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I can't relate to this at all, I feel like I went the opposite way. I started out putting all of my work out under GPL but slowly realized how restrictive and d

I can't relate to this at all, I feel like I went the opposite way. I started out putting all of my work out under GPL but slowly realized how restrictive and demanding such a license actually is, I think public domain is the license that provides the most good to the world as a whole. It enriches everyone, even those who I don't necessarily agree with. It is a much more powerful statement in my view to provide work in a way that allows the entire world, (corporations included) to enrich themselves and educate themselves in an open and free manner. If this means that they are going to repackage and sell the work, that is their prerogative. If that means a professor wants to put the work into their course and help to instruct a class with it, that is great too. It is nice to attempt to force people to play by the rules I like in order to try to enforce the actions that I see as best for the world, like sharing, etc. But at a certain point you just have to realize that there are differing points of view, that is just the way things go, and "progress" includes all of them.

flamtap 7y ago
>But at a certain point you just have to realize that there are differing points of view, that is just the way things go, and "progress" includes all of them. This is really insightful, to me. Worth keeping in mind in today’s world.
- kerkeslager 7y ago
  Eh, is it really insightful? It just seems straightforwardly wrong to me. Nazism is a viewpoint. Does progress include that? I know I'm triggering Godwin's law here, but if you're literally saying that progress includes ALL viewpoints, you're really opening yourself up to including some really ridiculously outlandish ideals.
  - klyrs 7y ago
    There's an addendum, regarding speaking out against actual nazism https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2018/06/19/27874178/godwins-law-suspended-by-godwin https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2018/06/19/27874178/godwins...
    - kerkeslager 7y ago
      I guess that applies, since "all viewpoints" does include actual Nazis.
  - carapace 7y ago
    "It's not even wrong." Flat-Earther-ism is a viewpoint. Anti-vaxxer-ism is a viewpoint.
- wiz21c 7y ago
  he didn't say that all points of view lead to positive progress. Progress is even "quoted". The GPL has that political nature : it makes you think about your own point of view and hence, the point of view of others. Figuring out if you want or need it by actually reading it is a super useful exercise.
- nfoz 7y ago
  "Progress" is an opinion/propaganda term -- you use it to paint whatever actually happened in a positive light.
Quekid5 7y ago
> It enriches everyone, even those who I don't necessarily agree with. That's definitely a valid PoV, but you just have to realize/accept that it may empower people who have power over you. I'm mostly talking about economic power here, but with the absurd expansion of lobbying, etc., this may extend to political power, cf. Turbotax[1]. Again: It's ultimately up to you, but for me... I don't want to give big conglomerates an inch if I can avoid it. Both as an individual and as a software-development business owner. (We do bespoke software, so "overly-permissive" licensing isn't really much of threat in that space -- from either perspective: There's no software that does what we provide, nor would what we provide do much for anyone else except our clients.) I'm not sure if this is too controversial, but I think BSD (permissive for developers, maybe restrictive for users) vs. GPL (restrictive for developers, permissive for users) is very similar to the Paradox of Tolerance in a way. [1] Who knows if they're using MIT/BSD licensed code, but I think it serves as a good example of the power of lobbying at least. EDIT: I don't grammar so good.
- jahewson 7y ago
  People who have power over you are, by definition, already empowered. Whether or not you give them something for free isn't going to move the needle.
  - Quekid5 7y ago
    "something" = "leverage". Disprove that. As a bonus point, leverage is exactly what you may be giving them by licensing with the BSD/MIT/... There's no guarantee that they'll gain leverage, but if they see and seize the opportunity then that's what they'll get. EDIT: The APL 2.0 is kind of interesting here because it doesn't really do that much over BSD/MIT/... except for the patent grant thing. The patent thing actually brings it much closer to 'acceptable' for me, personally, because a lot of instances of conglomerates exercising their power has been through software patents.
  - grumdan 7y ago
    It does cement their power over you even further though. An individual project may not make an appreciable difference, but in aggregate, if lots of people make similar choices, it may have an impact.
SquishyPanda23 7y ago
I'm sure you understand this already, but corporations can repackage and sell GPL code. The main thing you're granting in choosing a permissive license is the right to deny others the right to enjoy future improvements to the code. This is why in practice permissively licensed code is more successful in industry. Industries like to exercise the right to make proprietary improvements to open source code.
- module0000 7y ago
  > can repackage and sell GPL code Can you give me some detail about how/when this happens? I was under the impression that you can sell support(or other ancillary services) for GPL'd code, but not for the code itself.
  - nuclear_eclipse 7y ago
    Anyone can sell software built from GPL code, but if/when they do so, they are obligated to provide source code for that software to anyone receiving a copy, and those users are permitted to redistribute both the software and the source code as long as they also adhere to the GPL.
    - module0000 7y ago
      Now I understand, it's not the code itself that has a price(hence the 'THIS IS FREE SOFTWARE' notice at the top of GPL). It's the entire "product" they charge for. Thanks for the reply!
      - ghaff 7y ago
        Not quite. FREE SOFTWARE in that context is "free as in freedom" not "free as in beer." I can most certainly sell you for money software licensed under the GPL (if I make the corresponding sources available) with no other obligations on my part. Of course, today you're probably not going to have a lot of luck selling something that your potential customer can just download from elsewhere for free. So, in practice, you're going to have to provide other services/benefits that go into a commercial product. But there's nothing in the GPL that prohibits you from just selling a bunch of bits subject to the requirements of the license and calling it a day.
beering 7y ago
Someday, that might come full circle and you'll be the one who won't be enriched because the original code was MIT and not GPL. Here's an example: you buy some embedded hardware for a personal project, but you find out that the toolchain for that chipset is a pile of proprietary blobs built on Clang and it only runs on Windows. If it were built on GCC, then the GPL would force them to make the source available and people could adapt/update/rebuild it as needed. Making something MIT/public domain is free for one hop, from you to the next person. After that it can become even more restrictive and demanding than the GPL (i.e. proprietary binaries).
- smitop 7y ago
  GCC has the GCC Runtime Library Exception: the resulting binary of code compiled with GCC doesn't need to licensed under GPL.
  - qznc 7y ago
    Grandparent is talking about a modified GCC. Not some binary compiled with GCC.
    - nuclear_eclipse 7y ago
      If they aren't distributing their modified GCC with the hardware, they have no obligation to release the source code either.
- davidgerard 7y ago
  I can't find the link, but I remember someone from the X Window System regretting that X11 was under the MIT License - it's the origin of the MIT License - rather than copyleft, precisely because so many companies just would not give code back. Keith Packard on this in 2015: https://list.waikato.ac.nz/pipermail/wlug/2015-September/013795.html https://list.waikato.ac.nz/pipermail/wlug/2015-September/013... > Keith made it clear he prefers GPL-style (copyleft/sharealike) licences to MIT/BSD style ones. Net contributors of code tend to prefer the former, while net consumers of code (those who don’t want to give back to the community) tend to favour the latter. In other words, freeloaders.
kerkeslager 7y ago
> If that means a professor wants to put the work into their course and help to instruct a class with it, that is great too. Just to be very clear, neither the MIT nor GPL licenses prevent this.
- microtherion 7y ago
  Under a strict interpretation of the GPL, a student who copied code out of a textbook to use in a commercial project would be infringing the license. I've never come across this with GPL code, but I've been a bit uncomfortable about reading Numerical Recipes too closely because their code is restrictively licensed.
  - kerkeslager 7y ago
    > Under a strict interpretation of the GPL, a student who copied code out of a textbook to use in a commercial project would be infringing the license. This interpretation is very surprising to me. Could you point out what language in the GPL you're interpreting in this way?
    - microtherion 7y ago
      It seems pretty straightforward to me that section 5 of the GPL v3, "Conveying Modified Source Versions" (and the corresponding sections of earlier GPLs) would be applicable to this situation (provided that a non-trivial amount of code is incorporated by the student). What makes you believe otherwise?
      - kerkeslager 7y ago
        A misreading of the section I copy/pasted. :) I thought because you were responding to my post saying using GPL code in a class, that you were claiming professors couldn't use GPL code in classes (they can). But you weren't saying that--I misread.
    - SAI_Peregrinus 7y ago
bbatha 7y ago
I wish the public domain were the least restrictive license, but unfortunately that's just not true globally. In many jurisdictions, notably Germany, there is no public domain or the concept of a public domain doesn't match with common law countries. MIT/BSD or another permissive license is a much better choice if you value openness. [0] 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-domain_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-domain_software
- ghaff 7y ago
  In fact, the MIT license originally came about specifically because just making X public domain wouldn't fly with at least one of the X Consortium participants. https://opensource.com/article/19/4/history-mit-license https://opensource.com/article/19/4/history-mit-license
snuxoll 7y ago
I think it depends a lot on how valuable your software can be to $supermegacorp, honestly. If I write a competitor to $bigproprietaryapp I would probably decide to release it under a more copy-left license just so nobody can take a ready-to-run solution to market without recourse or compensation. I don't have a problem with proprietary software extending things I write, so such an app would probably be under something like the MPL - "you can use this and add extra features without contributing them back, but you still have to give changes to my code back" sounds like a pretty good compromise. Some big company wants to use the silly little structured logging wrapper I wrote for SLF4J though? What do I care, go for it, it's a tool and your use of it has no ability to damage any use the community at large has for it.
LaGrange 7y ago
> It enriches everyone This is untrue. It might appear obvious that it does, because in the first instance, everyone can take and use it however they want. But as soon as anyone relicenses the work, everyone else loses out. There are also more complicated benefits to the programmer-users of GPL software that get lost in the process. I don't think the situation is clear-cut, and too many factors are hard to quantify, but I don't think you can safely say that non-copyleft "enriches everyone."
delusional 7y ago
> It is a much more powerful statement in my view to provide work in a way that allows the entire world, (corporations included) to enrich themselves and educate themselves in an open and free manner. That is the purpose of the GPL as well. The GPL doesn't say that you have to be a free love hippie to use the software, in fact it says that everyone can use whatever. What it does prescribe is that if you extract value from selling FOOS (not using, but distributing) you must play by the rules of FOOS. You can not sit on the sidelines and extract value without providing anything. Nowhere does it say that you have to share my values. But if you sell my software you have to play by my rules, and that means contributing back.
- bscphil 7y ago
  I agree. The GPL is sort of a hack for people who don't believe in Copyright. In an ideal world, there would be no difference between GPL and public domain, but in our world the GPL forces people who use your code to behave as if everything were public domain.
mr_toad 7y ago
> It enriches everyone Well, except the users. Say EvilCompany takes the code, puts in in their buggy operating system, distributes it under a commercial license, and then you end up being prevented from fixing the code that you wrote. Because that’s what happened to RMS, and that’s why we have the GPL. It’s freedom; not for the author, and it’s not freedom for the developers or the vendors, it’s freedom for the users.
Digital-Citizen 7y ago
The public domain isn't recognized everywhere and licenses like Creative Commons Zero (CC0) which has a fallback of being all-permissive for regimes where a public domain won't work doesn't look out for patent treachery. The FSF warns against using CC0 for software (see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#CC0 https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#CC0 for the full comments): "For works of software it [CC0] is not recommended, as CC0 has a term expressly stating it does not grant you any patent licenses." If you really want people to be free to use the software as they wish, you can't ignore software idea patents. That naivety actually works against the users as they would be lured into dealing with the software believing it to be free but then trapped by a patent infringement lawsuit. > But at a certain point you just have to realize that there are > differing points of view, that is just the way things go, and > "progress" includes all of them. No, this is too broadly accepting and not carefully discerning as reality requires to make sage judgments nor will it help us understand the ethical underpinnings of the software freedom movement (very much related to one of the major problems in the essay -- the author frames the issue around "open source", a developmental methodology which eschews ethics and is therefore of great use to proprietors. See https://digitalcitizen.info/2019/05/10/how-free-software-and-open-source-differ-on-the-ground/ https://digitalcitizen.info/2019/05/10/how-free-software-and... for more on this). Proprietary software is a "differing point of view" and your statement tries to get us to accept that it is merely another acceptable alternative among many. Seeing proprietary software as some form of social progress means accepting the inherent harm of proprietary software, the very reason why the free software movement was founded in the first place. I will call proprietary software harmful and in no way progress for anything worth defending. The goal isn't to maximize one's ability to have power over someone else, it's to ensure specific and well-identified freedoms for all. Strongly copylefted free software where license terms are defended does this.

flamtap 7y ago

>But at a certain point you just have to realize that there are differing points of view, that is just the way things go, and "progress" includes all of them. This is really insightful, to me. Worth keeping in mind in today’s world.

kerkeslager 7y ago
Eh, is it really insightful? It just seems straightforwardly wrong to me. Nazism is a viewpoint. Does progress include that? I know I'm triggering Godwin's law here, but if you're literally saying that progress includes ALL viewpoints, you're really opening yourself up to including some really ridiculously outlandish ideals.
- klyrs 7y ago
  There's an addendum, regarding speaking out against actual nazism https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2018/06/19/27874178/godwins-law-suspended-by-godwin https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2018/06/19/27874178/godwins...
  - kerkeslager 7y ago
    I guess that applies, since "all viewpoints" does include actual Nazis.
- carapace 7y ago
  "It's not even wrong." Flat-Earther-ism is a viewpoint. Anti-vaxxer-ism is a viewpoint.
wiz21c 7y ago
he didn't say that all points of view lead to positive progress. Progress is even "quoted". The GPL has that political nature : it makes you think about your own point of view and hence, the point of view of others. Figuring out if you want or need it by actually reading it is a super useful exercise.
nfoz 7y ago
"Progress" is an opinion/propaganda term -- you use it to paint whatever actually happened in a positive light.

Quekid5 7y ago

> It enriches everyone, even those who I don't necessarily agree with. That's definitely a valid PoV, but you just have to realize/accept that it may empower people who have power over you. I'm mostly talking about economic power here, but with the absurd expansion of lobbying, etc., this may extend to political power, cf. Turbotax[1]. Again: It's ultimately up to you, but for me... I don't want to give big conglomerates an inch if I can avoid it. Both as an individual and as a software-development business owner. (We do bespoke software, so "overly-permissive" licensing isn't really much of threat in that space -- from either perspective: There's no software that does what we provide, nor would what we provide do much for anyone else except our clients.) I'm not sure if this is too controversial, but I think BSD (permissive for developers, maybe restrictive for users) vs. GPL (restrictive for developers, permissive for users) is very similar to the Paradox of Tolerance in a way. [1] Who knows if they're using MIT/BSD licensed code, but I think it serves as a good example of the power of lobbying at least. EDIT: I don't grammar so good.

jahewson 7y ago
People who have power over you are, by definition, already empowered. Whether or not you give them something for free isn't going to move the needle.
- Quekid5 7y ago
  "something" = "leverage". Disprove that. As a bonus point, leverage is exactly what you may be giving them by licensing with the BSD/MIT/... There's no guarantee that they'll gain leverage, but if they see and seize the opportunity then that's what they'll get. EDIT: The APL 2.0 is kind of interesting here because it doesn't really do that much over BSD/MIT/... except for the patent grant thing. The patent thing actually brings it much closer to 'acceptable' for me, personally, because a lot of instances of conglomerates exercising their power has been through software patents.
- grumdan 7y ago
  It does cement their power over you even further though. An individual project may not make an appreciable difference, but in aggregate, if lots of people make similar choices, it may have an impact.

SquishyPanda23 7y ago

I'm sure you understand this already, but corporations can repackage and sell GPL code. The main thing you're granting in choosing a permissive license is the right to deny others the right to enjoy future improvements to the code. This is why in practice permissively licensed code is more successful in industry. Industries like to exercise the right to make proprietary improvements to open source code.

module0000 7y ago
> can repackage and sell GPL code Can you give me some detail about how/when this happens? I was under the impression that you can sell support(or other ancillary services) for GPL'd code, but not for the code itself.
- nuclear_eclipse 7y ago
  Anyone can sell software built from GPL code, but if/when they do so, they are obligated to provide source code for that software to anyone receiving a copy, and those users are permitted to redistribute both the software and the source code as long as they also adhere to the GPL.
  - module0000 7y ago
    Now I understand, it's not the code itself that has a price(hence the 'THIS IS FREE SOFTWARE' notice at the top of GPL). It's the entire "product" they charge for. Thanks for the reply!
    - ghaff 7y ago
      Not quite. FREE SOFTWARE in that context is "free as in freedom" not "free as in beer." I can most certainly sell you for money software licensed under the GPL (if I make the corresponding sources available) with no other obligations on my part. Of course, today you're probably not going to have a lot of luck selling something that your potential customer can just download from elsewhere for free. So, in practice, you're going to have to provide other services/benefits that go into a commercial product. But there's nothing in the GPL that prohibits you from just selling a bunch of bits subject to the requirements of the license and calling it a day.

beering 7y ago

Someday, that might come full circle and you'll be the one who won't be enriched because the original code was MIT and not GPL. Here's an example: you buy some embedded hardware for a personal project, but you find out that the toolchain for that chipset is a pile of proprietary blobs built on Clang and it only runs on Windows. If it were built on GCC, then the GPL would force them to make the source available and people could adapt/update/rebuild it as needed. Making something MIT/public domain is free for one hop, from you to the next person. After that it can become even more restrictive and demanding than the GPL (i.e. proprietary binaries).

smitop 7y ago
GCC has the GCC Runtime Library Exception: the resulting binary of code compiled with GCC doesn't need to licensed under GPL.
- qznc 7y ago
  Grandparent is talking about a modified GCC. Not some binary compiled with GCC.
  - nuclear_eclipse 7y ago
    If they aren't distributing their modified GCC with the hardware, they have no obligation to release the source code either.
davidgerard 7y ago
I can't find the link, but I remember someone from the X Window System regretting that X11 was under the MIT License - it's the origin of the MIT License - rather than copyleft, precisely because so many companies just would not give code back. Keith Packard on this in 2015: https://list.waikato.ac.nz/pipermail/wlug/2015-September/013795.html https://list.waikato.ac.nz/pipermail/wlug/2015-September/013... > Keith made it clear he prefers GPL-style (copyleft/sharealike) licences to MIT/BSD style ones. Net contributors of code tend to prefer the former, while net consumers of code (those who don’t want to give back to the community) tend to favour the latter. In other words, freeloaders.

kerkeslager 7y ago

> If that means a professor wants to put the work into their course and help to instruct a class with it, that is great too. Just to be very clear, neither the MIT nor GPL licenses prevent this.

microtherion 7y ago
Under a strict interpretation of the GPL, a student who copied code out of a textbook to use in a commercial project would be infringing the license. I've never come across this with GPL code, but I've been a bit uncomfortable about reading Numerical Recipes too closely because their code is restrictively licensed.
- kerkeslager 7y ago
  > Under a strict interpretation of the GPL, a student who copied code out of a textbook to use in a commercial project would be infringing the license. This interpretation is very surprising to me. Could you point out what language in the GPL you're interpreting in this way?
  - microtherion 7y ago
    It seems pretty straightforward to me that section 5 of the GPL v3, "Conveying Modified Source Versions" (and the corresponding sections of earlier GPLs) would be applicable to this situation (provided that a non-trivial amount of code is incorporated by the student). What makes you believe otherwise?
    - kerkeslager 7y ago
      A misreading of the section I copy/pasted. :) I thought because you were responding to my post saying using GPL code in a class, that you were claiming professors couldn't use GPL code in classes (they can). But you weren't saying that--I misread.
  - SAI_Peregrinus 7y ago

bbatha 7y ago

I wish the public domain were the least restrictive license, but unfortunately that's just not true globally. In many jurisdictions, notably Germany, there is no public domain or the concept of a public domain doesn't match with common law countries. MIT/BSD or another permissive license is a much better choice if you value openness. [0] 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-domain_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-domain_software

ghaff 7y ago
In fact, the MIT license originally came about specifically because just making X public domain wouldn't fly with at least one of the X Consortium participants. https://opensource.com/article/19/4/history-mit-license https://opensource.com/article/19/4/history-mit-license

snuxoll 7y ago

I think it depends a lot on how valuable your software can be to $supermegacorp, honestly. If I write a competitor to $bigproprietaryapp I would probably decide to release it under a more copy-left license just so nobody can take a ready-to-run solution to market without recourse or compensation. I don't have a problem with proprietary software extending things I write, so such an app would probably be under something like the MPL - "you can use this and add extra features without contributing them back, but you still have to give changes to my code back" sounds like a pretty good compromise. Some big company wants to use the silly little structured logging wrapper I wrote for SLF4J though? What do I care, go for it, it's a tool and your use of it has no ability to damage any use the community at large has for it.

LaGrange 7y ago

> It enriches everyone This is untrue. It might appear obvious that it does, because in the first instance, everyone can take and use it however they want. But as soon as anyone relicenses the work, everyone else loses out. There are also more complicated benefits to the programmer-users of GPL software that get lost in the process. I don't think the situation is clear-cut, and too many factors are hard to quantify, but I don't think you can safely say that non-copyleft "enriches everyone."

delusional 7y ago

> It is a much more powerful statement in my view to provide work in a way that allows the entire world, (corporations included) to enrich themselves and educate themselves in an open and free manner. That is the purpose of the GPL as well. The GPL doesn't say that you have to be a free love hippie to use the software, in fact it says that everyone can use whatever. What it does prescribe is that if you extract value from selling FOOS (not using, but distributing) you must play by the rules of FOOS. You can not sit on the sidelines and extract value without providing anything. Nowhere does it say that you have to share my values. But if you sell my software you have to play by my rules, and that means contributing back.

bscphil 7y ago
I agree. The GPL is sort of a hack for people who don't believe in Copyright. In an ideal world, there would be no difference between GPL and public domain, but in our world the GPL forces people who use your code to behave as if everything were public domain.

mr_toad 7y ago

> It enriches everyone Well, except the users. Say EvilCompany takes the code, puts in in their buggy operating system, distributes it under a commercial license, and then you end up being prevented from fixing the code that you wrote. Because that’s what happened to RMS, and that’s why we have the GPL. It’s freedom; not for the author, and it’s not freedom for the developers or the vendors, it’s freedom for the users.

Digital-Citizen 7y ago

The public domain isn't recognized everywhere and licenses like Creative Commons Zero (CC0) which has a fallback of being all-permissive for regimes where a public domain won't work doesn't look out for patent treachery. The FSF warns against using CC0 for software (see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#CC0 https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#CC0 for the full comments): "For works of software it [CC0] is not recommended, as CC0 has a term expressly stating it does not grant you any patent licenses." If you really want people to be free to use the software as they wish, you can't ignore software idea patents. That naivety actually works against the users as they would be lured into dealing with the software believing it to be free but then trapped by a patent infringement lawsuit. > But at a certain point you just have to realize that there are > differing points of view, that is just the way things go, and > "progress" includes all of them. No, this is too broadly accepting and not carefully discerning as reality requires to make sage judgments nor will it help us understand the ethical underpinnings of the software freedom movement (very much related to one of the major problems in the essay -- the author frames the issue around "open source", a developmental methodology which eschews ethics and is therefore of great use to proprietors. See https://digitalcitizen.info/2019/05/10/how-free-software-and-open-source-differ-on-the-ground/ https://digitalcitizen.info/2019/05/10/how-free-software-and... for more on this). Proprietary software is a "differing point of view" and your statement tries to get us to accept that it is merely another acceptable alternative among many. Seeing proprietary software as some form of social progress means accepting the inherent harm of proprietary software, the very reason why the free software movement was founded in the first place. I will call proprietary software harmful and in no way progress for anything worth defending. The goal isn't to maximize one's ability to have power over someone else, it's to ensure specific and well-identified freedoms for all. Strongly copylefted free software where license terms are defended does this.