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Scapegoating free software’s failures

writing.kemitchell.com

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Re: Scapegoating free software’s failures

#61
post #20
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…

Isn't Parity License a source-available share-alike freeware license? It seems very different from GPL and even the ideas by which copyleft was originated.

Would you care to elaborate? To me, it seems very much in the 'spirit' of what GPL set out to do back when, updated to eliminate issues that weren't/couldn't have been forseen. Parity is not perfect (yet), but to me it's the most viable attempt at a modern copyleft license to date.

Technically, one can argue Parity is not 'open source', if one acknowledges that only OSI approved licenses should be called 'open source'. I don't, and quite a few other folk don't either. Lots of people do, though.

Re: Scapegoating free software’s failures

#62
post #47
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…

The FSF is not 'attacking' such licenses, they're just arguing that they aren't free libre software licenses. It's the SSPL people and others, by trying to co-opt the free and Libre software movement by claim their licenses are something they are not, which are mounting the assault. And let's be clear it is a pernicious, aggressive and deliberate attack threatening, and in some cases knowingly intended to fundamental…

The "aggressive, deliberate, threatening attacks" I have seen in discussions like this almost always seem to come from the FSF crowd. (not necessarily official sources, but supporters in public discussion channels)

Re: Scapegoating free software’s failures

#63
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…

> limits commercial use to a short trial period of 32 days. When a commercial user’s trial runs out, they need to buy a private license or stop using your software.

So it's clearly not Free Software because it doesn't respect freedom 0. Hardly a surprise that Bradley Kuhn and the FSF object to it being classified as such.

This is hardly a failure of "free software", just the author wants to try to subvert the definition which the FSF has long established. Maybe the author should try calling it something completely different (I suggest "trialware") and then the FSF wouldn't be bothered.

(https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html)

Re: Scapegoating free software’s failures

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, I always found it a bit strange that there were dozens of variants of the MIT and BSD license out there, but aside from the GPL and MPL no other popular license really took up the mantle of copyleft, aside from perhaps the old Sleepycat license. Fundamentally, copyleft can only be instantiated once. No two distinct copyleft licenses as we know them can be compatible with each other without jumping through…

> Fundamentally, copyleft can only be instantiated once. That's true of GPL-style copyleft, because it was designed quite intentionally to be a network-effect-leaden singleton. We say "GPL-compatible", but it's more accurate to say "GPL-submissive". The difference was felt very directly by the Eclipse folks in the run up to EPLv2. But there's nothing about share-alike terms that require that stricture. The Parity lic…

It is always useful to fall back to basic when ever people try to redefine copyleft or GPL. A copyright license is a list of complex permissions. Nothing more, nothing less.

If you have a two set of permissions, compatibility is the logical conclusions of finding intersection and see which actions are permitted in both set. Set theory do not have submissive and dominant sets. The intersection is always the elements which are in both A and B.

The parity license says "Make sure every part of the source code is available under this license or another license that allows everything this license does". It practically spells out that permissions in the intersection that lies between parity and an other license is acceptable to use when combining parity with an other license. It is true. It also true for any other copyright license, including GPL.

Re: Scapegoating free software’s failures

#65
post #3
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…

I've thought this for years: the aggressive defense of super liberal OSS licenses with no sort of "SaaS clause" or other limits turns FOSS into free labor for SaaS companies. SaaS is more closed than closed: you control nothing, not even your data, and can trivially be spied on and monetized in other questionable ways. The fact that some of the pieces of a SaaS site are open source is meaningless and changes nothing.…

> SaaS is more closed than closed: you control nothing, not even your data, and can trivially be spied on and monetized in other questionable ways

Spot on, and those companies managed to subvert and violate the spirit of FLOSS in many ways.

Re: Scapegoating free software’s failures

#66
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".

"can't be used for monetary gain" is very difficult to define. A simple example is replacing a paid software with FLOSS for cost saving.

For a company, this directly leads to increased profit.

This is one of the reasons why FLOSS licenses cannot go further than AGPL in limiting scope and use.

Re: Scapegoating free software’s failures

#67
post #63
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…

> limits commercial use to a short trial period of 32 days. When a commercial user’s trial runs out, they need to buy a private license or stop using your software. So it's clearly not Free Software because it doesn't respect freedom 0. Hardly a surprise that Bradley Kuhn and the FSF object to it being classified as such. This is hardly a failure of "free software", just the author wants to try to subvert the definit…

I’ve never presented Prosperity, the noncommercial form, as free or open source. The debate was about Parity, the strong copyleft form.

Re: Scapegoating free software’s failures

#68
post #52
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

This is not entirely accurate. (Well, there's a possibility that the FSF had early private drafts of GPLv3 that adapted the terms of AGPLv1 in some sort of straightforward sense.) (Source: I was more or less at the center of these developments at the time.)

The early public drafts of GPLv3 had already rejected the idea of incorporating an Affero provision in a strong sense. Instead, they explicitly classified AGPLv1-like Affero conditions as GPLv3-compatible -- but note that no otherwise GPLv3-compatible licenses with Affero conditions existed at the time, and it wasn't especially likely that they would spring into existence. Note that inclusion of some sort of Affero-like provision was already a publicly controversial issue in the run-up to the release of the first public draft of GPLv3, which you can see in some of the news coverage from the period (late 2005).

There was resistance or objection to the sort of compromise around network services the early drafts took, but this basically took the following forms: (1) some individuals (who I would say were mainly associated with the Debian Project or the FSF staff itself) argued that GPLv3 should have directly adopted an Affero provision, though one without the perceived flaws in the AGPLv1 version, which were sort of carried over into the wording of the draft compatibility provision; and (2) some companies (representing financial services interests who had come to be dependent on Linux for data center operations) raised concerns about the compatibility clause leading to an Affero-specific license proliferation problem. Outside of those two viewpoints there wasn't much interest in the issue, once the public drafts of GPLv3 were released.

The eventual solution, responsive to those two points of criticism, was to get rid of the compatibility solution in favor of a single, separate, FSF-authorized, GPLv3-compatible Affero license, with the Affero provision worded in a way that avoided the perceived flaws of the AGPLv1 approach.

Re: Scapegoating free software’s failures

#69
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".

"can't be used for monetary gain" is very difficult to define. A simple example is replacing a paid software with FLOSS for cost saving. For a company, this directly leads to increased profit. This is one of the reasons why FLOSS licenses cannot go further than AGPL in limiting scope and use.

The intent is probably that companies that make a profit cannot use the software.

Re: Scapegoating free software’s failures

#70
post #63
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…

> limits commercial use to a short trial period of 32 days. When a commercial user’s trial runs out, they need to buy a private license or stop using your software. So it's clearly not Free Software because it doesn't respect freedom 0. Hardly a surprise that Bradley Kuhn and the FSF object to it being classified as such. This is hardly a failure of "free software", just the author wants to try to subvert the definit…

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