With regard to software licensing ...
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With regard to software licensing ... (Score:5, Funny)
I find my opinions on Slashdot. I can't make sense of it myself in most circumstances.
I'm pretty sure I should hate Microsoft, it's ambiguous whether I should hate Apple or not.
GPL is the bees knees, and LGPL is mostly not very good at been not as good as GPL sometimes.
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On this faceless internet, it seems like you're supposed to hate everybody and everything.
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In theory they may be different, yes (perhaps); in practice, no, not really. So far there has only been one license certified as open source by the OSI that wasn't also classified as a free license by the FSF, and that license was surrounded by people on both sides arguing that it really did/didn't meet the specified criteria. (Fortunately, it was soon withdrawn, and nothing actually uses that license.) Note that the Open Source Definition is basically identical to the Debian Free Software Guidelines, so
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I don't think there is such a thing as an "open source licence" as distinct from a "free software" licence. Never heard of one, anyway.
The difference between Free Software is more of a philosophical one these days. The free software guys saying "the important thing about free software is the basic freedoms it grants to those who use it". The open source types tend more toward "The important thing about open source is that it allows a more efficient development model, which can greatly benefit industry an
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No, we all love open source, since it's free as in beer!
You just have to brew the beer !!!
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I have never had a free beer...
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The frequently used expression "free as in beer" is used to clarify which of the following (non-exhaustive) meanings is used: free beer, free spirit, free speech, free bird, free time, free memory,... So when someone says "free as in beer", it means the kind of "free" you intuitively understand when you see a big sign that says "Free beer!". I did not invent the expression, but somehow I managed to understand it right away when I first saw it. Maybe it's a nerd thing.
And of course I was being slightly sarca
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I can't make sense of it myself in most circumstances.
It's even more depressing (or amusing, once you've stopped caring) when the vendors can't figure out their own licensing.
We've had this happen on a few occasions. The vendor agreed that we were requesting a valid combination of packages and options, but were unable to figure out a price. Even up-selling to various mega-bundles would not include the combination we needed on compatible terms (annual vs one-time vs subscription). Their sales gurus at head office were also baffled, especially when their deve
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I find my opinions on Slashdot. I can't make sense of it myself in most circumstances.
I'm pretty sure I should hate Microsoft, it's ambiguous whether I should hate Apple or not.
GPL is the bees knees, and LGPL is mostly not very good at been not as good as GPL sometimes.
I'm pretty sure I'm not suppose to acknowledge that Richard Stallman showers, nor should I mention Linus in the same sentence as "smoking crack"
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I've met RMS, and he was filthy and he did stink. I'm fully aware that this will get modded troll, but it just amuses me that there's such an aggressive assumtion that the stereotype must be incorrect. The truth - and shouldn't we speak it? - is that Stallman is exactly what he looks like: a filthy hippy.
1 & 4 (Score:2)
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So what is bad about Civ 5? How does it compare to Civ IV?
Steam recently had a "fire sale" on Civ IV. I bought it having never played any Civ games, but having heard years and years of rave reviews for all things Civ. My kids and I have really enjoyed it, although the Sid avatar in the tutorial is super-creepy.
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So what is bad about Civ 5? How does it compare to Civ IV?
Civ IV (especially if you get BTS expansion) is much better than Civ V. Civ V does a few things nice (hex map & slightly improved graphics), but armies are really crippled since you only , and things like great generals are not nearly as useful. It also does weird things like the embarkment tech that you get which allows your guys to turn into boats, and combats where you do partial damage and it continues on to the next time period.
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That is what made the Steam sale so attractive - I got Civ4 + BTS + Col + War - all for $7.50.
That's the cost for a 6-pack of quality beer. Combine Civ IV with beer and how can you go wrong? :-)
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> So what is bad about Civ 5? How does it compare to Civ IV?
For one,
Religion got completely nerfed, as in removed.
Second,
http://www.amazon.com/Sid-Meiers-Civilization-V-Mac/product-reviews/B0048X7P4E [amazon.com]
Gee, I wonder why the Lead Designer and Principal Programmer of Civ V has _left_ Firaxis ...
http://flashofsteel.com/index.php/2010/12/21/jon-shafer-leaves-firaxis/ [flashofsteel.com]
But since I don't want to present a one-sided argument ...
http://www.gamingreality.com/2010/09/civilization-iv-vs-civilization-v-6.html [gamingreality.com]
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Also, the Amazon ratings tell an interesting story ...
641 Reviews
5 star: (92)
4 star: (69)
3 star: (59)
2 star: (116)
1 star: (305)
http://www.amazon.com/Sid-Meiers-Civilization-V-Mac/product-reviews/B0038TT8QM [amazon.com]
Again, Conversely, for completeness, Civ V improvements...
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/reviews/8126-Review-Civilization-V [escapistmagazine.com]
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Patch notes (Score:2)
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Civ5 is a mediocre game that tastes like it was aimed at console kiddies and people without a freaking brain. The best things were removed, the worst items were double-upped. I remember civ1/2/3 being hard on their own merit for what it had. I remember 4 taking the best of those 3 previous games and rounding it all off nicely.
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I had problems with Civ V initially, but I also had problems with Mafia II, GTA IV, CoD MW and MW2. Then I did a bios update and no more problems. Since then it has worked perfectly, I often play on huge maps and do tons of fun things. My only problem with the game is that even on quick mode it takes all damn day just to get through one round. But the graphical improvements, hex style, and gameplay itself is significantly better than CIV IV
LGPL Rules! (Score:2, Insightful)
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Agreed. The only projects I have ever contributed to are those which allow linking to a commercial product, because normally I end up getting paid to make those contributions.
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The opposite of "free" (as in the GPL's definition of free) is not "commercial", but "proprietary". You can very well ask your customers for a licensing fee if you distribute your GPL'd program to them. If your product and especially the support and services around that dump of code and binaries are good enough, they'll probably give you what you ask for anyway.
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If your product and especially the support and services around that dump of code and binaries are good enough
I think you've hit the nail on the head, and that's why White Box never stopped Red Hat from being a Wall Street darling. A lot of people don't like that, though, because they want to be able to sell just the license (who would buy a support contract for e.g. a game), and the GPL is not conducive to that. They don't have any right to get upset at folks who are using the GPL, though, since they are offering their users even fewer rights.
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Yes, but try convincing almost any owner of a software company that they should open-source the software they just spent a couple million dollars developing... yeah, not much luck.
Therefore, at work, open source projects are divided into
a) Projects I can't use (GPL)
b) Projects I can use, and contribute back to to stay within both the spirit and the legal terms of their license.
People are of course free to do whatever they want with their code, but from a practical side licensing under GPL is essentially shu
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Yes, but try convincing almost any owner of a software company that they should open-source the software they just spent a couple million dollars developing... yeah, not much luck.
Therefore, at work, open source projects are divided into
a) Projects I can't use (GPL) b) Projects I can use, and contribute back to to stay within both the spirit and the legal terms of their license.
People are of course free to do whatever they want with their code, but from a practical side licensing under GPL is essentially shutting out a bunch of commercial developers from caring about your code. And caring about it is the first step to getting them to contribute something.
Couldn't agree more. As a software developer for a commercial organisation, I'm tied to writing proprietary code by my company. There's a LOT of great little GPL projects out there that would save me an amazing amount of time if I was allowed to make use of them, but I'm not. I use a fair bit of LGPL code, and ALWAYS make sure I follow it to the letter and beyond (I generally contact the original author with my changes as well as prominently informing the users of the LGPL parts and where to get the sour
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I think open software licenses should be more fine grained, and specify what "interfaces" to the work are ok to leverage without your work being considered derivative. so a library can specify the api's that it exports, a program can specify its inputs and output
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i always found the "linking" part arbitrary. I can interface with a gpl program over a browser, and thats considered a service that i am providing to someone, so not a derivative work, even though it could easily be a programmable api over http.
I've come across the same issue myself. I make use of a couple of GPL products in one of my proprietary apps by asking the user to download and install them, then getting my app to run the other one and grab the output from it. I admit that I feel a little "dirty" doing this since it does feel like it's outside the spirit of the GPL but our corporate lawyer insists that there's no problem to do so (Google search results show plenty of arguments about whether this is okay or not, and it seems pretty divide
What the fuck do the choices even mean ? (Score:2)
'my opinion growing stronger towards jupiter' -> there is no difference in between the preceding sentence and the shitty poll options.
kudos to whomever wrote them. cut back on coffee.
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I don't know, I guess licensing has something to do with lawyers presiding over your life choices.
I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that most of us became engineers because we wanted to be able to exert some power and control over nature. Then there are some people who like to exert power and control over other people. So I guess these days those people mostly become lawyers, and write pieces of paper telling you what you can and cannot do. Most of us try to avoid these people like the plague, bu
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Actually, I like the wording of this poll- very open-ended, and obviously meant to spark discussion.
I've certainly found my *awareness* of licensing growing stronger over the years. Recently I've been making an effort to read all the EULAs that I'm supposed to when installing/upgrading software. An ITunes update (for example) becomes a MAJOR pain in the ass when confronted with 15-20 minutes of re-reading the EULA, while trying to detect what minute changes have occurred, etc. (Couldn't they just list the c
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... a "free" software license is simply astounding in its simplicity ...
Clearly you have not heard of the GPL. Version 3 is causing great headaches across the scene of developers that simply wish to develop "free" (as in beer) software and not get tangled in a web of political asshattery in the process.
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... a "free" software license is simply astounding in its simplicity ...
You cut off "In comparison, " at the start and quoted him out of context. In comparison with the software licences that ship with proprietary software, the GPL (any version), BSD and Apache licences are simple.
Clearly you have not heard of the GPL. Version 3 is causing great headaches across the scene of developers that simply wish to develop "free" (as in beer) software and not get tangled in a web of political asshattery in the process.
What? If a developer is really having a headache because they "simply wish to develop free* (as in beer) software" then they can replace their current, non-functional brain with the brain of a dead rat and use it for 2 picoseconds. If they did that, they would realise that they don't need a GPL v3, v
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The reason is that the The Living Fractal got it wrong. PC is "paper cassette". The message was informing the user of the printer where they should insert a specific size of paper.
I'll complain, anyway, (Score:4, Informative)
Without an option for my opinion not changing, and none for my opinion getting weaker either, there's no where for me to vote.
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I think "growing ambiguous" is supposed to be synonymous with "getting weaker", but yes, there's no option for "not changing", and moreover, none for "growing stronger with respect to some licenses and weaker with respect to others", as, for example, with a BSD advocate who finds himself mellowing towards the GPL and becoming less tolerant of commercial EULAs, or vice versa.
More ambiguous (Score:3, Insightful)
Back in the 90's My Late teens and early 20's I use to be an avid supporter of Open Source (GNU) in particular. I worked on making sure my computer was as pure as possible, and I was willing to debate and argue against anyone (technical) who is using Windows as their primary OS without wanting to install Linux on their computer.
Then as time went on I started to see real holes in the GNU and other Open Source Licenses as a process. While some some software really thrived on Open Source other projects I was interested in was really languishing, and many didn't come out of the design phase or became usable. Open Source is strong at projects that can grow organically. Closed source are for products that needs real project management and design work.
It isn't that Open Source is Bad it has its place but its place isn't everywhere. Close Source isn't pure evil, while it does have its problems it has its place too, and fills gaps that Open Source cannot fill.
RMS Vision is much too Utopian for real life. Microsoft all closed source vision is bad too. We need a good balance.
Re:More ambiguous (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a balance, but RMS and his ego has done some good.
Any old salts remember the UNIX days before Linux and 386BSD?
Want source code? Plunk $1000 to Mt. Xinu for BSD/OS.
Want a compiler? That's at least 5 C notes, to a grand. Oh, you want libraries too, that's extra.
I think had neither Linux or Jolitz's BSD taken off, the world would be a different place. We would see a lot of commercial flavors of UNIX, almost all of them incompatible, and we would be paying through the nose and out the rectum for things we take for granted these days.
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Instead we've got a free unix-like, a proprietary UNIX, and a clusterfuck, all incompatible.
Way better.
Yes. Yes it is way better. I can build a rock solid, high demand web server cluster for the price of the hardware. This cluster can communicate with proprietary software application servers running proprietary operating systems using soap. Everything just works. Outstanding.
Re:More ambiguous (Score:4, Interesting)
I would disagree. Say I need a file server, E-mail server, firewall, router, NAT box, squid cache, or any other system function.
I can get CentOS [1] or *BSD on the machine, and have a server going with a very sturdy OS, for no cost other than hardware.
In the days pre-Linux, I would have to buy a tape drive, buy a UNIX distribution, and make sure it is licensed to support more than 2 users (as per the SVR4 license regs). Total cost of the OS likely would cost more than the machine itself, even just for a basic firewall. These days, I'm sure you would need a "server" version to enable some functionality, so a box that costs $500 might cost $3000 for the OS.
Linux and BSD are wonderful things when you consider what life would be without them. If a business is lucky enough that they can run their operations completely on OSS solutions, they do not have to worry about a licensing infrastructure at all.
I date myself, but without Linux and BSD, we also would have had a ton of UNIX flavors from commercial vendors, each incompatible with the other by some slight difference. For example, all the source code (assuming no GNU autoconf) needed to deal with the different foibles of DYNIX, AIX, AIX/PS2, Solaris, Solaris 86, IRIX, HP/UX, Ultrix, UNICOS, Xenix, BSD/OS, MT XINU, AT&T, Dell UNIX, and many, many other variants.
Linux may not be perfect, but it is a unifying framework. Instead of people having to reinvent the wheel, it got people to be able to extend on an existing concept. Same with BSD.
[1]: I use CentOS, but use whatever distro you want.
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Very true. He is a polarizing personality. However, he does have some good points.
The one I most remember is about software patents. The FSF has been against those since 1989 when they boycotted Apple and Lotus until the mid 1990s, due to the lawsuits at that time.
If I were to add my opinion, I'd say he has done good overall. However, he is polarizing, and it can be argued that he sometimes shoots the F/OSS movement in the foot.
Take the GPL 3. I have been a consultant at companies that were so afraid o
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Back when I was in my late teens and early twenties I was a keen supporter of Open Source and contributed thousands of hours into maintaining a LGPL project which is now installed by default in all serious distros. Then during my first job developed the Linux kernel itself and continued to develop what was free and publicly available. I believe that what I did then was right and good and I am glad about what I accomplished during this time since I know the work I did is still used by tens of millions of peo
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IP has no inherent connection with China's failure to provide basic human rights. IP just happens to be valuable these days and greedy bastards like valuable things (almost by definition!)
People have been horrible to each other since long before any concept of IP existed, and will continue to be horrible to each other regardless of whether IP rules the roost or gets abolished and forgotten.
Creating and enforcing human rights laws is the correct solution to these problems.
For that matter, if anyone on the
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You comment makes no sense. There are a lot, lot and lot closed source projects that never came out of the design phase or became usable. The only difference with open source projects is that the failed closed source projects you will never see. Microsoft Vista to name one with never became usable, but how many in-house projects (with are closed source) do you think have failed for any given company?
I think, what you mean are commercial software vs. community driven projects. But it has nothing to do with t
you can assume humans are dicks, then hoard (Score:2)
Or assume humans are nice (or as nice as the society they grow up in) and promote sharing.
Not sure you can force anything, though.
So the best thing is to be nice and hope others are nice back. They often are.
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You can also assume some humans are nice and some are dicks, and be nice, promote sharing but use the power of the law to make sure that the dicks can't steal what you've just shared. That's exactly what GPL, Creative Commons, and similar copyleft ideas are for.
You can also assume that some humans are nice and some are dicks, and be a dick and steal things that others have shared. That's exactly what Walt Disney, Apple, Facebook, etc have built their businesses around.
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Exactly. The GPL is what happens to the BSDL when some dick tries to take advantage of everyone else and the "guy in charge" of the relevant project actually bothers to do something about it.
This is something that GPL/RMS/FSF detractors like to gloss over.
The options are stupid. There should have been a steady state option.
Informed Opinion (Score:2)
made the wrong choice... (Score:5, Insightful)
I chose "don't care", but I should have chosen the first option. Some of my old favorite games have bugs where they crash on multi-core systems unless you use a bunch of community-made work-arounds to get them running. The publisher has the source code, but they won't release it to the fans so we can fix the bugs properly. I regret ever giving these people a dime and I never will again.
Then I have other games that include malware requiring a disk to be in the drive to play the game, even though more modern systems don't have CD drives. This means the game from 1999 is unusable on my netbook. Again, I regret paying the devs.
I will never purchase another boxed commercial piece of software new again because the only thing the publishers and developers care about is taking my money and leaving me with a broken product. I'll just buy all my games used and run Linux from now on.
Licensing is good (Score:2)
Would not a lot of coders consider their talent to the same level as art?
Your code defines you and you create a product. It should have the same licensing rights as those who have copyright. It's your work. When you code for a company, you're agreeing to sell your work, for a paycheck to a company that once again owns licensing rights.
Open source code, is open source for anyone to modify and no one to own or license similarly to graffiti on random wall. The art constantly changes, and the best stuff is
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Would not a lot of coders consider their talent to the same level as art?
Your code defines you and you create a product. It should have the same licensing rights as those who have copyright. It's your work. When you code for a company, you're agreeing to sell your work, for a paycheck to a company that once again owns licensing rights.
Open source code, is open source for anyone to modify and no one to own or license similarly to graffiti on random wall. The art constantly changes, and the best stuff is respected and kept.
I personally feel that licensing is a bit expensive, and needs to be defined more fairly, but if you equate a copy to that of art, then to place the same art in multiple rooms you need to purchase multiple copies.
You have confused Open Source with Free Software. I have come across plenty of Open Source software that did not allow anyone to modify -- In this case there is definitely an entity attempting to assert ownership via leveraging the copyright system.
Free Software allows anyone to modify and distribute it as long as the distributor grants these same freedoms to the recipients. For a good example, look at iOS (containing BSD licensed (open source) code), and GNU/Linux, containing GPL'd Free Software. In t
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Would not a lot of coders consider their talent to the same level as art?
We would. It's just we also put art to the same level as educational materials: it's best when it's available to everyone rather than a select few rich enough to afford it, who are in turn prohibited from sharing it themselves. It's no coincidence F/OSS supporters are among the greatest proponents of Creative Commons and initiatives like MIT's OpenCourseWare.
Not changing (Score:2)
I'm not complaining, but merely mentioning that I can't vote in this poll because my opinion isn't changing, and I do care, to some extent. My opinions did change a bit back during the late eighties & early nineties, but once I finally settled on what seemed to me to be a set of reasonable positions, I haven't seen much need to change. The last time my opinions noticeably changed was when the GPLv3 came out, and I had to add an opinion to my set, but my opinions didn't "grow stronger" or become more a
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Funny that I have the oposite interpretation of yours :)
I think I can't vote because my opinions have changed, so I couldn't compare certainty of my older opinions with the certainty of the newer ones. If you kept the same opinions, you'd be able to.
And by the way, I'm now less certain about a more extreme opinion than just recently.
Depends (Score:2)
Missing the "No change" option. (Score:2)
I've felt pretty strongly about this issue for many years. I haven't noticed these feelings getting stronger or weaker, but I do care. There's no poll option that fits my situation, and I reckon I'm not alone here.
Simple solution (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't acknowledge the concept of IP, so licenses are irrelevant to me.
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I don't acknowledge the concept of IP, so licenses are irrelevant to me.
How do you post here without using the Internet Protocol? :-)
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via IPX. Didn't you know that Slashdot had a netware gateway?
Re:Simple solution (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you mean IP as in Copyright, Patents and Trademarks? Do you think for example that any car maker (to keep up the analogy cliches) should be able to slap a Ford badge onto what they build?
Re:Simple solution (Score:4, Insightful)
Mod parent up please. You should never put the terms copyright, patents and trademarks in to the same term "IP" because all 3 of them are so different as anything can be.
Trademarks laws are doing what they are suppose to be doing, to protect from imitations. That is very important for the pharmacy, for machines, for electronic ware, etc, and for small businesses and big firms.
Patents are somewhat more difficult to decide if they are good or bad. We need patents for real goods like machines. In the pharmacy and agricultural industry patents do more harm then good and should be more restricted. For software there should be no patents.
Copyright is just too long to have any moral at all. 95 years copyright is just so ridiculous and it makes a lot of harm to our culture.
Bad Example (Score:2)
Trademarks laws are doing what they are suppose to be doing, to protect from imitations. That is very important for the pharmacy...
While I agree in general that Trademarks are good, pharmacy is actually a bad example. Generic prescription drugs are identical to their trademarked counterparts - they have to be otherwise they would not be approved for use under the strict rules on drugs in most countries. So this is one case where actually trademarks have no value at all - they just persuade people to purchase more expensive brands of drugs for which the patent has expired.
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Curiously, before all the "IP" crap happened, there was in common law a tort called "passing off", which basically covers the same thing as Trademarks, but on the basis of "fraud damaging the goodwill of my products", without all the "i own the name" kind of entitlement attitude.
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The brand name part, that would be a Trademark. Of the three, it's the one with the most justification for existence, IMO.
Depends on where I am. (Score:2)
The older I get, the more I respect it (Score:3)
I think my opinions have matured with the aging process, and the realization that we are all only given a short period of time here on this earth. Although I might not exactly respect some of the sales games that get played, or respect some of the ways that corporations corner their respective markets, I do respect the people who write the software and those who build businesses that employ software developers. I was fortunate enough to turn a hobby with computers into a real career, and I did so using the tools developed by others.
With regards to open source versus closed source, and free verses for cost, it comes down to this for me. If you use a piece of software and someone wants to be paid for it, pay them. You do not have any right to tell them what their software is worth. If their software is so worthless, then do without it. If you want the functionality, pay for the functionality or convince someone else to develop that functionality for you and give it to you for free.
World class software developers are one of the few things that America has left. We're already slipping behind the rest of the world due to our messed up education system. I hate to get all patriot about this, but I'm serious when I say this. Either support the industries that we have here, or GTFO. Our country and our economy have enough problems already without stealing from each other on top of it.
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Re:Stronger sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
This.
I chose "Don't care, never have", by which I mean I have zero interest in what the publisher thinks they can tell me about how I may or may not use their software. I'll use software that I buy however the hell I want, including installing it on whatever machines I happen to want to use it on, including reselling it when I no longer want it, including reverse engineering it to disable "features" that annoy me ("Activation", CD checks, phoning home, forced autoupdates, etc).
That said, the same answer could also mean that I just mindlessly go along with whatever absurd restrictions the licensing decides to impose on me, which very much does not describe how I feel about this issue.
Poor wording, indeed.
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Actually, I think that's the exact opposite of the way I feel.
I refuse to buy something with strings attached. I won't buy a bicycle under the condition that I never let anyone else ride it, or with the expectation that the person who sold it to me could inspect my usage of it. Hell, I won't event rent a car from someone who restricts where I can go with it.. I tell those rental companies to buzz off and go with the one next to them.
Similarly, I would much rather run software that is permissively licensed
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Hell, I won't event rent a car from someone who restricts where I can go with it.. I tell those rental companies to buzz off and go with the one next to them.
Honest question. Which one doesn't restrict (through pricing or otherwise) where you can go with it? (eg. out of state, out of country?)
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It's happened to me exactly once. Budget wouldn't let me drive from Texas to New Mexico with the vehicle.. I walked away from their desk and went to the Avis desk. Problem solved.
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Honest question. Which one doesn't restrict (through pricing or otherwise) where you can go with it? (eg. out of state, out of country?)
Interesting question... I've never had a car rental place ask me where I'm going, nor have they ever explicitly told me of any restrictions. Perhaps there may be something written on the document I sign to pick up the car, but I can't say I've checked (yeah, I know... should read before signing and all that).
To note, I rent a lot of cars in a lot of different cities/countries as I travel for work quite often. However, I've only ever rented one car in the US (I think it was through Avis), so maybe it's mor
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By pure coincidence, I happen to be on a business trip at the moment and have a rental car through Europcar. Picked up the car in Vienna (Austria) and took it across to Brno (Czech Republic). I checked the rental agreement after making my last post here and can confirm there is definitely nothing in there about where I can go.
I'll definitely make a point of checking more often though and will be happy to correct myself if it turns out it is common to have such limitations.
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I wonder how the rental companies insurance works. Could drive your rental to Pakistan (hope you aren't in a hurry) and have the rental company cover it being damaged there?
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I actually think it's a pretty interesting poll. They should have reduced it to the first to options (more/less ambigous) plus a CowboyNeal option, the last option kind of clouds the issue.
Anyway, software licensing/copyright is obviously a daily topic on Slashdot, and people voice their opinion on it all the time. It's really interesting to see not what people believe, but how firm their beliefs in it are. A true meta-issue, almost a derivative in the mathematical sense.
Re:Stronger sure... (Score:4, Funny)
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Fifty different projects that all use GPL licensed code can all compete with each other. There's nothing forcing the resulting code to be uniform or unified in design, function, or any other way beyond the use license. The GPL forces the licenses into one indistinguishable mass, not the code. There's still tons of competition - and since the GPL products can freely mix and match each others' code, the compet
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Where did you get the idea that I was objecting?
The OP said "...Hence some cool stuff (clang! ZFS!) can't cross-pollinate with software under the GPL, which is too bad."
I was commenting that maybe an interesting side effect of the difficulty of including some licenses with GPL was the avoidance of a monculture.
Since Linux can't use ZFS (the CDDL was written to make this impossible) Linux has to come up with something new.
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Or perhaps GPL advocates could decide what they care more about. License purity or actually being able to use cool stuff. I see all sorts of posts about how people can just steal BSD code without giving back, but nobody seems to be able to demonstrate that it's more likely to happen with BSD code than GPL code. The fact is that anybody who is going to steal is going to steal just because you tell them not to doesn't guarantee compliance.
I also remember times when developers have stripped the BSD license off
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It's easy.
The BSD license gives other distributors permissions to repackage your code, and give nothing back but a written mention.
The GPL does not allow that, distributors need to show code. If they fail to, they fall out of the license, and under simple copyright infringement.
There's nothing to prove, the GPL protects against freeloaders, and the BSD does not. By design.
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There's nothing to prove, the GPL protects against freeloaders, and the BSD does not. By design.
I'd say "freeloading" puts it a bit harshly. BSD licensing says that the owner doesn't care if you make money from his code, so long as you throw him half a mention. GPL says you do care.
Neither is better than the other - it just gives the programmer a choice as to how much he wants to give away.
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Actually, the GPL absolutely does not prevent the accepter from making money by selling software that uses the code. This is intentional.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html [gnu.org]
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Monoculture has nothing to do with licensing. For plants, animals and political ideology, having everybody be the same or believe the same is bad. But I have a really hard time buying the notion that having everything under the same type of license would have that sort of world ending consequence.
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You didn't bother to provide any justification whatsoever as to why we need multiple licenses or the inherent benefit to their being multiple licenses. Nowhere in my post did I suggest that we settle on a single one much less to force people to use it.
And of course you don't care about my opinion, which is probably why you didn't bother to actually read or consider it. Additionally, it's pretty obvious that you don't actually write any code, otherwise you'd see the point, that there is no inherent benefit f
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There's no inherent benefit to being able to decide who you would like to grant a copy right to, considering the default position is that nobody is allowed to copy your source code or binary? Granting a license has the inherent benefit of you not wasting time assessing each case individually, but still being able to define in detail who should and should not be allowed to copy your code.
Consider how much time businesses spend on negotiating contracts, and whether you think it's better to just have no contra
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Also, it's good to let programmers choose how they'd like their code to be used.
To my eyes, BSD says "here - do whatever you want with it, I don't care", while GPL says "I'm not making any money off my code, and you can't make money off my code either".
The other angle is not to confuse development license with end-user licenses.
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