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My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

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Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#301

Post by icebraining »

ghaff wrote: post #291
icebraining wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be noted that the GPL requires you to pay forward , not back. You are under no obligation to release the code publicly or contribute to the original project.

The parent comment as a whole made it pretty clear they were talking about modified code that is redistributed. (I can, of course, take code and modify it for internal use and I don't have obligations under the GPL.)

Redistribution doesn't mean public. I've worked for years extending A/LGPL code that we redistributed, yet much of it never saw the light of day, since our clients have no interest in publishing it (although they are free to do so, of course).

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#302

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

otikik wrote: post #151

I use MIT (compared to GPL) because it's a low-maintenance library. When I have published stuff in GPL, I would have had someone from (say) the Netherlands opening an issue asking "hey, can I use this library for doing so-and-so?". And I had to go and check so-and-so and check the again library and re-read the license and after I was not sure because I am not a lawyer and GPL text is fairly dense. Even if I was a law…

There is a really easy answer to that question: If you are unsure, hire a lawyer in your jurisdiction. The fact that you wrote some Free Software does not obligate you to help people with integrating it into their software for free, and that includes any kind of legal work required.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#303

Post by wz1000 »

cflewis wrote: post #164
kemitchell wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a lawyer, and I really appreciated your "free" versus "fair" line. One tidbit on the GPLs: They require you to share alike if you share the software with others, but do not require you to share the software with others. You can make changes and larger programs entirely for your own or your company's internal use, and not share anything. The GPLs mention this explicitly, and implement it using concepts like "dist…

I like the idea of a license that is "fair", but there's something about GPL that rubs me the wrong way where I feel it accomplishes the goal of fair in some antagonistic manner. To me, GPL feels more like holding a legal gun to your head and say "You used my code, now play fair". It's not your Mum asking you nicely to share your toys with your brother. But then MIT is too far the other way where it's your Mum saying…

GPL is pretty much a "it's the right thing to do" kind of license. GPL violations are widespread and the terms are rarely enforced. Even when they are, in 99.9% of cases there are no penalties(unlike most commercial licenses), just a requirement to publish your code and adhere to the original terms of the license.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#304

Post by [deleted] »

rmtech wrote: post #227
mathnmusic wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

[deleted]

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#305

Post by merlincorey »

davidgerard wrote: post #247
beering wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someday, that might come full circle and you'll be the one who won't be enriched because the original code was MIT and not GPL. Here's an example: you buy some embedded hardware for a personal project, but you find out that the toolchain for that chipset is a pile of proprietary blobs built on Clang and it only runs on Windows. If it were built on GCC, then the GPL would force them to make the source available and pe…

I can't find the link, but I remember someone from the X Window System regretting that X11 was under the MIT License - it's the origin of the MIT License - rather than copyleft, precisely because so many companies just would not give code back. Keith Packard on this in 2015: https://list.waikato.ac.nz/pipermail/wlug/2015-September/013... > Keith made it clear he prefers GPL-style (copyleft/sharealike) licences to MIT…

> while net consumers of code (those who don’t want to give back to the community) tend to favour the latter. In other words, freeloaders.

I think this is a really unfair statement - "net consumers of code ... freeloaders".

While there are surely plenty of users of code who are not contributing at all, and they would be freeloaders, the phrasing "net consumers" means that some of the consumers are contributing back code, just not as much as they consume.

I would wager that most end users are freeloaders (they never commit code back).

I would further wager that most developers are closer to end-users.

Finally, I would wager that the vast majority of developers who contribute code are net consumers, not producers.

To me, it's not so surprising that a few people who put in the most public effort sometimes feel bitter that others don't carry their weight.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#306

Post by icebraining »

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…

> The political goal was to give users absolute control over their computational environments

No, that was Free Software. Open Source was created as a reaction to that, with the goal of removing the ethical implications and making it "business friendly". And it succeeded, unfortunately.

See: "Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software"

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#307

Post by [deleted] »

filmgirlcw wrote: post #268
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…

Except that analogy doesn't quite work. If you use a copyrighted song in a movie, you can choose to license that song (and the terms of use and cost will be up to the rights holder) -- licensing that song doesn't give the rights holder reciprocal access to your film. So yes, I agree with you that you need to obey the terms someone else has used for their work, or else you shouldn't use the work -- but your analogy wi…

[deleted]

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#308

Post by bunderbunder »

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #296
rmtech wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I feel like the GPL is the closest thing that programmers have to a union But unions generally exist to make their members rich. GPL has the opposite effect, it means you can't sell your code so you become poor. It's like the opposite of a union; a collective agreement among a group of professionals whereby they mutually agree to prevent each other from making money.

The programmer doesn't sell code, the programmer sells time writing software. With proprietary software, the owner of that software has a monopoly on the work on that software, and as such can demand monopoly prices. With Free Software, that monopoly doesn't exist, you only have market competition.

You did a switch-a-roo between the perspective of individual programmers to the perspective of organizations that produce software, and I think that doing so muddies the situation a bit.

Whether programmers sell their code or their time doesn't seem that important to me. (I've seen it work out both ways.) What is more important to me is what they're paid in. Personally, I like to get paid in money, because I can easily turn money into things like food and shelter. Because I like that, it's hard for me to hate on my employers - or anyone else's employers - for wanting money in exchange for software or SAAS or whatever.

From that perspective, a really devoted adherence to copyleft has always seemed kind of petulant to me. I don't want to begrudge anyone for the simple fact of trying to make a living any more than I want others begrudging me for the simple fact of trying to make a living.

I also don't begrudge people preferring to share their code under Free software licenses, mind. It's more that I take umbrage with thinking that choosing a license like MIT or BSD makes you some sort of capitalist patsy.

Also, point of pedantry: Simply owning exclusive rights to a particular piece of software does not give you a monopoly, and framing things in such hyperbolic terms does not do anything to advance the conversation.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#309

Post by icebraining »

rmtech wrote: post #227
mathnmusic wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Work for one of the thousands of companies that pay you to write GPL licensed code? I can give you some references, having worked for one for a few years (specifically, we wrote Odoo modules for various businesses).

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#310

Post by icebraining »

rmtech wrote: post #216
pessimizer wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you wrote 9,990 lines of proprietary code and included 10 lines of proprietary code from another company, I imagine that your entire program would have to be approved of by the other company in writing, or you wouldn't be able to distribute it. What's supposed to be the difference here?

> proprietary code ... What's supposed to be the difference here? The difference is that GPL is claiming to not be proprietary...

Which is why you don't need to ask for permission, just follow the license.
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