new extension generator for C++
Rouslan Korneychuk
to Python and I was wondering if there is any interest in it.
It's a hobby project. I was originally using Boost.Python on another
project but found a couple of things I didn't like. Eg: you can't really
have private constructors. If you want a Python object created, you
either have to expose the constructor in Python, or create an instance
of the object somewhere else in memory, and have it either copied to the
PyObject or have the PyObject hold a reference to it. I was working on a
rudimentary 3D game engine that was a Python extension. It was important
to avoid copying potentially huge amounts of data, but to have almost
every PyObject just be a pointer to another object (and the object
already is just a few or even one pointer) seemed like an pointless
compromise, considering that I was writing code that was specifically
designed to be a Python extension (There was also another issue I came
across but don't remember now).
So I looked for other solutions and noticed that Py++ (which simply
generates Boost.Python code for you) was based on a seperate program
called GCCXML. I figured I could use GCCXML and generate code however I
wanted. So I did.
My program generates human-readable code (it even uses proper
indentation). The program still has a lot of work to be done on it, but
it can already generate working Python extensions.
It takes an input file like this:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<module name="testmodule" include="main.h">
<doc>module doc string</doc>
<class name="AClass" type="MyClass">
<doc>class doc string</doc>
<init/>
<member cmember="value"/>
<def func="greet"/>
<propery get="getX" set="setX"/>
</class>
</module>
You can probably figure out what the resulting code does. The goal is to
generate code that is as close to hand-written code as possible. It even
forgoes using PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords and has the argument checks
hard-wired. It also generates a header file that contains a PyObject
implementation of MyClass called obj_AClass, with every constructor
fowarded and with the new and delete operators overloaded to play nice
with Python's memory handler:
...
extern PyTypeObject obj_AClassType;
struct obj_AClass {
PyObject_HEAD
MyClass base;
bool initialized;
void *operator new(size_t s) {
void *ptr = PyMem_Malloc(s);
if(!ptr) throw std::bad_alloc();
return ptr;
}
void operator delete(void *ptr) {
PyMem_Free(ptr);
}
obj_AClass(MyClass const & _0) : base(_0) {
PyObject_Init(reinterpret_cast<PyObject*>(this),&obj_AClassType);
initialized = true;
}
obj_AClass(unsigned int _0) : base(_0) {
PyObject_Init(reinterpret_cast<PyObject*>(this),&obj_AClassType);
initialized = true;
}
};
...
If you want to expose one overload of a constructor or function but not
the others, you can add overload="list,of,args" to <init/> or <def/>.
Default values for arguments are handled automatically. When handling
overloaded functions, it checks the types of the arguments to pick the
best overload, taking into consideration polymorphism and the fact that
basic types like ints can be converted from one-another. It will
automatically detect if two overloads match to the same set of Python
arguments (eg: void func(float) vs void func(double)). The only issue is
it will not use keyword arguments for overloaded functions (I don't know
if that can even be done reliably *and* efficiently. I would need to
give it more thought).
If there is enough interest I can put this project up on SourceForge or
Google Code.
Stefan Behnel
> So I looked for other solutions and noticed that Py++ (which simply
> generates Boost.Python code for you) was based on a seperate program
> called GCCXML. I figured I could use GCCXML and generate code however I
> wanted. So I did.
>
> My program generates human-readable code (it even uses proper
> indentation). The program still has a lot of work to be done on it, but
> it can already generate working Python extensions.
Last I heard, that was basically what PyBindGen does (and probably some
other existing binding generators). You should take a look at them before
investing too much time into a duplicated effort.
Also, if you're interested in performance, you should take a look at
Cython, which is an optimising compiler for (basically) Python code that
can talk to C, C++ and Fortran code. It's been used a lot for writing
performance critical library wrappers.
Stefan
Stefan Behnel
> it will not use keyword arguments for overloaded functions (I don't know
> if that can even be done reliably *and* efficiently. I would need to
> give it more thought).
You should look at the argument unpacking code that Cython generates. It
has been subject to serious benchmarking and optimisations.
Stefan
Samuel Williams
It looks interesting. I say go for it. You will learn something and might make some improvements on existing ideas.
I recommend putting the code on www.github.com
Kind regards,
Samuel
Rouslan Korneychuk
> Dear Rouslan,
>
> It looks interesting. I say go for it. You will learn something and might make some improvements on existing ideas.
>
> I recommend putting the code on www.github.com
>
> Kind regards,
> Samuel
>
>
aspect sounds interesting, since up until now, this project has been a
solitary exercise.
On 05/04/2010 01:51 AM, Stefan Behnel wrote:
> Last I heard, that was basically what PyBindGen does (and probably some
> other existing binding generators). You should take a look at them
> before investing too much time into a duplicated effort.
>
> Also, if you're interested in performance, you should take a look at
> Cython, which is an optimising compiler for (basically) Python code that
> can talk to C, C++ and Fortran code. It's been used a lot for writing
> performance critical library wrappers.
>
> Stefan
>
I took a brief look at PyBindGen. I noticed a couple of things in the
generated code of a test module. The PyObject definitions held a pointer
to the contained datatype, which is one of the things I was trying to
steer away from. It would generate a std::map for each new type,
apparently to allow the contained type to be matched back to the
PyObject when needed. I intend to use the same method that Boost.Python
uses, sneak the pointer into the destruct functor of a shared_ptr.
And when parsing arguments from an overloaded set, PyBindGen appears to
generate complete separate functions for each overload and then try one
after the other. The reason mine doesn't support overloaded named
arguments is because it instead uses a bunch of nested if-statements to
match the overload with as few checks as possible. Mine also orders the
checks so that a base-class is never checked before a derived-class and
that numeric types and string types are matched to their best fit (given
func(double x) and func(int x), a python float value will always call
func(double)). I'm not certain that PyBindGen doesn't generate code that
takes this into consideration I haven't studied its code.
I'll definitely take a look at how Cython handles arguments some time.
It's also interesting to note that while PyBindGen will parse C++ types
itself, to interpret arguments and return types, mine uses gccxml to do
all the work. When given a specific overload, it will generate a dummy
function with the same set of arguments in the file given to gccxml,
along with typedefs for all built-in types. That way, you can specify
types either explicitly, or with typedefs regardless of how the
interface you want to expose does it, and my code doesn't have to do any
extra work.
The only question I have now is what about licensing? Is that something
I need to worry about? Should I go with LGPL, MIT, or something else?
And should the license be mentioned in the code or be in a single
separate file at the top-level directory?
Rouslan Korneychuk
Aahz
Rouslan Korneychuk <rous...@msn.com> wrote:
>
>The only question I have now is what about licensing? Is that something
>I need to worry about? Should I go with LGPL, MIT, or something else?
Which license you use depends partly on your political philosophy.
Unless you have an aggressively Stallmanesque attitude that people using
your code should be forced to contribute back any changes, stick with
MIT. (Generally speaking, the less encumbrance in your code, the more
likely people are to use it, if your goal is to encourage users.)
--
Aahz (aa...@pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/
"It is easier to optimize correct code than to correct optimized code."
--Bill Harlan
Rouslan Korneychuk
> In article<4BE05D75...@msn.com>,
> Rouslan Korneychuk<rous...@msn.com> wrote:
>>
>> The only question I have now is what about licensing? Is that something
>> I need to worry about? Should I go with LGPL, MIT, or something else?
>
> Which license you use depends partly on your political philosophy.
> Unless you have an aggressively Stallmanesque attitude that people using
> your code should be forced to contribute back any changes, stick with
> MIT. (Generally speaking, the less encumbrance in your code, the more
> likely people are to use it, if your goal is to encourage users.)
MIT it is, then.
Ben Finney
> In article <4BE05D75...@msn.com>,
> Rouslan Korneychuk <rous...@msn.com> wrote:
> >
> >The only question I have now is what about licensing? Is that
> >something I need to worry about? Should I go with LGPL, MIT, or
> >something else?
>
> Which license you use depends partly on your political philosophy.
Yes.
Unless you place such a low value the freedom of your users that you'd
allow proprietary derivatives of your work to remove the freedoms you've
taken care to grant, then you should choose a copyleft license like the
GPL.
> Unless you have an aggressively Stallmanesque attitude that people
> using your code should be forced to contribute back any changes
Er, no. Anyone who thinks that a copyleft license “forces” anyone to do
anything is mistaken about copyright law, or the GPL, or both. The GPL
only grants permissions, like any other free software license.
--
\ “If sharing a thing in no way diminishes it, it is not rightly |
`\ owned if it is not shared.” —Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE) |
_o__) |
Ben Finney
Patrick Maupin
> a...@pythoncraft.com (Aahz) writes:
> > In article <4BE05D75.7030...@msn.com>,
> > Rouslan Korneychuk <rousl...@msn.com> wrote:
>
> > >The only question I have now is what about licensing? Is that
> > >something I need to worry about? Should I go with LGPL, MIT, or
> > >something else?
>
> > Which license you use depends partly on your political philosophy.
>
> Yes.
>
> Unless you place such a low value the freedom of your users that you'd
> allow proprietary derivatives of your work to remove the freedoms you've
> taken care to grant,
Oh, you mean like Guido and the PSF, and all the Apache people. Yes,
they're an uncaring bunch. I wouldn't trust software written by any
of them, or attempt to emulate them in any way.
> then you should choose a copyleft license like the
> GPL.
This is certainly appropriate in some circumstances. The only time I
personally would use the GPL is if I thought I wrote something so
wonderful and uneasily replicated that I wanted to directly make money
off it, and thus wanted to make it harder for others to take it and
sell enhanced versions without giving me the code back. For years, I
have viewed the GPL as more of a commercial license than the
permissive ones, a view that has been validated by several high
profile events recently.
> > Unless you have an aggressively Stallmanesque attitude that people
> > using your code should be forced to contribute back any changes
>
> Er, no. Anyone who thinks that a copyleft license “forces” anyone to do
> anything is mistaken about copyright law
Perhaps you feel "forces" is too loaded of a word. There is no
question, however, that a copyright license can require that if you do
"X" with some code, you must also do "Y". There is also no question
that the GPL uses this capability in copyright law to require anybody
who distributes a derivative work to provide the source. Thus,
"forced to contribute back any changes" is definitely what happens
once the decision is made to distribute said changes in object form.
>, or the GPL, or both. The GPL
> only grants permissions, like any other free software license.
But the conditions attached to those permissions make it not at all
"like any other free software license." And that's true whether we
use the word "forces" or not.
Regards,
Pat
Ben Finney
> On May 6, 6:56 pm, Ben Finney <ben+pyt...@benfinney.id.au> wrote:
> > Er, no. Anyone who thinks that a copyleft license “forces” anyone to
> > do anything is mistaken about copyright law
>
> Perhaps you feel "forces" is too loaded of a word. There is no
> question, however, that a copyright license can require that if you do
> "X" with some code, you must also do "Y".
No. A free software license doesn't require anything. It permits the
recipient to do things otherwise prohibited. Copyright law taketh, and
the license giveth as an exception to the law.
That is: it is copyright law that forces the recipient to abstain from a
broad range of actions. A free software license grants exceptions,
explicitly allowing specific actions to be performed.
> There is also no question that the GPL uses this capability in
> copyright law to require anybody who distributes a derivative work to
> provide the source. Thus, "forced to contribute back any changes" is
> definitely what happens once the decision is made to distribute said
> changes in object form.
You might as well say that a restaurant “forces” patrons to pay for
their meal. They don't; it's merely a proviso for performing the act of
eating the food.
Since no-one is forcing anyone to take any of the actions permitted in
the license, and since those actions would not otherwise be permitted
under copyright law, it's both false and misleading to refer to them as
“forced”.
--
\ “We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just |
`\ stuff that works.” —Douglas Adams |
_o__) |
Ben Finney
Patrick Maupin
> Patrick Maupin <pmau...@gmail.com> writes:
> > On May 6, 6:56 pm, Ben Finney <ben+pyt...@benfinney.id.au> wrote:
> > > Er, no. Anyone who thinks that a copyleft license “forces” anyone to
> > > do anything is mistaken about copyright law
>
> > Perhaps you feel "forces" is too loaded of a word. There is no
> > question, however, that a copyright license can require that if you do
> > "X" with some code, you must also do "Y".
>
> No. A free software license doesn't require anything. It permits the
> recipient to do things otherwise prohibited. Copyright law taketh, and
> the license giveth as an exception to the law.
Finely parsed semantics with a meaningless difference when applied to
what I said in the context of comparing GPL vs. permissive licenses.
> That is: it is copyright law that forces the recipient to abstain from a
> broad range of actions. A free software license grants exceptions,
> explicitly allowing specific actions to be performed.
Yes, and as I said, the exceptions are not as encompassing, and come
with more restrictions, when using the GPL vs. using a permissive
license.
> > There is also no question that the GPL uses this capability in
> > copyright law to require anybody who distributes a derivative work to
> > provide the source. Thus, "forced to contribute back any changes" is
> > definitely what happens once the decision is made to distribute said
> > changes in object form.
>
> You might as well say that a restaurant “forces” patrons to pay for
> their meal. They don't; it's merely a proviso for performing the act of
> eating the food.
I certainly *would* say that. Try eating at a restaurant with a
halfway watchful staff near a police station and see if you can get
away without payment. Same thing with buying groceries or dry goods.
The restaurants and the stores, with the full weight of the
government, force you to do certain things if you partake of their
wares. So do do software authors via their licenses, which, as you
correctly point out, derive their power from the fact that your legal
rights may be very limited absent a valid license to a piece of
software.
On the odd occasion that a restaurant or a store offers you something
for "free" (with no asterisks or fine print) they really mean it --
you can take it home and do what you want with it, with no force
applied. (Don't start on the whole libre vs. gratis thing -- as far
as I'm concerned, neither "free as in beer" software nor GPLed
software is as free as the occasional free meal or trinket I get,
which is much more akin to "public domain" in software.)
> Since no-one is forcing anyone to take any of the actions permitted in
> the license, and since those actions would not otherwise be permitted
> under copyright law, it's both false and misleading to refer to them as
> “forced”.
Again, the force is applied once you choose to do a particular thing
with the software -- is is really that hard to understand that
concept? Even the permissive licenses force you to retain the
copyright notice on the source, but other than that, they don't try to
exert any kind of control over derivative works.
By the way, in selectively quoting from my email, you conveniently
neglected to address the significant issue of Guido et al apparently
disrespecting their users by "placing a low value on their freedom".
You may think that "force" has been misused here; I happen to think
that you are (and with a lot of other company, no doubt) misusing the
word "freedom" to mean only those *particular* freedoms that *you*
deem appropriate, and trying to paint others who disagree with your
priorities as somehow immoral. Yet when good examples of these
apparently immoral people and their software are given, somehow the
conversation is always directed back away from this issue.
Personally, I usually like to give my customers (paid or unpaid) the
ability to use the software as they see fit. It's basically a gift;
although I force them to include my copyright notice on subsequent
source copies, I don't expect anything else in return, either directly
or indirectly. I certainly don't attempt to control the licensing of
any software they write that happens to use my software; I would view
that as an attempted abrogation of their freedom. But this just gets
back to the ancient philosophical question of whether a man is really
free if he is not allowed to sell himself into slavery. I would argue
that he is not; obviously you and Stallman believe that the man is not
free unless someone forces him to remain free by keeping him from
selling himself.
Regards,
Pat
Ben Finney
> On May 7, 5:33 pm, Ben Finney <ben+pyt...@benfinney.id.au> wrote:
> > Since no-one is forcing anyone to take any of the actions permitted
> > in the license, and since those actions would not otherwise be
> > permitted under copyright law, it's both false and misleading to
> > refer to them as “forced”.
>
> Again, the force is applied once you choose to do a particular thing
> with the software
And again, that would be the case with or without the specific free
software license, so it's false and misleading to say the license forces
anything. The actions that are prohibited are prohibited by copyright
law, not by the license.
I think we're done here.
--
\ “Members of the general public commonly find copyright rules |
`\ implausible, and simply disbelieve them.” —Jessica Litman, |
_o__) _Digital Copyright_ |
Ben Finney
Patrick Maupin
> Patrick Maupin <pmau...@gmail.com> writes:
> > On May 7, 5:33 pm, Ben Finney <ben+pyt...@benfinney.id.au> wrote:
> > > Since no-one is forcing anyone to take any of the actions permitted
> > > in the license, and since those actions would not otherwise be
> > > permitted under copyright law, it's both false and misleading to
> > > refer to them as “forced”.
>
> > Again, the force is applied once you choose to do a particular thing
> > with the software
>
> And again, that would be the case with or without the specific free
> software license
But the OP wasn't asking whether he should supply a license or not
(the absence of a license would presumably force everybody who wanted
to use the software to download a copy from an authorized site, and
not allow them to make copies for friends); he was asking *which*
license he should use, and he explicitly mentioned MIT and LGPL. In
the post you directly responded to, Aahz had responded to the OP with
a suggested license of "MIT". So, in the context of the original
question and original answer, the comparison is permissive vs. (L)GPL,
*not* (L)GPL vs. no license at all.
> so it's false and misleading to say the license forces
> anything.
I have already adequately covered what I believe Aahz meant by
"forced" and I think it's a reasonable term for the discussed
situation.
Personally, I believe that if anything is false and misleading, it is
the attempt to try to completely change the discussion from MIT vs.
GPL to GPL vs. no license (and thus very few rights for the software
users), after first trying to imply that people who distribute
software under permissive licenses (that give the user *more* rights
than the GPL) are somehow creating a some sort of moral hazard that
might adversely affect their users, and then refusing to have any
further discussion on that particular issue.
So which is it? GPL good because a user can do more with the software
than if he had no license, or MIT bad because a user can do more with
the software than if it were licensed under GPL?
> The actions that are prohibited are prohibited by copyright
> law, not by the license.
Yes, just like the taking of food from the restaurant is prohibited by
laws against theft, and in both cases, these prohibitions may be
backed up by the force of the government. But as discussed, this does
not mean that the restaurant or software author cannot give you
something for free if they desire to.
> I think we're done here.
Certainly appears that neither of us is going to convince the other of
anything.
Regards,
Pat
Steven D'Aprano
> Personally, I believe that if anything is false and misleading, it is
> the attempt to try to completely change the discussion from MIT vs. GPL
> to GPL vs. no license (and thus very few rights for the software users),
> after first trying to imply that people who distribute software under
> permissive licenses (that give the user *more* rights than the GPL) are
> somehow creating a some sort of moral hazard that might adversely affect
> their users
If encouraging third parties to take open source code and lock it up
behind proprietary, closed licences *isn't* a moral hazard, then I don't
know what one is.
For the record, I've published software under an MIT licence because I
judged the cost of the moral hazard introduced by encouraging freeloaders
to be less than the benefits of having a more permissive licence that
encourages freeloading and therefore attracts more users. For other
software, I might judge that the cost/benefit ratio falls in a different
place, and hence choose the GPL.
> So which is it? GPL good because a user can do more with the software
> than if he had no license, or MIT bad because a user can do more with
> the software than if it were licensed under GPL?
Good or bad isn't just a matter of which gives you more freedoms, they're
also a matter of *what* freedoms they give. Weaponized ebola would allow
you to kill hundreds of millions of people in a matter of a few weeks,
but it takes a very special sort of mind to consider that the freedom to
bring about the extinction of the human race a "good".
I consider the freedom granted by the MIT licence for my users to take my
source code and lock it up behind restrictive licences (and therefore
*not* grant equivalent freedoms to their users in turn) to be a bad, not
a good. But in some cases it is a cost worth paying, primarily because
not all people who use MIT-licenced software go on to re-publish it under
a restrictive licence, but nevertheless won't consider the GPL (possibly
due to misunderstandings, confusion or political interference).
--
Steven
Martin P. Hellwig
<cut>
> If encouraging third parties to take open source code and lock it up
> behind proprietary, closed licences *isn't* a moral hazard, then I don't
> know what one is.
I fail to see what is morally wrong with it. When I ,as the author,
share my work to the public, I should have made peace with the fact that
I, for all intends and purposes, lost control over its use. And that is
rightfully so; who am I to say: "Yeah you can use it but only once in a
blue moon when Jupiter aligns with Mars and a solar eclipse reaches its
high on Greenwich at noon exactly."
But just for argument sake say that you can put restrictions on the use,
who is going to enforce these restrictions? The author/Police/special
interest groups?
Anyway I usually put stuff under the MIT/BSD license, but when I can I
use the beerware license (http://people.freebsd.org/~phk/) and I fully
agree with PHK's reasoning.
--
mph
Aahz
Steven D'Aprano <st...@REMOVE-THIS-cybersource.com.au> wrote:
>
>For the record, I've published software under an MIT licence because I
>judged the cost of the moral hazard introduced by encouraging freeloaders
>to be less than the benefits of having a more permissive licence that
>encourages freeloading and therefore attracts more users. For other
>software, I might judge that the cost/benefit ratio falls in a different
>place, and hence choose the GPL.
Well, yes, which is more-or-less what I posted in the first place.
--
Aahz (aa...@pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/
f u cn rd ths, u cn gt a gd jb n nx prgrmmng.
Patrick Maupin
cybersource.com.au> wrote:
> On Fri, 07 May 2010 23:40:22 -0700, Patrick Maupin wrote:
> > Personally, I believe that if anything is false and misleading, it is
> > the attempt to try to completely change the discussion from MIT vs. GPL
> > to GPL vs. no license (and thus very few rights for the software users),
> > after first trying to imply that people who distribute software under
> > permissive licenses (that give the user *more* rights than the GPL) are
> > somehow creating a some sort of moral hazard that might adversely affect
> > their users
>
> If encouraging third parties to take open source code and lock it up
> behind proprietary, closed licences *isn't* a moral hazard, then I don't
> know what one is.
For a start, there is a difference between "encouraging" and
"allowing". But in point of fact, you have it exactly backwards.
Putting the code out there and making it a tort to republish it under
a closed license creates a moral hazard -- a trap that many companies
including Linksys/Cisco have fallen into. If I expect nothing in
return, if it's a gift, then the likelihood of moral hazard is
significantly reduced. Unless you are somehow suggesting that I owe
my user's customers anything (which suggestion, btw, is frequently
made in veiled terms, and always pisses me off), there is no other
moral hazard produced by me choosing a permissive license for my code.
> > So which is it? GPL good because a user can do more with the software
> > than if he had no license, or MIT bad because a user can do more with
> > the software than if it were licensed under GPL?
>
> Good or bad isn't just a matter of which gives you more freedoms, they're
> also a matter of *what* freedoms they give. Weaponized ebola would allow
> you to kill hundreds of millions of people in a matter of a few weeks,
> but it takes a very special sort of mind to consider that the freedom to
> bring about the extinction of the human race a "good".
You're missing the context where Mr. Finney keeps changing what he's
arguing about. I agree completely that different licenses are valid
for different expectations, and said as much in my first post on this
subject. But it's extremely silly to compare weaponized ebola to
publishing free software, unless you want to give ammunition to those
amoral profiteers who claim that it is so dangerous for hackers to
give out source code at all that doing so should be criminalized.
> I consider the freedom granted by the MIT licence for my users to take my
> source code and lock it up behind restrictive licences (and therefore
> *not* grant equivalent freedoms to their users in turn) to be a bad, not
> a good. But in some cases it is a cost worth paying, primarily because
> not all people who use MIT-licenced software go on to re-publish it under
> a restrictive licence, but nevertheless won't consider the GPL (possibly
> due to misunderstandings, confusion or political interference).
"Political interference" is certainly the main reason that I won't use
the GPL, but it is probably not the same politics you are thinking
of. When I seriously consider investing in learning a piece of
software so that I can make it part of my "toolbox," a major
consideration is how well it plays with the other tools in my toolbox,
and exactly which construction jobs I can use it on. RMS has managed
to create a scenario where the GPL not only doesn't play nicely with
some other licenses, but now doesn't even always play nicely with
itself -- some people who liked GPL v2 but weren't willing to cede
control of their future licensing terms to the FSF now have GPL v2
code that can't be linked to GPL v3 code.
So, when a package is GPL licensed, for me it can create more
contemplation about whether the package is worth dealing with or not.
If the package is large, well-maintained, and standalone, and I'm just
planning on being a user, the fact that it's GPL-licensed is not at
all a negative. If I'm looking at two roughly equivalent programming
toolkits, I will take the BSD/MIT one any day, because I know that
when I learn it, I "own" it to the extent that I can use it on
anything I want in any fashion in the future.
Regards,
Pat
Steven D'Aprano
> On May 8, 3:37 am, Steven D'Aprano <st...@REMOVE-THIS-
> cybersource.com.au> wrote:
>> On Fri, 07 May 2010 23:40:22 -0700, Patrick Maupin wrote:
>> > Personally, I believe that if anything is false and misleading, it is
>> > the attempt to try to completely change the discussion from MIT vs.
>> > GPL to GPL vs. no license (and thus very few rights for the software
>> > users), after first trying to imply that people who distribute
>> > software under permissive licenses (that give the user *more* rights
>> > than the GPL) are somehow creating a some sort of moral hazard that
>> > might adversely affect their users
>>
>> If encouraging third parties to take open source code and lock it up
>> behind proprietary, closed licences *isn't* a moral hazard, then I
>> don't know what one is.
>
> For a start, there is a difference between "encouraging" and "allowing".
Finely parsed semantics with a meaningless difference when applied to
what I said in the context of comparing GPL vs. more permissive licenses.
> But in point of fact, you have it exactly backwards. Putting the code
> out there and making it a tort to republish it under a closed license
> creates a moral hazard -- a trap that many companies including
> Linksys/Cisco have fallen into.
What? That's crazy talk. You think Linksys and Cisco don't have people
capable of reading licences? What sort of two-bit organisation do you
think they are?
They have lawyers, they have people whose job it is to make sure that
they don't infringe other people's copyright. They wouldn't use software
copyrighted by Microsoft without making sure they were legally licenced.
One can only wonder why they thought they didn't need to treat the GPL
with an equal amount of respect.
Since you raised the analogy of a restaurant giving away freebies, if a
restaurant stuck a sign on the door saying "Free softdrink with every
burger", and some Cisco engineer walked in the door and started loading
up a trolley with cans of drink from the fridge ("they're free, right?"),
would you argue that this was the restaurant's fault for creating a moral
hazard?
I don't think you understand what a moral hazard is. Under no
circumstances is it a moral hazard to say "If you do X, I will do Y" --
in this case, "If you obey these restrictions on redistribution, I'll
licence this copyrighted work to you". Perhaps you should check the
definition before arguing further that the GPL imposes a moral hazard on
anyone:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard
> If I expect nothing in return, if it's
> a gift, then the likelihood of moral hazard is significantly reduced.
> Unless you are somehow suggesting that I owe my user's customers
> anything (which suggestion, btw, is frequently made in veiled terms, and
> always pisses me off), there is no other moral hazard produced by me
> choosing a permissive license for my code.
No, you don't *owe* them anything, but this brings us back to Ben's
original post. If you care about the freedoms of Cisco's customers as
much as you care about the freedoms of Cisco, then that's a good reason
to grant those customers the same rights as you granted Cisco.
And let's not forget self-interest -- if you care about *your own
freedoms*, then it is in your own self-interest to encourage others to
use open licences rather than closed ones. The MIT licence merely
encourages openness by example, while the GPL makes it a legal
requirement.
Which brings us back full circle to Ben's position, which you took
exception to. If the global freedoms granted by the GPL are sufficiently
important to you, then you should use the GPL. If you have other factors
which are more important, then choose another licence. Why you considered
this controversial enough to require sarcastic comments about the
untrustworthiness of Guido and the PSF, I don't know.
--
Steven
Patrick Maupin
cybersource.com.au> wrote:
<most of the discussion about moral hazard snipped>
> I don't think you understand what a moral hazard is. Under no
> circumstances is it a moral hazard to say "If you do X, I will do Y" --
> in this case, "If you obey these restrictions on redistribution, I'll
> licence this copyrighted work to you". Perhaps you should check the
> definition before arguing further that the GPL imposes a moral hazard on
> anyone:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard
Well, definition is a tricky thing. Note that the wikipedia article
is disputed. One definition of moral hazard is "The tendency of a
person or entity that is imperfectly monitored to engage in
undesirable behavior." Under this definition, Linksys apparently
thought that the imperfect monitoring would let it get away with GPL
violations. Certainly, even if Linksys as a corporation wasn't trying
to get away with anything, their employees were improperly monitored,
and getting a product out was more important than any potential
copyright violation at the time (which shows there was a moral hazard
their employees took advantage of under either the definition I gave
or the wikipedia definition.) There are probably other companies (or
employees of those companies) getting away with GPL violations right
now -- certainly the risk of discovery if you just use a small portion
of GPL code and don't distribute your source must be very small.
There are certainly fewer companies getting away with MIT license
violations, simply because the license is so much harder to violate.
> > If I expect nothing in return, if it's
> > a gift, then the likelihood of moral hazard is significantly reduced.
> > Unless you are somehow suggesting that I owe my user's customers
> > anything (which suggestion, btw, is frequently made in veiled terms, and
> > always pisses me off), there is no other moral hazard produced by me
> > choosing a permissive license for my code.
>
> No, you don't *owe* them anything, but this brings us back to Ben's
> original post. If you care about the freedoms of Cisco's customers as
> much as you care about the freedoms of Cisco, then that's a good reason
> to grant those customers the same rights as you granted Cisco.
But I *do* grant them the same rights -- they can come to my site and
download my software!!!
> And let's not forget self-interest -- if you care about *your own
> freedoms*, then it is in your own self-interest to encourage others to
> use open licences rather than closed ones. The MIT licence merely
> encourages openness by example, while the GPL makes it a legal
> requirement.
But I *do* care about my own freedom. I thought I made that crystal
clear. If I produce something under the MIT license, it's because I
want to give it away with no strings. If I produce something under
the GPL (that's not merely a small addendum to a preexisting project),
it's probably going to be because I think it's pretty valuable stuff,
maybe even valuable enough I might be able to make some money with
it. If I'm going to use any prebuilt components, those *can't* be
licensed under the GPL if I want to deliver the final package under
the MIT license. Even if I'm using the GPL for my valuable software,
my monetization options are more limited if I use a third party
component that is licensed under the GPL, because I now don't have the
viable option of dual-licensing. So, that gets back to my argument
about what I like to see in a package I use, and how I license things
according to what I would like see. For me, the golden rule dictates
that when I give a gift of software, I release it under a permissive
license. I realize that others see this differently.
> Which brings us back full circle to Ben's position, which you took
> exception to. If the global freedoms granted by the GPL are sufficiently
> important to you, then you should use the GPL. If you have other factors
> which are more important, then choose another licence. Why you considered
> this controversial enough to require sarcastic comments about the
> untrustworthiness of Guido and the PSF, I don't know.
To me, the clear implication of the blanket statement that you have to
use the GPL if you care at all about users is that anybody who doesn't
use the GPL is uncaring. I think that's a silly attitude, and will
always use any tool at hand, including sarcasm, to point out when
other people try to impose their own narrow sense of morality on
others by painting what I perceive to be perfectly normal, moral,
decent, and legal behavior as somehow detrimental to the well-being of
the species (honestly -- ebola???)
Regards,
Pat
Carl Banks
> a...@pythoncraft.com (Aahz) writes:
> > In article <4BE05D75.7030...@msn.com>,
>
> > >The only question I have now is what about licensing? Is that
> > >something I need to worry about? Should I go with LGPL, MIT, or
> > >something else?
>
> > Which license you use depends partly on your political philosophy.
>
> Yes.
>
> Unless you place such a low value the freedom of your users that you'd
> allow proprietary derivatives of your work to remove the freedoms you've
> taken care to grant, then you should choose a copyleft license like the
> GPL.
GPL is about fighting a holy war against commercial software.
People who esteem their users give them freedom to use software
however they see fit, including combining it with proprietary
software.
Carl Banks
Aahz
Carl Banks <pavlove...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>GPL is about fighting a holy war against commercial software.
And really, that's a Good Thing. We wouldn't have Python, to some
extent, were it not for Stallman and his crusade. That doesn't mean we
should slavishly worship him, though.
--
Aahz (aa...@pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/
f u cn rd ths, u cn gt a gd jb n nx prgrmmng.
Ben Finney
> On May 8, 2:38 pm, Steven D'Aprano <st...@REMOVE-THIS-
> cybersource.com.au> wrote:
> > Which brings us back full circle to Ben's position, which you took
> > exception to.
[…]
> To me, the clear implication of the blanket statement that you have to
> use the GPL if you care at all about users is that anybody who doesn't
> use the GPL is uncaring. I think that's a silly attitude […]
Fortunately, neither that silly blanket statement nor its implication
are represented in any of my messages in this thread.
I hope that helps.
--
\ “I've always wanted to be somebody, but I see now that I should |
`\ have been more specific.” —Jane Wagner, via Lily Tomlin |
_o__) |
Ben Finney
Ben Finney
> In article <e2467908-621e-4ed4...@b7g2000yqk.googlegroups.com>,
> Carl Banks <pavlove...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >GPL is about fighting a holy war against commercial software.
>
> And really, that's a Good Thing. We wouldn't have Python, to some
> extent, were it not for Stallman and his crusade. That doesn't mean we
> should slavishly worship him, though.
+1.
--
\ “A child of five could understand this. Fetch me a child of |
`\ five.” —Groucho Marx |
_o__) |
Ben Finney
Patrick Maupin
> Patrick Maupin <pmau...@gmail.com> writes:
> > On May 8, 2:38 pm, Steven D'Aprano <st...@REMOVE-THIS-
> > cybersource.com.au> wrote:
> > > Which brings us back full circle to Ben's position, which you took
> > > exception to.
>
> […]
>
> > To me, the clear implication of the blanket statement that you have to
> > use the GPL if you care at all about users is that anybody who doesn't
> > use the GPL is uncaring. I think that's a silly attitude […]
>
> Fortunately, neither that silly blanket statement nor its implication
> are represented in any of my messages in this thread.
Hmm, I must have misunderstood this:
"Unless you place such a low value the freedom of your users that
you'd allow proprietary derivatives of your work to remove the
freedoms you've taken care to grant, then you should choose a copyleft
license like the GPL."
To me, placing "such a low value on the freedom of [my] users" sounds
like I'm ready to consign them to slavery or something, so I certainly
originally viewed this as a "blanket" (e.g. unqualified)
"statement" (well, that should be obvious) that I have to use the GPL
"if [I] care at all about [my] users".
> I hope that helps.
Well, perhaps you meant less by your wording of "a low value on the
freedom" than could be read into it, just as Aahz and I meant less by
"forced" than you apparently read into that. I think we all have more
or less accurate understandings of the differences between GPL and
permissive licenses, but only disagree somewhat on how important the
various features are, and at the end of the day we all come to some
reasonably nuanced view of how to proceed with our projects.
One thing I realized that I didn't cover in my earlier posts is that I
think that for a lot of library-type projects, LGPL v2.1 is a really
fine license, offering a great balance of competing interests. I view
the new licensing on QT from Nokia (commercial, GPL v3, or LGPL v2.1)
as a good example of a balanced strategy.
Regards,
Pat
Paul Rubin
> People who esteem their users give them freedom to use software
> however they see fit, including combining it with proprietary
> software.
Huh???? That makes no sense at all. Why should a standard like that be
expected from free software developers, when it isn't expected from the
makers of the proprietary software who you're proposing deserve to rake
in big bucks from locking up other people's work that they didn't pay
for?
I've got no problem writing stuff for inclusion in proprietary products.
But I do that as a professional, which means I expect to get paid for
it. And I think you have the "esteem" issue backwards. Users who
esteem developers who write and share software for community benefit,
should not whine and pout that the largesse doesn't extend as far as
inviting monopolistic corporations to lock it away from further sharing.
Paul Rubin
> I fail to see what is morally wrong with it. When I ,as the author,
> share my work to the public, I should have made peace with the fact
> that I, for all intends and purposes, lost control over its use.
Does the same thing apply to Microsoft? If I get a copy of MS Office,
do you think I should be able to incorporate its code into my own
products for repackaging and sale any way that I want, without their
having any say? If not, why should Microsoft be entitled to do that
with software that -I- write? Is there something in the water making
people think these inequitable things? If Microsoft's licenses are
morally respectable then so is the GPL.
Paul Rubin
> For the record, I've published software under an MIT licence because I
> judged the cost of the moral hazard introduced by encouraging freeloaders
> to be less than the benefits of having a more permissive licence that
> encourages freeloading and therefore attracts more users. For other
> software, I might judge that the cost/benefit ratio falls in a different
> place, and hence choose the GPL.
I don't know if it counts as a moral hazard but some programmers simply
don't want to do proprietary product development for free. That's why
Linux (GPL) has far more developers (and consequentially far more
functionality and more users) than the free versions of BSD, and GCC
(GPL) has far more developers than Python. Of course the BSD license
did allow Bill Gates and Steve Jobs to become billionaires off the work
off the developers who actually wrote the Berkeley code and are now
struggling to make their rent. But at least those developers can be
proud that the Microsoft and Apple DRM empires benefited so much from
their efforts. THAT's a level of self-sacrifice that I can do without.
Note, "permissive license" is a Microsoft propaganda term from what I
can tell. "Forbidding forbidden" is how I like to think of the GPL.
Robert Kern
> "Martin P. Hellwig"<martin....@dcuktec.org> writes:
>> I fail to see what is morally wrong with it. When I ,as the author,
>> share my work to the public, I should have made peace with the fact
>> that I, for all intends and purposes, lost control over its use.
>
> Does the same thing apply to Microsoft? If I get a copy of MS Office,
> do you think I should be able to incorporate its code into my own
> products for repackaging and sale any way that I want, without their
> having any say? If not, why should Microsoft be entitled to do that
> with software that -I- write?
Martin is not saying that you *ought* to release your code under a liberal
license. He is only saying that he does not believe he is inviting moral hazard
when *he* decides to release *his* code under a liberal license. He was
responding to Steven who was claiming otherwise.
> Is there something in the water making
> people think these inequitable things?
Is there something in the water making people think that every statement of
opinion about how one licenses one's own code is actually an opinion about how
everyone should license their code?
> If Microsoft's licenses are
> morally respectable then so is the GPL.
Martin is not saying that the GPL is not morally respectable.
--
Robert Kern
"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
an underlying truth."
-- Umberto Eco
Robert Kern
> Steven D'Aprano<st...@REMOVE-THIS-cybersource.com.au> writes:
>> For the record, I've published software under an MIT licence because I
>> judged the cost of the moral hazard introduced by encouraging freeloaders
>> to be less than the benefits of having a more permissive licence that
>> encourages freeloading and therefore attracts more users. For other
>> software, I might judge that the cost/benefit ratio falls in a different
>> place, and hence choose the GPL.
>
> I don't know if it counts as a moral hazard but some programmers simply
> don't want to do proprietary product development for free. That's why
> Linux (GPL) has far more developers (and consequentially far more
> functionality and more users) than the free versions of BSD, and GCC
> (GPL) has far more developers than Python.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc? Show me some controlled studies demonstrating that
this is actually the causative agent in these cases, then maybe I'll believe you.
Paul Rubin
>>> I fail to see what is morally wrong with it. When I ,as the author,
>>> share my work to the public, I should have made peace with the fact
>>> that I, for all intends and purposes, lost control over its use.
Robert Kern <rober...@gmail.com> writes:
> Martin is not saying that you *ought* to release your code under a
> liberal license. He is only saying that he does not believe he is
> inviting moral hazard when *he* decides to release *his* code under a
> liberal license. He was responding to Steven who was claiming
> otherwise.
As I read it, he is saying that when someone releases free software,
they have "for all intends and purposes lost control over its use", so
they "should have made peace with the fact" and surrender gracefully.
I'm asking why he doesn't think Microsoft has lost control the same way.
Carl Banks
> Carl Banks <pavlovevide...@gmail.com> writes:
> > People who esteem their users give them freedom to use software
> > however they see fit, including combining it with proprietary
> > software.
>
> Huh???? That makes no sense at all. Why should a standard like that be
> expected from free software developers, when it isn't expected from the
> makers of the proprietary software who you're proposing deserve to rake
> in big bucks from locking up other people's work that they didn't pay
> for?
Same thing's true commercial software, Sparky.
If a commercial developer has a EULA that prevents users from
combining their tools with tools from (say) their competitors, they
would be very much disrespecting their users. The GPL does exactly
that, and people who release GPL software disrespect their users just
as much as a commercial entity that requires you not to use competing
products.
But for some reason when someone and inflicts the disrespect of the
GPL on the community they're considered folk heroes. Bah.
> I've got no problem writing stuff for inclusion in proprietary products.
> But I do that as a professional, which means I expect to get paid for
> it. And I think you have the "esteem" issue backwards. Users who
> esteem developers who write and share software for community benefit,
> should not whine and pout that the largesse doesn't extend as far as
> inviting monopolistic corporations to lock it away from further sharing.
In your petty jealous zeal to prevent megacorporations from profiting
off free software, you prevent guys like me from doing useful,
community-focused things like writing extensions for commercial
software that uses GPL-licensed code. The GPL drives a wedge between
commercial and free software, making it difficult for the two to
coexist. That is far more detrimental to open source community than
the benefits of making a monopolistic corporation do a little extra
work to avoid having their codebase tainted by GPL.
Carl Banks
Aahz
Paul Rubin <no.e...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>
>I don't know if it counts as a moral hazard but some programmers simply
>don't want to do proprietary product development for free. That's why
>Linux (GPL) has far more developers (and consequentially far more
>functionality and more users) than the free versions of BSD, and GCC
>(GPL) has far more developers than Python.
What does your argument claim about Apache?
Paul Rubin
> If a commercial developer has a EULA that prevents users from
> combining their tools with tools from (say) their competitors,
Do you mean something like a EULA that stops you from buying a copy of
Oracle and combining it with tools from IBM on the computer that you
install Oracle on? Those EULAs exist but are not remotely comparable to
the GPL.
> The GPL does exactly that,
No it doesn't (not like the above). You, the licensee under the GPL,
can make those combinations and use them as much as you want on your own
computers. You just can't distribute the resulting derivative to other
people. With proprietary software you can't redistribute the software
to other people from day zero (or even use more copies within your own
company than you've paid for), regardless of whether you've combined it
with anything. And since you usually don't get the source code, it's
awfully hard to make derived combinatoins.
Paul Rubin
> What does your argument claim about Apache?
No idea. I don't have the impression the developer communities are
really similar, and Apache httpd doesn't have all that many developers
compared with something like Linux (I don't know what happens if you add
all the sister projects like Lucene).
I do know that the GPL has gotten companies to release major GCC
improvements that they would have preferred to make proprietary if
they'd had the option. That includes G++.
Patrick Maupin
> No it doesn't (not like the above). You, the licensee under the GPL,
> can make those combinations and use them as much as you want on your own
> computers. You just can't distribute the resulting derivative to other
> people. With proprietary software you can't redistribute the software
> to other people from day zero (or even use more copies within your own
> company than you've paid for), regardless of whether you've combined it
> with anything. And since you usually don't get the source code, it's
> awfully hard to make derived combinatoins.
But the point is that a lot of small developers who are writing
software don't need to distribute any software other than software
they wrote themselves. Their customers will have Oracle/Microsoft/IBM/
CA/whatever licenses already. Companies like Oracle support various
APIs that allow custom software to be connected to their software, so
if Carl is writing stuff to support Oracle, he can just distribute his
software to the customer, and let the customer link it himself.
Now when Carl's software links to GPLed software, it gets
interesting. Although it's probably a legal overreach, the FSF often
attempts to claim that software like Carl's, *by itself*, must be
licensed under the GPL, simply because it can link to GPLed software,
even if it doesn't actually contain any GPLed software. (Whether it's
a legal overreach or not, it's the position of the FSF, and of a lot
of authors who use the GPL, so morally it's probably best to follow
their wishes.)
The end result is that Carl can deliver software to his customer that
lets the customer link Oracle and Microsoft software together, for
example, but is prohibited from delivering software that lets the
customer link GPLed code to Oracle code, because the FSF considers
that software that would do that is a "derived work" and that Carl is
making a distribution when he gives it to his customer, and he is not
allowed to distribute GPLed code that links to proprietary Oracle
code.
Regards,
Pat
Patrick Maupin
Absolutely, and as Aahz acknowledges, RMS was a pioneer in introducing
people to the concept of free software. But fast forward to today,
and as ESR points out, the FOSS development model is so superior for
many classes of software that proprietary companies contribute to free
software even when they don't have to, and are working hard to support
hybrid models that the GPL doesn't support. See, for example, Apple's
support of BSD, Webkit, and LLVM. Apple is not a "do no evil"
corporation, and their contributions back to these packages are driven
far more by hard-nosed business decisions than by any expectation of
community goodwill.
Regards,
Pat
Steven D'Aprano
> GPL is about fighting a holy war against commercial software.
Much GPL software *is* commercial software. Given that you're so badly
misinformed about the GPL that you think it can't be commercial, why
should we pay any attention to your opinions about it?
--
Steven
Paul Rubin
> hybrid models that the GPL doesn't support. See, for example, Apple's
> support of BSD, Webkit, and LLVM. Apple is not a "do no evil"
> corporation, and their contributions back to these packages are driven
> far more by hard-nosed business decisions than by any expectation of
> community goodwill.
That is true. They've also supported GPL projects. I think they just
don't want to be in the business of selling those sorts of products.
They're making too much money selling iphones and laptops to want such a
distraction. Things were different with G++. The company that
developed it would have liked to go into the compiler business with it,
but it wasn't an option, so they released under GPL.
Linus has said similar things have happened with Linux, but I don't know
details.
Patrick Maupin
I think, when Carl wrote "commercial" he meant what many others,
including RMS, would call "proprietary." And, although many people
who use the GPL license may not be fighting the holy war, the original
author of the license certainly is. When asked how he sees
proprietary software businesses making a profit when more and more
software is free, RMS replied "That's unethical, they shouldn't be
making any money. I hope to see all proprietary software wiped out.
That's what I aim for. That would be a World in which our freedom is
respected. A proprietary program is a program that is not free. That
is to say, a program that does respect the user's essential rights.
That's evil. A proprietary program is part of a predatory scheme where
people who don't value their freedom are drawn into giving it up in
order to gain some kind of practical convenience."
And while I agree somewhat with RMS when the subject is certain
proprietary companies that try really hard to lock in users and lock
up their data, I don't view all proprietary software as evil, and I
certainly agree that RMS's language is couched in religious rhetoric.
Regards,
Pat
Paul Rubin
> I certainly agree that RMS's language is couched in religious rhetoric.
I would say political movement rhetoric. He's not religious. He uses
the word "spiritual" sometimes but has made it clear he doesn't mean
that in a religious sense.
Carl Banks
In the interests of not allowing petty semantics to interfere with
this rational discussion, I will correct myself slightly although I
diagree with the terminology. The GPL is a holy war against closed
source commercial software. Anyone who GPL's their code is fighting
that war whether they intend to or not.
And losing it, I might add. There are a small number--maybe 20--of
GPLed packages that have the leverage to force monopolistic
corporations to release their code when they wouldn't have otherwise.
Even then it's only bits and pieces (e.g., NVIDIA's kernel model--
fortunately the X Video driver is allowed to be closed source,
otherwise there'd be no driver on Linux).
Meanwhile there's thousands of GPL packages the corporations won't
touch and they--and we--suffer because of it. I might like to buy a
commercial plugin for Blender, but there aren't any because it's GPL.
If good commercial plugins are available, maybe some firms would find
Blender a reasonable low-cost alternative to expensive products like
Maya, thus benefiting the whole community. As it is, there is no
chance of that happening, all thanks to GPL.
That's the real effect of the GPL, the one that happens on the ground
every day. But if you want to think that the GPL is furthering the
cause of open souce on account of a few companies who donated a few
lines of code to GCC, be my guest.
As for open-source "commercial" software, there's a different holy war
being waged against it, namely reality. No one actually makes money
on it. Open source is the bait to attract customers to buy other
services, ans that's what they make money on. To me this means it's
not commercial but it doesn't matter: the GPL even interferes with
this. Companies do make money supporting GPL, but it's in spite of
GPL and not because of it. A permissive license would allow companies
more freedom to offer their proprietary enhancements.
Bottom line is, GPL hurts everyone: the companies and open source
community. Unless you're one of a handful of projects with sufficient
leverage, or are indeed a petty jealous person fighting a holy war,
the GPL is a bad idea and everyone benefits from a more permissive
licence.
Carl Banks
Carl Banks
> Carl Banks <pavlovevide...@gmail.com> writes:
> > If a commercial developer has a EULA that prevents users from
> > combining their tools with tools from (say) their competitors,
>
> Do you mean something like a EULA that stops you from buying a copy of
> Oracle and combining it with tools from IBM on the computer that you
> install Oracle on?
Yes
> Those EULAs exist but are not remotely comparable to
> the GPL.
They're not exactly the same but they're quite comparable and both
disrespectful to the user.
> > The GPL does exactly that,
>
> No it doesn't (not like the above). You, the licensee under the GPL,
> can make those combinations and use them as much as you want on your own
> computers. You just can't distribute the resulting derivative to other
> people. With proprietary software you can't redistribute the software
> to other people from day zero (or even use more copies within your own
> company than you've paid for), regardless of whether you've combined it
> with anything. And since you usually don't get the source code, it's
> awfully hard to make derived combinatoins.
Really, commercial closed source programs don't have APIs?
If the EULA isn't disrespectful likle the GPL, then I could write a
program that links against multiple closed source API and distribute
closed or open source binaries. Can't do either if you change one of
the proprietary programs to GPL. GPL is a lot more restrictive than
mere closed source proprietary when it comes to stuff like that.
Carl Banks
Martin P. Hellwig
<cut>
> As I read it, he is saying that when someone releases free software,
> they have "for all intends and purposes lost control over its use", so
> they "should have made peace with the fact" and surrender gracefully.
> I'm asking why he doesn't think Microsoft has lost control the same way.
Microsoft has indeed lost control of it in the same way, it is just
because we here in the 'western' world spend huge amount of money on
prosecuting and bringing to 'justice' does who, whether for commercial
purposes or otherwise, make a copy of a piece of code. Think about it,
it is not stealing, the original is still there and no further resources
where needed from the original developer.
What I am saying is that all this license crap is only needed because we
are used to a commercial environment where we can repeatedly profit from
the same work already done.
I am not saying that you should not profit, of course you should
otherwise there is no interest in making it in the first place.
What I am saying is that we as developers should encourage pay for work
and not pay for code. This will, as I believe it, keep everything much
more healthy and balanced. At least we can cut all the crap of software
patents and copyrights.
For those who say it can't be done, sure it can, all you have to do is
nothing, it takes effort to enforce policies.
--
mph
Paul Boddie
>
> Bottom line is, GPL hurts everyone: the companies and open source
> community. Unless you're one of a handful of projects with sufficient
> leverage, or are indeed a petty jealous person fighting a holy war,
> the GPL is a bad idea and everyone benefits from a more permissive
> licence.
Oh sure: the GPL hurts everyone, like all the companies who have made
quite a lot of money out of effectively making Linux the new
enterprise successor to Unix, plus all the companies and individuals
who have taken the sources and rolled their own distributions.
It's not worth my time picking through your "holy war" rhetoric when
you're throwing "facts" like these around. As is almost always the
case, the people who see the merit in copyleft-style licensing have
clearly given the idea a lot more thought than those who immediately
start throwing mud at Richard Stallman because people won't let them
use some software as if it originated in a (universally acknowledged)
public domain environment.
Paul
P.S. And the GPL isn't meant to further the cause of open source: it's
meant to further the Free Software cause, which is not at all the same
thing. Before you ridicule other people's positions, at least get your
terminology right.
Paul Boddie
>
> See, for example, Apple's
> support of BSD, Webkit, and LLVM. Apple is not a "do no evil"
> corporation, and their contributions back to these packages are driven
> far more by hard-nosed business decisions than by any expectation of
> community goodwill.
This being the same Apple that is actively pursuing software patent
litigation against other organisations; a company which accuses other
companies of promoting closed solutions while upholding some of the
most closed and restrictive platforms in widespread use. Your
definition of "do no evil" is obviously more relaxed than mine.
Paul
Steven D'Aprano
Patrick said that Apple is NOT a "do no evil" company.
Speaking as a former Mac fan boy, I came to the conclusion a long time
ago that if Apple and Microsoft exchanged market share, Apple would be
*far* more evil than MS has even dreamed of being. Nothing I've seen in
Apple's behaviour in the last few years has made me change my mind. They
do truly awesome hardware and UI design, but also have a company culture
that gives me the heebie-jeebies: the wolf of take-no-prisoners
corporatism disguised as the sheep of "Think Different" and the counter-
culture.
--
Steven
Paul Boddie
> On May 8, 2:38 pm, Steven D'Aprano <st...@REMOVE-THIS-
> >
> > No, you don't *owe* them anything, but this brings us back to Ben's
> > original post. If you care about the freedoms of Cisco's customers as
> > much as you care about the freedoms of Cisco, then that's a good reason
> > to grant those customers the same rights as you granted Cisco.
>
> But I *do* grant them the same rights -- they can come to my site and
> download my software!!!
Of course they can, but it doesn't mean that they can run that
software on the Cisco equipment they've bought, nor does it mean that
the original software can interoperate with the modified software,
that the end-user can enhance the original software in a way that they
prefer and have it work with the rest of the Cisco solution, or that
the data produced by the Cisco solution can be understood by a user-
enhanced version of the original solution or by other software that
normally interoperates with the original software. People often argue
that the GPL only cares about the software's freedom, not the
recipient's freedom, which I find to be a laughable claim because if
one wanted to point at something the GPL places higher than anything
else, it would be the "four freedoms" preserved for each user's
benefit.
Really, copyleft licences are all about treating all recipients of the
software and modified versions or extensions of the software in the
same way: that someone receiving the software, in whatever state of
enhancement, has all the same privileges that the individual or
organisation providing the software to them enjoyed; those "four
freedoms" should still apply to whatever software they received. That
this is achieved by asking that everyone make the same commitment to
end-user freedoms (or privileges), yet is seen as unreasonable or
actually perceived as coercion by some, says a great deal about the
perspective of those complaining about it.
[...]
> So, that gets back to my argument
> about what I like to see in a package I use, and how I license things
> according to what I would like see. For me, the golden rule dictates
> that when I give a gift of software, I release it under a permissive
> license. I realize that others see this differently.
Yes, but what irritates a lot of people is when you see other people
arguing that some other random person should license their own
software permissively because it's "better" or "more free" when what
they really mean is that "I could use it to make a proprietary
product".
[...]
> To me, the clear implication of the blanket statement that you have to
> use the GPL if you care at all about users is that anybody who doesn't
> use the GPL is uncaring.
Well, if you want the users to enjoy those "four freedoms" then you
should use a copyleft licence. If you choose a permissive licence then
it more or less means that you don't care about (or have no particular
position on the matter of) the users being able to enjoy those
privileges. I believe you coined the term "uncaring", but I think Mr
Finney's statement stands up to scrutiny.
Paul
Steven D'Aprano
[...]
> certainly the
> risk of discovery if you just use a small portion of GPL code and don't
> distribute your source must be very small. There are certainly fewer
> companies getting away with MIT license violations, simply because the
> license is so much harder to violate.
Do you really think it is harder for copyright infringers to copy and
paste a small portion of MIT-licenced code and incorporate it into their
code than it is for them to do the same to GPL code?
[...]
> If I produce something under the MIT license, it's because I
> want to give it away with no strings.
A reasonable position to take. But no strings means that others can add
strings back again. You're giving people the freedom to actively work
against the freedoms you grant.
This is very similar to (e.g.) the question of tolerance and free speech.
In the West, society is very tolerate of differing viewpoints. Does this
mean that we should tolerate intolerant and bigoted viewpoints? Does
tolerance for other points of view imply that we should just accept it
when the intolerant tell us to change our behaviour? Perhaps some people
think that tolerance implies that we should quietly acquiesce whenever
the intolerant, racist, sexist and bigoted demand we give up our
tolerance and free speech in the name of tolerating their hateful
beliefs. I prefer David Brin's philosophy:
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in
tolerance and free speech."
If you value tolerance, then tolerating the intolerant is self-defeating.
And if you value freedom, then giving others the freedom to take freedoms
away is also self-defeating. In the long term, a free society may come to
regret the existence of MIT-style licences -- to use a rather old-
fashioned phrase, these licences give comfort and support to the enemy
(those who would deny freedoms to everyone but themselves).
But in the short term, as I have said, one can't fight every battle all
the time, and MIT-style licences have their place. It's certainly true
that an MIT licence will allow you to maximise the number of people who
will use your software, but maximising the number of users is not the
only motive for writing software.
> If I'm
> going to use any prebuilt components, those *can't* be licensed under
> the GPL if I want to deliver the final package under the MIT license.
An over generalisation. It depends on the nature of the linkage between
components. For instance, you can easily distribute a GPLed Python module
with your application without the rest of your application being GPLed.
[...]
> To me, the clear implication of the blanket statement that you have to
> use the GPL if you care at all about users is that anybody who doesn't
> use the GPL is uncaring. I think that's a silly attitude, and will
> always use any tool at hand, including sarcasm, to point out when other
> people try to impose their own narrow sense of morality on others by
> painting what I perceive to be perfectly normal, moral, decent, and
> legal behavior as somehow detrimental to the well-being of the species
> (honestly -- ebola???)
In context, you were implying that "freedoms" are always a good, and that
more freedom always equals better. I provided a counter-example of where
more freedom can be a bad. What's so difficult to understand about this?
--
Steven
Paul Boddie
Yes, apologies to Patrick for reading something other than what he
wrote. I suppose I've been reading too many Apple apologist
commentaries of late and probably started to skim the text after I hit
the all-too-often mentioned trinity of "BSD, Webkit, and LLVM",
expecting to be asked to sing the praises of Apple's wholesome
"commitment" to open source.
Paul
Patrick Maupin
cybersource.com.au> wrote:
> On Sat, 08 May 2010 13:05:21 -0700, Patrick Maupin wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > certainly the
> > risk of discovery if you just use a small portion of GPL code and don't
> > distribute your source must be very small. There are certainly fewer
> > companies getting away with MIT license violations, simply because the
> > license is so much harder to violate.
>
> Do you really think it is harder for copyright infringers to copy and
> paste a small portion of MIT-licenced code and incorporate it into their
> code than it is for them to do the same to GPL code?
No, but there is less incentive for them to hide their tracks.
> > If I produce something under the MIT license, it's because I
> > want to give it away with no strings.
>
> A reasonable position to take. But no strings means that others can add
> strings back again. You're giving people the freedom to actively work
> against the freedoms you grant.
Only on modified versions. The internet is a wonderful thing. A
smart user can certainly find my original package if he is
interested. A dumb user -- well, maybe I don't want to support them
anyway.
> This is very similar to (e.g.) the question of tolerance and free speech.
> In the West, society is very tolerate of differing viewpoints. Does this
> mean that we should tolerate intolerant and bigoted viewpoints? Does
> tolerance for other points of view imply that we should just accept it
> when the intolerant tell us to change our behaviour? Perhaps some people
> think that tolerance implies that we should quietly acquiesce whenever
> the intolerant, racist, sexist and bigoted demand we give up our
> tolerance and free speech in the name of tolerating their hateful
> beliefs. I prefer David Brin's philosophy:
>
> "We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in
> tolerance and free speech."
Okaaaaay, but I think, given most current fair use interpretations,
most software licensing doesn't implicate free speech concerns. In
any case, GWB's attempt to impose tolerance and free speech on the
rest of the world shows that going forth and crushing may not, in some
cases, be the best policy, especially when the crushing involves
trampling the very rights you are trying to promulgate.
> If you value tolerance, then tolerating the intolerant is self-defeating.
Possibly, but you need a measured response. We don't patrol the roads
to make sure that nobody driving down them is a KKK member. We deal
with KKK members according to their words and/or actions. If you
value personal responsibility, you let people make bad choices and
then suffer the consequences of their own actions. (Like letting me
license my stuff under MIT :-)
> And if you value freedom, then giving others the freedom to take freedoms
> away is also self-defeating.
As I wrote in an earlier post in this thread, a lot of the discussion
gets down to the age old question about whether someone is really free
if he is not allowed to sell himself into slavery. This is a very
interesting philosophical question that has had many words written
about it. I personally don't think the answer is black-and-white, but
then I'm not much of a religious fanatic about anything.
> In the long term, a free society may come to
> regret the existence of MIT-style licences -- to use a rather old-
> fashioned phrase, these licences give comfort and support to the enemy
> (those who would deny freedoms to everyone but themselves).
Or in the long term, a free society may come to realize that the
license incompatibilities pioneered by the FSF and embodied in the GPL
set free software development back by two decades by making an
incremental approach difficult. Or it may be that the way things are
going is the normal chaotic market approach that actually speeds
things up and is actually the optimum way to get there from here. The
future is very difficult to predict, and even, in a few years, with
20-20 hindsight, it will be difficult to accurately speculate on what
might have been.
> But in the short term, as I have said, one can't fight every battle all
> the time, and MIT-style licences have their place. It's certainly true
> that an MIT licence will allow you to maximise the number of people who
> will use your software, but maximising the number of users is not the
> only motive for writing software.
I think we're in violent agreement that both permissive and GPL
licensing have their place. Certainly, the GPL is a more comforting
license to some people, and any license that encourages more good free
software to be written is a great thing. A developer ought to be able
to license his creation under a license of his choosing, and from my
perspective the whole purpose of the debate in this thread is to make
points for and against various licensing schemes to help the OP and
others in their decisions.
> > If I'm
> > going to use any prebuilt components, those *can't* be licensed under
> > the GPL if I want to deliver the final package under the MIT license.
>
> An over generalisation. It depends on the nature of the linkage between
> components. For instance, you can easily distribute a GPLed Python module
> with your application without the rest of your application being GPLed.
I agree that's probably true. However, if you read and parse Stallman
and Moglen very carefully, they don't *want* it to be true and in some
cases deny that it's true. The fact that a lot of people who use the
GPL take their word for this and also believe it means that it may be
morally wrong to make this sort of software combination even in some
cases where it is legally permissible, so in general I assume that if
someone distributes something under the GPL (as opposed to the LGPL)
then their intention is that any system that uses their software as a
component is also GPL.
> > To me, the clear implication of the blanket statement that you have to
> > use the GPL if you care at all about users is that anybody who doesn't
> > use the GPL is uncaring. I think that's a silly attitude, and will
> > always use any tool at hand, including sarcasm, to point out when other
> > people try to impose their own narrow sense of morality on others by
> > painting what I perceive to be perfectly normal, moral, decent, and
> > legal behavior as somehow detrimental to the well-being of the species
> > (honestly -- ebola???)
>
> In context, you were implying that "freedoms" are always a good, and that
> more freedom always equals better. I provided a counter-example of where
> more freedom can be a bad. What's so difficult to understand about this?
Well, for one thing, it was not my intention to imply that more
freedom is always good. I was answering the phrase "Unless you place
such a low value the freedom of your users" which is, IMHO, somewhat
inflammatory language, with equally inflammatory language. Obviously,
the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Regards,
Pat
Patrick Maupin
> On 8 Mai, 22:05, Patrick Maupin <pmau...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On May 8, 2:38 pm, Steven D'Aprano <st...@REMOVE-THIS-
>
> > > No, you don't *owe* them anything, but this brings us back to Ben's
> > > original post. If you care about the freedoms of Cisco's customers as
> > > much as you care about the freedoms of Cisco, then that's a good reason
> > > to grant those customers the same rights as you granted Cisco.
>
> > But I *do* grant them the same rights -- they can come to my site and
> > download my software!!!
>
> Of course they can, but it doesn't mean that they can run that
> software on the Cisco equipment they've bought, nor does it mean that
> the original software can interoperate with the modified software,
> that the end-user can enhance the original software in a way that they
> prefer and have it work with the rest of the Cisco solution, or that
> the data produced by the Cisco solution can be understood by a user-
> enhanced version of the original solution or by other software that
> normally interoperates with the original software.
I agree, and those people who will develop more software if they
aren't lying awake at night worried about whether Cisco or some other
big corporation is going to misappropriate their precious creations
should certainly use the GPL. More people building more free softare
is a great thing, and to the extent the GPL encourages this behavior,
it is a great thing.
> People often argue
> that the GPL only cares about the software's freedom, not the
> recipient's freedom, which I find to be a laughable claim because if
> one wanted to point at something the GPL places higher than anything
> else, it would be the "four freedoms" preserved for each user's
> benefit.
Well, I don't think you saw me arguing it that way. I will say, just
like anything else, that there is a cost associated with using GPL
software, and it is not necessarily a cost that I want to impose on
users of all my software.
> Really, copyleft licences are all about treating all recipients of the
> software and modified versions or extensions of the software in the
> same way: that someone receiving the software, in whatever state of
> enhancement, has all the same privileges that the individual or
> organisation providing the software to them enjoyed;
Sure, and for a major work I think that's great, especially if it
helps attract developers. Sometimes I see people GPL little 100 line
libraries (of often not very good code quality) in a clear attempt to
have the tail wag the dog, and that's laughably pathetic.
> those "four
> freedoms" should still apply to whatever software they received. That
> this is achieved by asking that everyone make the same commitment to
> end-user freedoms (or privileges), yet is seen as unreasonable or
> actually perceived as coercion by some, says a great deal about the
> perspective of those complaining about it.
Well, I *do* think it's, maybe not unreasonable, but certainly
unrealistic, for the author of a small library to attempt to leverage
control over several potentially much larger works by placing the
small library under the GPL, so in general I don't do it. I also
happen to believe that there are a lot of people (perhaps like Carl
Banks if I understand his post correctly) who make money delivering
small customized solutions to sit on top of proprietary software
solutions. If I can save one of these guys some time, perhaps they
will contribute back. If I use the GPL, I will have insured that one
of these guys cannot possibly link my software to, e.g. Oracle, so he
has to reinvent the wheel. So, for some use-cases, I sincerely
believe that the GPL license creates unnecessary, wasteful friction.
But the tone of your last statement and some of your statements below
make it abundantly clear that you've made up your mind about my morals
and aren't at all interested in my reasoning.
> > So, that gets back to my argument
> > about what I like to see in a package I use, and how I license things
> > according to what I would like see. For me, the golden rule dictates
> > that when I give a gift of software, I release it under a permissive
> > license. I realize that others see this differently.
>
> Yes, but what irritates a lot of people is when you see other people
> arguing that some other random person should license their own
> software permissively because it's "better" or "more free" when what
> they really mean is that "I could use it to make a proprietary
> product".
I'm not telling anybody what to do. I'm just explaining why I usually
use the MIT license for things I write, and will often not consider
using a library licensed under the GPL. What irritated me enough to
comment on this thread was the IMHO sanctimonious and inflammatory
"Unless you place such a low value the freedom of your users".
> > To me, the clear implication of the blanket statement that you have to
> > use the GPL if you care at all about users is that anybody who doesn't
> > use the GPL is uncaring.
>
> Well, if you want the users to enjoy those "four freedoms" then you
> should use a copyleft licence. If you choose a permissive licence then
> it more or less means that you don't care about (or have no particular
> position on the matter of) the users being able to enjoy those
> privileges. I believe you coined the term "uncaring", but I think Mr
> Finney's statement stands up to scrutiny.
I personally don't think that RMS's "four freedoms" are the last word
on the best way for society to develop software, no. But using
"Unless you place such a low value the freedom of your users" is truly
an inflammatory statement, because it was given in a context where the
GPL had not yet been carefully parsed and discussed, and did not make
it clear that the "freedoms" being discussed are a particular set of
"freedoms" and not, for example, those freedoms enshrined in the Bill
of Rights. (And as Steven has carefully pointed out, not all freedoms
are necessarily Good Things.)
Regards,
Pat
Patrick Maupin
Oh, I agree he's not religious. OTOH, I don't think bin Laden, or
most of the Ayatollahs, or priests who molest little boys, or Mormon
polygamists, or Branch Davidians are religious either.
But what these people have in common (and also have in common with
some _real_ religious people) is a fervent type of language and style
of speaking and writing, designed to attract religious followers, and
the ability and desire to frame disputes in black-and-white,
moralistic terms. (And here in the states, at least, it's getting
increasingly hard to separate religion from politics in any case.)
This is not necessarily a bad thing -- it's what the religious leaders
exhort their followers to do that makes them good or bad. As I have
discussed in other posts, I think the GPL is a good license for some
software and some programmers. In a perfect world with no proprietary
software, it might even be the only license that was necessary, except
then it wouldn't even be necessary. But in the messy real world we
live in, I
don't personally believe that it is the best solution for a large
class of software licensing problems.
Personally, I think the LGPL is a much better license for those who
are worried about people giving back, but the FSF has now, for all
practical purposes, deprecated it -- not directly, of course, but
implicitly, by changing the name from "Library" to "Lesser" and
damning it with faint praise by actually encouraging people who write
library components to try to help the tail wag the dog by using the
GPL instead of the LGPL.
Regards,
Pat
Martin P. Hellwig
> <cut>
> Wait, what? Why shouldn't I profit repeatedly from the "same work
> already done"? *I* created, its *mine*. I put blood, sweat and tears
> into it and perhaps huge amounts of resources, risking financial
> security and sanity, and you're arguing I shouldn't have the right to
> sell it after its done?
Of course, but what do you do if you find out that your potential
customer already has your software without paying you?
>
> Exactly how do you imagine I'm going to make money off of it? How the
> existing system works is that I sell... multiple copies of it. Maybe
> hundreds or thousands before that investment is recouped. At that
> point, do I no longer get to sell multiple copies? Or do I have to
> find someone to retroactively pay me some kind of salary? What does
> "pay for work" even mean?
>
As a simple developer I do not think my craft is more special than any
other craft like carpentry, masonry, plumbing, electrician etc.
And as I see how other crafts get paid I think is reasonable for my
craft too, I am either employed and paid by the hour or take more risks
and do projects, commissions, etc. etc.
Of course if I would be in the construction business and I build a house
I can either sell it or let it, but then I do take the risk that the
occupant uses my work beyond what I expected and eventually end up with
a huge repair costs.
I am sure you can imagine the rest of my comparison arguments between
construction and software development.
> What's wrong with software copyrights? Don't lump intellectual
> property issues together, they're not comparable. Copyrights have
> nothing at all to do with patents which have nothing at all to do with
> trademarks. Each is a very different set of law.
Very true and in my opinion they all share the same trait, although they
are once made to make sure the original author gets credit and profit
for his/her work they are primarily used now to profit beyond
reasonableness and actually encumber future development and good use,
IMHO they actually hinder the intellectual development of the human race.
>
> Sure, there's some nutty corner cases in copyrights, which need to be
> addressed-- including things like fair use and DRM. But on the whole,
> copyrights aren't really all that broken. Its nothing like the
> situation with software patents, which are just sort of crazy.
Okay so what do you actually do if you find out that in another country,
which do not share the same legislation (about the other 80% of the
population) brakes your copyright or does not uphold the patent
restrictions?
If your big like Microsoft you might try to convince that particular
government that their citizens should pay you, otherwise good luck (even
for Microsoft as they seem to fail more often than succeed in that notion).
They are broken because by definition restrictions need enforcement to
uphold them, if there is no enforcement it will not work. Perhaps a
better solution would be to find a way that does not need any
enforcement (or limited amount of it), say like the economy worked prior
to patents and copyrights minus kings and tyrants.
>
> For those who say it can't be done, sure it can, all you have to
> do is nothing, it takes effort to enforce policies.
>
>
> And an entire industry ceases to exist overnight, with countless new
> homeless people showing up on the streets.
I have the opposite opinion but neither of us have given any facts or
proven research papers on this so shall we call this quits?
>
> You can believe in the Free Software movement (I'm not saying you do,
> this 'you' is impersonal and metaphorical)-- and if you do, good for
> you. You can believe in "morality" with regards to "freedom" and the
> "essential rights" of the users. I find it all nonsensical. But good
> for you if you believe in it. But the Free Software movement exists
> *because* of copyrights. Copyright Law is what makes the GPL even
> possible.
>
<cut>
I don't believe in a system which is based on enforcing rules and where
breaking of this rule at most results in a hypothetical loss of income.
Some enforced rules are of course necessary, like not going on a
pillage/killing/raping spree (except of course if this is your job but
then your still governed by the rules of Geneva -- yeah I know bold
military statement, but I have been there too, the military that is). I
rather like to find a way where minimal rule enforcing is necessary to
make a living.
> But I fail to see what's fundamentally wrong with that system.
>
I hope I have further explained my point of view and hope that you agree
with me at least from my perspective, I do understand though that your
point of view is perfectly valid and reasonable. It is just that I am a
sucker for seeking alternative ways to improve systems even if they only
show small amounts of defects. So you could argue that I have my sight
set for an Utopia while you rather remain in the reality, if you can
find yourself with this than at least we can agree on that :-)
--
mph
Martin P. Hellwig
> For those who say it can't be done, sure it can, all you have to
> do is nothing, it takes effort to enforce policies.
>
>
Patrick Maupin
> On 9 Mai, 09:05, Carl Banks <pavlovevide...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Bottom line is, GPL hurts everyone: the companies and open source
> > community. Unless you're one of a handful of projects with sufficient
> > leverage, or are indeed a petty jealous person fighting a holy war,
> > the GPL is a bad idea and everyone benefits from a more permissive
> > licence.
>
> Oh sure: the GPL hurts everyone, like all the companies who have made
> quite a lot of money out of effectively making Linux the new
> enterprise successor to Unix, plus all the companies and individuals
> who have taken the sources and rolled their own distributions.
So, people overstate their cases to make their points. That happens
on both sides.
> It's not worth my time picking through your "holy war" rhetoric when
> you're throwing "facts" like these around. As is almost always the
> case, the people who see the merit in copyleft-style licensing have
> clearly given the idea a lot more thought than those who immediately
> start throwing mud at Richard Stallman because people won't let them
> use some software as if it originated in a (universally acknowledged)
> public domain environment.
No, you appear to have a kneejerk reaction much worse than Carl's.
You have assumed you fully understand the motives of people who point
out issues with the GPL, and that those motives are uniformly bad, and
this colors your writing and thinking quite heavily, even to the point
where you naturally assumed I was defending all of Apple's egregious
behavior.
As far as my throwing mud at Stallman, although I release some open
source stuff on my own, I make a living writing software that belongs
to other people, and Stallman has said that that's unethical and I
shouldn't be able to make money in this fashion. Sorry, but he's not
on my side.
> P.S. And the GPL isn't meant to further the cause of open source: it's
> meant to further the Free Software cause, which is not at all the same
> thing. Before you ridicule other people's positions, at least get your
> terminology right.
And, again, that's "free" according to a somewhat contentious
definition made by someone who is attempting to frame the debate by co-
opting all the "mother and apple pie" words, who is blindly followed
by others who think they are the only ones who are capable of thoughts
which are both rational and pure. I'm not saying everybody who uses
the GPL is in this category, but some of your words here indicate that
you, in fact, might be.
Regards,
Pat
Paul Boddie
> On May 9, 1:02 pm, Paul Boddie <p...@boddie.org.uk> wrote:
> >
> > People often argue
> > that the GPL only cares about the software's freedom, not the
> > recipient's freedom, which I find to be a laughable claim because if
> > one wanted to point at something the GPL places higher than anything
> > else, it would be the "four freedoms" preserved for each user's
> > benefit.
>
> Well, I don't think you saw me arguing it that way. I will say, just
> like anything else, that there is a cost associated with using GPL
> software, and it is not necessarily a cost that I want to impose on
> users of all my software.
I didn't say that you personally argued that way, but people do argue
that way. In fact, it's understandable that this is how some people
attempt to understand the GPL - the software maintains a particular
state of openness - but they miss the final step in the reasoning
which leads them to see that the licence preserves a set of privileges
for recipients as well.
The "cost" with the GPL is that people cannot take GPL-licensed
software and just do whatever they want with it, although it is also
the case that permissive licences also have a set of conditions
associated with each of them as well, albeit ones which do not mandate
the delivery of the source code to recipients. Thus, the observation
of software licences can never be about taking code which was publicly
available and combining it without thought to what those licences say.
Thus, remarks about Cisco and Linksys - that they were somehow "caught
out" - are disingenuous: if you're in the business of distributing
software, particularly if that software itself has a restrictive
licence, you cannot claim ignorance about licensing or that you just
"found some good code".
> > Really, copyleft licences are all about treating all recipients of the
> > software and modified versions or extensions of the software in the
> > same way: that someone receiving the software, in whatever state of
> > enhancement, has all the same privileges that the individual or
> > organisation providing the software to them enjoyed;
>
> Sure, and for a major work I think that's great, especially if it
> helps attract developers. Sometimes I see people GPL little 100 line
> libraries (of often not very good code quality) in a clear attempt to
> have the tail wag the dog, and that's laughably pathetic.
Why is it pathetic that someone gets to choose the terms under which
their work is made available? By default, if I release something
without any licence, the recipient has very few privileges with
respect to that work: it's literally a case of "all rights reserved"
for the creator. And if it's such a trivial library then why not
reimplement the solution yourself?
> > those "four
> > freedoms" should still apply to whatever software they received. That
> > this is achieved by asking that everyone make the same commitment to
> > end-user freedoms (or privileges), yet is seen as unreasonable or
> > actually perceived as coercion by some, says a great deal about the
> > perspective of those complaining about it.
>
> Well, I *do* think it's, maybe not unreasonable, but certainly
> unrealistic, for the author of a small library to attempt to leverage
> control over several potentially much larger works by placing the
> small library under the GPL, so in general I don't do it.
I dislike the way that when someone releases something under the GPL,
it is claimed that they are coercing or attempting to "leverage"
something. They have merely shared something on their terms. If you
don't like the terms, don't use their software.
> I also
> happen to believe that there are a lot of people (perhaps like Carl
> Banks if I understand his post correctly) who make money delivering
> small customized solutions to sit on top of proprietary software
> solutions. If I can save one of these guys some time, perhaps they
> will contribute back. If I use the GPL, I will have insured that one
> of these guys cannot possibly link my software to, e.g. Oracle, so he
> has to reinvent the wheel. So, for some use-cases, I sincerely
> believe that the GPL license creates unnecessary, wasteful friction.
But it is not universally true that GPL-licensed software cannot be
linked to proprietary software: there are a number of caveats in the
GPL covering cases where existing proprietary systems are in use.
Otherwise, you'd never have GPL-licensed software running on
proprietary systems at all.
> But the tone of your last statement and some of your statements below
> make it abundantly clear that you've made up your mind about my morals
> and aren't at all interested in my reasoning.
Not at all. Recently, I've had the misfortune to hear lots of
arguments about how the GPL supposedly restricts stuff like
"collaboration" and "growth" despite copious evidence to the contrary,
usually from people who seem to be making a career of shouting down
the GPL or the FSF at every available occasion. Now I'm not saying
that you have the same apparent motivations as these people, but I
maintain that when someone claims that people are "forced" to share
their work when they voluntarily make use of someone else's work, or
that they are at the peril of some "moral hazard", it does have a lot
to say about their perspective. (Not least because people are only
obliged to make their work available under a GPL-compatible licence so
that people who are using the combined work may redistribute it under
the GPL. You yourself have mentioned elsewhere in this discussion one
well-known software project that is not GPL-licensed but was
effectively distributed under the GPL to most of its users for a
considerable period of time.)
[...]
> > Yes, but what irritates a lot of people is when you see other people
> > arguing that some other random person should license their own
> > software permissively because it's "better" or "more free" when what
> > they really mean is that "I could use it to make a proprietary
> > product".
>
> I'm not telling anybody what to do. I'm just explaining why I usually
> use the MIT license for things I write, and will often not consider
> using a library licensed under the GPL. What irritated me enough to
> comment on this thread was the IMHO sanctimonious and inflammatory
> "Unless you place such a low value the freedom of your users".
It is hardly a rare occurrence now that I come across someone who has
written in some corner of the Internet, "It's a shame project XYZ is
GPL-licensed because I can't use it for commercial software
development. Can the project maintainers not choose another licence?"
Sometimes, someone who is seeking licensing advice might not want to
be unpopular and might choose a permissive licence because people
reassure them that their project will only be widely used if the
licence lets people use it "commercially" (or, in other words, in
proprietary software). My impression is that many in the core
community around Python seem to emphasise such popularity over all
other concerns.
What I want to point out, and some have done so much more directly
than I have in other forums and in other discussions, is that some
advice about licensing often stems from a direct motivation amongst
those giving the advice to secure preferential terms for themselves,
and that although such advice may be dressed up as doing the "right"
or "best" thing, those giving the advice stand to gain directly and
even selfishly from having their advice followed. I'm not saying you
have done this, but this is frequently seen in the core Python
community, such that anyone suggesting a copyleft licence is seen as
obstructing or undermining some community dynamic or other, while
those suggesting a permissive licence are somehow doing so "in the
spirit of Python" (to the point where the inappropriate PSF licence
for Python is used for independent projects).
> > Well, if you want the users to enjoy those "four freedoms" then you
> > should use a copyleft licence. If you choose a permissive licence then
> > it more or less means that you don't care about (or have no particular
> > position on the matter of) the users being able to enjoy those
> > privileges. I believe you coined the term "uncaring", but I think Mr
> > Finney's statement stands up to scrutiny.
>
> I personally don't think that RMS's "four freedoms" are the last word
> on the best way for society to develop software, no. But using
> "Unless you place such a low value the freedom of your users" is truly
> an inflammatory statement, because it was given in a context where the
> GPL had not yet been carefully parsed and discussed, and did not make
> it clear that the "freedoms" being discussed are a particular set of
> "freedoms" and not, for example, those freedoms enshrined in the Bill
> of Rights. (And as Steven has carefully pointed out, not all freedoms
> are necessarily Good Things.)
I tend not to use the terms "freedom" or "right" except when
mentioning things like the "four freedoms": the word "privilege" is
adequate in communicating what actually is conferred when combining
copyright and software licences. Nevertheless, the "four freedoms" and
"freedom of your users" are still useful notions: if a proprietary
variant of Python became widespread and dominant, although various
parts of the software might be freely available in their original
forms, the ability to reconstruct or change the software would be
impaired and provide fewer opportunities for user involvement than the
primary implementations of Python available today. And should such
proprietary software become mandated by government agencies or become
a de-facto standard, that really does have an effect on the freedom of
users.
Paul
Patrick Maupin
(Lots of good and balanced commentary snipped...)
> I didn't say that you personally argued that way, but people do argue
> that way. In fact, it's understandable that this is how some people
> attempt to understand the GPL - the software maintains a particular
> state of openness - but they miss the final step in the reasoning
> which leads them to see that the licence preserves a set of privileges
> for recipients as well.
Obviously, that's a bit subtle and certainly some people might miss
the step that says "the final user can always use *my* software, and
by choice of license I could decide to insure that if anybody else
fixes bugs in my software or combines it with other software they
write, then my end users will always be able to use that as well."
But others might notice that and still decide that it isn't the right
license for their software.
> Thus, remarks about Cisco and Linksys - that they were somehow "caught
> out" - are disingenuous: if you're in the business of distributing
> software, particularly if that software itself has a restrictive
> licence, you cannot claim ignorance about licensing or that you just
> "found some good code".
Any remarks I made about this were only in the debate about "moral
hazard" by which I meant something different than Steven did. I'm not
at all attempting to condone what Cisco did, just pointing out that if
I license code under the MIT license and Cisco uses it, I certainly
have no reason to complain about it, and wouldn't dream of doing so in
any case, but if I license code under the GPL, then yes, my intentions
are clear, and Cisco is complicit in either deliberately turning a
blind eye, or inadvertently not watching employees closely enough. I
thought I made it clear that I believe that at some level, some human
being had to do something that was wrong in order to get Cisco into
that position. My sole argument was that in general, I don't want to
be the one to put Cisco in that position, and conversely, I don't want
anybody else putting me in that position (I want to do the right
thing) so I usually don't license stuff under the GPL, or incorporate
stuff licensed under the GPL into anything I do.
> Why is it pathetic that someone gets to choose the terms under which
> their work is made available? By default, if I release something
> without any licence, the recipient has very few privileges with
> respect to that work: it's literally a case of "all rights reserved"
> for the creator. And if it's such a trivial library then why not
> reimplement the solution yourself?
You just answered your own question. It's pathetic to try to change
people's behavior by offering them something worthless if they change
their license to match yours. (I'm not at all saying that all GPL
code is worthless, but I have seen things like under 30 line snippets
that weren't even very well written that were "licensed" under the
GPL.)
> I dislike the way that when someone releases something under the GPL,
> it is claimed that they are coercing or attempting to "leverage"
> something. They have merely shared something on their terms. If you
> don't like the terms, don't use their software.
Well, I don't always make that claim, but I do make it when I see a
little "recipe" under the GPL. Often these recipes require so much
customization for any particular task that they are really just
pedagogical, and some of them aren't even very good. Color me a
cynic, but when I see something so short and generic that any sort of
judicial test would declare that there was no copyrightable "there"
there, that has an arguably politicized license slapped on it, I smell
an agenda.
> But it is not universally true that GPL-licensed software cannot be
> linked to proprietary software: there are a number of caveats in the
> GPL covering cases where existing proprietary systems are in use.
> Otherwise, you'd never have GPL-licensed software running on
> proprietary systems at all.
Agreed, but most of those are at very clearly delineated boundaries,
like the OS.
> > But the tone of your last statement and some of your statements below
> > make it abundantly clear that you've made up your mind about my morals
> > and aren't at all interested in my reasoning.
>
> Not at all. Recently, I've had the misfortune to hear lots of
> arguments about how the GPL supposedly restricts stuff like
> "collaboration" and "growth" despite copious evidence to the contrary,
> usually from people who seem to be making a career of shouting down
> the GPL or the FSF at every available occasion. Now I'm not saying
> that you have the same apparent motivations as these people, but I
> maintain that when someone claims that people are "forced" to share
> their work when they voluntarily make use of someone else's work, or
> that they are at the peril of some "moral hazard", it does have a lot
> to say about their perspective. (Not least because people are only
> obliged to make their work available under a GPL-compatible licence so
> that people who are using the combined work may redistribute it under
> the GPL. You yourself have mentioned elsewhere in this discussion one
> well-known software project that is not GPL-licensed but was
> effectively distributed under the GPL to most of its users for a
> considerable period of time.)
Sorry, guess I misunderstood where you are coming from.
> It is hardly a rare occurrence now that I come across someone who has
> written in some corner of the Internet, "It's a shame project XYZ is
> GPL-licensed because I can't use it for commercial software
> development. Can the project maintainers not choose another licence?"
> Sometimes, someone who is seeking licensing advice might not want to
> be unpopular and might choose a permissive licence because people
> reassure them that their project will only be widely used if the
> licence lets people use it "commercially" (or, in other words, in
> proprietary software). My impression is that many in the core
> community around Python seem to emphasise such popularity over all
> other concerns.
Yes, but I see the same sort of popularity effects tilt towards the
GPL sometimes, too.
> What I want to point out, and some have done so much more directly
> than I have in other forums and in other discussions, is that some
> advice about licensing often stems from a direct motivation amongst
> those giving the advice to secure preferential terms for themselves,
> and that although such advice may be dressed up as doing the "right"
> or "best" thing, those giving the advice stand to gain directly and
> even selfishly from having their advice followed. I'm not saying you
> have done this, but this is frequently seen in the core Python
> community, such that anyone suggesting a copyleft licence is seen as
> obstructing or undermining some community dynamic or other, while
> those suggesting a permissive licence are somehow doing so "in the
> spirit of Python" (to the point where the inappropriate PSF licence
> for Python is used for independent projects).
Agreed that every project is different, and lots of considerations
should be taken into account.
>
> I tend not to use the terms "freedom" or "right" except when
> mentioning things like the "four freedoms": the word "privilege" is
> adequate in communicating what actually is conferred when combining
> copyright and software licences. Nevertheless, the "four freedoms" and
> "freedom of your users" are still useful notions: if a proprietary
> variant of Python became widespread and dominant, although various
> parts of the software might be freely available in their original
> forms, the ability to reconstruct or change the software would be
> impaired and provide fewer opportunities for user involvement than the
> primary implementations of Python available today. And should such
> proprietary software become mandated by government agencies or become
> a de-facto standard, that really does have an effect on the freedom of
> users.
I don't worry too much about that happening. I think that ESR is
right that the powerful network effects of free development would
overwhelm any attempt to take something like Python private.
Regards,
Pat
Paul Boddie
> On May 9, 12:08 pm, Paul Boddie <p...@boddie.org.uk> wrote:
>
> > Oh sure: the GPL hurts everyone, like all the companies who have made
> > quite a lot of money out of effectively making Linux the new
> > enterprise successor to Unix, plus all the companies and individuals
> > who have taken the sources and rolled their own distributions.
>
> So, people overstate their cases to make their points. That happens
> on both sides.
Overstate their cases? The "GPL hurts everyone" is a flat-out
falsehood.
> > It's not worth my time picking through your "holy war" rhetoric when
> > you're throwing "facts" like these around. As is almost always the
> > case, the people who see the merit in copyleft-style licensing have
> > clearly given the idea a lot more thought than those who immediately
> > start throwing mud at Richard Stallman because people won't let them
> > use some software as if it originated in a (universally acknowledged)
> > public domain environment.
>
> No, you appear to have a kneejerk reaction much worse than Carl's.
> You have assumed you fully understand the motives of people who point
> out issues with the GPL, and that those motives are uniformly bad, and
> this colors your writing and thinking quite heavily, even to the point
> where you naturally assumed I was defending all of Apple's egregious
> behavior.
I skimmed your post in that particular case and apologised for doing
so.
How have I not understood the motives of people who do not like the
GPL? The GPL sets out a number of conditions on the use of a
particular work; these conditions are not liked by some people
typically because it means that they cannot use that work as part of a
proprietary product or solution, just as the authors of the licence
intended; various people would prefer that authors license their works
permissively, precisely because this lets them use such works in
proprietary software; some of the rhetoric employed to persuade people
to permissively license their work involves phrases like "more
freedom" (which are subjective at best, although never acknowledged as
such) or the more absurd "holy war", evidently.
I once attended a talk by someone from the FSF Europe, a few years ago
now, where the inevitable assertion that the BSD licences were "more
free" was made by an audience member. In my experience, such people
are very reluctant to acknowledge the different philosophical
dimensions of "freedom", whereas people who apply copyleft licences to
their works have typically had to confront such issues even before
being asked over and over again to relicense them.
> As far as my throwing mud at Stallman, although I release some open
> source stuff on my own, I make a living writing software that belongs
> to other people, and Stallman has said that that's unethical and I
> shouldn't be able to make money in this fashion. Sorry, but he's not
> on my side.
A lot of people seem to take issue with the GPL because they don't
like Stallman, but that only leads to their judgement being clouded as
a consequence. When Stallman's warnings become fulfilled, as has been
the case with things like BitKeeper, this only serves to infuriate
people further, often because they know they could have ignored the
messenger but should not have ignored the message. Most people writing
software are doing so for other people, and many people are doing so
as part of a proprietary process. Thus, the only way to interpret what
Stallman has to say (should you not wish to reject it completely) is
to consider it as some kind of absolute guidance, not some kind of
personal judgement.
> > P.S. And the GPL isn't meant to further the cause of open source: it's
> > meant to further the Free Software cause, which is not at all the same
> > thing. Before you ridicule other people's positions, at least get your
> > terminology right.
>
> And, again, that's "free" according to a somewhat contentious
> definition made by someone who is attempting to frame the debate by co-
> opting all the "mother and apple pie" words, who is blindly followed
> by others who think they are the only ones who are capable of thoughts
> which are both rational and pure. I'm not saying everybody who uses
> the GPL is in this category, but some of your words here indicate that
> you, in fact, might be.
No, I am saying that the Free Software movement is a well-defined
thing - that's why the name uses capital letters, but it could be
called the "Planet of the Zebras movement" for all the name should
reasonably distract from what the movement is actually about - and
that it has a very different agenda from the "open source" movement
which advocates very similar licensing on the basis of things like
higher software quality and other "pragmatic" consequences of using
such licensing.
As for the terminology, I've already noted that I prefer the term
"privileges" to "rights" or "freedoms" because it communicates that
something is gained. Again, some people assume that the natural state
of a work is (or should be) a free-for-all and that the GPL revokes
privileges: this is a misrepresentation of how copyright and licensing
functions.
Paul
Paul Boddie
>
> You just answered your own question. It's pathetic to try to change
> people's behavior by offering them something worthless if they change
> their license to match yours. (I'm not at all saying that all GPL
> code is worthless, but I have seen things like under 30 line snippets
> that weren't even very well written that were "licensed" under the
> GPL.)
If this is code that you would consider using in an existing project,
but if they aren't pitching it directly at you, why would you believe
that they are trying to change your behaviour? It is you who gets to
decide whether you use the code or not. If the licence isn't
acceptable to you, what prevents you from asking for a special
licence, especially if you are going to incorporate the code in a
product which is sold?
In the more general case of people just releasing small programs and
libraries, all such people are doing is saying, "Here is something I
have done, and here are the terms through which this is shared." If
anything, they are reaching out to see if anyone will work together
with them on making something better, where everyone agrees to a
common framework upon which that work will be done. I'm sure people
didn't think much of Linus Torvalds' work in the beginning, either.
Paul
Ed Keith
How you license your software should be based on how you want it to be used.
If you are releasing an end user application I do not care how you license it. If it is useful I will use it. If you believe some of the code is of commercial value, and that you hope to profit from it you should use the GPL, so you can license it separately to someone who wants to use it in a closed source product.
If, on the other hand you are releasing a library, to be incorporated into other products, If you release it under the GPL I will not take the time to learn it. I do not want to have to think about what took I can legally use for what job. Libraries with permissive licenses can be used in any project. Many contracts prohibit the use of GPL or LGPL code. So I do not waist my time learning to use libraries covered by restrictive licenses. So if you want me to even consider using your library do not use GPL, or LGPL. I favor the Boost license in this case.
I hope this is useful.
-EdK
Ed Keith
e_...@yahoo.com
Blog: edkeith.blogspot.com
Patrick Maupin
> On 10 Mai, 00:02, Patrick Maupin <pmau...@gmail.com> wrote:
> If this is code that you would consider using in an existing project,
Well, in a few cases I'm talking about, I wouldn't consider using the
code -- I just stumbled across it when researching some terms, and
discounted it immediately. Honestly, I'm talking about code that is
so small and generic that it doesn't deserve any copyright protection
(and wouldn't get any if it came to that in court).
> but if they aren't pitching it directly at you, why would you believe
> that they are trying to change your behaviour?
Because I've seen people specifically state that their purpose in
GPLing small libraries is to encourage other people to change their
behavior. I take those statements at face value. Certainly RMS
carefully lays out that the LGPL should be used sparingly in his "Why
you shouldn't use the Lesser GPL for your next library" post. (Hint:
he's not suggesting a permissive license instead.)
> It is you who gets to
> decide whether you use the code or not. If the licence isn't
> acceptable to you, what prevents you from asking for a special
> licence, especially if you are going to incorporate the code in a
> product which is sold?
Well, the only time I can remember even hinting around for any kind of
different license was when I was found an svglib bug for use with
rst2pdf. svglib is a "real" library (unlike the code snippets I was
discussing) licensed under the GPL. I would be quite happy to
consider learning it and contributing patches to it, but I didn't want
to maintain a fork myself, and the maintainer doesn't have a public
repository and was quite busy with other stuff, and when I asked him
if he would accept patches, it was ten days before he got back to me.
rst2pdf was licensed under the MIT license before I started
contributing to it, and there is no way I was going to even consider
adding patches for a GPLed package (which would certainly have to be
GPLed) into the rst2pdf repository. (Say what you will about how
sometimes differently licensed code can be combined, but RMS has to
share quite a bit of the blame/credit for the whole combining licenses
FUD.) So I took a completely different path and right now the best
way to use .svg files with rst2pdf is to use inkscape to convert them
to PDFs, and use some code I wrote that allows you to use preexisting
PDFs as images.
Despite being a real library, svglib is quite small at ca. 1200 lines,
and if the license were compatible with the rst2pdf codebase license
(e.g. even if it were LGPL), I would have just stuffed the file into
the rst2pdf codebase and started hacking on it. So there's a nice
little piece of GPLed code that isn't getting as much attention as it
would have if it were LGPLed or licensed permissively, or even if the
author had just dumped it onto sourceforge or googlecode under the GPL
but given me commit rights. As it is, I don't think it's been
maintained in 8 years.
This is exactly the same situation that Carl was describing, only with
two different open source packages rather than with a proprietary
package and a GPL package. The whole reason people use words like
"force" and "viral" with the GPL is that this issue would not have
come up if svglib were MIT and rst2pdf were GPL. (Note that the LGPL
forces you to give back changes, but not in a way that makes it
incompatible with software under other licenses. That's why you see
very few complaints about the LGPL.)
> In the more general case of people just releasing small programs and
> libraries, all such people are doing is saying, "Here is something I
> have done, and here are the terms through which this is shared."
Sure, and all I'm explaining is why I reject the terms in some cases.
I particularly reject the terms when a license that was originally
designed for a whole program is used for a small library, with the
express intent of getting more people to use said license.
> If anything, they are reaching out to see if anyone will work together
> with them on making something better, where everyone agrees to a
> common framework upon which that work will be done.
That's absolutely not always the case. Often, it's more "here's
something I've done; take it or leave it but if you take it, it's on
these terms."
> I'm sure people
> didn't think much of Linus Torvalds' work in the beginning, either.
I think the GPL was a great license for the development model for
Linux. I have no issues with how that worked. Part of that is that
Linus was always active in the development. I think that,
particularly when the concept of free software was relatively new, the
license might have been an effective focal point for rallying
contributions.
But I have definitely seen cases where people are offering something
that is not of nearly as much value as they seem to think it is, where
one of the goals is obviously to try to spread the GPL.
Regards,
Pat
Patrick Maupin
> On 9 Mai, 21:55, Patrick Maupin <pmau...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On May 9, 12:08 pm, Paul Boddie <p...@boddie.org.uk> wrote:
>
> > > Oh sure: the GPL hurts everyone, like all the companies who have made
> > > quite a lot of money out of effectively making Linux the new
> > > enterprise successor to Unix, plus all the companies and individuals
> > > who have taken the sources and rolled their own distributions.
>
> > So, people overstate their cases to make their points. That happens
> > on both sides.
>
> Overstate their cases? The "GPL hurts everyone" is a flat-out
> falsehood.
Well, just like in some cases it makes us all richer, in some cases it
also makes us all poorer. See my prior example about svglib.
> > > It's not worth my time picking through your "holy war" rhetoric when
> > > you're throwing "facts" like these around. As is almost always the
> > > case, the people who see the merit in copyleft-style licensing have
> > > clearly given the idea a lot more thought than those who immediately
> > > start throwing mud at Richard Stallman because people won't let them
> > > use some software as if it originated in a (universally acknowledged)
> > > public domain environment.
>
> > No, you appear to have a kneejerk reaction much worse than Carl's.
> > You have assumed you fully understand the motives of people who point
> > out issues with the GPL, and that those motives are uniformly bad, and
> > this colors your writing and thinking quite heavily, even to the point
> > where you naturally assumed I was defending all of Apple's egregious
> > behavior.
>
> I skimmed your post in that particular case and apologised for doing
> so.
Apology accepted.
> How have I not understood the motives of people who do not like the
> GPL? The GPL sets out a number of conditions on the use of a
> particular work; these conditions are not liked by some people
> typically because it means that they cannot use that work as part of a
> proprietary product or solution, just as the authors of the licence
> intended;
As I have shown in another post, in one case, I wanted to contribute a
fix for making one piece of GPLed software work better with another
case of MIT licensed software. The fact that one piece was GPLed and
the author didn't have a repository and was relatively unresponsive
via email, combined with the fact that I was too lazy to start a new
repository just to maintain a fork of one small library, means that I
didn't devote any time to fixing bugs and making the GPLed software
better. A "proprietary product or solution" never entered into the
picture.
> various people would prefer that authors license their works
> permissively, precisely because this lets them use such works in
> proprietary software;
You also are ignoring the fact that a lot of people practice what they
preach on the other side of this issue. Since I don't want to make
other people jump through these sorts of licensing hoops, I license
stuff under the MIT license. MIT, BSD, and Apache are "universal
donor licenses" and just like type O blood, I think this increases the
value of the code licensed under them.
> some of the rhetoric employed to persuade people
> to permissively license their work involves phrases like "more
> freedom" (which are subjective at best, although never acknowledged as
> such) or the more absurd "holy war", evidently.
Well, I think the reason "more freedom" is used is because RMS has
attempted to co-opt the word "freedom" and I think "holy war," though
inflammatory, accurately portrays the kind of language RMS uses to
attract his followers. YMMV
> I once attended a talk by someone from the FSF Europe, a few years ago
> now, where the inevitable assertion that the BSD licences were "more
> free" was made by an audience member. In my experience, such people
> are very reluctant to acknowledge the different philosophical
> dimensions of "freedom", whereas people who apply copyleft licences to
> their works have typically had to confront such issues even before
> being asked over and over again to relicense them.
Well, the whole reason I got involved in this thread was I felt that I
was, by association, being accused of not caring about others'
"freedom" so this is a pot/kettle issue. Also, when you're deeply
involved in an issue, you might miss or ignore insults hurled by
others seemingly on your side; it's always easier to spot the logical
fallacies made by members of the opposing side, and come to the
conclusion that your side is smarter, more moral, and generally
superior.
> > As far as my throwing mud at Stallman, although I release some open
> > source stuff on my own, I make a living writing software that belongs
> > to other people, and Stallman has said that that's unethical and I
> > shouldn't be able to make money in this fashion. Sorry, but he's not
> > on my side.
>
> A lot of people seem to take issue with the GPL because they don't
> like Stallman, but that only leads to their judgement being clouded as
> a consequence. When Stallman's warnings become fulfilled, as has been
> the case with things like BitKeeper, this only serves to infuriate
> people further, often because they know they could have ignored the
> messenger but should not have ignored the message. Most people writing
> software are doing so for other people, and many people are doing so
> as part of a proprietary process. Thus, the only way to interpret what
> Stallman has to say (should you not wish to reject it completely) is
> to consider it as some kind of absolute guidance, not some kind of
> personal judgement.
Oh, but I do consider the licenses separately, and describe when I
think they are appropriate. Again, if you're addressing half the
debaters, you're missing the people on your side (not necessarily in
this particular thread) who quote Stallman and Moglen as if their word
is the final word on everything. Even in the example you quote here,
it was obvious what was going to happen with bitkeeper to the most
casual observer, so I don't think that by itself shows incredible
powers of observation on Stallman's part. I also think that if
Stallman didn't exist, we would have invented him -- it was time for
that particular philosophy.
> > > P.S. And the GPL isn't meant to further the cause of open source: it's
> > > meant to further the Free Software cause, which is not at all the same
> > > thing. Before you ridicule other people's positions, at least get your
> > > terminology right.
>
> > And, again, that's "free" according to a somewhat contentious
> > definition made by someone who is attempting to frame the debate by co-
> > opting all the "mother and apple pie" words, who is blindly followed
> > by others who think they are the only ones who are capable of thoughts
> > which are both rational and pure. I'm not saying everybody who uses
> > the GPL is in this category, but some of your words here indicate that
> > you, in fact, might be.
>
> No, I am saying that the Free Software movement is a well-defined
> thing - that's why the name uses capital letters, but it could be
> called the "Planet of the Zebras movement" for all the name should
> reasonably distract from what the movement is actually about - and
> that it has a very different agenda from the "open source" movement
> which advocates very similar licensing on the basis of things like
> higher software quality and other "pragmatic" consequences of using
> such licensing.
But you're missing the point that it is called the "Free Software"
movement precisely for all the religious/political reasons that piss
some people off. People wouldn't get all hot and bothered about it if
it were the Planet of the Zebras movement, but RMS never would have
called it that.
> As for the terminology, I've already noted that I prefer the term
> "privileges" to "rights" or "freedoms" because it communicates that
> something is gained.
That's a reasonable starting point, but you still need a way to
distinguish who is getting the privileges -- in the case of the GPL,
it's often the non-programming general public, whereas in the case of
the MIT license, it's anybody who wants to do the software equivalent
of mash-ups, whether they want to generally share with the public or
not. Even that's not quite right -- the GPL allows me to make any
kind of mash-up I want as long as I don't want to share it with
*anybody* else; it's only when I want to share that it becomes a
problem if I used the wrong ingredients inside my mash-up. That's
where the "force" and "viral" words come from -- Microsoft doesn't
force me to use their license if I code to their API and don't
distribute their code, but the FSF's viewpoint is that any linking
(static or dynamic) forces me to use the GPL on my code even if I'm
not distributing the GPLed code I'm dynamically linking to. (Legally,
I think that's probably wrong, but that's their opinion, and
apparently the opinion of a lot of their adherents, so morally it
would be wrong for me to go against their wishes.)
> Again, some people assume that the natural state
> of a work is (or should be) a free-for-all and that the GPL revokes
> privileges: this is a misrepresentation of how copyright and licensing
> functions.
As I said earlier in the thread, the OP's question was not "no license
or GPL" but rather "MIT or GPL" so the relevance of a non-licensed
alternative wasn't really a point of this particular discussion.
Regards,
Pat
Paul Rubin
> It's certainly true
> that an MIT licence will allow you to maximise the number of people who
> will use your software, but maximising the number of users is not the
> only motive for writing software.
I'd say proprietary licenses where you spend billions on marketing and
lobbying get you the most users. Windows has orders of magnitude more
users than either Linux or BSD. FOSS under any license isn't about
maximizing users.
Carl Banks
> On 9 Mai, 09:05, Carl Banks <pavlovevide...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Bottom line is, GPL hurts everyone: the companies and open source
> > community. Unless you're one of a handful of projects with sufficient
> > leverage, or are indeed a petty jealous person fighting a holy war,
> > the GPL is a bad idea and everyone benefits from a more permissive
> > licence.
>
> Oh sure: the GPL hurts everyone, like all the companies who have made
> quite a lot of money out of effectively making Linux the new
> enterprise successor to Unix, plus all the companies and individuals
> who have taken the sources and rolled their own distributions.
Relative to what they could have done with a more permissive license?
Yes. GPL hurts everyone relative to licenses that don't drive wedges
and prevent interoperability between software.
You might argue that GPL is sometimes better than proprietary closed
source, and I won't disagree, but it's nearly always worse than other
open source licenses.
> P.S. And the GPL isn't meant to further the cause of open source: it's
> meant to further the Free Software cause, which is not at all the same
> thing.
It doesn't matter what the GPL "meant" to do, it matters what it does,
which is hurt everyone (relative to almost all other licenses).
> Before you ridicule other people's positions, at least get your
> terminology right.
I don't agree with FSF's defintion of free software and refuse to
abide by it. GPL isn't free software; any software that tells me I
can't compile it in with a closed source API isn't free. Period.
Carl Banks
Paul Boddie
> On May 9, 6:39 pm, Paul Boddie <p...@boddie.org.uk> wrote:
> > but if they aren't pitching it directly at you, why would you believe
> > that they are trying to change your behaviour?
>
> Because I've seen people specifically state that their purpose in
> GPLing small libraries is to encourage other people to change their
> behavior. I take those statements at face value. Certainly RMS
> carefully lays out that the LGPL should be used sparingly in his "Why
> you shouldn't use the Lesser GPL for your next library" post. (Hint:
> he's not suggesting a permissive license instead.)
Sure, but all he's asking you to do is to make the software available
under a GPL-compatible licence.
[...]
> rst2pdf was licensed under the MIT license before I started
> contributing to it, and there is no way I was going to even consider
> adding patches for a GPLed package (which would certainly have to be
> GPLed) into the rst2pdf repository. (Say what you will about how
> sometimes differently licensed code can be combined, but RMS has to
> share quite a bit of the blame/credit for the whole combining licenses
> FUD.)
I think the FSF are quite clear about combining licences - they even
go to the trouble of telling you which ones are compatible with the
GPL - so I don't see where "FUD" comes into it, apart from possible
corner cases where people are trying to circumvent the terms of a
licence and probably know themselves that what they're trying to do is
at the very least against the spirit of the licence. Even then,
warning people about their little project to make proprietary plugins,
or whatever, is not really "FUD".
As for rst2pdf, what your modifications would mean is that the
software would need to be redistributed under a GPL-compatible
licence. I'll accept that this does affect what people can then do
with the project, but once again, you've mentioned at least one LGPL-
licensed project which was previously in this very situation, and it
was never actually GPL-licensed itself. Here's the relevant FAQ entry:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#LinkingWithGPL
[...]
> This is exactly the same situation that Carl was describing, only with
> two different open source packages rather than with a proprietary
> package and a GPL package. The whole reason people use words like
> "force" and "viral" with the GPL is that this issue would not have
> come up if svglib were MIT and rst2pdf were GPL. (Note that the LGPL
> forces you to give back changes, but not in a way that makes it
> incompatible with software under other licenses. That's why you see
> very few complaints about the LGPL.)
Actually, the copyleft licences don't "force" anyone to "give back
changes": they oblige people to pass on changes.
[...]
> But I have definitely seen cases where people are offering something
> that is not of nearly as much value as they seem to think it is, where
> one of the goals is obviously to try to spread the GPL.
Well, even the FSF doesn't approve of trivial projects using the GPL:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhatIfWorkIsShort
Paul
Paul Boddie
> On May 9, 10:08 am, Paul Boddie <p...@boddie.org.uk> wrote:
> > Oh sure: the GPL hurts everyone, like all the companies who have made
> > quite a lot of money out of effectively making Linux the new
> > enterprise successor to Unix, plus all the companies and individuals
> > who have taken the sources and rolled their own distributions.
>
> Relative to what they could have done with a more permissive license?
Well, yes. Some people would have it that the only reason why BSD
variants never became as popular as Linux (or rather, GNU/Linux, but
lets keep this focused) is because the litigation around the BSD code
base "scared people away". Yet I remember rather well back in the
mid-1990s when people using the same proprietary-and-doomed platform
as myself started looking into Unix-flavoured operating systems, and a
group of people deliberately chose NetBSD because of the favourable
licensing conditions and because there was a portability headstart
over Linux, which at the time people seriously believed was rather non-
portable. So, that "scary AT&T" myth can be sunk, at least when
considering its impact on what people were doing in 1994. Although the
NetBSD port in question lives on, and maybe the people responsible all
took jobs in large companies, its success on that platform and its
derivatives has been dwarfed by that of the corresponding Linux port.
> Yes. GPL hurts everyone relative to licenses that don't drive wedges
> and prevent interoperability between software.
I can think of another case, actually connected to the above
proprietary platform and its practitioners, where software licensing
stood in the way of "just getting on with business" which is what you
seem to be advocating: a company released their application under the
GPL, except for one critical library which remained proprietary
software. Now, although you can argue that everyone's life would be
richer had the GPL not prohibited "interoperability" (although I
imagine that the application's licensing actually employed an
exception to glue everything together in that particular case), a
community never formed because people probably assumed that their role
would only ever be about tidying up someone else's code so that the
original authors could profit from it.
All the GPL is designed to do in such cases is to encourage people to
seek control (in terms of the "four freedoms") of all the technology,
rather than be placated by the occasional airdrop of proprietary
software and to be convinced never to explore the possibility of
developing something similar for themselves. The beneficiary of the
refusal to work on the above application was the GPL-licensed
Inkscape, which might not be as well-liked by many people, but it does
demonstrate, firstly, that permissive licences do not have the
monopoly on encouraging people to work on stuff, and secondly, that
actually going and improving something else is the answer if you don't
like the licensing of something.
> You might argue that GPL is sometimes better than proprietary closed
> source, and I won't disagree, but it's nearly always worse than other
> open source licenses.
For me, I would argue that the GPL is always better than "proprietary
closed source", recalling that the consideration is that of licensing
and not mixing in other concerns like whether a particular program is
technically better. In ensuring that an end-user gets some code and
can break out those "four freedoms" on it, it is clearly not "worse
than other open source licenses", and I don't accept that this is some
rare thing that only happens outside a theoretical setting on an
occasional basis.
> > P.S. And the GPL isn't meant to further the cause of open source: it's
> > meant to further the Free Software cause, which is not at all the same
> > thing.
>
> It doesn't matter what the GPL "meant" to do, it matters what it does,
> which is hurt everyone (relative to almost all other licenses).
This is your opinion, not objectively established fact.
> > Before you ridicule other people's positions, at least get your
> > terminology right.
>
> I don't agree with FSF's defintion of free software and refuse to
> abide by it. GPL isn't free software; any software that tells me I
> can't compile it in with a closed source API isn't free. Period.
Well, if you can't (or can't be bothered) to distinguish between what
is known as Free Software and "open source", then I'm hardly surprised
that you take offence at people releasing software for one set of
reasons while you only consider another set of reasons to be valid
ones. Throughout this discussion I've been accused of not being able
to put myself in the position of the other side, but I completely
understand that people just want as much publicly available software
as possible to be permissively licensed, frequently for the reason
that it will "grease the wheels of commerce", that it reduces (but,
contrary to popular belief, does *not* eliminate) the amount of
thought required when combining works, and that "the boss" or "the
company lawyers" feel more comfortable with permissive licences,
perhaps because they are scared about what might happen to their
patent portfolio or something (in which case they might want to re-
read some of those licences).
It isn't news to me that some people emphasise developer "freedoms"
and others emphasise user "freedoms", and frequently advocates of the
former can only consider unrestricted personal gratification as
"freedom". But to argue for the latter, I don't need to argue about
how some style of licence is "better" according to some hastily
arranged and fragile criteria: it's clear what the goal of copyleft
licensing is; take it or leave it. There's no real disinformation
campaign or "propaganda"; the FSF aren't "forcing" people to do
anything, in contrast to various proprietary software licences and the
way that most people are more obviously "forced" to buy a Microsoft
product when they buy a computer (and be told that there's no refund,
that it's "part of the product", contrary to what the EULA actually
says for obvious regulatory reasons).
So, given an acknowledgement of the motivation for copyleft licensing,
the argument for applying it practically makes itself. I don't need to
bring terminology like "holy war" or references to Bin Laden to make
my case. I wonder, then, why people feel the need to do just that.
Paul
Patrick Maupin
> On 10 Mai, 03:09, Patrick Maupin <pmau...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On May 9, 6:39 pm, Paul Boddie <p...@boddie.org.uk> wrote:
> > > but if they aren't pitching it directly at you, why would you believe
> > > that they are trying to change your behaviour?
>
> > Because I've seen people specifically state that their purpose in
> > GPLing small libraries is to encourage other people to change their
> > behavior. I take those statements at face value. Certainly RMS
> > carefully lays out that the LGPL should be used sparingly in his "Why
> > you shouldn't use the Lesser GPL for your next library" post. (Hint:
> > he's not suggesting a permissive license instead.)
>
> Sure, but all he's asking you to do is to make the software available
> under a GPL-compatible licence.
I'll be charitable and assume the fact that you can make that
statement without apparent guile merely means that you haven't read
the post I was referring to:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-not-lgpl.html
> [...]
>
> > rst2pdf was licensed under the MIT license before I started
> > contributing to it, and there is no way I was going to even consider
> > adding patches for a GPLed package (which would certainly have to be
> > GPLed) into the rst2pdf repository. (Say what you will about how
> > sometimes differently licensed code can be combined, but RMS has to
> > share quite a bit of the blame/credit for the whole combining licenses
> > FUD.)
>
> I think the FSF are quite clear about combining licences - they even
> go to the trouble of telling you which ones are compatible with the
> GPL
Yes, but one of the things they are quite clear on is that the overall
work must be licensed as GPL, if any of the components are licensed as
GPL. They claim this is true, even if a non-GPL work dynamically
links to a GPL work.
- so I don't see where "FUD" comes into it, apart from possible
> corner cases where people are trying to circumvent the terms of a
> licence and probably know themselves that what they're trying to do is
> at the very least against the spirit of the licence.
Legally, I don't think they can dictate the license terms of, e.g.
clisp just because it can link to readline. But practically, they DID
manage to do this, simply because Bruno Haible, the clisp author, was
more concerned about writing software than spending too much time
sparring with Stallman over the license, so he finally licensed clisp
under the gpl. clisp *could* use readline, but didn't require it;
nonetheless Stallman argued that clisp was a "derivative" of
readline. That case of the tail wagging the dog would be laughable if
it hadn't worked. In any case, Stallman's success at that tactic is
probably one of the things that led him to write the paper on why you
should use GPL for your library. (As an aside, since rst2pdf *can*
use GPL-licensed svglib, it could possibly be subject to the same kind
of political pressure as clisp. But the fact that more people are
better informed now and that the internet would publicize the dispute
more widely more quickly means that this is a battle Stallman is
unlikely to wage at this point, because if the leader of any such
targeted project has enough cojones, the FSF's inevitable loss would
reduce some of the FUD dramatically.)
> Even then,
> warning people about their little project to make proprietary plugins,
> or whatever, is not really "FUD".
I think that, legally, they probably don't have a leg to stand on for
some of their overarching claims (e.g. about shipping proprietary
software that could link to readline, without even shipping
readline). But morally -- well, they've made their position
reasonably clear and I try to abide by it. That still doesn't make it
"not really FUD." I'd call this sort of badgering "copyright misuse"
myself.
> As for rst2pdf, what your modifications would mean is that the
> software would need to be redistributed under a GPL-compatible
> licence.
That's parsing semantics rather finely. In practice, what it really
means is that the combination (e.g. the whole program) would
effectively be GPL-licensed. This then means that downstream users
would have to double-check that they are not combining the whole work
with licenses which are GPL-incompatible, even if they are not using
the svg feature. Hence, the term "viral."
> I'll accept that this does affect what people can then do
> with the project, but once again, you've mentioned at least one LGPL-
> licensed project which was previously in this very situation, and it
> was never actually GPL-licensed itself. Here's the relevant FAQ entry:
>
> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#LinkingWithGPL
Yes, I've read that, but this is much more informative:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLInProprietarySystem
"A system incorporating a GPL-covered program is an extended version
of that program. The GPL says that any extended version of the program
must be released under the GPL if it is released at all."
This makes it clear that the overall work must be GPLed. Now, all of
a sudden, downstream users cannot do some things they could have done
before. Can you not see that taking a preexisting MIT-licensed
project and adding code to make it GPL could negatively affect some of
its users and that that is not necessarily an unalloyed good?
> [...]
>
> > This is exactly the same situation that Carl was describing, only with
> > two different open source packages rather than with a proprietary
> > package and a GPL package. The whole reason people use words like
> > "force" and "viral" with the GPL is that this issue would not have
> > come up if svglib were MIT and rst2pdf were GPL. (Note that the LGPL
> > forces you to give back changes, but not in a way that makes it
> > incompatible with software under other licenses. That's why you see
> > very few complaints about the LGPL.)
>
> Actually, the copyleft licences don't "force" anyone to "give back
> changes": they oblige people to pass on changes.
True, if pedantic. I meant "give back" in the more general sense.
> [...]
>
> > But I have definitely seen cases where people are offering something
> > that is not of nearly as much value as they seem to think it is, where
> > one of the goals is obviously to try to spread the GPL.
>
> Well, even the FSF doesn't approve of trivial projects using the GPL:
>
> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhatIfWorkIsShort
Sure, that's a pragmatic view -- copyright might not even be permitted
on something that short that is mainly functional. However, length is
not the only arbiter of trivial. To stay with the same example,
personally, I would consider readline "trivial" within the context of
a lot of software which might use it, regardless of whether the
readline implementation itself used all sorts of fancy neural net
technology to predict what word the user was going to type or
whatever. But whether it was trivial or not, if I ship software that
*could* link to it but doesn't *require* it (like the case of clisp)
without shipping readline, I think it's FUD and an attempt at
copyright misuse to call my software a derivative work of readline.
But obviously YMMV
Regards,
Pat
Aahz
Paul Boddie <pa...@boddie.org.uk> wrote:
>
>Actually, the copyleft licences don't "force" anyone to "give back
>changes": they oblige people to pass on changes.
IMO, that's a distinction without a difference, particularly if you
define "give back" as referring to the community rather than the original
project. With the FSF itself using "pressure" in the FAQ entry you
linked to, I have no clue why you and Ben Finney object to my use of
"force".
--
Aahz (aa...@pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/
f u cn rd ths, u cn gt a gd jb n nx prgrmmng.
Aahz
this thread for the most part -- given the poster who suggested that
Apache makes more sense these days, I'm switching to that terminology]
In article <99386b28-1636-4f81...@11g2000prv.googlegroups.com>,
Carl Banks <pavlove...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>You might argue that GPL is sometimes better than proprietary closed
>source, and I won't disagree, but it's nearly always worse than other
>open source licenses.
That I completely disagree with. I'm not going to bother making
arguments (Paul Boddie et al has done a much better job than I could),
but I wanted to register my disagreement as someone who generally prefers
Apache-style licenses. I will just add that I believe that Apache-style
licensing could not work in the absence of GPL software. IOW, I believe
that GPL confers a form of herd immunity to Open Source in general, and
Stallman gets full credit for creating the idea of GPL to protect Open
Source.
I believe that Stallman understands this perfectly well and it in part
represents why he is so opposed to non-GPL licensing; it makes sense that
he feels some resentment toward the "freeloading" from the rest of the
Open Source community. OTOH, I also believe that having only GPL would
destroy Open Source as a viable development environment and community;
it's too restrictive for some very valuable projects (including Python in
specific, to bring this back on topic).
Each project needs to think carefully about its relationship to the Open
Source ecosystem and community before deciding on a license. But for
small projects trying to get users, defaulting to Apache makes sense.
Paul Boddie
> In article <074b412a-c2f4-4090-a52c-4d69edb29...@d39g2000yqa.googlegroups.com>,
> Paul Boddie <p...@boddie.org.uk> wrote:
> >Actually, the copyleft licences don't "force" anyone to "give back
> >changes": they oblige people to pass on changes.
>
> IMO, that's a distinction without a difference, particularly if you
> define "give back" as referring to the community rather than the original
> project.
There is a difference: I know of at least one vendor of GPL-licensed
solutions who received repeated requests that they make their sources
available to all-comers, even though the only obligation is to those
receiving the software in the first place. Yes, the code can then
become public - if Red Hat decided to only release sources to their
customers, and those customers shared the sources publicly, then
CentOS would still be around as a Red Hat "clone" - but there are
situations where recipients of GPL-licensed code may decide that it is
in their best interests not to just upload it to the public Internet.
> With the FSF itself using "pressure" in the FAQ entry you
> linked to, I have no clue why you and Ben Finney object to my use of
> "force".
Because no-one is being forced to do anything. Claiming that "force"
is involved is like hearing a schoolboy saying, "I really wanted that
chocolate, but why is that man forcing me to pay for it?" Well, you
only have to pay for it if you decide you want to take it - that's the
only reasonable response.
Paul
Patrick Maupin
I've addressed this before. Aahz used a word in an accurate, but to
you, inflammatory, sense, but it's still accurate -- the man *would*
force you to pay for the chocolate if you took it. You're making it
sound like whining, but Aahz was simply trying to state a fact. The
fact is, I know the man would force me to pay for the chocolate, so in
some cases that enters into the equation and keeps me from wanting the
chocolate. This isn't whining; just a common-sense description of
reality. Personally, I think this use of the word "force" is much
less inflammatory than the deliberate act of co-opting the word
"freedom" to mean "if you think you can take this software and do
anything you want with it, you're going to find out differently when
we sue you."
Regards,
Pat
Ben Finney
> Paul Boddie <pa...@boddie.org.uk> wrote:
> >Actually, the copyleft licences don't "force" anyone to "give back
> >changes": they oblige people to pass on changes.
>
> IMO, that's a distinction without a difference, particularly if you
> define "give back" as referring to the community rather than the
> original project. With the FSF itself using "pressure" in the FAQ
> entry you linked to, I have no clue why you and Ben Finney object to
> my use of "force".
Precisely because there *is* force involved: copyright law is enforced,
ultimately, by police with threats to put you in a box forcibly.
But that force, it must be recognised, comes from the force of law. The
GPL, and all free software licenses, do *not* force anyone to do
anything; exactly the opposite is the case.
Free software licenses grant specific exceptions to the enforcement of
copyright law. They grant freedom to do things that would otherwise be
prevented by force or the threat of force.
This is obvious when you consider what would be the case in the absence
of any free software license: everything that was prohibited is still
prohibited in the absence of the license, and indeed some more things
are now prohibited as well.
Conversely, in the absence of any copyright law (not that I advocate
that situation), copyright licenses would have no force in or behind
them.
So I object to muddying the issue by misrepresenting the source of that
force. Whatever force there is in copyright comes from law, not any free
software license.
--
\ “Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in |
`\ these.” —Ovid (43 BCE–18 CE) |
_o__) |
Ben Finney
Paul Boddie
>
> I'll be charitable and assume the fact that you can make that
> statement without apparent guile merely means that you haven't read
> the post I was referring to:
>
> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-not-lgpl.html
Of course I have read it, and not just recently either. But this is a
position paper by the author of the licence, and it doesn't mean that
someone who has written a GPL-licensed library completely agrees with
that position. And anyway, it's a case of "take it or leave it" - it's
not like the author or the FSF are sneaking stuff into every product
and every corner of the market and then telling you that you can't
"unchoose" their stuff.
[...]
> Legally, I don't think they can dictate the license terms of, e.g.
> clisp just because it can link to readline. But practically, they DID
> manage to do this, simply because Bruno Haible, the clisp author, was
> more concerned about writing software than spending too much time
> sparring with Stallman over the license, so he finally licensed clisp
> under the gpl. clisp *could* use readline, but didn't require it;
> nonetheless Stallman argued that clisp was a "derivative" of
> readline. That case of the tail wagging the dog would be laughable if
> it hadn't worked. In any case, Stallman's success at that tactic is
> probably one of the things that led him to write the paper on why you
> should use GPL for your library.
Although it seems quite unfair, the e-mail discussion about the
licence does show that Stallman was not initially convinced that works
should be affected in such a way (with regard to the Objective-C
compiler developed by NeXT), and that Haible was not strongly opposed
to changing the licence. You can argue that Stallman overreached by
demanding a licence change and that consideration of such matters has
progressed since that time, but Haible always had the option of not
using or supporting readline - only the latter is contentious, and the
obligation of GPL-compatible licensing (as opposed to GPL-licensing)
now diminishes how contentious this is today.
[...]
> I think that, legally, they probably don't have a leg to stand on for
> some of their overarching claims (e.g. about shipping proprietary
> software that could link to readline, without even shipping
> readline). But morally -- well, they've made their position
> reasonably clear and I try to abide by it. That still doesn't make it
> "not really FUD." I'd call this sort of badgering "copyright misuse"
> myself.
Again, you have to consider the intent of the licensing: that some
software which links to readline results in a software system that
should offer the "four freedoms", because that's the price of linking
to readline whose licence has promised that any system which builds
upon it shall offer those privileges.
> > As for rst2pdf, what your modifications would mean is that the
> > software would need to be redistributed under a GPL-compatible
> > licence.
>
> That's parsing semantics rather finely. In practice, what it really
> means is that the combination (e.g. the whole program) would
> effectively be GPL-licensed. This then means that downstream users
> would have to double-check that they are not combining the whole work
> with licenses which are GPL-incompatible, even if they are not using
> the svg feature. Hence, the term "viral."
Once again, I refer you to the intent of the licensing: if someone has
the software in front of them which uses svglib, then they need to
have the privileges granted to them by the GPL. Yes, if the software
also uses some component with a GPL-incompatible licence, then this
causes a problem.
[...]
> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLInProprietarySystem
>
> "A system incorporating a GPL-covered program is an extended version
> of that program. The GPL says that any extended version of the program
> must be released under the GPL if it is released at all."
>
> This makes it clear that the overall work must be GPLed. Now, all of
> a sudden, downstream users cannot do some things they could have done
> before. Can you not see that taking a preexisting MIT-licensed
> project and adding code to make it GPL could negatively affect some of
> its users and that that is not necessarily an unalloyed good?
Well, I have referred several times to WebKit without you taking the
hint, but that provides a specific case of a project which is LGPL-
licensed despite being based on (in GPLv3 terminology) libraries which
were distributed under the GPL and combined with that software.
Similarly, the effort to ensure that CPython's licence was GPL-
compatible had a lot to do with the right to redistribute with GPL-
licensed code (actually readline, if I remember correctly).
[...]
> > Well, even the FSF doesn't approve of trivial projects using the GPL:
>
> >http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhatIfWorkIsShort
>
> Sure, that's a pragmatic view -- copyright might not even be permitted
> on something that short that is mainly functional. However, length is
> not the only arbiter of trivial. To stay with the same example,
> personally, I would consider readline "trivial" within the context of
> a lot of software which might use it, regardless of whether the
> readline implementation itself used all sorts of fancy neural net
> technology to predict what word the user was going to type or
> whatever. But whether it was trivial or not, if I ship software that
> *could* link to it but doesn't *require* it (like the case of clisp)
> without shipping readline, I think it's FUD and an attempt at
> copyright misuse to call my software a derivative work of readline.
> But obviously YMMV
Is readline trivial? Was readline trivial in 1992? Does it even
matter, because the author is more or less saying that they don't want
their code incorporated in a proprietary system? It's interesting to
see that GPLv3 doesn't talk about derived works or derivatives (at
least not as much as GPLv2), but instead talks about things being
"based on" other things, but as I've already said, at the point of
someone running a bunch of software components together, the intent of
copyleft licences is to say that the user should be able to take that
(or part of it, in the case of "weak copyleft" licences) and change,
recompile and distribute its sources, modified or not.
Paul
Paul Boddie
>
> I've addressed this before. Aahz used a word in an accurate, but to
> you, inflammatory, sense, but it's still accurate -- the man *would*
> force you to pay for the chocolate if you took it.
Yes, *if* you took it. He isn't forcing you to take it, though, is he?
> You're making it sound like whining, but Aahz was simply trying to state a fact.
It is whining if someone says, "I really want that chocolate, but that
nasty man is going to make me pay for it!"
> The fact is, I know the man would force me to pay for the chocolate, so in
> some cases that enters into the equation and keeps me from wanting the
> chocolate.
If the man said, "please take the chocolate, but I want you to share
it with your friends", and you refused to do so because you couldn't
accept that condition, would it be right to say, "that man is forcing
me to share chocolate with my friends"?
> This isn't whining; just a common-sense description of
> reality. Personally, I think this use of the word "force" is much
> less inflammatory than the deliberate act of co-opting the word
> "freedom" to mean "if you think you can take this software and do
> anything you want with it, you're going to find out differently when
> we sue you."
The word "freedom" means a number of things. If you don't like the way
Messrs Finney and Stallman use the term, please take it up with them.
But to say that someone entering a voluntary agreement is "forced" to
do something, when they weren't forced into that agreement in the
first place, is just nonsense. It's like saying that the shopkeeper is
some kind of Darth Vader character who is coercing people to take the
chocolate and then saddling them with obligations against their will.
Paul
Steven D'Aprano
> It's like saying that the shopkeeper is some kind of Darth Vader
> character who is coercing people to take the chocolate
Last time I came home with chocolate, I tried that excuse on my wife. She
didn't believe it for a second.
Next time, I'll try claiming that I was obliged to eat the chocolate
because of the GPL.
--
Steven
Lie Ryan
> On 10 Mai, 17:01, Patrick Maupin <pmau...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I'll be charitable and assume the fact that you can make that
>> statement without apparent guile merely means that you haven't read
>> the post I was referring to:
>>
>> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-not-lgpl.html
>
> Of course I have read it, and not just recently either. But this is a
> position paper by the author of the licence, and it doesn't mean that
> someone who has written a GPL-licensed library completely agrees with
> that position. And anyway, it's a case of "take it or leave it" - it's
> not like the author or the FSF are sneaking stuff into every product
> and every corner of the market and then telling you that you can't
> "unchoose" their stuff.
Come on, 99% of the projects released under GPL did so because they
don't want to learn much about the law; they just need to release it
under a certain license so their users have some legal certainty. Most
programmers are not lawyers and don't care about the law and don't care
about the GPL; if a commercial programmer want to use the GPL-code in an
incompatible licensed program, and he comes up asking, many would just
be happy to say yes.
Most people release their code in GPL just because it's popular, not for
the exact clauses in it. Heck, many people that releases code in GPL
might not actually have read the full license.
Only big GPL projects have the resources to waste on a lawyer. And only
very big projects have the resources to waste on enforcing the license
they uses. The rest of us just don't care.
Paul Boddie
>
> Come on, 99% of the projects released under GPL did so because they
> don't want to learn much about the law; they just need to release it
> under a certain license so their users have some legal certainty.
Yes, this is frequently the case. And the GPL does offer some
certainty that various permissive licences do not.
> Most programmers are not lawyers and don't care about the law and don't care
> about the GPL; if a commercial programmer want to use the GPL-code in an
> incompatible licensed program, and he comes up asking, many would just
> be happy to say yes.
Yes, quite possibly. I did mention this myself elsewhere.
> Most people release their code in GPL just because it's popular, not for
> the exact clauses in it. Heck, many people that releases code in GPL
> might not actually have read the full license.
Yes, this is also probably the case for a number of people. Although
many probably understand the principles of the licence and feel that
it represents their wishes most accurately.
> Only big GPL projects have the resources to waste on a lawyer. And only
> very big projects have the resources to waste on enforcing the license
> they uses. The rest of us just don't care.
Well, that's always an option as well, but at the same time, there are
people willing to pursue licence violations, and these people have
done so successfully. There's no need to make an impassioned argument
for apathy, though. Some people do wish to dictate what others can do
with their work.
Or are you trying to make another point here? That people would choose
something other than the GPL if only they "knew better", perhaps?
Since the FSF goes out of its way to list lots of Free Software
licences, GPL-compatible or otherwise, and those other licences aren't
exactly secret anyway, I hardly think there's a conspiracy at work.
Paul
Patrick Maupin
> On 10 Mai, 17:01, Patrick Maupin <pmau...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I'll be charitable and assume the fact that you can make that
> > statement without apparent guile merely means that you haven't read
> > the post I was referring to:
>
> >http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-not-lgpl.html
>
> Of course I have read it, and not just recently either. But this is a
> position paper by the author of the licence, and it doesn't mean that
> someone who has written a GPL-licensed library completely agrees with
> that position. And anyway, it's a case of "take it or leave it" - it's
> not like the author or the FSF are sneaking stuff into every product
> and every corner of the market and then telling you that you can't
> "unchoose" their stuff.
OK. Now I'm REALLY confused. I said "Certainly RMS
carefully lays out that the LGPL should be used sparingly in his "Why
you shouldn't use the Lesser GPL for your next library" post. (Hint:
he's not suggesting a permissive license instead.)"
to which you replied:
"Sure, but all he's asking you to do is to make the software available
under a GPL-compatible licence."
and then I tried to politely show that you were wrong about RMS's
intentions, but now, but you're saying "oh, of course, he'd say that
-- he wrote the license" which is basically what I've been saying all
along. But if you have read it like you say, then it appears you were
being very disingenuous in your original reply!
> Although it seems quite unfair, the e-mail discussion about the
> licence does show that Stallman was not initially convinced that works
> should be affected in such a way (with regard to the Objective-C
> compiler developed by NeXT), and that Haible was not strongly opposed
> to changing the licence. You can argue that Stallman overreached by
> demanding a licence change and that consideration of such matters has
> progressed since that time, but Haible always had the option of not
> using or supporting readline - only the latter is contentious,
"was not strongly opposed to changing the license" As I already
mentioned, he was more interested in doing useful stuff than worrying
about the license. Yes, readline was the hook that sucked him into
using the GPL, but IMHO RMS was flat out wrong about the licensing
implications. As I mentioned, though, the morality and the legality
are probably different animals.
> and the
> obligation of GPL-compatible licensing (as opposed to GPL-licensing)
> now diminishes how contentious this is today.
NO. If you are building an application, and distributing GPLed stuff
as part of it, the FSF still maintains that the license is such that
the entire application must be GPLed. You keep acting like this isn't
true, but it absolutely is if you're distributing the entire
application.
> > I think that, legally, they probably don't have a leg to stand on for
> > some of their overarching claims (e.g. about shipping proprietary
> > software that could link to readline, without even shipping
> > readline). But morally -- well, they've made their position
> > reasonably clear and I try to abide by it. That still doesn't make it
> > "not really FUD." I'd call this sort of badgering "copyright misuse"
> > myself.
>
> Again, you have to consider the intent of the licensing: that some
> software which links to readline results in a software system that
> should offer the "four freedoms", because that's the price of linking
> to readline whose licence has promised that any system which builds
> upon it shall offer those privileges.
But I did consider the intent, and as I have made clear, I think
that's a bullying tactic that fragments the software world
unnecessarily. Obviously YMMV.
> > > As for rst2pdf, what your modifications would mean is that the
> > > software would need to be redistributed under a GPL-compatible
> > > licence.
NO. You're still not paying attention. The FSF's clear position is
that if you actually *redistribute* software under the GPL as *part of
a system* then the full package must be licensed *under the GPL*.
> Once again, I refer you to the intent of the licensing: if someone has
> the software in front of them which uses svglib, then they need to
> have the privileges granted to them by the GPL. Yes, if the software
> also uses some component with a GPL-incompatible licence, then this
> causes a problem.
It appears that the FSF's position is the ability to link to svglib
would require software to be licensed under the GPL. I don't believe
that, but I do believe that if rst2pdf distributed svglib (or even
patches to svglib which were clearly derivative works) then yes,
rst2pdf would have to be distributed under the GPL. This kind of
bullshit is only acceptable to people who only think a single license
is acceptable.
> [...]
>
> >http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLInProprietarySystem
>
> > "A system incorporating a GPL-covered program is an extended version
> > of that program. The GPL says that any extended version of the program
> > must be released under the GPL if it is released at all."
>
> > This makes it clear that the overall work must be GPLed. Now, all of
> > a sudden, downstream users cannot do some things they could have done
> > before. Can you not see that taking a preexisting MIT-licensed
> > project and adding code to make it GPL could negatively affect some of
> > its users and that that is not necessarily an unalloyed good?
>
> Well, I have referred several times to WebKit without you taking the
> hint,
OK, I don't work with webkit. I knew you were hinting at something,
but why the games, I don't know. I guess it's all about mystique and
games.
> but that provides a specific case of a project which is LGPL-
> licensed despite being based on (in GPLv3 terminology) libraries which
> were distributed under the GPL and combined with that software.
What other libraries? I don't know it's history. I give you specific
examples at problems; you hint around at things you claim are not
problems and then still don't give specifics.
> Similarly, the effort to ensure that CPython's licence was GPL-
> compatible had a lot to do with the right to redistribute with GPL-
> licensed code (actually readline, if I remember correctly).
Yes, but the Python project doesn't actually distribute readline, and
(as I mentioned) people are more informed now, and it would be
difficult for RMS to bully Python into relicensing. But if the Python
distribution *included* GNU Readline, then RMS would be on firmer
ground, and the license would probably have to be changed. This is
*exactly* the situation I was describing with svglib -- can you still
not see that it is a problem to just toss unsupported free software
out there with a GPL license? Unsupported Apache or MIT is fine --
fix it or ignore. Unsupported GPL is an attractive nuisance.
> Is readline trivial? Was readline trivial in 1992?
Again, you could have neural net prediction and other fancy
technologies, but in general, yes, the concept is pretty trivial and
there were many systems that already had such things back then.
> Does it even
> matter, because the author is more or less saying that they don't want
> their code incorporated in a proprietary system?
Yes it matters because as others have pointed out, sometimes people
use stuff which is purported to be "free" without a full understanding
of all the implications. But this gets back to my general complaint
about co-opting the word "free" which you don't think is a problem
because you have chosen to use other words.
> It's interesting to
> see that GPLv3 doesn't talk about derived works or derivatives (at
> least not as much as GPLv2), but instead talks about things being
> "based on" other things, but as I've already said, at the point of
> someone running a bunch of software components together, the intent of
> copyleft licences is to say that the user should be able to take that
> (or part of it, in the case of "weak copyleft" licences) and change,
> recompile and distribute its sources, modified or not.
Trust me, I know the intent, and could even consider it a noble goal.
But I think a lot of the means employed in getting to this end are
simply wrong.
Regards,
Pat
Patrick Maupin
> On 10 Mai, 20:36, Patrick Maupin <pmau...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I've addressed this before. Aahz used a word in an accurate, but to
> > you, inflammatory, sense, but it's still accurate -- the man *would*
> > force you to pay for the chocolate if you took it.
>
> Yes, *if* you took it. He isn't forcing you to take it, though, is he?
No, but he said a lot of words that I didn't immediately understand
about what it meant to be free and that it was free, and then after I
bit into it he told me he owned my soul now.
> > You're making it sound like whining, but Aahz was simply trying to state a fact.
>
> It is whining if someone says, "I really want that chocolate, but that
> nasty man is going to make me pay for it!"
But that's not what happened. I mean, he just told me that I might
have to give some of it to others later. He didn't mention that if I
spread peanut butter on mine before I ate it that I'd have to give
people Reese's Peanut Butter cups.
>
> > The fact is, I know the man would force me to pay for the chocolate, so in
> > some cases that enters into the equation and keeps me from wanting the
> > chocolate.
>
> If the man said, "please take the chocolate, but I want you to share
> it with your friends", and you refused to do so because you couldn't
> accept that condition, would it be right to say, "that man is forcing
> me to share chocolate with my friends"?
But the thing is, he's *not* making me share the chocolate with any of
my friends. He's not even making me share my special peanut butter
and chocolate. What he's making me do is, if I give my peanut butter
and chocolate to one of my friends, he's making me make *that* friend
promise to share. I try not to impose obligations like that on my
friends, so obviously the "nice" man with the chocolate isn't my
friend!
> > This isn't whining; just a common-sense description of
> > reality. Personally, I think this use of the word "force" is much
> > less inflammatory than the deliberate act of co-opting the word
> > "freedom" to mean "if you think you can take this software and do
> > anything you want with it, you're going to find out differently when
> > we sue you."
>
> The word "freedom" means a number of things. If you don't like the way
> Messrs Finney and Stallman use the term, please take it up with them.
> But to say that someone entering a voluntary agreement is "forced" to
> do something, when they weren't forced into that agreement in the
> first place, is just nonsense. It's like saying that the shopkeeper is
> some kind of Darth Vader character who is coercing people to take the
> chocolate and then saddling them with obligations against their will.
I explained this very carefully before multiple times. Let me give
concrete examples -- (1) I have told my children before "if we take
that candy, then they will make us pay for it" and (2) if we included
(GPLed software) in this (MIT-licensed software) then we will have to
change the license. In both these cases, once the decision has been
made, then yes, force enters into it. And no, I don't think the
average shop keeper is nearly as evil as Darth, or even RMS.
Regards,
Pat
Patrick Maupin
> On 11 Mai, 15:00, Lie Ryan <lie.1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Come on, 99% of the projects released under GPL did so because they
> > don't want to learn much about the law; they just need to release it
> > under a certain license so their users have some legal certainty.
>
> Yes, this is frequently the case. And the GPL does offer some
> certainty that various permissive licences do not.
Huh? Permissive licenses offer much better certainty for someone
attempting a creative mash-up. Different versions of the Apache
license don't conflict with each other. If I use an MIT-licensed
component, it doesn't attempt to make me offer my whole work under
MIT.
[..]
>
> Well, that's always an option as well, but at the same time, there are
> people willing to pursue licence violations, and these people have
> done so successfully. There's no need to make an impassioned argument
> for apathy, though. Some people do wish to dictate what others can do
> with their work.
Oh, I get it. You were discussing the certainty that an author can
control what downstream users do with the software to some extent.
Yes, I fully agree. The GPL is for angry idealists who have an easily
outraged sense of justice, who don't have enough real problems to work
on.
BTW, I'm here to make an impassioned argument for apathy. For
example, I think the world needs fewer suicide bombers, and the more
apathy we can get.
Regards,
Pat
Patrick Maupin
cybersource.com.au> wrote:
> Last time I came home with chocolate, I tried that excuse on my wife. She
> didn't believe it for a second.
>
> Next time, I'll try claiming that I was obliged to eat the chocolate
> because of the GPL.
Good luck with that. Women can always see right through bad
analogies, especially where chocolate is concerned!
Regards,
Pat
Lie Ryan
> On May 11, 9:00 am, Paul Boddie <p...@boddie.org.uk> wrote:
>> On 11 Mai, 15:00, Lie Ryan <lie.1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Come on, 99% of the projects released under GPL did so because they
>>> don't want to learn much about the law; they just need to release it
>>> under a certain license so their users have some legal certainty.
>>
>> Yes, this is frequently the case. And the GPL does offer some
>> certainty that various permissive licences do not.
>
> Huh? Permissive licenses offer much better certainty for someone
> attempting a creative mash-up. Different versions of the Apache
> license don't conflict with each other. If I use an MIT-licensed
> component, it doesn't attempt to make me offer my whole work under
> MIT.
Legal certainty as in, imagine if you released a piece of code, and use
this as the license:
"Feel free to use the code"
Then some other programmers see it, and use it in their project. The
original author then sued them because he actually intended the code to
be linked to, not copied pasted into another code base.
Then he modified the license to sound:
"Feel free to link, include, or use the code"
Then some other programmers see the code, and modified it to fit their
purpose. The original author then sued them because he only intended the
code to be "used unchanged" not "modified".
"Feel free to link, include, use, or modify the code"
Then some other programmers see the code, and used it in some commercial
project. The original author then sued them because he only intended the
code to be used in open source projects.
Lather, Rinse, Repeat and you get twenty page long license like GPL or
OWL[*]. By this time, the other programmer have learnt not to use code
with such uncertain license and the original author would either have
taken a law degree or learn to use a well-known licenses (GPL or
whatever) instead of writing his own.
The other programmer would always find a loophole in such ad-hoc
license, inadvertantly or otherwise. If the original author used GPL
(or OWL), the other programmer knows exactly when their use case is
protected by GPL/OWL (i.e. even if the original author later found that
he disagrees with a certain clause in the license he choose, it then
becomes his fault for choosing it; the other programmer's use case is
protected by the license and thus he have the legal certainty).
[*] OWL: other well-known license
As a plus, using a well-known license means the other programmer also
don't need to hire a lawyer to determine whether he can use your code.
The other programmer sees GPL and remembers that FSF listed the license
he's using as GPL-compatible, he knows immediately he can use the code
without reading the full text of GPL. The other programmer sees some
Apache and he remembers previously he had used another Apache-licensed
code and knows immediately that he can use this other Apache project. If
everyone writes their own license, then this knowledge reuse wouldn't be
possible.
>> Well, that's always an option as well, but at the same time, there are
>> people willing to pursue licence violations, and these people have
>> done so successfully. There's no need to make an impassioned argument
>> for apathy, though. Some people do wish to dictate what others can do
>> with their work.
>
> Oh, I get it. You were discussing the certainty that an author can
> control what downstream users do with the software to some extent.
> Yes, I fully agree. The GPL is for angry idealists who have an easily
> outraged sense of justice, who don't have enough real problems to work
> on.
The point is, GPL (and OWL) is for programmers who just don't care about
the legal stuffs and would want to spend more time writing code than
writing license.
Lie Ryan
> On May 11, 5:34 am, Paul Boddie <p...@boddie.org.uk> wrote:
>> On 10 Mai, 20:36, Patrick Maupin <pmau...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> The fact is, I know the man would force me to pay for the chocolate, so in
>>> some cases that enters into the equation and keeps me from wanting the
>>> chocolate.
>>
>> If the man said, "please take the chocolate, but I want you to share
>> it with your friends", and you refused to do so because you couldn't
>> accept that condition, would it be right to say, "that man is forcing
>> me to share chocolate with my friends"?
>
> But the thing is, he's *not* making me share the chocolate with any of
> my friends. He's not even making me share my special peanut butter
> and chocolate. What he's making me do is, if I give my peanut butter
> and chocolate to one of my friends, he's making me make *that* friend
> promise to share. I try not to impose obligations like that on my
> friends, so obviously the "nice" man with the chocolate isn't my
> friend!
The analogy breaks here; unlike chocolate, the value of software/source
code, if shared, doesn't decrease (in fact, many software increases its
value when shared liberally, e.g. p2p apps).
There might be certain cases where the software contains some trade
secret whose value decreases the more people knows about it; but sharing
does not decrease the value of the software, at least not directly, it
is the value of the secret that decreases because of the sharing.
Paul Boddie
>
> OK. Now I'm REALLY confused. I said "Certainly RMS
> carefully lays out that the LGPL should be used sparingly in his "Why
> you shouldn't use the Lesser GPL for your next library" post. (Hint:
> he's not suggesting a permissive license instead.)"
>
> to which you replied:
>
> "Sure, but all he's asking you to do is to make the software available
> under a GPL-compatible licence."
Alright, then, all he's asking you to do is to make *your* software
available under a GPL-compatible licence. That's what I meant in the
context of the discussion. Usually, people complain about how the GPL
dictates a single licence, forbidding all others, that is then
inseparable from their work ("It's my work but they make me GPL it! I
can't even control my own work any more! The FSF owns it!" and such
nonsense), but I've already given examples of this not being the case
at all.
> and then I tried to politely show that you were wrong about RMS's
> intentions, but now, but you're saying "oh, of course, he'd say that
> -- he wrote the license" which is basically what I've been saying all
> along. But if you have read it like you say, then it appears you were
> being very disingenuous in your original reply!
What the licence asks you to do and what the author of the licence
wants you to do are two separate things.
[...]
> NO. If you are building an application, and distributing GPLed stuff
> as part of it, the FSF still maintains that the license is such that
> the entire application must be GPLed. You keep acting like this isn't
> true, but it absolutely is if you're distributing the entire
> application.
I wrote "the software" above when I meant "your software", but I have
not pretended that the whole system need not be available under the
GPL. Otherwise the following text would be logically inconsistent with
such claims:
[...]
> On May 11, 5:24 am, Paul Boddie <p...@boddie.org.uk> wrote:
> > Again, you have to consider the intent of the licensing: that some
> > software which links to readline results in a software system that
> > should offer the "four freedoms", because that's the price of linking
> > to readline whose licence has promised that any system which builds
> > upon it shall offer those privileges.
>
> But I did consider the intent, and as I have made clear, I think
> that's a bullying tactic that fragments the software world
> unnecessarily. Obviously YMMV.
More loaded terms to replace the last set, I see.
> > > > As for rst2pdf, what your modifications would mean is that the
> > > > software would need to be redistributed under a GPL-compatible
> > > > licence.
>
> NO. You're still not paying attention. The FSF's clear position is
> that if you actually *redistribute* software under the GPL as *part of
> a system* then the full package must be licensed *under the GPL*.
Again, what I meant was "your software", not the whole software
system. As I more or less state below...
> > Once again, I refer you to the intent of the licensing: if someone has
> > the software in front of them which uses svglib, then they need to
> > have the privileges granted to them by the GPL. Yes, if the software
> > also uses some component with a GPL-incompatible licence, then this
> > causes a problem.
>
> It appears that the FSF's position is the ability to link to svglib
> would require software to be licensed under the GPL.
It would require the resulting system to be licensed under the GPL. As
it stands by itself, rst2pdf would need to be licensed compatibly with
the GPL.
> I don't believe
> that, but I do believe that if rst2pdf distributed svglib (or even
> patches to svglib which were clearly derivative works) then yes,
> rst2pdf would have to be distributed under the GPL. This kind of
> bullshit is only acceptable to people who only think a single license
> is acceptable.
Take it or leave it, then.
[...]
> > Well, I have referred several times to WebKit without you taking the
> > hint,
>
> OK, I don't work with webkit. I knew you were hinting at something,
> but why the games, I don't know. I guess it's all about mystique and
> games.
You mentioned WebKit as a non-GPL-licensed project which attracted
contributions from hard-nosed business. WebKit started life as KHTML
and was (and still is) LGPL-licensed, but for all practical purposes,
KHTML was only ever experienced by KDE users whilst linked to the Qt
framework, then available under the GPL. Now, given that WebKit now
works with other GUI frameworks, yet is still LGPL-licensed (and this
has nothing to do with recent Qt licensing developments, since this
applies to the period before those changes), it is clear that any
assertion that WebKit "was made GPL-only", which is what a lot of
people claim, is incorrect.
> > but that provides a specific case of a project which is LGPL-
> > licensed despite being based on (in GPLv3 terminology) libraries which
> > were distributed under the GPL and combined with that software.
>
> What other libraries? I don't know it's history. I give you specific
> examples at problems; you hint around at things you claim are not
> problems and then still don't give specifics.
I've now given you the specifics.
> > Similarly, the effort to ensure that CPython's licence was GPL-
> > compatible had a lot to do with the right to redistribute with GPL-
> > licensed code (actually readline, if I remember correctly).
>
> Yes, but the Python project doesn't actually distribute readline, and
> (as I mentioned) people are more informed now, and it would be
> difficult for RMS to bully Python into relicensing.
All RMS and the FSF's lawyers wanted was that the CNRI licences be GPL-
compatible. There are actually various aspects of GPL-compatibility
that are beneficial, even if you don't like the copyleft-style
clauses, so I don't think it was to the detriment of the Python
project.
> But if the Python
> distribution *included* GNU Readline, then RMS would be on firmer
> ground, and the license would probably have to be changed. This is
> *exactly* the situation I was describing with svglib -- can you still
> not see that it is a problem to just toss unsupported free software
> out there with a GPL license? Unsupported Apache or MIT is fine --
> fix it or ignore. Unsupported GPL is an attractive nuisance.
Well, if you're planning to release code and just walk away from it,
then choosing a permissive licence might be acceptable, but not all
code "found" by people on the Internet is abandoned, even if it is
apparently mere fodder for their super-important project.
> > Is readline trivial? Was readline trivial in 1992?
>
> Again, you could have neural net prediction and other fancy
> technologies, but in general, yes, the concept is pretty trivial and
> there were many systems that already had such things back then.
Well, that may not be a judgement shared by the authors. There are
numerous tools and components which do dull jobs and whose maintenance
is tedious and generally unrewarding, but that doesn't mean that such
investment is worth nothing in the face of someone else's so-very-
topical high-profile project.
> > Does it even
> > matter, because the author is more or less saying that they don't want
> > their code incorporated in a proprietary system?
>
> Yes it matters because as others have pointed out, sometimes people
> use stuff which is purported to be "free" without a full understanding
> of all the implications. But this gets back to my general complaint
> about co-opting the word "free" which you don't think is a problem
> because you have chosen to use other words.
Well, if people are making use of "some good code found for free on
the Internet", particularly if they are corporations like Cisco, and
they choose not to understand things like copyright and licensing, or
they think "all rights reserved" is just a catchy slogan, then they
probably shouldn't be building larger works and redistributing them.
This may seem unfair to you, but there are plenty of other
organisations who are much less charitable about copyright
infringement than the FSF or the average Free Software developer.
But if you're more or less saying that the intentions of an author can
(or should) be disregarded if the desire to use that author's work is
great enough, well, that's certainly interesting to learn.
Paul
Paul Boddie
>
> Huh? Permissive licenses offer much better certainty for someone
> attempting a creative mash-up. Different versions of the Apache
> license don't conflict with each other. If I use an MIT-licensed
> component, it doesn't attempt to make me offer my whole work under
> MIT.
What certainty does the MIT licence give contributors to a project
against patent infringement claims initiated by another contributor?
[...]
> Oh, I get it. You were discussing the certainty that an author can
> control what downstream users do with the software to some extent.
> Yes, I fully agree. The GPL is for angry idealists who have an easily
> outraged sense of justice, who don't have enough real problems to work
> on.
Again, the author does not exercise control when people must
voluntarily choose to use that author's work and thereby agree to
adhere to that author's set of terms.
Paul
Paul Boddie
> On May 11, 5:34 am, Paul Boddie <p...@boddie.org.uk> wrote:
>
> > Yes, *if* you took it. He isn't forcing you to take it, though, is he?
>
> No, but he said a lot of words that I didn't immediately understand
> about what it meant to be free and that it was free, and then after I
> bit into it he told me he owned my soul now.
Thus, "owned my soul" joins "holy war" and "Bin Laden" on the list.
That rhetorical toolbox is looking pretty empty at this point.
[...]
> > It is whining if someone says, "I really want that chocolate, but that
> > nasty man is going to make me pay for it!"
>
> But that's not what happened. I mean, he just told me that I might
> have to give some of it to others later. He didn't mention that if I
> spread peanut butter on mine before I ate it that I'd have to give
> people Reese's Peanut Butter cups.
He isn't, though. He's telling you that you can't force other people
to lick the chocolate off whatever "Reese's Peanut Butter cups" are,
rather than actually eating the combination of the two, when you offer
such a combination to someone else. Is the Creative Commons share-
alike clause just as objectionable to you, because it's that principle
we're talking about here?
[...]
> > If the man said, "please take the chocolate, but I want you to share
> > it with your friends", and you refused to do so because you couldn't
> > accept that condition, would it be right to say, "that man is forcing
> > me to share chocolate with my friends"?
>
> But the thing is, he's *not* making me share the chocolate with any of
> my friends. He's not even making me share my special peanut butter
> and chocolate. What he's making me do is, if I give my peanut butter
> and chocolate to one of my friends, he's making me make *that* friend
> promise to share. I try not to impose obligations like that on my
> friends, so obviously the "nice" man with the chocolate isn't my
> friend!
Yes, he's making everyone commit to sharing, and yes, it's like a
snowball effect once people agree to join in. But unless you hide that
commitment, no-one imposes anything on anyone. They can get their
chocolate elsewhere. They join in; they are not conscripted.
[...]
> I explained this very carefully before multiple times. Let me give
> concrete examples -- (1) I have told my children before "if we take
> that candy, then they will make us pay for it" and (2) if we included
> (GPLed software) in this (MIT-licensed software) then we will have to
> change the license. In both these cases, once the decision has been
> made, then yes, force enters into it. And no, I don't think the
> average shop keeper is nearly as evil as Darth, or even RMS.
Entering an agreement voluntarily does not mean that you are forced to
enter that agreement, even if the agreement then involves obligations
(as agreements inevitably do).
Paul
Patrick Maupin
> On 11 Mai, 22:39, Patrick Maupin <pmau...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > OK. Now I'm REALLY confused. I said "Certainly RMS
> > carefully lays out that the LGPL should be used sparingly in his "Why
> > you shouldn't use the Lesser GPL for your next library" post. (Hint:
> > he's not suggesting a permissive license instead.)"
>
> > to which you replied:
>
> > "Sure, but all he's asking you to do is to make the software available
> > under a GPL-compatible licence."
>
> Alright, then, all he's asking you to do is to make *your* software
> available under a GPL-compatible licence. That's what I meant in the
> context of the discussion. Usually, people complain about how the GPL
> dictates a single licence, forbidding all others, that is then
> inseparable from their work ("It's my work but they make me GPL it! I
> can't even control my own work any more! The FSF owns it!" and such
> nonsense), but I've already given examples of this not being the case
> at all.
In that post, specifically, RMS says to use the GPL in some cases,
rather than the LGPL, for libraries. Any other interpretation of
*that post* is disingenuous.
> > and then I tried to politely show that you were wrong about RMS's
> > intentions, but now, but you're saying "oh, of course, he'd say that
> > -- he wrote the license" which is basically what I've been saying all
> > along. But if you have read it like you say, then it appears you were
> > being very disingenuous in your original reply!
>
> What the licence asks you to do and what the author of the licence
> wants you to do are two separate things.
But the whole context was about what RMS wanted me to do and you
disagreed!
>
> > NO. If you are building an application, and distributing GPLed stuff
> > as part of it, the FSF still maintains that the license is such that
> > the entire application must be GPLed. You keep acting like this isn't
> > true, but it absolutely is if you're distributing the entire
> > application.
>
> I wrote "the software" above when I meant "your software", but I have
> not pretended that the whole system need not be available under the
> GPL.
You say you "have not pretended" but you've never mentioned that it
would or even acknowledged the correctness of my assertions about this
until now, just claiming that what I said was false.
> > On May 11, 5:24 am, Paul Boddie <p...@boddie.org.uk> wrote:
> > > Again, you have to consider the intent of the licensing: that some
> > > software which links to readline results in a software system that
> > > should offer the "four freedoms", because that's the price of linking
> > > to readline whose licence has promised that any system which builds
> > > upon it shall offer those privileges.
>
> > But I did consider the intent, and as I have made clear, I think
> > that's a bullying tactic that fragments the software world
> > unnecessarily. Obviously YMMV.
>
> More loaded terms to replace the last set, I see.
IMO "Bullying" is the correct term for some of Stallman's actions,
including in the clisp debacle. I knew you wouldn't agree -- that's
why YMMV. And I'm not "replacing" any set of terms -- part of the
"bullying" is the "forcing."
> > > > > As for rst2pdf, what your modifications would mean is that the
> > > > > software would need to be redistributed under a GPL-compatible
> > > > > licence.
>
> > NO. You're still not paying attention. The FSF's clear position is
> > that if you actually *redistribute* software under the GPL as *part of
> > a system* then the full package must be licensed *under the GPL*.
>
> Again, what I meant was "your software", not the whole software
> system. As I more or less state below...
BUT THAT DOESN'T MATTER. Once the whole package is licensed under the
GPL, for someone downstream to try to scrape the GPL off and get to
just the underlying non-GPL parts is harder than scraping bubblegum
off your shoe on a hot Texas day.
> > > Once again, I refer you to the intent of the licensing: if someone has
> > > the software in front of them which uses svglib, then they need to
> > > have the privileges granted to them by the GPL. Yes, if the software
> > > also uses some component with a GPL-incompatible licence, then this
> > > causes a problem.
>
> > It appears that the FSF's position is the ability to link to svglib
> > would require software to be licensed under the GPL.
>
> It would require the resulting system to be licensed under the GPL. As
> it stands by itself, rst2pdf would need to be licensed compatibly with
> the GPL.
They've softened their stance considerably over the last few years,
and don't overreach nearly as much as they used to, I agree.
[...]
> You mentioned WebKit as a non-GPL-licensed project which attracted
> contributions from hard-nosed business. WebKit started life as KHTML
> and was (and still is) LGPL-licensed, but for all practical purposes,
> KHTML was only ever experienced by KDE users whilst linked to the Qt
> framework, then available under the GPL. Now, given that WebKit now
> works with other GUI frameworks, yet is still LGPL-licensed (and this
> has nothing to do with recent Qt licensing developments, since this
> applies to the period before those changes), it is clear that any
> assertion that WebKit "was made GPL-only", which is what a lot of
> people claim, is incorrect.
I didn't make that claim and have never heard of that claim, and I'm
not at all sure of the relevance of whatever you're trying to explain
to the licensing of an overall program, rather than a library.
> > > but that provides a specific case of a project which is LGPL-
> > > licensed despite being based on (in GPLv3 terminology) libraries which
> > > were distributed under the GPL and combined with that software.
>
> > What other libraries? I don't know it's history. I give you specific
> > examples at problems; you hint around at things you claim are not
> > problems and then still don't give specifics.
>
> I've now given you the specifics.
And now that I know the specifics, I think they are completely
irrelevant to any points I was trying to make in this discussion.
> > > Similarly, the effort to ensure that CPython's licence was GPL-
> > > compatible had a lot to do with the right to redistribute with GPL-
> > > licensed code (actually readline, if I remember correctly).
>
> > Yes, but the Python project doesn't actually distribute readline, and
> > (as I mentioned) people are more informed now, and it would be
> > difficult for RMS to bully Python into relicensing.
>
> All RMS and the FSF's lawyers wanted was that the CNRI licences be GPL-
> compatible. There are actually various aspects of GPL-compatibility
> that are beneficial, even if you don't like the copyleft-style
> clauses, so I don't think it was to the detriment of the Python
> project.
And I don't have a problem with that. Honestly I don't. But as far
as I'm concerned, although you finally admitted it, a lot of the
dancing around appeared to be an attempt to disprove my valid
assertion that a combined work would have to be distributed under the
GPL, and that no other free software license claims sovereignty over
the entire work.
> > But if the Python
> > distribution *included* GNU Readline, then RMS would be on firmer
> > ground, and the license would probably have to be changed. This is
> > *exactly* the situation I was describing with svglib -- can you still
> > not see that it is a problem to just toss unsupported free software
> > out there with a GPL license? Unsupported Apache or MIT is fine --
> > fix it or ignore. Unsupported GPL is an attractive nuisance.
>
> Well, if you're planning to release code and just walk away from it,
> then choosing a permissive licence might be acceptable, but not all
> code "found" by people on the Internet is abandoned, even if it is
> apparently mere fodder for their super-important project.
Code doesn't have to be abandoned to be an attractive nuisance.
> > > Is readline trivial? Was readline trivial in 1992?
>
> > Again, you could have neural net prediction and other fancy
> > technologies, but in general, yes, the concept is pretty trivial and
> > there were many systems that already had such things back then.
>
> Well, that may not be a judgement shared by the authors. There are
> numerous tools and components which do dull jobs and whose maintenance
> is tedious and generally unrewarding, but that doesn't mean that such
> investment is worth nothing in the face of someone else's so-very-
> topical high-profile project.
OK, so what you're saying is that readline is so dull and unrewarding
that the only reason to bother writing it is to reel people in to the
GPL?
> > > Does it even
> > > matter, because the author is more or less saying that they don't want
> > > their code incorporated in a proprietary system?
>
> > Yes it matters because as others have pointed out, sometimes people
> > use stuff which is purported to be "free" without a full understanding
> > of all the implications. But this gets back to my general complaint
> > about co-opting the word "free" which you don't think is a problem
> > because you have chosen to use other words.
>
> Well, if people are making use of "some good code found for free on
> the Internet", particularly if they are corporations like Cisco, and
I'm not talking about Cisco. I'm talking about people like the author
of clisp, and you well know it.
> they choose not to understand things like copyright and licensing, or
> they think "all rights reserved" is just a catchy slogan, then they
> probably shouldn't be building larger works and redistributing them.
Well, the FSF seems to have softened its stance, but at the time,
clisp wasn't even distributing readline. That's why I use terms like
"bullying". The bully now knows it's harder to get away with that
particular lie, but he's still scheming about how to reel more people
in.
> This may seem unfair to you, but there are plenty of other
> organisations who are much less charitable about copyright
> infringement than the FSF or the average Free Software developer.
None of those claim that their software is "Free Software" (all
caps). You apparently think it's fine that that's just a catchy
slogan.
> But if you're more or less saying that the intentions of an author can
> (or should) be disregarded if the desire to use that author's work is
> great enough, well, that's certainly interesting to learn.
I never said that and you know it. I have explicitly gone out of my
way to indicate that I won't use GPLed software in cases where my
doing so might violate the author's wishes, even if it would be legal
to do so, and I have always said people should be able to use whatever
license they want. But the intentions of an author, as viewed
through, e.g., the MIT license, are much easier to discern and much
more liberal for downstream users than the GPL, which is exceedingly
long and requires a huge FAQ to even begin to fathom.
Regards,
Pat
Patrick Maupin
> The point is, GPL (and OWL) is for programmers who just don't care about
> the legal stuffs and would want to spend more time writing code than
> writing license.
Absolutely. When I wrote "permissive license" I was not trying to
imply that everybody should roll their own.
Regards,
Pat
Patrick Maupin
> On 11 Mai, 23:02, Patrick Maupin <pmau...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Huh? Permissive licenses offer much better certainty for someone
> > attempting a creative mash-up. Different versions of the Apache
> > license don't conflict with each other. If I use an MIT-licensed
> > component, it doesn't attempt to make me offer my whole work under
> > MIT.
>
> What certainty does the MIT licence give contributors to a project
> against patent infringement claims initiated by another contributor?
None. If I was worried about that, I'd probably use the Apache
license instead.
> > Oh, I get it. You were discussing the certainty that an author can
> > control what downstream users do with the software to some extent.
> > Yes, I fully agree. The GPL is for angry idealists who have an easily
> > outraged sense of justice, who don't have enough real problems to work
> > on.
>
> Again, the author does not exercise control when people must
> voluntarily choose to use that author's work and thereby agree to
> adhere to that author's set of terms.
So you're saying that Microsoft doesn't exercise control about keeping
me from using a copy of Windows on more than one machine -- it's not
"control" because I agreed to it up front. Sorry, my mileage
varies. In fact, I would (and do) say that Microsoft forces me to buy
one copy of Windows for every machine I want to run it on.
Regards,
Pat
Patrick Maupin
> On 11 Mai, 22:50, Patrick Maupin <pmau...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On May 11, 5:34 am, Paul Boddie <p...@boddie.org.uk> wrote:
>
> > > Yes, *if* you took it. He isn't forcing you to take it, though, is he?
>
> > No, but he said a lot of words that I didn't immediately understand
> > about what it meant to be free and that it was free, and then after I
> > bit into it he told me he owned my soul now.
>
> Thus, "owned my soul" joins "holy war" and "Bin Laden" on the list.
> That rhetorical toolbox is looking pretty empty at this point.
Not emptier than you analogy toolbox. This is really a pretty stupid
analogy, but I guess my lame attempts at showing that are wasted.
> > > It is whining if someone says, "I really want that chocolate, but that
> > > nasty man is going to make me pay for it!"
>
> > But that's not what happened. I mean, he just told me that I might
> > have to give some of it to others later. He didn't mention that if I
> > spread peanut butter on mine before I ate it that I'd have to give
> > people Reese's Peanut Butter cups.
>
> He isn't, though. He's telling you that you can't force other people
> to lick the chocolate off whatever "Reese's Peanut Butter cups" are,
> rather than actually eating the combination of the two, when you offer
> such a combination to someone else.
No. That's not what is happening, and you've now officially stretched
the analogy way past the breaking point. In any case, he's telling me
I have to give the recipe for my homemade peanut butter.
> Is the Creative Commons share-
> alike clause just as objectionable to you, because it's that principle
> we're talking about here?
I have explained that, in some cases, I will use GPL software, and in
other cases I won't, and tried to explain why and what the difference
is. Anybody can re-read my posts and figure out that the same might
apply to the various Creative Commons licenses.
> > > If the man said, "please take the chocolate, but I want you to share
> > > it with your friends", and you refused to do so because you couldn't
> > > accept that condition, would it be right to say, "that man is forcing
> > > me to share chocolate with my friends"?
>
> > But the thing is, he's *not* making me share the chocolate with any of
> > my friends. He's not even making me share my special peanut butter
> > and chocolate. What he's making me do is, if I give my peanut butter
> > and chocolate to one of my friends, he's making me make *that* friend
> > promise to share. I try not to impose obligations like that on my
> > friends, so obviously the "nice" man with the chocolate isn't my
> > friend!
>
> Yes, he's making everyone commit to sharing, and yes, it's like a
> snowball effect once people agree to join in.
Sorry, I sometimes have a hard time distinguishing the semantic
difference between "make" and "force". Could you elucidate?
> But unless you hide that
> commitment, no-one imposes anything on anyone. They can get their
> chocolate elsewhere. They join in; they are not conscripted.
And I've already explained why, in some cases, someone might refuse
the tastiest chocolate in the world to not join in.
> > I explained this very carefully before multiple times. Let me give
> > concrete examples -- (1) I have told my children before "if we take
> > that candy, then they will make us pay for it" and (2) if we included
> > (GPLed software) in this (MIT-licensed software) then we will have to
> > change the license. In both these cases, once the decision has been
> > made, then yes, force enters into it. And no, I don't think the
> > average shop keeper is nearly as evil as Darth, or even RMS.
>
> Entering an agreement voluntarily does not mean that you are forced to
> enter that agreement, even if the agreement then involves obligations
> (as agreements inevitably do).
No, but copyright licenses are funny things, not like contracts where
there is a meeting of the minds up front. For example, while the
Ciscos of the world have no excuse, I bet a lot of people who download
Ubuntu and make copies for their friends are unaware of this section
of the GPL FAQ:
"I downloaded just the binary from the net. If I distribute copies, do
I have to get the source and distribute that too? Yes. The general
rule is, if you distribute binaries, you must distribute the complete
corresponding source code too. The exception for the case where you
received a written offer for source code is quite limited."
Regards,
Pat
Patrick Maupin
> On 05/12/10 06:50, Patrick Maupin wrote:
>
>
>
> > On May 11, 5:34 am, Paul Boddie <p...@boddie.org.uk> wrote:
> >> On 10 Mai, 20:36, Patrick Maupin <pmau...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> The fact is, I know the man would force me to pay for the chocolate, so in
> >>> some cases that enters into the equation and keeps me from wanting the
> >>> chocolate.
>
> >> If the man said, "please take the chocolate, but I want you to share
> >> it with your friends", and you refused to do so because you couldn't
> >> accept that condition, would it be right to say, "that man is forcing
> >> me to share chocolate with my friends"?
>
> > But the thing is, he's *not* making me share the chocolate with any of
> > my friends. He's not even making me share my special peanut butter
> > and chocolate. What he's making me do is, if I give my peanut butter
> > and chocolate to one of my friends, he's making me make *that* friend
> > promise to share. I try not to impose obligations like that on my
> > friends, so obviously the "nice" man with the chocolate isn't my
> > friend!
>
> The analogy breaks here; unlike chocolate, the value of software/source
> code, if shared, doesn't decrease (in fact, many software increases its
> value when shared liberally, e.g. p2p apps).
Absolutely true. Actually, the analogy was really pretty broken to
start with. It wasn't my analogy -- I was just trying to play
along :-)
> There might be certain cases where the software contains some trade
> secret whose value decreases the more people knows about it; but sharing
> does not decrease the value of the software, at least not directly, it
> is the value of the secret that decreases because of the sharing.
Sure. But in general, people will share, often even when doing so is
legally questionable. Just look at the RIAA's woes if you don't
believe me. The only real question here is whether the marginal value
achieved by adding constraints to force people to share (which most
would have done anyway) outweighs the costs to people who, for
whatever reason (perhaps a trade secret obligation) *can't* share.
The answer to that question may well vary depending on several
factors. The fact that GPL and Apache and MIT and BSD are available
is a good thing -- whichever license an author feels best fits his
project is definitely the one he should use.
Regards,
Pat
Paul Boddie
> On May 12, 7:43 am, Paul Boddie <p...@boddie.org.uk> wrote:
> > Thus, "owned my soul" joins "holy war" and "Bin Laden" on the list.
> > That rhetorical toolbox is looking pretty empty at this point.
>
> Not emptier than you analogy toolbox. This is really a pretty stupid
> analogy, but I guess my lame attempts at showing that are wasted.
Yes they are. The analogy was to point out that someone can really
want something, but if they are not prepared to accept the "price" of
acquiring it, then there is no point in them whining about someone
withholding that thing from them, or whining about someone "forcing"
them to do stuff, especially when there is clearly no "force" involved
at all.
[...]
> > He isn't, though. He's telling you that you can't force other people
> > to lick the chocolate off whatever "Reese's Peanut Butter cups" are,
> > rather than actually eating the combination of the two, when you offer
> > such a combination to someone else.
>
> No. That's not what is happening, and you've now officially stretched
> the analogy way past the breaking point. In any case, he's telling me
> I have to give the recipe for my homemade peanut butter.
If you want to redefine the basis of the analogy, then you can talk
about the recipe all you like, yes. Otherwise, no: the analogy was
only about people whining about not being able to get stuff with no
strings attached. I could swap that analogy with one that has someone
really wanting a ride on a bus, or wanting to go to the moon, where
they don't like it when someone tells them that they can't get do that
stuff without agreeing to something or other first. Feel free to start
discussing the shape of the bus ticket or who pays for spacesuits if
you want, but to say, "I really want to use that thing, but that nasty
man has licensed it under the GPL" is whining in precisely the same
way as featured in the analogy.
> > Is the Creative Commons share-
> > alike clause just as objectionable to you, because it's that principle
> > we're talking about here?
>
> I have explained that, in some cases, I will use GPL software, and in
> other cases I won't, and tried to explain why and what the difference
> is. Anybody can re-read my posts and figure out that the same might
> apply to the various Creative Commons licenses.
So it is objectionable to you as well, then.
[...]
> > Yes, he's making everyone commit to sharing, and yes, it's like a
> > snowball effect once people agree to join in.
>
> Sorry, I sometimes have a hard time distinguishing the semantic
> difference between "make" and "force". Could you elucidate?
Yes: once they've agreed to join in, they "have to" go along with the
whole scheme.
> > But unless you hide that
> > commitment, no-one imposes anything on anyone. They can get their
> > chocolate elsewhere. They join in; they are not conscripted.
>
> And I've already explained why, in some cases, someone might refuse
> the tastiest chocolate in the world to not join in.
Well, great for them. I thought they were "forced" to join in. I guess
not.
[...]
> No, but copyright licenses are funny things, not like contracts where
> there is a meeting of the minds up front. For example, while the
> Ciscos of the world have no excuse, I bet a lot of people who download
> Ubuntu and make copies for their friends are unaware of this section
> of the GPL FAQ:
>
> "I downloaded just the binary from the net. If I distribute copies, do
> I have to get the source and distribute that too? Yes. The general
> rule is, if you distribute binaries, you must distribute the complete
> corresponding source code too. The exception for the case where you
> received a written offer for source code is quite limited."
Yes, and that's why, when Mepis Linux were found not to be
distributing the sources, they had to go along with the above section.
And that's also why version 3 of the GPL has a clause about nominating
a party that will honour the obligation to provide source. But what's
your problem exactly? The GPL applies to redistribution, and the
default state of a copyrighted work is that you don't have permission
to redistribute it, so before someone shares something they have to
know whether they are able to do so or not.
The various clauses are all there for their own reasons. If you don't
like them, don't use GPL-licensed software.
Paul
Paul Boddie
> On May 12, 7:10 am, Paul Boddie <p...@boddie.org.uk> wrote:
> > What the licence asks you to do and what the author of the licence
> > wants you to do are two separate things.
>
> But the whole context was about what RMS wanted me to do and you
> disagreed!
What RMS as an activist wants is that everyone releases GPL-licensed
code, except where permissively licensed code might encourage open
standards proliferation. What RMS the licence author requests is that
your work is licensed in a way which is compatible with the GPL.
[...]
> > I wrote "the software" above when I meant "your software", but I have
> > not pretended that the whole system need not be available under the
> > GPL.
>
> You say you "have not pretended" but you've never mentioned that it
> would or even acknowledged the correctness of my assertions about this
> until now, just claiming that what I said was false.
Well, excuse me! I think we both know that combining something with a
GPL-licensed work and redistributing it means that the "four freedoms"
must apply, and that recipients get the work under the GPL. You can
insist that I said something else, but I spell it out in this post:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/034fbc8289a4d555
Specifically the part...
"Not least because people are only obliged to make their work
available under a GPL-compatible licence so that people who are using
the combined work may redistribute it under
the GPL."
In case you don't find this satisfactory, "their work" means "their
own work".
[...]
> > More loaded terms to replace the last set, I see.
>
> IMO "Bullying" is the correct term for some of Stallman's actions,
> including in the clisp debacle. I knew you wouldn't agree -- that's
> why YMMV. And I'm not "replacing" any set of terms -- part of the
> "bullying" is the "forcing."
Stallman gave Haible the choice to not use readline. Maybe that wasn't
very nice, and maybe Haible didn't believe that using readline would
incur any consequences, but that's what you get when you use a
copyrighted work. Your language is all about portraying the FSF as
operating in some kind of illegal or unethical way. I guess you
believe that if you throw enough mud, some of it will stick.
> > Again, what I meant was "your software", not the whole software
> > system. As I more or less state below...
>
> BUT THAT DOESN'T MATTER. Once the whole package is licensed under the
> GPL, for someone downstream to try to scrape the GPL off and get to
> just the underlying non-GPL parts is harder than scraping bubblegum
> off your shoe on a hot Texas day.
Big deal. If a project wants to avoid even looking at GPL-licensed
code for the reason that someone might end up getting the code under
the GPL, and that they're so bothered that the opportunity to not
grant such recipients the privileges of modification and
redistribution disappears because of the GPL, then that's their
problem.
[WebKit is LGPL-licensed but KHTML linked to GPL-licensed code,
shouldn't WebKit be GPL-licensed?]
> I didn't make that claim and have never heard of that claim, and I'm
> not at all sure of the relevance of whatever you're trying to explain
> to the licensing of an overall program, rather than a library.
The point is precisely the one you concede about a project needing to
be licensed compatibly with the GPL, even though to use the combined
work, the result will be GPL-licensed.
[...]
> > All RMS and the FSF's lawyers wanted was that the CNRI licences be GPL-
> > compatible. There are actually various aspects of GPL-compatibility
> > that are beneficial, even if you don't like the copyleft-style
> > clauses, so I don't think it was to the detriment of the Python
> > project.
>
> And I don't have a problem with that. Honestly I don't. But as far
> as I'm concerned, although you finally admitted it, a lot of the
> dancing around appeared to be an attempt to disprove my valid
> assertion that a combined work would have to be distributed under the
> GPL, and that no other free software license claims sovereignty over
> the entire work.
I never denied that the GPL would apply to the combined work! Read the
stuff I quote above. Your *own* stuff (for example, the WebKit stuff)
can be licensed compatibly with the GPL (for example, the LGPL), but
the *whole* thing as it lands in the user's lap will be GPL-licensed.
[...]
> > Well, that may not be a judgement shared by the authors. There are
> > numerous tools and components which do dull jobs and whose maintenance
> > is tedious and generally unrewarding, but that doesn't mean that such
> > investment is worth nothing in the face of someone else's so-very-
> > topical high-profile project.
>
> OK, so what you're saying is that readline is so dull and unrewarding
> that the only reason to bother writing it is to reel people in to the
> GPL?
No, what I am saying is that a fair amount of work might have gone
into making readline, even though it may not be shiny enough by some
people's standards, but that doesn't mean you can disregard the
authors' wishes by insisting that is it "trivial" or unimportant,
whereas your own software somehow is important. As soon as you go down
that road, everyone can start belittling the works of others purely so
that they can start disregarding the terms which regulate those works,
and then it's a free-for-all.
[...]
> > Well, if people are making use of "some good code found for free on
> > the Internet", particularly if they are corporations like Cisco, and
>
> I'm not talking about Cisco. I'm talking about people like the author
> of clisp, and you well know it.
Well, Cisco seemed to have a bit of a problem. Maybe they thought that
this "free stuff" was just a commodity, too.
> > they choose not to understand things like copyright and licensing, or
> > they think "all rights reserved" is just a catchy slogan, then they
> > probably shouldn't be building larger works and redistributing them.
>
> Well, the FSF seems to have softened its stance, but at the time,
> clisp wasn't even distributing readline. That's why I use terms like
> "bullying". The bully now knows it's harder to get away with that
> particular lie, but he's still scheming about how to reel more people
> in.
What the FSF did was regrettable if the author didn't feel he had a
choice. I have no idea what went on beyond what the public mailing
list record can reveal.
Paul
Patrick Maupin
> On 12 Mai, 16:45, Patrick Maupin <pmau...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On May 12, 7:43 am, Paul Boddie <p...@boddie.org.uk> wrote:
> > > Thus, "owned my soul" joins "holy war" and "Bin Laden" on the list.
> > > That rhetorical toolbox is looking pretty empty at this point.
>
> > Not emptier than you analogy toolbox. This is really a pretty stupid
> > analogy, but I guess my lame attempts at showing that are wasted.
>
> Yes they are. The analogy was to point out that someone can really
> want something, but if they are not prepared to accept the "price" of
> acquiring it, then there is no point in them whining about someone
> withholding that thing from them, or whining about someone "forcing"
> them to do stuff, especially when there is clearly no "force" involved
> at all.
But nobody's whining about the strings attached to the software. Just
pointing out why they sometimes won't use a particular piece of
software, and pointing out that some other people (e.g. random Ubuntu
users) might not understand the full cost of the software, and that
that is because the cost of the software has been deliberately
obscured by using unqualified terms like all-caps "Free Software."
> > > He isn't, though. He's telling you that you can't force other people
> > > to lick the chocolate off whatever "Reese's Peanut Butter cups" are,
> > > rather than actually eating the combination of the two, when you offer
> > > such a combination to someone else.
>
> > No. That's not what is happening, and you've now officially stretched
> > the analogy way past the breaking point. In any case, he's telling me
> > I have to give the recipe for my homemade peanut butter.
>
> If you want to redefine the basis of the analogy, then you can talk
> about the recipe all you like, yes. Otherwise, no: the analogy was
> only about people whining about not being able to get stuff with no
> strings attached. I could swap that analogy with one that has someone
> really wanting a ride on a bus, or wanting to go to the moon, where
> they don't like it when someone tells them that they can't get do that
> stuff without agreeing to something or other first. Feel free to start
> discussing the shape of the bus ticket or who pays for spacesuits if
> you want, but to say, "I really want to use that thing, but that nasty
> man has licensed it under the GPL" is whining in precisely the same
> way as featured in the analogy.
Oh, no wonder I didn't understand what you were getting at with the
analogy. I'm not whining about people licensing stuff under the GPL,
just about its apologists pretending there are never any negative
consequences from it.
> > > Is the Creative Commons share-
> > > alike clause just as objectionable to you, because it's that principle
> > > we're talking about here?
>
> > I have explained that, in some cases, I will use GPL software, and in
> > other cases I won't, and tried to explain why and what the difference
> > is. Anybody can re-read my posts and figure out that the same might
> > apply to the various Creative Commons licenses.
>
> So it is objectionable to you as well, then.
I somehow knew that is how you would read my posts, but no. It's
people like you putting words in my month that is objectionable.
> [...]
>
> > > Yes, he's making everyone commit to sharing, and yes, it's like a
> > > snowball effect once people agree to join in.
>
> > Sorry, I sometimes have a hard time distinguishing the semantic
> > difference between "make" and "force". Could you elucidate?
>
> Yes: once they've agreed to join in, they "have to" go along with the
> whole scheme.
Sorry, that is absolutely no different than what I originally said
when I was first defending Aahz's use of the word "force" to Ben
Finney back on the 7th:
"Perhaps you feel "forces" is too loaded of a word. There is no
question, however, that a copyright license can require that if you do
"X" with some code, you must also do "Y". There is also no question
that the GPL uses this capability in copyright law to require anybody
who distributes a derivative work to provide the source. Thus,
"forced to contribute back any changes" is definitely what happens
once the decision is made to distribute said changes in object form."
Both your "make" and my "force" mean "to compel." We've come full
circle. The English language makes no real distinction between
"making everyone commit" and "forcing everyone [to] commit".
> > > But unless you hide that
> > > commitment, no-one imposes anything on anyone. They can get their
> > > chocolate elsewhere. They join in; they are not conscripted.
>
> > And I've already explained why, in some cases, someone might refuse
> > the tastiest chocolate in the world to not join in.
>
> Well, great for them. I thought they were "forced" to join in. I guess
> not.
That's because you use selective quoting of "forced" and deliberately
ignore the context it was used in.
> > No, but copyright licenses are funny things, not like contracts where
> > there is a meeting of the minds up front. For example, while the
> > Ciscos of the world have no excuse, I bet a lot of people who download
> > Ubuntu and make copies for their friends are unaware of this section
> > of the GPL FAQ:
>
> > "I downloaded just the binary from the net. If I distribute copies, do
> > I have to get the source and distribute that too? Yes. The general
> > rule is, if you distribute binaries, you must distribute the complete
> > corresponding source code too. The exception for the case where you
> > received a written offer for source code is quite limited."
>
> Yes, and that's why, when Mepis Linux were found not to be
> distributing the sources, they had to go along with the above section.
> And that's also why version 3 of the GPL has a clause about nominating
> a party that will honour the obligation to provide source. But what's
> your problem exactly?
My problem, exactly, is that bothering Mepis, yet not bothering Joe
Blow when he gives a copy to his friend, is exactly the kind of
selective enforcement of copyright rights that Microsoft is accused of
when they turn a blind eye to piracy in third-world countries.
>The GPL applies to redistribution, and the
> default state of a copyrighted work is that you don't have permission
> to redistribute it, so before someone shares something they have to
> know whether they are able to do so or not.
And Joe Blow assumes that something that says "Free Software" means
it. Sure he *should* read the copyright license, but you've already
admitted he probably won't bother, and might not understand it if he
does.
> The various clauses are all there for their own reasons. If you don't
> like them, don't use GPL-licensed software.
I've already explained very carefully multiple times:
1) I often use GPL software, and don't have any problem with the
license at all *as a user*.
2) I very seldom create stuff under the GPL because I don't like
imposing those sorts of restrictions on software I am giving away; and
3) For stuff I create which is not under the GPL, to make sure that I
can give it away without restrictions, I need to make sure that I am
not incorporating any GPL software.
Despite your opinion, there is nothing legally or morally wrong with
me using GPL software (and not redistributing it) just because I
happen to feel that (a) for my purposes, for most stuff I write, it
happens to be the wrong license, (b) (especially historically) some of
the practices used to insure proliferation of the GPL are ethically
questionable, and (c) whenever these ethically questionable practices
are discussed, quasi-religious apologists will take these questionable
practices to the next level, by selective quoting and bad analogies
and hinting at things without actually coming out and saying them, and
all sorts of other debate tactics designed to confuse rather than
enlighten.
Regards,
Pat
Lie Ryan
All analogy is broken, except if the analogy is the exact situation; but
then again, if the analogy is the exact situation, then it's not an
analogy :-)
Patrick Maupin
> On 12 Mai, 16:10, Patrick Maupin <pmau...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On May 12, 7:10 am, Paul Boddie <p...@boddie.org.uk> wrote:
> > > What the licence asks you to do and what the author of the licence
> > > wants you to do are two separate things.
>
> > But the whole context was about what RMS wanted me to do and you
> > disagreed!
>
> What RMS as an activist wants is that everyone releases GPL-licensed
> code, except where permissively licensed code might encourage open
> standards proliferation. What RMS the licence author requests is that
> your work is licensed in a way which is compatible with the GPL.
Sorry, didn't know they were twins.
>
> [...]
>
> > > I wrote "the software" above when I meant "your software", but I have
> > > not pretended that the whole system need not be available under the
> > > GPL.
>
> > You say you "have not pretended" but you've never mentioned that it
> > would or even acknowledged the correctness of my assertions about this
> > until now, just claiming that what I said was false.
>
> Well, excuse me! I think we both know that combining something with a
> GPL-licensed work and redistributing it means that the "four freedoms"
> must apply, and that recipients get the work under the GPL. You can
> insist that I said something else, but I spell it out in this post:
>
> http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/034fbc8289a4d555
>
> Specifically the part...
>
> "Not least because people are only obliged to make their work
> available under a GPL-compatible licence so that people who are using
> the combined work may redistribute it under
> the GPL."
>
> In case you don't find this satisfactory, "their work" means "their
> own work".
OK, but in the last several threads on this sub-part, you kept
contradicting me for some supposed technicality (how was I to know
there were two RMS's?) when I was trying to make the same point.
>
> [...]
>
> > > More loaded terms to replace the last set, I see.
>
> > IMO "Bullying" is the correct term for some of Stallman's actions,
> > including in the clisp debacle. I knew you wouldn't agree -- that's
> > why YMMV. And I'm not "replacing" any set of terms -- part of the
> > "bullying" is the "forcing."
>
> Stallman gave Haible the choice to not use readline. Maybe that wasn't
> very nice,
It wasn't even legally correct. At that point, Stallman had access to
counsel, etc. and should have known better.
> and maybe Haible didn't believe that using readline would
> incur any consequences,
He wasn't distributing it! It didn't incur any legal consequences;
only the consequence due to not realizing that using readline placed
him squarely inside RMS's chess game.
> but that's what you get when you use a
> copyrighted work.
No. That's what you get when you use a copyrighted work authored by
an idealist who is trying to spread his choice of license.
> Your language is all about portraying the FSF as
> operating in some kind of illegal or unethical way.
Sorry, didn't mean to be that subtle. RMS and others at the FSF have,
on multiple occasions, made statements about how licenses work which
are legally false. This is not illegal, but it is, in my opinion,
unethical. Some of these claims appear to not be made so boldly any
more, so perhaps they are catching on that others have caught on.
> I guess you
> believe that if you throw enough mud, some of it will stick.
I don't care about mud or sticking. I am happy to see that the
current wording of the FAQ probably means that another clisp/readline
scenario won't happen, and like to believe that the public outcry over
this sort of thing, and reminders of it in this sort of discussion,
help to remind the FSF that others are watching them.
> > > Again, what I meant was "your software", not the whole software
> > > system. As I more or less state below...
>
> > BUT THAT DOESN'T MATTER. Once the whole package is licensed under the
> > GPL, for someone downstream to try to scrape the GPL off and get to
> > just the underlying non-GPL parts is harder than scraping bubblegum
> > off your shoe on a hot Texas day.
>
> Big deal. If a project wants to avoid even looking at GPL-licensed
> code for the reason that someone might end up getting the code under
> the GPL, and that they're so bothered that the opportunity to not
> grant such recipients the privileges of modification and
> redistribution disappears because of the GPL, then that's their
> problem.
Yes, I understand it's no big deal to you. However, what you have
said is not quite right. If I license something under the MIT
license, I cannot guarantee that no one will ever get it under the
GPL, because it could be redistributed downstream under the GPL (but
then I don't care to in any case). However, I *can* guarantee that
the code I write (and all the underlying code it relies on) will
remain freely available from me for people who need the ability to,
for example, link with proprietary code.
Despite this not being a very big deal to you, the whole tempest in a
teacup here is about this very issue. Yes, I understand it is a
problem for me, or any other author who wants to provide code that can
be used freely by people who download it. And, as has been pointed
out in this discussion, many people don't read licenses very
carefully, so someone who doesn't want to restrict other people from
linking his library with third party proprietary code should think
twice about using the GPL.
> [WebKit is LGPL-licensed but KHTML linked to GPL-licensed code,
> shouldn't WebKit be GPL-licensed?]
>
> > I didn't make that claim and have never heard of that claim, and I'm
> > not at all sure of the relevance of whatever you're trying to explain
> > to the licensing of an overall program, rather than a library.
>
> The point is precisely the one you concede about a project needing to
> be licensed compatibly with the GPL, even though to use the combined
> work, the result will be GPL-licensed.
You keep spinning around on what you're trying to argue or prove. I
don't know what I'm supposed to have "conceded" -- I was only stating
the obvious about how if I incorporate GPL licensed code in a project,
the entire project has to be GPL licensed.
>
> > > All RMS and the FSF's lawyers wanted was that the CNRI licences be GPL-
> > > compatible. There are actually various aspects of GPL-compatibility
> > > that are beneficial, even if you don't like the copyleft-style
> > > clauses, so I don't think it was to the detriment of the Python
> > > project.
>
> > And I don't have a problem with that. Honestly I don't. But as far
> > as I'm concerned, although you finally admitted it, a lot of the
> > dancing around appeared to be an attempt to disprove my valid
> > assertion that a combined work would have to be distributed under the
> > GPL, and that no other free software license claims sovereignty over
> > the entire work.
>
> I never denied that the GPL would apply to the combined work! Read the
> stuff I quote above. Your *own* stuff (for example, the WebKit stuff)
> can be licensed compatibly with the GPL (for example, the LGPL), but
> the *whole* thing as it lands in the user's lap will be GPL-licensed.
Yes, but at the outset, I was talking about incorporating (at least to
the point of redistributing) GPL-licensed code. That forces the
license.
> No, what I am saying is that a fair amount of work might have gone
> into making readline, even though it may not be shiny enough by some
> people's standards, but that doesn't mean you can disregard the
> authors' wishes by insisting that is it "trivial" or unimportant,
> whereas your own software somehow is important. As soon as you go down
> that road, everyone can start belittling the works of others purely so
> that they can start disregarding the terms which regulate those works,
> and then it's a free-for-all.
Ahh, well done. You've sucked me into a meaningless side debate. If
I'm not distributing readline, then legally the license distribution
terms don't apply to me. End of story. (Morally, now we might get
into how trivial it is or isn't.)
> > > Well, if people are making use of "some good code found for free on
> > > the Internet", particularly if they are corporations like Cisco, and
>
> > I'm not talking about Cisco. I'm talking about people like the author
> > of clisp, and you well know it.
>
> Well, Cisco seemed to have a bit of a problem. Maybe they thought that
> this "free stuff" was just a commodity, too.
Well, that's the problem with an "attractive nuisance." It's
attractive, or people wouldn't use it, and it's a nuisance -- either
you have to have the lawyers look at all this paperwork, or you can
just ignore it and hope for the best and be bothered by the nuisance
later. And before you start talking about how the license isn't any
worse than Microsoft, etc. -- just remember that, for Cisco, part of
what makes it attractive is the availability of source.
> > > they choose not to understand things like copyright and licensing, or
> > > they think "all rights reserved" is just a catchy slogan, then they
> > > probably shouldn't be building larger works and redistributing them.
>
> > Well, the FSF seems to have softened its stance, but at the time,
> > clisp wasn't even distributing readline. That's why I use terms like
> > "bullying". The bully now knows it's harder to get away with that
> > particular lie, but he's still scheming about how to reel more people
> > in.
>
> What the FSF did was regrettable if the author didn't feel he had a
> choice. I have no idea what went on beyond what the public mailing
> list record can reveal.
But you don't need to know anything else. RMS claimed clisp was a
derivative work of readline, even though readline wasn't even
distributed with clisp. That's just plain copyright misuse, and if it
had gone to court with good lawyers, RMS might have lost the copyright
protections for readline.
Regards,
Pat
Ed Keith
> So I object to muddying the issue by misrepresenting the
> source of that
> force. Whatever force there is in copyright comes from law,
> not any free
> software license.
You are the one muddying the waters. It does not mater whether you break my kneecaps, or hire someone else to break my kneecaps, either way my kneecaps are broken.
You can use any license you want, but the simple fact is that if there are fewer restrictions in the license then the user has more freedom in how he uses the licensed code. If there are more restrictions he/she has less freedom in how he/she uses the licensed code. We can debate which is better (whether a man should be free to sell himself into slavery) but to claim that putting more restrictions on someone give them more freedom is pure Orwellian double speak.
Sophistry is the last resort of those who have run out of good arguments. The more you engage in it the weaker you make your position.
This thread is generating more heat than light, and probably should be dropped.
-EdK
Ed Keith
e_...@yahoo.com
Blog: edkeith.blogspot.com
Paul Boddie
> On May 12, 1:00 pm, Paul Boddie <p...@boddie.org.uk> wrote:
[Quoting himself...]
> > "Not least because people are only obliged to make their work
> > available under a GPL-compatible licence so that people who are using
> > the combined work may redistribute it under
> > the GPL."
>
> > In case you don't find this satisfactory, "their work" means "their
> > own work".
>
> OK, but in the last several threads on this sub-part, you kept
> contradicting me for some supposed technicality (how was I to know
> there were two RMS's?) when I was trying to make the same point.
We both agree that any combining a work with a GPL-licensed work means
that the result has to be distributable under the GPL. I was also
merely pointing out that the non-GPL-licensed work has to be licensed
compatibly if the possibility of combination with GPL-licensed works
exists, but you still get to choose the licence. You even acknowledged
this:
"In practice, what it really means is that the combination (e.g. the
whole program) would effectively be GPL-licensed. This then means
that downstream users would have to double-check that they are not
combining the whole work with licenses which are GPL-incompatible,
even if they are not using the svg feature."
And for the last time, Stallman's opinion on what you should or should
not do is a distinct matter from the actual use of these licences.
[Haible and readline]
> He wasn't distributing it! It didn't incur any legal consequences;
> only the consequence due to not realizing that using readline placed
> him squarely inside RMS's chess game.
Really, what Stallman did in 1992 is a matter for Stallman to defend.
Whether a bunch of people use the GPL to license their work or not is
a separate matter. All I can say is that Stallman's reasoning was
probably driven by the possibility that someone could license their
work in a fashion that is incompatible with readline, but deliberately
be able to make use of it technically, and then when a user combines
that work and readline, the user is told that although readline is
used in that combined work, the licensing terms do not now apply.
[...]
> No. That's what you get when you use a copyrighted work authored by
> an idealist who is trying to spread his choice of license.
Well, take it up with Stallman, then. It's a separate issue from the
use of the FSF's licences and even how the FSF functions today.
[...]
> Yes, I understand it's no big deal to you. However, what you have
> said is not quite right. If I license something under the MIT
> license, I cannot guarantee that no one will ever get it under the
> GPL, because it could be redistributed downstream under the GPL (but
> then I don't care to in any case). However, I *can* guarantee that
> the code I write (and all the underlying code it relies on) will
> remain freely available from me for people who need the ability to,
> for example, link with proprietary code.
Yes, and as I said, in the context of a program landing in a user's
lap, there is no guarantee that such a program will offer users any
privileges other than to run the program, and then maybe only under
certain conditions. Which is how this discussion began.
> Despite this not being a very big deal to you, the whole tempest in a
> teacup here is about this very issue. Yes, I understand it is a
> problem for me, or any other author who wants to provide code that can
> be used freely by people who download it. And, as has been pointed
> out in this discussion, many people don't read licenses very
> carefully, so someone who doesn't want to restrict other people from
> linking his library with third party proprietary code should think
> twice about using the GPL.
Sure, the permissive licences declare fewer restrictions or
obligations on immediate recipients, but what kicked this discussion
off was the remark about end-user privileges, not what certain
recipients (but not others) are able to do with the code.
[...]
> > No, what I am saying is that a fair amount of work might have gone
> > into making readline, even though it may not be shiny enough by some
> > people's standards, but that doesn't mean you can disregard the
> > authors' wishes by insisting that is it "trivial" or unimportant,
> > whereas your own software somehow is important. As soon as you go down
> > that road, everyone can start belittling the works of others purely so
> > that they can start disregarding the terms which regulate those works,
> > and then it's a free-for-all.
>
> Ahh, well done. You've sucked me into a meaningless side debate. If
> I'm not distributing readline, then legally the license distribution
> terms don't apply to me. End of story. (Morally, now we might get
> into how trivial it is or isn't.)
According to the FSF, whose opinions you don't trust, it doesn't
matter if you do distribute readline or not:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#LinkingWithGPL
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#IfLibraryIsGPL
From version 3 of the GPL:
"For example, Corresponding Source includes interface definition files
associated with source files for the work, and the source code for
shared libraries and dynamically linked subprograms that the work is
specifically designed to require, such as by intimate data
communication or control flow between those subprograms and other
parts of the work."
You may beg to differ. I would advise against doing so in a courtroom.
[...]
> But you don't need to know anything else. RMS claimed clisp was a
> derivative work of readline, even though readline wasn't even
> distributed with clisp. That's just plain copyright misuse, and if it
> had gone to court with good lawyers, RMS might have lost the copyright
> protections for readline.
Now that *is* a ridiculous statement. Just because a decision is made
that one work is not derived from another does not mean that the
claimed original work is no longer subject to copyright.
Paul
Paul Boddie
>
> But nobody's whining about the strings attached to the software. Just
> pointing out why they sometimes won't use a particular piece of
> software, and pointing out that some other people (e.g. random Ubuntu
> users) might not understand the full cost of the software, and that
> that is because the cost of the software has been deliberately
> obscured by using unqualified terms like all-caps "Free Software."
Right. The "full cost" of software that probably cost them nothing
monetarily and which comes with all the sources, some through a chain
of distribution and improvement which could have led to proprietary
software had the earliest stages in the chain involved permissive
licensing. And that they can't sell a binary-only Ubuntu derivative.
[...]
> Oh, no wonder I didn't understand what you were getting at with the
> analogy. I'm not whining about people licensing stuff under the GPL,
> just about its apologists pretending there are never any negative
> consequences from it.
So, the "negative consequences" are that people can't make proprietary
editions of some software. When that's a deliberate choice in the
design of a licence, there's no pretending that the consequences
aren't there, just that they aren't perceived by everyone to be
negative.
[Sharing alike]
> I somehow knew that is how you would read my posts, but no. It's
> people like you putting words in my month that is objectionable.
Well, you effectively said that you didn't like being asked to "share
alike", which is what the GPL achieves, so why should I not assume
that you generally object to other, more obviously labelled licences
like the CC-*-SA licences which make it clear what is expected of that
hapless recipient of a work who doesn't bother reading the licence?
[Obligations after joining a scheme]
> Sorry, that is absolutely no different than what I originally said
> when I was first defending Aahz's use of the word "force" to Ben
> Finney back on the 7th:
>
> "Perhaps you feel "forces" is too loaded of a word. There is no
> question, however, that a copyright license can require that if you do
> "X" with some code, you must also do "Y". There is also no question
> that the GPL uses this capability in copyright law to require anybody
> who distributes a derivative work to provide the source. Thus,
> "forced to contribute back any changes" is definitely what happens
> once the decision is made to distribute said changes in object form."
>
> Both your "make" and my "force" mean "to compel." We've come full
> circle. The English language makes no real distinction between
> "making everyone commit" and "forcing everyone [to] commit".
Yes, but you have to choose to do something ("X") to start with. Which
is actually what you wrote later in that exchange:
"Again, the force is applied once you choose to do a particular thing
with the software -- is is really that hard to understand that
concept?"
But you're virtually claiming that people stumble into a situation
where they have to do something they don't like or didn't anticipate,
when in fact they've actually entered into an agreement.
[...]
> My problem, exactly, is that bothering Mepis, yet not bothering Joe
> Blow when he gives a copy to his friend, is exactly the kind of
> selective enforcement of copyright rights that Microsoft is accused of
> when they turn a blind eye to piracy in third-world countries.
Nonsense. If anything, it's a matter of priorities, and completely
absurd to claim that the FSF and all the other copyright holders for
GPL-licensed software on Ubuntu installation media are all conspiring
together to "seed" the planet with "unlicensed wares" in order to reap
some kind of monetary reward afterwards, which is what Microsoft has
been accused of.
[...]
> Despite your opinion, there is nothing legally or morally wrong with
> me using GPL software (and not redistributing it) just because I
I never said there was. I said that if you don't like the licence,
don't incorporate works which use it into your own projects. But don't
say that it's not fair that people are releasing stuff under terms you
don't like, or say that they're being "pathetic" or petty or
ridiculous by doing so, or are imposing their agenda on you.
> happen to feel that (a) for my purposes, for most stuff I write, it
> happens to be the wrong license, (b) (especially historically) some of
> the practices used to insure proliferation of the GPL are ethically
> questionable, and (c) whenever these ethically questionable practices
> are discussed, quasi-religious apologists will take these questionable
> practices to the next level, by selective quoting and bad analogies
> and hinting at things without actually coming out and saying them, and
> all sorts of other debate tactics designed to confuse rather than
> enlighten.
More name-calling and finger-pointing. Great stuff, there. Anything
else?
Paul