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My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

drewdevault.com

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Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#331

Post by zzzeek »

megous wrote: post #162
zzzeek wrote: post #141

I think the distinction between "download and run" software vs. "libraries used to build new programs" should always be stated in this GPL vs. not discussion. For "download and run" software, having it be GPL IMO doesn't limit too much who will ultimately be using your software. But if you are writing a programming library that would be used to create new software, GPL and even the LGPL will scare away a lot of comme…

For me it's rather simple. I like GNU/Linux, the whole free/sharing ecosystem helped me learn so much, it allowed me great productivity, to modify anything and everything, etc. I like others to have the same opportunity, so GPL it is, even for libraries.

Well it doesn't always work that way. I have a bunch of MIT licensed libraries that are very widely used and I'm 100% certain there are no commercial forks of it of any particular value. Because then they'd not have my support when their stuff breaks. Im sure there's lots of other libraries like mine, the MIT license is not limiting anyone's access to the best versions of my code.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#332

Post by mcguire »

rmtech wrote: post #228
mathnmusic wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The correct conclusion is that you must never use or look at software that you yourself didn't write.

Of course, then there's patents. You might want to avoid having any ideas at all.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#333

Post by mcguire »

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…

You are welcome to negotiate a second license to avoid the GPL.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#334

Post by TuringTest »

munificent wrote: post #130
TuringTest wrote: post #10

MIT-like freedom is the "freedom to sell yourself as a slave". GPL is "your liberty ends where my nose begins". If you understand freedom as the removal of social constraints, you won't understand the value of something like GPL software or Wikipedia. If, on the other side, you think of freedom as the capability to do things, the accumulation of knowledge in copyleft projects creates possibilities that are less likel…

> MIT-like freedom is the "freedom to sell yourself as a slave". I don't think this analogy is strictly wrong , but the tone is insensitive enough that it is unlikely to be persuasive to the people you are trying to persuade. (Also, some will feel that it diminishes the gravity of actual slavery.) I agree with your point, but I think you would be better off stating it in a different way.

You're of course right. I created that line for a different place, aiming for a provocative adage that would capture attention (by being aggresive) and make people think by getting straight to the point and highlighting the paradox of "pure freedom". For that purpose, being controversial and rough was a feature, even at the cost of causing initial rejection.

I copied it here to deliver the basic idea as fast as I could, but it certainly is out of context as the starter of a calm conversation with more time to expose ideas and ponder them, as is the style of this forum.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#335

Post by TuringTest »

Quekid5 wrote: post #214
eitland wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's definitely a valid PoV, but you just have to realize/accept that it may empower people who have power over you. Newtons Equations has also empowered the powerful for a while now but I think we are still happy that they are available for free for everyone without any limitations.

What? I'm really struggling to find the nugget of 'point' in there, but... what? Are you saying that Gravity is somehow biased toward powerful people? Are you saying that refraction is somehow biased toward powerful people? I'm left so confused by your comment. It's amazing -- hopefully in a good way!)

I believe etland might be referring to the knowledge provided by discovering the equations, rather than the natural phenomena themselves. But I may be wrong.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#336

Post by bunderbunder »

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #324
bunderbunder wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 easi…

> 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. The comment I replied to talked about programmers, and I was also talking about programmers, so ... where did I supposedly do that? > Personally, I like to get paid in money, because I can easily turn money into things like food an…

> What difference does it make to you in that situation whether the result of the hour of work that you are paid for is licenced under GPL or under a proprietary licencse?

Directly, not at all. But most companies find it very difficult to turn a profit on GPL-licensed software without resorting to things that render the whole thing moot, like being SAAS vendors who never "distribute" the software in the first place. The whole "derivative works" angle on the GPL, then, makes it hard for commercial vendors to make distributable software that relies on GPL packages without putting their own revenue stream at great peril.

So commercial software shops tend to build on MIT, BSD or Apache licensed stuff. Which is typically NBD. My experience has been that fears about "not contributing back" are typically unfounded. Everyone submits pull requests for their bugfixes and enhancements, because nobody wants to deal with maintaining some special snowflake private version of cURL or whatever.

Consequently, I think that the elephant in the room is that, typically, when people complain that there's something akin to a moral obligation to use GPL, what it's really about is fears that someone might make more money than they think is seemly by shipping closed-source software that relies on open-source components. Which, fine, if you don't like that, you do you and license the software however you want. But don't begrudge the rest of us for not being quite so worried about that.

As far as the whole ownership thing goes, I'd say it was pretty clearly implied in your first sentence:

> 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

That statement tacitly denies the existence of freelance software developers, by implying that all programmers are working for another company for some sort of salary or wage, and don't ever individually own code themselves. Which isn't quite true, and subtly frames things in a way that strips developers of their moral agency.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#337

Post by icebraining »

ghaff wrote: post #319
icebraining wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

You’re essentially working as contractors for the company in that case though. So you’re effectively part of the company and aren’t really distributing as the term is generally understood. Of course there is some ambiguity as there always is.

No, there's no need for technicalities. The GPL only says you must distribute the source to the people to whom you have distributed binaries. It doesn't say you must publish it publicly.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#338

Post by School-Cotton »

jeremyjh wrote: post #114
School-Cotton wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this meaningfully different from being able to build a multi-billion dollar company like Red Hat on top of other people’s GPLed work? Yes, because of the GPL, they have to give RHEL customers the source to all their patches, but what difference does this make in practice?

> but what difference does this make in practice? CentOS is the difference; it is one of the most widely used distributions has the same stability and longevity characteristics and gets security fixes just as fast as RHEL.

That is a good point. Perhaps a better example would be FAANG making billions and running their servers on Linux, which (IIRC) is what things like the AGPL are designed to prevent.

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#339

Post by madez »

est31 wrote: post #262
Quekid5 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It enriches everyone, even those who I don't necessarily agree with. That's definitely a valid PoV, but you just have to realize/accept that it may empower people who have power over you. I'm mostly talking about economic power here, but with the absurd expansion of lobbying, etc., this may extend to political power, cf. Turbotax[1]. Again: It's ultimately up to you, but for me... I don't want to give big conglomer…

> I think BSD (permissive for developers, maybe restrictive for users) vs. GPL (restrictive for developers, permissive for users) is very similar to the Paradox of Tolerance in a way. It very much boils down to tolerance, yeah. I've made the experience that in the communities where permissive licenses are common, there is much larger tolerance for proprietary software and services than in communities that revolve aro…

The GPL is not self-serving; it is a tool to achieve a type of society, and that is the society you seem to enjoy, too. After all, by what else should be measure the permissive licences vs copyleft licences if not by their influence on society?

Re: My Personal Journey from MIT to GPL

#340

Post by codr7 »

I used to release all my code as GPL. But the more time I spent witnessing the madness that is license wars, the less I felt like contributing to the mess.

I spend a lot of time and effort on my code, and I don't mind sharing it for free. I would prefer if other people tuned into that mindset rather than greedily raping the world for profit.

But adding more rules never seem to help, it always causes more division.

My current perspective is that its simply not my responsibility to push others into doing what I believe is the right thing.

Which is why g-fu [0] is released as MIT.

[0] https://github.com/codr7/g-fu/tree/master/v1

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