We Don't Need the GPL Anymore 919
jpkunst writes "In a lengthy interview with Eric S. Raymond by Federico Biancuzzi at O'Reilly's onlamp.com, ESR defends his position that 'Open source would be succeeding faster if the GPL didn't make lots of people nervous about adopting it.'" From the article: "I don't think the GPL is the principal reason for Linux's success. Rather, I believe it's because in 1991 Linus was the first person to find the right social architecture for distributed software development. It wasn't possible much before then because it required cheap internet; and after Linux, most people who might otherwise have founded OS projects found that the minimum-energy route to what they wanted was to improve Linux. The GPL helped, but I think mainly as a sort of social signal rather than as a legal document with teeth."
He's right, of course (Score:5, Insightful)
And ESR would have another chance to get it right.
GPL is very much needed (Score:5, Insightful)
RTFA (Score:3, Insightful)
While we're at it... (Score:4, Insightful)
ESR on drugs (Score:4, Insightful)
The GPL is the one well-thought out licence, and AFAIK it's the only Free/Open-Source Software license ever to actually stand up in court.
ESR, shut the fuck up, you've done your good deeds, now don't start destroying it all just because you're not in the spotlight anymore.
It's not the GPL that makes people nervous (Score:5, Insightful)
-1 Flamebait (Score:3, Insightful)
He's just sour he couldn't come up with the GPL in the first place. All he has done with his so-called "open source initiative" is try to steal the FSF's thunder. The guy is chronically jalous of RMS.
If not, he would acknowledge that the GPL is far more than the licence of Linux. Truth is, the GPL is the constitution of the Free Software movement. As such, it protects all software under it. Not just Linux.
Re:He's right, of course (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:He's right, of course (Score:5, Insightful)
FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and all the other operating systems based on the BSD license were not made obsolete by Microsoft, even if they do use some BSD code. The introduction of BSD code into Microsoft Windows did not magically make it a superior operating system. Neither would Linux code in Windows.
Your entire argument is a straw man.
Amazing (Score:3, Insightful)
sPh
Counterpoint (Score:5, Insightful)
KHTML isn't the biggest project out there, but it's in the top few % for size and complexity, I'd bet. Imagine what a private company could do to a smaller project.
Re:He's right, of course (Score:3, Insightful)
Goodbye (Score:0, Insightful)
The topics don't cater to the thinking person anymore here - and for a site that doesn't provide anything original, the irritating "dumbing down and intentionally misleading" topics have irritated me one too many times. If someone wants to start another site with less noise, even if there are 20-50 replies instead of 500, count me in.
Re:Other licenses are becoming more common (Score:5, Insightful)
Without GPL were doomed! (Score:5, Insightful)
Dont even think for a minute that the world is so "well-adapted" and would play nice if we took away GPL.
Let me take http://www.blender3d.org/ [blender3d.org] as an example. The community bought this excellent piece of 3d software free from the grasp of shareholders and re-licensed it to GPL.
Thanks to that, its relatively safe from its actual competitors such as Discreet(AutoDesk), Alias etc. This program is so powerful that it actually can compete with the big ones, I know... I use it commercially today to develop artworks for ad-campaings that bring food on the table, but the GPL license made it affordable for me to get a "start" on my own instead of having to invest thousands of dollars into expensive 3d-software.
The big companies see us as potential customers as long as Blender where inferior to their software, but now as it has grown bigger...and more companies/personal users etc. are using it...
Dont go thinking theyll play it nice forever...losing customers theyll look for an "edge" somewhere...such as a license infringement...maybe code or functions that are equal to theirs SUE SUE SUE!
Darl McBride anyone?
We need GPL, now more than ever!
Re:He's right, of course (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple did simply embrace and extend BSD. Nobody seemed to mind, and Apple ended up with a rather good OS.
Naive Optimism (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone's been hanging around too many honest engineers. This statement grossly underestimates the selfishness of people and corporations as well as the impact of a strong legal system. Look, I'm not saying the GPL is the only important factor but I can't logically see linux existing in anywhere near its current form without it. Even if most individuals would respect other people's work (and that's retardedly naive) some people and most corporations will not. In fact, corporate management has a fiduciary duty to make as much profit as possible for their shareholders and they're under a lot of pressure to do it. There are MUCH easier (and proven) ways to make high margin profits with software than the open source model. Without legal teeth to enforce keeping software in the community it simply wouldn't happen. It's pretty safe to assume that nearly all people and companies act in their short term self interest first and foremost. Always. No exceptions.
Re:GPL Teeth? (Score:4, Insightful)
Alternativly they just don't read it properly.
You don't have to open everything. Just the stuff that is a derrivative of the GPLed program.
Those companies try to make you believe they have this huge pile of code and they add a little bit of GPL code. It usually is the other way around: they use huge amounts of GPL code (e.g. an entire kernel) and add a little bit off their own.
Jeroen
Re:ESR on drugs (Score:4, Insightful)
Why does Slashdot keep publishing his idiocies [slashdot.org]?
Re:He's right, of course (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:GPL Teeth? (Score:4, Insightful)
Here is what would happen if someone infringing upon the GPL ever refused to settle:
(Paraphrased from a talk given by Ebden Moglen [wikipedia.org]. I don't remember which it was, but I think it was one of the ones linked from that article.)
Re:He's right, of course (Score:2, Insightful)
That's not the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Not having the slightest idea what the GPl requires. (See countless "They don't have downloadable source code on their website! GPL violation!!!" stories here.)
2) Declaring violations of "the spirit of the GPL" that pretty much cover anything "the community" decides it deserves and isn't getting.
The recent Safari-KHTML brouhaha indicates why companies face risk from even the most careful use of others' GPL code.
Re:-1 Flamebait (Score:3, Insightful)
ESR is such a troll.
While I don't consider myself an ESR fan, reading TFA, I got the impression that the one doing the trolling was in fact the interviewer. IMHO his questions are constantly trying to sucker ESR into saying something stupid (more page views => more advertising revenue?), but this time ESR manages to keep his head cool and answers pretty rationally.
Re:GPL the bane of my life.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Follow the terms of the license or don't use our software. Like any other. We just happen to think our terms are better than everybody elses.
Re:Not really. (Score:4, Insightful)
superiority of open source (Score:4, Insightful)
Much has been made of the difference in philosophy of the "free software" and "open source" camps (too much, perhaps); this is a pretty clear statement of Eric's perspective.
Re:He's right, of course (Score:2, Insightful)
And ?
Does this make the original BSD code non available ? The answer is no.
Does this make the original BSD code trapped ?
The answer is no.
So what happens ?
We have BSD code and people can grab it to build upon it. This has no impact on the free code itself and it is still available to us.
What does happen in the long term ?
Company X takes BSD code and builds on it. When the next release of the BSD code appears, they have to integrate their changes to the new version. This costs time and money.
And the risk is that BSD people could make changes that heavily break their own proprietary code.
In the long term, and as we get important changes to the BSD code, they will understand that their benefits are to release their code to the BSD people. Hoping that some of their stuff will get integrated into the BSD base, because the more of it gets there, the less work they will have to do.
If we base ourselves our real world facts concerning this, company X starts building on BSD code and keeps their changes proprietary. After some time, they will open the code and propose it as they build more code they won't release immediatly.
The BSD and GPL licences are complementary. We should use BSD licence for code we want to spread as much as possible like formats, protocols. TCP/IP was spread in part because of this in an era where each vendor tried to push his own proprietary network protocols.
The GPL licence should be used to protect everything that could have a value in the commercial world that we want to protect like office-like programs and so on.
This idea of complementary BSD-GPL licences does come from a friend called Emmanuel Dreyfus, a NetBSD developer and the more I think about it, the clever it looks to me
(Gilbert Fernandes)
(gilbert.fernandes _at_ club-internet *dot* fr)
Re:He's right, of course (Score:4, Insightful)
What if Microsoft incorporated more open software- would that be a good thing, or a bad thing?
Re:Naive Optimism (Score:1, Insightful)
In the beginning, the question wasn't "will the proprietary software industry run off and make money with this", it was a sort of prisoner's dilemma of "i'll share my software if you share yours". That's the nut that the GPL cracked.
today, is it still necessary? Look, let people share their stuff the way they want to. It's about freedom.
Contributors! Contributors! (Score:3, Insightful)
A lot of people already wrote GPLed software before Linux was released for that and other reasons. I wonder how feature-rich Linux distributions would be if they accepted only BSD-licensed software. Even people who do serious kernel work might want to get paid if someone uses their kick-ass algorithms in a closed-source OS.
kde, gnome, gnu* (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:GPL is very much needed (Score:2, Insightful)
CherryOS?
You miss his main argument (Score:2, Insightful)
Now the way he arrives at this conclusion is the interesting part, I think.
His basic argument is that open source developement is a superior system of production.
Now if that is the case, there really is no need for the GPL, as companies who don't participate in this superior system (that is, take open source code and turn it into closed source) are in fact punishing themselves.
I don't know if I really agree with him on that, but it's at least an interesting and thought provoking argument.
Re:Very Odd (Score:1, Insightful)
I have to disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
I have to disagree with Eric. Certainly open-source would be more widely adopted if it didn't use the GPL, but it wouldn't be more successful. A lot of it's success is because of features that've gotten added over time as people needed them. The GPL is what enforces that add-back. Without it individuals would probably contribute back but corporate-sponsered development would've probably been locked up on the grounds of "protecting our precious IP". We would've lost a lot of features, and we would've seen a splintering like we did with Unix itself as companies fought to make their own subtly-incompatible versions of software to insure their customers stayed locked in and buying from them. We saw Microsoft try this with the non-GPL'd Kerberos software, and the only thing that prevented it was MIT getting nasty about trademarks. Without the GPL this would be the norm, not an exceptional example.
Re:Counterpoint (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, do, because this is a great example of where the GPL doesn't make any difference. Apple effectively forked KHTML (as near as I can tell, accidentally), but it was legal to do so under the GPL... they didn't need to do anything more than release the source code. Instead, in response, they opened up the CVS and the bug database. Not because the GPL forced them to, but because the chose to.
If KHTML had been under the BSDL, would Apple have taken it away completely? Legally, they could have, but they haven't done that for other open source components in Mac OS X... the source trees at opensource.apple.com and opendarwin.org include code under BSDL, APSL, GPL, and more.
AT&T took BSD code and forked it, and nobody cared until USL tried to shut down the open-source BSD... and that BSD code turned out to be just the lever that Berkeley needed to bring USL to heel.
Microsoft's using GPL code and BSD code in Interix, and that has neither let them "outperform" Cygwin nor forced Microsoft to open Interix one skerrick more. Microsoft's been using BSD code in Windows for years, but that same code was re-implemented in Linux... if the code had been GPLed, would Linux somehow be more outperforming BSD in the market, would NT have been less successful? Personally, I wish Microsoft had used more of the BSD stack rather than mostly borrowing userland tools, it would have made socket programming in Windows a lot easier... and more compatible.
So, over and over again, we see that it's not the license that matters, it's the attitude of the people using it.
The GPL doesn't stop you from forking the code base. The GPL doesn't stop different open source groups from forking the code base. The GPL doesn't stop groups using the same code base from developing functionally equivalent packages on top of that GPLed code. Heck, sometimes the only way to bring a code base forward is to fork and switch, and Nokia at least seems to think that's a great idea...
If they could truly go their own ways without Apple showing anything they did but KDE showing everything, I think it's pretty clear Apple could run ahead of KDE.
But instead, Apple is voluntarily choosing to take part on the open market of ideas to a far greater degree than any license commits them to. They could easily pull a Sveasoft and release source code grudgingly enough that KHTML would forever remain the junior fork.
What ESR's saying now is what BSD advocates have been saying for years. Companies that are interested in being productive partners will be productive partners no matter what license you use, and companies that aren't will find ways to stick to the letter of the license while completely gutting its spirit.
Actually ESR misses the point. (Score:5, Insightful)
> NetBSD is a worthy project, but, let's face it,
> the fan base for it simply is not large enough to
> justify spending marketing effort to recruit them.
I agree that NetBSD is cool and appreciate all their hard work. It's allowed me to have a modern desktop on my Solaris 8 system at work without having root privileges. No Linux, not even Gentoo can claim to be able to do that.
That being said, the xBSDs were actually ahead of Linux in the late 1990s. The xBSDs were more widely deployed for enterprise systems. But Linux still overtook them. The initial fan base isn't really an issue.
It's also not the applications issue. NetBSD can pretty much run any app that's on Linux. There may be a bit lag (since the apps are developed on Linux most of the time and there's a bit of a porting effort), but the apps get there without too much time.
It's not the compile your own source code culture of the xBSDs since pkg_add supports binary packages, and Gentoo has more popularity than the xBSDs. There is also version of Debian for the xBSDs.
It's not even the kernel. A few years back, the BSD was superior in many ways, but Linux still outstripped it.
When all is said and done, there is only one key difference between Linux and BSD, the license. Companies like IBM don't mind GPLing their technology for the same reason TrollTech doesn't mind GPLing Qt....If anyone wants to use it in a commercial product, they have to pay IBM, TrollTech, Sleepycat, etc for the right to take the code prorietary. And although your competitors may have access to your source code, they can't do anything with it without releasing their changes so you can benefit from it. When a company GPLs their product, they haven't really given it away.
GPL is a quid pro quo license (you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours). Businesses understand quid pro quo and use it every day as a means of getting things done.
BSD is a charity license. As far as businesses are concerned, charity is good, but business is business and the last thing you want to do is give charity to your competitors.
It's not politically correct to say this, but "it really is the license, stupid".
Re:He's right, of course (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it is good because if you improve GPL software, like M$ did with the BSD TCP stack, you must give the improvements back to the community. M$ kept their improvements to themselves, legally and according to the BSD license. M$ weren't stealing. They just want to take and not give back.
Re:GPL the bane of my life.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Many open source libraries are licenced under the LGPL specifically because the authors obviously want people to have the freedom to use them for closed-source software. However, some are licensed differently, and his point was that it can be a PITA to make sure that the licence isn't being violated.
Most developers genuinely don't want to violate the GPL, and an abrasive, angry attitude when it is done purely by accident doesn't do the open source community any favours at all.
the political argument vs. what the consumer wants (Score:2, Insightful)
If you're a developer, then you have every right to choose any license you want, but it always seems that we have non-developers trying to tell people what is "freedom".
How many BSD developers are bitter that Apple co-opted their code (which remains open anyway) and are making money off it? Probably none. It's a gift an they're most likely proud that their code is in a kickass operating system.
But it's always the GPL zealots that think they have some right to tell BSD developers or people that give out code under a liberal license like BSD/MIT/X11 that they're not doing the right thing because it can be "closed up".
And that's always the big lie that GPL zealots throw out. That code can be "closed up". Nobody buys it, because everybody knows that unless all the source code from all the hard drives disappears then that's impossible. But they continue to lie to promote their political agenda and turn people off.
IBM, Sun, HP, Red Hat, Linspire, Xandros? (Score:3, Insightful)
Or, in other words (Score:3, Insightful)
The GPL has become the most popular free software license because it enforces a contract where you can't take without giving back. This may not be what you want for some programs, particularly programs which are platforms, such as Apache or Perl. But for most cases it is. It sends an important message to the people contributing to a GPLed project-- it says, your contributions won't be wasted, if people use this you benefit. It gives you a reason to contribute rather than boredom of philanthropy.
Meanwhile the only people who would be made "nervous" by the presence of the GPL are the people who want, or think they might want in the future, to take from open source software without giving equally in return. Think about that for a moment.
I tend to release my personal code under the LGPL because I feel the GPL is too restrictive, and I care more about the things I release being useful than I care about knowing I'll get something back. But that doesn't mean I'm going to deny how important the GPL is. The GPL made the open source development model as we know it today, with corporate and private interests sharing resources toward a common goal, possible-- we may be at a point now where lots of companies are contributing to open source purely voluntarily, but this is at least partly because open source is "hip" right now. There was a point in the past where it wasn't "hip" and companies sometimes had to be made to contribute, by holding the "you have to contribute to take" aspect of the GPL heads. There will be a point in the future where open source is not "hip" the way it is today. When that point comes, good luck convincing companies to contribute to your Apache licensed projects rather than just taking. It won't work all the time.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:GPL Teeth? (Score:3, Insightful)
(yawn) oh really? (Score:1, Insightful)
Next one please?
Take a tip from the IETF (Score:5, Insightful)
Software monoculture leads to catastrophic failures in a connected world. Look how Ultrix, which had a (somewhat) independent code base, was immune to the Cornell worm when most of the Unices dropped off the Internet nearly simultaneously. Would it have been better to have every box on the Internet die? Or was it better for the VMS, MVS, and Ultrix machines to stay on-line?
Re-inventing the wheel is not always a bad thing. Your wheel can have cleats and sipes the old one didn't have, and still be bolt-on compatible.
Re:Other licenses are becoming more common (Score:3, Insightful)
Perl is either GPL'd or covered by Wall's Artistic License.
http://dev.perl.org/licenses/ [perl.org]
Re:He is right ! (Score:4, Insightful)
GPL is about "converting" in the religious sense. Is this a bad thing? You tell me. You can choose not to be converted, and continue making excuses why you are so stingy with your source code, or you can share it freely. Be stingy, I don't care, but don't expect me to continue giving all my source code to you, so you can go off and sell it...
Re:Naive Optimism (Score:3, Insightful)
Corporate management has a fiduciary duty to maximize stakeholder wealth in the long term. Maintaining acceptable profit levels is only one aspect of that goal. Companies that go all-out to maximize return to shareholders find that their business model is unsustainable and they burn out.
Contrary to your assertions regarding short term self interest, most people engage in long term planning and understand the risks of sacrificing long term returns for short term profits. Around the world most public companies now face government regulation or bourse rules for corporate governance, which makes stakeholder wealth (not shareholder profit) their fiduciary duty.
So if a company can sustain a business model by taking and not giving back, it will probably do so. But in most cases it is in the company's interests to give back. For example, it makes economic sense for a company with an embedded Linux platform to contribute fixes back to the original source tree, because it takes more effort to maintain a separate patch tree in-house.
Re:While we're at it... (Score:1, Insightful)
that was a funny post!
Re:GPL Teeth? (Score:2, Insightful)
Here's a tangible counterpoint to that argument: There's no confusion -- pe1rxg has obviously mispelled "derivative" using two r's. I'm confident that any reader will completely understand the intent despite the misspelling.
But you know what? That one extra "r" conveys a message which completely overshadows what's been said. That extra "r" says "The person who has written this has no FUCKING idea what they are talking about." People who understand licenses do not misspell that word. People with the understanding and training necessary to tell you what a complicated license like the GPL requires do not misspell that word. With that one extra "r", pe1rxg has instantly demonstrated that his opinion on licensing issues have no merit.
I wouldn't hire a programmer who had difficulty spelling "include" and I sure as hell won't take legal advice on licensing issues from a person who doesn't know how to spell such a basic term of art like "derivative". You just can't develop an understanding of licensing issues without consequently developing a familiarity with the terms used in discussing licensing issues.
It's sort of the same way that everyone who uses command line ftp learns how to spell "anonymous"
Re:He's right, of course (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That's not the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
That's precisely the point. There are two sets of "rules" here* -- what the GPL actually requires and what "the community" thinks the rules ought to be. There is no real question that Apple was in full compliance with the licensing terms; that doesn't protect them from a) idiot zealots who think that they're required to backport code to the original base and b) less idiotic zealots who realize that there's no violation but invoke "the spirit of the GPL" anyway.
That's precisely my point -- that obeying the rules is *not* adequate.
* Actually there's a third set of rules consisting of terms asserted by the FSF (like about dynamic linking), the true legal status of which is entirely unclear.
Here's what I want in a license (Score:2, Insightful)
The ability to use open code in a non open product with no more than three provisions: first that I only have to republish the open code used whether or not I changed it and if so with the changes notes, second that any code strictly written by me remain mine to do with as I please and be under no compulsion to open it or relinquish my rights to it in any way, and third to pay such royalties as are required to whoever is assigned their receipt should I charge for the resulting product.
From the point of view of creating open code:
A license model with various clauses that allows me to either open my code completely or partially, and grant certain rights to users to either use it for free or be able to charge for derivative works and require or not as I see fit disclosure of the code used and any changes made.
The whole cliche IANAL thing holds great meaning here in that I am NOT a lawyer but a techie. I don't want to become a lawyer or even a paralegal and the licenses out there damn near require me to start becoming one. Given that, I might as well retain a lawyer to write licenses based on my desires on demand. Since I live in a court town with more laywers per square mile than manhole covers and potholes, it's not that difficult to find them.
Industry needs to be able to charge for the fruits of their labors and would likely have not a lot of problem paying royalties to open source organizations. Such monies would undoubtedly go far in attracting full time core developers and keepers in a way that PayPal donations just can't touch.
Imagine if Microsoft was embraced instead by the open source world, if the open source world worked WITH Microsoft, instead of constantly against them. With more flexible and sane license structures and an end to eschewing commerce and capitalism on the open source side, more of the outside world's work might then find its way into Microsoft products where they could then say, "we're responsible for that" and "we changed that structure and made it more secure". And a lot of Microsoft's work might under the right license terms make it back to the open source world for inclusion into other OSes and so forth.
Just a little dream I have that someday people will grow up and learn you cannot change the course of a stampede by standing before it and yelling epithets and waving slogans, but must join the stampede, run the race to the fore, and lead it from within. Windows' entrenchment is that stampede and open source is the idiot sitting before it on the ground thinking he can wave off the charging cattle.
Not really. (Score:2, Insightful)
But just having technically superior code doesn't mean anything in the marketplace.
Check out the history of Gem OS or OS/2. Check out the marketshare of the various *BSD versions. Sure, their TCP/IP stack is getting heavy usage, but that's only because Microsoft is distributing it.
Is Microsoft hurting itself by NOT openly providing any improvements/enhancements for that TCP/IP stack? I don't see how.
And any non-Microsoft improvements that are released under that license can, quickly, be absorbed by Microsoft to improve Microsoft's products.
It all comes down to money and marketing. Microsoft has the money, they can afford the marketing.
Anyone want to bet that a survey of CxO's would show 100% recognize the "Microsoft" brand name but less than 10% would recognize "NetBSD" or "OpenBSD" and so forth?
Marketshare is important in getting to the point where enough DEVELOPERS (shades of Ballmer!) recognize the project and understand the license and still want to contribute.
Reality check... (Score:1, Insightful)
Alas, the last time I checked, our so-called free market was still ruled by megacorporations like Microsoft, kept firmly in power by corrupt and misguided governments and books full of laws and regulations protecting their interest. They really don't give a flying fuck about the benefits of open source software development model, as long as they can conquer markets with inferior products using other means.
As long as there for instance is still is a huge worldwide hunt going on for teenage kids that "illegally" copy music, and the fight to keep any kind of knowledge or human creativity in the public domain is still full on, we live in a world where having a "better" way to do things means fuck-all.
In this reality, we still need heavy handed, cumbersome methods like the GPL to protect our freedom. If that means Linux ea having a marginal marketshare instead of small marketshare (before being assimilated), tough. Let's discuss abolishing the GPL when we have a real free market.
Re:GPL the bane of my life.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, George.
Not another GPL/BSD flamefest (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:He's right, of course (Score:4, Insightful)
What if the original maintainer has given up, and it needs a lot of porting to work on modern systems? With BSD software, where's the incentive to make the "new" version open source?
Re:He's right, of course (Score:1, Insightful)
The point you're missing is that open source isn't about getting something in return. If you really want something in return, try SELLING what you write instead of giving it away.
Ugh... no (Score:4, Insightful)
KHTML is NOT GPLed. It is under the LGPL. The names sound similar but this is a really, really serious distinction. The LGPL is much more loose and is a lot closer to BSD than GPL-- it basically says "you have to release changes you make to these files in this project, but you can take these files and dump it into something larger and you don't have to do anything to the rest of your project, so long as these files when taken as an independent unit still work". This means that changes and fixes to the LGPLed work must be contributed back, but additions, well, contributing those back are pretty much optional.
If KHTML had been GPLed, the entire Safari situation would have been different. For one thing, it very possibly wouldn't have happened. The GPL probably asks enough that Apple wouldn't have found it acceptable-- they're apparently OK with releasing source to WebCore or WebKit or whichever it is, but they probably wouldn't have been happy with having to open source Safari, or having to force any OS X developers linking against WebCore[Kit?], a system service, to open source. If KHTML had been GPLed Apple would have just gone and used their other option for a plug-in rendering engine, the mozilla/firefox project, which is available under the MPL (and soon the LGPL as well)-- which is even less restrictive than the LGPL from Apple's perspective.
But, let's hypothetically say KHTML had been GPLed and Apple had accepted this. What then? Well, then the situation vondo describes couldn't have occurred. Apple could have forked and written better code than the open source community, but that would be okay-- because they would have no control over their fork. I or you or anyone else in the world could have just downloaded safari.tar.gz, forked apple's fork, made one tiny improvement, and released it on the internet. Tada! The open source community has outdone Apple!
But that isn't an option here in real life. In real life, Apple's released WebKit/KHTML, but that's not a full product. It's a rendering engine. It can't really do anything by itself.
And what this means is that even though Apple's released their source, the Open Source community can't keep up with them. You could technically take WebKit and stuff it into Konqueror (and it would be interesting to try, I'm suprised no one has yet). But this would require some integration work, plus it still wouldn't at all stand up to Safari due to the value added by the parts of Safari which remain proprietary.
So while the LGPL, a less-"pure" license than the GPL, lead to a commercial use of an LGPLed library which is beneficial to the commercial user, beneficial to the open source project, and beneficial to others [slashdot.org]-- this is the exact thing ESR is trying to encourage!-- use of the LGPL in this case has still created an effective barrier to the open source product being as useful or successful as the commercial project which is using its code. RMS, were he here and someone had let him off his leash, would probably point out that this is one of the reasons you want to be using the GPL instead of the LGPL or BSD or MPL licenses in the first place!
Re:Actually ESR misses the point. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:GPL the bane of my life.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Come on, ESR is a bullshit artist (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Actually ESR misses the point. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:He's right, of course (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:He's right, of course (Score:3, Insightful)
But if they then want to implement the new enhanced features added to the closed source version, then they do have to reinvent the wheel again.
Re:GPL Teeth? (Score:3, Insightful)
Since even without explicit permission from the Copyright holder, the Copyright act _does_ grant unlimited permission to copy a copyrighted work for personal use. It's the act of distributing in the first place that negates the notion of personal use, and that requires permission from the Copyright holder to do. The GPL grants said permission to all people that agree to its terms. If you don't agree, then all you have left is personal/private use, or are stuck trying to negotiate alternative terms with the copyright holders (which they are not under any obligation to provide).
Re:Counterpoint (Score:4, Insightful)
"Yes, do, because this is a great example of where the GPL doesn't make any difference."
/does/ make a difference, although it's not obvious - the GPL kept Apple from legally sucking up source code and not releasing it per the license. The GPL sets a minimum standard of behavior for companies. The GPL may have started as a way to subvert the system and give the code freedom, but it's evolved into a set of legal protections. That's the point Raymond seems to be missing.
I think it actually
"So, over and over again, we see that it's not the license that matters, it's the attitude of the people using it."
/and/ the attitude that matter.
If you're talking about companies who choose to go over and above what the license requires, then sure, I agree with you. But for every company like Apple, there could be a dozen others who take the code and don't give back their source. For those companies, it's the license
I don't think forking is the issue of greatest concern. You're right that companies likely to contribute will do so regardless of license...when they don't, though, at least the license holders have some way of defending themselves in court through the GPL.
BSD is a great example of what doesn't work (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider Sun Microsystems, whose SunOS operating system was based on BSD. What did they give back? Other than a few bug fixes early on, nothing.
Ultrix, from Digital Equipment, was BSD-based. Little to nothing came back to BSD from DEC.
Remember OSF/1, which was based on Mach/BSD? How much of their work went back? Next to nothing.
Microsoft used the BSD TCP stack as the basis of their TCP stack. What did they give back? Nothing.
FTP software based their whole product suite on the BSD codebase. How much came back? Nothing.
I don't know of any major corporation which has made significant donations back to the BSD core. There may be the rare exception, but the bulk of corporate back-donations has been some bug fixes. That has left the development almost entirely to individual developers or very small groups, and thereby limited how much could be done.
Lots of people think of the GPL as a "communist" license, but in fact it is BSD that is the free-for-all. The BSD license attaches no value to what it is licensing, and as a result you a software "tragedy of the commons" where everyone is happy to use it but almost nobody ever gives anything back. I know that there are going to be people who vehemently disagree with what I'm going to say, but: It has been my observation that the BSD source base has been relatively stagnant over more than a decade. If you look at what a modern BSD provides and compare it to what BSD 4.3 provided you'll find little that is new. A similar comparison with any major commercial UNIX will yield a great many such features (like working SMP support, journalled filesystems, NUMA support, logical volume management, realtime support, etc).
The GPL, on the other hand, leverages the fact that the source base is valuable. It is not a "give away" as so many people claim but rather an intellectual property trade very much like the patent sharing agreements so common in the proprietary world. While businesses would rather get something for nothing, if what they're getting in trade is valuable enough it is an incentive to give up some of their own rights.
If you think of the GPL as an intellectual property collective agreement you have the right idea. The thing about that kind of agreement is that the more IP that is covered by it the more valuable the collective becomes -- and therefore the more likely others are to join it.
In Linux' case the source base is exceptionally valuable at this point, worth literally billions of dollars, and for the better part of a decade has been receiving significant code donations from corporations. Remember the list of features modern UNIXen have that BSD doesn't? Did you notice how many of them Linux does support? All of them. For something like a decade corporations have been making major code donations back to the Linux codebase and it has advanced tremendously as a result. While Linux certainly has its rough edges it has seriously outgrown its tinkerer beginnings.
So Raymond could not be more wrong about this point. Oh, I agree that the development structure that Torvalds set up was a principal contributor to its success. To be sure, one of the major limitations in the BSD codebase has been the reluctance of the BSD principals to accept code they didn't write. But BSD has branched enough times that it has also seen conditions similar to what Linux enjoyed and it still never turned the corner.
What made Linux win was simply that large corporations had to give to get, and the more times that happens the more likely it becomes.
Re:GPL Teeth? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A consultant's perspective (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm missing important information about the situation above, but here's my take. What's neglected here is that the JDBC drivers [mysql.com] in question are issued under a dual license (commercial/GPL). So this sounds like a straight-forward decision not to purchase the commercial license. They could have connected to the MySQL database using say, Sun's JDBC stuff without having to GPL their code. The "No Open Source" policy is just stupid, but it's not my company.
"Open Source" is not for software freedom. (Score:3, Insightful)
And it's our responsibility to be good to corporations, even to the point of allowing them to take works out of the commons, because why? The corporations that complain the most about the GNU GPL (Apple and Microsoft, among others) are those that treat their users horribly by distributing programs the users aren't allowed to inspect, share, or modify. The progress the free software movement made before the open source movement existed (which was over a decade of work) happened largely without the direct input of proprietors like what ESR is talking about. The GPL was never anti-business. And yet even after the open source movement continues to try to reframe the debate away from software freedom, the GNU GPL is the most popular free software license in existance.
I think ESR doesn't like the GPL because it works against the open source movement's goal to work for business by introducing them to programmers who are willing to work without payment (cheap labor has been a rallying cry of business, and a source of genuine social discontent amongst workers, for a very long time). The open source movement was founded and continues to do what they can to dismiss software freedom. Software freedom gives people the idea that they don't need the beneficiaries of "open source" as much as they need communities of partners, both individual and organizational. But open source advocates don't see this. They want to pretend that the free software movement and open source movement share a common philosophy despite that never having been the case [gnu.org].
ESR is showing off his ahistorical silliness again. But more importantly, he is trying to reframe the issues away from software freedom as a value unto itself and toward "openness" and innovation. From the very first lines of the article, and his speech, he wants his organization (the Open Source Initiative and, to a larger degree, the open source movement) to get credit for work he had nothing to do with writing -- the GNU GPL. The GPL predates anything to do with "open source" and therefore existed independant of it. Neither the OSI nor ESR have yet to write a single license which can compare to the licenses the Free Software Foundation have written. When it comes to advice about the GPL, consult with experts: Richard Stallman, Eben Moglen, and Brad Kuhn, FSF members all. Leave those who want to either "steal thunder" (as the saying goes) aside.
adoption vs. survival (Score:2, Insightful)
The GPL gives people the additional push they need to turn good intentions ("we're going to start using this piece of open source software") into actual actions ("we are going to release our improvements to it"). It also provides crucially important protections against patent abuses.
Anybody who thinks the GPL doesn't have teeth is welcome to try to test it. So far, just about every company who has faced the issue has backed down.
Re:GPL Teeth? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm getting pretty sick of this argument.
Any professional developer* worth anything will ask the following questions when investigating a library for use in a product:
It's not Rocket Surgery - I do this as a matter of course when evaluating libraries at work.
It is Job #1. Not Job #DoItAfterWeShip.
Sure, the GPL might scare people off using a library, but then...so what? If they don't want to share, then they write the code themselves. Their choice. If they don't want to share, I'm not saying that's 'evil', just that they don't get the benefit of the free software someone else produced on the condition that others share too. I myself have been in both positions, and whether you choose to use GPL software for a particular task is specific to what you are doing. You make a choice and you move on.
Whining about the license stopping you use a library is like whining about the price of a commercial library stopping you using the library. In either case it doesn't do you any good, and to paraphrase Linus, whoever wrote the code gets to decide the license and the cost, and nobody else gets to complain.
But this "we used GPL'd code without doing even the most basic license checks on our libraries, and now we have to release our code! no fair!" stuff is just bullshit. They fucked up. They're idiots. End of story.
As for 'holding developers back', it's a bit like calling out a roadside recovery service when you break down in your car, and getting upset when they tell you they will charge you. "You won't tow me unless I pay you? If I don't agree to your terms, I'll have to do it without you?! You're holding me baaaaaaaack, man!"
* Or any developer worth anything, come to that.
Re:Counterpoint (Score:3, Insightful)
The GPL did no such thing. You can't say "this license or law stopped X, Y, or Z" unless there's a likelihood of X, Y, or Z happening. There's a law against my pulling out a gun and shooting my boss, but you can't say "the law kept me from shooting my boss" unless you had reason to believe that I would have done that if the law didn't stop me.
Yes, there are companies for which this is true. There are, for example, companies that have taken BSDL code and not released their changes. But there are companies that have taken BSDL code and have released their changes. Apple is one of them, and given that they have released the source to their entire kernel and just about every other part of OS X below the GUI and big chunks above it as well, I find it hard to believe that the license KHTML is under would have made much if any difference to what Apple released.
Apple is not just paying lip service to open source. They're making open source part of their business model. Because open source works better for them. And that's what ESR is pointing out here, that companies are seeing that open source works better than going it alone, even if you're Apple. Yes, the license has now and then prevented some bad actors from releasing proprietary versions of open source tools, but it's pretty rare that the resulting code has been more effective than the open source version.
I mean, look at Windows NT. The use of the BSD TCP stack in Windows NT (however much debate there might be over HOW MUCH was used in the kernel, or how much remains, they definitely used BSD code) is the poster boy for how Big Bad Companies use BSDL code and don't give back to the community. Is Microsoft's code superior to the open source version? If you had the choice, would you pick Microsoft's TCP and socket library? There's no question but that Microsoft's TCP implementation is one of the least flexible around and the fact theat their socket library doesn't use file handles is a major shortcoming.
Do you think Microsoft would be better or worse off if they had completely open-sourced their TCP implementation? If it was possible for me to go in and fix stuff, and improve NT's networking? To give it the kind of NATting and packet filtering that BSD and Linux TCP has had for years? To fix the socket library so you could implement a superserver like inetd?
Hell yes, they'd be better off if it was open sourced. No matter HOW big they are, they'd still have a better product.
THAT is the point that ESR's making. That when you're using open source software, the people most hurt by fighting it and only begrudgingly doing what the law allows... are the code hoarders. And THAT is what companies are catching on to.
Re:BSD is a great example of what doesn't work (Score:1, Insightful)
This is the reason lots of research and projects use BSD license to make something that gains the widest possible penetration, something that both open source and proprietary software developers can use. Where would we be today if the internet was not developed on BSD and the TCP/IP stack was not released under a license everyone could use?
Would we all be using Microsoft network now, or some other proprietary standard with half working support from the opensource operating systems.
Re:He's right, of course (Score:3, Insightful)
Hi. Are you twelve? Do you realize it makes you look like a total yutz when you do that?
You had a good point, but you lost me with the dollar signs. In writing circles, it's called a "roadblock." Try to avoid it.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:He's right, of course (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree with you. More importantly (and far more influentually) the market disagrees with you. Ask IBM, HP, Intel, SGI, Disney, Pixar, Google--I could go on, but I won't--how much value GPL software has. Seems to me that the value of the Linux kernel alone is measured in billions--if not tens or even hundreds of billions--of dollars.
Beyond that, the comparison of GPL code to socialism (a comparison designed to equate the GPL with an idea many consider to be evil) is that the GPL is entirely opt-in. Someone unfortunate enough to live in a socialist or communist nation will find that the products of their labor are forcibly taken and given to others "more deserving" or who "need it more" with the alternative being prison or death. On the other hand, engaging in the development of--or using--software licensed under the GPL is entirely voluntary. RMS is not going to come to your house wearing jackboots and demand you use GCC.
Let's not beat around the bush--companies and individuals HAVE been screwed by productizing GPL software and finding either someone else doing the same, or getting threatening letters from the copyright owners demanding source code. To this, I say: they COULD have elected to develop from scratch, but instead opted to use someone else's work. Exactly why would a rational person expect to be able to take someone else's labor and profit from it without remuneration? THAT sounds more like a socialist state to me, while the GPL's quid-pro-quo sounds quite capitalist in comparison.
Re:Silly OSI vs FSF marketing fud (Score:2, Insightful)
ESR has claimed in the past that Open Source differs from Free Software in it's rhetoric.
This is clearly bunk.
The reason ESR is now bitching about the GPL now is obviously that he's noticed the GPL is more than a license. It's RMSs creed.
ESR has observed the recent publicity about the GPL3 and realized that some of the principals the GPL stands for are ones he does not share.
If he thinks Open Source would succeed faster without the GPL, I think RMS would probably happily agree!
The GPL is not there to promote Open Source. It's there to protect Free Software.
If he wants to drive a stake into an already divided community, he's succeeding.
But he needs to wake up and realize that he's hurting the whole industry by doing it.
Just at the point when the GPL has gained traction in some of the biggest corporations in the industry, ESR comes out and slams it; inviting people to create their own licenses.
There are already far too many incompatible Free and Open Source Software licenses.
The last thing we need is someone trashing the license with the biggest share.
What we do need is the ability to mix and match source code from all over. To take ideas a freely mix them with existing code and make something new.
We need fewer licenses.
While I thoroughly respect ESR and some of what he has done, this is a very bad move.
He's sending the message that it just fine to drop the principals of freedom for accelerated growth or wider acceptance.
While it's clear he and some others believe it, he does not speak for us all; and should shut the hell up.
The GPL is the pillar that Free Software has stood upon. It has withstood all attacks from the largest and meanest enemies.
If it's defeated and Free Software goes away, Open Source will shortly thereafter follow.
Re:BSD is a great example of what doesn't work (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm well aware of his point, it has been made ad-infinitum over the last two decades. I've been in the middle of commercial products that had to deal with both licenses and, for sure, it's easier to deal with BSD than the twisty legalisms of the GPL.
I don't think anyone argues that the BSD license isn't preferable to businesses over GPL. And why would it not be? They literally get something for nothing. Everyone likes to get something for nothing!
The thing is, at some point the value of the codebase is greater than the cost of giving up some of your rights in order to use it. When that happens then the GPL has a major, major advantage in that it creates a feedback loop. The more code gets donated the more incentive there is to use it and as a result donate more code and make the code base more valuable.
Back ten years ago you could have argued that that loop wouldn't happen because of the unwillingness of people to give up their rights, and it would not have been possible to point to counterexamples. But Linux proves that there is a point at which the value overcomes the resistance.
No BSD-licensed product has ever had that happen, nor does it seem likely that it ever will happen -- there is no incentive whatsoever to feed code back, and plenty of counter-incentive.
Human Nature, GPL and Bit Torrent. (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux is successful because of GPL. GPL is an incentive to share, you know that your sharing will result in more sharing. You know that when you contribute to GPL, you are encouraging more people to do the same. In the end you benefit as well.
There is a strong analogy with Bit Torrent. Same human nature factors. Bit Torrent works so well because of enforced sharing.
The alternative is what? The "honor system". Well that really doesn't work if you understand human nature.
The "honor system" completely opposite to the way corporations "MUST" act. Must in that if they can take it for free and give nothing back, then then must to maximize profits as they are obligated to do. GPL frees corporations of the necessity to not give anything back. There now is a case for sharing that is compatible with corporate governance.
GPL is a necessity.
Re:He's right, of course (Score:3, Insightful)
Beyond that, the comparison of GPL code to socialism (a comparison designed to equate the GPL with an idea many consider to be evil)
Important note: the above is valid only in USA, where there is tremendous propaganda against socialism. The rest of the world thinks otherwise.
Re:BSD is a great example of what doesn't work (Score:2, Insightful)
You seem to make the assumption that these same evil corporations that forked BSD would also fork and contribute to the same software if GPL-licensed. Suppose BSD was released under a copyleft license. Would they have used BSD and released changes back to the community? Or would they have simply not used BSD at all and instead created their own OS or licensed one from elsewhere? Before you answer that question, carefully consider the software climate at the time, where free and open software was a new idea. Contrast that with the climate today, where the these ideas are established, and Linux is a top player in the field. Perhaps *that* is why Linux receives so much corporate support today, not necessarily because of the GPL license.
Ask yourself this question as well: if it were not for the proliferation of UNIX softwares (as a result of the BSD forks), would Mr. Torvalds have created Linux?
You list a number of corporations that distributed BSD-forked software without contribution. I would love to do the same for GPL software, but unfortunately, that is a difficult proposition. In the copyleft world, the equivalent scenario would be a corporation that - given the choice of contributing to a software or avoiding the software completely - chose to avoid the software completely. I don't have the luxury of a list publicly produced products to point to. Certainly, though, there are many corporations that did not contribute to copyleft software *because* it was copyleft software.
-dkgasaway
Re:He's right, of course (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually, I think the ideals behind the GPL do have a lot in common with the ideals behind socialism. Yes, many people (in the US) consider socialism to be evil. But they are ill-informed idiots.
Compared to capitalism, Socialism is really bad at some things (e.g. emerging-technology development) and completely kicks capitalisms ass at other things (e.g. health care). Many are fortunate enough to live in countries that strike a better balance of socialism and capitalism than the US. They may be in a better position to judge when the GPL, or open source generally, is the way to go, because they can recognize that it is indeed socialism, but that may be a good thing.