6 ms·

Won't this be easy to get from MacPorts soon enough anyway?

bcrescimanno 16y ago
The obvious question is: why would anyone want to? Presumably, Apple will replace Samba with something that works well for the vast majority of cases. To me, this echoes my problems with the GPLv3: how can software be truly free (as in freedom) if it's not free to be used commercially?
- SoftwareMaven 16y ago
  While I agree about the problems with the GPL, freedom is such an overloaded term with different meanings having different levels of importance that it is effectively meaningless.
- tptacek 16y ago
  It is free to be used commercially, if you write it, pay for it, or keep its derived works open source. The only thing GPLv3 keeps you from doing is closed-source commercialization against the wishes of the author. This seems eminently reasonable to me. If you want to allow people to do closed-source commercial projects with your code, BSD license it.
  - chc 16y ago
    It feels kind of like a semantic game to call free software "commercial." Do you really believe that, in general, consumer software that you essentially have to surrender the copyright to is commercially viable? Are many people actually going to pay for something that's available for free with literally no added benefit? (I am, of course, ignoring support here, because support is really a separate product that could even be provided by a third party.)
    - oihujyfgthyjuik 16y ago
      Depend s- is your app commercially viable if you have to re-implement all the GPL stuff I wrote for you yourself? If you are using my GPL contributions for free then you can't turn around and stop your customers using those contributions.
      - chc 16y ago
        Yes, but I can do that if I'm using your BSD-licensed contributions. That's why we're saying that, from the perspective of a commercial software vendor, BSD ensures more freedom.
        tptacek 16y ago
        GPL is moderately less free than BSD/MIT. GPL is significantly more free than closed-source commercial. Two groups of people are negatively impacted by the GPL. First, people who want to ship closed-source versions of code they didn't write in exchange for money, against the will of the package author. Hard to feel sorry for these people. Second, people with BSD/MIT/Apache licensed open source project who want to make it possible for other people to ship closed-source versions of their code for money. A valid concern, but a pragmatic one, not an ideological one. BSD gives away "too much"; GPL holds back "too much". There's no happy medium. Let's take the ideological cast off this ("freedom", "commercial", "semantic games"). The issue here is simple and practical.
        oihujyfgthyjuik 16y ago
        It also ensures you can take my work for free, keep it to yourself and not pass on my contribution to other people. I can also come around and clean out your gutters for free.
        chc 16y ago
        I'm not asking you to clean my gutters for free. I'm asking you to stop saying you'll clean my gutters for free, but sticking in the fine print "$5000 fee required for access to free gutter service." To drop the metaphor: I'm not saying that you can't license your code under GPL. If you don't want me using your software, that's your right. By placing the code under GPL, you are communicating that I am not free to use the software as I please. That is, again, your right — all I ask is that you be honest about the fact that use of the code is very much restricted. If anybody using your code is effectively barred from commercial endeavors, then for people who make money off their software, it does not grant them any more freedom than closed-source code does. To say a license grants freedom because you're free not to use the code is just weird.
    - thaumaturgy 16y ago
      It's like free speech in a sense. You can focus on the freedoms of the user, or you can focus on the freedoms of the developer, and the two aren't 100% congruent. I agree with you, for what it's worth. I much prefer the BSDL exactly for reasons like this.
    - prodigal_erik 16y ago
      There's only one business model the GPL interferes with, namely selling copies of software nobody paid you to write.
      - chc 16y ago
        That's really oversimplifying. For example, if I write a full Photoshop clone that links to a third-party library to support some obscure graphics format, you'd have to be out of your mind to say the whole program is a derivative of that library — but that's how the GPL sees it. In GPL World, all of our programs are forks of libc. This problem is so significant that no major Linux distro puts its system libraries under the GPL. It is clear that they believe the GPL would interfere with more than just the freeloading business model.
    - tptacek 16y ago
      GPL does nothing to prevent you from selling software. Look what Sleepycat did. Just GPL your code, and put an enterprise-grade price tag on a non-GPL commercial license. The only people affected by the GPL are people who want to sell software they didn't write. It's hard for me to get worked up about that: the overwhelming majority of all commercial software is more restrictive.
      - chc 16y ago
        I don't think it's fair to call a program that links against a library for some subset of its functionality "selling software they didn't write." I believe Firefox uses zlib and libpng, but I don't think most people would call Firefox a version of zlib or libpng. Anyway, I'm not saying that people shouldn't be able to license their software under the GPL. If you don't want me using your code, that's your right. But if they do GPL it, from my POV as a potential user of the code, it might as well be closed-source. Thus I object to the statement "It is free to be used commercially," when it is actually free for any other use but impractical for commercial use. (Even in your Sleepycat example, it was the non-GPL version that they used in their commercial pursuits.)
        tptacek 16y ago
        Help me understand what you're saying. If I write a library, you are free not to use it. My code, my terms, right? That's how commercial licensing works. How does GPL harm that dynamic? Or, should the party with more source code lines dictate terms to the party with fewer?
        chc 16y ago
        I think I must be saying this very clumsily. I'll try to sum it up explicitly. I'm OK with the existence of GPL software. I like it when people use a more permissive license, but your code is yours to do with what you will. What bothers me is what people say about the GPL, because I think it's misleading. There is this common idea in the free software community that it is not hostile to commercial software. That's what I don't like. If people came out and said, "Yeah, my GPL source code has very severe restrictions that make it unsuitable for integration in commercial software," I would agree and wish them happy coding. But they don't say that. They use the misleading banner of "free," and even try to deny that it's incompatible with commercial software. Based on all the evidence I've seen, I believe commercial software pretty much has to be offered under a proprietary license in 99% of cases. The GPL says I can't do that if I use so much as one line of GPL code written by somebody else. That means that using GPL code in my software renders it unsaleable. So, when you said, "It is free to be used commercially … if you keep its derived works open source," I objected to that. If you can only release your software under the GPL, you're probably not going to make a lot of money selling it — it strains the definition of "commercial." You can't even use the Sleepycat model, where there's a GPL version and a commercial one. It's your right to put your software under that license. But I think it's important for people to understand that it completely shuts out commercial use, even if the commercial use is largely original. We shouldn't downplay that.
- zppx 16y ago
  > Presumably, Apple will replace Samba with something that works well for the vast majority of cases. I doubt it although I wish this becomes true, the protocol is a pain in the ass, even Samba has some quirks, Samba is a very large software (probably millions of lines of code) just to compare. I just cannot see Apple spending so much time developing this solution only because of their dislike of the GPLv3, sounds dumb to me.
  - wladimir 16y ago
    The only thing that came to mind here is that they'll license the protocol/implementation from MS itself. I'm not sure they'd be open to that, but who knows...
- protomyth 16y ago
  > The obvious question is: why would anyone want to? Presumably, Apple will replace Samba with something that works well for the vast majority of cases. Using OS X Server as a PDC for Windows 7 machines is the big ticket reason.
- pedrocr 16y ago
  The GPL has always included restrictions on how you can use the code and forces you to license the whole as GPL if you derive your own product from a GPL original. GPLv3 advances that into ensuring those freedoms in other cases (patents and locked down hardware). It's not that you can't commercialize GPL software, it's that while doing so you need to still ensure a set of freedoms for the user. That's the essential part of freedom as defined by the FSF. See the 4 freedoms (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html). It took a long time for companies to accept the GPLv2 restrictions when developing products and now some are balking at GPLv3. Google even has a no-GPL policy for anything on the Android userspace. You can of course disagree with this way of working and prefer something like BSD/MIT licensing instead. I wonder if anyone has done a comparison of how much contribution from commercial entities BSD and GPL projects have generated.
- RickHull 16y ago
  > how can software be truly free (as in freedom) if it's not free to be used commercially? Ignoring that Free Software is in fact used commercially everyday, it is important to realize that certain freedoms must be restricted in order to preserve overall freedom. Like how your freedom to locate your fist is constrained by the location of my chin. Or how your freedom to stuff a ballot box is constrained by the preservation of a just, fair, democratic election.
- msg 16y ago
  Here's my contribution. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2227753 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2227753 Key points: It might be more accurate to call it "freed" software. The goal of the GPL is to uncage domesticated software and let it roam wild forever, never collared again. The people who distribute software in this fashion won't let you put it back in the zoo. And again, FSF is not saying that users are free to do what they want. You are not free, according to them. They say that software is free, in the sense of the software freedoms. That sentence essentially would only parse to $0 before Stallman came along.
- pornel 16y ago
  > how can software be truly free (as in freedom) if it's not free to be used commercially? GPL's goal is to maximize users' freedom, not developers'. GPL forbids developers to take freedom away from users, as software with commercial terms or DRM becomes non-free for users.

The obvious question is: why would anyone want to? Presumably, Apple will replace Samba with something that works well for the vast majority of cases. To me, this echoes my problems with the GPLv3: how can software be truly free (as in freedom) if it's not free to be used commercially?

SoftwareMaven 16y ago
While I agree about the problems with the GPL, freedom is such an overloaded term with different meanings having different levels of importance that it is effectively meaningless.
tptacek 16y ago
It is free to be used commercially, if you write it, pay for it, or keep its derived works open source. The only thing GPLv3 keeps you from doing is closed-source commercialization against the wishes of the author. This seems eminently reasonable to me. If you want to allow people to do closed-source commercial projects with your code, BSD license it.
- chc 16y ago
  It feels kind of like a semantic game to call free software "commercial." Do you really believe that, in general, consumer software that you essentially have to surrender the copyright to is commercially viable? Are many people actually going to pay for something that's available for free with literally no added benefit? (I am, of course, ignoring support here, because support is really a separate product that could even be provided by a third party.)
  - oihujyfgthyjuik 16y ago
    Depend s- is your app commercially viable if you have to re-implement all the GPL stuff I wrote for you yourself? If you are using my GPL contributions for free then you can't turn around and stop your customers using those contributions.
    - chc 16y ago
      Yes, but I can do that if I'm using your BSD-licensed contributions. That's why we're saying that, from the perspective of a commercial software vendor, BSD ensures more freedom.
      - tptacek 16y ago
        GPL is moderately less free than BSD/MIT. GPL is significantly more free than closed-source commercial. Two groups of people are negatively impacted by the GPL. First, people who want to ship closed-source versions of code they didn't write in exchange for money, against the will of the package author. Hard to feel sorry for these people. Second, people with BSD/MIT/Apache licensed open source project who want to make it possible for other people to ship closed-source versions of their code for money. A valid concern, but a pragmatic one, not an ideological one. BSD gives away "too much"; GPL holds back "too much". There's no happy medium. Let's take the ideological cast off this ("freedom", "commercial", "semantic games"). The issue here is simple and practical.
      - oihujyfgthyjuik 16y ago
        It also ensures you can take my work for free, keep it to yourself and not pass on my contribution to other people. I can also come around and clean out your gutters for free.
        chc 16y ago
        I'm not asking you to clean my gutters for free. I'm asking you to stop saying you'll clean my gutters for free, but sticking in the fine print "$5000 fee required for access to free gutter service." To drop the metaphor: I'm not saying that you can't license your code under GPL. If you don't want me using your software, that's your right. By placing the code under GPL, you are communicating that I am not free to use the software as I please. That is, again, your right — all I ask is that you be honest about the fact that use of the code is very much restricted. If anybody using your code is effectively barred from commercial endeavors, then for people who make money off their software, it does not grant them any more freedom than closed-source code does. To say a license grants freedom because you're free not to use the code is just weird.
  - thaumaturgy 16y ago
    It's like free speech in a sense. You can focus on the freedoms of the user, or you can focus on the freedoms of the developer, and the two aren't 100% congruent. I agree with you, for what it's worth. I much prefer the BSDL exactly for reasons like this.
  - prodigal_erik 16y ago
    There's only one business model the GPL interferes with, namely selling copies of software nobody paid you to write.
    - chc 16y ago
      That's really oversimplifying. For example, if I write a full Photoshop clone that links to a third-party library to support some obscure graphics format, you'd have to be out of your mind to say the whole program is a derivative of that library — but that's how the GPL sees it. In GPL World, all of our programs are forks of libc. This problem is so significant that no major Linux distro puts its system libraries under the GPL. It is clear that they believe the GPL would interfere with more than just the freeloading business model.
  - tptacek 16y ago
    GPL does nothing to prevent you from selling software. Look what Sleepycat did. Just GPL your code, and put an enterprise-grade price tag on a non-GPL commercial license. The only people affected by the GPL are people who want to sell software they didn't write. It's hard for me to get worked up about that: the overwhelming majority of all commercial software is more restrictive.
    - chc 16y ago
      I don't think it's fair to call a program that links against a library for some subset of its functionality "selling software they didn't write." I believe Firefox uses zlib and libpng, but I don't think most people would call Firefox a version of zlib or libpng. Anyway, I'm not saying that people shouldn't be able to license their software under the GPL. If you don't want me using your code, that's your right. But if they do GPL it, from my POV as a potential user of the code, it might as well be closed-source. Thus I object to the statement "It is free to be used commercially," when it is actually free for any other use but impractical for commercial use. (Even in your Sleepycat example, it was the non-GPL version that they used in their commercial pursuits.)
      - tptacek 16y ago
        Help me understand what you're saying. If I write a library, you are free not to use it. My code, my terms, right? That's how commercial licensing works. How does GPL harm that dynamic? Or, should the party with more source code lines dictate terms to the party with fewer?
        chc 16y ago
        I think I must be saying this very clumsily. I'll try to sum it up explicitly. I'm OK with the existence of GPL software. I like it when people use a more permissive license, but your code is yours to do with what you will. What bothers me is what people say about the GPL, because I think it's misleading. There is this common idea in the free software community that it is not hostile to commercial software. That's what I don't like. If people came out and said, "Yeah, my GPL source code has very severe restrictions that make it unsuitable for integration in commercial software," I would agree and wish them happy coding. But they don't say that. They use the misleading banner of "free," and even try to deny that it's incompatible with commercial software. Based on all the evidence I've seen, I believe commercial software pretty much has to be offered under a proprietary license in 99% of cases. The GPL says I can't do that if I use so much as one line of GPL code written by somebody else. That means that using GPL code in my software renders it unsaleable. So, when you said, "It is free to be used commercially … if you keep its derived works open source," I objected to that. If you can only release your software under the GPL, you're probably not going to make a lot of money selling it — it strains the definition of "commercial." You can't even use the Sleepycat model, where there's a GPL version and a commercial one. It's your right to put your software under that license. But I think it's important for people to understand that it completely shuts out commercial use, even if the commercial use is largely original. We shouldn't downplay that.
zppx 16y ago
> Presumably, Apple will replace Samba with something that works well for the vast majority of cases. I doubt it although I wish this becomes true, the protocol is a pain in the ass, even Samba has some quirks, Samba is a very large software (probably millions of lines of code) just to compare. I just cannot see Apple spending so much time developing this solution only because of their dislike of the GPLv3, sounds dumb to me.
- wladimir 16y ago
  The only thing that came to mind here is that they'll license the protocol/implementation from MS itself. I'm not sure they'd be open to that, but who knows...
protomyth 16y ago
> The obvious question is: why would anyone want to? Presumably, Apple will replace Samba with something that works well for the vast majority of cases. Using OS X Server as a PDC for Windows 7 machines is the big ticket reason.
pedrocr 16y ago
The GPL has always included restrictions on how you can use the code and forces you to license the whole as GPL if you derive your own product from a GPL original. GPLv3 advances that into ensuring those freedoms in other cases (patents and locked down hardware). It's not that you can't commercialize GPL software, it's that while doing so you need to still ensure a set of freedoms for the user. That's the essential part of freedom as defined by the FSF. See the 4 freedoms (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html). It took a long time for companies to accept the GPLv2 restrictions when developing products and now some are balking at GPLv3. Google even has a no-GPL policy for anything on the Android userspace. You can of course disagree with this way of working and prefer something like BSD/MIT licensing instead. I wonder if anyone has done a comparison of how much contribution from commercial entities BSD and GPL projects have generated.
RickHull 16y ago
> how can software be truly free (as in freedom) if it's not free to be used commercially? Ignoring that Free Software is in fact used commercially everyday, it is important to realize that certain freedoms must be restricted in order to preserve overall freedom. Like how your freedom to locate your fist is constrained by the location of my chin. Or how your freedom to stuff a ballot box is constrained by the preservation of a just, fair, democratic election.
msg 16y ago
Here's my contribution. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2227753 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2227753 Key points: It might be more accurate to call it "freed" software. The goal of the GPL is to uncage domesticated software and let it roam wild forever, never collared again. The people who distribute software in this fashion won't let you put it back in the zoo. And again, FSF is not saying that users are free to do what they want. You are not free, according to them. They say that software is free, in the sense of the software freedoms. That sentence essentially would only parse to $0 before Stallman came along.
pornel 16y ago
> how can software be truly free (as in freedom) if it's not free to be used commercially? GPL's goal is to maximize users' freedom, not developers'. GPL forbids developers to take freedom away from users, as software with commercial terms or DRM becomes non-free for users.