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FSF Wastes Away Another "High Priority" Project

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Re: FSF Wastes Away Another "High Priority" Project

#71

Post by cube13 »

mlinksva wrote: post #32
muuh-gnu wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it is effectively their fault for preventing the licence of their project from _ever_ being updated, even in the case where some future legal loophole makes exploiting GPLv2 code possible. It is short sighted essentially freezing the legal status of a project forever, and it is even more idiotic to blame the FSF for being incompatible with projects that voluntarily cut off forward-compatibility by removing the "or…

If freezing legal status of a project forever is short-sighted, the ability to opt-out of upward compatibility in GPLv2 is a tragedy, as is the same in GPLv3. If there ever is a GPLv4, hopefully it will be purely GPLv4+ with no option for GPLv4-only.

You're assuming that you're going to agree with the terms of GPL5. That's certainly not a good assumption(See Torvalds, Linus).

Re: FSF Wastes Away Another "High Priority" Project

#73

Post by cube13 »

gknoy wrote: post #70
benatkin wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The need for open source tools that interact with dwg resonates strongly with me. I hope they can rewrite it, and I hope they choose BSD (or MIT) rather than GPLv2.

Exactly: The solution seems to be (unfortunately) to let LibreDWG languish, and write a new library which is GPL2, or some other license. Sounds painful, since the people who want to use it are those who until now have not been (I assume) the ones writing the library.

To be fair, it looks like the FSF is letting LibreDWG languish anyway. There hasn't been a master commit in 2 years, and the last activity in the repository was in February 2012.

I'd assume that a "high priority" project would have a lot more activity than that, especially because there hasn't been a binary release yet( http://www.gnu.org/software/libredwg/ ).

Re: FSF Wastes Away Another "High Priority" Project

#74

Post by RexRollman »

sigzero wrote: post #65
RexRollman wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely disagree. The FSF has every right to not re-license the software.

I don't think anyone is arguing that they don't have the right. I think people are arguing that it is a douche move on their part.

To me, the douche move is whining about it when they decided against allowing it.

Re: FSF Wastes Away Another "High Priority" Project

#75

Post by tjaerv »

jlarocco wrote: post #43
benatkin wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the FSF purports to be an organization that advances the cause of free software, so it's worth calling them on their bullshit. Not everyone thinks of them as a zealot organization even though it's headed by a zealot. Perhaps they should. Also I think this issue might be fixable if there's enough outcry about it. And they really are in a tough situation because of this.

It's been well known for a long time that the FSF is only interested in advancing their own idea of "free software." At this time it's the GPLv3 flavor of free software. For people who don't agree with the FSF's idea of "free software" or don't want the politics that goes along with the GPL and FSF, there's always the BSD license. Though it really wouldn't help in this case, since the library in question belongs to t…

And for those fed up with copyright as a whole: http://unlicense.org

Re: FSF Wastes Away Another "High Priority" Project

#76

Post by verand »

_ak wrote: post #69
meaty wrote: post #20

At the risk of starting a flame war, this is why all my shit is BSD licensed. Like the software, the license isn't a pain in the arse either.

Same here. I only use software licenses where I can understand every single word. My personal preference is MIT, but 2-clause BSD or ISC would be equally fine.

But not 3-clause BSD? I figure the reasoning behind the third clause is to cover the situation where you write FooLib and someone uses it, advertising, "The Crazy Super Cool App is the craziest and supercoolest app of them all because FooLib makes it so crazy and supercool!" If the CSCA turns out to be a stinking pile, you don't get the stigma.

Re: FSF Wastes Away Another "High Priority" Project

#77

Post by joe_the_user »

glesica wrote: post #34
anonymouz wrote: post #23

Anyone surprised by the fact that the FSF puts its principles about the purity of free software licenses before pragmatism hasn't been paying much attention. The GPLv3 is the flagship license of the FSF and they think it fixes some issues with the GPLv2, so it's hardly surprising that they will refuse to relicense their high priority projects under the older license. "But you'll gain more users" has never been a reas…

LibreCAD doesn't hold the copyright, so they can't change the license. The copyright is held by a private company with no particular incentive to make the Free product better, especially since the paid product wouldn't be able to use the LibreDWG code.

So a more or less a "random circumstance" is the reason the FSF should be changing it's principles?

I mean, there may be times when the FSF does stick foolishly to principles but the "because we've decided it's OK to be halfway open and accept putting copyright control in the hands of a random company, you should bend for us" argument does not seem compelling.

It sounds like the mom and kids dynamic "can't I break the rules this one time, [XXXX very 'just, reasonable' sounding excuse]". The reason you have blanket principles is that otherwise someone finds a single exception that sounds emotionally compelling, then the exception becomes the hole that more or less everyone just drives through and "inconvenient" principles go out the window.

Also, the article doesn't say anything one way or the other about releasing the library LGPL which would seem appropriate for a library which could then be used by a commercial product.

Re: FSF Wastes Away Another "High Priority" Project

#78

Post by Flimm »

millerc wrote: post #55
glesica wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LibreCAD doesn't hold the copyright, so they can't change the license. The copyright is held by a private company with no particular incentive to make the Free product better, especially since the paid product wouldn't be able to use the LibreDWG code.

You seem to forget the primary reason why the GPL came to be, the principle that caused RMS to rewrite EMACS as an open source product in the first place: if a piece of software is closed, or in this case "not open enough", they want it rewritten under a new license. This story only seems to be a case of political pressure to do so, regardless of the effort a rewrite may cause. In this regards, FSF is clearly putting…

In a lot of countries, it's impossible to put something in the public domain immediately.

Re: FSF Wastes Away Another "High Priority" Project

#79

Post by gillianseed »

rosser wrote: post #2

This surprises anyone? As far as the FSF (or at least Stallman, which for all practical purposes is the same thing) is concerned, LibreCAD and FreeCAD are in the wrong here — for using one of the FSF's own licenses . Stallman is a zealot, and this is what zealots do.

It's not one of 'FSF's own licences', it's a modified GPLv2 licence where the 'or later' clause has been removed so that it is GPLv2 ONLY, thus making it a NEW licence.

No GPL licences crafted by FSF has this limitation.

Re: FSF Wastes Away Another "High Priority" Project

#80

Post by gillianseed »

sigzero wrote: post #65
RexRollman wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely disagree. The FSF has every right to not re-license the software.

I don't think anyone is arguing that they don't have the right. I think people are arguing that it is a douche move on their part.

Why is it a 'douche move'? If the original licencors Ribbonsoft had not released the code under a modified GPLv2 licence where they explicitly removed the 'or later' clause then there would have been no problem.
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