371–380 of 468 posts
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No, I was aware that the commenter was on my side. I just suggested an alternative reply to the invalid argument.
No, you suggested the exact same reply he had already given, just in the next paragraph. > it is like saying free speech is not important because you have nothing to say The only thing your "alternative" reply changes from that is grammar.
I dislike people calling the GPL "viral". The thing that is viral is copyright. Copyright is baked into law and nobody can escape it. If you relinquish your own copyright then as soon as someone modifies the work copyright comes back. Copyleft is the only antidote we have for copyright. All Stallman et al really want is to "switch off" copyright. That would be obvious if people would listen to his talks. But instead…
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What if that "bad" is insignificant compared to the good produced by that code as part of proprietary software? That scenario is impossible with GPL. Effectively, you're just restricting the business models of your users. It has worked for some projects (Linux above all) but if you're talking about a small project that likely stays small, I don't know if it usually makes much sense. Also, your convoluted explanation…
> Effectively, you're just restricting the business models of your users. It has worked for some projects (Linux above all) I think you are understating how crucial a license like the GPL was in Linux getting to where we are today. It was essential.
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Blender, Krita, Wordpress, Drupal, Nextcloud and many other projects are commercial and (A)GPL. As long as you share the sources of your modifications, you are free to use their code.
All of the projects you mentioned except Nextcloud are owned and developed by non-profits.
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Without GPL Oracle could make closed source improvements which RedHat could not use, giving Oracle an edge over RedHat. If RedHat then went under because of that we were stuck with a closed source Linux. The Audacity drama is solved by GPL, you can compile your own version without telemetry. Forks will pop up and the Audacity developers will backtrack and remove the offending parts of the code.
Ah, so it's really about making it harder for other players to improve their product? As for Audacity - the exact same thing would have happened with any other Open Source license; GPL doesn't make it any easier.
As for Audacity: its owners couldn't do that without closing their fork, which would mean splitting off with the developer community and becoming irrelevant.
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But from a quick check those are the reverse of the OP implication, in this cases someone takes a big GPL project and inserts a small proprietary thing on top , I would like to see an example where someone had a bit proprietary project, a dev inserted 5 lines GPL code and a judge forced them to GPL everything.
If you are looking for the smallest case, then look at Oracle vs Google multibillion debate about this function: private static void rangeCheck(int arrayLen, int fromIndex, int toIndex) { if (fromIndex > toIndex) throw new IllegalArgumentException("fromIndex(" + fromIndex + ") > toIndex(" + toIndex+")"); if (fromIndex arrayLen) throw new ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException(toIndex); } https://www.copperpodip.com/post/orac…
"Alsup did agree with the jury that the rangeCheck function and eight security files were a copyright infringement, but the only relief available was statutory damages up to a maximum of US$150,000"
So your argument is exactly my point, the license is not infecting your product, you have to pay damages or in case of GPL you have the OPTION to comply with the license and release the code.
Again, copy -pasting some GPL code is not magicaly transforming your other code into GPL. Or the reverse copy pasting some Oracle/Microsoft or Google code in yoru project does not make your project Oracle or MS property.
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Your comment gives the impression that GPL is a set of restrictions that developers are unfairly enforcing upon others. In fact it is the complete opposite: it is a set of permissions granted by the developer which otherwise would probably be forbidden by law.
There is no "probably" about it. Law definitely forbids basically everything that GPL allows, that's why GPL exists: to grant those rights. And of course one would then expect the thankful user to at least honor the same terms. Nothing odd about that to me.
I'm still bummed out that for years, GPL was the "standard" go-to open source license. So many projects became useless for any commercial projects whatsoever. GPL advocates say it's so that your code isn't exploited by corporations. But I'd say that choosing GPL means it's more important to you that your code "is not exploited by corporations" than that it can be used for good by people with commercial interests. Tho…
The GNU Foundation--and the GPL--put one thing at its most important focus: that "users"--the people who are actually using the software and entrusting it with their data or their lives--have guaranteed freedoms. People--such as myself--who use the GPL believe that these freedoms are extremely important: that "users" should be able to get access to the source code for programs and be able to modify them (...and befor…
You are a developer of proprietary software. Your aim is to provide the same freedoms in practice that users enjoy in GPL'd software. What do you do?
There is a sensible and real answer here-- custom software development. If a user is paying a dev/dev-team to build that user some custom software, then barring fraud they have full control over what the software does. Plus, custom software and custom software development probably make up a huge chunk of the dev economy.
But notice that this is nearly never what GPL opponents are talking about. (In fact there is surely overlap between GPL'd software and custom software dev.) Instead they talk about consumer applications, games, etc.-- software which does not give its users the same freedoms as GPL'd software. In this class of software, there must then be an implicit premise: either the freedoms that end-users enjoy in both GPL'd software and custom software do not matter, or some other novel argument that downplays both the practical and ethical benefits of those freedoms.
And here's the thing-- whatever the implicit argument is, it runs counter to the spirit of both GPL'd software and custom software dev.
GPL advocates ought to use this argument to split the opposition between custom software development (regardless of license) on the one hand, and whatever the word is for proprietary software that aims to lock users into a system they can't control on the other.
Btw, the fact that I can't think of the word for the second category is a red flag that GPL advocates do a shit job with their propaganda. :)
Edit: clarification
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Lets take your 10 years one... If a work loses its copyright after 10 years, I could grab emacs 23.3 and make some changes and release it all close source. Or gcc 4.6.1. iText became AGPL in '09.. version 5.1.1 was released 10 years ago (5.5.13 is current) and it could be brought to a closed source library. Whats more, I believe that the photographs that I took 10 years ago still have as much value as the day that I…
Copyright is a complicated thing and I don't pretend to have all the answers. I'm not suggesting to simply reduce the length of copyright and keep everything else the same. I would like to see copyright on software gone completely. Software has a unique purpose in our lives and should not be treated like other creative works such as music and literature. I believe software development would still be good business wit…
You are suggesting depriving artists and writers of their livelihood.
I will agree that the Disney Micky mouse mess is ugly and does make things worse, but making it so that a photograph that I took {N} years ago is no longer something that I am able to protect and gain value from is... not something that I'm ok with. I do still sell the occasional print from a photo I shot a decade (or two) ago. Having someone else take that print and then make a poster from it and sell that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
> Why would it change anything for existing free/open-source software? We'd still have GNU/Linux and the BSDs. If it made proprietary software even worse, then so be it. More reason to use free software.
Open source would lose its protections after that decade. MongoDB for example went AGPL in '09... and that wouldn't be enforceable anymore on that version.
My prediction is that open source would die shortly afterwards since there would be no way to enforce the GPL or any copyleft on old code.
No, open source wouldn't be thriving in that world as it can't enforce its license through copyright.
BSDs wouldn't really notice. Linux and the GPL would find itself closed source - not just locked down and tiviozed. GPLv3 and AGPL would lose all their teeth.
The GPL is there to try to make it easier to hack or tinker with the things you own that use something that has been GPLed. With copyright toothless on old code, that GPL and AGPL gets used without contributions. Proprietary steps up its DRM and licensing - where you're "renting" an application with a subscription so copying it from one computer to another is pointless... but then we're already there for proprietary applications.
A short term copyright is a loss for artists and open source - it doesn't make it worse for exiting proprietary applications.
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What if that "bad" is insignificant compared to the good produced by that code as part of proprietary software? That scenario is impossible with GPL. Effectively, you're just restricting the business models of your users. It has worked for some projects (Linux above all) but if you're talking about a small project that likely stays small, I don't know if it usually makes much sense. Also, your convoluted explanation…
I agree with your point on the usage of the word "bad", this is what the term "relative" that I used implied, as well as the explaination of which specific aspect I think it applies to. I am not sure why you are trying to make fun of me: Permissive licenses ensure that the first generation of users/developers benefit from the code in question being free, and then allow restrictions. Licenses along the lines of the GP…
> So the tree of descendants of an originally "permissively" licensed code contains potentially more restrictions, that the tree of descendants of originally GPL licensed code.
I think the number of users should count as well. A proprietary application distributed to millions results, in a way, in more "freedom" of use (albeit of a thinner scope) compared to a GPL'd application rarely used or distributed.
> This is, as you rightly noted, not how modern business models function.
Some do, some don't. See e.g. Carlo Daffara on open source business models.