6 ms·

I just have to say, while I respect the work and have been looking forward to nix tools being ported to rust, the first thing I do is see if it's GPL or not and

I just have to say, while I respect the work and have been looking forward to nix tools being ported to rust, the first thing I do is see if it's GPL or not and if it's not it immediately loses points (not all of them), because I have been working hard to free up my stacks. I wish people would consider making core system tools like this GPL instead of MIT/BSD styles. Tivoization is a real threat to the freedom of users and devs. (which is what mit license enables, despite it being listed as "gpl compat") For example, I forced myself to learn screen really well because even though I like tmux and it has some features lacking in screen, I would rather support a tool I know is more aligned with freedom for the user. Same with i3 vs awesome, etc. An interesting side benefit of this is I have noticed the complexity of my stack has been reduced because of this selectiveness.

Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
In fact, the complexity of your system has probably increased. I find the quality of software generally available under the GPL is inferior to that available under more permissive licenses, and in most cases that's due to huge amounts of unnecessary complexity. This may just be bias introduced by GNU, though. In some cases the GPL gets in the way of progress, such as the decable over GCC being able to export its AST for other tools to interact with - a feature RMS rejected on the grounds that it would make it possible to make nonfree tools that integrate with GCC.
- mhh__ 9y ago
  The GCC AST thing was due to politics inside GNU, not explicitly related to the GPL.
notheguyouthink 9y ago
I'm not too familiar with licensing, can someone ELI5? Eg, normally I just choose MIT because licensing is not a concern of mine. I'd like credit, but beyond that, do whatever the hell you want with my work. Now, I'm not making core nix tools, but should I be choosing a different license? Man do I hate licensing.
- leeoniya 9y ago
  "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil." clause made JSLint's license incompatible with MIT [1]. "He has, however, granted "IBM, its customers, partners, and minions" permission "to use JSLint for evil", a solution which appeared to satisfy IBM's lawyers." :D Given IBM's history of making Jew-counting machines for the Germans during WWII, that exception is particularly disturbing. Also JSON [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Crockford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Crockford [2] http://www.json.org/license.html http://www.json.org/license.html
  - jancsika 9y ago
    > "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil." clause made JSLint's license incompatible with MIT [1]. This is so frustrating. One of Crockford's most persuasive points in his writing and lectures about Javascript is that computer programs are no place for self-expression. When he explains what is wrong with the language, he gives astute suggestions on foolproof ways to workaround the language's weak points by avoiding ambiguity. He's even written JSLint to help the programmer do just that without having to research every idiosyncratic pitfall that would come from just winging it. Yet here he is-- in a domain for which he has absolutely no expertise-- expressing himself in a licensing clause. Causing measurable hours of waste because Debian or IBM or insert-org-here has no experience with his idiosyncratic license and no easy way to predict what are its effects.
- ac29 9y ago
  BSD style licences dont require source code changes to be released. For example, the PS4 OS is based in part on FreeBSD, which is distributed as binaries. Sony is under no obligation to release any source code changes or contribute anything upstream. Copyright holders for people who wrote FreeBSD code have no legal standing to sue for access to these changes either (I think, but I am not a lawyer). By contrast Android devices all run the Linux Kernel, which is licenced under the GPLv2. Android device makers are obligated to release the kernel code they use, so users or upstream developers could use it. It's a bit more complicated than that, because the code doesnt necessarily have to be able to be loaded on the device (GPLv2 doesn't say anything about locked bootloaders or cryptographic signing, for example, and binary blobs that work in tandem with GPL code are a bit of a grey area, as far as I know). Parent commenter prefers the latter style, or possibly even GPLv3, which imposes additional restrictions on what you can do. See Tivoization [0]. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization
eridius 9y ago
I just have to say, while I respect the work put into tools of the sort that you use, the first thing I do is see if it's GPL or not and if it is it immediately loses points (very nearly all of them), because GPL is awful. If I'm going to use a tool like this, I'm going to want to be able to check out the code, perhaps submit PRs, etc, but if it's GPL then I don't want to so much as look at the code because GPL is viral and aggressively removes so many developer freedoms. In fact, I genuinely don't understand the "freedom for the user" aspect. The only "freedoms" the GPL cares about are freedoms for developers (end users don't care in the slightest about whether they can get the source code, etc), but GPL is far and away the most restrictive license I've ever seen in terms of taking away developer freedoms. So when people say the GPL provides freedom for the user, it makes no sense, because what it's doing is taking away freedoms from anyone who actually cares about source access. In fact, all the GPL really seems to do is protect the "freedom" of the original developer to ensure access to any changes made by other people, at the cost of taking away the freedoms of all of these other people.
- Drdrdrq 9y ago
  No, "freedom for the user" is exactly what it says. GPL cares about end user, not so much about developer. Original developer just gets to decide which group is more important in his particular case.
  - eridius 9y ago
    Read what I said. The "end user" doesn't care in the slightest about source access. Everything the GPL is concerned about only matters to other developers, not to end users.
    - goodplay 9y ago
      As an end-user, I do. Being prevented from fixing my own (expensive) device is not something I would voluntarily subject myself to. For context, here's a comment I posted a while ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13527205 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13527205): I used to be a big fan of permissive licenses until I bought a $700+ android phone a couple of years back and discovered that it did not "support" my native language (it could render the glyphs but system-wide support was not enabled). Having extensive experience with unicode and how text is usually rendered, I knew exactly how to fix the issue; the fix was likely as simple as injecting an SO that hijacks a specific system library function. However, because the phone was locked down, I was unable to fix the problem myself. All important system apps including SMS and the browser displayed gibberish. It was the most expensive brick I ever bought. This experience taught me the true value of the GPL and why user freedom far outweighs the freedom of developers

Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago

In fact, the complexity of your system has probably increased. I find the quality of software generally available under the GPL is inferior to that available under more permissive licenses, and in most cases that's due to huge amounts of unnecessary complexity. This may just be bias introduced by GNU, though. In some cases the GPL gets in the way of progress, such as the decable over GCC being able to export its AST for other tools to interact with - a feature RMS rejected on the grounds that it would make it possible to make nonfree tools that integrate with GCC.

mhh__ 9y ago
The GCC AST thing was due to politics inside GNU, not explicitly related to the GPL.

notheguyouthink 9y ago

I'm not too familiar with licensing, can someone ELI5? Eg, normally I just choose MIT because licensing is not a concern of mine. I'd like credit, but beyond that, do whatever the hell you want with my work. Now, I'm not making core nix tools, but should I be choosing a different license? Man do I hate licensing.

leeoniya 9y ago
"The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil." clause made JSLint's license incompatible with MIT [1]. "He has, however, granted "IBM, its customers, partners, and minions" permission "to use JSLint for evil", a solution which appeared to satisfy IBM's lawyers." :D Given IBM's history of making Jew-counting machines for the Germans during WWII, that exception is particularly disturbing. Also JSON [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Crockford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Crockford [2] http://www.json.org/license.html http://www.json.org/license.html
- jancsika 9y ago
  > "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil." clause made JSLint's license incompatible with MIT [1]. This is so frustrating. One of Crockford's most persuasive points in his writing and lectures about Javascript is that computer programs are no place for self-expression. When he explains what is wrong with the language, he gives astute suggestions on foolproof ways to workaround the language's weak points by avoiding ambiguity. He's even written JSLint to help the programmer do just that without having to research every idiosyncratic pitfall that would come from just winging it. Yet here he is-- in a domain for which he has absolutely no expertise-- expressing himself in a licensing clause. Causing measurable hours of waste because Debian or IBM or insert-org-here has no experience with his idiosyncratic license and no easy way to predict what are its effects.
ac29 9y ago
BSD style licences dont require source code changes to be released. For example, the PS4 OS is based in part on FreeBSD, which is distributed as binaries. Sony is under no obligation to release any source code changes or contribute anything upstream. Copyright holders for people who wrote FreeBSD code have no legal standing to sue for access to these changes either (I think, but I am not a lawyer). By contrast Android devices all run the Linux Kernel, which is licenced under the GPLv2. Android device makers are obligated to release the kernel code they use, so users or upstream developers could use it. It's a bit more complicated than that, because the code doesnt necessarily have to be able to be loaded on the device (GPLv2 doesn't say anything about locked bootloaders or cryptographic signing, for example, and binary blobs that work in tandem with GPL code are a bit of a grey area, as far as I know). Parent commenter prefers the latter style, or possibly even GPLv3, which imposes additional restrictions on what you can do. See Tivoization [0]. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization

eridius 9y ago

I just have to say, while I respect the work put into tools of the sort that you use, the first thing I do is see if it's GPL or not and if it is it immediately loses points (very nearly all of them), because GPL is awful. If I'm going to use a tool like this, I'm going to want to be able to check out the code, perhaps submit PRs, etc, but if it's GPL then I don't want to so much as look at the code because GPL is viral and aggressively removes so many developer freedoms. In fact, I genuinely don't understand the "freedom for the user" aspect. The only "freedoms" the GPL cares about are freedoms for developers (end users don't care in the slightest about whether they can get the source code, etc), but GPL is far and away the most restrictive license I've ever seen in terms of taking away developer freedoms. So when people say the GPL provides freedom for the user, it makes no sense, because what it's doing is taking away freedoms from anyone who actually cares about source access. In fact, all the GPL really seems to do is protect the "freedom" of the original developer to ensure access to any changes made by other people, at the cost of taking away the freedoms of all of these other people.

Drdrdrq 9y ago
No, "freedom for the user" is exactly what it says. GPL cares about end user, not so much about developer. Original developer just gets to decide which group is more important in his particular case.
- eridius 9y ago
  Read what I said. The "end user" doesn't care in the slightest about source access. Everything the GPL is concerned about only matters to other developers, not to end users.
  - goodplay 9y ago
    As an end-user, I do. Being prevented from fixing my own (expensive) device is not something I would voluntarily subject myself to. For context, here's a comment I posted a while ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13527205 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13527205): I used to be a big fan of permissive licenses until I bought a $700+ android phone a couple of years back and discovered that it did not "support" my native language (it could render the glyphs but system-wide support was not enabled). Having extensive experience with unicode and how text is usually rendered, I knew exactly how to fix the issue; the fix was likely as simple as injecting an SO that hijacks a specific system library function. However, because the phone was locked down, I was unable to fix the problem myself. All important system apps including SMS and the browser displayed gibberish. It was the most expensive brick I ever bought. This experience taught me the true value of the GPL and why user freedom far outweighs the freedom of developers