My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL • Hacker News Board

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#171

Post by hdfbdtbcdg » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 5:45 PM UTC

Iv wrote: post #152

The question that remains is basically "what is your stance on the Great IP war?" I agree that the world would be better if all software was public domain and that the GPL is an inferior option. In a world where proprietary software is the norm though, GPL is a way to fight back this trend. I think GPL makes a lot of sense on software that make computers easier to use or that have privacy implications: browsers for i…

Or LGPL...

BTW even Richard Stallman agrees with you with respect to e.g. ogg vorbis libraries...

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#172

Post by snuxoll » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 5:45 PM UTC

threwawasy1228 wrote: post #65

I can't relate to this at all, I feel like I went the opposite way. I started out putting all of my work out under GPL but slowly realized how restrictive and demanding such a license actually is, I think public domain is the license that provides the most good to the world as a whole. It enriches everyone, even those who I don't necessarily agree with. It is a much more powerful statement in my view to provide work…

I think it depends a lot on how valuable your software can be to $supermegacorp, honestly. If I write a competitor to $bigproprietaryapp I would probably decide to release it under a more copy-left license just so nobody can take a ready-to-run solution to market without recourse or compensation. I don't have a problem with proprietary software extending things I write, so such an app would probably be under something like the MPL - "you can use this and add extra features without contributing them back, but you still have to give changes to my code back" sounds like a pretty good compromise.

Some big company wants to use the silly little structured logging wrapper I wrote for SLF4J though? What do I care, go for it, it's a tool and your use of it has no ability to damage any use the community at large has for it.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#173

Post by monocasa » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 5:47 PM UTC

neuland wrote: post #34

oarsinsync wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was very disheartened to see the Linux community's and other GPL projects' attitude to enforcement actions brought by individuals. Can you share some examples of what's happened that's disheartening? I'm assuming based on context that the reaction to individuals enforcing GPL violations have been negative, which I would agree is disheartening. If you don't enforce the terms, the terms are valueless, and you might…

The big case recently was in Germany against VMWare [0]. They lost that case. But it was controversial partly because the person (who contributed a non-trivial amount of networking code) was asking for monetary damages in addition to bringing the company into compliance. But setting the money aside, even the enforcement part was flamed by Torvalds and Greg KH [1]. The gist was that they're able to bring more people i…

What's the closed source BusyBox alternative?

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#174

Post by bunderbunder » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 5:48 PM UTC

> Your parents probably taught you about the Golden Rule when you were young: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The GPL is the legal embodiment of this Golden Rule

Funny. For me, the Golden Rule still leads me to the opposite conclusion: I want people to share their work with me open-handedly, without telling me what I can do with it or what other software I am allowed to combine it with. The more strings are attached, the less it feels like it's really sharing. The most annoying example of this is when companies open-source their works under a copyleft license in an obvious attempt to get free labor from the community while reserving the ability to actually profit from that work for themselves.

And therefore, when I share the software I work on, I prefer to share it open-handedly.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#175

Post by mathnmusic » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 5:50 PM UTC

rmtech wrote: post #165

Can somebody clarify for me - if you write 9,990 lines of proprietary code and include 10 lines of GPL code, the whole 10,000 becomes GPL, right? And then the whole 10,000 becomes public property according to the GPL so the person who wrote the 9,990 lines of proprietary code starves to death and dies because you can't monetize public property, and our food system only accepts money in exchange for food, not "good de…

> if you write 9,990 lines of proprietary code and include 10 lines of GPL code, the whole 10,000 becomes GPL, right?

NO. GPL mentions no where about 10 being the minimum # of lines. All it says is that if your work is a "derivative" of the GPL code, then it must be GPL'd. Courts will determine whether including 10 lines of GPL code make your product derivative or not. The assumption is that a reasonable criteria will be evolved to determine when is something derivative and when it isn't.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#176

Post by rpeden » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

cflewis wrote: post #164

kemitchell wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a lawyer, and I really appreciated your "free" versus "fair" line. One tidbit on the GPLs: They require you to share alike if you share the software with others, but do not require you to share the software with others. You can make changes and larger programs entirely for your own or your company's internal use, and not share anything. The GPLs mention this explicitly, and implement it using concepts like "dist…

I like the idea of a license that is "fair", but there's something about GPL that rubs me the wrong way where I feel it accomplishes the goal of fair in some antagonistic manner. To me, GPL feels more like holding a legal gun to your head and say "You used my code, now play fair". It's not your Mum asking you nicely to share your toys with your brother. But then MIT is too far the other way where it's your Mum saying…

It's not as if they spring the GPL licence only after you use the code, though.

It's more like "hi there, if you want to use my code, these are the terms under which I've made it available" than "you used my code, now play fair".

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#177

Post by cjbprime » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

> [more free vs. less free]

The intuition that helped me understand this was noticing that the GPL is trying to maximize societal freedom, and in contrast the BSD is trying to maximize individual freedom. So, is the GPL less free than BSD? Answer: For whom? Single individuals or everyone together?

An analogy: a society would have more individual liberty if dogs were allowed to poop on the sidewalk, because fining dog owners who don't clean up after their dog is reducing the individual liberty of those dog owners.

But the society with this individual liberty curtailed is a better society.

The same distinction holds across politics in general -- we might approximately map GPL vs. BSD onto, say, socialist vs. libertarian.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#178

Post by coldpie » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 5:56 PM UTC

cflewis wrote: post #164

kemitchell wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a lawyer, and I really appreciated your "free" versus "fair" line. One tidbit on the GPLs: They require you to share alike if you share the software with others, but do not require you to share the software with others. You can make changes and larger programs entirely for your own or your company's internal use, and not share anything. The GPLs mention this explicitly, and implement it using concepts like "dist…

I like the idea of a license that is "fair", but there's something about GPL that rubs me the wrong way where I feel it accomplishes the goal of fair in some antagonistic manner. To me, GPL feels more like holding a legal gun to your head and say "You used my code, now play fair". It's not your Mum asking you nicely to share your toys with your brother. But then MIT is too far the other way where it's your Mum saying…

Think of it more as the price you pay for using someone else's work. Just like when you pay $1k for a license to ship some proprietary software, you agree to instead pay for using this code by sharing your source, too. You're free to not pay either price and write your own, of course.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#179

Post by pessimizer » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 5:57 PM UTC

wrs wrote: post #96

simion314 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>First, I'm not a lawyer, but I've always seen the MIT license as being more "free", If you are a lawyer can you maybe be more clear about "more free" , more free relative to what? AFAIK GPL protects the user freedom and I think you are referring at the programmers freedom, GPL is a license that respects the users/society as a group, most people here are developers sothey will say that this is less free for them as a…

If “users” = “not programmers” (which I think must be the definition here) then neither license gives users anything except the freedom to hire programmers to do something they want more cheaply. (I include buying software and downloading free-as-in-beer software in “hiring programmers”.) With MIT/GPL the programmers can afford to charge a lot less to do the same job. It’s fundamentally programmer freedom in either c…

No, the GPL is primarily about user freedom, and programmer benefit is a virtuous side-effect. The GPL is entirely made up of restrictions on programmer freedom, which is why BSD/MIT partisans rail against it. It attempts to define the maximum amount of programmer freedom that can be allowed without impeding the user's freedom in any way.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#180

Post by Drdrdrq » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 5:58 PM UTC

kickopotomus wrote: post #97

kemitchell wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a lawyer, and I really appreciated your "free" versus "fair" line. One tidbit on the GPLs: They require you to share alike if you share the software with others, but do not require you to share the software with others. You can make changes and larger programs entirely for your own or your company's internal use, and not share anything. The GPLs mention this explicitly, and implement it using concepts like "dist…

That is fascinating. Do you happen to know of any good resources for pitfalls/downsides of other popular licenses (bonus if layman friendly)?

For example this? https://writing.kemitchell.com/ ;)

(GP is the author - it contains some very good explanations on the subject of licenses, imho of course)