"Why the GPL doesnt focus on freedom" keynote from OSCON
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I was installing jxself's kernel today on a new rig and decided to stalk him on identica and saw him comment about GitHub's Tom Preston-Wener's keynote talking about FLOSS licenses at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bAAlPXB2-c around the 10:52 mark.
Is this a new mentality where the cool and hip San Francisco startup, new-age programmers will only do permissive licenses? Granted, I think that permissive licenses are more than suitable for the majority of code to get to the broadest audience, but the GPL does have its strengths if you want to force people to buy a commercial license if you own the copyright to free software.
But does the GPL lack freedom entirely? That's up for debate really.
Sounded like FUD to me.
Follow up interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DoB0SCUtOk
Exerpt from http://tom.preston-werner.com/2011/11/22/open-source-everything.html
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What is the One True License?
I prefer the MIT license and almost everything we open source at GitHub carries this license. I love this license for several reasons:
* It's short. Anyone can read this license and understand exactly what it means without wasting a bunch of money consulting high-octane lawyers.
* Enough protection is offered to be relatively sure you won't sue me if something goes wrong when you use my code.
* Everyone understands the legal implications of the MIT license. Weird licenses like the WTFPL and the Beer license pretend to be the "ultimate in free licenses" but utterly fail at this goal. These fringe licenses are too vague and unenforceable to be acceptable for use in some companies.
On the other side, the GPL is too restrictive and dogmatic to be usable in many cases. I want everyone to benefit from my code. Everyone. That's what Open should mean, and that's what Free should mean.
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That's FUD, plain and simple.
* Enough protection is offered to be relatively sure you won't sue me if something goes wrong when you use my code.
Using my code in proprietary software is "something that goes wrong". And something permissive licenses do not protect from (by definition).
We're not interested in your anti-GPL FUD, t3g.
I'm not Tom Preston-Wener, so therefore I didn't give the speech in question. Direct your anger towards him.
The GPL is about promoting freedom for everyone. Not maximizing freedom on an individual level.
The GPL's extra restrictions ensure that freedom persists from one iteration of a work to the next. Permissive licenses do not restrict in this way. And so are more free for people individually.
Maximum individual freedom allows the proprietary world to take the free world's products. And proprieterize them. Here, the free world works for the proprietary world. And the proprietary world benefits financially, without the same investment or risk.
So maximum-individual-freedom reduces a financial barrier-to-entry, for restricting others' freedom.
His concept of freedom has two effects, and he only talks about one of them: More freedom for each individual today. Less* freedom for everyone tomorrow.
Edit: *proportionally less. Maybe the same total free options. But proportions matter. If software freedom is forced to the fringes, social pressure will make the free options irrelevant.
GPL gives total freedom to the user, but restricted freedom to the developer.
Permissive gives total freedom to the user and developer, but then allows other developers to change the intention of the original developer by making proprietary or bundling it with other proprietary software.
I'd like to add that the logic used here would also work for justifying the legalization of slavery. You could say, "We want workers to have the freedom to choose how they want to work, and that's why permitting people to sell themselves into slavery is the best way." (It's not the same, mind you, but this does show how absurd the logic is.)
Not quite.
Writing proprietary software is more like offering somebody to become a slave at free will.
It's like raising the question: "who wants to become my slave voluntarily?".
It's similar but not the same like enslaving people directly since they are free to choose whether they want to use it or not.
Exactly.
Actually the GPL isn't focused on "total" (any better words?) freedom as (I think) it rather says "Don't tell the world that it's your writing since it wasn't, and don't you dare to re-release a version of this software that is not free",
while non-copyleft lincences tend to simply say "Don't tell the world it's your writing since it's actually mine"
Free is defined by the 4 software freedoms (though I disagree with RMS in that I think freedom 0 should be "To use a programme, for any purpose that doesn't deprive the programme's consumers from freedoms 1, 2, and 3" as otherwise the GPL might not be free since it can't be used for the purpose of depriving others from freedoms 1, 2, and 3). My 2 cents.
Freedom 0 means that you can use the program in whatever way you want, not that you can do whatever you want with it.
Yeah but I think the the former is sometimes a bit too synonymous with the latter.
"Use" means "execute" the program. And freedom 0 guarantees that you can do that for any purpose (including commercial, military, etc.). You can compile proprietary software with GCC if you wish. The question is: what would the free software win if it would prevent that. Basically nothing (the proprietary software would then be compiled by a proprietary compiler). But it would lose contributions.
That reminds me of some fonts that Adobe releases as free software under SIL 1.1, but they can only be created from source code using their non-free tools.
This is probably why you don't see Adobe's Source Sans Pro, Source Serif Pro, and Source Code Pro fonts in the Debian/Trisquel/Ubuntu repositories.
Well, that is different: free software must be "buildable" with free tools but can be "use", i.e., "executed" for any purpose (freedom 0). A free font can be used in a copyrighted document.
It is a perfectly witless, foolish proposition. The GPL prevents
the Tragedy of the Commons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
Oops, this was about the wider topic and I picked the wrong email to comment on.
Yeah, you're right. It was long after my post did I think about it.
I guess the next time somebody brings that (freedom 0 and allowing Free Software to be re-released unfreely based on it and debating GPL's freeness based on it) up when it comes to discussing software freedom I can explain my position.
I guess the best way to know one's position in an argument is indeed to actually argue it, like a certain blogger said.
Some time ago I heard that github is not "Open Source", so I decided to use gitorius insted which is copylefted free software under the AGPL. At this time I was a Mac User but I know that "if something is not open source, it is certainly not free software." [RMS]
When I browse github, I still find lots of code that does not have a licence. People who do care about freedom, know that you have to select a free license to give the users freedom. It does not have to be the GPL, you can use the LGPL, Apache License, or the MIT licence. As long the licence is compatible with the GPL the choice of the licence is OK. Using a free licence that is incompatible limits the use with GNU so this should not be done. Recently Apple begin relicencing some components of Mac OS X under the Apache Licence, so I can use them together with GNUstep.
I looked at choosealicense.com, and found out that this page uses the word "content" that one should avoid. I think you can use the GPL for other data which is not code, even if the data is only avialable in binary format.
>I looked at choosealicense.com, and found out that this page uses the word "content" that one should avoid.
Another reason to avoid using the site is that it leaves "No license" on the table as a legitimate option. If you send people to choosealicense.com, they may decide to go the no license route. (Of course, they are not legally obliged to license their code, but this site actively encourages it.)
Try out GitLab: https://www.gitlab.com
I am a member!
Tom Preston-Warner represents the open source world. In the open source world, open source code exists so that proprietary software developers can build their proprietary software on top of collaboratively maintained libraries and frameworks. That's why his mantra is "open source almost everything." "Almost everything" is all libraries, frameworks, infrastructure stuff. That is why his vision of "freedom" includes the right to use the code in proprietary products. That is the world he comes from.
great post
http://tom.preston-werner.com/2011/11/22/open-source-everything.html
"Have you ever written an amazing library or tool at one job and then left to join another company only to rewrite that code or remain miserable in its absence? [...] By getting code out in the public we can drastically reduce duplication of effort."
"Don't open source anything that represents core business value."
I agree because people like him want to take code from others and since it isn't copyleft, it is the best option to make non-free or never contribute back.
They only want to release code that is safe to release and hope that the community will work on it for them (beats paying a full time developer) so they can turn around and lock it down.
I still believe that for libraries, its ok to use a permissive license for easy integration, but complete software packages can benefit from copyleft licenses the most.
I am a member!
>hurrr the GPL is too long! Reading is hard!
Yeah well so is the US constitution, what kind of pleb-tier argument is this?
The GPL,LGPL, and AGPL are for software where the Free Software Foundation has been assigned the copyright. The Apache Public license was created for Apache by Apache. The Mozilla Public license was created by Mozilla. The copyright owner controls and protects the software. The copyright owner can even dual license the code. Other copyright owners using these permissive licenses popularizes them, but in no way obligates them to keep the copyright that way, or license other software they own copyright to with similar licenses.
I am hazy on this but Free Software Foundation and Debian had the first standards about what licenses constituted Free or Open Source software.
Truly, wish to protect software freedom? Assign copyright to the GNU Project which is controlled by an organization that is unwaveringly dedicated to free software. Also FSF and Debian/Software in the Public Interest have actually pursued litigation to protect free software. The GNU Project is sort of a copyright collective. In software the organization with the biggest IP usually wins. If software is disruptive enough to gain wide adoption there will be litigation.
Maybe, if Xiph (Vorbis, Theora) assigned its copyrights to FSF GNU industry would be willing to adopt it as a standard. Given sufficient size and software use, GNU Project could act as a de facto standards organization.
Point is licensing your software using someone else's license it a step in a good direction, but it isn't enough to build an industry; one where software IP isn't powerful.
BTW GNOME doesn't require copyright assignment...really?!
The Xiph codecs should stay under a BSD license to aid in adoption and to provide a free option. Even RMS agrees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorbis
This has been discussed many times in these forums.
Extracted from https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-recommendations.html :
"There are only a couple of kinds of projects that we think should not have any copyleft at all. The first is very small projects. We use 300 lines as our benchmark: when a software package's source code is shorter than that, the benefits provided by copyleft are usually too small to justify the inconvenience of making sure a copy of the license always accompanies the software.
The second is projects that implement free standards that are competing against proprietary standards, such as Ogg Vorbis (which competes against MP3 audio) and WebM (which competes against MPEG-4 video). For these projects, widespread use of the code is vital for advancing the cause of free software, and does more good than a copyleft on the project's code would do."
General info about licenses:
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#SoftwareLicenses
Most programs under the GNU licenses are not GNU programs. And their copyrights are not assigned to the FSF. Even GNU programs do not necessarily have their copyrights assigned to the FSF: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.html
The copyright assignment is entirely independent from the license. It is stating that the author of the work is not who wrote it but the third entity that it was assigned to. One can understand why many programmers are reluctant to sign such assignments!
Anyway, they are particularly useful when the work is written by tens (or more) of people, some potentially dead, and the license needs to be enforced or a decision (e.g., switch to a newer version of the license) needs to be taken. If the copyright holder is the FSF, one can be sure the decision will never be to make proprietary derivatives. It is hard to say so of any other entity.
As for GNOME, here is its policy on copyright assignment: https://wiki.gnome.org/action/show/FoundationBoard/Resources/CopyrightAssignment
Has the Open Source Initiative (OSI) said anything about the motivations for open source?
I assume that the OSI's definition of open source accomodates Tom Preston -Werner's vision. And perhaps others' visions too? Are there other visions for open source?
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