24 ms·

This is why we should use free software and not just open source one. And the importance of GPL3 for the humanity.

• adharmad 7y ago
  How would using a GPL3 license be helpful? Oracle is not embedding or even dynamically linking to Amazon S3 APIs. They have created their own implementation but copied the signatures to be compatible with Amazon S3 APIs. This is similar to Linus creating a free operating system while adhering to the POSIX standard.
• matheusmoreira 7y ago
  The GPL was created partly in reaction to copyright protection being extended to source code. Copyleft licenses subvert copyright by forcing all involved to do the opposite of what they'd normally do with a copyrighted work. The real victory for humanity would be the end of copyright itself. Too much time is wasted on trying to understand and work around this fundamentally broken system.
  • ms4720 7y ago
    Why? Should not content creators make a fair profit on their content? This includes books and movies. If you read Stallman's early writings on the matter his goal was to have software development funded and directed by the government, so no linux or bsds for example.
    • matheusmoreira 7y ago
      Creators need to figure out how to get paid before their works are created. Perhaps patronage via services like Patreon is the way to go. If we keep relying on copyright, we'll eventually lose everything that makes computers great. Copyright infringement is trivial because we own our machines and have full control over the software that runs on them. Governments and the copyright industry are growing increasingly hostile to the idea that citizens should be able to run whatever software they want. Therefore, maintaining the illusion that information is scarce is fundamentally incompatible with the freedoms envisioned by Stallman's licenses, especially the latest versions. This API copyright issue also threatens competing free software implementations of proprietary APIs. Projects like Wine should be directly affected by the court's decision.
    • Mikhail_Edoshin 7y ago
      Maybe copyright shouldn't be exclusive but more like an offer open to everyone with monetary terms on which it would also be taxed?
    • genidoi 7y ago
      This is specific to software development, where every incremental change to the work is by definition modular. Unlike artwork or music where no individual brush strokes or chords could feasibly exist in a vacuum. Look, should a CSS snippet copywriteable? What about a complex SQL query? Imo, no singular LOC is unique in the way that a newly developed drug is unique or a song is unique. If devs can agree on that, why should that extend to an arbitrarily long combination of LOCs? Even if it's somehow copyrightable, why should the rights of that LOC extend to the person claiming theirs has been breached? It's a bold claim to say that you are the first dev in the world to have ever created a particular piece of functionality. Code should be treated like trade secrets - the protection of the creator is in the meticulous seperation of end product from recipe. SaaSs already do this, the entire front end is publicly visible code, which line-for-line, rarely accounts for more than a small % of the backend logic.
  • beefhash 7y ago
    > The real victory for humanity would be the end of copyright itself. Too much time is wasted on trying to understand and work around this fundamentally broken system. That would also bring about an abrupt end of license wars of permissive vs. copyleft, I suppose.
    • naniwaduni 7y ago
      It seems unlikely for the change to be abrupt without, ah, bigger issues...