5 ms·

Uh, why is it necessary to change the license? BSD code can be compiled into a GPL project without issue; by changing the license you guarantee the BSD crowd wo

by mikece 7y ago

Uh, why is it necessary to change the license? BSD code can be compiled into a GPL project without issue; by changing the license you guarantee the BSD crowd won’t help you one iota.

dragonwriter 7y ago
Hyperbola seems to be a project driven largely by GNUish licensing ideology.
- mikece 7y ago
  But what does that gain anyone? If the Linux/GNU ecosystem were re-licensed to MIT/BSD/Apache2, what would be lost?
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    A number of proprietary extensions to the ecosystem that are never contributed back.
    - oropolo 7y ago
      Right, just like Microsoft, Google, Apple, Sony, Netflix, Juniper and everyone else who uses BSD software never, ever gives their additions back. Oh wait... they do!
      - quotemstr 7y ago
        Tell me where I can download the source to nVidia's LLVM-based shader compiler.
      - saagarjha 7y ago
        Only bits and pieces when they feel like it.
      - kick 7y ago
        Apple throws things over the wall after taking it and hiding it. They don't "give back" in any meaningful sense. I'm still bitter at how they murdered KHTML. (Before someone comments "But KHTML is LGPL!": I know. That's the point. The GPL doesn't have these problems. The LGPL is too weak to be meaningful.)
        duskwuff 7y ago
        > I'm still bitter at how they murdered KHTML. Murdered? Thanks in large part to the work Apple did to transform KHTML into WebKit, WebKit and its derivatives (like Blink) have utterly dominated the browser marketplace. I have a hard time reconciling your characterization of Apple's action with the facts.
        kick 7y ago
        Murdered. They forked it in a way that couldn't be upstreamed (they waited a year and change before releasing source, when doing so releasing it as undocumented garbage), and made their contributions in a way that allowed it to be closed.
        xeeeeeeeeeeenu 7y ago
        GPL doesn't forbid forking.
        kick 7y ago
        Safari would have been released as free software if KHTML was GPL.
        petecox 7y ago
        Apple wouldn't have based a product around it if it were GPL.
        kick 7y ago
        Which is fine, too! What happened wasn't, though.
      - drewg123 7y ago
        Netflix kernel guy here... Off the top of my head, we (Netflix) have contributed the following over the last few years to FreeBSD: - async sendfile - rewrite of the pbuf system - unmapped mbufs - kernel TLS - RACK TCP - BBR TCP - TCP high precision timer system (TCP pacer) - various NUMA improvements, which allow us to stream in excess of 200Gb/s of TLS encrypted video traffic from a single server - Metric tons of fixes Contributing stuff back makes it easier to work with other folks, and makes our jobs easier. We merge from upstream FreeBSD-current every few weeks. The smaller the diff we carry forward, the easier our jobs are.
        belorn 7y ago
        If everyone contribute back everything then the distinction between BSD and GPL would be indistinguishable. A zero diff would be easier work, and would make your job easier than a small diff. but since that is not the case there is an evidential balance between contributing back and keeping changes proprietary. It would be nice in this kind of threads if both sides were just honest in presenting how things work. Companies will decide on contributing back BSD code based on competitive advantages of doing so. It is a business decision. They can reducing costs by having the code maintained by upstream and reduce integration costs, or they can get advantage over their competitors by keeping the code proprietary. I see similar discussing when companies talk about paying taxes. The press releases will talk about contributing back to society and being responsible citizen, while at the same time employing lawyers who do "tax management" in order to pay as little tax as possible. It is true that they do contribute back with numbers that looks impressive, and paying some taxes is easier than paying no taxes, but a honest description would call it a calculated business decision that balance benefits and drawbacks between compliance and tax avoidance.
        mikece 7y ago
        I would say there's a massive difference between contributing back code and paying taxes. Public companies have a FIDUCIARY duty to provide maximum value to shareholders, and that's been the "legal justification" for the FAANGs to engage in the "reverse Irish, Dutch sandwich" scheme to pay zero taxes. Meanwhile, shareholders don't care about code licensing as long as the company isn't giving away the secret sauce under F/OSS terms. Netflix dude above mentioned how much they contribute back; the "enlightened self-interest" of the BSD world encourages these companies to contribute as much as possible back to the project so their diffs in pulling down updates are minimal. If they go asshole and keep everything private they are making their own headache worse when updating or locking themselves in the past.
  - oropolo 7y ago
    Why is this being question being down-voted without explanation? I understand there are philosophical/religious implications to the question but it's still valid: what would you lose?
    - geofft 7y ago
      I didn't downvote, but my guess is that it's because there are well-known tradeoffs and no obvious answer, and asserting that there is no downside to one choice / making people re-argue well-understood benefits to one choice doesn't actually contribute to the conversation.
  - geofft 7y ago
    In practice: there are many companies that built interesting networking products on top of BSD kernels and had no compulsion to release the source, and meanwhile the performance of Linux's networking stack slowly beat it, because companies were working upstream.
    - mikece 7y ago
      "Have no compulsion to release the source" -- reminds me of the interview on the Bryan Lunduke show with a FreeBSD maintainer who talked about Juniper, Comcast, EMC, and Netflix engineers who contribute back a lot of code to FreeBSD, just not the code that specifically makes their work a competitive advantage for their employer, a definition that changes over time. I might be conflating the Lunduke interview with something else but I thought that the Netflix engineers that build their ISP-level caching servers ultimately decided that none of it constituted a proprietary advantage so they released it all. Had the project been based on closed source this wouldn't be an option -- and GPL was out the question all the way unless it was known up-front there would be nothing that could give the makers a competitive advantage. Programmers have to eat; permissive licensing is the best compromise between openness and needing to make a living. History has shown that eventually the code comes out rather than being socked away in proprietary hell.
      - mistrial9 7y ago
        although you make some good points, sadly, the permissive license structure is arguably enabling a new Feudalism, at least in the West, with seasoned programmers reduced to share-cropping, while finance rules the castle (and its dining halls).
        dragonwriter 7y ago
        Permissive license structure for computer programs (or, for that matter, anything especially about computer programs) has nothing to do with that, it's just the normal labor-capital relationship of capitalism. There is, literally, no conceivable software licensing regime that avoids that effect, as long as the broader economic system is predominantly capitalist.
- belorn 7y ago
  GNU people will happy use and welcome contribution under both permissive and copyleft licenses. BSD ideology will only accept permissive licenses. Anything less pure is unwelcome.

by mikece 7y ago

Uh, why is it necessary to change the license? BSD code can be compiled into a GPL project without issue; by changing the license you guarantee the BSD crowd won’t help you one iota.

dragonwriter 7y ago

Hyperbola seems to be a project driven largely by GNUish licensing ideology.

mikece 7y ago
But what does that gain anyone? If the Linux/GNU ecosystem were re-licensed to MIT/BSD/Apache2, what would be lost?
- saagarjha 7y ago
  A number of proprietary extensions to the ecosystem that are never contributed back.
  - oropolo 7y ago
    Right, just like Microsoft, Google, Apple, Sony, Netflix, Juniper and everyone else who uses BSD software never, ever gives their additions back. Oh wait... they do!
    - quotemstr 7y ago
      Tell me where I can download the source to nVidia's LLVM-based shader compiler.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      Only bits and pieces when they feel like it.
    - kick 7y ago
      Apple throws things over the wall after taking it and hiding it. They don't "give back" in any meaningful sense. I'm still bitter at how they murdered KHTML. (Before someone comments "But KHTML is LGPL!": I know. That's the point. The GPL doesn't have these problems. The LGPL is too weak to be meaningful.)
      - duskwuff 7y ago
        > I'm still bitter at how they murdered KHTML. Murdered? Thanks in large part to the work Apple did to transform KHTML into WebKit, WebKit and its derivatives (like Blink) have utterly dominated the browser marketplace. I have a hard time reconciling your characterization of Apple's action with the facts.
        kick 7y ago
        Murdered. They forked it in a way that couldn't be upstreamed (they waited a year and change before releasing source, when doing so releasing it as undocumented garbage), and made their contributions in a way that allowed it to be closed.
      - xeeeeeeeeeeenu 7y ago
        GPL doesn't forbid forking.
        kick 7y ago
        Safari would have been released as free software if KHTML was GPL.
        petecox 7y ago
        Apple wouldn't have based a product around it if it were GPL.
        kick 7y ago
        Which is fine, too! What happened wasn't, though.
    - drewg123 7y ago
      Netflix kernel guy here... Off the top of my head, we (Netflix) have contributed the following over the last few years to FreeBSD: - async sendfile - rewrite of the pbuf system - unmapped mbufs - kernel TLS - RACK TCP - BBR TCP - TCP high precision timer system (TCP pacer) - various NUMA improvements, which allow us to stream in excess of 200Gb/s of TLS encrypted video traffic from a single server - Metric tons of fixes Contributing stuff back makes it easier to work with other folks, and makes our jobs easier. We merge from upstream FreeBSD-current every few weeks. The smaller the diff we carry forward, the easier our jobs are.
      - belorn 7y ago
        If everyone contribute back everything then the distinction between BSD and GPL would be indistinguishable. A zero diff would be easier work, and would make your job easier than a small diff. but since that is not the case there is an evidential balance between contributing back and keeping changes proprietary. It would be nice in this kind of threads if both sides were just honest in presenting how things work. Companies will decide on contributing back BSD code based on competitive advantages of doing so. It is a business decision. They can reducing costs by having the code maintained by upstream and reduce integration costs, or they can get advantage over their competitors by keeping the code proprietary. I see similar discussing when companies talk about paying taxes. The press releases will talk about contributing back to society and being responsible citizen, while at the same time employing lawyers who do "tax management" in order to pay as little tax as possible. It is true that they do contribute back with numbers that looks impressive, and paying some taxes is easier than paying no taxes, but a honest description would call it a calculated business decision that balance benefits and drawbacks between compliance and tax avoidance.
        mikece 7y ago
        I would say there's a massive difference between contributing back code and paying taxes. Public companies have a FIDUCIARY duty to provide maximum value to shareholders, and that's been the "legal justification" for the FAANGs to engage in the "reverse Irish, Dutch sandwich" scheme to pay zero taxes. Meanwhile, shareholders don't care about code licensing as long as the company isn't giving away the secret sauce under F/OSS terms. Netflix dude above mentioned how much they contribute back; the "enlightened self-interest" of the BSD world encourages these companies to contribute as much as possible back to the project so their diffs in pulling down updates are minimal. If they go asshole and keep everything private they are making their own headache worse when updating or locking themselves in the past.
- oropolo 7y ago
  Why is this being question being down-voted without explanation? I understand there are philosophical/religious implications to the question but it's still valid: what would you lose?
  - geofft 7y ago
    I didn't downvote, but my guess is that it's because there are well-known tradeoffs and no obvious answer, and asserting that there is no downside to one choice / making people re-argue well-understood benefits to one choice doesn't actually contribute to the conversation.
- geofft 7y ago
  In practice: there are many companies that built interesting networking products on top of BSD kernels and had no compulsion to release the source, and meanwhile the performance of Linux's networking stack slowly beat it, because companies were working upstream.
  - mikece 7y ago
    "Have no compulsion to release the source" -- reminds me of the interview on the Bryan Lunduke show with a FreeBSD maintainer who talked about Juniper, Comcast, EMC, and Netflix engineers who contribute back a lot of code to FreeBSD, just not the code that specifically makes their work a competitive advantage for their employer, a definition that changes over time. I might be conflating the Lunduke interview with something else but I thought that the Netflix engineers that build their ISP-level caching servers ultimately decided that none of it constituted a proprietary advantage so they released it all. Had the project been based on closed source this wouldn't be an option -- and GPL was out the question all the way unless it was known up-front there would be nothing that could give the makers a competitive advantage. Programmers have to eat; permissive licensing is the best compromise between openness and needing to make a living. History has shown that eventually the code comes out rather than being socked away in proprietary hell.
    - mistrial9 7y ago
      although you make some good points, sadly, the permissive license structure is arguably enabling a new Feudalism, at least in the West, with seasoned programmers reduced to share-cropping, while finance rules the castle (and its dining halls).
      - dragonwriter 7y ago
        Permissive license structure for computer programs (or, for that matter, anything especially about computer programs) has nothing to do with that, it's just the normal labor-capital relationship of capitalism. There is, literally, no conceivable software licensing regime that avoids that effect, as long as the broader economic system is predominantly capitalist.
belorn 7y ago
GNU people will happy use and welcome contribution under both permissive and copyleft licenses. BSD ideology will only accept permissive licenses. Anything less pure is unwelcome.