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All of the licenses this person defends have serious defects which are being ignored here. FSF saw and understood there were many weaknesses in gplv2 which is w

All of the licenses this person defends have serious defects which are being ignored here. FSF saw and understood there were many weaknesses in gplv2 which is why they worked so hard on gplv3, which is the standard bearer for copy left in my opinion, including it's derivatives like a/l(gpl). The main criticism that is valid is the "gunshy enforcement" by FSF, but if you listen to people like Eben Moglen they are very open about the fact that they have been working on the long game of getting into a position where enforcement would be effective instead of weaken the copyleft movement via a failed enforcement action, and that they have known it would take many years and even decades before the law side would catch up and be ready. I do think they need to step it up, but these are things that FSF et al already acknowledge and are working to address. I have to admit a certain amount of conflicting views here, as I am at the same time sympathetic to entities afraid of doing work that others might then use and profit off of without contributing back (such as MangoDB claims), but I am also sensitive to claims that the licenses they are pursing could also be used as a cudgel to get more people towards paying them instead of using FOSS versions, and also to the fear of corps that SSPL could be a dangerous license if misconstrued. Which is why Mongo was dropped by RedHat, Fedora and Debian... In general I think that (a/l)gplv3 did most of the work actually needed to solve these issues, and that attempts like SSPL, however laudable, are likely to fracture and weaken FOSS as a whole and, being incompatible with gpl, I cannot support them. There are ideas there that are important and should be discussed however. I have put my actions where my mouth is on this issue. I have worked very hard to make the majority of my daily desktop and server stacks gpl or gpl compatible. (which means I steer far clear of mit/bsd licensed things if I can) The few exceptions are things I always keep an eye out for alternatives on. An interesting SO on the SSPL: https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/7522/sspl-and-the-open-source-definition https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/7522/sspl-and... In essence, I mark it as a sign of honest discussion when someone admits the weaknesses to their arguments. There is none of that here, ergo...

kemitchell 7y ago
I believe I mentioned enforcement only in closing. As far as licenses go, my criticism was sharper: FSF licenses as intended allow substantial bodies of activist work to benefit venture capital-backed, closed-software companies. Those intentional drafting decisions are incongruous with a post-hoc politics of VC scapegoating. You mentioned Moglen's public writing on enforcement, and I think you summarize it fairly. But it is precisely that posture that I criticize as gunshy. The Principles of Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement lay it shorter and plainer. The idea that the law isn't ready for GPL enforcement is laid bare by other organizations' success enforcing GPLs. This has some folks within the FSF camp worried: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1mGG4JYurE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1mGG4JYurE They are losing the power to construct and enforce their own social truth about the licenses they published.
- arminiusreturns 7y ago
  Well, I have to admit, you make some convincing points. I feel like I have a lot of reading to do. Are there any books or even blogs that really delve into the meat of the subject you can recommend? I think there is a lot of internal criticism in FSF that doesn't get leaked due to fear of it portraying a weakness, but that needs to be talked about regardless, and you are doing that. Thanks for a balanced response.
  - kemitchell 7y ago
    Unfortunately, there's no single tome directly on point of these debates that I'm aware of. Some of these debates are very old, but some are also basically current events. I'd also be suspicious of any one point of view, including my own. As for blogs, I'd strongly recommend all the folks mentioned in the post, all of whom I link from my blogroll (https://writing.kemitchell.com/blogroll.html https://writing.kemitchell.com/blogroll.html). Bradley Kuhn: http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/ http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/, but see also https://copyleft.org https://copyleft.org, to which he's contributed extensively Heather Meeker: https://heathermeeker.com/ https://heathermeeker.com/ Van Lindbergh: https://processmechanics.com/ https://processmechanics.com/ My own: https://writing.kemitchell.com https://writing.kemitchell.com I think I remember correctly that Bradley and Van were generally against SSPL, while Heather and I were for it. But you should ask them, rather than take my word for it! For a more general reading list, see this one from Blue Oak Council: https://blueoakcouncil.org/lawyer-reading-list https://blueoakcouncil.org/lawyer-reading-list

kemitchell 7y ago

I believe I mentioned enforcement only in closing. As far as licenses go, my criticism was sharper: FSF licenses as intended allow substantial bodies of activist work to benefit venture capital-backed, closed-software companies. Those intentional drafting decisions are incongruous with a post-hoc politics of VC scapegoating. You mentioned Moglen's public writing on enforcement, and I think you summarize it fairly. But it is precisely that posture that I criticize as gunshy. The Principles of Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement lay it shorter and plainer. The idea that the law isn't ready for GPL enforcement is laid bare by other organizations' success enforcing GPLs. This has some folks within the FSF camp worried: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1mGG4JYurE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1mGG4JYurE They are losing the power to construct and enforce their own social truth about the licenses they published.

arminiusreturns 7y ago
Well, I have to admit, you make some convincing points. I feel like I have a lot of reading to do. Are there any books or even blogs that really delve into the meat of the subject you can recommend? I think there is a lot of internal criticism in FSF that doesn't get leaked due to fear of it portraying a weakness, but that needs to be talked about regardless, and you are doing that. Thanks for a balanced response.
- kemitchell 7y ago
  Unfortunately, there's no single tome directly on point of these debates that I'm aware of. Some of these debates are very old, but some are also basically current events. I'd also be suspicious of any one point of view, including my own. As for blogs, I'd strongly recommend all the folks mentioned in the post, all of whom I link from my blogroll (https://writing.kemitchell.com/blogroll.html https://writing.kemitchell.com/blogroll.html). Bradley Kuhn: http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/ http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/, but see also https://copyleft.org https://copyleft.org, to which he's contributed extensively Heather Meeker: https://heathermeeker.com/ https://heathermeeker.com/ Van Lindbergh: https://processmechanics.com/ https://processmechanics.com/ My own: https://writing.kemitchell.com https://writing.kemitchell.com I think I remember correctly that Bradley and Van were generally against SSPL, while Heather and I were for it. But you should ask them, rather than take my word for it! For a more general reading list, see this one from Blue Oak Council: https://blueoakcouncil.org/lawyer-reading-list https://blueoakcouncil.org/lawyer-reading-list