What about the Artistic License? 348
Swordfish asks: "Despite the avid discussion of the merits and vulnerabilities of the GNU lincense, almost no one discusses the Perl Artistic License
in slashdot. Why is there so little discussion of the Artistic License? It seems to me that the GNU License allows forking, but all forks must be free. The Artistic License seem to allow commercial, closed-source forks. But if preventing forks is important, GPL doesn't seem to stop it. So why not just use the Artistic License? Then the authors can some day make money out of a commercial fork if they need to pay the bills!"
BSD license (not offtopic) (Score:4)
Simple it dosn't allow for the whole "world view" (Score:3)
More seriously I think that it will allow all changes to be free regardless of forking thus allowing all development to contribute to the whole. This is a model which supports project centric thinking versus developer centric or corporate centric thinking.
Because of Larry? (Score:5)
If asked about the merits of Artistic License, Larry would probably just tell you that there's more than one way to do it
Dana
GPL and forking (Score:4)
To answer your other question about being able to create a commercial, closed source version of the authors need to pay the bills: the GPL allows this as well (as does any other license) The original author of the program retains the copyright to the code and can re-release it at any time under any license he wants. What the GPL prevents is OTHER people stealing GPL'ed code and selling it as a commercial, closed source program. (this doesn't, however, prevent other people from selling it as a commercial, Open Source product)
"Software is like sex- the best is for free"
-Linus Torvalds
Right to fork... (Score:2)
The Right to Fork (RtF) is important because it ensures that in the event that the code maintainers go crazy, decide they refuse to incorporate features that many users want, etc. that otthers can take the codebase and fork it.
For example this happened with GNU Emacs, which forked into Xemacs over design and philosophy disputes.
The end result of forking is usually good, in the way in which the GPL allows it. Because all the resultant code must be open and Free, the incentive is to maintain compatibility so as to get people to actually use your forked code. And The GPL is Compatibility-Wise Viral (or some such buzzword enabled thing).
I guess my point is that forking isn't inherently bad, and the GPL doesn't intend to prevent it, just make sure it is done by a set of rules that encourage Freedom and compatibility.
Re:Content, Not Media (Score:2)
Althought I believe in what you are saying about developer time I think that this can work both in the same vein adom [www.adom.de] has both commercial features and features that are essentially free (the program has compiled versions for dos and linux x86) and allows for purtchessing of a commercial version for about $20 which allows for special features. This helps both causes: the developer, and the user.
Giving away a product on the premise that you can sell support is fine, if it can fly. But I'd rather have cash in hand.
Again this is fine. However if you want your product to fly if you are doing this freelance usually you get a wider audience if you use the GPL because concievably it could be included say in the next version of Debian or Red Hat.
Too many licenses (Score:2)
IANAL, but the GPL and LGPL seem to me quite adequate for non-commercial work, and I don't see why you'd want to release source at all for a commercial work (it just encourages competition). And if you don't object to your open source code being used in commercial products, why bother copyrighting it at all? The public domain is a viable alternative if you don't care what anyone does with the code.
Why I Like the Artistic License (Score:3)
As I read it, someone can take my program and modify it and choose how he wishes to release his modifications. He can make them available under the same license. He can make them available only in binary form.
What he cannot do (under the license) is to distribute his 'non-standard version' (my program WITH his changes) in binary only form without also including my 'standard version' and the copyrights and disclaimers. It's like a mixture of the BSD (you can do anything you want with it, even make it commercial and secret) and GPL (you can do anything you want with it as long as you allow anyone else the same right with regard to your own modifications). It seems to allow commercial usage while still crediting me for my own work.
There are places where it's more appropriate than others, of course, especially for Perl middleware, where someone is likely to grab a bunch of components and modify them slightly to fit a particular task.
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Licenses Info (Score:2)
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/
As I undestand it... (Score:3)
I thought to myself, how could Microsoft parasitize the Linux hype in the popular media, and at the same time destroy the organized movement against it? The answer struck me: port IE to Linux, close the source, throw on a few bells, and sell an MS distro. Consumers leery of a new OS would prefer the MS-sanctioned copy, and a port of IE would allow gradual porting of the MS Office APIs and apps.
The only pitfall is the "viral" property of the GPL, under which much (all?) of Linux's code is licensed. Microsoft naturally would not undetake a port of its cash cows, or even IE, if that entailed opening their source. Despite criticisms from men like Tom Christiansen, it seems evident to me that the viral GPL is serving to protect open source "while we sleep" in ways many of us never imagine.
-konstant
Commercial Forks (Score:3)
The author of GPL code is not subject to GPL requirements, so I'm confused where you're going with this. If an author--like Alladin of Ghostscript--wishes to sell non-GPL licensed copies of his software, there's nothing preventing him, except the degree of code that hasn't had ownership signed over to him.
Small patches can be presumed to have ownership signed(though it really should be explictly stated), and large ones will end up getting a shared-ownership scenario, one way or another. But the GPL just doesn't do anything to stop commercial forks if the author needs to pay the bills!
Honestly, people genuinely don't realize how much work has gone into closing loopholes with the GPL. No matter how esoteric each clause seems, there really are good reasons for them to be there. The problem lies in the fact that overly simple licenses--of which I'm not necessarily saying the Artistic License is one of--have just as much potential for being Gotcha Source as the most complex, overwrought, and landmined license that you can find.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Badly worded? (Score:2)
Also, rightly or wrongly, it suffers from being YAL and it's a good idea to choose the XFree86, LGPL or GPL licences instead, to let other free programs reuse your code. (Dual-licensing, as with perl, solves this problem.)
IMHO, all the fuss the AL makes about non-standard executables having non-standard names is unnecessary - it's unlikely there would be a conspiracy to replace your program with a different version without telling anyone. The requirement of the GPL to make it clear when code is modified, or Apache's requirement that you can't call your version 'Apache', seem like a better way to do things.
The Artistic license is not ideological (Score:3)
The point of the GPL is not to discourage forks. So far as I know, and so far as I've read and reread, the point of the GPL is to encourage forks and code reuse. In other words, they have almost totally opposite goals. The Artistic license doesn't even touch on code reuse, which speaks volumes.
GPL authors can still make money ("to pay the bills") by rereleasing under an alternative, proprietary license. I'm not sure if that's possible under the Artistic license - for that matter, I don't think that that's necessary under the artistic license. Which one has the potential to be more profitable is up for argument, of course.
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New LGPL-Like license?(offtopic) (Score:3)
Recently there has been lot of discussion of databases, and who owns them. The US either is considering or passed a law saying a Database(and info contained there-in) is owned by the creating person/company. [I honestly can't remember.]
At anyrate, this got me thinking of a the (possible) need for DGPL. Basically the same as the LGPL, but adding that the database host (i.e. the owner of the server hosting the specific instance of the db) can put restrictions on access allowing them to offset the cost of hosting the machine (administration, i'net connection, etc.). Examples of acceptable restrictions would be 1) any program accessing this database must display the advert. provided, 2) a cost of
Is there a lic. that allows this kind of thing, or should I be working on one?
I'm aware this would be hard to enforce, but I think it has some potential...
[Yes, this directly related to something I'm currently working on....and no, I don't want to give out specifics, I will talk in generalities though...]
Forking is key (Score:3)
It seems like the right to fork, far from being a liability of the GPL, is a signifigant strength. Its a way to get a bunch of random people to work very hard to reconcile their visions of what a system should be like- nobody wants a code fork, so people try very hard to work together.
On the other hand, when visions are really irreconciliable, the option to fork can be a good thing- Lots of people like Xemacs, and lots of other people like emacs classic, and this code fork let those people do there thing where it was needed. And both emaxen are open source. Everybody still wins.
With the Artistic license things seem to become much more difficult. A lot more responsibility rests with the community- If MegaCorp markets 'MegaPerl', complete with non-standard name & clear documentation of differences, the perl community has to catch up, and quick. Especially when MegaCorp starts introducing Value Adding Incompatabilities® That nobody else gets to see... If one fork of emacs dies tomorrow nobody loses. If perl dies and MegaPerl continues everyone does.
The way to deal with this is aggressive development and promotion. Perl has this, thanks to an amazing community with great leadership. Ad as long as that keeps up, and new features keep getting added to the system, MegaPerl is doomed to failure. But they live in a much more dangerous place than their GPL'd bretheren.
Why the GPL is good (Score:2)
If I write code and give it to the world, I'm doing it because I choose to, I think people might appreciate my work and maybe I'm feeling a little bit altruistic.
But I wouldn't do this if it were possible for somebody to take my work, make it into proprietary software and make a profit off my labour. I like the GPL because this is precisely the abuse it is designed to prevent. It's important to know that your code won't get ripped off.
As for open source forks, I actually think these are a good thing. Good ideas will flourish, unsucessful forks won't last long. This is the key to evolution, and as long as forks are guaranteed to stay free, I'm quite happy to see them happen.
Sounds good to this uninformed reader (Score:4)
The GPL basically turns the traditional license on its head - it protects the users instead of the producers. So long as they don't break the license, there is nothing to stop anyone that gets hold of something GPLd from doing something the author doesn't like. Because it provides some safety for users, it is attractive to developers who want to gain users.
Personally I like the idea behind the BSD license - that it promotes the use of quality code by allowing anyone to borrow bits for use in anything, regardless of the next license, so long as it is acreditted. I think the GPL's political nature will ultimately prevent its apparent greatest ambition - to move to a world where everything is GPLed. It works fine for hobby projects, labour of love stuff, like Linux. But at the same time it excludes the larger part of the software producing world - industry - from benefitting unless they are prepared to change their whole business model to the one advocated by RMS and his wandering carrier bags. But it is doing us a great service by bring the whole open source thing back into relatively common use, like it was when Unix was young.
Thanks for asking the question. I will make the effort to look at the Artistic license and see if I can learn from it. It sounds like a fair solution.
The authors can *always* make commercial forks (Score:3)
Nothing in the GPL prohibits authors from releasing commercial versions of their own software -- or closed-source versions either.
In fact, you can't write a license that limits your rights as the author; the GPL is based on copyright law, which says that authors can do anything, but other users have to do what the author says (thus the "nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the software" note in the GPL).
So you're free to release your software under as many different licenses as you want, closed and/or open. IIRC, perl itself is a good example of this -- it's available under both the GPL and the Artistic License, so people who want to incorporate it into GPLed projects can do so, while people who need more flexibility have that option as well.
Some of the confusion may arise because if you want your program to become part of the GNU project (as distinct from part of the larger category of "software distrubuted under the GNU GPL") you have to assign your copyright to the Free Software Foundation (give the software to them, in other words). By doing that you relinquish your rights as author and can no longer release closed-source versions.
Re:BSD license (not offtopic) (Score:2)
I much prefer the BSD-style-licenses in that I can someday make profit off of something that I spend countless hours working on.
I'll all for free software, and open source, but I'm all for paying the bills and eating as well.
On a side note I still prefer the license Chat is released under, something along the lines of:
"If this software breaks, you can keep both halves"
Bruce Perens on why to avoid the Artistic License (Score:4)
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Every licence has it's good points (Score:3)
GPL allows forks, indeed ENCOURAGES forks, in many ways, but with all forks free and open (UNLESS the code is significantly re-written, and the amount of GPLed code used is small). This works in the same way as evolution. If something has an advantage, it'll thrive. If it doesn't, it'll die. This leads to the digital equivalent of bio-diversity (electro-diversity?), with a large proliferation of specialised tools, all performing similar, but usefully different, functions.
The BSD licence makes some fundamental assumptions IMHO - that well-designed and well-maintained programs fork rarely and that evolutionary forces are not as significant in programming as market forces (although both exist). This leads to having a relatively small number of variants, all performing a wide range of functions and all very similar (if not identical).
Each of these has a place. The GPL is -not- useful for producing "office" applications, IMHO, because the needs are too structured. There's no room for evolution to take place. Also, each application has to do too many things, and there's little room for diversity. The BSD licence is -ideal- for this kind of application, for the very same reasons.
On the other hand, something like speech synthesis or speech recognition, search engines, toolkits, etc, would be horrible to try under a BSD licence. The drive to fragment, and the fact that any of those fragments can close & become commercial, would rip the project apart, before long. The GPL, though, is perfect for this, encouraging and promoting the very things that would destroy the work, under a BSD licence.
Re:BSD license (not offtopic) (Score:4)
While at times it seems that way, I'd rather hope that reality is somewhat different. People will sling mud at anyone and anything without really doing the research first, and some uninformed moderators seem to think that opinionated == informed.
I agree that various licenses have different merits and uses. I just won't get thrown up into the spotlight (or the "10 Hot Comments Slashbox :) for saying so.
What does open source mean to me? It means that when I started using the libsensors modules, I was able to add a temperature sensors to wmmon. When I'm unhappy with the smoothness of my mouse acceleration, I can modify gpm's two lines of acceleration code and do whatever I want with it, including examing SVGAlib to see how they chose to do it "properly". It's the little things like that.
Most of the "GPL"-shouting zealots I've seen never even take advantage of the modifiability (hope that's a word :) of open source (not Open Source - I'm not getting political here) software. It seems that most of the GPL zealots have little to contribute to the community in terms of brain, so they throw as much heart into matters as possible.
Just a thought.
-chet
GPL ensures that forks can legally be remerged (Score:2)
However, since all forks must be GPL'ed as well, it will always be legal to remerge the forks. This is a big difference compared to licenses that allows proprietary forks, for example the BSDL. The many proprietary BSD derived operating systems can not be remerged without permission of all the copyright holders.
Re:Commercial Forks (Score:2)
I also thank the numerous CPAN contributors who have made libraries that I can include in commercial work (I am also a CPAN contributor), add proprietary extensions to, and otherwise modify to my hearts content. Without this licence my work wouldn't be possible.
The Poetic License (Score:4)
- This source code is free.
Of course, this leaves the restrictions and legal remedies somewhat unclear, but I think the license's brevity and artistic merit (cough) make up for that.One flower becomes many.
Make your code free too.
Interesting idea (was Re:As I undestand it...) (Score:2)
If MS did release "MS Linux - All Singing, All Dancing and Whiter Whites" then I think they would come under a great deal of scrutiny which would (hopefully) prevent them from subverting the GPL.
Assuming they can't subvert the GPL, then if they wish to keep their code secret the only way they go is port their own set of libraries (and only link to LGPL libraries) and maybe produce a binary-only kernel module(*) or two. I imagine their stuff would only work on their own distribution if at all possible, though even that might prove difficult as a lot of people would try and reverse engineer it if they tried
* - this could/would become an issue the next time the kernel team changed the interface and everyone's MS Office installs stopped working!
It's about freedom, not commercialism (Score:2)
The GPL is about freedom. The whole point of it is that, once a piece of software is GPLd, that source will forever be available. We want our software to be freely available to all. If you use the GPL, you are stating that you will not allow someone to close off your source and distribute their derivation.
If all we cared about was whether commercial forks were possible or not, why not just stick "you may not sell this software for a profit" lines in your source? It's about more than that: GNU wants software to be free. Remember the concept of copyleft [gnu.org]?
How many times is this debate going to come up on Slashdot? A summary of the two main licences:
1) GPL - use this licence if you want your software to remain Free as long as you decide to keep it that way. You do not have to license subsequent versions with the GPL; you may relicense at any time. However, no-one else may relicense your software, or distribute binaries without source.
This means that, in simple terms, your source code and any derivations will be available to anyone who has access to the binary.
2) BSD - use this licence if you want to get a protocol, standard or ethos popular. For example, if you want people to use your software as widely as possible, and the source is not as important as the idea behind it, this may be applicable to you.
If this is wrong, please correct me.
Clueless? (Score:2)
If you want to eat, you have to write some software that is so hard to use, that it requires significant documentation. Then you can sell that documentation. You first have to develop some evangelical devotee's to install the software en mass, so that people will need to buy the documentation.
Or you could just make it hard enough to use that people need to call you for help. Then instead of writing software for a living, you can write once, sell support for ever.
But never mention selling software with closed source code here, it is almost a certain death sentence. How dare anyone make money for their efforts.
Because, lets face it, once you have free speech, you have free beer. No matter what license it is under, if I can download the source, and compile it, why pay for it.
Re:BSD license (not offtopic) (Score:2)
>I much prefer the BSD-style-licenses in that I >can someday make profit off of something that I >spend countless hours working on.
Either you are spreading FUD, or you don't understand what you are talking about. In the first case, please stop being lame. In the second --- read a little, if you really are concerned about how licences affect *you*, you should have at least a little understanding of them.
I don't want to get drawn into a license-advocacy discussion, but completely incorrect statements like your just confuse neophytes who may be reading this. In case it is not obvious, I will be more explicit. The BSD license doesn't give *you* any additional ability to make profit off something *you* did. What it does do is let *me* make a profit of your 'countless hours' --- without even mentioning it to you. This is why many corporate types favour teh BSD style, as it allows a company to benifit from the pool of code without returning anything. For exactly the same reason, this is why many GPL advocates are anti-BSD.
S.
Re:BSD license (not offtopic) (Score:2)
I much prefer the BSD-style-licenses in that I can someday make profit off of something that I spend countless hours working on.
Ok the is just one little problem. People in the business world using this stuff to do enterprise level work must be able to think that their products will still be around for a while without say the maintainer of bash suddently going commercial and making the product cost $1,000 per machine or something like that. I am not against this but aren't you already employed? I mean you had to get money while you were writing the thing in the first place so I assume you have a steady job. I guess it could be nice to have some means to get money if you were layed off or something but software that is produced by one person usually takes a little while to get spread around even if it is great (perl, gcc, etc).
I'll all for free software, and open source, but I'm all for paying the bills and eating as well.
Same with me. Usually however I invest my time in something that is a little bit surer because I don't like to loose bets that involve my house. It's just that most projects are seen as something that people do with their free time and not as their full time jobs so most people don't think that people are spending their full time working on their favorite project.
On a side note I still prefer the license Chat is released under, something along the lines of:
"If this software breaks, you can keep both halves"
Is this the name of the program? I am not familiar with it. But I guess that implies that the product will come with no support from the developer right?
Re:BSD license (not offtopic) (Score:2)
Now, if you take someone else's GPL code, you can't do this. Basically, the GPL says that anyone can use it and modify it but all versions that fork must remain free. But this does NOT apply to the owner of the code. Now if your not absolutely sure on this, you can state a clause that says: all of your code is owned by you, and may be used elsewhere by you, but anyone else must only use it under GPL.
This is also why you can take non GPL code that you own and place it under GPL. If you own it, you can do what ever you like with it.
I like the GPL because it is the only license that says the code I write and give to the community, shall always be free to the community. But I prefer the LGPL, because that way only the code that people use to change what I write, remains free, and not something that uses my code but does not effect my code.
Just a rant.
Steven Rostedt
Re:As I undestand it... (Score:2)
The other thing is that under Linux, Microsoft would be just another developer. They wouldn't have the ability to control the underlying API's which is the heart of Microsoft's monopoly power.
If Microsoft did something wierd to Linux to try to usurp control, they would have to release that information because of the GPL. If the changes they made were good, everybody would accept them and they'd show up in other distros. If the changes were bad, everybody else would ignore them.
The only possible evil thing they could do is force other distros to incorporate MS's changes to the Kernel in order to be compatible with Office and IE. The end result of this though is that MS just pisses everybody off, but they can continue to follow the changes that MS makes so they never get their monopoly power.
Now if Linux was released under Artistic License or BSD, they could just take the Linux code, close it up hack it to hell and back and sell it as their own proprietary version with their own API's. Fortunately they cannot do that!
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Re:Commercial Forks (Score:2)
Nothing forces you to rename whole applications to use GPLed apps! You can ship Perl with your application; you just have to provide the source code to Perl if requested.
Such is the state of affairs with most compilers--remember, DJGPP uses lots of GPL/GNU code, and it was used to compile Quake.
Perl, as an interpreter, is a bit different.
Granted, if you're looking to make propietary extensions, you're not going to get an easy free ride under the GPL, but that's how the original coders get paid back: You get their massive infrastructure, they get your patch.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
The Greatest Gift of All (Score:5)
The AL certainly doesn't purport to stop you from adding your own extensions. And if you do that, it certainly doesn't tell you under what conditions you can or cannot distribute or charge for this work, nor does it say anything about whether you must provide source for your own work. (Actually, it says that it doesn't say that. :-) That would be wicked because it would mean trying to exert control over some other software besides the original; that is, stuff that whoever issued the licence didn't themself write. I don't even know whether it's legal, but it's certainly not programmer-friendly.
As I dimly understand these matters, Larry just doesn't want you to write something and then pretend that it was Larry who really wrote it. I don't blame him, and I'd be surprised if anybody did. I doubt you'd want somebody other than a legitimate owner of that name putting "written by [your name here]" all over their own software.
fraud, not about restricting anybody's freedom. I hardly see these two matters as alternate faces of the same issue, but perhaps some people do.
If you intend to make your software as useful as it can be to as many people as you can, then you should make it free software. Which is a terrible word, because of word games from the FSF. I mean free as in "gift". As in "free of restrictions" or as in "no strings attached". There are plenty of licences out there that do this. Short licences are better than long ones. The best license is "do as thou wilt".
Here's one that's been floating around:
And here's another:As you see, a free licence is simple, to the point, and generous. It is not an insidious imposition of your person moral choices upon others. If you decide their choices for them a priori, they can make no moral decision. There is no goodness in being automata. You must let people choose for themselves.
Some people prefer to install poison-pills in their licences. Usually, this poison pill is about using the software to make money with. Sleepycat Software has that, the GPL has that, and so do lots of others. I suppose some selfish people have good reasons for this, but let's not be pretending that software with a poison-pill in it is somehow "free", or that it does the most good. It doesn't. A selfish poison pill tries to make sure that the original authors' socio-economic-political dogma gets spread through the world at the cost of helping fewer people. "Use" licences like this hamper code reuse and hurt programmers. A gift, on the other hand, comes without a price tag on it.
Every author has to make up their own mind here. I personally prefer software freely given away--without restrictions, without legislated morality, without poison pills, without any agenda beyond trying to help to make the world a better place. The AL seems to do a good job at that.
Try, please, to remember what the greatest gift of all is. If you know what it is and why, then you'll understand. If you do not, then I'm not sure I can convince you. But the answer is charity.
Please look at the General Artistic License (Score:2)
Parts of the Perl Artistic License seemed to me to be specific to Perl, so I removed them.
If you have time, look at it, and tell me if its ok.
http://www.dma.org/~dma hurin/files/software/wkn/doc/LICENSE [dma.org]
Re:GPL mandates reinvention (Score:2)
Of course, there are ways around that [perl.com], effectively converting the GPL into the LGPL as applied to libraries. Better not to use the viral version in the first place, though.
Re:BSD license (not offtopic) (Score:2)
Amen to that. The fastest way to kill your karma on here is to take a stand against the GPV. Calling it exactly what it is - a viral tool for RMS to promote and enforce his utopian worldview - is enough to send GPV zealots into a frenzy of seek-and-destroy moderation.
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The big differences between the Free licenses (Score:2)
-> The New BSD license and X Consortium license allow additional restrictions, and linking to anything. I see no functional difference between the two.
-> The Old BSD license is the New BSD license plus the advertising clause. It (and the many unique BSDesque licenses derived from it) are the only ones which requires notice during advertising, so I won't bother mentioning each one that has no advertising clause.
-> The Artistic license prevents additional restrictions (i.e. relicensing by others), but allows linking to anything
-> The LGPL prevents additional restrictions. It allows non-(L)GPL apps to link to it, but it's unclear whether or not it can link to non-LPL libraries.
-> The GPL prevents additional restrictions. It also prevents linking to software under any license that doesn't meet very strict requirements, which the GPL, LGPL and X Consortium license definately meet, the New BSD license probably meets, but few others do.
Thus the Artistic license does not allow switching to a proprietary license any more than the GPL does. What it does allow you to do is develop Free Software in a proprietary world. Free software developers on Windows should consider it, as many libraries and tools there are proprietary, and Artistic offers better protection than, say BSD. Also, Free Software developers developing for Qt and/or KDE should consider it, as it works very well with the QPL, with no arguments from GPL developers.
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Re:Commercial Forks (Score:2)
I was talking about the artistic licence when distributing highly modified version of perl (or other AL licensed product). I don't have to provide the source code if I simply rename the app to "myperl" according to section 3c and/or 4c of the license (of course I have to say what I've changed from the original in my source, but no-one else ever has to see that). I also have to ship the original - but if it's openly available anyway I don't see how that works, but I do it anyhow to comply.
Re:As I undestand it...NOT (Score:2)
You are right, but not for the reasons you gave. Microsoft is bound legally by agreements from their transaction with SCO regarding Xenix. They cannot sell a Unix operating system and therefore have a vested interest in the success of Windows. They have had IE ported to Solaris for quite some time now. They have enough capital and enough good minds there to crank out a Unix/Linux/whatever port of any app very quickly, they choose not to as it would not be in their best interests.
Re:The Greatest Gift of All (Score:2)
As an example of an 'acceptable' free software license, you give:
You may use, modify, distribute, and sell this program in any way you wish, provided you do not restrict others from doing the same.
I find it amazing that after all the anger and hostility you've shown towards GNU and the Free Software Foundation, you have summed up the GPL and blessed it with your stamp of approval as a 'true free software license'.
Daniel
People DO talk about the Artistic (Score:3)
The problem with the BSD and the Artistic for me is that I'm not interested in facilitating someone else's proprietary software without getting something back from them - I am only interested in sharing with people who give me the same rights that I give them. I can still make my own proprietary software with my own work, because I hold the copyright and can issue my work with any number of licenses. If I want to use someone else's work in proprietary software, I can buy a license from them, just as I can sell a license to other people who want to make proprietary use of my work. This is hardly anti-commercial. In fact, you could say that the GPL is neutral regarding proprietary work, because it allows you to buy and sell separate commercial licenses and do pretty much what you'd do with conventional software licensing if you wish.
Thanks
Bruce
One of the great myths about licenses (Score:3)
One of the great license myths is that the GPL prevents authors from making money and less restrictive licenses permit it. My experience is exactly the opposite. I wrote a GPL'd program which a big corporation wanted to use part of in a commercial product, which they did not want to GPL. They asked for a special license which I granted for a nice fee. If I had used the Artistic or BSD licenses, I would never have heard from them and never even known they used my code.
This is a big advantage of the GPL which is not often mentioned in these discussions.
Re:The Greatest Gift of All (Score:2)
<sigh>
This discussion should be about the Artistic License, but I'm going to talk about the GPL, since you've taken a few potshots at it and I don't like to see my preferred license unfairly dragged through the mud.
I don't know about Sleepycat Software's license, but you are incorrect about the GPL. It seems to be a common misconception that the GPL disallows making a profit on software, and I'm not sure why. Nowhere in the GPL is there language barring people from selling GPLed software. In fact, the GPL states in section 1 I gather from your post that you don't like the GPL, but please argue against it from a basis of fact, not conjecture. The rhetoric and charged words ("poison pill", most notably) don't add much to your writing, either. Again, argue on fact, please.--Phil (Who wishes that more people who argue about the GPL (on both sides!) would read the thing first.)
Re:BSD license (not offtopic) (Score:2)
frenzy of seek-and-destroy moderation.
You know I don't think it's a virus or at least one that does real harm. What you are basically saying is that if I wish to write a program then I *must* by default use the GNU GPL uhhh no! Basically all the GPL is doing is saying that you cannot take from the code that has the GPL and use it for say a new product that would not be free. Geez I can't see how that hurts at all. In fact if you are sufficiently motivated it will spur innovation. Think about it; a race against time to see who gets the use of a particular feture in their code base the proprietary and others or the GPL. You know stating the name of something just because you don't like it and changing it to something that will cause people to react to negatively is not usually done in polite company. Would you run into a church and start yelling profanity with a bottle of jack daniels in one hand, a cigar in your mouth and a couple of hookers with you? I am not closed minded with regard to the use of other liscences. I have never actually released any production level code but in principal I would use the GPL because people could keep my code alive for as long as possible. Your bias towards RMS is interesting but not atypical to a great many people who were misunderstood in their time.
The only reason people still are able to use a great deal of the programs that we now have for linux, the growth of the operating system, and the movement of open source was due to him. Actually you shouldn't be so virtrolic with your responses about something that you didn't have to use anyway. The GPL started with software that was ORIGINALLY WRITTEN BY HIM that's right HIM. We all choose to run his code and code produced by likeminded people across the world. It's just like a STD in that you can only get one if you decide to engage in practices that will allow you to become infected. In this case if I am not too bold to say that you also choose wheather to use the gnu products. The same as if I choose to use windows or any other product that has a liscence. If I use windows I follow the liscencing if I don't want to I use another OS like linux, OS/2, BeOS, Mac OS, QNX or another choice. Don't take it out on the world if you spent about 5 years writing that lisp function for emacs only to find out that you can't sell it.
Less discussion than GPL because... (Score:2)
So "Let's work on a GPL Napster/javac/VMWare/X/..." comes up a lot, but "let's make a GPL Perl" hardly makes any sense.
Re:Bruce Perens on why to avoid the Artistic Licen (Score:2)
These are not "loopholes". They are permission to make your own ethical decisions.
Larry Wall has a strong belief that people must be allowed to make their own ethical choices. He will give away his code, because this makes him happy. He does not expect you to feel obligated to him by this. If you are obligated to anyone, you are obligated, in his words, to the Author of his story.
Don't like it? Don't use perl.
I think Perens has made a totall ass of himself. "use of Artistic waning"? Perl is still out there, and doing quite well. And, personally, I think Artistic is the best of the licenses.
:)
Don't let the fact that you don't want to allow people certain choices blind you to the fact that allowing them those choices isn't a "loophole".
GPL is a demand letter with a court date; Artistic is a polite request.
Re:The Greatest Gift of All (Score:2)
If you want to make your own changes, your changes are not subject to its terms. This licence guarantees that the original code remains forever free, which is usually all anybody wants. It leaves completely up to you the decision about what to do with your own code that you created, modifing the original. The original is guaranteed to remain forever free. That's what this licence says. Nothing more, nothing less.
This licence merely leaves up to you the free choice of what to do with your own work. If it did not, if it sought to impose its morality on you, it would render you incapable of making a moral decision--which is itself a fundamentally immoral act. It's distressing how many people take perverse pleasure in committing this kind of immoral act.
The referenced licence is a charitable gift. There is no poison pill. It's a free gift.
"Do unto others as you would have them do onto you" is completely different than "Coerce others into doing what you want them to do". I know which rule I prefer. It's really about morality, you see.
Re:BSD license (not offtopic) (Score:2)
GPL'd software gets better all the time. One needs look no further than the Linux kernel itself to see this, but also go check out freshmeat.net. The biggest problem in open source land today seems to be finding a problem to work on that someone else isn't already tackling.
I am very happy to know that the software I use and enjoy isn't going to be stolen and usefully modified by a company somewhere that will then require me to pay for it. If the changes are worth making, someone will make them, even if they have to give them away. It's all a matter of cost analysis: how much would it cost to add this vs. how much is it worth to us to have it. Letting a company steal code just to tip the worth scale a little more is something I just can't agree with. In the end, it's a matter of world view and it'll never be argued out successfully, but I personally don't see how a developer could undervalue his/her labor so much as to work on a program that no one else would feel the desire to improve just on good will. The BSD style licenses, to me, seem to be a form of begging, in that they try to make it even more appealing for someone to modify the code than the simple reason of "I'd like to see this implemented." Changes that aren't worth making on their own merit just don't seem to be worth making at all, and that's the real reason to stick with a GPL/LGPL license for free software.
-Mike
Re:The Greatest Gift of All (Score:2)
Re:The Greatest Gift of All (Score:2)
You are assuming TC's hatred has a rational basis. This is a natural assumption, given that TC is quite well formulated, and explain why his flames are moderated up. However, TC's has quite a different worldview. Basically, anything Perl is good, anything that in any way can be seen as competing or critisizing Perl is bad. RMS became "bad" when he complained about the lack of good, free introductory texts about Perl. Since that time, TC has campaigned against anything related to RMS, FSF or GNU. The GPL isn't evil because of anything it says, it is evil because it was written by RMS.
Re:As I undestand it... (Score:2)
First of all, your post assumes that there's a big demand for an 'alternative' desktop platform to MS Windows. Of course, outside of the engineering dorm, there really isn't.
(Which is not to say that people aren't frustrated with Windows 9x, but if they are unwilling to try NT/2000, why would they even consider Linux?)
Second, Microsoft's motto is "Windows Everywhere". They've got a lot of ego, and billions of dollars of investment behind that idea. I can't even imagine the scale of the catastrophic event would get them to change their mind.
Third, if Microsoft is worried about Linux, it's only in the arena of server machines. Porting Office wouldn't do anything to stem the tide of Linux DNS, HTTP, database, and mail servers. These machines are already tipping the initiative away from MS's "Windows DNA" strategy. Server engineers wouldn't want to use a custom/closed source Linux that couldn't easily be patched.
(What would kill NT as a server platform is a port of "BackOffice", but that's even more unlikely, if it's even possible to do with good performance.)
Finally, I actually do expect a version of IE for Linux once MainSoft has moved it's Win32 porting library to Linux. However, this more of a final stab at Netscape (like IE/Solaris) than any attempt at destroying Linux.
All-in-all "MS Linux" might be interesting to chew over in your collective paranoia, but, knowing Microsoft, I'm willing to bet a large sum of money that it will never happen. If Microsoft wanted to conspire to subvert Linux, it would be much easier for them to push "Windows only" hardware.
--
Re:The Greatest Gift of All (Score:2)
Maybe you like this effect. Maybe you don't like the term "poison pill". But by any other name, it still has these effects. Of that there is no question, for it's in plain black and white for all to read. All that's left is whether you deem this effect good or not, and what you call it.
And it certainly shouldn't come as a great surprise to you that some people prefer to instead use a free licence, charitably giving their work away to the improve the lot of programmers everywhere without passing moral judgment on those programmers' lifestyle choices. Some of us have never been happy in that kind of church, full of pushy self-righteousness and telling others what to do.
Re:The Greatest Gift of All (Score:2)
Re:Interesting idea (was Re:As I undestand it...) (Score:2)
In fact, I predict that someday they shall, at which point we call get to buy Linus a beer. But I think he'll have one as soon as MS starts producing programs for Linux, not their own MS-Linux operating system. At least, that's what Linus once remarked.
Are we there yet?
Re:It's about freedom, not commercialism (Score:2)
The simple fact is that a free licence like the BSDL or the AL makes exactly the same guarantee, without the sting.
Of course, the licences do differ, but not with respect to what you wrote right there. The place they differ is in the non-free part of the GPL, the part where it tries to force other people to follow its own moral notions due not to free choice but because of a stiff requirement.
Re:The Greatest Gift of All (Score:2)
The GPL prevents you from making a profit on the fruits of OTHER people's labors (w/o their permission) - and you are lying if you say otherwise.
Re: but he's completely wrongo (Score:2)
Re:People DO talk about the Artistic (Score:2)
Main problem with the GPL (Score:2)
Since programmer A has other things to do, and the program is already somewhat useful, he releases the program under the GPL, so that others may benefit from his brilliance.
Programmer B finds a bug in the program and fixes it, following the GPL and releasing his bugfix to the code under the GPL.
Now, if programmer A wants to release the final version, he either has to 1) find another bugfix to correct the problem, or 2) convince programmer B to release that bugfix to programmer A under other terms than the GPL.
Programmers C, D, E, and F all find additional bugs and submit fixes, all under the GPL. At this time, programmer A would either have to find alternative solutions or else convince programmers B-F to release their changes to him under terms other than the GPL.
As those who understand statistics and human behavior, the chances that programmer A can either convince all of the other programmers to release those changes to him or have enough time to rewrite his code so that it neither contains the bug nor includes GPL fixes--approaches zero.
GPL has effectively "poisoned" the development of the product. Programmer A dumps the project in disgust and resolves never to use the GPL again. Programmer A has just lost his time, efforts, and an idea for a project which is now polluted by the GPL.
Some enterprising programmer *might* pick up that code and reuse it or fix it. But it is unlikely that the code will reach anywhere near what it could have been, had programmer A not dropped the project.
The bottom line is: if you use the GPL, you're stuck with it. It locks you into that licensing scheme, and unless you have the time, energy, and will to completely rewrite a piece of software released under the GPL, you will lose control of your idea and your software, even if that was not your original intent.
-CD76
Re:GPL mandates reinvention (Score:2)
Community is more sensible than GPL on forking (Score:2)
You're over-simplifying things. For trivial changes, yes you're right, but for non-trivial ones it's as likely as not to be impossible to integrate the changes back into the original tree. For example, some idiot could reformat the entire package to his preferred style when he grabs it to make changes and then publish "his own improved" version. And even if such pathological modification hasn't happened, why is the onus of back-integration on the original author? His time is better spent on continued development rather than on tracking code forks.
The GPL is generally good, in my estimation, except in the single area of code forking guidelines: namely, it doesn't provide any. At the very least, it should state somewhere that public forking is discouraged when the software is still in active consensual development by the primary author or group.
Currently it's only because of the goodwill and commonsense of the community that we don't have a forking nightmare on our hands. The GPL ought to enshrine that commonsense in its preamble.
Re:As I undestand it... (Score:2)
Re:BSD license (not offtopic) (Score:3)
Funny how many people get this wrong.
Re:GPL prevents theft and therefore is a good thin (Score:2)
Re:The Greatest Gift of All (Score:2)
I have the utmost respect for your technical acumen, your lucid writing, and your vast contributions to the perl community (of which I proudly claim membership, I love writing perl code). Perhaps by starting from that premise, that I am a respectful and intelligent person who is seeking to understand your viewpoint, you can avoid some of the sturm und drang flying around this issue and give a direct, fact-based argument to back the following assertion (please feel free to correct my paraphrasing):
You claim:
The GPL prevents me profiting (presumably financially) from my code.
Please explain. Red Hat is making money on GPL'd code. Alan Cox is getting paid to write GPL'd code. That's profit. I'm about to start flaming you here, so if you are not interested is hearing someone else tell you how wrong you are, stop here. I am, however, honestly interested in an unassailable argument backing up your thesis.
My flames and counterarguments:
What you appear to mean is that you cannot use compilation as a form of encryption to prevent someone else from seeing how you did what you did and, by hiding that information, prevent others from creating a competing and possibly superior product that would instantly destroy your product's inherent value. I think this argument shows the poverty of the entire closed source model.
The closed source model hold that software has some inherent intrinsic value. I disagree. Software has no inherent value whatsoever. Its value lies solely in relation to an existing problem that must be solved. If the software fits your problem, it has value. If it does not, it has none. The price of software is being made articifially high because compilation is tantamount to encryption, which creates an artifical shortage of technique.
Open Source reverses this. Open source creates a world where technique is open, and infinitely extensible. Software has no value in such a world, but SKILLED PEOPLE who can write and modify software, THEY have value! Not only that, but the omnipresence of open technique increases the skills and power of each programmer.
The Artisitic License is fine, for what it is, but it does not prevent someone taking the whole body of code and closing it. That's the problem. Not selling it. The GPL lets you sell it. You just can't take away the right the redistribute it, nor can you take away the source code.
Nobody is forcing you to use GPL'd code. If you find yourself wanting to do so, you must either open your own code (GPL it), or you'll have to write your own. You claim that the GPL advocates are "passing moral judgement" and are "full of pushy self-righteousness...telling others what to do." It seems to me that you are guilty of precisely the same in the very same paragraph! Don't like the GPL? DON'T USE IT! But don't use your pushy self-righteousness to pass moral judgment on those of us who choose to do so! If you can't see the blatant hypocrisy in your statement, well, I might have to take back my statement of respect.
Re:BSD license (not offtopic) (Score:2)
Ok, that is a bit harsh. You are more confused, than clueless, it seems. He was talking about making money *off his own work*. You are talking about making money *off someone else's* work.
Not the same thing. You can *always* control what happens to your own source. What the licences do is affect what you can do with other peoples work. Let me repeat that, as it is important. The GPL, BSD, etc., are not about restricting what you can do with *your* work. You own it, you can do what you want with it including 'make money off it' or 'give it away' or whatever. I can even write a program, GPL it and *also* sell it to a company with an explicit exclusion from the GPL terms. Of course when you release source code under any license you are expicitly giving up some control. I can't open source some code and then 3 months later say 'ooopppps, I didn't mean that. You all have to destroy your copies'. But you get the point, I hope.
If he doesn't release his own work, it isn't under BSD or GPL. The only question in this case is, did he use anyone elses code in the process --- in that case we are talking about whether or not he can make money off someone elses work (without their express permission). If the other code he used is BSD'd, he can, if GPL'd he is illegally re-distributing.
This was the misinformation in the orignal post that I was pointing out.
S.
Re:Practical Question: AL compatible with GPL? (Score:2)
Re:your definition of "your own work" is.....? (Score:2)
What you write is yours. What I write is mine. And I can do whatsoever I please with what I write. I choose to make it a free gift. I don't care what others do with it. That's not up to me. If it were, it wouldn't have been a free gift.
Re:Main problem with the GPL (Score:4)
It's hardly a case of "pollution". If I were programmer B, I'd be highly ticked off if someone took my work on any GPL project and used it in their own proprietary project. I'd have every right to complain.
Basically, open source software should be seen as a donation to the community. Making it proprietary again is like stealing out of charity boxes. If you want to make money off distributing, consulting and support then that's just fine. But the software must stay free.
For goodness sake, this is the whole *point* of the GPL. Software for the good of all, payment for the work you do rather than as a royalty for some fictitious property right. If you don't like this idea, then don't use the GPL, but then don't go expecting freebies from the open source community either.
In order to understand the Artistic License... (Score:3)
In order to understand the Artistic License, you first have to understand where it comes from. The AL first arrived on the scene with Perl. Perl, as you are aware, is a multi-disciplinary language. The hallmarks of Perl hackers are hubris, laziness and impatience. There is more than one way to do anything is the Perl motto. The Artistic License reflects all of these things, as well as the linguistic legerdemain of Larry Wall's humour.
Perl was release under a dual GPL/Artistic license. Larry wanted the hacker community to embrace Perl, but understand that there was a large contingent of "GPL or Go To Hell" reactionaries within it. He also wanted it to be used by the suits, but also understood that many in the corporate world are frightened of the viral nature of copyleft. By releasing Perl under a dual license, the user could choose whatever license they wanted and no one would ever know. You could be secretly using Artistic Perl while everyone else around you thought you were using the party line GPL. Or vice versa. Talk about subversion!
Bruce Perens perenially states his dislike for the AL because he thinks it is a "sloppy" license. Bruce Perens should take some classes in linguistics. "Artistic License" has a meaning beyond the mere name of a software license.
The main gist of the Artistic License is that you can do anything you want with the software, but you must let the user know you're doing it. Thus, you can take AL's software proprietary, but the user can't be hoodwinked into thinking he's running the real stuff, and you have to let the user know where to get the real stuff if he wants it.
If none of the above makes any sense, then just visualize the Artistic License on the middle of an imaginary line stretched between the BSD and GPL licenses.
Re:Because of Larry? (Score:2)
Is Perl itself GPLed, then? Doesn't Artistic License violed GPL on a couple of points?
You've made my head spin
Dana
Re:The Greatest Gift of All (Score:2)
is immoral? If someone wants to write code, but hates the idea of
someone else selling their code in a proprietary format so much that
they wouldn't write the code if that might happen, then why shouldn't
they put a GPL license on their code?
I'm not writing this as some GPL ideologue: I think the test of the
merit of an open sourceness license is how much good code it generates
under some freely available license. Personally I think that a BSD
style license is best, but one really does lose the development
efforts of the kind of person described above. On the other hand, BSD
has benefitted from code that has forked off for some time under a
proprietary license, and then been rereleased under the BSD license.
And one thing that for me is very important about the GPL and FSF:
reading it and Stallman's supposedly immoral rants was what made the
idea of the free software development model `click' for me.
Re:The Greatest Gift of All (Score:2)
The GPL attempts to assert control over the software you, and you alone, have written. It is one thing to require modifications to be under the same license, but quite another to require an independent module written wholly by someone else to adhere to it.
The above clause does not prevent you from using the software in any way with another license. The only thing it restricts you on is the original code. The GPL, on the other hand, severly restricts what libraries may be linked to in, what applications it may be linked to, what source code files may reside in the same package with it, etc.
Re:Practical Question: AL compatible with GPL? (Score:2)
I would encourage you to make a note in your distribution that you have done this, though.
Re:Forking is key (Score:2)
If nobody is using an Open Source program, then who's left to complain about it anyway? Perl was released so that everyone could use the code. But if no one is using it anymore, what's the point of keeping it around?
Re:It's about freedom, not commercialism (Score:2)
Re:People DO talk about the Artistic (Score:2)
Re:The Greatest Gift of All (Score:2)
you can find it on some of the programs I made available."
Then I suggest you rewrite it, because, in the words of Indigo Montoya, I do not think it means what you think it means. "do not prevent anyone from doing the same" is quite easily misinterpreted as "do not deny these rights to other people", which is the spirit of the GPL.
In your case, though, I'm not quite sure what the point of that clause is; there's no way anyone can stop other people from getting the same code they got. I'm not a lawyer, but I think the license would be the same, and less confusing, with that clause removed.
Daniel
Re:The Greatest Gift of All (Score:2)
While the original and sole author could sell his original code under a separate licence, he must make sure not to use any bug fixes people send him, because of course they only looked at the GPL version. This is impractical and counterproductive.
Re:BSD license (not offtopic) (Score:2)
Pull the other one, it has got bells on..
Daniel
PS - if you still don't get the point, go to the top of the page, to where Tom Christansen got a 5, consider the difference between your post and his, and try to work out why he got marked up and you didn't.
Re:BSD license (not offtopic) | GPL is a virus. (Score:2)
Once more: YOUR CODE IS GUARANTEED TO REMAIN ALWAYS FREE. The GPL is not the way to make that happen. The BSD licence does that, too, but the GPL does something else.
The GPL is a way to immorally coerce others into making the choices that you want them to make. The LGPL, being non-infective, is much less evil.
Remember that there are many ways to avoid GPL [perl.com]'d libraries, too, so the library might was well be LGPL'd. Notice how the bc program is handled on OpenBSD. It manages to use the GPL'd program without contamination.
If you give something away, it is free. If you tell them what to do with it, it is not. Free is better.
Re:As I undestand it... (Score:2)
I suspect that the only thing stopping this is (a) their pride, and (b) the DOJ's scrutiny of them.
Daniel
Pride and DOJ, but also SCO.. (Score:2)
Daniel
Re:The Greatest Gift of All (Score:2)
Uh, no, it doesn't. Aside from the fact that this is explicitly stated in the GPL itself (since I have a sudden insight that you'll call it "FSF propaganda") what it does is to say that you cannot distribute a combination of your work and mine unless the aggregate is under a GPL-compatible license, because I will revoke your right to distribute my code in that case. Unless I'm mistaken, you could license your code under a "more free" license such as X, and it'd all be ok.
It makes demands and restrictions on how you use the original, and what you do with your own work product.
It only restricts how you can distribute the original; you cannot link it with software with an incompatible license (which, unfortunately, includes some free software
It forbids you from using GPL'd software in conjunction with commercial software like Oracle libraries.
Your other points are arguable, but this is totally false. The GPL only covers redistribution; in fact, the license text says so explicitly. You can link it to as many non-free libraries as you want, although free (non-profit or commercial) ones are preferred.
And it certainly shouldn't come as a great surprise to you that some people prefer to instead use a free licence, charitably giving their work away to the improve the lot of programmers everywhere without passing moral judgment on those programmers' lifestyle choices.
Uhh, which part of the GPL attempts to control lifestyle choices? Or is RMS going to add a requirement in that next version that the user abstain from alcohol..?
Daniel
Re:The Greatest Gift of All (Score:2)
Actually...they don't. Not that it bothers me, since I don't own any RHAT
Daniel
Re: Find me the place... (Score:2)
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2
above provided that you also do one of the following:
a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above
on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing
source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on
a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for
noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b
above.)
Therefore, you can charge as much as you want for the binaries, as long as you make the source available seperately for free.
Re:The Greatest Gift of All (Score:2)
That's not a misinterpretation. That's exactly what it means.
Excuse me? You just gone done telling me how happy you were that someone could take your code and relicense it as proprietary software. If you want things that way, that's fine, but the proprietary company is clearly preventing the users from doing what they did to that copy of the software. (yes, in theory the users could still get it from you, but I still maintain that the proprietary company violated your license as written -- and they could still get it even if that clause weren't there)
So I still think that the cause is superfluous and confusing -- if not, you should clarify what you mean a little.
I'm not going to argue about the GPL any more, it's clear that no-one's going to change his or her mind so we're just wasting breath, which is a fairly precious resource
Daniel
Re:The Greatest Gift of All (Score:2)
Sure, there are ways around this. You can point out that the amount of derivedness is immaterial--the courts might well support you here, since they have in other forms of intellectual property. Or you could argue that a library was meant to be used. Or you could use the FSF's own mendacious "free" rhetoric back on them explaining why something that you can do anything you want with something that's free.
Or, of course, you can use the freedline [perl.com] mechanism, but the FSF will just complain bitterly that this mechanism violates the spirit of what they're trying to do. Whether it's immoral to disobey an immoral command is something you'll have to work out for yourself.
Re:GPL mandates reinvention (Score:2)
I knew this will be yet another license war (Score:2)
Now let me say something that seems to be very misunderstood. I am a free software advocate. Now, most people who like free software have nothing against using software under the BSD, X, AL or any other free software license. The important part is that it is free, that is the rights of redistribution, modification, and use. Free Software does not equate to GPL-only.
Now when you are developing things are different. A lot of people don't want to contribute to propietary software. Just as many propietary software developers don't want their code to end up in free software. There are also people who want their code in either free or propietary software. Hence the copy-centered (thanks for the word, some AC) licenses. Now copy-centered software can be either copy-lefted or copy-righted (turned into propietary software I mean in this context). The problem is, when either happens, the code gets stuck. So you end up with at least three forks eventually, a copy-lefted that always demands complete openness, a copy-righted that always demands complete closedness, and a lesser copy-centered fork that continually gets sucked into the other two.
The real irony here is that you'd think that authors of copy-centered software wouldn't care about what license is used. Yet there are advocates everywhere.
My main point here is that the user should only be concerned that it is free software he using. I, for instance, will have no problem using KDE 2 and qt 2. If it is great software then I will use it because it is free. But the developer of that software is the only one who may choose the license. Contributers remember must choose to reuse the developers code. Just as I may choose not to develop qt because of the restrictions in its licensing. There are many people who do not mind the restrictions and code it any. Since qt is not the only choice, it is not a huge problem.
But remember folks. The issue is freedom. There is nothing morally or ethically wrong with any free software license. Remember, developers must reuse his/her code.
Re:As I undestand it... (Score:2)
Was it really FreeBSD they started with, or was it some other distribution?
Re:Sounds good to this uninformed reader (Score:2)
Remember the Perens interview in which he essentially confessed that in an RPC-centered world, full of COM and CORBA and dynamic linking and client-server bits, that libraries aren't really going to propagate the GPL the way the FSF would like them to? I forget the words he used, but it seems to me it might have been "loophole". And of course, there's the freeline [perl.com] technique demonstrating this and removing the string from viral libraries, making them to their real work -- being callable code -- not conveying the homeopathic GPL curse.
Re:BSD license (not offtopic) (Score:2)
Re:GPL and forking (Score:2)
Re:I knew this will be yet another license war (Score:2)
Re:The Greatest Gift of All (Score:2)
Re:The Greatest Gift of All (Score:2)
The line you quoted was referring to the right to use the software; you claimed that the GNU license forbids you to use software in conjunction with proprietary libraries, which is false. Admittedly you can't redistribute the result if you've linked the code in, but this might be fine for some purposes. If you're really intent on it, I suspect you could distribute your modifications as patches.
Anyway, I'd like to kill this thread, as we're obviously all too stubborn to change positions. I suspect you're going to try to get the last word in, though
Luck,
Daniel
Re:The Greatest Gift of All (Score:2)
No. Redhat is making money distributing GPL'd code.
"Alan Cox is getting paid to write GPL'd code."
Redhat is paying Alan to improve and maintain some of the code that they are distributing. If Alan wrote exactly the same code on his free time at home, Redhat would not buy it.
There is not one piece of Open Source software in the world that I am not able to obtain for free. I doesn't matter that the FSF charges thousands of dollars for the official GNU tools since I can get every one of them for for no cost at all.
"Nobody is forcing you to use GPL'd code. If you find yourself wanting to do so, you must either open your own code (GPL it)..."
Take a good look at the above sentence. The GPL says that it makes no restrictions whatsoever upon the use of the software. Yet here you are saying that Tom must GPL his software in order to *use* yours. No, I'm not playing tricky semantics. If dynamic linking is not the normal *use* and *purpose* of a GPL'd shared library, then please tell me what is?
"You claim that the GPL advocates are "passing moral judgement" "
What else do you people who require you distribute philosophical tracts along with their software?
Re:The Greatest Gift of All (Score:2)
Oh please!!! What slave-state are you talking about? Please get a dictionary and look up the words you are using. A slave has to obey the dictates of his master. A slave cannot freely walk away from his plantation, chains and master.
However, if I am a user of proprietary software, I have every real and existing right to ignore the demands of the software owners. I can freely uninstall the software any time their blathering becomes and annoyance.
"If you still want to play the IP game, that's fine, but the GPL is not going to be there to help you!"
Then the GPL shouldn't be in the IP game either. It is the utmost of hypocrisy to decry the evilness of copyrights and then to turn around and enforce the wishes of the GPL with a copyright. This is a much different thing that "fighting fire with fire" because as any fireman will tell you, fire is not evil. Does Richard Stallman think he is so holy that he is above the laws he demands of Bill Gates?