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I don't know enough about this to take sides but I do think that the author of this piece is being a bit misleading on at least one point. This piece says: > .

I don't know enough about this to take sides but I do think that the author of this piece is being a bit misleading on at least one point. This piece says: > ... Greg Olson [referred] to the GPL and other copyleft licenses as “Restrictive Licenses” and “viral.” The original article, which he then quoted, reads: > These licenses are often termed ‘viral’ because ... So, while Mr. Olson did use the term "viral" in his piece, he didn't specifically call them "viral". Instead, he said, quite literally, that "these licenses are often termed 'viral'" (and they are). Anyways, the open source world has been having this argument forever -- often in the form of whether the BSD v. GPL is more "free" -- and it all depends on whose point of view you're looking at it from (the developer's or the user's).

TuringTest 10y ago
> it all depends on whose point of view you're looking at it from (the developer's or the user's). Myself, I like to see it with respect to what is protected by the license in terms of freedom. - "Permissive" licenses (BSD-like) protect a single snapshot of the code, as it exists the day it is released. That version can be used freely by anyone, but the possibility to impose additional restrictions means that you won't necessarily be free to use the versions derived from that snapshot. - "Protective" licenses (i.e. Copyleft) protect the whole project in the long term, whether it is the snapshot released under the license or any later modification of it. You are guaranteed access to any version that someone releases of that code, under the same terms that give you the freedom to use code.
- Borealid 10y ago
  There's a dichotomy here. What you term "protective" here (GPL-style copyleft licenses) actually impose a greater number of restrictions on the person who obtains code under them: specifically, they lose the ability to distribute modified versions under a different license. So while one could argue that they are "protective" because they protect the rights of future users, one could also argue they are "restrictive" because they remove the right to add restrictions - which is, itself, a right! BSD-style licenses give a greater number of freedoms to the user who initially receives the software than GPL-style licenses. This has been used to argue that they are overly free, and used to argue that they are insufficiently free. But I think it's important to point out that there's a valid point of view in which "the ability to prevent someone else from doing something with my work as I choose" is considered a freedom that some licenses take away.
  - TuringTest 10y ago
    > So while one could argue that they are "protective" because they protect the rights of future users, one could also argue they are "restrictive" because they remove the right to add restrictions - which is, itself, a right! While true from a local perspective (how many actions can you perform over this snapshot of the code), you're missing the systemic point of view. Every time someone adds an additional constraint over their released copy of the project, they're killing off every possible action that downstream users would have made starting from it. Imagine for a minute that Webkit had been licensed as BSD or MIT rather than with the protective LGPL, and Apple had released Safari with a fully proprietary relicense. In that case, neither Chrome would exist nor any of the other modern non-Firefox, non-Trident browsers (which depend on the cleanup performed by Apple over KHTML). The share-alike clauses of the LGPL guaranteed that Apple didn't have the option to restrict use of the software, creating a whole world of possibilities for anyone starting from their improved version, that wouldn't exist otherwise. I'm not saying that a project under a share-alike license will always have more actions available overall; it depends on how the project is adopted by their community of users. But counting only the restrictions imposed on any particular snapshot of the software misses the forest for the trees.
    - Borealid 10y ago
      > While true from a local perspective (how many actions can you perform over this snapshot of the code), you're missing the systemic point of view. > Every time someone adds an additional constraint over their released copy of the project, they're killing off every possible action that downstream users would have made starting from it. Preventing someone downstream from adding constraints is, in itself, adding a constraint. The argument you make about other possible actions also applies to the-action-of-closing-the-thing-off; the butterfly flaps its wings just as hard for commercial software. I'm not "missing the systemic point of view", I'm just pointing out that what we've got here is a group that is arguing in favor of restrictions of a certain type because they say that restrictions are, in themselves, wrong. That would be more palatable if it were framed as a "lesser of two evils" situation, but instead it's presented as being 100% undiluted moral right. I wish that people who zealously supported BSD-style licenses would take a moment to understand why it's important to others that software remain free-in-whichever-sense. I wish that people who zealously supported GPL-style licenses would acknowledge that they are taking away a certain set of otherwise-available rights concerning what others are allowed to do with their software - NOT maximizing possibilities, but instead restricting them to a certain set they find agreeable.
- josinalvo 10y ago
  Thanks for stating both cases charitably
- Nursie 10y ago
  I'm not sure those are quite true, and certainly aren't the whole story. - Permissive licences often don't guarantee anything to the end user. Nobody is under any obligation to make any source available to you at all, original or derived versions. - Copyleft licenses, by contrast, guarantee the end user gets access to the code that's running on their system.

TuringTest 10y ago

> it all depends on whose point of view you're looking at it from (the developer's or the user's). Myself, I like to see it with respect to what is protected by the license in terms of freedom. - "Permissive" licenses (BSD-like) protect a single snapshot of the code, as it exists the day it is released. That version can be used freely by anyone, but the possibility to impose additional restrictions means that you won't necessarily be free to use the versions derived from that snapshot. - "Protective" licenses (i.e. Copyleft) protect the whole project in the long term, whether it is the snapshot released under the license or any later modification of it. You are guaranteed access to any version that someone releases of that code, under the same terms that give you the freedom to use code.

Borealid 10y ago
There's a dichotomy here. What you term "protective" here (GPL-style copyleft licenses) actually impose a greater number of restrictions on the person who obtains code under them: specifically, they lose the ability to distribute modified versions under a different license. So while one could argue that they are "protective" because they protect the rights of future users, one could also argue they are "restrictive" because they remove the right to add restrictions - which is, itself, a right! BSD-style licenses give a greater number of freedoms to the user who initially receives the software than GPL-style licenses. This has been used to argue that they are overly free, and used to argue that they are insufficiently free. But I think it's important to point out that there's a valid point of view in which "the ability to prevent someone else from doing something with my work as I choose" is considered a freedom that some licenses take away.
- TuringTest 10y ago
  > So while one could argue that they are "protective" because they protect the rights of future users, one could also argue they are "restrictive" because they remove the right to add restrictions - which is, itself, a right! While true from a local perspective (how many actions can you perform over this snapshot of the code), you're missing the systemic point of view. Every time someone adds an additional constraint over their released copy of the project, they're killing off every possible action that downstream users would have made starting from it. Imagine for a minute that Webkit had been licensed as BSD or MIT rather than with the protective LGPL, and Apple had released Safari with a fully proprietary relicense. In that case, neither Chrome would exist nor any of the other modern non-Firefox, non-Trident browsers (which depend on the cleanup performed by Apple over KHTML). The share-alike clauses of the LGPL guaranteed that Apple didn't have the option to restrict use of the software, creating a whole world of possibilities for anyone starting from their improved version, that wouldn't exist otherwise. I'm not saying that a project under a share-alike license will always have more actions available overall; it depends on how the project is adopted by their community of users. But counting only the restrictions imposed on any particular snapshot of the software misses the forest for the trees.
  - Borealid 10y ago
    > While true from a local perspective (how many actions can you perform over this snapshot of the code), you're missing the systemic point of view. > Every time someone adds an additional constraint over their released copy of the project, they're killing off every possible action that downstream users would have made starting from it. Preventing someone downstream from adding constraints is, in itself, adding a constraint. The argument you make about other possible actions also applies to the-action-of-closing-the-thing-off; the butterfly flaps its wings just as hard for commercial software. I'm not "missing the systemic point of view", I'm just pointing out that what we've got here is a group that is arguing in favor of restrictions of a certain type because they say that restrictions are, in themselves, wrong. That would be more palatable if it were framed as a "lesser of two evils" situation, but instead it's presented as being 100% undiluted moral right. I wish that people who zealously supported BSD-style licenses would take a moment to understand why it's important to others that software remain free-in-whichever-sense. I wish that people who zealously supported GPL-style licenses would acknowledge that they are taking away a certain set of otherwise-available rights concerning what others are allowed to do with their software - NOT maximizing possibilities, but instead restricting them to a certain set they find agreeable.
josinalvo 10y ago
Thanks for stating both cases charitably
Nursie 10y ago
I'm not sure those are quite true, and certainly aren't the whole story. - Permissive licences often don't guarantee anything to the end user. Nobody is under any obligation to make any source available to you at all, original or derived versions. - Copyleft licenses, by contrast, guarantee the end user gets access to the code that's running on their system.