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Specifically in what way are proprietary licenses deadly? Lock-in can certainly be problematic but with more open interchange formats that’s becoming less of a

Specifically in what way are proprietary licenses deadly? Lock-in can certainly be problematic but with more open interchange formats that’s becoming less of an issue. Saying proprietary licenses are deadly without explanation seems more like zealotry than reasoned consideration. Thankfully we have alternatives to the GPL like MIT and Apache for people who want to share source but not force that choice on others.

arminiusreturns 7y ago
GPL has had decades of reasoned consideration, and v3 in particular is one of that few holdouts in an era of tivoization that puts the user in a prison. It is inevitably the users who suffer, and in greater numbers. Tivoization is fatal in the sense of freedom of the user, which is the most important freedom in many peoples eyes. I've said it before and I'll say it again. BSD is about freedom for the devs. GPL is about freedom for the user. Not all users are devs, but all devs are users, and users should take precedence. Proprietary doesn't give a crap about either, and its defenders are the ones most closely resembling religious zealotry... as in false in almost every way but clung to mostly because it benefits it's pushers.
- sojmq 7y ago
  The Venn diagram of "devs" and "users who would like to tinker with the firmware of their iphones" is pretty much a circle. Most users don't have time to do that; if the software of their phone doesn't work they'll get another phone, not another software.
  - wahern 7y ago
    The usual retort to this argument is to analogize devs to mechanics: most car owners don't want to tinker with their engines, but even car owners appreciate the freedom to choose their own mechanic, and assume the mechanic has the ability to utilize and access to alternative parts.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - arminiusreturns 7y ago
    Why stop at phones, what about x86 too? When does it stop? I side with freedom, and say phones should be more free, instead of making excuses about why they aren't. This is why I fully support pinephone and Librem 5's work, however imperfect. The right to repair, in my opinion, inherently requires the right to root. Firmware in particular is behind, (which is why I have some holdout hope for power and risc/mips architectures in the future), but we can still fight for software freedom at least.
geofft 7y ago
The GPL has no power that owners of proprietary code don't already have. The GPL is a software license under copyright law which grants certain permissions subject to certain conditions. If you don't fulfill those conditions, standard copyright law takes effect. The GPL does not on its own have the power to "infect" the rest of your codebase. You can absolutely decide you want to distribute GPL'd software compiled in with proprietary software for which you don't want to release the source. The owner of the GPL software still does not, at this point, have any right to your source. All they can do is say, since you have not obeyed the conditions, you don't have a valid license for my software, and I am now ready to sue you for infringement. You can resolve this situation by relicensing the proprietary components under the GPL and distributing source, if you'd like. GPLv3 has an explicit provision that says, if you do this within 30 days of being notified of the problem, the license retroactively does apply to you and it wasn't infringement. Many major GPLv2 rightsholders have voluntarily adopted the same condition for their GPLv2 code: https://gplcc.github.io/gplcc/ https://gplcc.github.io/gplcc/ You can also resolve the situation by settling with them out of court, going to court and paying damages, going to court and arguing it was fair use / de minimis / whatever, trying to buy them out, etc. If you're willing to do any of those, then you don't have to release your source. (If you go to court and lose, you will probably be ordered to not further distribute the GPL'd code in violation of the license.) None of this is specific to the GPL. If you use proprietary code without a license at all, the rightsholders can still sue you. You can still negotiate with them. You can still fight it out in court. The rightsholder can even choose to say, "Hey, you know what? If you release the entire source code to your product publicly, we'll drop this case." They have the ability to negotiate that with you because that's the same ability GPL rightsholders have. GPL is considered "viral" because, for most people, releasing the rest of your source code is preferable to losing in court for regular copyright infringement. With proprietary software, if it's found out that you've misused someone's code, they probably will not offer you that viral option - they'll go straight for the monetary damages. If you don't consider that fatal, then you shouldn't fear that situation with the GPL, either.
- xkde 7y ago
  True, but it’s perfectly reasonable for Apple to come to the conclusion that, “we just don’t want to deal with the risk” and move on. If they’re not using either GPLed or proprietary stuff, the problem goes away.
lolc 7y ago
> Saying proprietary licenses are deadly without explanation seems more like zealotry than reasoned consideration. Look I didn't come up with the analogy for the virality of the GPL. I don't think it's very illuminating. What the analogy says is that once you have GPL-licenced code in your code all of it will catch it and must be published under the GPL. Proprietary code is worse because once you have proprietary code in your code it becomes unpublishable. I call that fatal under the analogy. > Thankfully we have alternatives to the GPL like MIT and Apache for people who want to share source but not force that choice on others. Sure those are benign within the analogy. That's what the analogy is meant to convey. Funny thing though: MIT code can be made proprietary, I mean fatal, GPL code cannot.
- jancsika 7y ago
  That was an epic troll. In a single post it took the OP from implied acceptance of an anti-GPL trope to explicitly defending proprietary licenses from an attack by the same kind of careless metaphor. I hope others on HN pick up on this and use the "proprietary is deadly" trope similarly (that is, only in response to casual uses of the "viral GPL" trope).
  - belorn 7y ago
    This is why I almost always downvote comments that talks describe a license as viral. It is a metaphor that only causes harm to civil and constructive discussions.
    - teddyh 7y ago
      See also Viral Code and Vaccination by Robert J. Chassell: — When others hurt me, I try to defend myself. But some tell me that this makes them sick. They tell me that I should permit people to rob me of my work. They tell me that I should never try to defend myself. They tell me that I should stop using the GNU General Public License, a license that vaccinates me against hurt. Instead, I should adopt a license that permits other people to rob me with impunity. They want me to adopt a license that forbids me from fighting back. They want me to give up my right to benefit from a derivative of my own work, a right I possess under current copyright law. Of course, the language is a little less feverish than this. Usually, I myself am not called “infectious”. Rather, the legal defense that I use is called “infectious”. The license I choose is called “viral”. In every day language, words such as “infect” and “virus” describe disease. The rhetoric is metaphorical. A legal tool is not a disease organism; but it is popular to think of the law as an illness, so the metaphor has impact. The people who want to rob me use language that says I make them sick when I stop them from robbing me. They do not want to draw attention to the so-called “disease” that makes them ill: my health and my rights, and the health and rights of other people. Instead, they choose metaphor to twist people's thinking. They do not want anyone to think that I am a good citizen for stopping crime. They want the metaphor to fool others into thinking that I am a disease agent. The GNU General Public License protects me. The connotation of “virus” and “infect” is that my choice of defense gives an illness to those who want to rob me. I want freedom from their robbery; but they want the power to hurt me. They get sick when they cannot hurt me. To use another health and illness-related metaphor, the GNU General Public License vaccinates me; it protects me from theft. Note that the theft about which I am talking is entirely legal in some situations: if you license your work under a modified BSD license, or a similar license, then others may legally take your work, make fixes or improvements to it, and forbid you from using that code. I personally dislike this arrangement, but it exists. — https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/vaccination.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/vaccination.html

arminiusreturns 7y ago

GPL has had decades of reasoned consideration, and v3 in particular is one of that few holdouts in an era of tivoization that puts the user in a prison. It is inevitably the users who suffer, and in greater numbers. Tivoization is fatal in the sense of freedom of the user, which is the most important freedom in many peoples eyes. I've said it before and I'll say it again. BSD is about freedom for the devs. GPL is about freedom for the user. Not all users are devs, but all devs are users, and users should take precedence. Proprietary doesn't give a crap about either, and its defenders are the ones most closely resembling religious zealotry... as in false in almost every way but clung to mostly because it benefits it's pushers.

sojmq 7y ago
The Venn diagram of "devs" and "users who would like to tinker with the firmware of their iphones" is pretty much a circle. Most users don't have time to do that; if the software of their phone doesn't work they'll get another phone, not another software.
- wahern 7y ago
  The usual retort to this argument is to analogize devs to mechanics: most car owners don't want to tinker with their engines, but even car owners appreciate the freedom to choose their own mechanic, and assume the mechanic has the ability to utilize and access to alternative parts.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- arminiusreturns 7y ago
  Why stop at phones, what about x86 too? When does it stop? I side with freedom, and say phones should be more free, instead of making excuses about why they aren't. This is why I fully support pinephone and Librem 5's work, however imperfect. The right to repair, in my opinion, inherently requires the right to root. Firmware in particular is behind, (which is why I have some holdout hope for power and risc/mips architectures in the future), but we can still fight for software freedom at least.

geofft 7y ago

The GPL has no power that owners of proprietary code don't already have. The GPL is a software license under copyright law which grants certain permissions subject to certain conditions. If you don't fulfill those conditions, standard copyright law takes effect. The GPL does not on its own have the power to "infect" the rest of your codebase. You can absolutely decide you want to distribute GPL'd software compiled in with proprietary software for which you don't want to release the source. The owner of the GPL software still does not, at this point, have any right to your source. All they can do is say, since you have not obeyed the conditions, you don't have a valid license for my software, and I am now ready to sue you for infringement. You can resolve this situation by relicensing the proprietary components under the GPL and distributing source, if you'd like. GPLv3 has an explicit provision that says, if you do this within 30 days of being notified of the problem, the license retroactively does apply to you and it wasn't infringement. Many major GPLv2 rightsholders have voluntarily adopted the same condition for their GPLv2 code: https://gplcc.github.io/gplcc/ https://gplcc.github.io/gplcc/ You can also resolve the situation by settling with them out of court, going to court and paying damages, going to court and arguing it was fair use / de minimis / whatever, trying to buy them out, etc. If you're willing to do any of those, then you don't have to release your source. (If you go to court and lose, you will probably be ordered to not further distribute the GPL'd code in violation of the license.) None of this is specific to the GPL. If you use proprietary code without a license at all, the rightsholders can still sue you. You can still negotiate with them. You can still fight it out in court. The rightsholder can even choose to say, "Hey, you know what? If you release the entire source code to your product publicly, we'll drop this case." They have the ability to negotiate that with you because that's the same ability GPL rightsholders have. GPL is considered "viral" because, for most people, releasing the rest of your source code is preferable to losing in court for regular copyright infringement. With proprietary software, if it's found out that you've misused someone's code, they probably will not offer you that viral option - they'll go straight for the monetary damages. If you don't consider that fatal, then you shouldn't fear that situation with the GPL, either.

xkde 7y ago
True, but it’s perfectly reasonable for Apple to come to the conclusion that, “we just don’t want to deal with the risk” and move on. If they’re not using either GPLed or proprietary stuff, the problem goes away.

lolc 7y ago

> Saying proprietary licenses are deadly without explanation seems more like zealotry than reasoned consideration. Look I didn't come up with the analogy for the virality of the GPL. I don't think it's very illuminating. What the analogy says is that once you have GPL-licenced code in your code all of it will catch it and must be published under the GPL. Proprietary code is worse because once you have proprietary code in your code it becomes unpublishable. I call that fatal under the analogy. > Thankfully we have alternatives to the GPL like MIT and Apache for people who want to share source but not force that choice on others. Sure those are benign within the analogy. That's what the analogy is meant to convey. Funny thing though: MIT code can be made proprietary, I mean fatal, GPL code cannot.

jancsika 7y ago
That was an epic troll. In a single post it took the OP from implied acceptance of an anti-GPL trope to explicitly defending proprietary licenses from an attack by the same kind of careless metaphor. I hope others on HN pick up on this and use the "proprietary is deadly" trope similarly (that is, only in response to casual uses of the "viral GPL" trope).
- belorn 7y ago
  This is why I almost always downvote comments that talks describe a license as viral. It is a metaphor that only causes harm to civil and constructive discussions.
  - teddyh 7y ago
    See also Viral Code and Vaccination by Robert J. Chassell: — When others hurt me, I try to defend myself. But some tell me that this makes them sick. They tell me that I should permit people to rob me of my work. They tell me that I should never try to defend myself. They tell me that I should stop using the GNU General Public License, a license that vaccinates me against hurt. Instead, I should adopt a license that permits other people to rob me with impunity. They want me to adopt a license that forbids me from fighting back. They want me to give up my right to benefit from a derivative of my own work, a right I possess under current copyright law. Of course, the language is a little less feverish than this. Usually, I myself am not called “infectious”. Rather, the legal defense that I use is called “infectious”. The license I choose is called “viral”. In every day language, words such as “infect” and “virus” describe disease. The rhetoric is metaphorical. A legal tool is not a disease organism; but it is popular to think of the law as an illness, so the metaphor has impact. The people who want to rob me use language that says I make them sick when I stop them from robbing me. They do not want to draw attention to the so-called “disease” that makes them ill: my health and my rights, and the health and rights of other people. Instead, they choose metaphor to twist people's thinking. They do not want anyone to think that I am a good citizen for stopping crime. They want the metaphor to fool others into thinking that I am a disease agent. The GNU General Public License protects me. The connotation of “virus” and “infect” is that my choice of defense gives an illness to those who want to rob me. I want freedom from their robbery; but they want the power to hurt me. They get sick when they cannot hurt me. To use another health and illness-related metaphor, the GNU General Public License vaccinates me; it protects me from theft. Note that the theft about which I am talking is entirely legal in some situations: if you license your work under a modified BSD license, or a similar license, then others may legally take your work, make fixes or improvements to it, and forbid you from using that code. I personally dislike this arrangement, but it exists. — https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/vaccination.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/vaccination.html