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Toward Copyleft Equality for All

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Re: Toward Copyleft Equality for All

#41

Post by pgeorgi »

richardfontana wrote: post #32
pabs3 wrote: post #2

This reminded me of the agreement between Qt and KDE, where if Qt is ever made proprietary, KDE can publish Qt under the BSD license: http://www.olafsw.de/a-better-qt-because-of-open-source-and-... https://old.reddit.com/r/QtFramework/comments/e9376a/trouble... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21755337

Indeed that Qt-KDE "treaty" was an inspiration for the feature of copyleft-next that bkuhn lauds in this article.

Do I understand that feature correctly that, because it's not a limitation on user rights but a pledge by the author, it can be added to any copyleft license without becoming incompatible to the base license or making the result a non-free license?

Re: Toward Copyleft Equality for All

#42

Post by _frkl »

shmerl wrote: post #5
_frkl wrote: post #4

I'm torn. On one side I do like this idea, on the other hand I don't see a practical way to work on exploratory open source software in some areas where your effort (even if it actually ends up delivering value to somebody) will be rewarded adequately. The existing models (open core, support contracts, donations, ...) may work here and there (although some of those would be invalidated by this suggestion), but compar…

I don't think anyone suggested that it should be easy to make money that way. It was and likely will always be more difficult. Which doesn't mean it shouldn't be done.

Of course nobody suggested that, that's far off the point I was trying to make. If it's harder to do, less people will do it. Whereas I'd like the opposite to happen. If you take away the option to dual-license, it becomes harder still.

Re: Toward Copyleft Equality for All

#43

Post by _frkl »

tptacek wrote: post #6

The premise of this post is that dual-licensing --- offering a piece of serverside or on-prem commercial software under (A)GPL terms, with a proprietary license available for firms that want unrestricted usage --- is "seedy". It's not clear to me how that premise is justified, and Kuhn's claim that the model has failed to increase software freedom seems totally unjustified. At the heart of Kuhn's argument about "seed…

In addition, I'm not sure using MySQL as an example makes a whole lot of sense. After all, that project was forked and the 'freer' alternative won out, so said 'seedy' behavior wasn't really a winning strategy. Or, at least, the community isn't worse of, from today's standpoint.

Re: Toward Copyleft Equality for All

#44

Post by _frkl »

rocqua wrote: post #17
tptacek wrote: post #6

The premise of this post is that dual-licensing --- offering a piece of serverside or on-prem commercial software under (A)GPL terms, with a proprietary license available for firms that want unrestricted usage --- is "seedy". It's not clear to me how that premise is justified, and Kuhn's claim that the model has failed to increase software freedom seems totally unjustified. At the heart of Kuhn's argument about "seed…

> People sign CLAs because they want their modifications upstreamed, and to avoid maintaining forks, not because they're legally required to do so. This is still coercive though. It is the big party using their power to get developers to give up their rights. Notably, by giving up these rights, it becomes possible for the party to go against the FOSS principles that were the reason copy-left was invented.

But all this doesn't leave contributors without any rights: they can still decide to band together and fork the whole thing. Even after signing CLAs and having contributed to the original codebase for a while.

Re: Toward Copyleft Equality for All

#45

Post by GoblinSlayer »

singron wrote: post #28
PeterZaitsev wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this refers to the attempt of MySQL AB to invent "internal distribution" so where if you have proprietary software which you might be distributing from one department to another in the same company you can't do that with GPL2 and need to buy the proprietary version

I always wondered if an employee could make a GPL source request to their employer. Is there any more reading about any of these events or legal theory? I'm having difficulty Googling this.

No, GPL opts out from such distribution channels. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#InternalDistributi...

Re: Toward Copyleft Equality for All

#46

Post by simonh »

kazinator wrote: post #7

> The essence in non-legalese is this: If you offer a license that isn't a copyleft license, the copyleft provisions collapse and the software is now available to all under a non-copyleft, hyper-permissive FOSS license. Why would anyone choose this? It must be for the sake of giving the downstream users some sort of assurance that a Bad Thing won't happen to them, as a sort of promise. "If we ever commercialize this,…

>Why would anyone choose this?

It's about clear communication of a commitment to users and licensees. It's about building trust, and hence strengthening and broadening the community around the software.

I licensor can know that they never intend to re-license code commercially, but their users and licensees can't know that in the same way. Without a clause like this have to take that on trust and some might choose not to do that, missing out and weakening the adoption of the code and it's community. The presence of a clear commitments avoids that problem.

Re: Toward Copyleft Equality for All

#47

Post by [deleted] »

kazinator wrote: post #9
dredmorbius wrote: post #3

Two standout points from this essay: 1. I've long heard that various SaaS companies really didn't like the Affero General Public License. Kuhn makes a case for why this is a validly justified concern, something I'd not previously considered. 2. The copyleft restriction termination is a really interesting concept, though not without its own set of consequences which should be closely examined. Historically, the advant…

That Affero license doesn't seem very useful, because if you depend on code running on someone else's server, it doesn't help you if you have an honest copy of the source code that is actually running on it. You still don't control it. You can't make changes and deploy it to that server, or update it yourself, etc.. Free, open-source software is about control: controlling what code manipulates your data. In short, it…

[deleted]

Re: Toward Copyleft Equality for All

#48

Post by [deleted] »

tuukkah wrote: post #14
kazinator wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That Affero license doesn't seem very useful, because if you depend on code running on someone else's server, it doesn't help you if you have an honest copy of the source code that is actually running on it. You still don't control it. You can't make changes and deploy it to that server, or update it yourself, etc.. Free, open-source software is about control: controlling what code manipulates your data. In short, it…

Isn't the point that you can modify and deploy a copy on your own infrastructure?

[deleted]

Re: Toward Copyleft Equality for All

#49

Post by simonh »

kazinator wrote: post #9
dredmorbius wrote: post #3

Two standout points from this essay: 1. I've long heard that various SaaS companies really didn't like the Affero General Public License. Kuhn makes a case for why this is a validly justified concern, something I'd not previously considered. 2. The copyleft restriction termination is a really interesting concept, though not without its own set of consequences which should be closely examined. Historically, the advant…

That Affero license doesn't seem very useful, because if you depend on code running on someone else's server, it doesn't help you if you have an honest copy of the source code that is actually running on it. You still don't control it. You can't make changes and deploy it to that server, or update it yourself, etc.. Free, open-source software is about control: controlling what code manipulates your data. In short, it…

You are not locked into a particular proprietary service provider. So with the Affero license in principle you get the following benefits:

* You know what code is providing your services.

* You have the option to run that code yourself.

* Other service providers can provide the same service using the same code, so you're not locked in.

Re: Toward Copyleft Equality for All

#50

Post by kemitchell »

richardfontana wrote: post #32
pabs3 wrote: post #2

This reminded me of the agreement between Qt and KDE, where if Qt is ever made proprietary, KDE can publish Qt under the BSD license: http://www.olafsw.de/a-better-qt-because-of-open-source-and-... https://old.reddit.com/r/QtFramework/comments/e9376a/trouble... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21755337

Indeed that Qt-KDE "treaty" was an inspiration for the feature of copyleft-next that bkuhn lauds in this article.

Any additional reading on the Qt-KDE treaty that you would recommend?
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