Sun's Schwartz Attacks GPL 625
jskelly writes "Sun Micro President Jonathan Schwartz
attacked the GPL at the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco yesterday.Other than the same old arguments (you can't make it proprietary later)
he adds that it imposes on developing nations
"a rather predatory
obligation to disgorge all their IP back to the wealthiest nation in the world" -- but fails to mention that the converse is also true: the wealthiest nation in the world is similarly, under the GPL, forced to "disgorge all its IP back to the developing nations" as well. Duh!"
Nothing wrong with hating the GPL... (Score:4, Insightful)
All about maintining the Status Quo (Score:4, Insightful)
I suppose he would prefer to see the developing nations disgorging their money back to the wealthiest nation in the world's private companies (via licensing costs), thus ensuring this status remains in effect.
Poor baby. (Score:4, Insightful)
Does anyone see some light at the end of the tunnel for Sun?
It seems to me that they are in several type of trouble with no idea of how to get straight again.
Just my 2 pen'eth Pete
Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting. The world's hottest economy right now is China, which has a poor record when it comes to IP. Other emerging nations, such as India, Indonesia and Brazil also have poor IP records.
No, IP is not needed to pull nations up. It would be nice, but it's clearly not a requirement.
smart people being stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do these supposedly smart people Balmer, Gates, Lyons, McBride, Schwartz, etc. of the world always sound so stupid when they attept to attack the GPL? They always make it sould like the GPL stipulation to give back your improvements as a nasty surprise at the bottom of the cracker jack box.
Could I not also say:
academia and manufacturing companies that had begun to incorporate propriety software into their products, then...found they had an obligation to pay royalities back to the companies that licences their IP
evil propriety software evil evil...
Christ Schwartz has some balls (Score:5, Insightful)
It always amazes me when they bitch and moan about the way things should be when commercial software manufacturers make up only a small fraction of the software development world. Most people developing software are doing so for internal I.T. departments for internal projects. They benefit the most from Open Source.
But vendors like Sun and Microsoft want us to remain in the dark ages suckling on their poisoned teat when the world can now ween itself of that sour milk and move on to the glory of free beer.
Oh, wait...I'm mixing metaphors...mmm, beer...what was I on about?
Re:All about maintining the Status Quo (Score:5, Insightful)
"IP" is simply ideas with a price tag, which ultimately slows down the speed of human development in return for providing shiny things for those of us with too much already.
But I think Jonanthan Schwartz knows that...
GPL is not always appropriate for all uses (Score:5, Insightful)
GPL is better for poorer nations (Score:2, Insightful)
Contrast that with Microsoft, raking in dollars from all over the world, back to their little stash in the North West US.
That's why (Score:1, Insightful)
Disingenuous (Score:5, Insightful)
In this case, SUN is seriously misquoting the GPL. Deliberately, I fear. Nothing in the GPL requires general publication -- giving away IP. The only thing required is that you give users source. If there are many users, it amounts to general publication. But a lot of code is _not_ general, but just for one firm. They get source (as they should, having paid for the work), but are very unlikely to publish it generally. The only thing the GPL really attacks is per-seat licencing. Co-incidentally, this is a big part of Sun's revenue stream.
Re:smart people being stupid (Score:2, Insightful)
The GPL says... (Score:5, Insightful)
You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works.
Nobody is forcing Mr. Schwartz to make use of GPL software. We in the open source community like the GPL because it's fair. You want to use all that code out there, for free? Share and enjoy. But you have to play by our rules. You don't get to enjoy the benefits of the GPL without also taking on its responsibilities.
That's why Sun (and Microsoft) love the BSD license so much
Re:hmmmm... (Score:2, Insightful)
Basically, he's making a convoluted argument that GPL is infact far too capitalist to work in today's hugs-and-kisses technology industry. It's probably one of the more insane accusations cast against the GPL, if only because it directly contradicts the conventional wisdom that the GPL is a huge communist scheme.
Typical (Score:2, Insightful)
"IP" does not exist. It's not allowed by the US Constitution, and is bizarre in concept anyway: what, you own the part of my brain that knows your ideas? You cannot actually own something that only exists in people's heads, fella. Hand me a song and then we can talk.
The problem is, as usual, their feeling of entitlement to continue an outmoded business model as the world changes around them. It reminds me a little bit of the Sneeches, who ignored the rest of the world while it developed around them; bitching at each other was too important. (Yes, I know it's really about Palestine and Israel.) At some point soon, the world will be working with an entirely different business model, and these self-important ass-munches will still be whining about the "revenue streams" that they're entitled to.
"La la la C'mon people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together, got to love one another right now!" Fuck off and die, hippies.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Disgorge your purse! (Score:2, Insightful)
It is rather clear that most developing nations won't ever even the field in terms of production capacity - we will never have as many programmmers as well-trainned as the US, for instance. So Free Software makes all sense, as it allows us to divide the efforts among all interested parties. For poor nations the situation is even more dramatic, as they neither have the manpower nor the money to pay for the software.
Ha! (Score:3, Insightful)
His motto was "All your cheap labor belong to us". Not it's, "All your property belong to us".
What a clown.
Developing nations don't give a fuck about "intellectual property". Just look at the US when it was a young country.
So if the GPL.. (Score:2, Insightful)
What are they doing to help these countries, with their proprietary models? Import employees? Lots of good that'll do their economy. Outsource? Only means more profit (lower wages) flows back to the USofA.
"Use the Schwarz" is getting a whole new meaning. Seriously, go ask the folks in Brazil and Chile where they can stick it.
Re:Poor baby. (Score:5, Insightful)
Notice how the big IP companies always bitch and moan about the GPL? Love it!
I'd say IBM is a pretty big IP company, and it seems to be OK with the GPL. Sure, some IBM products may not use GPLed code because of legal restrictions, but that's different from bitching about it.
CEOs who bitch about external factors are not doing their real job, which is adapting to those factors and/or changing them. CEOs who bitch about not being able to use the fruits of a volunteer effort for their company's gain should be working on finding a way to MAKE money instead.
Bye,
Ori
No surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
Hello, truth? Are you out there? Come back... we miss you.
stupid CEO, don't like it? don't use it (Score:5, Insightful)
High cost to Depevoling Countries (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Poor baby. (Score:3, Insightful)
You can certainly make proprietary software out of GPL code. Your code. If it's your code, you can release it under any license you want! You just can't make proprietary code out of someone else's GPL code. Now why would you think you have any rights to code you didn't write?
Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, but with the exception of India (which enforces copyright; their issues were with pharmaceutical patents) none of those countries generate significant innovative art or technology. Hong Kong's entertainment industry and Taiwan's tech sector are far more influential than all of mainland China's.
No one's claiming that IP law is necessary to produce lots and lots of concrete or cheap shoes.
They are under no such obligation! (Score:4, Insightful)
They're not obliged to release the software if they do use it (e.g. for internal projects).
Since they can get it for free, the amount they receive is probably greater than the cost to them.
They have choice in the matter. As much choice as whether or not to use Solaris. And personally, I think a lot of developing nations are going to be alot happier about giving "IP" away to the richest nations in the world than giving money to the richest nations in the world.
Better xample (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:stupid CEO, don't like it? don't use it (Score:2, Insightful)
No Offense To Sun Microsystems... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's still not too late for them to get with the program. Superior hardware and OS? Maybe, but due to marketing, business model, shifted tech sector needs or whatever you want to call it.... It's almost a weekly occurence where I'm hearing about a couple of $400 Debian boxes replacing tens of thousands of dollars of old Sun hardware, not the other way around...
Re:GPL is not always appropriate for all uses (Score:5, Insightful)
The GPL is no different from any other copyright restriction in this regard.
Max
IP to pull you up (Score:5, Insightful)
I think Schwartz misunderstands. IP isn't used to pull you up. It is used to push others down. Although I can see how he could confuse one with the other.
When you are one of the ones being pushed down, the distinction becomes more obvious.
CDDL (Score:1, Insightful)
Why do these guys bother?
Sun's behavior lately (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:GPL is not always appropriate for all uses (Score:2, Insightful)
I tend to agree.
Other Open Source Licenses (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hmm... (Score:2, Insightful)
IMHO, Schwartz's comments are intuitively incorrect, BUT thinking that those hottest economies are hot because of a lack of IP laws is also wrong.
Again, IMHO and being a manufacturer, those economies (China, India, etc) are hot because of specific industries transferring "capacity" to the lowest cost provider. I'm seeing a hell of a lot of cheap manufactured products coming out of China right now. Products that were conceptualized and designed and originally built or prototyped elsewhere. Same with India, even if you consider call centers to be "resources".
Show me something truly original coming from any of those countries. There's a challenge for you.
Most people make the mistake of assuming that IP means only copyright or only patents. IP may have its flaws, but it does work in the sense of providing you with competitive relief in your protected zone and allowing you to design and produce your invention (whether product or digital "bit").
Re:Nothing wrong with hating the GPL... (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, the vast majority of those of us who are (and have been for nearing two decades) fans of the GPL are that way because we don't particularly care about software.
I'm a programmer, but I've only rarely worked for actual software companies. In most non-software companies, you hire programmers to make the things that off-the-shelf software doesn't provide possible.
For such efforts, the GPL is ideal, and I've seen companies benifit both from using established GPL projets as a starting point and from starting new GPL projects.
Re:Nothing wrong with hating the GPL... (Score:3, Insightful)
First, let me address your question as you stated it. You should spend your money developing software and just give it away because it will enhance your reputation. For the respect of your peers, in other words.
But the real answer to your question comes from the twin misconceptions contained in it. I spend my money developing software, but so do IBM, the University of Illinois, Linus Torvalds / OSDL, and thousands of people all over the world. I accept the benefit of their work, building on it with my tiny contributions, and to pay for their work return my little contribution to the public. And I don't just give it away, I give it away and charge cash money to support it (and other free software).
The other business model (trying to hide your source code) results in distrust between you and your users. It also means a support nightmare in ten years when your software is still limping along but no one understands it and you're nowhere to be found.
Re:Brazil, stop destroying OUR rainforest (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:duh! (Score:1, Insightful)
What holes? Sun cannot take away CDDLed code!
Sometimes, reading Slashdot is like peering into a cult headquarters and listing in on their "re-education" classes. The groupthink, here, is thicker than Bill Gates' ego.
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
The GPL is an exercise of intelectual property rights, not a subversion of those rights.
Re:All about maintining the Status Quo (Score:5, Insightful)
The GPL is an equalizer, and puts software back into the realm where it began and where I think it always belonged: cooperative science.
Re:Release src only if publically release binary (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Hmm... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Nothing wrong with hating the GPL... (Score:2, Insightful)
All they are saying is that, if instead of writing your own code from scratch, you want to use ours as a base, you have to give away the result, just as we gave this to you.
If you DON'T want to use the code given freely to you as a base, you don't have to, and shouldn't. You are free to write it yourself, or find some other commercial solution that has licensing terms that fit your business.
Bad summary! (Score:4, Insightful)
This is incorrect. Of course you can make your GPL'd code proprietary if you decide to retain copyright ownership of your IP. You may and can release your code as GPL, and later release it as closed-source, proprietary work.
Of course, you can't license someone else's IP. That's a different ball of wax. Exactly like I can't license Michael Jackson's Thriller album to EMI.
GPL imposes on developing nations "a rather predatory obligation to disgorge all their IP back to the wealthiest nation in the world"
Again, this is incorrect to the point where it's either a gross misquote, or complete lack of understanding of IP.
The GPL does not in any way coerce any non-GPL license into the GPL. There may be financial benefits to licensing a product under the GPL license. On the flip side, there may be financial benefits to not license a product under the GPL. There is absolutely no obligation, preditorially or otherwise, to license your own IP under the GPL. The only exception is if you've agreed to a contract which stipulates that you must release your work under the GPL - and clearly agreeing to such a contract implies that there is some advantage to you to do so.
So in a nutshell, this is not an issue. And the fact that no cases were described suggests that this is just can't happen.
Re:GPL is not always appropriate for all uses (Score:4, Insightful)
I think his point is that some open source projects would be more widely adopted and supported without the GPL
You mean the way the BSDs are so much more widely adopted than Linux?
Dear Mr. Schwartz, (Score:3, Insightful)
Zack
Re:Nothing wrong with hating the GPL... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you don't think you can make money using the GPL.. then don't use the GPL. I don't understand what you could possibly complain about.
Just because it doesn't work for your needs doesn't make it useless.
Smoke, mirrors and control freaks... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Nothing wrong with hating the GPL... (Score:1, Insightful)
To get my job done.
Software isn't the end, it's the means to an end - the way to solve problems.
Similarly, I drive on the public road to get to work. My company and I have no delusions that we'd want to own our own road so we can charge competitors to drive on it. We *LIKE* the fact that our contributions (taxes) are pooled with many others' so we all benefit from it. Software is the same thing.
We just want the damn OS to not crash - and if we can help accomplish this, we're happy to do so.
Re:Poor baby. (Score:3, Insightful)
If you look at that situation through RIAA-colored glasses, it would be called "theft".
So Mr. Schwartz, if you want complain that you can't "steal" anything from Open Source because of the GPL, remember this well. Even thieves have to eventually pay when they get caught.
Re:Release src only if publically release binary (Score:3, Insightful)
It was my impression that you could sell modified GPL made binaries to customers (with the source) without distributing the source or binary to the general public, or even contributing your modified source back to the original GPL'ed project that you started your project from.
So, from how I understand it, I don;t think that he is violating the GPL.
Want to understand this story? (Score:2, Insightful)
Bruce
Re:Nothing wrong with hating the GPL... (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe your experience differs from mine, but I usually have to explain to my clients that no, they don't get to keep the software all to themselves. They think they get a business advantage by hiding their internal practices, which may or may not be true generally, but in the case of software it's pretty easy to demonstrate for them the advantages of community maintenance.
And I may have been around longer than you have, because I've dealt with countless people who say "Bill Jones wrote this for us ten years ago, but he {died, moved to Bechualaland, doesn't support this version any more}. Yes, they "just want it to work", and no, they don't want to spend the money to upgrade or replace it.
The worst case is some bozo who encrypts his code, so he can sell his stinking BASIC app. Ack. A close runner up is the nimrod who builds in date traps, so that unless he unlocks the trap the app doesn't run. That's just poor-man's licensing, but it's usually done in a really ugly way.
The few times when I've had the source code available the problem has invariably be easy to fix. It's amazing how shallow bugs are when you have the source, since you know that the program worked fine until some circumstance changed.
Why is it so wrong to like the free beer? I like giving away the beer. I do charge for delivery and cleanup, though, at $100, $75, or $50/hour depending on whether they buy by the glass, pitcher, or keg.
Anti-GPL is Anti-Free-Market (Score:4, Insightful)
The Free Market is all about people freely setting whatever price they want, and taking their chances on the outcome.
No-one is forced to use the GPL. Under the GPL, contributors voluntarily set the price of their contribution (at "free") and take their chance freely on somehow making a living. So what's the problem?
If Third-World nations, or individuals decide to take their chance, it's probably because they figure the alternatives don't work to their advantage. They may be right, they may be wrong, but it's really up to them to make the call.
Some you win, some you lose .... so why does Sun sing the blues?
Re:stupid CEO, don't like it? don't use it (Score:1, Insightful)
Your ignorance is, of course, excusable. Your arrogance, on the other hand, is inexcusable given your ignorance. There's nothing wrong with a little pride in being knowledgable, of course, and sometimes people take pride in knowledge that is actually apocryphal. That's not really so terrible. Swearing at and insulting someone who clearly knows more about the subject at hand than you is the inexcusable part.
Re:Bad summary! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nothing wrong with hating the GPL... (Score:1, Insightful)
That does wonders for paying my mortgage and feeding my child.
Re:High cost to Depevoling Countries (Score:3, Insightful)
Cheers.
Duh (Score:4, Insightful)
Thats the whole *POINT*. People who license their work under GPL specifically intend for this, and if they refuse to permit their work to be used in a proprietary work, they have every right to make the restriction. Its called share and share alike.
Why should any corp have a right to take someone else work, that they obtained for free, and use it in their proprietary for-profit product, against that persons will? You dont have that right for code developed by anyone else thats *NOT* open source, you (usually) dont even get to *see* the source, let alone even get to consider including it in your own project. GPL isnt taking anything away, its granting lots of rights that you wouldnt otherwise have, but its specifically *not* granting the right to use GPL'd code in a project, and then not give the same rights to others that the GPL gave you. Its 100% fair, which I suppose I can understand how software corps dont like that - they like it when they can have an unfair advantage.
Re:All about maintining the Status Quo (Score:3, Insightful)
1. If an Indonesian lab can get cold fusion working, I'll bet there's an Indonesian company that can produce a working power plant using it. The same is true of any country that has the infrastructure to support serious research.
2. If an Indonesian entity (be it a university lab, a company, whatever) tried to patent something so incredibly useful
Re:Want to understand this story? (Score:2, Insightful)
I have never seen any real indication that Sun is unfriendly towards open source. Being unfriendly towards specific things, like Red Hat, is different, because Red Hat is monetizing Linux as compeititon to Sun. Business is business, in this case. If Sun ever starts trash-talking Debian or Gentoo, then I will change my opinion.
Otherwise, Sun are striving to co-exist with Linux in a way that brings UNIX(tm) out into the open without teams of lawyers jumping down their throats. It's a delicate dance they have to do, but they say their teams of lawyers have been at it for five years, now, analyzing the problem. The result of their efforts is an apparently uninfringing codebase, called OpenSolaris, which, if infringements are found, will be indemnified by Sun themselves. This is the whole rationale beind the CDDL and Sun's earlier grant of patents into the OpenSolaris project. Their goal is to establish a foundation for OpenSolaris that can't be unseated by a one-man company with a patent. IMO, this is a wise move, which keeps Solaris as a formidable option for businesses who care about these things.