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Scapegoating free software’s failures

writing.kemitchell.com

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Re: Scapegoating free software’s failures

#51

Post by de_watcher »

o-__-o wrote: post #25
pygy_ wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hypothetically: the employer gave you a copy of the modified software (by having you modify it). He's bound by the license and so are you?

Your employer is an entity (a person, an LLC, or a corporation), you work for that entity. The entity is allowed to distribute it among themselves but the entity prevents itself from distributing to others (by following the license constraints). You, the employee, do not gain the right to the software because the employer did not give you, personally, any permission to the software. Only once the software has been di…

If the employer distributes to the third party then the employee still doesn't have the rights. But the third party can distribute to anybody.

Re: Scapegoating free software’s failures

#52

Post by cyphar »

phkahler wrote: post #4
catern wrote: post #2

While this article's tone is somewhat angry and personal, it makes some quite interesting points and takes a perspective that I've never heard before. Before reading the article I was tentatively in favor of more expansive copyleft licenses such as Mongo's SSPL, for various reasons. But I hadn't considered something implied by that position, which this article says directly: The FSF and what one might call "mainstrea…

Two point he made that I've often wondered about. 1) why wasn't AGPL used for GPLv3? 2) why should companies be able to keep proprietary version from being distributed? The second one I can see being possible by having employees agree not to exercise their GPL redistribution rights as a condition of employment. Still it seems like a large group of companies could all agree to that kind of thing to effectively take a…

The initial drafts of the GPLv3 did contain the Afferro provisions, but there was a lot of backlash over it during the public drafting process (some argued it wasn't enforceable, many argued that it overstepped their views on what the GPL should be, and so on). So it was split off into a separate license to hopefully increase the probability that people would switch to GPLv3.

Given all of the other FUD around GPLv3 from Linus et al, it seems like they wouldn't have lost much if they'd kept it in (or maybe they should've gone with the LGPL model, where the main license has the restrictions but they have a separate license which reduces the restrictions). But hey, hindsight is 20-20.

Re: Scapegoating free software’s failures

#53

Post by arkh »

zbentley wrote: post #42

> GPLv2 and v3 gave hobbyists, students, and anti-corporate hackers a means to feel as though their work resists the evil empire of the software industry, while in fact serving it up with unpaid work product. From the VC point of view, the GPLs break the dam on that pool of labor, flooding venture prospects with freebie technology. That seems concerning and deeply cynical. Mostly because I worry that it may be accura…

Another victim from the English language.

Yes lot of corporations get free software for free. And that should be celebrated: free (as in freedom to tinker) software is getting everywhere. People can read it, adapt it to their needs and release it again.

Re: Scapegoating free software’s failures

#54

Post by grumpydba »

zbentley wrote: post #42

> GPLv2 and v3 gave hobbyists, students, and anti-corporate hackers a means to feel as though their work resists the evil empire of the software industry, while in fact serving it up with unpaid work product. From the VC point of view, the GPLs break the dam on that pool of labor, flooding venture prospects with freebie technology. That seems concerning and deeply cynical. Mostly because I worry that it may be accura…

> GPLv2 and v3 gave hobbyists, students, and anti-corporate hackers a means to feel as though their work resists the evil empire of the software industry, while in fact serving it up with unpaid work product.

I got linux and the GNU userland for free. I used it to learn and it got me a job. Of course I contribute to GPL projects. It's not unpaid work, it's paid in code.

It's funny that he chose mongodb as an example. They require a contributor to sign the CLA and give all ownership of the code to mongodb. This is effectively unpaid work, more than the GPL.

These new unfree licenses are the most restrictive the VC friendly lawyers can think of to maintain an usurped "open source" moniker while trying to push clients to buy commercial licenses.

Re: Scapegoating free software’s failures

#55

Post by snorkasaurus »

jobigoud wrote: post #8
StavrosK wrote: post #5

So if I want to write an OSS library that can't be used for monetary gain, what license do I release it under? AGPLv3? EDIT: Actually, I misspoke, since monetary gain isn't the problem. I should have said "used against user freedom", but that's much less well-defined. I want a license that is as "open" as possible, for whatever definition of "open".

You can't. It wouldn't be OSS if I couln't take your library and resell it. You could look at CC-BY-NC-SA, but it's not Open Source and not appropriate for software.

I'm dense. Why isn't it appropriate for software?

Re: Scapegoating free software’s failures

#56

Post by yabadabadoes »

detaro wrote: post #30
mark_l_watson wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The header said “Venture Capital Shill”, so I thought I was using a term he self identified with. Maybe I was wrong about that and it is just the title of the article.

You literally quoted part of the section that describes that the author considers that label an unfair attack made to allow people to ignore his arguments. And then used said label to attack him and ignore his arguments. The article is worth reading more carefully, even if you don't agree with him.

I read the article as carefully as I could given its style and I think the author is injecting the negative sentiment by self abasement to give himself license to anger, etc.

The GPL was written by an institutional employee that was upset by VC backed plans to co-opt internal software and turn it into a profit vehicle. In that context the compatibility of everyone's interests but VC interests make perfect sense.

The claim that copy left is failing and byzantine are haberdash. That many people don't understand GPL and that it is succeeding in its direction and not the one they assumed is an argument that could be made and should at a minimum be significant to VCs.

Re: Scapegoating free software’s failures

#57

Post by pmjordan »

baot wrote: post #50
zbentley wrote: post #42

> GPLv2 and v3 gave hobbyists, students, and anti-corporate hackers a means to feel as though their work resists the evil empire of the software industry, while in fact serving it up with unpaid work product. From the VC point of view, the GPLs break the dam on that pool of labor, flooding venture prospects with freebie technology. That seems concerning and deeply cynical. Mostly because I worry that it may be accura…

I think it's silly: the idea that free software is primarily done unpaid is just a myth, as can be seen from the attendees of any major free software conference, or the commit history of the major codebases. The killer feature of copyleft is as a way for standards to propagate within industries so that duplicate work can be avoided. Any benefits that end users get are a happy coincidence.

This is certainly true for the big headline projects. For every one of those, there's a hundred small but widely used libraries or tools whose sole maintainers (or tiny groups of maintainers) struggle under the workload of keeping it going, as they do so in addition to whatever pays their bills - with no obvious route to recompense for that unpaid labour. Worse, large users of the tool or library get to make modifications without sharing them with the original author and rest of the world.

the idea that free software is primarily done unpaid is just a myth, as can be seen from the attendees of any major free software conference

I'll point out that just because you mostly see delegates from big businesses to FOSS conferences, that doesn't mean this is a representative sample. It can just as well mean that the long tail of contributors isn't able to attend.

Of course, had the maintainers of the small-but-popular tool/library chosen a license under which the big corporate users were forced to contribute any local modifications back, this may in itself have prevented the popularity of the tool or library in the first place. Because for many developers and companies, using an AGPL (or even GPL or LGPL) licensed tool or library is absolute anathema.

(GPL in whatever form of course does not help with financially compensating independent developers, so it wouldn't fully solve the problem.)

Re: Scapegoating free software’s failures

#58

Post by _frkl »

StavrosK wrote: post #14
_frkl wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say as strongly copy left as possible, although that will inevitably bring with it some restrictions for users. Parity ( https://paritylicense.com/ ) is my favourite at the moment (created by the blog posts author). It's interesting in that it doesn't try to prescribe the license downstream projects use as long as it's free (in contrast to for example GPL) but is, at the same time, very strict in regards to when…

That's an interesting license, thanks! I would have liked some examples about what exactly it does, because reading the text doesn't make all the ramifications clear, but it looks promising.

If some of the text is unclear, you can submit an issue on the license' GitHub repository. Kyle (the creator of the license) considers this an issue with the license, and is very open to improve the text to eliminate any such issues readers have.

Re: Scapegoating free software’s failures

#59

Post by GoblinSlayer »

AlexMax wrote: post #26

They mention it in one of the lines of this blog, but apparently this individual (perhaps with the help of others, it wasn't clear) has come up with two of their own software licenses, with a website and everything. https://guide.licensezero.com/ > The Prosperity Public License (Prosperity) works a bit like a Creative Commons NonCommercial license, but for software. Prosperity gives everyone broad permission to use y…

Isn't commercial license revokable?

Re: Scapegoating free software’s failures

#60

Post by StavrosK »

_frkl wrote: post #58
StavrosK wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting license, thanks! I would have liked some examples about what exactly it does, because reading the text doesn't make all the ramifications clear, but it looks promising.

If some of the text is unclear, you can submit an issue on the license' GitHub repository. Kyle (the creator of the license) considers this an issue with the license, and is very open to improve the text to eliminate any such issues readers have.

I will, thanks. It's not unclear in a legal way, just in a human "what can my users/forkers/etc do with this license" way (which may still be a valid issue to open).
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