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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”

#91

Post by saurik »

reidrac wrote: post #53
dman wrote: post #3

This headline is a bit sensationalist. His tweet at the end says - "I'm still supportive of lots of GPL work, but I don't think the restrictions helped in this particular case." He also says - "but tons of opportunities to just copy-paste-modify were lost due to license concerns". It appears that the goal John was shooting for was to have as broad an impact by having the code being reused in as many situations as pos…

I think you're right; this is more about choosing the right license to support your means than a general BSD vs GPL. I find interesting his point of view compared to his partners': he would have preferred if the code was used by more people, his partners were more worried perhaps about competition (if anyone released a game based on their code, they had to contribute the changes back; which is something id could use…

While your theory is quite possible, it is worth noting (just to make sure that the premise of GPL is well-defended) that it is also possible his partners were more concerned about "freedom": that their new engine should benefit the commons rather than getting co-opted by people who don't care about end users, and that they would have preferred that their groundbreaking technology encourage more open source games.

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

#92

Post by foxes »

wildmanx wrote: post #75
foxes wrote: 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…

I think the key property of the GPL is its virality. It's part of the vision that if I can use some software, I can also change it, to adapt it to my needs, to learn from it, to build something on top of it. I can disassemble my bike, re-assemble it, change it, build on top of it. I want to do that with my browser, my OS kernel and my image viewer too. That this is connected to how "valuable" code is, is in a sense a…

Well I agree in that regard, but I think in the ideal world everything would just be open, and you would want to incentivise openness so it ends up as the natural state. In a sense by decoupling these issues. Eg Microsoft Windows OS could just be open source. There is some value to having windows itself, but the more valuable thing is the horde of programmers, and all the other resources behind it.

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

#93

Post by throwaway984393 »

epaga wrote: 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…

Nobody knew back in the day that this strange idea called "open source licensed software" would become a big deal. And when it did become a big deal, there still wasn't enough practical examples to inform us which license to choose. At the time, corporations were not "taking advantage" of open source licenses, and we had no idea they would later on. So corporations weren't really a factor for us. It was more about source code freedom / user freedom.

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

#94

Post by dspillett »

epaga wrote: 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.

I'd say that for a lot of people using the GPL that is exactly correct, but they distinguish between the people using the code and the commercial interest that they work for much more than your wording suggests. That good person will eventually move on, potentially leaving just the commercial interest.

Of course there are more extreme views (that good people and commercial interests do not mix) so it isn't that simple for all.

And there is the obvious twist of the point that by avoiding the use code covered by GPL, someone is tacitly stating that the potential for commercial exploitation is an option that they (directly or via following their employers' wishes) expressly want to keep available.

This is why some projects dual license, but that can have its own problems for projects with many maintainers or forks - sharing back becomes a relicensing issue of it's own (it is less of an issue for a protect maintained by small team, or a team of one).

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

#95

Post by drran »

bifrost wrote: post #14
bawolff wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither license gives you the right to see the source. GPL only gives you the right if the software is distributed to you, and im pretty sure BSD gives you no rights in that regard.

Sure, but you're claiming the GPL enabled "reading the source" which is patently false.

GPL protects the right to see the source of a binary distributed to you, so, in some cases, it enables reading of the code.

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

#96

Post by foxes »

xunn0026 wrote: post #88
foxes wrote: 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 possibl…

I agree scientific papers should be open source. It is not acceptable there is a proliferation of bad practice. That seems a different issue however.

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

#97

Post by drran »

epaga wrote: post #83
matkoniecz wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Which is very useful feature for me, the author of GPL'ed code.

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

#98

Post by [deleted] »

epaga wrote: 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…

[deleted]

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

#99

Post by 3np »

epaga wrote: post #85
CorrectHorseBat wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In that case you’re very free to not use such a GPL library.

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

#100

Post by saurik »

throwaway984393 wrote: post #61

Twitter makes for a bad blogging \ platform

I think it works best when people use it like a slide deck--the kind you create and then "send" to someone, as opposed to the kind that is used as a visual aid for a talk or lecture--and carefully organize their tweets so that they have one semi-isolatable (but hopefully rather complete) thought/insight per message. I agree that John Carmack, as evidenced by these tweets, does not seem to know (or care about) how to do that :(... but I've totally seen people do it well; and then, as a "blogging platform", it has the superpower of letting people branch graphs out of your deck, highlighting and commenting on slides while still retaining their context as part of a global discussion.
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