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“I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

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Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#81
post #55

Why is a few snippets of code so valuable anyway? We don't GPL scientific research, you expect people to cite you, and then build off your work, the licensing in a sense is far more permissive. You don't GPL maths text books and then require proofs to be licensed back. Other knowledge doesn't seem to propagate in society like this. The human element of the programmer who can understand, adapt and develop some program…

"Few snippets of code" can be pretty large.

I see a lot of value in not pointlessly reinventing the wheel. GPL encourages/enforces people who fix things to give those changes back to upstream where they may benefit everyone. So ideally only one set of fixes per problem has to be globally implemented and maintained.

The implications for global wealth are non-trivial. How much Linux alone has done, I wonder?

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#82
post #11

I’ve looked at some of the Copilot threads but am unable to follow the issue. Can someone summarize what the issue is with Copilot and why a BSD license would have been significant for the code?

1. Someone expressed their concern that fragments of GPL code would end up in projects with non-GPL licenses and called it open source laundering. They were also concerned about the interpretation of derivative work. Could copilot's output be considered a derivative work? https://twitter.com/eevee/status/1410037309848752128?lang=en 2. Someone posted how copilot reproduced the famous fast inverse square root function…

One more critical aspect of the issue:

3. Microsoft decided to exclude proprietary code from copilot learning date. If they were concerned that copilot's output might infringe on other companies proprietary code, they should have the same concerns about free and open source licensed code.

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#83
post #48

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…

Why GPL makes them useless? In my view, if your business requires leeching on unpaid work without contributing back I am happy about my code being useless for you.

GPL makes "them" (especially small one-off libraries) useless because even the smallest part can not be used without therefore needing to "contribute back" the ENTIRE app.

(edited to clarify I don't mean ALL projects become useless through GPL)

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#84
post #55

Why is a few snippets of code so valuable anyway? We don't GPL scientific research, you expect people to cite you, and then build off your work, the licensing in a sense is far more permissive. You don't GPL maths text books and then require proofs to be licensed back. Other knowledge doesn't seem to propagate in society like this. The human element of the programmer who can understand, adapt and develop some program…

> The valuable thing is their time and overall knowledge, not the end piece of content necessarily.

The GPL doesn't give primacy to the thing that's built - but to the user of the thing. The GPL implicitly values the user's freedom over developer's convenience - the opposite is true for BSD-like licenses.

Generally, I feel like the affinity most people have to one license or another entirely depends on how they more closely identify as a user of. software, vs as a developer

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#85
post #48

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…

Why does the GPL license make it "useless for any commercial projects whatsoever"? Many commercial projects use GPL software. The only thing you have to do is provide sources under the same license if you release binaries. If you're not even willing to do that I understand some people rather have you not use their software.

"Not even"? This is a huge requirement for most cases.

A small GPL library for, say, some statistics calculation, would mean an entire product's source code would need to be released if it used the library.

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#86
post #48

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…

> 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.

My take on this is that those two things are almost equivalent. There are very few cases where I wouldn't consider someone using my open source code for financial gain without contributing back to not be exploitation.

If you're making something for personal use or even for some business cases, I see no valid reason you couldn't adhere to the GPL. If, however, you insist that what you make should be your own property and you just want to take what I made as your own and give nothing back to me or the project, then you should pay for dual-licensing or pay your own engineers to develop an alternative.

Open source developers are volunteers - many of us would gladly volunteer at a homelrss shelter, give blood, etc., but I can't imagine you'd find many people willing to volunteer for a company. For reasons why that is, ask anyone who's been in an unpaid internship.

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#87
Just a note that he is speaking from the perspective of someone who already profited immensely from the source code in question before the source was released. Most developers of FOSS never see a single dime and actually do it at net negative monetary benefit not to mention personal cost. All of that purely for the benefit of the collective.

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#88
post #55

Why is a few snippets of code so valuable anyway? We don't GPL scientific research, you expect people to cite you, and then build off your work, the licensing in a sense is far more permissive. You don't GPL maths text books and then require proofs to be licensed back. Other knowledge doesn't seem to propagate in society like this. The human element of the programmer who can understand, adapt and develop some program…

Have you heard of... patents? Why is an idea written on paper so valuable? Why can't people just use it (or, as it often happens, independently rediscover it) and just cite the patent if recognition is required?

As for scientific research, most of the software behind scientific paper is basically closed source. Which is another reason why there's a whole reproducibility problem with science papers: it's quite possible many papers are just bad interpretation of data due to bad software.

Also note how much software / research / data is proprietary. How can one quote that?

I wouldn't mind using only BSD in the future if I get to read the Apple iOS source code on GitHub.

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#89
post #10

There is no empirical evidence in what he says

> There is no empirical evidence in what he says Didn't Apple remove all GPL-based code from the whole iOS and macOS dev infrastructure at some point due to GPL licensing concerns? I also believe Apple sticked for a very long time to an older version of GCC in the past, due to licensing concerns of newer versions of GCC [0]. That was, until Apple replaced GCC with Clang. And I am not sure if GPL-based code can even b…

1) So, Apple's issue with upgrading to newer versions of various projects--such as gcc but I think also very notably bash--was because of GPL3 in specific; but frankly the reason we need GPL3 is because of companies like Apple: it is a shame that all important code wasn't GPL3 from day one, as it might have prevented a lot of the worst issues we are dealing with currently. (It is actually my understanding that the GPL3 was released at almost exactly the same time as the iPhone was announced, which is certainly coincidental but historically "fitting".)

2) Chris Lattner--after he was working for Apple--actually got permissions to offer the copyright for clang over to the Free Software Foundation... which turned it down for (unfortunate) ideological reasons involving hating the idea of compiler libraries (as they undermine GPL compliance) and that Stallman claims to have missed the e-mail (due to incorrect usage of his e-mail client). This was, of course, before GPL3. But it demonstrates that Apple mostly hates GPL3... as GPL2 honestly barely matters in a world of locked bootloaders and pervasive codesign.

3) But like, part of the backstory here is important, as it helps explain--if you accept what I think are immoral goals from Apple as "ok in their eyes" (so you have sympathy or whatever... I clearly don't ;P)--the bad blood between these two groups and the deep suspicions that lead to some of these decisions: Steve Jobs actually had gotten bit before by the GPL, when Next decided to develop an Objective-C frontend and actively tried to circumvent the GPL by building it in such a way where users would link it later to gcc-as-a-library.

People disagree on whether this was a good result for GCC or not, partially on the grounds that the Objective-C frontend wasn't that useful without the Objective-C runtime library, and the GNU replacement for that was--until somewhat recently (by which I mean in the grand scheme of things, versus when this story started, as RMS can be found talking about in 1992 already this using the phrase "long ago")--always lagging so far behind as to be kind of useless (as Objective-C really "got good" much later, particularly with Objective-C 2.0). But like, that there was some kind of argument going on here that left scars on both parties--a scenario that specifically involves this specific project and player that are almost always cited as if without any "history"--is important.

And FWIW, Apple does actually take advantage of the fact that they don't have to release the changes they make to LLVM to prevent collaboration: as a particularly amazing example, they kept the arm64 backend for long enough that Google was forced to lead a community effort to write their own (which I do think they called aarch64, but maybe I'm misremembering) from scratch; but then, when the community was ready to begin mainlining it, Apple decided finally to release their arm64 backend and insisted that everyone work on merging them, which set everyone back on the 64-bit Android front even further. (And like, sure: why should anyone get to benefit from the work Apple poured into their backend? That's their competitive advantage, after all... except in a world of GPL that's the pact everyone is agreeing to: "Apple got to benefit from our work, so we should get to benefit from Apple's work". It certainly isn't like Apple developed LLVM... god I hope Chris Lattner was sufficiently compensated by them when they hired him and took over that project, but frankly knowing Apple I can't imagine he was :/.)

Re: “I wish I could have licensed the Id source code releases as BSD”

#90
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As he says in the linked tweet: the major value the GPL contributed is the code being open-sourced in the first place, since his co-copyright-holders would never have agreed to license it BSD. The alternative to the GPL, in this case, was "(c) All Rights Reserved", which is still how most other old games are licensed.

So valuing that his co-holders didn't want to opensource is good for the open source community? That seems backwards.

Que? They were obviously fine with open-sourcing, just not under BSD license.
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