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My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

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Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#221

Post by kazinator »

whatshisface wrote: post #72
zepto wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no such thing as a tiny monopoly.

An example of a tiny monopoly would be a program with no alternatives that performed a task worth a few thousand bucks to 20 people on Earth. It doesn't have to be Standard Oil for monopoly pricing to take effect, if the market is small enough the mere fact that two vendors couldn't survive at the same time would be enough to keep out competition. Another example would be proprietary data formats, if your program is…

The alternative is for those 20 people to learn to code, or spread the word that they are looking to pay for an alternative.

A monopoly occurs when competition is actively prevented, in spite of its ample competitive ability. The monopolist uses its power to block the entry of new competition, even if that competition has the product, know-how and so forth. In some cases monopolies are geographical, like utility companies. Another utility company is just as capable, but it and its wiring/plumbing is in another district.

The mere difficulty of mustering a viable competitive effort (e.g. it being difficult to write a replacement program that those 20 people are willing to use instead) is not a monopolistic entry barrier.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#222

Post by ZeroGravitas »

darkpuma wrote: post #219
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an example to back up your point RMS has explicitly supported the use of non-GPL licenses for codecs as a strategic move to avoid being shut out of that market by network effects.

Do you have a link to anything he's written about this? It sounds interesting.

https://lwn.net/2001/0301/a/rms-ov-license.php3

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#223

Post by mathnmusic »

rmtech wrote: post #207
evmar wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I make a movie and include your copyrighted song for just three minutes of the intro, my whole movie violates the law. Or if I write a book and copy-paste just one chapter you wrote on your blog into it, the book also violated your copyright. And I "starve to death and die" because yes, in this world you can't just take things that other people have made and use them in whatever way you like -- if you can't obey t…

> if you can't obey the terms that someone else has given for the use of their creative work, then don't use their work. Yes I agree, but the conclusion to this is that you probably should never use the GPL. If you want other people to be able to use your code, use the MIT license. If you want to monetize your code/keep it secret/sell it, then don't try to open-source it. The GPL makes code radioactive and useless to…

GPL is an activist license. They have a worldview that they think is more right than others. It's of course not optimal for everyone. They think that closed source software is "morally wrong", and therefore "allowing closed and open source to exist side-by-side" is not really their goal.

As a user, I prefer GPL's activist stance, rather than MIT license's non-activist approach which essentially translates to an ethics of "might is right".

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#225

Post by garmaine »

godshatter wrote: post #102
simion314 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>First, I'm not a lawyer, but I've always seen the MIT license as being more "free", If you are a lawyer can you maybe be more clear about "more free" , more free relative to what? AFAIK GPL protects the user freedom and I think you are referring at the programmers freedom, GPL is a license that respects the users/society as a group, most people here are developers sothey will say that this is less free for them as a…

I was looking at it from the programmer's perspective. Specifically, from the perspective of someone who built something themselves and distributed it. From what I can tell, the user's freedoms (assuming no changes) are pretty much the same. They can use the software without worry.

If I make a (A)GPL program, I can be certain that EVERY downstream user has access to the source code and the freedom to recompile, reuse, remix, etc.

That is not the case with MIT, where any developer downstream may choose to re-license as they see fit.

From a user's perspective, the rights are very, very different. When you choose a copyleft license, you are making a specific choice that downstream users should have their rights protected, even if that comes at the expense of the "freedom" of downstream developers--who are now prevented from doing anything which restricts user freedom.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#226

Post by mhh__ »

normalhuman wrote: post #138
mhh__ wrote: post #87

I worry that the downturn of GPL use will have consequences in the future. I understand why the GPL has its issues in context/s, but I don't see why it shouldn't be the default for open source where possible. The political argument that gave birth to GNU/FSF seems to have lost it's bite in this day and age (perhaps due to a feeling that now open source is the de facto default, it will always be this way?)

Open Source failed. It remains as something that is useful to build software, but its political aims were defeated. The political goal was to give users absolute control over their computational environments. In reality, we have less and less control, because computations moved to the cloud (corporation-controlled servers) and the most used devices regressed to a non-hackable state (mobile gadgets). Even if you use a…

Arguably GPLv3 was a step in that direction

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#227

Post by rmtech »

mathnmusic wrote: post #223
rmtech wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you can't obey the terms that someone else has given for the use of their creative work, then don't use their work. Yes I agree, but the conclusion to this is that you probably should never use the GPL. If you want other people to be able to use your code, use the MIT license. If you want to monetize your code/keep it secret/sell it, then don't try to open-source it. The GPL makes code radioactive and useless to…

GPL is an activist license. They have a worldview that they think is more right than others. It's of course not optimal for everyone. They think that closed source software is "morally wrong", and therefore "allowing closed and open source to exist side-by-side" is not really their goal. As a user, I prefer GPL's activist stance, rather than MIT license's non-activist approach which essentially translates to an ethic…

> They think that closed source software is "morally wrong", and therefore "allowing closed and open source to exist side-by-side" is not really their goal.

OK, that's nice but can these people explain to me how I should pay rent?

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#228

Post by rmtech »

mathnmusic wrote: post #218
rmtech wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Courts will determine whether including 10 lines of GPL code make your product derivative or not. OK but in reality that means the cost of including those 10 lines is that you are exposing yourself to an unknown amount of legal risk, and our legal system has a highly nonlinear penalty system, so it's basically as if the 10 lines infect your whole codebase with GPL.

I feel this is a bit of exaggeration. You are copying someone else's work without complying with their license. That act, not the fact that it is GPL, is exposing yourself to unknown amount of legal risk. Legal system does have nonlinear penalty system but at the same time, judgments are expected to be reasonable and fair. Courts will not force you to GPL your code, but they may stop you from distributing your work -…

> You are copying someone else's work without complying with their license. That act, not the fact that it is GPL

Right, so the correct conclusion is to never use, never contribute to and never write GPL-licensed software. Then you comply 100% with GPL, you have no legal risk and you also have money to pay for your Gatorade.

In fact the best solution would just be to completely rid ourselves of GPL?

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#229

Post by _ph_ »

jbotz wrote: post #153
aroberge wrote: post #103

I teach Physics and Math. As a student, I enjoyed the freedom to consult textbooks, learn about new computation methods and be able to use them later when needed without worrying about potential restrictions. And I want my students to enjoy the same freedom. In my first projects, I used the GPL license but have moved since to almost always using the MIT License or, sometimes and when appropriate, CC-0. When I find so…

I think you misunderstand copyright... you can't violate a license (that's based on copyright) by using ideas you saw in the source code. You really have to actually copy , verbatim, a significant chunk of code to be in violation of a software copyright. Sure, what constitutes a significant chunk is somewhat open to interpretation, but nobody who releases their software under the GPL is likely to ask a court for a ri…

Strictly speaking, as soon as you looked at the GPL code you are tainted. A developer with a good memory will struggly not to pick up code he read through. After all, if you are looking at others people code, you are looking at the interesting parts - and if you see a cleverly written function - so anything which is longer as a single expression - you are in risk violating the copyrights of the creator. As I am respecting the works of others, I try to keep legally and morally clean and not just "being caught". So, being a professional programmer, I usually avoid looking at GPL code myself.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#230

Post by jeena »

School-Cotton wrote: post #203
pessimizer wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt any licensing makes your phone more stable, but if it were unstable, the GPL would certainly certainly make it easier/cheaper to fix.

> I doubt any licensing makes your phone more stable Sure it does. Without open-source software to base their work on, Apple would have had to start from scratch and possibly never get the project into a usable state. (In fact, they did actually try several multiple times to replace Mac OS 9 with an in-house-developed OS, before eventually buying NeXT, whose OS was rebranded as OS X and ultimately became iOS).

But if it were unstable, the GPL would certainly certainly make it easier/cheaper to fix.
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