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I don't care if I get downvoted for this, but what hurts free software is licensing under the GPL. It's a cancer that infects anything it is compiled into. Ther

I don't care if I get downvoted for this, but what hurts free software is licensing under the GPL. It's a cancer that infects anything it is compiled into. There's a _TON_ of amazing software out there, which sadly is licensed under the GPL, so it just can't be used in something proprietary, because it would mean open sourcing your entire codebase. What's the point of open sourcing something if it can't be used in a proprietary product? At least release it under a license so that it can be used + allow the users to contribute their changes back to the original codebase. Plenty of companies will do this, but only if they can actually use it in their app or software. GPL code is, unless it's run in a self contained process, for all intents and purposes useless.

__jal 10y ago
1995 called, it wants its bad arguments back. The honest answer is that people releasing software under the GPL don't want you using their code in your proprietary whatever. They explicitly said they don't want you to do that. How is that different than you releasing your proprietary whatever, and conditioning use on paying you money and agreeing not to share it? If you get to set the terms of use of your code, so do other people. > What's the point of open sourcing something if it can't be used in a proprietary product? Obviously, the point is to share it with people who want to do something other than use it in a proprietary product. Complaining about free gifts generally doesn't end very well. Don't like the terms? Pretend it is Oracle or Microsoft crown-jewel code. You can't do what you want with that, either.
- charlesdm 10y ago
  > How is that different than you releasing your proprietary whatever, and conditioning use on paying you money and agreeing not to share it? If you get to set the terms of use of your code, so do other people. One component != an entire product. That's like saying you invent an open source car engine licensed under GPL. And now you can't use it in any car, because you can't build an entire car on your own, and even if you could, you'd have to give the entire car design away for free. I don't mind giving back any improvements I make to a library (and I've done so several times in the past), but I honestly don't see the point in releasing anything under GPL. That's like saying, you know what guys, I love the fact that no one is ever going to bother using this for something great. The only use case the GPL works in, if it's an entire product on its own, i.e. MySQL, etc. Closed source doesn't always mean evil. Open source doesn't always mean good.
  - Retra 10y ago
    If you don't accept the GPL license, then the code is not open to you. Treat it like you would any other closed source code: don't use it. If you have such a noble use of the code, feel free to ask the authors to be charitable and license it to you under different terms.
    - Nomentatus 10y ago
      But again, what actually happens is that trying to impose a GPL license (that grabs both hardware and software patents) merely causes someone else to replicate the whole effort under a better open source license.
      - quadrangle 10y ago
        "impose"… if I write some code and put it under the GPL, I'm not imposing anything. "better"… That's sorta like saying that when some community gets together and builds a public park that when a wealthy company comes around and builds a fancy exclusive country club that the terms of the country club are better, and if only the folks had just let the country club folks build their exclusive clubhouse in the middle of the original park, that would be better because it doesn't cause them to have to go buy and prepare a different plot of land.
        Nomentatus 10y ago
        Contracts impose. Else enforcement couldn't be a topic. But suppose we allow your cavil, and try "insist" or "request"? What changes? Nothing. Better - companies are choosing to replicate, not stamping out kiddie parks. If you're going to end up with an MIT license, why not start there and avoid all the waste?
        Sacho 10y ago
        You keep repeating this sentiment, but you haven't brought forward any argument why GPL doesn't achieve its goals, even if, eventually, some of the software gets reinvented with a different license. I could take your argument and use it the same way vs proprietary software - why even bother writing it, if some of it is going to end up being remade(or even just relicensed!) under an MIT license? In both cases, the developer extracted some value from the licensing.
- Nomentatus 10y ago
  But what has actually happened, again and again and again, is that all the work gets done again, to recreate the GPL software under a more liberal (say BSD or MIT) license. The GNU libraries are just one example. That's immensely wasteful just for starts - wasteful of the earnest labors of armies of volunteers, amongst others. The original idea of these licenses was to discourage freeloading - that hasn't worked very well; and the penalty in inefficiency for the economy as a whole seems to be about 100%. Sad.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - quadrangle 10y ago
    Richard Stallman wrote the GPL and never ever had any goal to "discourage freeloading". His goal was to create an entirely free software ecosystem where the community users, the end-users were not limited and controlled by proprietary software publishers. Whether or not that goal was or wasn't well-served by the GPL, that was and remains the motivation.
    - Nomentatus 10y ago
      Copyleft is an interesting invention. It isn't in any way necessary for that freedom thing. It never was. I can't speak to RS's original motivations, but I know well how the licenses were originally perceived, sold, and even argued against. If your argument means that RS et al will cheerfully drop the patent and tivoization clauses as extraneous; great. So far, I have seen no hint of this. The best way to summarize your argument is that RS got wildly distracted from his original goals, and that's my argument.
      - belorn 10y ago
        How do patent and tivoization help to "create an entirely free software ecosystem where the community users, the end-users were not limited and controlled by proprietary software publishers."? It is rather easy to see how patent and tivoization are harmful to the creation of such ecosystem.
tytso 10y ago
There is, alas, plenty of examples of code which were based on BSD-licensed code, and _not_ given back to the community. Exhibit 1: BSD code (open source) and WAFL (netapp's write anywhere file system that was written on top of BSD, and never given back). If the point is so that people contribute the changes back to the original codebase (which you seem to agree with), then the point of using the GPL is to make sure that actually happens. If it is used in a proprietary product, and never given back, from the perspective of the open source world, that use of the code might as well have never happened.
- greenhouse_gas 10y ago
  Example 2: Cyanogen. Remember how the internet exploded when Cyanogen tried to commercialize CM (and the Focal controversy), and contributers were angry that Cyanogen made a company "off their backs" which sold a closed-source improvement of CM? For some reason, had Samsung done the same, everyone would have praised them to the heavens, it would have been "the obvious success of permissive licencing". Now, when a founder and major contributor did the same to his OS project, everyone cried foul. But Lineage is still Apache2, for some reason.
  - Sacho 10y ago
    Erm, weren't the contributors angry because they weren't getting compensation for their GPL-contributed work? > For some reason, had Samsung done the same, everyone would have praised them to the heavens, it would have been "the obvious success of permissive licencing". Do you have an oracle or a time machine to know this?
- deleted 10y ago
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- deleted 10y ago
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- charlesdm 10y ago
  > If it is used in a proprietary product, and never given back, from the perspective of the open source world, that use of the code might as well have never happened. That's obviously not how it works in the real world. Out of ten people, 5 might give back, and 5 might not. You're essentially saying then that the contribution of the first 5 isn't worth it, because the other 5 wouldn't be contributing. Any contribution is great. The more a library is being used (commercially or non commercially), the more contributors it'll have in the long run. It's not a zero sum game.
snakeanus 10y ago
There's a _TON_ of amazing software out there, which sadly is licensed under a non-free license, so it just can't be used in something free, because it would make your program proprietary.

__jal 10y ago

1995 called, it wants its bad arguments back. The honest answer is that people releasing software under the GPL don't want you using their code in your proprietary whatever. They explicitly said they don't want you to do that. How is that different than you releasing your proprietary whatever, and conditioning use on paying you money and agreeing not to share it? If you get to set the terms of use of your code, so do other people. > What's the point of open sourcing something if it can't be used in a proprietary product? Obviously, the point is to share it with people who want to do something other than use it in a proprietary product. Complaining about free gifts generally doesn't end very well. Don't like the terms? Pretend it is Oracle or Microsoft crown-jewel code. You can't do what you want with that, either.

charlesdm 10y ago
> How is that different than you releasing your proprietary whatever, and conditioning use on paying you money and agreeing not to share it? If you get to set the terms of use of your code, so do other people. One component != an entire product. That's like saying you invent an open source car engine licensed under GPL. And now you can't use it in any car, because you can't build an entire car on your own, and even if you could, you'd have to give the entire car design away for free. I don't mind giving back any improvements I make to a library (and I've done so several times in the past), but I honestly don't see the point in releasing anything under GPL. That's like saying, you know what guys, I love the fact that no one is ever going to bother using this for something great. The only use case the GPL works in, if it's an entire product on its own, i.e. MySQL, etc. Closed source doesn't always mean evil. Open source doesn't always mean good.
- Retra 10y ago
  If you don't accept the GPL license, then the code is not open to you. Treat it like you would any other closed source code: don't use it. If you have such a noble use of the code, feel free to ask the authors to be charitable and license it to you under different terms.
  - Nomentatus 10y ago
    But again, what actually happens is that trying to impose a GPL license (that grabs both hardware and software patents) merely causes someone else to replicate the whole effort under a better open source license.
    - quadrangle 10y ago
      "impose"… if I write some code and put it under the GPL, I'm not imposing anything. "better"… That's sorta like saying that when some community gets together and builds a public park that when a wealthy company comes around and builds a fancy exclusive country club that the terms of the country club are better, and if only the folks had just let the country club folks build their exclusive clubhouse in the middle of the original park, that would be better because it doesn't cause them to have to go buy and prepare a different plot of land.
      - Nomentatus 10y ago
        Contracts impose. Else enforcement couldn't be a topic. But suppose we allow your cavil, and try "insist" or "request"? What changes? Nothing. Better - companies are choosing to replicate, not stamping out kiddie parks. If you're going to end up with an MIT license, why not start there and avoid all the waste?
        Sacho 10y ago
        You keep repeating this sentiment, but you haven't brought forward any argument why GPL doesn't achieve its goals, even if, eventually, some of the software gets reinvented with a different license. I could take your argument and use it the same way vs proprietary software - why even bother writing it, if some of it is going to end up being remade(or even just relicensed!) under an MIT license? In both cases, the developer extracted some value from the licensing.
Nomentatus 10y ago
But what has actually happened, again and again and again, is that all the work gets done again, to recreate the GPL software under a more liberal (say BSD or MIT) license. The GNU libraries are just one example. That's immensely wasteful just for starts - wasteful of the earnest labors of armies of volunteers, amongst others. The original idea of these licenses was to discourage freeloading - that hasn't worked very well; and the penalty in inefficiency for the economy as a whole seems to be about 100%. Sad.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- quadrangle 10y ago
  Richard Stallman wrote the GPL and never ever had any goal to "discourage freeloading". His goal was to create an entirely free software ecosystem where the community users, the end-users were not limited and controlled by proprietary software publishers. Whether or not that goal was or wasn't well-served by the GPL, that was and remains the motivation.
  - Nomentatus 10y ago
    Copyleft is an interesting invention. It isn't in any way necessary for that freedom thing. It never was. I can't speak to RS's original motivations, but I know well how the licenses were originally perceived, sold, and even argued against. If your argument means that RS et al will cheerfully drop the patent and tivoization clauses as extraneous; great. So far, I have seen no hint of this. The best way to summarize your argument is that RS got wildly distracted from his original goals, and that's my argument.
    - belorn 10y ago
      How do patent and tivoization help to "create an entirely free software ecosystem where the community users, the end-users were not limited and controlled by proprietary software publishers."? It is rather easy to see how patent and tivoization are harmful to the creation of such ecosystem.

tytso 10y ago

There is, alas, plenty of examples of code which were based on BSD-licensed code, and _not_ given back to the community. Exhibit 1: BSD code (open source) and WAFL (netapp's write anywhere file system that was written on top of BSD, and never given back). If the point is so that people contribute the changes back to the original codebase (which you seem to agree with), then the point of using the GPL is to make sure that actually happens. If it is used in a proprietary product, and never given back, from the perspective of the open source world, that use of the code might as well have never happened.

greenhouse_gas 10y ago
Example 2: Cyanogen. Remember how the internet exploded when Cyanogen tried to commercialize CM (and the Focal controversy), and contributers were angry that Cyanogen made a company "off their backs" which sold a closed-source improvement of CM? For some reason, had Samsung done the same, everyone would have praised them to the heavens, it would have been "the obvious success of permissive licencing". Now, when a founder and major contributor did the same to his OS project, everyone cried foul. But Lineage is still Apache2, for some reason.
- Sacho 10y ago
  Erm, weren't the contributors angry because they weren't getting compensation for their GPL-contributed work? > For some reason, had Samsung done the same, everyone would have praised them to the heavens, it would have been "the obvious success of permissive licencing". Do you have an oracle or a time machine to know this?
deleted 10y ago
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deleted 10y ago
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charlesdm 10y ago
> If it is used in a proprietary product, and never given back, from the perspective of the open source world, that use of the code might as well have never happened. That's obviously not how it works in the real world. Out of ten people, 5 might give back, and 5 might not. You're essentially saying then that the contribution of the first 5 isn't worth it, because the other 5 wouldn't be contributing. Any contribution is great. The more a library is being used (commercially or non commercially), the more contributors it'll have in the long run. It's not a zero sum game.

snakeanus 10y ago

There's a _TON_ of amazing software out there, which sadly is licensed under a non-free license, so it just can't be used in something free, because it would make your program proprietary.