Linus Torvalds Weighs in on Commercial Users of Open Source Code (tag1consulting.com) 87
This week Linus Torvalds continued a long email interview with Jeremy Andrews, founding partner/CEO of Tag1 (a global technology consulting firm and the second all-time leading contributor to Drupal). In the first part Torvalds had discussed everything from Apple's ARM64 chips and Rust drivers, to his own Fedora-based home work environment — and reflections on the early days of Linux.
But the second part offers some deeper insight into the way Torvalds thinks, some personal insight, what he'd share with other project maintainers — and some thoughts on getting corporations to contribute to open source development: While open source has been hugely successful, many of the biggest users, for example corporations, do nothing or little to support or contribute back to the very open source projects they rely on. Even developers of surprisingly large and successful projects (if measured by number of users) can be lucky to earn enough to buy coffee for the week. Do you think this is something that can be solved? Is the open source model sustainable?
Linus Torvalds: I really don't have an answer to this, and for some reason the kernel has always avoided the problem. Yes, there are companies that are pure "users" of Linux, but they still end up wanting support, so they then rely on contractors or Linux distributions, and those obviously then end up as one of the big sources of kernel developer jobs.
And a fair number of big tech companies that use the kernel end up actively participating in the development process. Sometimes they end up doing a lot of internal work and not being great at feeding things back upstream (I won't name names, and some of them really are trying to do better), but it's actually very encouraging how many big companies are very openly involved with upstream kernel development, and are major parts of the community.
So for some reason, the kernel development community has been pretty successful about integrating with all the commercial interests. Of course, some of that has been very much conscious: Linux has very much always been open to commercial users, and I very consciously avoided the whole anti-corporate mindset that you can most definitely find in some of the "Free Software" groups. I think the GPLv2 is a great license, but at the same time I've been very much against some of the more extreme forms of "Free Software", and I — and Linux — was very much part of the whole rebranding to use "Open Source".
Because frankly, some of the almost religious overtones of rms and the FSF were just nutty, and a certain portion of the community was actively driving commercial use away.
And I say that as somebody who has always been wary of being too tainted by commercial interests... I do think that some projects may have shot themselves in the foot by being a bit too anti-commercial, and made it really hard for companies to participate...
But is it sustainable? Yes. I'm personally 100% convinced that not only is open source sustainable, but for complex technical issues you really need open source simply because the problem space ends up being too complex to manage inside one single company. Even a big and competent tech company.
But it does require a certain openness on both sides. Not all companies will be good partners, and some developers don't necessarily want to work with big companies.
In the interview Torvalds also thanks the generous education system in Finland, and describes what it was like moving from Finland to America. And as for how long he'll continue working on Linux, Torvalds says, "I do enjoy what I do, and as long as I feel I'm actually helping the project, I'll be around...
"in the end, I really enjoy what I do. I'd be bored to tears without kernel development."
But the second part offers some deeper insight into the way Torvalds thinks, some personal insight, what he'd share with other project maintainers — and some thoughts on getting corporations to contribute to open source development: While open source has been hugely successful, many of the biggest users, for example corporations, do nothing or little to support or contribute back to the very open source projects they rely on. Even developers of surprisingly large and successful projects (if measured by number of users) can be lucky to earn enough to buy coffee for the week. Do you think this is something that can be solved? Is the open source model sustainable?
Linus Torvalds: I really don't have an answer to this, and for some reason the kernel has always avoided the problem. Yes, there are companies that are pure "users" of Linux, but they still end up wanting support, so they then rely on contractors or Linux distributions, and those obviously then end up as one of the big sources of kernel developer jobs.
And a fair number of big tech companies that use the kernel end up actively participating in the development process. Sometimes they end up doing a lot of internal work and not being great at feeding things back upstream (I won't name names, and some of them really are trying to do better), but it's actually very encouraging how many big companies are very openly involved with upstream kernel development, and are major parts of the community.
So for some reason, the kernel development community has been pretty successful about integrating with all the commercial interests. Of course, some of that has been very much conscious: Linux has very much always been open to commercial users, and I very consciously avoided the whole anti-corporate mindset that you can most definitely find in some of the "Free Software" groups. I think the GPLv2 is a great license, but at the same time I've been very much against some of the more extreme forms of "Free Software", and I — and Linux — was very much part of the whole rebranding to use "Open Source".
Because frankly, some of the almost religious overtones of rms and the FSF were just nutty, and a certain portion of the community was actively driving commercial use away.
And I say that as somebody who has always been wary of being too tainted by commercial interests... I do think that some projects may have shot themselves in the foot by being a bit too anti-commercial, and made it really hard for companies to participate...
But is it sustainable? Yes. I'm personally 100% convinced that not only is open source sustainable, but for complex technical issues you really need open source simply because the problem space ends up being too complex to manage inside one single company. Even a big and competent tech company.
But it does require a certain openness on both sides. Not all companies will be good partners, and some developers don't necessarily want to work with big companies.
In the interview Torvalds also thanks the generous education system in Finland, and describes what it was like moving from Finland to America. And as for how long he'll continue working on Linux, Torvalds says, "I do enjoy what I do, and as long as I feel I'm actually helping the project, I'll be around...
"in the end, I really enjoy what I do. I'd be bored to tears without kernel development."
I have a top secret insider information. (Score:5, Insightful)
Companies are cheap. If they can find a piece of software that is free to use, and free to alter, they are going to use it, they will often do little to support them back, because they are cheap.
The best you might get out of these companies, is them providing you back contributing code, as they don't want to break the license.
Re: (Score:1)
The best you might get out of these companies, is them providing you back contributing code, as they don't want to break the license.
That's exactly the 'tit-for-tat' model that he has always advocated for. Why would they provide back more than their code contributions?
Re: I have a top secret insider information. (Score:1)
Some are, some aren't. It can often depend on the mood of the guy actually using/writing the code. Of the outfit is small enough and he's got enough clout, then it'll be shared if he wants to share, and it won't be if he doesn't.
Some places are big enough to have policies of thou shalt not share, and some places have no policy but hire cheap code monkey contractors who fill out time sheets in 15 minute increments and "participating in OSS development on behalf of Xcorp" is not a valid entry.
And then there a
Re:I have a top secret insider information. (Score:4, Informative)
The best you might get out of these companies, is them providing you back contributing code, as they don't want to break the license.
Yes, they pay developers to fix bugs and add features to the software they use and then contribute those changes back to the project. That's exactly the way it's supposed to work.
Re:I have a top secret insider information. (Score:4, Interesting)
Companies are cheap. If they can find a piece of software that is free to use, and free to alter, they are going to use it, they will often do little to support them back, because they are cheap.
The best you might get out of these companies, is them providing you back contributing code, as they don't want to break the license.
It comes down to how companies are structured and what they actually are in reality.
Companies are collections of individuals, with wildly different thoughts and opinions on everything an individual can hold a thought or opinion on. There's often only a single (very loosely) common thread in those individuals, in that those at the top have a common goal regarding how to make money, and nearly everyone else either shares that goal or at least tolerates it.
As one of the division IT leads, what software I want to use a solve a given problem in our division mostly comes down to my choice.
Yet what the company spends money on is not the choice of any one single individual.
If I need to run a web server, I can choose say Apache, and unless someone has a reason to choose something else, then there you go, the choice is made.
I can't be expected to submit code back, since I'm not changing any. We just use it to serve webpages.
When it comes down to paying for it, I have input in asking, but no control over making it happen.
Neither does my boss, or his, not single handedly anyway. Yet we are all involved. If I don't ask, it won't happen, and if everyone up the chain involved doesn't agree, it won't happen either.
This is the same for donating to open source as it is for purchasing commercial closed licensed software. I as an individual may very much want to, but I as that same individual don't have that authority.
Sometimes, that's why I would choose open source over paid software. I don't need to ask for $0, and so it's guaranteed no one will say no to it.
Re: I have a top secret insider information. (Score:1)
Companies are collections of individuals, with wildly different thoughts and opinions on everything an individual can hold a thought or opinion on.
A profound epiphany to be sure... take you a while??
Re: (Score:2)
It's shorthand for "my job does not involve contributing to open source". Most places are not Google, you do your job without 15% of the time being spent on fun projects. If you found a bug in your compiler and fixed it, then you're done and should not contribute back to the original author on the company's dime, do that on your own time if you've got enough energy left at the end of the day.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
While that is true, you have to look in the other direction as well, because if there was no open source software at all, the vast majority of the web would have fizzled out, and we'd still be using telnet and gopher.
Open source allowed companies to not have to worry about the kind of licensing BS that we currently see with commercial music, where not only is it difficult to license, but difficult to even know who to license it from.
More to the point, Open Source isn't always about trying to minimize costs,
Re: I have a top secret insider information. (Score:1)
Some ten years ago I ran teams which wrote firmware and device drivers for a major semiconductor company.
Customers would ask for Linux support, which we would provide. We also tried to send some code changes upstream which would be ignored or rebuffed.
Companies have enough internal politics as it is, no one has the time to manage the open source communitiesâ(TM) as well.
We ended up making our patches available on our website. Didnâ(TM)t know or care beyond that.
I donâ(TM)t know what happened
Institutionalization of sociopathy. (Score:1)
See, this right there... you comment ... that is exactly where psychopathic/sociopathic behavior is institutionalized and justified as if it was a "normal" aspect of capitalism.
And you wonder why everybody hates capitalism and Americans, ... even though both are not necessarily related to this, and it's just plain anti-social assholery that harms everybody and should be shunned by society.
Can you stop ruining capitalism? It would be a great idea without this crap!
Re:Institutionalization of sociopathy. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm confused. Companies are using software that is free to use and free to modify, as intended by both meanings of "free" within the community. You're demanding that in exchange for such software, which has essentially zero marginal cost of reproduction because SOFTWARE, that companies pay for the ability to use the software with either money or time. Capitalism? Americans? No, look in the mirror. Now you're the one attempting to make people jump through hoops in order to use the resource that you want to appropriate to you and yours.
Fixed that for you.
Re: Institutionalization of sociopathy. (Score:1)
And you wonder why everybody hates capitalism and Americans
Are those compliments?? After all, they came from a German.
(I kid, I kid!)
Re: (Score:2)
They may not contribute code themselves, but a lot of companies WILL pay for a commercial distribution so that they'll get technical support for their operating system of choice. If they pay a firm like Redhat or Canonical for support, they are indirectly contributing code to the ecosystem that helps improve the code.
Best,
Re: I have a top secret insider information. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's far to painful to supply code back to open source projects when your job is to do something else. It's time consuming even to find out if the bug you fixed is in the latest version (being the corporate world, tools do not get upgraded to the latest version merely because they exist). It would be much simpler overall to just donate $1000 to FSF because we use their tools. But then someone higher up is going to want a breakdown to be sure that money is going to the right place, why give FSF money but
"Nuttiness" (Score:5, Insightful)
You know why the FSF and rms come across as "nutty" at times? Because without them, and without their voices being occasionally heard, PC hardware would have been as completely tied to Microsoft by now as Apple is to OSX, and we'd certainly have had another copyright extension act to boot. If they have to be loud and repetitive at times, then so be it. The media certainly isn't going to go out of its way to write stories about how the stranglehold on "Intellectual Property" robs society of its culture (by virtue of all the public domain being hopelessly dated to younger audiences) as well as its capacity for innovation - after all, the media bosses are the ones who profit from that arrangement!
I respect that Linus can devote himself to code on the level that he can. But at the same time, a world with only Linuses is a world where the fatcats have well and truly won, and all the Linuses shrug and say things like "Do I agree with Micro-Sony using GPLv2 code in their latest Rights Management and Recovery for Wearables? Not entirely, but I'm here to write software, and calling it a 'murderous rootkit' just because it ended up choking a few children who were trying on each other's sweaters is not terribly constructive. I'm just thrilled to my very ego that some of their internal servers run Fedora, and hope they will continue to do so".
Does Richard Stallman eat his dead skin on camera? Yeah. Are he and his foundation also responsible for the fact that we can read copies of the Great Gatsby for free, and that the current culture is such that conglomerates didn't even try to push for yet another copyright extension? Yes, in no small part, and definitely far larger a part than Linus and Linux combined.
Re:"Nuttiness" (Score:5, Informative)
One can be nutty and right at the same time. That doesn't make them any less nutty.
Re:"Nuttiness" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
It is not about freeloading. Google has enough smart engineers and enough money to buy them off from all over the world and have them write their own OS.
It is about eliminating competitors. Free Software removes "software" as a distinguishing factor. The only way to work in that market is branding. Steve Jobs did that at Apple but others suffer from being run by geeks. How do you become wealthy by only being good at writing ds/algo? RMS and FSF as his extension don't value being wealthy instead they value a
Re: (Score:2)
Has Google made money out of anything other than search at this point? I'm not sure I buy the argument that they could write a useable, general operating system from scratch.
Re: (Score:2)
Making money is the opposite of writing usage general os from scratch.
They have not only written their own os (ChromeOS, Android, Fuchsia), they have written Golang (a new language), Google FS (that became Apache HDFS), Protobuf, Chromium that turned into nodejs enabling javascript developers to be richer than C++ developers. That is all just system-level languages. If you do any NLP you are going to use google libraries in python.
What is stopping Google
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
Nonsense.
RMS's problem, which is the FSF's problem, is that he want's no commercial usage possible.
The BSD license is good enough for everyone. GPL2 is "good enough" for specific uses, but completely inappropriate for commercial software that isn't intended to be continuously developed (eg games.)
Some software actually needs to be "BSD-like" licensed because it commercial users don't use it, we get fragmentation. The entire reason we don't have 9000 versions of TCP/IP is because the original BSD TCP/IP stac
Re: (Score:1)
Nonsense.
RMS's problem, which is the FSF's problem, is that he want's no commercial usage possible.
That's not true, otherwise GCC would have been licensed such that anything it produced had to be distributed with accompanying source code.
Re:"Nuttiness" (Score:5, Informative)
Nonsense. RMS's problem, which is the FSF's problem, is that he want's no commercial usage possible.
No, THAT is nonsense. RMS has written many times that he does not oppose commercial usage. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/g... [gnu.org]
I'd like to license my code under the GPL, but I'd also like to make it clear that it can't be used for military and/or commercial uses. Can I do this? (#NoMilitary)
No, because those two goals contradict each other. The GNU GPL is designed specifically to prevent the addition of further restrictions. GPLv3 allows a very limited set of them, in section 7, but any other added restriction can be removed by the user. More generally, a license that limits who can use a program, or for what, is not a free software license.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy... [gnu.org]
Since I am not against business in general, I would oppose a restriction against commercial use. A system that we could use only for recreation, hobbies and school is off limits to much of what we do with computers.
Yet again, your outright lying about this issue shows there's ulterior motives at work. Either that, or you bought someone else's hook, lie, and sinker who were malicious or also illiterate.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yet again, your outright lying about this issue shows there's ulterior motives at work. Either that, or you bought someone else's hook, lie, and sinker who were malicious or also illiterate.
Or rms is bad at his job of being an effective messenger.
Just look at his appearance, the long hair, scraggly beard, frumpy clothing. It's the classic unprofessional appearance. That's great for students who want to look like rebels, but it's terrible for a board room.
So yeah, people will see him and think he's hostile to commercial interests because he dresses like someone who's trying to "stick it to the man".
Now you can get away with things like that if you're good with your messaging otherwise, but rms
Re: (Score:2)
He either is or isn't against commercial use of software in principle. How he appears, how good he is at messaging, is NO EXCUSE for spreading lies about his position on commercial software. This is about facts.
Re: (Score:2)
So you're excusing people spreading a lie that he's against commercial use of software?
He either is or isn't against commercial use of software in principle. How he appears, how good he is at messaging, is NO EXCUSE for spreading lies about his position on commercial software. This is about facts.
Your points are kinda getting mixed up.
Your previous claim was that the corporate opposition was about freeloading, ie there is an obvious undercurrent of corporate interests behind the current opposition to the FSF. The GPL is simply a thorn in the side of anyone who wants to freeload off open source software.
That is pretty damn false. Some of the biggest criticism came from RedHat, the exact opposite of a corporate freeloader. And yes it was bought by IBM, but IBM is also very much not a freeloader. Aside
What Stallman thought? Read "Free as in Freedom" (Score:2)
Want to know what Stallman thought? Read "Free as in Freedom" Then you'll know from the primary source ... Oh, yeh ... information want's to be free, right? So no excuses ... https://b-ok.cc/book/2837341/9... [b-ok.cc] ... direct download link ... https://b-ok.cc/dl/2837341/b7e... [b-ok.cc] ... and for bittorrent ... the Library Genesis libgen link has torrent links too ... http://libgen.rs/book/index.ph... [libgen.rs]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
The entire reason we don't have 9000 versions of TCP/IP is because the original BSD TCP/IP stack was good enough for everyone to use, and everyone used it, even Microsoft. Had that not happened, we might have seen Microsoft and Apple go off and make their own incompatible TCP/IP implementations, or even write entirely different protocols (see NetBIOS) that were not intended to be scaled to the entire internet, and if your PC doesn't have that OS and Protocol implementation, you can't talk to any other computer.
I don't know if you're just ignorant or trolling. Companies innovate and create stuff that fits their needs. Then when they find that the need to inter-operate with other companies' works, they kludge their working system to make it work with others. That's the way it has always worked. It may not in layer 3 (or even lower, layer 1. Think Token Ring, Ethernet, Arcnet, G-Net, StarNet, etc) and might even be in layers higher than 3 (SMB vs. NFS), but at some point companies realized that most others were
Re: (Score:3)
Some software actually needs to be "BSD-like" licensed because it commercial users don't use it, we get fragmentation. The entire reason we don't have 9000 versions of TCP/IP is because the original BSD TCP/IP stack was good enough for everyone to use, and everyone used it, even Microsoft. Had that not happened, we might have seen Microsoft and Apple go off and make their own incompatible TCP/IP implementations, or even write entirely different protocols (see NetBIOS) that were not intended to be scaled to the entire internet, and if your PC doesn't have that OS and Protocol implementation, you can't talk to any other computer.
That may have been true at one point, but the TCP standard has evolved since then and the protocol handling code hasn't been even close between different implementations for a very long time. Some did a full rewrite of the original TCP code and some just made so many changes the code is unrecognizable. Even 20 years ago I was seeing debugging on the Linux kernel list that amounted to "this code interoperates badly with this other OS or doesn't handle older/newer versions of the other OS well.
Kinda like what is happening with TLS 1.3 right now. Needlessly making the web have to run in full SSL mode all the time, wasting energy and time on smaller devices. We quite literately lost significant web server capacity on any machine more than 6 years old just to kowtow to google's idiocy. SSL does not give you privacy, contrary to the narrative. Google went and forked OpenSSL... that won't end well. There was no need to force SSL on sites that don't have any input. Thousands of video, comic and photo sites, along with streaming, never needed this. But now here we are stuck with a web that will expire every 60 days if someone so much as breathes on the SSL certificate.
I think it's
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
RMS's position, which is the FSF's position, is that he wants no proprietary software
When it comes down to it, this the big difference between the two camps.
The Free Software/copyleft people are morally opposed to the existence of proprietary software. It's evil. They want it gone. The GPL is designed to disadvantage it. Commercial has nothing to do with; profit has nothing to do with it; just freedom.
The open source/permissive license people just want people to use their code.
Re: (Score:2)
Do you have any evidence that the FSF had an impact on US copyright law? Claiming that "he and his foundation also responsible for the fact that we can now read copies of the Great Gatsby for free" seems like a bit of a stretch.
It also seems a bit counterintuitive to me, because software licenses REQUIRE copyright, so copyright extension isn't really the enemy, although I guess no software was written before 1923 so it's all good.
Re: (Score:2)
Silly. We couldn't read the Great Gatsby at all if RMS hadn't written it!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You know why the FSF and rms come across as "nutty" at times?
this is particularly fascinating to me, to learn that even Linus Torvalds completely and utterly fails to comprehend what the FSF is about. at the 3mdeb "beer event" only this week, we were very surprised and honoured that Dr Stallman turned up, unannounced. we got the opportunity to ask him, well, basically, "what the heck?". his reply was extremely informative: if he was as "stupidly zealously religiously indoctrinous" as everyone *makes him out to be*, he would NEVER have invented the LGPL license.
bea
Re: (Score:1)
Re: "Nuttiness" (Score:1)
You know why the FSF and rms come across as "nutty" at times?
My IQ isn't low enough to have ever thought that. Stallman is brilliant, ethical and apparently has fucking disgusting personal habits but as it's the only thing that his [desperate; corporate] detractors can get to stick, so it's probably about as legit as the "nuttiness" claim.
Re: "Nuttiness" (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
RMS has a knack for worrying about problems the rest of us haven't noticed yet, which is one of the reasons the GPL v.2 was around for Linux to use. RMS also tends to be stubborn and recalcitrant on what seem like min
Re: (Score:2)
You know why the FSF and rms come across as "nutty" at times? Because without them, and without their voices being occasionally heard, PC hardware would have been as completely tied to Microsoft by now as Apple is to OSX, and we'd certainly have had another copyright extension act to boot. If they have to be loud and repetitive at times, then so be it.
Would that have been the case? The FSF and rms weren't the only ones in the fight. In fact, on the topic of copyright extensions I'd credit Lawrence Lessig and the Creative Commons far more more than I'd credit rms. And the lack of hardware lock-in seems much more attributable to the influence of Open Source companies like RedHat, and their allies like IBM. The anti-corporate narrative of rms is hardly the way to affect change in the corporate world.
I remember the early 2000's and the most prominent thing I
Re: (Score:2)
Linus is in a very good position to weigh in: he's grown fat since relocating to CA.
Re: I think we need an IT expert to weight in (Score:1)
Or something.
Back in the late 80's (Score:3)
My boss and I donated about 14K to the FSF, because our very, very large corporation was using a ton of open source software from them.
He was the same boss that told me, "Some people live to work, some people work to live" (probably my favorite boss)
We also donated some stuff to the university that gave us a tape for emacs for our vax cluster. At the time there didn't seem to be any other way to get the software...
Bait and switch? (Score:3, Insightful)
What is it, that needs "solving", exactly? Is not the software in question freely (as in beer) available because it is written by enthusiasts/hobbyists?
Well, one can certainly charge for a) access to source; b) using it. It may need to be a different license (BSD, perhaps), but it is possible — and has been done, with Unix in particular.
Yet, to demand a "solution" (read: "money") from people, who took your promise of free code, and made use of it, seems like bait-and-switch...
Not unlike demanding a "donation" in exchange for "free" lemonade — a common (mal)practice among vendors unwilling (or unable) to deal with the bureaucracy/regulations necessary for a proper vending permit.
I still don't see who is harmed... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's telling that the kernel doesn't have this "problem." The kernel is close to the hardware, and hardware vendors have to make physical objects of value to make a profit. It's called the manufacturing sector. All the code they contribute is self serving, to help sell their hardware. It just happens to benefit users as well - users of that hardware. That's a win-win.
Software vendors, on the other hand, tend to rent-seeking business models. The existence of free alternatives forces them to earn their rents. Open source also helps them to earn their rents. Is there a problem with that?
Re: (Score:2)
Yet, to demand a "solution" (read: "money") from people, who took your promise of free code, and made use of it, seems like bait-and-switch...
You seem to have missed the part of the interview where they talked about how they’ve deliberately rebranded as “open source” instead of “free”. In the same way that a retail shop that displays its wares isn’t engaging in a bait-and-switch by showing you what they have and letting you inspect it, neither is open source software if they let you look before deciding whether you want to purchase.
But it also isn’t a bait-and-switch even when software is available for fr
Re: (Score:1)
There is no such thing. Things are done either as a hobby, or for pay. (The luckiest among us are those, for whom hobby and profession overlap significantly.) That's it.
Only if the strings of such financial support were originally attached in the license and/or other documentation. To begin demanding it later is "bait and switch"...
Re: (Score:2)
We seem to be on completely different wavelengths here. As I'm talking about the "public", "common good", and speaking of various amenities, I do so with an awareness and consideration of centuries-old charitable traditions, so let me start with a few relevant examples, just to make sure we're on the same page.
For one, public amenities are regularly given to cities by benefactors who live in the community (hence why a park may be named after a person or company), after which it's up to the community to main
Re: (Score:1)
That only makes sense, when the subject is tangible property. Does anyone even own the software projects in subject?
No. You pick that litter because it gives you pleasure — you've improved the world around you, and can feel better about yourself. You're under no obligation to do it. I know, that this is, what
Re: (Score:2)
That only makes sense, when the subject is tangible property. Does anyone even own the software projects in subject?
Whether tangible or not makes no difference, and it doesn't matter who owned it before, what matters is that it's been given to the public to maintain.
No. You pick that litter because it gives you pleasure — you've improved the world around you, and can feel better about yourself.
Just because someone can feel better about themself doesn't mean they necessarily do. You're assuming that everyone else thinks as you do. They don't.
There are innumerable motivations beyond payand pleasure for doing the things we do. While altruism is often accompanied by pleasure at having done the right thing, that isn't always the case, yet it still remai
Re: (Score:2)
You seem to have missed the part of the interview where they talked about how they’ve deliberately rebranded as “open source” instead of “free”.
But it's still a free software license. Anybody you distribute it to you must also distribute the source code and they are free to redistribute it as well. The "open source" branding is really because the project doesn't really embody the values of the FSF - in fact it explicitly does not have the "or later versions" part of the GPL and doesn't do copyright assignment to the FSF. The project is about the source, not about 'freedom' and you see this in the position on Tivoization: so long as the source is gi
Re: comunes have this problem (Score:2)
There will indeed be freeloading. That's true pretty much everywhere. Particularly in larger groups, in pretty much everything, there will be those who carry the ones who slack. The advantage of a more free arrangement is that the ones with ability and drive can exceed, bringing greater rewards to themselves. It's mostly a problem where so-called equity is enforced.
Apache License (Score:2)
These days the Apache 2 License is much more popular than GPL, and the code quality tends to be higher, too. Companies contribute if it makes sense as part of their business strategy; the same as with GPL. The GPL restrictions, preventing companies who don't want to share from using it, just lowers the number of users, reduces the importance of the code, and in fact, reduces the value of contributions by companies who do see themselves benefiting by having their name on the package.
GPL is great for Linux, b
Re: (Score:1)
The GPL does not require people who use or modify GPL code to share that code with others or upstream. The GPL ONLY requires those who share modified code to include the source or a offer to get the source.
GPL 10 (Score:2)
By using this software you consent to allow 1% of your processing power to be used to generate cryptocurrency. The proceeds of which will be divided amongst the copyleft holders of the software in proportion to your usage with any remainder, due to unclear copyright or other ambiguities, being used to improve the security of the software.
:)
Re: GPL 10 (Score:2)
Strawman much?
Do you also draw posters like this [bytwerk.com]?
Re: (Score:2)
The GFDL's idea of "invariant sections" -- which Debian decided were non-free, meaning a bunch of GNU documentation has to live in their non-free repository -- is a precedent for the FSF deciding that nobody else should be allowed to change something because the FSF's opinion is more important than anyone else's.
Re: (Score:2)
And how you made the leap from my post to antisemitism is bizarre to say the least.
Opposing theft and robbery is not 'nutty' though. (Score:1)
Torvalds just doesn't seem to think any further. And apparently accepts being abused if it's not all too direct and blatant.
What free software is about, is nothing else but stopping people from stealing from people and robbing them. With things like racketeering schemes (imaginary property) and other forms of monopolism and artificial scarcity (like lock-in, walled gardens, tivoization). All things that effectively mean somebody steals your money or makes you work for free by taking your choice.
That is neve
New friendly Linus? (Score:2)
"I won't name names, and some of them really are trying to do better"
Is this the new friendly, polite Linus since the "Fuck you, Nvidia!" of several years ago? ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] )
Not that he was wrong about Nvidia, mind you.
GPL predates the cloud (Score:2)
I worked for one such big tech that never paid a penny for the software it used and never contributed time or money to open source projects.
You know what I'd do with that kernel? (Score:1)
Pop it in a pan heated with oil and serve it with a light drizzle of salt. How'd you like that, Mr. Torvalds?
Education & medical care. (Score:4, Interesting)
As a foreigner who has lived in the US (Texas - it was great!) his assessment of the way medical care is paid for is spot on. And education - even I from a cow town in Australia could see some of the gaping flaws in the way the average USAian was was taught about the world. But despite all that, the people are wonderful and the place is great.
Linus is spot on about rms and the FSF (Score:1)
Even corporate entities that use the software and contribute nothing back to the actual source code have a very useful and valuable role in the OSS ecosystem: their consumption (or lack thereof) gives feedback about the usefulness of a particular piece of software and can even provide ideas for where things can be improved.
The attitude of RMS and the FSF to paint corporate/commercial interests as self-serving, greedy, toxic bastards alienates a huge portion of the potential OSS community, and a population
I want to see the Linux microdrive driver (Score:1)
In fact, I guess I could say that I've been wanting an ARM machine for much longer than that - back when I was a teenager, the machine I really wanted was an Acorn Archimedes, but availability and price made me go with a Sinclair QL (M68008 processor) and then obviously a few years later a i386 PC instead.
Feedback for Openource developer (Score:2)
I keep running into the issue where the companies I work for (developing mass-market embedded products) can't use anything licenced with GPLv3 (but are OK with older (L)GPL licences.
Mostly this is around GPLV3's extra requirements to distribute a full software environment so end users can rebuild the software that includes the GPLV3 component.
Although it sounds like a great idea, it's simply not an option for companies that have (or think they have) any kind of intellectual property or something unique in
Called Out the Smelly Pope (Score:2)
Of course open source is sustainable (Score:2)
Is the open source model sustainable?
Of course it is, as long as there are enough friendless people who can be paid little to nothing in money but be given fake "respect" and "community", open source will continue. Hell, this is also true for some commercial closed source development as well, everybody knows that employtee who has no friends, works 24/7, and gets really excited whenever there is a company event.