-customer. If you're got good code for baking, contribute.

Re: Making the GPL more scary

#93

Post by pjmlp »

imtringued wrote: post #89
eadmund wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the point of the open source was often to share code to improve the state of the art and provide useful code for people so they don't have to start from scratch Was that the point of free software? I thought that the point was freedom: that users be permitted to use, modify & redistribute the software they use. Inclusion of BSD-licensed code in proprietary software fails at that: a macOS user is unable to use macOS…

You're forgetting that those businesses that depend on your software are your users. The first step of making useful software is by having users. If nobody uses your software because of licensing reasons nobody will ever contribute to it and it might as well not exist. On the other hand if there are users then there is a chance that a subset of the users will contribute back voluntarily.

Trying to do business with desktop software proves otherwise regarding contributions.

Re: Making the GPL more scary

#94

Post by msbarnett »

hannob wrote: post #45
amingilani wrote: post #9

I'm probably going to get a lot of flak for this, but here's an opinion supporting the MongoDB license. Two things: 1. MongoDB has the right to do whatever they like ------------------------------------------------------ The creator of a product: 1. Has a rational interest in maximizing their returns 2. Owns all the rights to their products (barring existing IP restrictions) And if they choose to open source their co…

> 1. MongoDB has the right to do whatever they like Well, no, obviously not. They have to stay within legal bounds. But of course they can have any obscure license that is legal if they want. The thing they get flak for is trying to deceive the public. > 2. This License Means More Open Source Code This license is only open source in a very obscure interpretation of the word. It's basically doing a lot of legal gymnas…

> This license is only open source in a very obscure interpretation of the word.

It's "open source" in the dead-obvious meaning "the source code is open for inspection". I'd argue it's all of the extra baggage that the OSI have read into the words "open" and "source" that are considerably more obscure. Neither the word "open" nor "source" implies "free for commercial exploitation to all and sundry"

Re: Making the GPL more scary

#95

Post by antirez »

sseveran wrote: post #79
cyphar wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems like it is to me, it's just extremely protective of the source code owner's rights. It is effectively impossible to follow the conditions of the license -- according to the interpretation by Bradley Kuhn and others this would require you to provide the source code for Linux under this license if you run MongoDB on Linux. Linux is GPLv2 and has thousands of copyright owners -- it is not possible for any ind…

Individuals interpretations of this are unlikely to matter much until such a clause is tested in court. The interpretation that the license is as broad as Mr Kuhn claims may be true, but it may not be. Personally I think that both Mongo and Redis doing this is great as it shows the danger posed when a company can just relicense a project at will, which IMHO is the greater issue here. If Mongo felt the need they could…

"Redis doing this" -> Redis is BSD licensed, but Redis Labs modules that were never part of Redis itself changed license. Note btw that when something is BSD can be relicensed by everybody, both the original copyright owners or anyone else.

Re: Making the GPL more scary

#96

Post by zzzcpan »

sytse wrote: post #91
pdpi wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're allowed to license Mongo on whatever terms they see fit, but we're also allowed to judge them on the licence terms they choose. If they had a source-provided, not-for-commercial-use hobbyist/educational licence and a proprietary licence, nobody would bat an eyelid. What they seem to be doing instead (this might or might not be correct, but is definitely the point the article is making) is burdening their "ope…

I think that it is interesting that this is enabled by a CLA. If the project would have used a Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO) this relicensing would not have been possible. When Debian started to use GitLab they asked us to replace our CLA for the open source code to a DCO. They saw the risk of relicensing and addressed it.

Relicensing is still very much possible with DCO. You just put contributions under the license they were originally submitted and use whatever license you want for owned code. Essentially providing a separate license(s) for contributions.

Re: Making the GPL more scary

#97

Post by zzzcpan »

hannob wrote: post #45
amingilani wrote: post #9

I'm probably going to get a lot of flak for this, but here's an opinion supporting the MongoDB license. Two things: 1. MongoDB has the right to do whatever they like ------------------------------------------------------ The creator of a product: 1. Has a rational interest in maximizing their returns 2. Owns all the rights to their products (barring existing IP restrictions) And if they choose to open source their co…

> 1. MongoDB has the right to do whatever they like Well, no, obviously not. They have to stay within legal bounds. But of course they can have any obscure license that is legal if they want. The thing they get flak for is trying to deceive the public. > 2. This License Means More Open Source Code This license is only open source in a very obscure interpretation of the word. It's basically doing a lot of legal gymnas…

> These two goals are fundamentally incompatible.

They are very much compatible. Even more so, than permissive licenses that don't protect users of services from lock in.

Re: Making the GPL more scary

#98

Post by zzzcpan »

bad_user wrote: post #47
amingilani wrote: post #9

I'm probably going to get a lot of flak for this, but here's an opinion supporting the MongoDB license. Two things: 1. MongoDB has the right to do whatever they like ------------------------------------------------------ The creator of a product: 1. Has a rational interest in maximizing their returns 2. Owns all the rights to their products (barring existing IP restrictions) And if they choose to open source their co…

Open Source needs a definition and that definition has been governed by OSI: https://opensource.org/osd just like how Free Software has been governed by FSF: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html Yes, we need an organization that governs over such a definition and over compliance, because otherwise the term becomes meaningless, due to being sexy for marketing purposes. Back in the day companies like Microsof…

So, you don't like for the term "open source" to include anti lock-in conditions to protect users freedoms and only ok with it if the license permits lock-in exploitation of users via hosted services? That's the kind of open source definition I strongly disagree with.

Re: Making the GPL more scary

#99

Post by tannhaeuser »

jbeard4 wrote: post #90

I wonder why the RPL isn't more popular for this. It's an OSI-approved license that is meant to fix the "SAAS loophole": PREAMBLE The Reciprocal Public License (RPL) is based on the concept of reciprocity or, if you prefer, fairness. In short, this license grew out of a desire to close loopholes in previous open source licenses, loopholes that allowed parties to acquire open source software and derive financial benef…

Interesting. I guess the RPL however is as toothless as the AGPL when it comes to extend its scope to the provisioning software cloud providers use to run your AGPL-licensed software for their customers, which is the problem I believe MongoDB, Inc. wants to target.

Re: Making the GPL more scary

#100

Post by Spivak »

msbarnett wrote: post #94
hannob wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. MongoDB has the right to do whatever they like Well, no, obviously not. They have to stay within legal bounds. But of course they can have any obscure license that is legal if they want. The thing they get flak for is trying to deceive the public. > 2. This License Means More Open Source Code This license is only open source in a very obscure interpretation of the word. It's basically doing a lot of legal gymnas…

> This license is only open source in a very obscure interpretation of the word. It's "open source" in the dead-obvious meaning "the source code is open for inspection". I'd argue it's all of the extra baggage that the OSI have read into the words "open" and "source" that are considerably more obscure. Neither the word "open" nor "source" implies "free for commercial exploitation to all and sundry"

The source isn't very useful if you're not allowed to run the software.

Being able to compile and run the software for whatever propose you want isn't obscure.

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