5 ms·

If I make a movie and include your copyrighted song for just three minutes of the intro, my whole movie violates the law. Or if I write a book and copy-paste j

by evmar 7y ago

If I make a movie and include your copyrighted song for just three minutes of the intro, my whole movie violates the law. Or if I write a book and copy-paste just one chapter you wrote on your blog into it, the book also violated your copyright. And I "starve to death and die" because yes, in this world you can't just take things that other people have made and use them in whatever way you like -- if you can't obey the terms that someone else has given for the use of their creative work, then don't use their work.

rmtech 7y ago
> if you can't obey the terms that someone else has given for the use of their creative work, then don't use their work. Yes I agree, but the conclusion to this is that you probably should never use the GPL. If you want other people to be able to use your code, use the MIT license. If you want to monetize your code/keep it secret/sell it, then don't try to open-source it. The GPL makes code radioactive and useless to everyone. I get the intent in the OP that people should obey the golden rule and only build open source on open source. But what actually happens in my limited experience is that when a company comes across GPL code, the boss asks you to find equivalent code with an MIT license and ditch the GPL code. If no such MIT code exists, the boss asks you to find another way, or to rewrite the GPL code yourself and keep it secret, or maybe even release it as MIT code. GPL code is a dead end because it poisons other code. And the fundamental reason for this is that programmers have to get money somehow, which almost always means being able to have some of the code they write as closed-source. MIT allows closed and open source to exist side-by-side. You can write some code that does something, release it under the MIT license on GitHub, and also use it as a component of your company's proprietary product which ultimately pays for you to eat and live. And this problem recurses. If I am not in a corporate setting and I am choosing between a GPL library or an equivalent MIT library to use in my own open source application, I should choose the MIT one because otherwise my open source code becomes "infected" with GPL, meaning that people in a corporate setting can't use it. If I'm deciding which library to learn as a hobby I should choose the MIT one because that will be useful for getting a job. Etc. GPL will IMO be radioactive for as long as we insist that most programmers have to sell something in order to have a house to live in and food on the table. If the rest of society sets up a big fund to hand out money to programmers who make useful software, then we can talk about GPL. But actually even if such a fund existed I still think MIT would be better.
- mathnmusic 7y ago
  GPL is an activist license. They have a worldview that they think is more right than others. It's of course not optimal for everyone. They think that closed source software is "morally wrong", and therefore "allowing closed and open source to exist side-by-side" is not really their goal. As a user, I prefer GPL's activist stance, rather than MIT license's non-activist approach which essentially translates to an ethics of "might is right".
  - rmtech 7y ago
    > They think that closed source software is "morally wrong", and therefore "allowing closed and open source to exist side-by-side" is not really their goal. OK, that's nice but can these people explain to me how I should pay rent?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - icebraining 7y ago
      Work for one of the thousands of companies that pay you to write GPL licensed code? I can give you some references, having worked for one for a few years (specifically, we wrote Odoo modules for various businesses).
      - rmtech 7y ago
        And how does the company get money?
        icebraining 7y ago
        Sales of the modules, optional support contracts, and SaaS hosting of the GPL application and our GPL modules for people who prefer it to self-hosting.
- mcsofake 7y ago
filmgirlcw 7y ago
Except that analogy doesn't quite work. If you use a copyrighted song in a movie, you can choose to license that song (and the terms of use and cost will be up to the rights holder) -- licensing that song doesn't give the rights holder reciprocal access to your film. So yes, I agree with you that you need to obey the terms someone else has used for their work, or else you shouldn't use the work -- but your analogy with regards to a film or a book isn't accurate.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- mcguire 7y ago
  You are welcome to negotiate a second license to avoid the GPL.
  - rmtech 7y ago
    > You are welcome to negotiate a second license to avoid the GPL. I have seen this in real life a few times. Usually something gets released under the GPL and then the authors ask for $ to hand it out with a commercial license on a case-by-case basis. But in practice it is difficult to negotiate a truly fair price if the market is somewhat thin and the size of the code is relatively small. I've seen this for ML datasets for example, collected using taxpayers' money and the author wants $50k per license to allow a company to use it. But that $50k represents what the author thinks they can get away with, not the true value of the dataset to your algorithm. In reality companies (in my experience) stay away from this, and for good reason. In cases like this I definitely wish GPL didn't exist, because if the academics who made the dataset had to choose between MIT or secret/proprietary, they would not be able to get away with Keeping their taxpayer funded dataset secret. (Because then taxpayers would be like "yo, wtf are we paying you for?"). One reason open source is good is that code markets just don't seem to work very well. But the good kind of open source is MIT licensed code.
    - mcguire 7y ago
      "But that $50k represents what the author thinks they can get away with, not the true value of the dataset to your algorithm." That is how the market works, right? The price of something is set not by the "value" but by what the seller can get. Researchers "get away" with keeping their data proprietary all the time.

by evmar 7y ago

rmtech 7y ago

> if you can't obey the terms that someone else has given for the use of their creative work, then don't use their work. Yes I agree, but the conclusion to this is that you probably should never use the GPL. If you want other people to be able to use your code, use the MIT license. If you want to monetize your code/keep it secret/sell it, then don't try to open-source it. The GPL makes code radioactive and useless to everyone. I get the intent in the OP that people should obey the golden rule and only build open source on open source. But what actually happens in my limited experience is that when a company comes across GPL code, the boss asks you to find equivalent code with an MIT license and ditch the GPL code. If no such MIT code exists, the boss asks you to find another way, or to rewrite the GPL code yourself and keep it secret, or maybe even release it as MIT code. GPL code is a dead end because it poisons other code. And the fundamental reason for this is that programmers have to get money somehow, which almost always means being able to have some of the code they write as closed-source. MIT allows closed and open source to exist side-by-side. You can write some code that does something, release it under the MIT license on GitHub, and also use it as a component of your company's proprietary product which ultimately pays for you to eat and live. And this problem recurses. If I am not in a corporate setting and I am choosing between a GPL library or an equivalent MIT library to use in my own open source application, I should choose the MIT one because otherwise my open source code becomes "infected" with GPL, meaning that people in a corporate setting can't use it. If I'm deciding which library to learn as a hobby I should choose the MIT one because that will be useful for getting a job. Etc. GPL will IMO be radioactive for as long as we insist that most programmers have to sell something in order to have a house to live in and food on the table. If the rest of society sets up a big fund to hand out money to programmers who make useful software, then we can talk about GPL. But actually even if such a fund existed I still think MIT would be better.

mathnmusic 7y ago
GPL is an activist license. They have a worldview that they think is more right than others. It's of course not optimal for everyone. They think that closed source software is "morally wrong", and therefore "allowing closed and open source to exist side-by-side" is not really their goal. As a user, I prefer GPL's activist stance, rather than MIT license's non-activist approach which essentially translates to an ethics of "might is right".
- rmtech 7y ago
  > They think that closed source software is "morally wrong", and therefore "allowing closed and open source to exist side-by-side" is not really their goal. OK, that's nice but can these people explain to me how I should pay rent?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - icebraining 7y ago
    Work for one of the thousands of companies that pay you to write GPL licensed code? I can give you some references, having worked for one for a few years (specifically, we wrote Odoo modules for various businesses).
    - rmtech 7y ago
      And how does the company get money?
      - icebraining 7y ago
        Sales of the modules, optional support contracts, and SaaS hosting of the GPL application and our GPL modules for people who prefer it to self-hosting.
mcsofake 7y ago

filmgirlcw 7y ago

Except that analogy doesn't quite work. If you use a copyrighted song in a movie, you can choose to license that song (and the terms of use and cost will be up to the rights holder) -- licensing that song doesn't give the rights holder reciprocal access to your film. So yes, I agree with you that you need to obey the terms someone else has used for their work, or else you shouldn't use the work -- but your analogy with regards to a film or a book isn't accurate.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mcguire 7y ago
You are welcome to negotiate a second license to avoid the GPL.
- rmtech 7y ago
  > You are welcome to negotiate a second license to avoid the GPL. I have seen this in real life a few times. Usually something gets released under the GPL and then the authors ask for $ to hand it out with a commercial license on a case-by-case basis. But in practice it is difficult to negotiate a truly fair price if the market is somewhat thin and the size of the code is relatively small. I've seen this for ML datasets for example, collected using taxpayers' money and the author wants $50k per license to allow a company to use it. But that $50k represents what the author thinks they can get away with, not the true value of the dataset to your algorithm. In reality companies (in my experience) stay away from this, and for good reason. In cases like this I definitely wish GPL didn't exist, because if the academics who made the dataset had to choose between MIT or secret/proprietary, they would not be able to get away with Keeping their taxpayer funded dataset secret. (Because then taxpayers would be like "yo, wtf are we paying you for?"). One reason open source is good is that code markets just don't seem to work very well. But the good kind of open source is MIT licensed code.
  - mcguire 7y ago
    "But that $50k represents what the author thinks they can get away with, not the true value of the dataset to your algorithm." That is how the market works, right? The price of something is set not by the "value" but by what the seller can get. Researchers "get away" with keeping their data proprietary all the time.