4 ms·

> I license all my personall stuff under the GPL and AGPL (where applicable) and dislike the permissive licenses (MIT, 3 clause BSD, X11, Apache) because they a

> I license all my personall stuff under the GPL and AGPL (where applicable) and dislike the permissive licenses (MIT, 3 clause BSD, X11, Apache) because they allow people to take your stuff and never contribute back. I prefer strong copyleft licenses that force you to contribute. Here is a good article going into permissive vs copyleft licensing. This is a fair point, however the way it seems to end up working is that people just don't use the software due to the viral nature of GPL and AGPL. I'd be happy enough to contribute modifications back to projects under GPL and AGPL but, the reality is, if I embed some GPL or AGPL component, service, or product into my site or service we're now in this (at best) legal grey area where we have to figure out how much of what I've done is a modification, and how much is distinct, and there's a risk I just have to hand it all over (whch I don't want to do). It quickly becomes enough of a nightmare to deal with that it's easier to either (a) find an alternative that uses a permissive license, or (b) build something oneself that offers the required functionality. It's a shame because it leads to, I think, both OSS and corporations losing out. It would be great if there was some sort of middle ground license that protected against corporate abuse, and forced corporations to hand over changes without the risk of having to hand over large tranches of their other IP. I'm not sure what that would be though, or whether it could be made to work.

toyg 6y ago
The minute it is required to hand over anything, even a single line of code, you will find someone raising the objection you mentioned (“it’s too burdensome to figure out if I have to release 6 characters or 5 characters!”). Stock corporate lawyers don’t like uncertainty, and the smallest of grey areas will be seized upon to block anything “in order to protect the company”. The reality is that in 99.99999% of the cases, nobody will ever come after you for trying to do the right thing. If you engage the GPL community in good faith, things will work out fine with minimum fuss. So no, we don’t need another license, we just need people willing to do the right thing.
- _ph_ 6y ago
  The problem with GPL is, that it doesn't only require you to hand over any modifications to the GPL code - this would be easily to do, but to any code in a product built containing GPL code. And that is where the problems usually start. The reality is, not everyone agrees what the reality is and especially a company which takes licenses serious will be very careful to check, whether using GPL code is possible in a project. And no, we don't need another license, there are plenty of licenses available which resolve the issues. Be it the permissive licenses (MIT, BSD, ...) or GPL with linking exceptions.
  - arminiusreturns 6y ago
    > but to any code in a product built containing GPL code. Citation please. I don't think this is accurate, and is another common misunderstanding of the gpl license family. I frequently see proprietary systems that have a notice list of the licenses they are using, including gplv2/3. Are they all in violation? I doubt it. GPL is my license of choice, (I have an almost completely gpl daily stack), so I'm not just being rhetorical, if there is something I'v missed I want to learn!
    - bartread 6y ago
      > Citation please. I don't think this is accurate, and is another common misunderstanding of the gpl license family. I believe you, but I also think (as stated in another comment) that if this is the case the GPL doesn't do a very good job of explaining itself. At the very least this creates friction when considering its adoption.
      - arminiusreturns 6y ago
        I think there is some truth there, but I think a lot more of the FUD on the copyleft licenses originates not from unclear licenses, but from a network effect where so many people repeat falsehoods, and to be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if some entities actively encouraged them.
      - toyg 6y ago
        > the GPL doesn't do a very good job of explaining itself The copious amount of side-notes [1][2][3] is likely to clarify most doubts, if one is willing to go through it. Obviously "contract law applied to software" is not a fun read though. [1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html [2] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.html [3] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/quick-guide-gplv3.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/quick-guide-gplv3.html
- bartread 6y ago
  > The reality is that in 99.99999% of the cases, nobody will ever come after you for trying to do the right thing. If you engage the GPL community in good faith, things will work out fine with minimum fuss. > So no, we don’t need another license, we just need people willing to do the right thing. What I'd actually like is for the license to be clear enough in its intent that I don't need to engage anyone in a consultation with either a lawyer or the community to figure out whether I can use a project or not.
- lawtalkinghuman 6y ago
  > If you engage the GPL community in good faith, things will work out fine with minimum fuss. Who is the "GPL community"? Stallman and FSF/GNU/SFLC? Linus Torvalds? A non-profit foundation like Apache/Mozilla/GNOME? A community of enthusiasts with a web forum and a GitHub org? A random solo author library of a random JS package on GitHub? Google? Microsoft? Oracle? Because the sort of intuitive risk feelings I'd have for each differ quite considerably.
  - toyg 6y ago
    First port of call should be authors, since they are the copyright holders and can clarify intent beyond the letter of the licence. Failing that, you can ask FSF/GNU. (Not sure why you'd bring Apache or Mozilla into this, considering they went to the trouble of writing their own licenses rather than using the GPL...)
    - lawtalkinghuman 6y ago
      The intent needs to be clear in the licence text itself. In a dispute, courts will look to intent somewhat, but generally the law assumes that when parties to a contract or licence or deed state their intentions in the form of written text, that text will be primary in understanding the content of the agreement that was made. The authors of legal texts don't have magic powers. Let's say you buy a product from a company, C. They wrote a contract which you both agreed to. They are a big company, and you are just an individual person, so your bargaining power is pretty minimal compared to them, and basically amounts to "take it or leave it". So you buy a thing on their terms. Some term of the contract later turns out to be unclear, so you ask them to clarify it. Is the clarification they provide going to be beneficial to their interests or yours? Theirs, obviously. Stallman's interpretation of the GPL in the case of uncertainty or lack of clarity is going to be to read it in such a way as serves his goals: making sure there is more free software in the world, and protecting the Four Freedoms. A corporate lawyer working for Oracle is going to interpret unclear provisions in a perhaps rather more conservative way, especially if it financially benefits Oracle. The fact Stallman wrote the license doesn't give him any particular special hermeneutical status when working out how a court will interpret it. "Hey, just trust us" isn't useful either, because there's a difference between being asked to trust randomhacker849 and being asked to trust a multinational megacorporation like Google or Oracle. While randomhacker849 may follow the broad spirit of any particular open source licence and expect licensees to follow the broad spirit too, I'm pretty sure Oracle are going to follow the exact letter if doing so is in their financial interest. The whole point of legal instruments is the need for trust is reduced because you have rights and obligations that a court will enforce. And the whole reason we turn agreements into written legal texts is precisely because "hey, just trust us" doesn't scale—when millions or billions are on the line, you want those agreements formalised. (I included Apache and Mozilla because they represent examples of open source non-profit foundations, not because they use the GPL, incidentally. Other than GNOME and FSF, most of the projects that have their own foundation—LibreOffice's Document Foundation, Perl, Python, Mozilla—have permissive licenses rather than copyleft. The point isn't about the wording of the text, but more the question of "if I were going to rely on a disputed bit of license text in my use of this software, what risk would I face of litigation?"... and that risk differs considerably between randomhacker849, a non-profit foundation, Stallman/FSF, and a huge scary litigious corporate beast like Oracle.)
3np 6y ago
Is it, though? Do you have an (even hypothetical) example? I've never been in a situation where this is unclear. External code that interfaces with the GPL code, or that the GPL code interfaces with: OK Modifying or extending anything in the code itself: Not OK
- bartread 6y ago
  Sure. I can't talk about specifics but I've worked several places where GPL code was forbidden, particularly in products we built that were installed on premise, and LGPL regarded with suspicion. (IANAL) LGPL isn't generally a problem (from my reading of it), but it gets grey the moment you include a library (even unmodified) that is released under GPL. And this is where everyone starts getting nervous, regardless of whether it's OK to do that without handing over your source code or not. That confusion, if it is an invalid concern, suggests that at the very least the GPL does not do a good job of explaining itself.
matthewdgreen 6y ago
Isn’t this what the LGPL was designed for?
- bartread 6y ago
  It is, but authors aren't forced to use it, and you can happily license your library as GPL.
h0l0cube 6y ago
During my consulting, every fork I've made that was integrated into a project, was upstreamed via a PR. Either that or just, you know, leave the fork available on a company Github account. And if an org requires sensitive, and proprietary modifications, maybe that org ought to be investing the time and resources to make it from scratch?
rileymat2 6y ago
>This is a fair point, however the way it seems to end up working is that people just don't use the software due to the viral nature of GPL and AGPL. I agree, but if almost all open source developers followed the more viral ones, the cost of proprietary software would become clear.
kazinator 6y ago
GPLed programs are used by millions of people who don't "give anything back".

toyg 6y ago

The minute it is required to hand over anything, even a single line of code, you will find someone raising the objection you mentioned (“it’s too burdensome to figure out if I have to release 6 characters or 5 characters!”). Stock corporate lawyers don’t like uncertainty, and the smallest of grey areas will be seized upon to block anything “in order to protect the company”. The reality is that in 99.99999% of the cases, nobody will ever come after you for trying to do the right thing. If you engage the GPL community in good faith, things will work out fine with minimum fuss. So no, we don’t need another license, we just need people willing to do the right thing.

_ph_ 6y ago
The problem with GPL is, that it doesn't only require you to hand over any modifications to the GPL code - this would be easily to do, but to any code in a product built containing GPL code. And that is where the problems usually start. The reality is, not everyone agrees what the reality is and especially a company which takes licenses serious will be very careful to check, whether using GPL code is possible in a project. And no, we don't need another license, there are plenty of licenses available which resolve the issues. Be it the permissive licenses (MIT, BSD, ...) or GPL with linking exceptions.
- arminiusreturns 6y ago
  > but to any code in a product built containing GPL code. Citation please. I don't think this is accurate, and is another common misunderstanding of the gpl license family. I frequently see proprietary systems that have a notice list of the licenses they are using, including gplv2/3. Are they all in violation? I doubt it. GPL is my license of choice, (I have an almost completely gpl daily stack), so I'm not just being rhetorical, if there is something I'v missed I want to learn!
  - bartread 6y ago
    > Citation please. I don't think this is accurate, and is another common misunderstanding of the gpl license family. I believe you, but I also think (as stated in another comment) that if this is the case the GPL doesn't do a very good job of explaining itself. At the very least this creates friction when considering its adoption.
    - arminiusreturns 6y ago
      I think there is some truth there, but I think a lot more of the FUD on the copyleft licenses originates not from unclear licenses, but from a network effect where so many people repeat falsehoods, and to be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if some entities actively encouraged them.
    - toyg 6y ago
      > the GPL doesn't do a very good job of explaining itself The copious amount of side-notes [1][2][3] is likely to clarify most doubts, if one is willing to go through it. Obviously "contract law applied to software" is not a fun read though. [1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html [2] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.html [3] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/quick-guide-gplv3.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/quick-guide-gplv3.html
bartread 6y ago
> The reality is that in 99.99999% of the cases, nobody will ever come after you for trying to do the right thing. If you engage the GPL community in good faith, things will work out fine with minimum fuss. > So no, we don’t need another license, we just need people willing to do the right thing. What I'd actually like is for the license to be clear enough in its intent that I don't need to engage anyone in a consultation with either a lawyer or the community to figure out whether I can use a project or not.
lawtalkinghuman 6y ago
> If you engage the GPL community in good faith, things will work out fine with minimum fuss. Who is the "GPL community"? Stallman and FSF/GNU/SFLC? Linus Torvalds? A non-profit foundation like Apache/Mozilla/GNOME? A community of enthusiasts with a web forum and a GitHub org? A random solo author library of a random JS package on GitHub? Google? Microsoft? Oracle? Because the sort of intuitive risk feelings I'd have for each differ quite considerably.
- toyg 6y ago
  First port of call should be authors, since they are the copyright holders and can clarify intent beyond the letter of the licence. Failing that, you can ask FSF/GNU. (Not sure why you'd bring Apache or Mozilla into this, considering they went to the trouble of writing their own licenses rather than using the GPL...)
  - lawtalkinghuman 6y ago
    The intent needs to be clear in the licence text itself. In a dispute, courts will look to intent somewhat, but generally the law assumes that when parties to a contract or licence or deed state their intentions in the form of written text, that text will be primary in understanding the content of the agreement that was made. The authors of legal texts don't have magic powers. Let's say you buy a product from a company, C. They wrote a contract which you both agreed to. They are a big company, and you are just an individual person, so your bargaining power is pretty minimal compared to them, and basically amounts to "take it or leave it". So you buy a thing on their terms. Some term of the contract later turns out to be unclear, so you ask them to clarify it. Is the clarification they provide going to be beneficial to their interests or yours? Theirs, obviously. Stallman's interpretation of the GPL in the case of uncertainty or lack of clarity is going to be to read it in such a way as serves his goals: making sure there is more free software in the world, and protecting the Four Freedoms. A corporate lawyer working for Oracle is going to interpret unclear provisions in a perhaps rather more conservative way, especially if it financially benefits Oracle. The fact Stallman wrote the license doesn't give him any particular special hermeneutical status when working out how a court will interpret it. "Hey, just trust us" isn't useful either, because there's a difference between being asked to trust randomhacker849 and being asked to trust a multinational megacorporation like Google or Oracle. While randomhacker849 may follow the broad spirit of any particular open source licence and expect licensees to follow the broad spirit too, I'm pretty sure Oracle are going to follow the exact letter if doing so is in their financial interest. The whole point of legal instruments is the need for trust is reduced because you have rights and obligations that a court will enforce. And the whole reason we turn agreements into written legal texts is precisely because "hey, just trust us" doesn't scale—when millions or billions are on the line, you want those agreements formalised. (I included Apache and Mozilla because they represent examples of open source non-profit foundations, not because they use the GPL, incidentally. Other than GNOME and FSF, most of the projects that have their own foundation—LibreOffice's Document Foundation, Perl, Python, Mozilla—have permissive licenses rather than copyleft. The point isn't about the wording of the text, but more the question of "if I were going to rely on a disputed bit of license text in my use of this software, what risk would I face of litigation?"... and that risk differs considerably between randomhacker849, a non-profit foundation, Stallman/FSF, and a huge scary litigious corporate beast like Oracle.)

3np 6y ago

Is it, though? Do you have an (even hypothetical) example? I've never been in a situation where this is unclear. External code that interfaces with the GPL code, or that the GPL code interfaces with: OK Modifying or extending anything in the code itself: Not OK

bartread 6y ago
Sure. I can't talk about specifics but I've worked several places where GPL code was forbidden, particularly in products we built that were installed on premise, and LGPL regarded with suspicion. (IANAL) LGPL isn't generally a problem (from my reading of it), but it gets grey the moment you include a library (even unmodified) that is released under GPL. And this is where everyone starts getting nervous, regardless of whether it's OK to do that without handing over your source code or not. That confusion, if it is an invalid concern, suggests that at the very least the GPL does not do a good job of explaining itself.

matthewdgreen 6y ago

Isn’t this what the LGPL was designed for?

bartread 6y ago
It is, but authors aren't forced to use it, and you can happily license your library as GPL.

h0l0cube 6y ago

During my consulting, every fork I've made that was integrated into a project, was upstreamed via a PR. Either that or just, you know, leave the fork available on a company Github account. And if an org requires sensitive, and proprietary modifications, maybe that org ought to be investing the time and resources to make it from scratch?

rileymat2 6y ago

>This is a fair point, however the way it seems to end up working is that people just don't use the software due to the viral nature of GPL and AGPL. I agree, but if almost all open source developers followed the more viral ones, the cost of proprietary software would become clear.

kazinator 6y ago

GPLed programs are used by millions of people who don't "give anything back".