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My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

drewdevault.com

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Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#341

Post by c22 »

cjbprime wrote: post #318
c22 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same cooperation problem regardless. GPL only works because enough people agree to respect the system that allows it to function. If no one payed lawyers to argue over licensing issues and no one supported courts in which to hear the arguments then the GPL would just be words on paper. Since we fundamentally live in a world where cooperation happens all the time I know that a utopian interpretation of this w…

I don't think people are especially willing to cooperate in the absence of enforced rules, even with regard to the GPL. They didn't "choose" to live in countries where governments will perform force against them if they break the rules -- that's a very rosy view of consent and cooperation. And even in such a world, GPL violations are so common that for a while I think most Android phones in existence weren't even try…

Governments aren't strange 3rd party alien entities enforcing their "rules" on a captive population. All governments (and corporations) consist of individuals. Some day governments will consist entirely of people who haven't been born yet, so it seems a little disingenuous to imply these people are just being born into an authoritarian world that they have no power to change. Governments continue to enjoy legitimacy because populations choose to continue to accept them.

My argument was that these massive social structures are already the result of unprecedented levels of cooperation and their global influence and homogenization appear to be expanding. Are we at peak cooperation yet? Apparently not, some companies abuse the GPL and I still occasionally have to clean up other people's dog shit. And realistically there will probably always be a few "Mikes" somewhere polluting the lake for their personal profit, but I believe we are moving in the right direction and we will be able to reduce the freeloaders to a tolerable level as long as we continue to produce way more than we can possibly use. In the meantime I prefer to walk the walk, I'll continue to gift my extra time and energy to help others achieve their goals and I absolutely will spend an extra $50 on widgets if I find out Wanda is up to something shady.

I'm not against people who choose to use the GPL, I think it's an extremely clever legal hack, but I look forward to a world where people don't feel like they have to.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#342

Post by ghaff »

icebraining wrote: post #337
ghaff wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re essentially working as contractors for the company in that case though. So you’re effectively part of the company and aren’t really distributing as the term is generally understood. Of course there is some ambiguity as there always is.

No, there's no need for technicalities. The GPL only says you must distribute the source to the people to whom you have distributed binaries . It doesn't say you must publish it publicly.

I was assuming that if you were developing code for someone they would also get access to the sources. But you’re right. That’s not necessarily a given.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#343

Post by icebraining »

ghaff wrote: post #342
icebraining wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, there's no need for technicalities. The GPL only says you must distribute the source to the people to whom you have distributed binaries . It doesn't say you must publish it publicly.

I was assuming that if you were developing code for someone they would also get access to the sources. But you’re right. That’s not necessarily a given.

No, they did get the sources. What I wrote is that you don't have to "release the code publicly or contribute to the original project."

Obviously our clients (who got the sources) could have published them. But they have no incentive to do so.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#344

Post by zelphirkalt »

mhh__ wrote: post #87

I worry that the downturn of GPL use will have consequences in the future. I understand why the GPL has its issues in context/s, but I don't see why it shouldn't be the default for open source where possible. The political argument that gave birth to GNU/FSF seems to have lost it's bite in this day and age (perhaps due to a feeling that now open source is the de facto default, it will always be this way?)

Actually I think free software is more important than ever, as many people don't get the difference and think open source is sufficient. What they do not get is, that there are no ethical values beyond literally an "open source" are implied with open source, while free software does pursue ethical values as well.

Since many are so uneducated about the difference, it is especially important to highlight this difference wherever one can.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#345

Post by zelphirkalt »

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…

Should go and watch any video in which RMS explains what free software aims at achieving.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#346

Post by c22 »

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #275
microtherion wrote: post #150

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.

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…

> ...(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.

I don't think this is right. The copyright of the BSD/MIT licensed code remains with the original authors who should be attributed in the textbook (as per the license). Since these authors have permissively licensed their code you're free to use it in your own project (as long as you also include the original attribution). Copying other parts of the text book may be a copyright violation, however.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#347

Post by chilicuil »

For me this all copyright / license topic is non sense, that's why I don't even bother adding a license to my projects, some years ago I used to add MIT licenses when requested, however these days I just ignore those requests, they can use it or not, but I'm not doing any effort to fulfill these copyright / license claims.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#348

Post by kissgyorgy »

I have a project (X.509 certificate lifecycle manager for bootstrapping CAs, issuing certs, like Lemur or Vault PKI backend) I would like to provide this free for any solo system administrators, small companies for internal use, software developers, freelancers, but I don't want to give the possibilities for big companies to repackage and resell it as their own and I also want to force them contributing back.

What license should I choose and why? I thought GPL or AGPL, but I really don't want to scare away individuals and small teams (who this software would help the most).

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#349

Post by est31 »

madez wrote: post #339
est31 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think BSD (permissive for developers, maybe restrictive for users) vs. GPL (restrictive for developers, permissive for users) is very similar to the Paradox of Tolerance in a way. It very much boils down to tolerance, yeah. I've made the experience that in the communities where permissive licenses are common, there is much larger tolerance for proprietary software and services than in communities that revolve aro…

The GPL is not self-serving; it is a tool to achieve a type of society, and that is the society you seem to enjoy, too. After all, by what else should be measure the permissive licences vs copyleft licences if not by their influence on society?

Are you one of those "GPL is socialism" people? You are misguided. Yes, there are lots of marxists/communists in the open source / free software community and most people in it lean left.

But the GPL itself is compatible with a capitalist society. In fact, GPL can be the basis for making money with FLOSS software, by offering non-GPL'd commercial licenses. All the GPL ensures that if you want to make a proprietary fork of the software, its original author has to be made part of the equation. Some people see it as a tool to achieve communism and I think they are misguided in the view that the goal is desireable. The open source software they create is nevertheless a valuable and worthy contribution to mankind. You can't just reject someone's work because of idiotic ideology. As long as they share this view and allow me to have a productive working relationship with them on the open source component, I'm fine.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#350

Post by ndesaulniers »

mcguire wrote: post #322
epistasis wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem with the GPL philosophy is that I can't find the mechanism that results in more general access to code in the world, when releasing your software as GPL versus BSD/MIT. What determines what's out there in the world, the decision to release source versus simply doesn't come down to "well I can use this GPL code as part of my project if I also GPL it, so I guess I'll share my code too." The decisions about w…

The GPL is the one reason why there is one "mainline" Linux kernel and a number of roughly compatible distributions rather than the incompatible chaos of the Unix wars of the '80s and '90s. Take a look at imake and autoconf if you need convincing that the GPL is valuable.

Well, I hate autoconf, so maybe poor choice of example. :P
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