111–120 of 134 posts
Looks like they're trying to preempt the whole "can you distribute GPLed programs via the app store" problem that Apple's been facing.
So it's the same as Apple then. "Can you distribute GPL?" "No."
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You're probably just trolling, but it needs to be said every time: The freedom that the GPL takes away is the freedom to bring down the system. It keeps people in check and prevents corruption. If you enjoy the freedoms of MIT and BSD style licenses - why do you complain about the GPL? It seems that it only takes "freedoms" away that you don't appear to be interested in anyways?
Because freedom also means freedom to use my code and keep it to yourself if you want to. There isn't any corruption in that. Tons of software here are using bsd/mit licensed code and not releasing their change, that has nothing to do with corruption (or you don't understand what corruption is, go read a definition). Using the GPL means you're free to use my code ... As long as the result is under gpl too. You lose y…
You never had any of those freedoms because the code is not yours. Your point is correct (yes, the GPL does prevent you from stealing other people's work!), but your wording is FUD.
as long as they don't require all software to come from the marketplace (a la apple), i have no problem with that.
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I feel the same way about the GPL, in that it dictates very strong boundaries about what can and cannot be done with the code you are distributing. I don't personally feel that the tradeoff is acceptable to achieve a goal of preventing corruption, as you say, and it can be argued that the license indeed does prevent many freedoms to do what you will. If I write software and distribute it as open-source on the Interne…
You're being deliberately trollish bringing in religion, it's a dumb insult and I could turn around and call your arguments religious and it wouldn't have any meaning either. Why is GPL so hard to understand? Plain and simple, GPL is an attack on closed source systems. And if you knew anything about computing history in the last 20 years you should be extremely grateful to RMS and what the license has accomplished.
Because I refuse to walk the party line on Free Software?
> bringing in religion, it's a dumb insult and I could turn around and call your arguments religious and it wouldn't have any meaning either.
How on earth is religion an insult? The proponents of Free Software believe very strongly in Free Software, and fight for it with zeal and fervor. The similarity to religious debates of history is very clear to me.
If anything, I elevated Free Software with the comparison by placing it in a category deserving of special treatment. Every right-thinking country on our planet has figured out that people are going to believe what they're going to believe, and government does not get to dictate what individuals can believe. So it is with the Free Software philosophy -- even if you don't agree with Stallman's philosophy (I only agree with some), you are entitled to believe in it because you have that freedom.
Your implication, which somewhat betrays your personal belief, is that there is a negative connotation that comes with the mere mention of religion, which I find equally offensive.
> Why is GPL so hard to understand? Plain and simple, GPL is an attack on closed source systems.
Maybe. Publishing your source in the public domain is also an attack on closed-source systems. The binary attitude of proponents of Free Software is something that I wince at every time I see it demonstrated.
> And if you knew anything about computing history in the last 20 years
You're right, my opinion obviously implies that I'm a moron. How dare I speak up about an opinion?
> you should be extremely grateful to RMS and what the license has accomplished.
I don't owe Free Software, or Richard Stallman, anything. Whatever advances have been made in computing, Free Software didn't wander into my life and make me who I am. It made computing what it is.
That being said, I am aware of what the GPL and the GNU Project itself was designed to do, and what it did. I firmly believe that without the GNU Project, we'd be in a much different place than we are today with computing. I have tremendous respect for Richard Stallman, and merely disagree with some of his tenets. I would hope that he respects my disagreement, and would be willing to try to convince me of his beliefs if given the opportunity (no, no comparison to religion there).
Just like you are allowed to believe in Free Software, so I am allowed to disagree with some of Stallman's beliefs, and I am allowed to choose not to use the GPL. My desire to not use the GPL is not an automatic admitting that I'm history-dumb and have no idea of its purpose, intent, or legacy.
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I'm not going to comment on whether GPL style licenses actually have the effect of promoting freedom like they say, but I don't see at all how they take it away. An author is free to write code and distribute it under the GPL. Likewise anyone else is free to fork it, or use it in their own codebase so long as they honor the terms of the license . How does that take away anyone's freedom? Don't like the terms of an au…
The problem is that nobody actually knows what constitutes a derivative work. Hence you have the LGPL for libraries so that you don't have to worry about linking them. The result is that nobody wants to risk tainting their work with GPL code if they're trying to make money. If it's GPL many people won't even look at it because who knows if someone who contributed a 2 line patch 10 years ago is going to come banging d…
Any particular examples?
"If it's GPL many people won't even look at it because who knows if someone who contributed a 2 line patch 10 years ago is going to come banging down your door with lawyers crying about violations. That's not what freedom is about."
When has this ever happened?
The fact is the AGPLv3 is the most business-friendly Free Software/open source license available:
The Affero clause prevents your competitors from taking your software and running an SaaS operation. BSD/MIT doesn't.
GPL prevents your competitors from outright stealing your work. BSD/MIT doesn't.
Version 3 of the GPL prevents your competitors from using your software on their hardware while preventing you from doing the same thing. BSD/MIT doesn't.
Don't forget that there's nothing stopping you from dual-licensing. Dual-licensing with the GPL is a proven business model. Dual-licensing with BSD/MIT doesn't make sense.
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The problem is people attack the GPL hold up the BSD as if it's without restrictions. But it is (granted, the restrictions are fairly simple to address, their are restrictions places on you, and if you don't follow them, you are in the same boat as the GPL). > There is no free with restrictions In this case, the only option is to write it yourself, as even things put into the public domain can have a catch (Actually,…
> (Actually, I think their is a license that basically does with you'd think putting something into the pubic domain does, I just forget the name). CC0? https://creativecommons.org/choose/zero/ > This is true of pretty much all licensed code, including BSD. Couldn't agree more. Don't call it Free, and don't try to associate Free with the GPL at the expense of everything else (which seems to be the push). Libre too. B…
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Ah, but that's the thing - it is a trade-off. While both the GPL and BSD (and other Free Software licenses) are certainly better than closed-source, the GPL is a promise to the user at the expense of the developer (a reasonable expense, to be sure), whereas the BSD and BSD-like licenses are promises to the developer, perhaps at some expense to the user (i.e. if something uses it it's not guaranteed to be Free Softwar…
> Given that most people are developers, not users In what universe?
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The problem is that nobody actually knows what constitutes a derivative work. Hence you have the LGPL for libraries so that you don't have to worry about linking them. The result is that nobody wants to risk tainting their work with GPL code if they're trying to make money. If it's GPL many people won't even look at it because who knows if someone who contributed a 2 line patch 10 years ago is going to come banging d…
"The result is that nobody wants to risk tainting their work with GPL code if they're trying to make money." Any particular examples? "If it's GPL many people won't even look at it because who knows if someone who contributed a 2 line patch 10 years ago is going to come banging down your door with lawyers crying about violations. That's not what freedom is about." When has this ever happened? The fact is the AGPLv3 i…
"Any particular examples?"
Me. I know I can't be the only one.
Your competitors could just download the source code, figure out what you wrote, and re-work it into their app. As long as it was different enough, there's not much you could do.
I'm not sure how this would really help you.
"he Affero clause prevents your competitors from taking your software and running an SaaS operation."
I thought open source was about freedom. It seems like it's an attempt to prevent people from making a profit and forcing a political movement. Freedom shouldn't have limits. If you are creating your work to force me to adhere to your ideals, it's not really freedom.
"GPL prevents your competitors from outright stealing your work. BSD/MIT doesn't."
Can code or ideas really be stolen? After all, the original is still there.
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> If some wants to use it in proprietary software they cannot, because if they did they would be unable to then share it with their neighbor. So he isn't free to do what he wishes with the software. Free is one of the most overloaded words in the English language, and I know that at least some of the Free Software movement agrees due to the prevalence of libre software (as if switching to French somehow makes it more…
The switch to is arguably good because in French there are two words that map to the English free --- libre = free as in speech, gratis = free as in beer. So libre is less overloaded than free, making it less ambiguous. Citation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratis_versus_Libre
They're only preventing GPLv3 (and its ilk). There's a reason they mention GPLv3 and not GPLv2. GPLv2 just requires the sharing of source code for a given binary. GPLv3 takes it a lot farther and requires that a mechanism also be provided to use derivative works. So if a car manufacturer uses GPLv3 code, they not only have to distribute the source code (which may or not be an issue), they also have to allow people to…
You are the first to actually hit that point, and I believe rightly so. I don't see how you could actually comply with V3 and release your software on any of these stores. The obtaining of a developer signing key is not free, and there is no guarantee that the derived work would actually be accepted.