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“I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

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Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#381

Post by bcrl »

epaga wrote: post #48

I'm still bummed out that for years, GPL was the "standard" go-to open source license. So many projects became useless for any commercial projects whatsoever. GPL advocates say it's so that your code isn't exploited by corporations. But I'd say that choosing GPL means it's more important to you that your code "is not exploited by corporations" than that it can be used for good by people with commercial interests. Tho…

There is an example of 2 projects that started around the same time, one of which used the GPL and one of which used the BSD license. Almost 30 years after the projects started, the one one using the GPL is vibrate and healthy, while the other project using the BSD license has trouble getting companies to contribute their changes back and barely has enough developers participating in the community to survive.

This is the tale of Linux vs FreeBSD. Companies like Juniper that made heavy use of FreeBSD as the basis for JunOS have an atrocious history of failing to contribute their changes back to the community, and Juniper isn't the only one engaging in this behaviour. Sure there are other reasons that Linux took off and FreeBSD didn't, but license is a major factor in how their respective communities behave.

Yes, there are times when copying BSD licensed code is easier if you don't want to publish your source, but it isn't too difficult to adapt business processes to this constraint for the vast majority of applications. Look at what happened in the wireless router market. Early in the 2000s many products made use of the various vendors' Linux based SDKs and weren't compliant at publishing their source. Today OpenWRT is vibrant and most vendors offer GPL archive downloads on their websites. Personally, I don't think this would have happened if Linux wasn't GPLed and there wasn't the pressure the GPL afforded on vendors to open up their code.

I understand and respect John Carmack's position, and the GPL isn't for everyone, but people need to understand that license can result in significant differences in the viability of a community built around a software project on the longer term scales of 10-20 years.

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#382

Post by renewiltord »

trasz wrote: post #360
renewiltord wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? So if I want to include BSD code without attributing in my commercial software, I can distribute the binary? That’s rhetorical. I can’t do so legally without receiving a different license for the copyrighted code. The counter example to what you claim is trivial to construct.

Yes, you can, assuming we're talking about the modern BSD license. So, your point was?

This is wrong. 3-clause BSD requires reproduction of copyright notice. You cannot distribute commercial derivatives of BSD-licensed code without including attribution. It’s literally clause two.

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#383

Post by VectorLock »

defaultname wrote: post #370
VectorLock wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the value of what they're offering cannot possibly be more than the delta from what is freely and openly available. They didn't make the original any less available, and a user is only possibly going to pay if the features are different enough to merit the cost over the freely available version I think its interesting that you described exactly the big problem the GPL was supposed to solve. The entire intention is t…

I understand the intent of the GPL, and the reasoning behind its creation. I'm not arguing about that. It isn't accidental that I am arguing around that point. I'm talking specifically about the notion of people making money off of open source -- whether BSD, GPL, etc. You cannot possibly make a penny off of what is freely and openly available. It's economic market value is $0.00. It's human value is considerable, bu…

Thats where the "sour grapes" come from. When another person takes a valuable thing that someone else made and turns it into monetary gain they feel like that is "stealing."

It is less obvious because its not as directly and easily measurable when a direct dollar sign is put on a product. The same feeling happens when big tech builds huge profit machines using something a person made and gave away as a cog without contributing back. Or when AWS takes something like Elasticsearch and hosts it for profit - Elastic co. sure thought they were stealing.

You call it sour grapes and then describe how someone is stealing something of value. Was Elastic's response to AWS also sour grapes?

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#384

Post by zelphirkalt »

zamalek wrote: post #328
zelphirkalt wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One can still disagree with Carmack but it's still worth understanding what he's claiming. Exactly, one can still disagree, and he is making a claim. Those are 2 things: He does not know what would have happened, had they gone with BSD license. No one does ultimately. It might be a case of "the grass is always greener on the other side". Second is, that he might write however good code he wants, but what is its use…

> Of course it is possible, that there would have been more adopters and more people sharing code back, but that is not guaranteed, which is kind of the point of GPL. BSD/MIT/permissive and our use of them did make it a hell of a lot easier to approach my previous employer about contributing back on company time/pay (they now do). They even came back with "but no GPL." One of the biggest problems in OSS is paid time/…

Which is a bit weird, considering, that those things, that are contributed back, are not ensured to remain available, when anyone else makes modifications and has the option to make their changes a proprietary thing.

One would think, that if any contributions flowing back are allowed by a company, then it is to GPL licensed projects, because competitors, who want to use it in their products, would have to also contribute back their modifications. Basically to ensure, that a competitor cannot gain an invisible advantage based on ones code. (If all play by the rules.)

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#385

Post by vsw02 »

yosamino wrote: post #222
vsw02 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have not understood my point at all. If you think I feel attacked in response to a comment laboriously explaining why two sides have been locked in pointless battle for decades, you’ve taken a point of view from me that simply doesn’t exist. The conclusion you’re drawing, particularly that I have any interest in denying someone rights or that my criticism of GPL implies a wish to harm others’ freedoms, is interes…

I apologize for misunderstanding you. I read you writing of commanding less respect as a developer and being "the second class in this picture" as feeling attacked. If I am honest, I did not understand your point, then. Your start-off was that the GPL segments between users and developers and disagreeing with that. What I tried to offer as a counterpoint, is that the GPL does not actually segment between the two, it…

Right, understood. You can’t have your beliefs without excluding mine. Totally understand where you’re coming from. I refer you back to the pointless battle to understand why this is the last time we will speak. I gave you room to do your thing, pointed out people could have different priorities, and you still spent half your comment telling me how my behavior is wrong.

What are you expecting? My gosh, you’re right, the freedoms I’m depriving of my users not subscribing to your orthodoxy? Show me the light? Not happening, sorry. The free software community has had decades to win me over and every time it ends in this. You’re not the first. Won’t be the last.

If your community spent more time listening rather than wagging fingers and tutting at the choices of others you’d get somewhere among the (most) people who don’t respond well to that. This thread is a pretty good microcosm of that because you’ve heard precisely none of what I’ve said; if you had, you’d have known the shaming sermon with a lot of “you” thrown in probably wasn’t the way to go.

Perhaps the GPL itself is incompatible with not explaining someone else’s business to them because that’s its whole trick to achieve the outcome desired. This thread kind of helped me realize that. You don’t even know you’re doing it because unconsciously you’ve accepted that telling others what they can and cannot do is a workable approach as it’s codified into the whole methodology of your movement.

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#386

Post by MisterTea »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #322
PoignardAzur wrote: post #156

I'm very frustrated by some of the answers here and on Twitter. Carmack says: > The GPL virality wound up being a net negative, and more value would have come from BSD. [...] The best aspects of GPL work didn't manifest, but tons of opportunities to just copy-paste-modify were lost due to license concerns. One of the answers on Twitter: > Then what if it's being exploited by big techs and make your work proprietary?…

Eh, people are allowed to disagree or challenge Cormack, it doesn't bother me that they brought up that worry despite knowing he is an experienced respected person. I do find it notable how many of my peer computer programmers/software engineers no longer believe in open source though. 15 years ago it was very popular to believe in open source, as a way of combating the power of giant corporations. The dislike/distru…

Focus changed. The 90's was the rise of the PC, the 00's the rise of the web, and the teens rise of the money making mobile platform.

The rise of the PC is what sparked open source as we needed cheaper (free) tools. Once the tools were free it accelerated the growth of the web which was built using said free tools (remember LAMP stacks?). Mobile built on the web and used the same free tools allowing more money to be made. It basically put a computer in everyone's pocket in two decades which is no small feat.

In the end open source did win in a way. We still use open source tools. Linux powers most of the web as well as Android. Much of iOS/MacOS is built of/with free tools (GCC/clang, BSD, etc). But OSS remains a beast of burden which powers money making platforms. And there's a lot of money to be made on those platforms so focus has greatly shifted.

Reminds me of a phrase used to describe the evolution of Jazz music: "Born in a whiskey jar, grew up on pot, and died on heroin." Open source was born in that whiskey jar of general purpose beige boxes. It grew up during the wonky web years and showed great promise. Now its highly addicted to corporate money and slowly fading away.

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#387

Post by kbenson »

EdSchouten wrote: post #51
kbenson wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GPL license is license-viral, the BSD license is just attribution-viral, as I understand it. For BSD licensed code, you must reproduce the license and attribution for that code, but the rest of the code can be licensed as you want. For GPL code there are additional requirements.

But does Copilot reproduce the license and attribution for the code? As far as I know, it does not.

I don't think so, which makes the resulting amalgamation in violation of the original source in that respect for both of them. Beyond that, even if you add the license and attribution manually, the GPL is still not satisfied, and may require the entire source it was used in be released depending on whether you've shipped that product to customers or used it in specific ways. That's an entirely different class of problem than just needing to go back and add some comments to your code to note where some of it came from.

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#388

Post by x4e »

mikevm wrote: post #187

What is the point in releasing your code as GPL anyway? If you've solved some interesting problem, then people can read your code to figure it out and then reimplement it, and no one will ever find out.

Many companies do not want to take that risk and will ensure they comply by the license.

And anyway, what does it matter if someone steals your code? The point of the GPL is not to prevent people stealing your code but to hope that it at least provides some value to others through good faith forks respecting their freedoms.

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#389

Post by CorrectHorseBat »

trasz wrote: post #363
CorrectHorseBat wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without GPL Oracle could make closed source improvements which RedHat could not use, giving Oracle an edge over RedHat. If RedHat then went under because of that we were stuck with a closed source Linux. The Audacity drama is solved by GPL, you can compile your own version without telemetry. Forks will pop up and the Audacity developers will backtrack and remove the offending parts of the code.

Ah, so it's really about making it harder for other players to improve their product? As for Audacity - the exact same thing would have happened with any other Open Source license; GPL doesn't make it any easier.

>Ah, so it's really about making it harder for other players to improve their product?

No, it's about keeping those improvements open source.

>As for Audacity - the exact same thing would have happened with any other Open Source license; GPL doesn't make it any easier.

Yes, it does make it a lot easier since the Muse Group (assuming they don't own all copyright of Audacity, if they do the license doesn't indeed really matter) has to release all improvements as GPL and the fork can simply cherry-pick them. With a MIT/BSD style license they could just make it proprietary and then we would be stuck having to choose between an outdated Audacity and a non-free Audacity.

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#390

Post by jamescostian »

yosamino wrote: post #222
vsw02 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have not understood my point at all. If you think I feel attacked in response to a comment laboriously explaining why two sides have been locked in pointless battle for decades, you’ve taken a point of view from me that simply doesn’t exist. The conclusion you’re drawing, particularly that I have any interest in denying someone rights or that my criticism of GPL implies a wish to harm others’ freedoms, is interes…

I apologize for misunderstanding you. I read you writing of commanding less respect as a developer and being "the second class in this picture" as feeling attacked. If I am honest, I did not understand your point, then. Your start-off was that the GPL segments between users and developers and disagreeing with that. What I tried to offer as a counterpoint, is that the GPL does not actually segment between the two, it…

>> I don’t lose sleep over Boeing patching a random library I wrote and not sharing the patch

> What you call "permissive" then is only permissive in the short term, because it precisely introduces this segmentation between users and developers in the long term. If you look at this as a tree structure, it's permissive only to your immediate children, because you are granting them the right to take away this precise freedom from your grandchildren, thus introducing the separation between users and developers.

It sounds like vsw02 understands your argument, and has already showed that they don't consider the scenario you describe to bothersome. One might say vsw02 predicted your argument, but I'd say you didn't fully consider vsw02's argument.

Your example sounds like the paradox of tolerance, but there is a critical difference: consequences. If you are tolerant of intolerance, then the repercussion is that intolerance continues, and even increases, which can also increase physical violence, and various human rights violations. If you give code freely to those who will not provide the modifications to that code freely, there won't be an increase in violence, or what most people would consider human rights violations.

Could we have a bit more FOSS code if all OSS was libre? Maybe. Carmack disagrees though in TFA, stating "I'm pretty sure there would have been more total users of the code, likely making the amount shared in the open still greater." Explaining libre isn't helping, you need to provide an argument that vsw02 hasn't already shown to be irrelevant to them, and ideally, one that also addresses Carmack's argument (saying "that's just speculation" is true, but it seems Carmack's speculation is speculation that a lot of us subjectively already agree with)

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