Re: New Essay - FOSS Licences Wars
Hi Mikhael! On Sunday 30 Aug 2009 02:51:47 Mikhael Goikhman wrote: On 28 Aug 2009 21:39:14 +0300, Shlomi Fish wrote: Hi Mikhael! Thanks for your comments and sorry for the late response. No worry about the late response, mostly because I didn't see much to discuss here. You wrote a somewhat provocative article advising against major FOSS licenses, so I just needed to defend the FOSS licenses. However, if you are honestly open to learn facts and opposite opinions, we may hold a short discussion. The anti-GPL arguments you used are actually as old as GPL itself (20 years) and are quite easy to parry. This is mostly already done in GPL FAQ: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html I read parts of it and it does not answer them successfully. I also think that having such a long document (even longer than the licences which are themselves very long), is a big red flag that it is over-complicated. On Saturday 22 August 2009 18:31:38 Mikhael Goikhman wrote: On 21 Aug 2009 19:58:13 +0300, Shlomi Fish wrote: Many people are using the GPL, because it was recommended by their friends, while actually desiring a weak copyleft or even a permissive licence. To suggest that many people want to yield all their rights granted by Copyright Law and to use permissive license would not be right. However to suggest that their friends recommend GPL because it has no problems would be more correct. I don't understand. Many people who are new to the FOSS world release programs that they wrote under the GPL, without being fully aware of its implications, from various reasons. How they actually want people to use their software may be very different from the implications of the GPL. Like they may not mind people closing derived versions of the source under a different licence. Or they don't want the various anti-patent clauses of the GPL. Or they want something that is a weak copyleft licence. I already talked with someone who wanted to use the GPL, and after I asked him what he want, it was actually weak copyleft. Many people just hear about the GPL licences online and believe the hype about them, don't investigate what their implications are and so end up using them. And now the OpenBSD project wants to replace most GPL software with permissive, BSD-style licences (specifically the ISC licence, I believe). Good luck to this purely political action of BSD people. I predict it will fail in the whole, although they may replace 3-4 projects from 10. I don't know the scope of this replacement. In any case, most GPLed software out there is of little interest to anyone, or have permissively-licensed alternatives that are good enough, so that would be good enough. The user-land of the BSD distributions have already implemented a lot of the features of the GNU user-land. OpenBSD developers have some respect from me, mostly because they refuse to include non free software drivers. But they are still not too high on my scale, because their principles are somewhat twisty. They had an opportunity to be listed on the GNU site as a fully free OS, but explicitely refused to do the needed thing, i.e. to stop to include or advertise non-free software (in one or another way, being it optional packages/ports or on the web site). Developers who knowlingly choose GPL for the sake of free software have more respect from me. Well, arguably this is besides the point of the GPL suitability for other projects, and whether it encourages duplicate effort or not. But to answer your question - the FSF is far too picky and fanatical about its choice of what is a 100% Free Distribution. From my understanding, the FSF does not even want to have references or mentions of non-free-software anywhere, or that there will be repositories of non-FOSS software. This seems way too irrational and impractical. The following popular Linux distributions - Debian, Ubuntu, Mandriva, Fedora, openSUSE, Gentoo, Archlinux, Slackware - none of them are free enough for the FSF's tastes, and instead it has the following list - http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html - of incredibly obscure distributions, and gNewSense which is based on Ubuntu, only to exclude the non-free stuff. What in your opinion makes the GPL superior in that case? The superiority of GPL (and its family) over other licenses is well known. Anyone who is willing to have more free software chooses this license. It is the BSD people who should justify their need to replace free software just on the sake of easier serving non-free software, or out of the not-invented-here syndrom. Sorry, I lost context. Next time, please don't trim the message so much. 2) Your catalogizing of Artistic License as weak copyleft is false. Noone (except for you) considers it copyleft, see wikipedia. According to: [skipped to reduce message length] This seems like copyleft to me, at least as far
Re: New Essay - FOSS Licences Wars
Shlomi, have you noticed you are the only one so far that consistently cross post to several mailing lists? On Saturday, 3 בOctober 2009 15:48:53 Shlomi Fish wrote: ... the FSF is far too picky and fanatical about its choice of what is a 100% Free Distribution. From my understanding, the FSF does not even want to have references or mentions of non-free-software anywhere, or that there will be repositories of non-FOSS software. This seems way too irrational and impractical. Yeah, how irrational is the Free Software Foundation to refuse advertising and soliciting of non-free software... Shlomi, you are entitled to your own opinions and License choice. I (like most FOSS users and advocates) am already used to being called fanatical, irrational and impractical -- by users of non-free software. However, when someone makes these claims on a Linux mailing list they are obviously trolling -- maybe that's why you keep cross posting (trying to maximize impact). -- Oron Peled Voice: +972-4-8228492 o...@actcom.co.il http://users.actcom.co.il/~oron I just found out that the brain is like a computer. If that's true, then there really aren't any stupid people. Just people running Windows. ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: New Essay - FOSS Licences Wars
On 09/01/2009 11:21 PM, geoffrey mendelson wrote: snipped/ Apple is actually a pretty decent supporter of FOSS, they just chose not to use the GPL, which lead them to BSD instead of Linux, and they kept parts of their operating system and technology proprietary. They have an obligation to their stockholders to maintain the value of their investment. They also pay their employees fairly and have good benefits, something that some people on this list feel is their right as consultants marketing FOSS, but not the right of the developers of it. Geoff. A company which shuts down websites (to let their PR keep rolling on launch), forces other to remove videos (wired), uses the DMCA to hold down a wiki site (just to keep a format hidden) and much more are no supporters of FOSS. The obligation to stockholders is a lame excuse (just like, it's a company, they need to make money) for keeping a fake FOSS/Cool mask. -- Meir ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: New Essay - FOSS Licences Wars
On Sep 2, 2009, at 12:30 PM, Meir Kriheli wrote: A company which shuts down websites (to let their PR keep rolling on launch), How about a citation? This is to vague to be anything but FUD without one. forces other to remove videos (wired), That's simply wrong. Apple never forced Wired, they asked. They asked them to remove the video because it was a step by step tutorial on how to violate the Apple EULA. It was not a tutorial on how to install Darwin, a FOSS operating system on your PC, but a full out install the parts that are proprietary too video. What that has to do with FOSS, I have no idea. uses the DMCA to hold down a wiki site (just to keep a format hidden) and much more are no supporters of FOSS. I looked that up. The website in question had pages which suggested that a user circumvent a DRM method. Telling people how to circumvent DRM is a DMCA viloation, telling them should do it, but not how, may have been. The law was unclear. Instead of embroiling the EFF and Apple in a long and lengthy lawsuit, Apple decided to fold on the side of public freedom. It could have gone the other way, and due to the cost may have bankrupted the EFF. IMHO Apple did the right thing in both cases, they moved to protect their intelectual property as was permitted by law (and may be required by securities law, being a publicy traded company) and when it came down to fighting the EFF in court, they left the EFF standing. It is important to note that there was no legal precident set by dropping the cases, it still is a gray area in the law, and someone else could (and possibly may have to) do it all over again. The only victory for FOSS, if there was one at all, is Apple let the EFF live. The obligation to stockholders is a lame excuse (just like, it's a company, they need to make money) for keeping a fake FOSS/Cool mask. Why? They really do have both an ethical and a legal obligation to shareholders. It's the US, Meir, laws and ethics are different there than Israel. BTW, don't you do exactly that? Push FOSS/Cool and then charge customers for your services? Oh I forgot, you need to make money. Geoff. -- geoffrey mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM Jerusalem Israel geoffreymendel...@gmail.com ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: New Essay - FOSS Licences Wars
On Tuesday 01 September 2009 22:43:12 Steve Litt wrote: On Tuesday 01 September 2009 14:09:24 Shlomi Fish wrote: So why am I still sticking with the MIT/X11? The main reason I think is that as an open-source programmer, I'm not interested in worrying about how people abuse my code. I don't like Apple, and am not fond of many Microsoft products. But I'm not interested to prevent Apple or Microsoft or any other developer of commercial and/or proprietary software for Windows or Mac OS X or the iPhone or whatever from using my code in their projects. Even if they do monopolistic things with your code? See this: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9137291/Mac_clone_maker_sues_Apple_o ver_Snow_Leopard Sorry for breaking the URLs. It's a KMail boo-boo. I've thought about it and I'd like to say what I feel about it. The first part of the answer is that I'm don't want my software to police Ethics. If I make my licence GPL or similar, then no one will be able to use it in proprietary contexts, including many small software developers, or many big and small benevolent organisations (both software and non-software related) that are too scared of complex copyleft licences, for many reasons. So I don't only discriminate against abusive companies such as Apple, but I also discriminate against many other perfectly innocent corpora - some of which won't ask me for permission before moving elsewhere or writing something themselves. The second reason is that in accordance with: http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/philosophy/guide-to-neo-tech/ I think that while monopolies are often inevitable, then given good market conditions, they cannot remain abusive for long, or else they won't be able to sustain their market-share. And the current economical situation in many countries encourages many monopolies or oligopolies by giving huge contracts (of the military, the education system etc.) to only one very large contractor. (We may be getting off-topic). Therefore, I think that we should let the market should speak for itself, and we should not worry too much about monopolies. The third reason is that I think even the worst monopolies in history that I can think of were not as abusive as many governments: http://vip.latnet.lv/LPRA/100MilVictims.htm Corporations, while possibly being immoral and destructive are unlikely going to do something that stands against absolute ethics such as killing, stealing/theft or fraud, which governments have been routinely doing, even against their own citizens. Finally, let's say I'm writing a text editor called My Enhanced Text Editor or METE for short, and release it under a BSD-style licence. Someone (perhaps a single developer, perhaps a multi-million-dollar-corporation), takes it, enhances it and creates METE-Enterprise Edition, which becomes insanely popular and gains a near monopoly on the text editors' market. As the developer of METE, I can now work on integrating the good features of METE-EE into METE, so we will eventually regain some of the market share. And maybe some features are only of interest to METE-EE-Corp.'s customers and are of no interest to the open-source version, which can regain a substantial share of the market while still allowing METE-EE-Corp. to make nice sales. And naturally, as METE developers we're not standing still. As the developer of Freecell Solver, I got some very good ideas from my competitors. For example, I implemented a randomised scan with a user- configurable seed after seeing Freecell Tool, and I worked on a meta-scan for minimising the average solution length after some input from the creator of http://www.numin8r.us/programs/ ). Neither of them are free. Naturally, all of this is assuming there are legal problems such as software patents, but these may affect the original METE too, and are an even greater danger to commercial software than to gratis one. (Even Microsoft has been bitten by software patent litigations several times.) I should note that also there's a place in the market for both FOSS and non- FOSS alternatives. For example, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Bug_and_issue_tracking_software There are several high-quality FOSS alternatives, but many commercial and/or non-free offerings are also doing fine. And there isn't a clear winner. And in the software world there have been several historical transitions from one dominant alternative to a different one or to several alternatives. Regards, Shlomi Fish -- - Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ Best Introductory Programming Language - http://shlom.in/intro-lang God gave us two eyes and ten fingers so we will type five times as much as we read. ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: New Essay - FOSS Licences Wars
On 09/02/2009 01:16 PM, geoffrey mendelson wrote: On Sep 2, 2009, at 12:30 PM, Meir Kriheli wrote: A company which shuts down websites (to let their PR keep rolling on launch), How about a citation? This is to vague to be anything but FUD without one. ThinkSecret had to shutdown in exchange for keeping their sources hidden. Those sources where under NDA - that's not ThinkSecret's problem but Apple's, yet they were the one paying the price. forces other to remove videos (wired), That's simply wrong. Apple never forced Wired, they asked. They asked them to remove the video because it was a step by step tutorial on how to violate the Apple EULA. It was not a tutorial on how to install Darwin, a FOSS operating system on your PC, but a full out install the parts that are proprietary too video. You sure have nice website here, shame if something bad happened to it. Apple's EULA (or anyone else's for that matter) is not law, but their threat (backed by their very active legal department) sure was enough. We've suffered from the same at whatsup.org.il. An Israeli hardware company threatened us as one of our users wrote against their ethic an behavior. Our options were either revealing his IP or being sued. After consulting a known lawyer he advised us to delete the comment or fight a lengthy battle which we can't afford, and he handled it for us against the company, without his help (no charge) we've been in the mud. Since then it happened again. One can bet same decision was forced on Wired. What that has to do with FOSS, I have no idea. A company which tries to present itself as FOSS friendly has no business of NDAs, DRM, DMCA, legal bullying and lock ins. Sure you can do that (But they need to make money), just don't try to sell you're Cool, Hip and Theo de Raadt soul mate. Someone who pretends to support FOSS can't be against open society. They can't support gag orders just for a refund (looks like a standard corporate procedure), How can a law/state even allow such actions ? http://www.osnews.com/story/21937/ They can't support hiding information from the public to keep their phony image, http://www.osnews.com/story/21878/ : KIRO 7 Consumer Investigator Amy Clancy worked for 7 months to try and get her hands on the 800-page report by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. She used the Freedom Of Information Act, but Apple's lawyers kept on filing exemption after exemption, apparently trying to prevent the report from going public. The report shows in great detail several incident where iPods burst into flames and smoke, at times burning owners uses the DMCA to hold down a wiki site (just to keep a format hidden) and much more are no supporters of FOSS. I looked that up. The website in question had pages which suggested that a user circumvent a DRM method. Telling people how to circumvent DRM is a DMCA viloation, telling them should do it, but not how, may have been. It wasn't about DRMor circumention at all , more about interfacing with iPod and the iTunesDB. And they kept the pressure even when the pages were removed. DMCA had nothing to do with it. The law was unclear. Instead of embroiling the EFF and Apple in a long and lengthy lawsuit, Apple decided to fold on the side of public freedom. It could have gone the other way, and due to the cost may have bankrupted the EFF. Ain't that nice of Apple of letting the EFF linger on ? I must send a Thank you letter to Mr. Jobs. IIRC It's very simple. They've change the format, so the info on the Wiki (which helped other devices/software sync with iTunes/iPod) wasn't relevant anymore. And they still keep using those tactics to lock their users and prevent them from using anything else. Yep, very FOSS friendly: http://www.osnews.com/story/21881 IMHO Apple did the right thing in both cases, they moved to protect their intelectual property as was permitted by law (and may be required by securities law, being a publicy traded company) and when it came down to fighting the EFF in court, they left the EFF standing. It is important to note that there was no legal precident set by dropping the cases, it still is a gray area in the law, and someone else could (and possibly may have to) do it all over again. The only victory for FOSS, if there was one at all, is Apple let the EFF live. The obligation to stockholders is a lame excuse (just like, it's a company, they need to make money) for keeping a fake FOSS/Cool mask. Why? They really do have both an ethical and a legal obligation to shareholders. It's the US, Meir, laws and ethics are different there than Israel. You mean United Corporate of America ? The poster child of laws made for and by the corporations ? looking for their interests instead of the citizens ? Mussolini said: Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power - takes one to know one. BTW, don't you do exactly
Re: New Essay - FOSS Licences Wars
On Wednesday 02 September 2009 12:30:34 Meir Kriheli wrote: On 09/01/2009 11:21 PM, geoffrey mendelson wrote: snipped/ Apple is actually a pretty decent supporter of FOSS, they just chose not to use the GPL, which lead them to BSD instead of Linux, and they kept parts of their operating system and technology proprietary. They have an obligation to their stockholders to maintain the value of their investment. They also pay their employees fairly and have good benefits, something that some people on this list feel is their right as consultants marketing FOSS, but not the right of the developers of it. Geoff. A company which shuts down websites (to let their PR keep rolling on launch), forces other to remove videos (wired), uses the DMCA to hold down a wiki site (just to keep a format hidden) and much more are no supporters of FOSS. The obligation to stockholders is a lame excuse (just like, it's a company, they need to make money) for keeping a fake FOSS/Cool mask. In addition to what Meir said further, I should note that I've been collecting many anti-Apple links here: http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/apple/ Plenty of links and citations there. Regards, Shlomi Fish -- Meir ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il -- - Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ Stop Using MSIE - http://www.shlomifish.org/no-ie/ God gave us two eyes and ten fingers so we will type five times as much as we read. ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: New Essay - FOSS Licences Wars
On Friday 21 August 2009 19:58:13 Shlomi Fish wrote: Hi all! I have published a new essay about free software licences: http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/computers/open-source/foss-licences-wa rs/ Any comments will be welcome. Replying to myself (while de-CCing Perl-IL) I'd like to note that in my coverage of the reasons of why I prefer public domain licences instead of weak copyleft or strong copyleft licences, I probably missed the one that was the most important for me. So this is a GPL-vs.-BSDL post. I'll start with a little history. Back when I got my first computer - an 8088 PC XT with two 5.25 360 KB diskette drives, and no hard disk, I started programming in BASIC - first the one that came on the BIOS and then BASIC.COM or GWBASIC. (BASICA wouldn't run on my computer, for some reason). Back then, I programmed mostly games and my friends and I shared tips and programs between ourselves. I took a long break in programming, and then started programming BASIC again - this time QBasic. Then I got my father to buy a C compiler and he bought me Turbo C++, which I used for somewhat more serious stuff than BASIC (though I still used QBasic). Back then I wrote two libraries-of-sorts - called CCalc (for various mathematical routines) and CSee (for graphics) which I intended to distribute as shareware. I don't recall if I wanted to include the source. I've now made them, and some other C code from that era, available as FOSS at: http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/nostalgia/ In any case, back then we were used to the fact that we have to pay for our software, so I probably thought that making these libraries public-domain was not worth it. After I started getting into the world of UNIX, Linux, GNU, and open-source I realised there was a lot of software out there distributed with the source, which I could download and compile. I used to think of prep.ai.mit.edu (the old primary FTP host for gnu.org) as a cool collection of source code, which I could download, read the INSTALL file, build and install (sometimes after fixing the source). I wasn't interested in the implications of its FOSSness or the GPL licence. I also downloaded other software. I did know the software was gratis, as opposed to MiniSQL/mSQL which was sourceware and shareware, and it was good enough for me. After I became more involved and started playing with Linux for developing software on it, I learned even more and understood what free (as in speech) software or as it was later called open-source software was all about. One thing I understood back then, was that it took me a long time to fully get to the bottom of all the GPL's nuances, and that I thought the public domain was preferable, because I didn't care too much about people changing the licence to something else, or using it in their own non-free/non-GPL-compatible software. A lot of people I have talked with since have shown some mis- understandings of the GPL. In any case, I had initiated some FOSS projects under the public-domain which didn't amount to a lot. I also wrote a patch for GIMP (see http://www.shlomifish.org/grad-fu/ ) which I made available, but has since taken some other iterations and incarnations to be embedded. And then I released Freecell Solver (originally under the Public Domain - now MIT/X11) and did a lot of extensive work on it, and then started some other moderately successful MIT/X11 projects, or contributed to or adopted FOSS projects under various licences. So why am I still sticking with the MIT/X11? The main reason I think is that as an open-source programmer, I'm not interested in worrying about how people abuse my code. I don't like Apple, and am not fond of many Microsoft products. But I'm not interested to prevent Apple or Microsoft or any other developer of commercial and/or proprietary software for Windows or Mac OS X or the iPhone or whatever from using my code in their projects. In fact, I would prefer them to use my code than to create a proprietary replacement. Not to mention that making my code GPLed may also make it inappropriate for some developers of BSD software, BSD distributions, some developers of non-GPL-compatible-but-still- free software, etc. I don't want that - I want my code to be of the maximal use possible. I should note that I'm more worried about my code being used for malicious purposes by evil governments, as I think no big corporation in history has been as abusive as some past and present governments that come to mind. But preventing internal use or defence use or government use or whatever will make it non-FOSS, (and non-GPL-compatible), not to mention that adding random restrictions (cannot be used by Neonazis, cannot be used by terrorists, cannot be used by 'Zionists', etc.) will fragment the software world as a whole. Back to the topic: I don't want to be bothered about legal issues with my software. If you want to use my code - use it.
Re: New Essay - FOSS Licences Wars
On Tuesday 01 September 2009 14:09:24 Shlomi Fish wrote: So why am I still sticking with the MIT/X11? The main reason I think is that as an open-source programmer, I'm not interested in worrying about how people abuse my code. I don't like Apple, and am not fond of many Microsoft products. But I'm not interested to prevent Apple or Microsoft or any other developer of commercial and/or proprietary software for Windows or Mac OS X or the iPhone or whatever from using my code in their projects. Even if they do monopolistic things with your code? See this: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9137291/Mac_clone_maker_sues_Apple_over_Snow_Leopard I think the preceding article is one of the strongest arguments for copyleft I've ever seen. SteveT Steve Litt Recession Relief Package http://www.recession-relief.US Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: New Essay - FOSS Licences Wars
On Sep 1, 2009, at 10:43 PM, Steve Litt wrote: Even if they do monopolistic things with your code? See this: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9137291/Mac_clone_maker_sues_Apple_over_Snow_Leopard I think the preceding article is one of the strongest arguments for copyleft I've ever seen. Why? Apple is free to do what they want with their code. If they only implement drivers and kernel support for their own computers, how is that wrong? As for MacOS, the base operating system, Darwin, happens to be free as in beer. You can download the source code for it, and build your own drivers, system loader, etc. It's very easily done and has been done many times. There have been many distributions of Darwin for generic PC's, many of them bundled with bootleg MacOS distributions, some of them not. What is proprietary is the GUI called Aqua which runs under it and the programs which run under Aqua, although you can if you wish develop or port FOSS to it. See OpenOffice.org for example, the early versions of OO were launced under Aqua (but could have been launched via the Darwin CLI) and ran in XWindows (which was also FOSS). The newest version and a branch (NeoOffice) replaced the Xwindows UI with a Java one, so that it could be portable across all platforms and still access the GUI. Apple produces a better product (MacOS) and can afford to test and support it better because it is limited to their hardware. If they expanded it to support all PC's it would be much larger, require more testing and more support. Look at any PC generic product such as Windows or any distribution of Linux and tell me that it has testing and support anywhere near as good as MacOS. it doesn't. Windows Vista was a disaster of testing and support, and look at the size of Microsoft, and Linux, look at the quality of the latest releases from Ubuntu for example. 9.04 was IMHO something that made Windows Vista look like heaven. The release would not boot on small computers, and the small computer emergeny fix would not boot on bigger computers. It took over two months to release a 9.04 kernel that would both support optical drives and not memory leak to the point it had to be rebooted every 24 hours. Apple is actually a pretty decent supporter of FOSS, they just chose not to use the GPL, which lead them to BSD instead of Linux, and they kept parts of their operating system and technology proprietary. They have an obligation to their stockholders to maintain the value of their investment. They also pay their employees fairly and have good benefits, something that some people on this list feel is their right as consultants marketing FOSS, but not the right of the developers of it. Geoff. -- geoffrey mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM Jerusalem Israel geoffreymendel...@gmail.com ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: New Essay - FOSS Licences Wars
On 21 Aug 2009 19:58:13 +0300, Shlomi Fish wrote: I have published a new essay about free software licences: http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/computers/open-source/foss-licences-wars/ Any comments will be welcome. This article contains several factual errors as well as many arguments like I didn't read or read once and am unable to understand, so it should be bad, that makes it difficult to take the article seriously. But I will try to constructively comment anyway. 1) To use a term Wars together with FOSS Licenses is to seriously misunderstand the topic. Different licenses are for different needs. 2) Your catalogizing of Artistic License as weak copyleft is false. Noone (except for you) considers it copyleft, see wikipedia. 3) Your advice to use The Sleepycat License if one needs strong copyleft is very problematic in several aspects. First, The Sleepycat License is not the classical copyleft that mandates the free nature of the derivatives. It fails on at least one important property of the classical copyleft (i.e. GPL or GFDL) that is code interoperability. It is too easy to create derivative works that are under incompatible terms (think about any license that speaks about available sources, but incompatible with GPL; there are many of these). http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/copyleft.html Second, its use of reasonable conditions wording makes it too vague and open to all kinds of attacks. It is not even clear whether proprietary deriatives are allowed, and in which cases. I would say it has serious holes to be even considered Strong Copyleft. Anyone who uses this license for his own work should be prepared for it to be interpreted more as Permissive License than Copyleft License. Another problem of short license texts (see my point 11) is their ambiguity. It fully depends on the common practive and interpretation. If it is interpreted as yet another all-permissive license then it shares all their problems that the classical copyleft tries to solve, including the license proliferation. So it is irresponsible to blindly suggest The Sleepycat License for every programmer without describing its multiple problems. On the contrary, the GNU GPL was written and verified by the best lawers and found not to contain any known hole, was proven to be enforceable in courts, and does not have interoperability problem mentioned above. 4) To say GPL v3 has more restriction than v2 is to show ignorance on the topic. All GPL versions implement the same idea that was not changed since its start (enforce the four software freedoms for any evolution of the program). Just some bugs were fixed for the changed reality. 5) All classical copyleft license are incompatible between themselves, on purpose. The way to make them compatible is by adding explicit relicensing permission (say GPL v3 and AGPL v3 are mutually compatible). Or dual licensing, including the or later tip. 6) Your comments about Affero GPL are unfounded. It seems you think that this license is applicable to any normal (desktop) program. It is not. It is only applicable to a special program that was designed (and was born from the start) as a network interface (like web service) _and_ has a functionality to download its own source code over network. Then it is believed that removing this functionality in deriative works would mean turning such free software service into a non free software service, that would indicate a hole in Strong Copyleft in a multi-computer environment and in ability to enforce providing the four freedoms to users. There are cases when no other license alternatives for web services (designed to be free and trustful) exist other than AGPL. No sane user would/should use Online Secure Voting or other services if he can't verify its sources first. Including you. So please either remove your advice to avoid non-FOSS licenses, or remove your prejudice against AGPL. 7) You always use Licence spelling when you refer to the licenses, even if the official names have License spelling. I would not do this. 8) To advocate one MIT license in all cases is not wise. Then you would better start to advocate Loosy Software (5 freedoms, the fifth is to be able to convert to a closed source) and not Free Software (4 freedoms). 9) Unfortunately the section Bad Idea No. 6: Using the GPL or the LGPL deeply places the whole article into the troll category. It seems you are very confused. On one hand you use the Free Software definition by FSF, and on the other hand you dismiss the licences that implement this FSF definition in the most optimal, practical and preserving way. This section also sounds as FUD. If you don't understand GPL as you say (although it is crystal clear; enforce the 4 software freedoms for any evolution of the program, using legal language), you should not write an article about FOSS Licenses and start unneeded wars. Sorry to say this. 10) I had no problem understanding the Sleepycat licence, the Perl Artistic
Re: New Essay - FOSS Licences Wars
On Sunday 23 August 2009 05:43:55 you wrote: Hi Steve, and everybody! On Saturday 22 August 2009 21:54:35 Steve Litt wrote: I think a lot of people (including me) like GPL's guarantee that they're not doing unpaid work for Microsoft (or Apple). My experience with VimOutliner, which is the only one of my free software projects that actually attracted other developers, indicates that its GPL nature is attractive to developers. I don't mind companies or individuals using my software commercially. In fact, I absolutely would be delighted in any beneficial use of it. I should also note that Microsoft, Apple or whoever are still free to use your GPLed software as long as they comply with the GPL, which allows them to sell it. For example, RHEL and commercial UNIXes contain a lot of GPLed and other FOSS code, and that's OK. This is a very personal thing. A lot of people very much hate commercial use of their free software, for one of two reasons: 1) The programmer does all the work, and the company gets all the money. Many people, when confronted with this situation, look in the mirror and the mirror image says to them sucker! 2) The programmer hates Microsoft (or Apple or Google or whatever), and releasing permissive enables the hated company to profit off the programmer's work. In this case, going GPL is sort of like a boycott. SteveT Steve Litt Recession Relief Package http://www.recession-relief.US Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: New Essay - FOSS Licences Wars
Hi Steve, and everybody! On Saturday 22 August 2009 21:54:35 Steve Litt wrote: On Saturday 22 August 2009 03:21:13 you wrote: On Friday 21 August 2009 22:07:17 Steve Litt wrote: I disagree with some of your conclusions, but obviously your facts are spot on. Thanks. I would be happy to hear any arguments you have against my conclusions. Maybe I'll change my opinions. OK, here's an example. You implied in a few places that if software 1 was GPL, software 2 never would have existed, but if software 1 was MIT/BSD, software 2 would have existed though possibly not as free software. For instance: My response is that this was indeed a problem and inconvenienced the users of Exceed. However, if X-Windows were GPLed, then the people who made Exceed and wanted to sell it, would not have made it in the first place, because they had to make it GPLed and keep it as FOSS. So either they would have implemented it from scratch or not at all. My opinion is they very well might have made an Exceed GPL package, depending on how much of their incentive was selling software (notice I didn't say making money), vs how much priority was scratching an itch on Windows. Yes, you're right about that. I'm not ruling out that in case X-Windows was GPLed, then Exceed would have been created and released as FOSS, but it's still possible it would not have been created at all. Then there's this: Furthermore, If X11 had been initiated under a non-BSD-style-licence, then it is possible it would not have become as ubiquitous as it is in the UNIX world, thus making it irrelevant to port it to Windows in the first place. My opinion would be the opposite -- it would have been adopted even more universally had it been GPL. After all, the GPL Linux kernel plus the GNU utilities greatly outsold the older and more established BSDs. I don't think the GPL is what made the Linux kernel popular. Apache, X- Windows, bind, and a lot of other software is very ubiquitous and is under a permissive licence, and it is also commonly used on Linux. I now think the open-development model of Linux, as well as Linus Torvalds' extraordinary leadership (and the fact the BSD code was initially caught in the ugly ATT lawsuit, which clouded its future), are what ultimately made Linux popular. For all we know, it could have been BSDLed and just as popular. I think a lot of people (including me) like GPL's guarantee that they're not doing unpaid work for Microsoft (or Apple). My experience with VimOutliner, which is the only one of my free software projects that actually attracted other developers, indicates that its GPL nature is attractive to developers. I don't mind companies or individuals using my software commercially. In fact, I absolutely would be delighted in any beneficial use of it. I should also note that Microsoft, Apple or whoever are still free to use your GPLed software as long as they comply with the GPL, which allows them to sell it. For example, RHEL and commercial UNIXes contain a lot of GPLed and other FOSS code, and that's OK. My experience with Freecell Solver has been that developers are also happy with Public Domain-like licences. While relatively few code contributions made it into the main code, it was integrated into several larger projects (both FOSS and non-FOSS) and it was even forked once (privately at first, and then the fork was published). And I received a lot of useful input and inspirations from my users, co-developers and even competitors, which greatly enhanced the product. It is possible VimOutliner is simply the most attractive project of yours, not due to its licence, but due to its technological nature. My view is license should depend on use. For instance, it's fine that VimOutliner is GPL because it's not a development tool and it's unlikely someone would use its parts to make something else. On the other hand, my Node.pm tool (http://www.troubleshooters.com/projects/Node/index.htm) is meant as a development tool that I wanted to be able to produce a proprietary program, so I made it GPL with an exception (http://www.troubleshooters.cxm/projects/Node/COPYING.LPDTL.1.0). OK. Another use of some restrictive licenses is to make war on software patents, which I think almost everyone believes to be unnecessary and obnoxious. The Apache Licence also has an anti-patent clause of some sort, and is a permissive licence. The GPL and friends do not prevent the software patents problem (which I agree is a huge problem), but they may make it better. Don't know. In any case, I think we should fight software patents in other ways aside from using restrictive licences. Another use of restrictive licenses is to prevent things similar to the kerberos mess. See http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/ms_tuncom/major/mtc-00029523.htm and search for
Re: New Essay - FOSS Licences Wars
I do completely understand the attractiveness of the MIT license. It's simple and can't come back to bite you later. I'm just saying the GPL has plenty of benefits. I am not sure I understand. MIT license can't come back and bite me? Correct me if I am wrong but in MIT license someone can take my software and make it proprietary, add some features and sell it. If it was GPL he/she could still sell it but I had the same option since I can see his/her additions to the software. -- Ori Idan ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: New Essay - FOSS Licences Wars
On Sunday 23 August 2009 01:49:09 you wrote: I do completely understand the attractiveness of the MIT license. It's simple and can't come back to bite you later. I'm just saying the GPL has plenty of benefits. I am not sure I understand. MIT license can't come back and bite me? Correct me if I am wrong but in MIT license someone can take my software and make it proprietary, add some features and sell it. If it was GPL he/she could still sell it but I had the same option since I can see his/her additions to the software. You're absolutely right. The bite I was referring to was when you have your GPL software and find other software you'd love to combine with it, but you can't because they have incompatible licenses. That's much less likely to happen with MIT software. SteveT Steve Litt Recession Relief Package http://www.recession-relief.US Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: New Essay - FOSS Licences Wars
On Sunday 23 August 2009 08:49:09 Ori Idan wrote: I do completely understand the attractiveness of the MIT license. It's simple and can't come back to bite you later. I'm just saying the GPL has plenty of benefits. I am not sure I understand. MIT license can't come back and bite me? Correct me if I am wrong but in MIT license someone can take my software and make it proprietary, add some features and sell it. He cannot take *your* software directly. Your original applications remain under the X11 licence, and other people who've downloaded them can make them or derived works stay X11Led. What is possible is that someone will make a derived copy, and sub-license it. What he meant by can't come back to bite you later was that you cannot be sued for deficiencies in the code or otherwise be harmed in any way as the originator of the program, if you make it X11Led. If it was GPL he/she could still sell it but I had the same option since I can see his/her additions to the software. Right. Personally, as a creator of software licensed under permissive licences, I'm not worried about people making derived works non-free, and in fact sometimes I even find it desirable. (Like the case of the shareware Freecell 3-D program that incorporated Freecell Solver). And some people and organisations have a natural aversion from the GPL or even the LGPL, which making your program X11L or similar happily avoids. Regards, Shlomi Fish -- - Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ The Human Hacking Field Guide - http://xrl.us/bjn8q God gave us two eyes and ten fingers so we will type five times as much as we read. ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: New Essay - FOSS Licences Wars
On Sunday 23 August 2009 16:14:28 Steve Litt wrote: On Sunday 23 August 2009 05:43:55 you wrote: Hi Steve, and everybody! On Saturday 22 August 2009 21:54:35 Steve Litt wrote: I think a lot of people (including me) like GPL's guarantee that they're not doing unpaid work for Microsoft (or Apple). My experience with VimOutliner, which is the only one of my free software projects that actually attracted other developers, indicates that its GPL nature is attractive to developers. I don't mind companies or individuals using my software commercially. In fact, I absolutely would be delighted in any beneficial use of it. I should also note that Microsoft, Apple or whoever are still free to use your GPLed software as long as they comply with the GPL, which allows them to sell it. For example, RHEL and commercial UNIXes contain a lot of GPLed and other FOSS code, and that's OK. This is a very personal thing. A lot of people very much hate commercial use of their free software, for one of two reasons: I should note that the GPL (or any other permissive or copyleft licences) are not against commercial use as defined by the FSF. You can sell GPLed software and there are other ways to make money out of it. For example, Cygnus systems (now part of Red Hat) has been providing licensed versions of the GNU toolchain with support, so they sell it to you, and you pay them for support. See Give Away the Recipe, Open a Restaurant: http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/magic-cauldron/ar01s09.html Similarly, Red Hat are selling RHEL, or OpenNT - Interix - Microsoft's Services for UNIX has contained gcc, and other copyleft software. 1) The programmer does all the work, and the company gets all the money. Many people, when confronted with this situation, look in the mirror and the mirror image says to them sucker! This can happen with GPLed software too as illustrated above. 2) The programmer hates Microsoft (or Apple or Google or whatever), and releasing permissive enables the hated company to profit off the programmer's work. In this case, going GPL is sort of like a boycott. And sometimes they can profit from GPLed software, too. I think you shouldn't restrict your software just because you hate Microsoft or Apple or whoever. As ESR says in http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html , a hacker should not spend a lot of energy hating Microsoft. He also once said he had no problems after Microsoft incorporated (BSD-style) code he wrote into their programs (while still crediting him in the about dialog). I dislike Apple, but I wouldn't mind them using my software, because my software is free-as-in-speech for everyone. The only way to prevent companies from making any use of your software is to add non-commercial, etc. clauses, but that will make it non-free and non-GPL-compatible. I do agree that copyleft licences may prevent more abuses than permissive ones (either by individuals or by multi-milliard companies), but they have their own drawbacks as I demonstrated. Regards, Shlomi Fish SteveT Steve Litt Recession Relief Package http://www.recession-relief.US Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il -- - Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ Freecell Solver - http://fc-solve.berlios.de/ God gave us two eyes and ten fingers so we will type five times as much as we read. ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: New Essay - FOSS Licences Wars
On Friday 21 August 2009 22:07:17 Steve Litt wrote: On Friday 21 August 2009 12:58:13 Shlomi Fish wrote: Hi all! I have published a new essay about free software licences: http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/computers/open-source/foss-licences- wa rs/ Any comments will be welcome. Excellent essay! Thanks! I like the way you immediately revealed your predjudice (pro- MIT) so as to get that out of the way. :-) I disagree with some of your conclusions, but obviously your facts are spot on. Thanks. I would be happy to hear any arguments you have against my conclusions. Maybe I'll change my opinions. I especially like this: 3. Write a GPLed server for solving Freecell that the graphical game would communicate with using TCP/IP or a different IPC mechanism. That's an excellent encapsulation method not only for variables, but for licenses too. Yes. It's not always feasible to do that. For example, you cannot do it with the strong-copyleft Berkeley DB or the formerly GPLed Qt, without really killing performance *and* going through a lot of trouble. But it is often an option, as is the case for a Freecell solver. BTW, I do actually have some aspirations of creating a web-service for fc- solve in order to provide hints for http://cards.wikia.com/wiki/World_of_Solitaire or a similar online Solitaire game. So it seems some of the hypothetical anti-GPL measures are actually otherwise useful technologically. Best regards, Shlomi Fish SteveT Steve Litt Recession Relief Package http://www.recession-relief.US Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il -- - Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/ways_to_do_it.html God gave us two eyes and ten fingers so we will type five times as much as we read. ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: New Essay - FOSS Licences Wars
I also like the article, it really shows most of the licenses and explains them. I would be happy if it contains more information about the clauses in BSD licenses. As for myself I prefer writing GPL applications as GPL license keeps the software free so it actually defends me from people that will take my software and make it propriatry. -- Ori Idan On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 10:21 AM, Shlomi Fish shlo...@iglu.org.il wrote: On Friday 21 August 2009 22:07:17 Steve Litt wrote: On Friday 21 August 2009 12:58:13 Shlomi Fish wrote: Hi all! I have published a new essay about free software licences: http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/computers/open-source/foss-licences- wa rs/ Any comments will be welcome. Excellent essay! Thanks! I like the way you immediately revealed your predjudice (pro- MIT) so as to get that out of the way. :-) I disagree with some of your conclusions, but obviously your facts are spot on. Thanks. I would be happy to hear any arguments you have against my conclusions. Maybe I'll change my opinions. I especially like this: 3. Write a GPLed server for solving Freecell that the graphical game would communicate with using TCP/IP or a different IPC mechanism. That's an excellent encapsulation method not only for variables, but for licenses too. Yes. It's not always feasible to do that. For example, you cannot do it with the strong-copyleft Berkeley DB or the formerly GPLed Qt, without really killing performance *and* going through a lot of trouble. But it is often an option, as is the case for a Freecell solver. BTW, I do actually have some aspirations of creating a web-service for fc- solve in order to provide hints for http://cards.wikia.com/wiki/World_of_Solitaire or a similar online Solitaire game. So it seems some of the hypothetical anti-GPL measures are actually otherwise useful technologically. Best regards, Shlomi Fish SteveT Steve Litt Recession Relief Package http://www.recession-relief.US Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il -- - Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/ways_to_do_it.html God gave us two eyes and ten fingers so we will type five times as much as we read. ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: New Essay - FOSS Licences Wars
On Saturday 22 August 2009 03:21:13 you wrote: On Friday 21 August 2009 22:07:17 Steve Litt wrote: I disagree with some of your conclusions, but obviously your facts are spot on. Thanks. I would be happy to hear any arguments you have against my conclusions. Maybe I'll change my opinions. OK, here's an example. You implied in a few places that if software 1 was GPL, software 2 never would have existed, but if software 1 was MIT/BSD, software 2 would have existed though possibly not as free software. For instance: My response is that this was indeed a problem and inconvenienced the users of Exceed. However, if X-Windows were GPLed, then the people who made Exceed and wanted to sell it, would not have made it in the first place, because they had to make it GPLed and keep it as FOSS. So either they would have implemented it from scratch or not at all. My opinion is they very well might have made an Exceed GPL package, depending on how much of their incentive was selling software (notice I didn't say making money), vs how much priority was scratching an itch on Windows. Then there's this: Furthermore, If X11 had been initiated under a non-BSD-style-licence, then it is possible it would not have become as ubiquitous as it is in the UNIX world, thus making it irrelevant to port it to Windows in the first place. My opinion would be the opposite -- it would have been adopted even more universally had it been GPL. After all, the GPL Linux kernel plus the GNU utilities greatly outsold the older and more established BSDs. I think a lot of people (including me) like GPL's guarantee that they're not doing unpaid work for Microsoft (or Apple). My experience with VimOutliner, which is the only one of my free software projects that actually attracted other developers, indicates that its GPL nature is attractive to developers. My view is license should depend on use. For instance, it's fine that VimOutliner is GPL because it's not a development tool and it's unlikely someone would use its parts to make something else. On the other hand, my Node.pm tool (http://www.troubleshooters.com/projects/Node/index.htm) is meant as a development tool that I wanted to be able to produce a proprietary program, so I made it GPL with an exception (http://www.troubleshooters.cxm/projects/Node/COPYING.LPDTL.1.0). Another use of some restrictive licenses is to make war on software patents, which I think almost everyone believes to be unnecessary and obnoxious. Another use of restrictive licenses is to prevent things similar to the kerberos mess. See http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/ms_tuncom/major/mtc-00029523.htm and search for Kerberos to see what I'm talking about. I do completely understand the attractiveness of the MIT license. It's simple and can't come back to bite you later. I'm just saying the GPL has plenty of benefits. Thanks SteveT Steve Litt Recession Relief Package http://www.recession-relief.US Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
Re: New Essay - FOSS Licences Wars
On Friday 21 August 2009 12:58:13 Shlomi Fish wrote: Hi all! I have published a new essay about free software licences: http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/computers/open-source/foss-licences-wa rs/ Any comments will be welcome. Excellent essay! I like the way you immediately revealed your predjudice (pro- MIT) so as to get that out of the way. I disagree with some of your conclusions, but obviously your facts are spot on. I especially like this: 3. Write a GPLed server for solving Freecell that the graphical game would communicate with using TCP/IP or a different IPC mechanism. That's an excellent encapsulation method not only for variables, but for licenses too. SteveT Steve Litt Recession Relief Package http://www.recession-relief.US Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt ___ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
