GPL 3 As Bonfire of the Vanities

morganew writes "Jonathan Zuck has written a CNET Op-ed stating that the GPL 3 is about returning the flock to the faith, and is reminiscent of Savonarola's 'Bonfire of the Vanities', urging true believers to burn things that took their eyes off God. From Article: 'The commercial humanists such as Lawrence Lessig with his Creative Commons initiative have turned away from the Old Testament, and the GPL 3.0 license is a call to the faithful to reject these vanities'. Given the reaction by Linus Torvalds and nearly all the OSS business community to the GPL 3, are we going to see a break in the church?"

Full Disclosure

[gowen (141411)]

When reading any socio-political article, be sure you know who the author works for [wikipedia.org].

Re:Full Disclosure

[gowen (141411)]

Or do we have to throw some "Ad Hominem" at him?

It's not ad hominem to point out that someone may have been paid to hold a certain opinion, any more than it's ad hominem to point out that the White House press secretary's statements may be phrased in such a way to reflect well on the President.

Re:Full Disclosure

[Doctor Faustus (127273)]

It's not ad hominem to point out that someone may have been paid to hold a certain opinion
Just so long as you're not going on to say that what that person's saying should be ignored because of it. He could still be right, even if he's saying something in his employer's best interest.

Besides, in this case, he appears to be arguing against something that would benefit Microsoft.

Re:Full Disclosure

[Chmarr (18662)]

Yes, it does matter, because *I* want to know *WHO* is making the opinion, and what agenda might be satisfied by publishing the opinion. This way, I can decide which elements I can reasonably trust on faith, and which elements may have ulterior motives for pomulgating.

Re:Full Disclosure

[gowen (141411)]

Does it matter if he got paid for his opinion?

Of course it bloody matters.

It doesn't necessarily invalidate his opinion (and I never said it did -- that would be argument ad hominem) but it should cast a certain amount of doubt as to whether he reached those opinions through research, or is just parroting his employers opinions.

Who would you trust more : a NASA scientist who warned you about global warning, or an Exxon scientist who told you that global warming was a myth? Why?

Tell me : if you were on trial, would you like the witnesses against you to have been paid by the prosecution?

Re:Here's what you did say

[Frymaster (171343)]

That is ad hominem. Whether he was paid or not has absolutely no bearing on the accuracy of his statements.
You can check the accurracy of his statements and decide if they are correct.

correct. attempting to invalidate someone's statements by pointing out they have been paid to make them is ad hominem. just because a person, in a worst case scenario, makes a cynical statement merely for personal profit has absolutely no bearing on the truth of that statement whatsoever.

now, having said that, i went and read the article and have come to the conclusion that the real purpotrator of fallicies in this thread is Jonathan Zuck himself. the entire rambling piece is little more than a bag of poor analogies propped up as straw men, miscontextualized quotes and mild ad hominem. this is a gross exercise in rhetoric that brings approprixmately zero new insight to discussion about the future of the gpl.

Re:Here's what you did say

[slagell (959298)]

Ah, if only every argument was a purely deductive proof that we could analyze as such. Then a person's bias would have little effect on the efficay of their arguments. However, there are 2 major problems. First, most arguments only contain bits of induction in a much larger argument that has deductive and inductive parts (usually some crap too). Instead of "proving" anything, they person making the argument will supply a bunch of evidence. Bias often causes people to highlight the "evidence" in their favor, and brush aside evidence not in their favor. So when you hear an argument from a person with a strong agenda, you really should stop to think about what counter evidence has been overlooked or brushed aside. The second problem affects even the purely deductive kind of argument that might bring Aristotle himself to orgasm. This is that we must still evaluate the premises of any argument, and decide if they are reasonable. Not knowing everything in the universe, people really on expert opinion in many cases to determine whether these premises are sound. So credability becomes very important. Thus, in addition to what is being said, who is saying it does matter. The court system certainly recognizes this with the use of "expert witnesses". You can never logically just brush something off as false because it was said by a certain person, just as being hypocritical doesn't make you wrong. But unless the argument made is a 100% deductive proof with very simple assumptions, then the "who" as well as the "what" is important in evaluating the argument.

Attack of the killer motives

[rumblin'rabbit (711865)]

It is all the rage these days to attack a person's motives rather than their arguments. I wonder sometimes if it's due to the prevalence of postmodernism in the universities, where subjectivity (e.g., "whose truth?") reigns supreme.

It's sad and intellectually lazy.

Re:Attack of the killer motives

[gowen (141411)]

That would be a valid point if the author had constructed a coherent, fact-based argument. But in fact, the article is little more than a list of unsupported assertions about other peoples motives.

And the natural reaction to such an article is to ask "Why would someone write such a thing?"

And the answer is invariably the same : "Money".

Huh?

[Moby Cock (771358)]

a break in the church?

I thought it was a Bazaar.

Are we going to see a break in the church?

[by Anonymous Coward]

GPL 3: "I've created OSS Lutherans!"

It's technology, for Pete's sakes

[by Anonymous Coward]

Why is it that with every new or good thing someone should come, make a "cause" out of it, preferably a religion or something equally mindless, based on faith and not reason, and then wave banners of the newfound dogma in our faces while stuffing his proverbial coffers with capital.

I say its technology, and any selfrighteous sermonizing jackass that wants to make religious wars based on it can go and do it with himself, for all I care.

Re:It's technology, for Pete's sakes

[Andy_R (114137)]

I'd say it's social engineering, or possibly economics, not technology. There isn't much in the GPL that could not be applied to computing 30 years ago, or collaborative text authorship 100 years ago.

The GPL issue is possibly the first really large-scale one that the computer geek community has to address that is not simply technology-led, it's led by ideology and/or conscience.

Wow

[endrue (927487)]

That has got to be the most strangled and embarrasing analogy I have ever heard. It makes me feel all dirty - like I'm in some kind of cult. Lighten up!

Above religion?

[bubulubugoth (896803)]

Aren`t we, technology advocates, above this kind of faithfull belive, and use more rational tougths and critical tougths?

I sure know that, sometimes, only very few sometimes, almost never, we the "techs" tend to be fanatics...

But this is getting creepy, GPL3 is just a license, to protect information, over one simple filosophical belive: Free of information.

Hell, reading about flocks, faith, damn... what`s next? To adore the holy chip of Intel?

Re:Above religion?

[Luscious868 (679143)]

Nope. Just look at the comments in any article about Google or Appple.

MOD PARENT DOWN!!!

[gEvil (beta) (945888)]

Parent post is critical of Google and Apple!

Reasoning from analogies

[hey! (33014)]

Reasoning from analogies is like tying your shoes with laces made of butter.

What is the problem?!

[ajs318 (655362)]

We believe that every user of software has four basic rights: the right to ENJOY the software, the right to STUDY how the software works, the right to SHARE the software with others and the right to ADAPT the software to their needs. We believe that these rights spring directly from the existence of software, are fundamental and can never be signed away.

THE RIGHT TO ENJOY

We believe that everyone has the right to use software that they have legitimately acquired, for any purpose: it is for the user to determine whether it is suitable for a particular application. If the supplier of a program were somehow unfairly to impose their will upon the user, perhaps by stipulating that the program should not be used for certain purposes, that would constitute an act of violence.

THE RIGHT TO STUDY

We believe that every user of a program has the right to study how that program works. If the user of a program wishes to replicate a particular piece of functionality from that program, they have the right to examine the program in order to determine how the functionality is performed. Nobody should be forced to re-invent the wheel. The supplier of a program does not have the right to keep secret from any rightful user how the program works: by allowing someone else to use the program, they have invited that person in on the secret.

If the creator of a process wishes to keep secret the details of a process, then that is their prerogative. Effectively, they are providing a service: a customer supplies the materials; the provider of the service takes them away, does something secret, and later returns a finished product to the customer. The customer has certain rights in respect of the transaction, including the right to decline the transaction altogether based upon the level of secrecy expected by the supplier. Where the right to study a program is denied, the user {customer} is expected to provide the supplier with not just the raw materials {input to the program}, but also the resources to carry out the process {computer time and disk space}. This diminishes the quid pro quo, and so is potentially an unfair transaction.

Access to the source code is highly desirable in the exercise of this right.

THE RIGHT TO SHARE

We believe that all the fruits of all human endeavour properly belong to all of humankind.

Software can be shared without being diminished by the act of sharing: if I give a copy of a program to my neighbour, I still have a copy. {Of course, I no longer have the exclusive use of that software. This exclusivity is a form of artificial scarcity.} Nobody has the right to impose their will on my neighbour and say that they should not use a particular program: to do so would be a form of violence.

THE RIGHT TO ADAPT

We believe that every user of a program has the right to adapt that program to their own needs. Nobody should be forced to adapt their method of working to suit the way that someone else believes that the job should be done that would constitute unfairly imposing one's will on another, which is a form of violence.

Access to the source code is highly desirable in the exercise of this right.

DELEGATION OF RIGHTS

We further believe that any user who is not skilled in the art of computer programming, or who simply desires to delegate the task to another, has the right to employ a competent programmer [2] of their choice and whom they trust, to assist them in the exercise of their rights to enjoy, study, share and adapt computer software; and that every competent programmer has the right to run a business based on providing such services in a free market. These services might include independent appraisal of the program to determine its suitability for a particular application {which is contingent upon the right to study}; modification to tailor the program to the customer's working

Re:What is the problem?!

[fossa (212602)]

I find your arguments distrubing. You say he does not have the "right" to ask for part of your paycheck. Nor does he have the "right" to copy "your" software. I say the former is very different from the latter. In the latter case, you are asking him to give up some of his freedom: the freedom to copy. His copying does not directly affect you in any way. In the former case, he is asking something of you that does directly affect you. You have no right to demand that others limit their freedom for the mere claim that you "own" the "right" to copy. Now, it so happens that we as a society have decided that allowing you to do so temporarily will be beneficial for the promotion of the progress of science and the useful arts. But there is nothing inherent that says you should be able to limit his freedom in this way as his actions do not affect you. So, please, throw out the "I own it so he can't copy it" argument. Instead, argue that society should agree to prevent him fom copying. And it better have a damn good reason to do so.

Freedom to Create Free Software is Good

[digitaldc (879047)]

Enter Girolamo Savonarola, a Dominican priest, who came to power in Florence in 1494. He viewed all of this "humanism" as vanity, turning people's heads away from the word of God and true religion. He took a very severe stand against the new scholarship, culminating in a series of bonfires in the town square, where many great works of art and science were lost. These fires have come to be known as the "Bonfire of the Vanities."
Like Savonarola, Richard Stallman takes a similarly religious stance on software development, rather than a practical one. For Stallman, the concept that software be "free, as in freedom" is the only concern in the creation of software.

At first, I was thinking that Stallman, was the opposite of someone like Savonarola, since he encourages 'freedom' in software creation and not adhering to strict rules or religion. And freedom should include the freedom to create any software you like, totally free or hybrid - though this is not exactly what Stallman envisioned. But of course, all this 'freedom' could lead to something altogether different - 'not free' code and this could not be named 'public.'

I do not see the point of this person's article, except to stir up bad feelings against Stallman. Maybe since the guy works for the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT), he has an agenda to push - creating disdain for the concept of free software? ACT doesn't like OpenOffice, so they probably do not like Stallman either.

Religious debate?

[truthsearch (249536)]

Many in the commercial software community call open vs. closed source a religious debate. They argue they're on the pragmatic side. The open source community often tries to portray their side as practical, not idealistic. Framing this in religious tones in not going to help. It only stokes the fires and brings this article's author more readers. I see this as just media sensationalism with some facts thrown in.

What is the GPL3 Fight All About?

[tabdelgawad (590061)]

This is a real question to those who have spent more time thinking about this and have a better understanding. My impression was that RMS is trying to respond to the possibility, courtesy of DRM and 'Trusted Computing', that a company could take GPL software, make (and publish) modifications, then release a version that cannot be modified further and still run. This would transform GPL software to a 'Look But Don't Tinker' variety. After a while, for example, you wouldn't be able to meaningfully branch a project. Is this about right? If so, is the fight about this goal of GPL3 or the particular methods/language it uses?

FSF stands up against Big Money and Big Brother!

[billybob2 (755512)]

Richard Stallman correctly predicted many of the ways in which Big Corporations and Big Brother will use DRM [eff.org] (also known as Digital Restrictions Management, Treacherous Computing, or Handcuffware) to enslave people. Just read the essay he wrote, titled "Can you trust your computer? [gnu.org]" and look at some of the recent [slashdot.org] Slashdot [slashdot.org] stories [slashdot.org] and you'll see that he's been all along.

I have nothing but respect for Stallman's courage to take on the powerful and wealthy interests that want to subjugate the populace. This is the time to show our gratitude for his uncompromising ideals by donating to the Free Software Foundation [fsf.org] (which Richard Stallman founded and leads) and to the Electronic Frontiers Foundation [eff.org].

Re:So what are its real legal effects?

[giorgiofr (887762)]

What's so immoral, anti-social, or religious about giving someone a gift?

Nothing! There's nothing immoral in the BSD lic... oh wait...