Comment Re:RMS needs to get over the GPL (Score 1) 279
Which binary did you sell?
Which binary did you sell?
Hmm... I'll keep an eye on any FSF-related explanations. Thanks for the discussion.
If you insist on equating "earning money by programming" with "selling binaries", there's nothing much I can do.
If you're going to pretend gender is distinct from sex or arbitrary, I suggest a text area, so one can write that one is a pear if one wants to. I reserve my right *not* to call him/her "thy fruityness".
Name 3 examples.
RedHat (the biggest commercial Linux contributor this year), source of revenue: Support and training
Intel (the second biggest commercial Linux contributor this year), source of revenue: Selling hardware
Mozilla (the FLOSS reference project), source of revenue: Partnership with Google, donations, and now ads
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/02/04/1628236/whos-writing-linux-these-days and own knowledge of the companies
http://news.slashdot.org/story/14/02/12/0338239/mozilla-to-show-sponsored-links-to-first-time-firefox-users
Not that I'm saying you can't find three examples, but my suggestion is that they are fringe, niche cases, not a model that can keep significant numbers of programmers earning a living.
Well that seemed to be the implication. If everyone started selling services of and around coding instead of compiled code, people would pay. Like: here's money to do feature X that I need. You know, contract work. They're just not used to it, we're set back by the proprietary practices.
And it has to be profit from programming
Usually, coders earn a salary programming. That is, the code is not sold, but a functional "product" (really, binaries), the money just percolates to developers. So the same constraint applied to proprietary software would rule out most companies, and interpreted to your slant, would sitll eliminate Google. Therefore I've ignored it since it's not important to getting paid. The only ones who are technically selling code per-se are free-lancers (cf. Google Summer of Code) and in-house programmers (cf. ESR's Cathedral vs Bazaar, where he claims there are more of those, than those working on "products"). Simply put, doesn't matter if a certain company or an individual pays you for a product or a service.
"subjugating"? You guys are insane. Working hard to make a product, and then selling it is how virtually all the things you rely on get made, from your home to your transport to your food.
Thanks for the insult. It's not about the product being sold, it's about user not being able to use it for "whatever purpose", share it "to help his neighbor", modify it "to suit his needs". And distribute his changes. Don't you even know the four freedoms? Software is not physical goods that get spent, it can be copied. It's fundamentally different. There just needs to be a paradigm shift in the minds of people. Hence GPL:
What you describe is precisely TiVoization. TiVo didn't deny code (that would be against GPL2, not just v3), they denied modified software to be run on their system. The purpose of GPLv3's section 6 is to compel them to enable and instruct the user on how to install it on the system. The same clause exists in AGPL.
The question remains: Does not owning hardware circumvent the clause?
This would be so if it were a fact that only proprietary software is profitable, which is not the case.
A case can be made for "against making profit by subjugating users", though.
Considering that AGPL(v3, the FSF version) is based on GPLv3 and features the same anti-TiVoization article (nr. 6), please explain why you think it's still subject to TiVoization, why does ownership of the machine matter? Do you think that the license cannot compel the service provider to allow upload of modified software? Thanks.
I can't believe I'm reading this!
You're actually saying that it's a bad thing to be oblidged to make patents "free" if you build them into free software.
Are you a corporate entity? Besides having rights, are corporate entities now able to converse? I have no other way of explaining this lack of empathy for the user, for yourself!
You're patent trolls' dream. They don't even need to pay you to promote their next big scheme.
Actually, no. You may use GPL'd code any way you like (that's freedom 0) and share with others (freedom 2). You can likewise modify the software any way you like (freedom 1). And all this time, you need not release source code. The condition to release the source only kicks in with freedom to distribute your changes (freedom 3), so only when there is a third person involved with your derivative you have to grant them the same freedoms you've been given by the original author.
In fact, this was a problem with SaaS: You could've modified free software, and run it in the back on your servers, and say that you're simply providing a service to the end user, and since he's not getting the modified program, he doesn't get to have its source either. This is what AGPL is designed to address, and thus it's mostly used for web software. So with AGPL, as soon as you use a program, whether you have a copy, or are executing it online, you get access to the source.
What do you think the purpose of copyleft (of which GPL is just a manifestation) was? The problems it adressed persist.
Now let me address the "freedoms" you're defending. There's always the quote "your freedom to wave your fist ends where my nose begins", but I'm not going to argue that in this case - let's assume users don't have freedoms like FSF asserts. Let's listen to you and focus on corporate freedoms:
You're saying people should have the "freedom" to leech, because this technically means the least amount of restrictions on a code. But in fact, what you're really defending is the right of authors of derivatives to restrict what their users can do. And you know what? I agree that they have that freedom: They built it, they should be able to do with it whatever they want. But the dissonance in your opinion is this: The author of the original piece of code which they built on also has the same right! So if you're going to defend people who impose restrictions that hurt end-users, why attack those that use the same right in the purpose of maximizing the freedoms of those same end-users?
So there are restrictions in both stories, just that BSD is asocial and GPL isn't: BSD says "do what thou wilt" and that inevitably favors the bully. Mind you, the bully (=the warlord in the case of anarchy) is going to impose his own rules. GPL says instead: Fair play rules are valid for everyone.
For example?
Would GCC migrate to LLVM bytecode? What does that give us (except lack of diversity)?
Not sure what else could these two compilers have in common.
RMS knows that (and has made statements to that effect): GPL exists precisely because it's not a perfect world.
While you may call it a freedom, "freedom" to kill would not be a beneficial one.
Speaking metaphorically, that's what BSD license grants you: A way to murder free software in the black hole of proprietary software.
Do companies contribute back? Sure, some do, some of the things. But everything else is competition.
And therein lies the real difference: GPL is against proprietary software, it aims to provide free software to everyone. BSD isn't and doesn't.
Kinda like free vs open.
TL;DR: No.
I'm not sure how GCC could benefit from this.
While theoretically GPL could subsume BSD code produced from the collaboration, I reckon it's more likely that brains are going to migrate rather than code. And I don't see those working on LLVM (for commercial interest) migrating to GCC.
If I were RMS I'd be worried.
Quick glance at the charts over at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_Chile leaves me completely unimpressed
Remember, UNIX spelled backwards is XINU. -- Mt.
