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My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

drewdevault.com

271–280 of 431 posts

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#271

I always thought of the GPL being more about the distinguished self-importance of programmers than software freedom. Imagine if mathematicians started putting licenses on their contributions to math. They'd be laughed out of math-town. Look, if you want to contribute to the commons of programming, use a permissive license. If you want to cut out certain people who can't or don't want to use copyleft, use the GPL. If…

> Nobody wants to read the source code to such garbage as "stfupy3.org"

How do you know? It could be exactly what I need for some esoteric reason!

Within the past year, I've found several useful projects on Github that their authors who appeared to consider them worthless.

---

Edit: As an example, I really wanted a simplistic dictionary app for my iPhone, which used the definitions built into iOS so it could work offline without taking up lots of storage space. Apps like this are explicitly against App Store guidelines.

After a chance search on Github, I came across this. Licensed under the WTFPL. https://github.com/forresty-archive/Dictionary

I'm not really a developer of any kind—I know basic Javascript—but I was able to figure out enough to get the app working on modern iOS, with modern fonts and such. The result was https://github.com/Wowfunhappy/Dictionary

Here's what really surprised me—I posted this to the /r/Jailbreak subreddit and I still get PM's once every other week thanking me for the app (which, I think I made quite clear, I didn't write). Apparently english language learners in particular find it very helpful.

Suffice to say, I'm really happy that "forresty", whoever they are, posted their rejected iOS app to Github.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#272
post #81

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…

>But at a certain point you just have to realize that there are differing points of view, that is just the way things go, and "progress" includes all of them. This is really insightful, to me. Worth keeping in mind in today’s world.

"Progress" is an opinion/propaganda term -- you use it to paint whatever actually happened in a positive light.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Under a strict interpretation of the GPL, a student who copied code out of a textbook to use in a commercial project would be infringing the license. This interpretation is very surprising to me. Could you point out what language in the GPL you're interpreting in this way?

It seems pretty straightforward to me that section 5 of the GPL v3, "Conveying Modified Source Versions" (and the corresponding sections of earlier GPLs) would be applicable to this situation (provided that a non-trivial amount of code is incorporated by the student). What makes you believe otherwise?

A misreading of the section I copy/pasted. :)

I thought because you were responding to my post saying using GPL code in a class, that you were claiming professors couldn't use GPL code in classes (they can). But you weren't saying that--I misread.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#274

I always thought of the GPL being more about the distinguished self-importance of programmers than software freedom. Imagine if mathematicians started putting licenses on their contributions to math. They'd be laughed out of math-town. Look, if you want to contribute to the commons of programming, use a permissive license. If you want to cut out certain people who can't or don't want to use copyleft, use the GPL. If…

> Nobody wants to read the source code to such garbage as "stfupy3.org" How do you know? It could be exactly what I need for some esoteric reason! Within the past year, I've found several useful projects on Github that their authors who appeared to consider them worthless. --- Edit: As an example, I really wanted a simplistic dictionary app for my iPhone, which used the definitions built into iOS so it could work off…

> How do you know? It could be exactly what I need for some esoteric reason!

No true scotsman wants to read that garbage.

> Within the past year, I've found several useful projects on Github that their authors who appeared to consider them worthless.

If the authors truly believed it was worthless, they wouldn't have expended the energy to publish it.

But that's not the point anyway. If you drown out your good work with all the crap you may have written over the years, your overall portfolio becomes weaker. In the arts, pretty much everyone knows this. In programming, apparently only the people that are hiring know this.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If that means a professor wants to put the work into their course and help to instruct a class with it, that is great too. Just to be very clear, neither the MIT nor GPL licenses prevent this.

Under a strict interpretation of the GPL, a student who copied code out of a textbook to use in a commercial project would be infringing the license. I've never come across this with GPL code, but I've been a bit uncomfortable about reading Numerical Recipes too closely because their code is restrictively licensed.

Actually, you have it all backwards.

If it is a normal textbook with non-GPL code in it (which includes code taken from an MIT/BSD licenced source), then that's copyrighted, and using that code for anything else, commercial or not, would be copyright infringement.

If the code is taken from a GPL source, though, then at least the code in that book would have to be licenced under GPL as well, in which case you would be free to use it for commercial software, as long as it is licenced under GPL. The GPL does not forbid use in commercial software, it only forbids use in non-GPL software.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#276
I use the GPL and I long for the day that it is no longer needed -- when we finally abolish copyright. I GPL to help virally encourage an ecosystem of software that will not abuse my freedom via the tyranny of copyright, in the meantime.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#277
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course there is. What else would you call a company store in a remote logging camp? When the market is small, a monopoly can be small.

Is that camp the only one in the world?

Do you think it is?

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#278
This is an interesting read, but it's almost ironic because over the last decade, the argument between MIT and GPL has become less important, IMHO because of the rise of SaaS. And by that, I mean, that we've seen a recent push back towards both Apache and GPL licenses from companies that take umbrage with other companies using their source code to sell hosted SaaS versions of their work, without contributing back. Of course, the problem is that the GPL doesn't solve that problem any better than BSD or MIT or Apache and it is debatable if the AGPL does either. The fact is, modern OSS/FOSS licenses really weren't designed for the age of server-side software where there isn't a distributed client or locally compiled code.

And while I'm incredibly sympathetic to companies who see Amazon and others (and disclosure, I work for Microsoft but my opinions are my own and I don't represent my employer) using their work to sell hosted versions of their products that directly compete/undercut/undermine their core businesses, that's also just a natural side-effect of using an OSS license in the first place. If you, as a business, are unable or unwilling to account for that possibility, perhaps you shouldn't have used that license to begin with. It seems unfair and wrong to attempt to relicense or reframe the rules after you have already benefited from the source used by others, which is why I look at things like Common Clause with disdain. Own that you are proprietary or GTFO, don't try to do this bullshit middle-ground approach, which doesn't do anything.

So in a SaaS situation, MIT vs GPL is irrelevant, and yet many of the renewal of licensing discussions are around those ideas.

My personal philosophy around open source has also shifted over the last decade or so, but it has largely cemented why I personally prefer BSD/MIT licenses. Having said that, although I prefer BSD/MIT licenses, I'm also of the opinion that in many cases, it is beneficial to everyone to contribute changes back to the main projects. Period.

I used to be much more in favor of proprietary software -- or, at least the right for a developer to choose to make some or all of their software proprietary. I still believe that -- because even though I would argue that open source is often a better development model, I'm not in favor of the FSF POV that deems all software must be free. True freedom means the ability to do things that are not in the interest of the public or maybe, even ultimately, the developer herself.

My position has changed insofar as I now think that the business case (and not just the moral/ethical case) for FOSS or OSS is stronger -- but I still feel strongly that aspects of the GPL make it overly cumbersome when releasing software. My feeling has always been, if I choose to make my code available, I'm making that choice -- I would like you to choose to contribute any changes back. It would probably be better for everyone if you did that -- but I don't want or need reciprocal access to any code you use alongside what I wrote, and I don't feel you're obligated to share any specific changes back with me. If I wanted to enforce that someone has to pay me for my work in order to potentially profit from it, I would need to make my work proprietary and sell it that way.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under a strict interpretation of the GPL, a student who copied code out of a textbook to use in a commercial project would be infringing the license. I've never come across this with GPL code, but I've been a bit uncomfortable about reading Numerical Recipes too closely because their code is restrictively licensed.

A large portion of programming books are still under neither a FOSS nor a CC license, and hence fully protected by copyright. (I've encountered some where the main text of the book is not under a FOSS license, while the code is, but that's also not universal.) In such cases, you're not allowed to just re-use large code segments from the book (commercially or in an open source piece of code). Hence the case of a book…

If you infringe gpl code though, you're obligated to provide your source. If you infringe some other copyrighted code, you're just liable for damages.

Is this correct at all? Like if Microsoft accidentally included some gpl code in Windows, could they theoretically be required to open source it? Or would just have to stop distributing?

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#280

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…

Someday, that might come full circle and you'll be the one who won't be enriched because the original code was MIT and not GPL. Here's an example: you buy some embedded hardware for a personal project, but you find out that the toolchain for that chipset is a pile of proprietary blobs built on Clang and it only runs on Windows. If it were built on GCC, then the GPL would force them to make the source available and pe…

> If it were built on GCC...

This assumes that if the only option available to the embedded hardware company were the GPL, that they'd go with that option. (more likely, the product would never come to market)

In reality, releasing something under the GPL typically just ensures that it won't be used by businesses. This is a real bummer, because it means it is off-limits to me during my day-job.

I would love to try and convince my coworkers to write some Scheme, but the majority of that community uses the GPL, which makes it a bit of a non-starter.

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