81–85 of 85 posts
Does anyone else see the total irony in this? Considering that both Ruby and Git (two of the core technologies GitHub runs on) are both GPL. People can use whatever OSS license they want, I certainly have no gripe with him using the MIT license, but I could do without the dogma.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>then your position in the market is based on imperfect information (and therefore, monopolization power). Good! Who wants their living standard to be dependent on a never ending rat race of constantly out-innovating competitors? Especially when there are really big players out there that can throw huge resources into taking your market share.
If your marketshare is based on amount of resources, then your position is sustained by entry barriers, not your skills. If someone can gather the resources and do better than you, then it's better for all the market - not just you. What you do with AGPL is making sure that if it is based on your knowledge, you will be able to improve from who has already improved from you. If you can't stand someone to do better tha…
So what. Even if I were the best programmer to ever live today, I won't always be. I don't want to starve when I'm older and not as good.
>If you can't stand someone to do better than you and you can't learn from him
It's not about learning. I have no problem learning. The problem is I need to eat to live, I need a place to stay and so on. I have to compete in a free market against others and there are plenty of people out there who will try to undercut your prices because that's easier making a better product. If I give them my work I've just made their job that much easier.
> I think that is for lazy people, they want money for an idea from people who actually implement it - work.
Complete nonsense. The issue is; technology advances take research. Stealing something you've seen someone else do can be done very quickly. If a person comes up with a new way of doing things, a novel new take on an old idea (e.g. the iPad), as soon as they put it out there everyone could just steal the idea if not for patents. They need to charge a certain amount of money to make the time they spent researching worthwhile but the people who just copy don't have those expenses.
>A free market relies on perfect informatios on whatever technology is being used
Could you provide an example of any market anywhere in the world that has perfect information? Markets are neither efficient nor entirely rational.
>if the supplier fully opens and doesn't lock in them
But this isn't "open source". When a company outsources software development they demand the source be made available to them and no one else. They would never pay if the source was going to be made available to their competitors upon completion.
"the GPL is too restrictive and dogmatic to be usable in many cases" Does anyone else see the total irony in this? Considering that both Ruby and Git (two of the core technologies GitHub runs on) are both GPL. People can use whatever OSS license they want, I certainly have no gripe with him using the MIT license, but I could do without the dogma.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So somebody who is making a proprietary thing is not restricting anyone by using an MIT or BSD licensed component. Of course you are! You are restricting your customers' freedom. The idea of the GPL is bigger than just giving you, a software developer, freedom to use it. The GPL ensures that your final end user also had all the freedoms that the you, the middle man, had. They can stand on the shoulders of you, who…
Agree to disagree then. The alternative to Windows and OS X is not GPL-licensed Windows and GPL-licensed OS X, it's no Windows and no OS X, and we still have BSDs, Linux, and other open source systems in the ecosystem. Nobody who wants an open source OS has been restricted, and those who want a different experience than open source provides have the freedom to choose a proprietary OS. If someone wants an open source…
BUT, I do think you can objectively measure "freedom" as it relates to software. The people who tend to complain about the GPL being "restrictive" are people that want to take code and release something proprietary. From their perspective the license is forbidding them to do what they want to do and is therefore restricive. But that's only considering themselves and not the people they are releasing the program to which is why I characterized it as "selfish". I think if you step back and look at why the GPL requires you to distribute the source with your binaries it is obvious that they are trying to give your customers the same freedoms you had. That objectively increases the amount of freedom in the whole software ecosystem.
> If you don't understand that's fine, but I am absolutely not restricted by the proprietary software that I choose to use.
Yeah, you are restricted--You are not allowed to compile up the source to your legitimately purchased Photoshop. I fully understand that you don't care (and I don't either [well, until there's a stupid bug]), but to say that you're not restricted is to, I think, misunderstand the situation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agree to disagree then. The alternative to Windows and OS X is not GPL-licensed Windows and GPL-licensed OS X, it's no Windows and no OS X, and we still have BSDs, Linux, and other open source systems in the ecosystem. Nobody who wants an open source OS has been restricted, and those who want a different experience than open source provides have the freedom to choose a proprietary OS. If someone wants an open source…
I think you may be jumping to conclusions about what I think. I'm generally OK with proprietary software--I use Mac OS X on my main computer. I've paid lots of money for proprietary applications. I've released source under a variety of licenses (including GPL, proprietary and BSDish) and feel that they each have their place. I do feel much better using open source stuff because I know the rug is never going to be pul…
--
Ok I see what you mean about thinking that the GPL is restrictive is selfish. I don't think it's necessarily bad to be selfish sometimes. Everyone has to earn a living and wanting to do so is inherently selfish. It's difficult to earn a living off selling and supporting open source software. Sure RedHat does it, and Cygnus does it. There are far more failures though. It seems that the best way to create open source software for a living is to work for a big company that sponsors a project such as Linux, LLVM, or something like that. The rest of us sell proprietary software and services and until you have a lot of momentum I don't think it's wise to open source everything. Releasing your project under the GPL or AGPL from day one is scary for most people. Selfish? Absolutely. Necessarily bad? Not in my opinion.
> Yeah, you are restricted--You are not allowed to compile up the source to your legitimately purchased Photoshop. I fully understand that you don't care (and I don't either [well, until there's a stupid bug]), but to say that you're not restricted is to, I think, misunderstand the situation.
It depends on your point of view. There's the point of view that RMS has: we have all been duped by big corporations. We're captives, and just because we like our prison and can't see the fences doesn't mean we are not restricted. This is the "captive" definition of restrict.
Another definition of restrict is to limit someone's movement or actions, as in "restrict someone to", or "restrict something to". Is one really limited if they don't care about those limits? I think this is where it's easy to get bogged down in semantics and philosophy.
Nation states limit and restrict us in many ways. Is that necessarily bad? Technically we are restricted, but is it useful to try and convince everyone that we've all been duped and anarchy is the true way to bee free? What if you just live in a country that is "free enough" and allows you to do what you want to do, without feeling restricted? If I'm thinking idealistically then yes a state of anarchy where everyone behaves in a cooperative and cordial manner sounds like bliss. But unfortunately that just doesn't work in real life.