7 ms·

Copyleft addresses the freeloader problem, true - but GPL goes on to grab patent rights - that's what usually prevents corporate use. Sadly, you aren't the only

Copyleft addresses the freeloader problem, true - but GPL goes on to grab patent rights - that's what usually prevents corporate use. Sadly, you aren't the only one whom confuses copyleft with GPL; which has (unnecessarily) badly tainted the idea of copyleft, itself. GPL deserves its terrible reputation, copyleft doesn't. But someone (cough, cough) over-reached.

CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
Which copyleft licenses would these corporations be okay with?
stcredzero 10y ago
Copyleft addresses the freeloader problem Is there a freeloader problem? How do we know if people just aren't that interested in the software?
- thomasahle 10y ago
  Easy. If they don't use it, they're probably not interested. If they use it without giving back (or forward), they're probably free loading.
  - stcredzero 10y ago
    How is that a problem? I take a book out of the library. (That institution is both about free as in speech and free as in beer.) If I become a huge fan, then I might buy the book for myself and start dressing up like the characters at conventions. If I'm not that into it, I return the book. If one puts something out there for "free" then one is not entitled to a return. It's the model which is broken, not the users!
    - thomasahle 10y ago
      I was answering the second question, not whether free loading is an actual problem. The answer to that is of course up to the original author, who is entitled to use any license they like. Regarding your "peek and return" scenario, GPL actually lets you do that, and I wouldn't consider you an actual "user".
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- Nomentatus 10y ago
  Yes, there is a freeloader problem - the vast majority of corporations using Linux get real business value but give back zero. But if you scare away the majority of businesses with your license, you haven't solved that freeloader problem.
davexunit 10y ago
The GPL does not have a terrible reputation. It does, however, have a vocal group of a corporate sponsored detractors that are trying to destroy it. Lots and lots of people are thankful for the GPL, myself included.
- ubernostrum 10y ago
  Speaking as a long-time contributor to and maintainer of permissive/BSD software: the thing about the GPL family which drives me away is partly philosophical disagreement, but mostly uncertainty. You can if you like say this is just the "U" in "FUD", but there's truth here. For example: the FSF's stance on certain provisions of the GPL, like the ones on linking, is as far as I know completely untested in court and at odds with what appear to be both established legal and common-sense/intuitive notions of what constitutes a derivative work. And I'm not speaking from inexperience there: the Django project had to go many rounds on this because the maintained MySQL driver modules for Python are all GPL. Does this end up GPL'ing Django since it supports MySQL as an option and, thanks to the nature of Python's import system, will share address space with a GPL'd module if you use MySQL as your database? Or does the fact that it's an end-user choice and Django is simply shipping code to normalize API access to any of multiple drivers on multiple DB engines (leaning heavily on PEP 249, which itself is a normalized API for Python DB drivers to expose) avoid that? Nobody seems to be able to give a clear answer, because there is no clear answer, legally, on when the GPL's derivative-works clause is invoked or even if the GPL's derivative-works clause is legally sensible.
  - belorn 10y ago
    The linking aspect is only a line in the sand where fsf will enforce the license, and is not part of the license text. To my knowledge it comes from the idea that binaries with linked libraries will generally not work without those libraries and that that dependency is a strong indicator that we are dealing with a single work rather than multiple independent and separate works. In contrast to uncertainty, I think we can be quite certain that django works without mysql (I personally run several sites with postgresql). Modules for django would likely not work without django, so they are likely derivative of django and not the other way around. I also vaguely recall fsf stating that they don't consider the linking guidelines to be that relevant for software written in languages without linking, which would include python programs. Is your problem with the license that FSF as an organization has an opinion on how derivate works can be identified for software?
wolrah 10y ago
I'm curious how you believe the GPL has overstepped regarding patents in the context of a copyleft license. GPLv2 says very little directly about patents, only touching on the topic by saying that they're not an excuse for not complying. That implies some things for patent holders on relevant topics but isn't explicit about it. GPLv3 basically makes those implications explicit, stating clearly that if you hold or license any relevant patents you must be able to freely license them downstream. To me that stuff is implied with copyleft, because how else could it work? Since patents restrict my ability to legally redistribute the code, and the whole point of copyleft is to ensure my ability to legally redistribute the code, I don't see how they're separable as long as software patents remain being a thing.
- jdmichal 10y ago
  Does it restrict your capability to distribute the code? Or the user's capability to run the code unless they have properly licensed the patent contained therein? I'm specifically thinking about sub-pixel font rendering, for which FreeType contains code which is disabled by default due to patents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering#Patents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering#Patents That would imply that it's the latter. Which, of course, is still an issue for the user. But it does point to the GPL not requiring the patent clause in order to meet its copyleft goals.
  - Nomentatus 10y ago
    Interesting angle. I'd say the courts haven't ruled on this. FreeType wasn't created by Microsoft, obviously. It has no license for M's patented tech so it can't include the code live, period. I presume that FreeType is trying to skirt the law by making it easy for users to break the law without, they hope, being seen as breaking the law themselves. I don't know what the court would decide if Microsoft sued. Presumably FreeType would say that the code was there just to help future programmers catch up when the patent expires. I'm guessing they wouldn't win that one. So, I'm going to say it's not a sufficient example.
- Nomentatus 10y ago
  "Downstream" means everybody, of course, forever. You've just lost your patented tech, so if you don't want to sell it outright, you can't touch anything GPL. Given how complex technologies are, now, that severely limits where GPL2 and 3 can be used. So you might ask, why does Google use the Linux kernel? Perhaps because they don't have to modify the kernel to accommodate inventions they wish to preserve, for public software such as Android; but more importantly the kernel is useless by itself and the license doesn't extend to libraries (Google spent billions recreating the GNU libraries to be sure of that), so the license for the kernel has no practical importance. The rights granted are "stranded", as it were. Clever on the part of Google. But in most cases, the GPL or MPL can't be gotten around in that manner. The googleable rubric for GPL2 is "GPL's Implied Patent Grant." In sum, the GPL seizes all relevant patent rights from any contributor (regardless of whether those contributions related to their patents, IIRC) and any distributor. In some cases that doesn't matter - in other cases, it does. If you want to retain control of who gets to use your patents, and patented tech, that's a big problem. If your invention is a hardware invention, the GPL still scoops it up - their language doesn't exclude rights to hardware inventions - so you may actually have the right to build any such patented hardware as long as you put Linux in it: if the patent owner touched Linux. It would take a court case to be certain this wasn't a risk. This also seems to mean (even for GPL2) that if you explicitly license one entity to use GPLed software with your patented tech (hardware or software), then you've just given a free license to every soul on earth to do the same, with no royalties. In some cases, that might not matter. In many other cases, it does. "In contrast, a GPLv2 licensee, under the doctrine of implied patent license, is free to practice any patent claims held by the licensor that cover “reasonably contemplated uses” of the GPL’d code, which may very well include creation and distribution of modified works since the GPL’s terms, under which the patented code is distributed, expressly permits such activity. Further supporting this result is the Federal Circuit’s pronouncement that the recipient of a patented article has, not only an implied license to make, use, and sell the article, but also an implied patent license to repair the article to enable it to function properly, Bottom Line Mgmt., Inc. v. Pan Man, Inc., 228 F.3d 1352 (Fed. Cir. 2000). Additionally, the Federal Circuit extended that rule to include any future recipients of the patented article, not just the direct recipient from the distributor. This theory comports well with the idea of Free Software, whereby software is distributed among many entities within the community for the purpose of constant evolution and improvement. In this way, the law of implied patent license used by the GPLv2 ensures that the community mutually benefits from the licensing of patents to any single community member." https://copyleft.org/guide/comprehensive-gpl-guidech7.html https://copyleft.org/guide/comprehensive-gpl-guidech7.html
davidgerard 10y ago
If you think protection of software patents is a good idea, you may be deeply and fundamentally wrong about software.
- Nomentatus 10y ago
  But it's not about software patents - GPL makes absolutely no distinction between software and hardware patents, it wants them both! If they didn't grab hardware patent licenses (or licenses to mixed hardware/software inventions) that would be an entirely different worldview. I'd very much welcome that change.
  - davidgerard 10y ago
    That would only mean you can't use a patent to make the software non-free. It would be more convincing if you gave a clear example. (that wasn't functionally an attempted end-run around software freedom.)
    - Nomentatus 10y ago
      It would mean anyone willing to use that software can use your hardware invention without paying you. No thanks. You can dispute this I suppose because the wording of the license is awful and far too terse, and hasn't been tested in court - but for businesses, that IS the risk, and therefore the problem.

CiPHPerCoder 10y ago

Which copyleft licenses would these corporations be okay with?

stcredzero 10y ago

Copyleft addresses the freeloader problem Is there a freeloader problem? How do we know if people just aren't that interested in the software?

thomasahle 10y ago
Easy. If they don't use it, they're probably not interested. If they use it without giving back (or forward), they're probably free loading.
- stcredzero 10y ago
  How is that a problem? I take a book out of the library. (That institution is both about free as in speech and free as in beer.) If I become a huge fan, then I might buy the book for myself and start dressing up like the characters at conventions. If I'm not that into it, I return the book. If one puts something out there for "free" then one is not entitled to a return. It's the model which is broken, not the users!
  - thomasahle 10y ago
    I was answering the second question, not whether free loading is an actual problem. The answer to that is of course up to the original author, who is entitled to use any license they like. Regarding your "peek and return" scenario, GPL actually lets you do that, and I wouldn't consider you an actual "user".
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
Nomentatus 10y ago
Yes, there is a freeloader problem - the vast majority of corporations using Linux get real business value but give back zero. But if you scare away the majority of businesses with your license, you haven't solved that freeloader problem.

davexunit 10y ago

The GPL does not have a terrible reputation. It does, however, have a vocal group of a corporate sponsored detractors that are trying to destroy it. Lots and lots of people are thankful for the GPL, myself included.

ubernostrum 10y ago
Speaking as a long-time contributor to and maintainer of permissive/BSD software: the thing about the GPL family which drives me away is partly philosophical disagreement, but mostly uncertainty. You can if you like say this is just the "U" in "FUD", but there's truth here. For example: the FSF's stance on certain provisions of the GPL, like the ones on linking, is as far as I know completely untested in court and at odds with what appear to be both established legal and common-sense/intuitive notions of what constitutes a derivative work. And I'm not speaking from inexperience there: the Django project had to go many rounds on this because the maintained MySQL driver modules for Python are all GPL. Does this end up GPL'ing Django since it supports MySQL as an option and, thanks to the nature of Python's import system, will share address space with a GPL'd module if you use MySQL as your database? Or does the fact that it's an end-user choice and Django is simply shipping code to normalize API access to any of multiple drivers on multiple DB engines (leaning heavily on PEP 249, which itself is a normalized API for Python DB drivers to expose) avoid that? Nobody seems to be able to give a clear answer, because there is no clear answer, legally, on when the GPL's derivative-works clause is invoked or even if the GPL's derivative-works clause is legally sensible.
- belorn 10y ago
  The linking aspect is only a line in the sand where fsf will enforce the license, and is not part of the license text. To my knowledge it comes from the idea that binaries with linked libraries will generally not work without those libraries and that that dependency is a strong indicator that we are dealing with a single work rather than multiple independent and separate works. In contrast to uncertainty, I think we can be quite certain that django works without mysql (I personally run several sites with postgresql). Modules for django would likely not work without django, so they are likely derivative of django and not the other way around. I also vaguely recall fsf stating that they don't consider the linking guidelines to be that relevant for software written in languages without linking, which would include python programs. Is your problem with the license that FSF as an organization has an opinion on how derivate works can be identified for software?

wolrah 10y ago

I'm curious how you believe the GPL has overstepped regarding patents in the context of a copyleft license. GPLv2 says very little directly about patents, only touching on the topic by saying that they're not an excuse for not complying. That implies some things for patent holders on relevant topics but isn't explicit about it. GPLv3 basically makes those implications explicit, stating clearly that if you hold or license any relevant patents you must be able to freely license them downstream. To me that stuff is implied with copyleft, because how else could it work? Since patents restrict my ability to legally redistribute the code, and the whole point of copyleft is to ensure my ability to legally redistribute the code, I don't see how they're separable as long as software patents remain being a thing.

jdmichal 10y ago
Does it restrict your capability to distribute the code? Or the user's capability to run the code unless they have properly licensed the patent contained therein? I'm specifically thinking about sub-pixel font rendering, for which FreeType contains code which is disabled by default due to patents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering#Patents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering#Patents That would imply that it's the latter. Which, of course, is still an issue for the user. But it does point to the GPL not requiring the patent clause in order to meet its copyleft goals.
- Nomentatus 10y ago
  Interesting angle. I'd say the courts haven't ruled on this. FreeType wasn't created by Microsoft, obviously. It has no license for M's patented tech so it can't include the code live, period. I presume that FreeType is trying to skirt the law by making it easy for users to break the law without, they hope, being seen as breaking the law themselves. I don't know what the court would decide if Microsoft sued. Presumably FreeType would say that the code was there just to help future programmers catch up when the patent expires. I'm guessing they wouldn't win that one. So, I'm going to say it's not a sufficient example.
Nomentatus 10y ago
"Downstream" means everybody, of course, forever. You've just lost your patented tech, so if you don't want to sell it outright, you can't touch anything GPL. Given how complex technologies are, now, that severely limits where GPL2 and 3 can be used. So you might ask, why does Google use the Linux kernel? Perhaps because they don't have to modify the kernel to accommodate inventions they wish to preserve, for public software such as Android; but more importantly the kernel is useless by itself and the license doesn't extend to libraries (Google spent billions recreating the GNU libraries to be sure of that), so the license for the kernel has no practical importance. The rights granted are "stranded", as it were. Clever on the part of Google. But in most cases, the GPL or MPL can't be gotten around in that manner. The googleable rubric for GPL2 is "GPL's Implied Patent Grant." In sum, the GPL seizes all relevant patent rights from any contributor (regardless of whether those contributions related to their patents, IIRC) and any distributor. In some cases that doesn't matter - in other cases, it does. If you want to retain control of who gets to use your patents, and patented tech, that's a big problem. If your invention is a hardware invention, the GPL still scoops it up - their language doesn't exclude rights to hardware inventions - so you may actually have the right to build any such patented hardware as long as you put Linux in it: if the patent owner touched Linux. It would take a court case to be certain this wasn't a risk. This also seems to mean (even for GPL2) that if you explicitly license one entity to use GPLed software with your patented tech (hardware or software), then you've just given a free license to every soul on earth to do the same, with no royalties. In some cases, that might not matter. In many other cases, it does. "In contrast, a GPLv2 licensee, under the doctrine of implied patent license, is free to practice any patent claims held by the licensor that cover “reasonably contemplated uses” of the GPL’d code, which may very well include creation and distribution of modified works since the GPL’s terms, under which the patented code is distributed, expressly permits such activity. Further supporting this result is the Federal Circuit’s pronouncement that the recipient of a patented article has, not only an implied license to make, use, and sell the article, but also an implied patent license to repair the article to enable it to function properly, Bottom Line Mgmt., Inc. v. Pan Man, Inc., 228 F.3d 1352 (Fed. Cir. 2000). Additionally, the Federal Circuit extended that rule to include any future recipients of the patented article, not just the direct recipient from the distributor. This theory comports well with the idea of Free Software, whereby software is distributed among many entities within the community for the purpose of constant evolution and improvement. In this way, the law of implied patent license used by the GPLv2 ensures that the community mutually benefits from the licensing of patents to any single community member." https://copyleft.org/guide/comprehensive-gpl-guidech7.html https://copyleft.org/guide/comprehensive-gpl-guidech7.html

davidgerard 10y ago

If you think protection of software patents is a good idea, you may be deeply and fundamentally wrong about software.

Nomentatus 10y ago
But it's not about software patents - GPL makes absolutely no distinction between software and hardware patents, it wants them both! If they didn't grab hardware patent licenses (or licenses to mixed hardware/software inventions) that would be an entirely different worldview. I'd very much welcome that change.
- davidgerard 10y ago
  That would only mean you can't use a patent to make the software non-free. It would be more convincing if you gave a clear example. (that wasn't functionally an attempted end-run around software freedom.)
  - Nomentatus 10y ago
    It would mean anyone willing to use that software can use your hardware invention without paying you. No thanks. You can dispute this I suppose because the wording of the license is awful and far too terse, and hasn't been tested in court - but for businesses, that IS the risk, and therefore the problem.