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This kind of comment does little to advance the discussion. All you're doing is steamrollering over legitimate opinions with an ad hominem attack. For example,

This kind of comment does little to advance the discussion. All you're doing is steamrollering over legitimate opinions with an ad hominem attack. For example, while I don't mind the GPL, I prefer to use more permissive licenses for my own code, because that's what's more in line with my personal ethics. I'm just not a "strings attached" kind of person. There is a courage criticism to make of how I do things, but it works in the opposite of the direction you're trying to take things: I sometimes wish I had the guts to follow SQLite's lead on software licensing.

echelon 6y ago
> All you're doing is steamrollering over legitimate opinions with an ad hominem attack. Where? > This kind of comment does little to advance the discussion. What are you talking about? Wider GPL adoption is central to the discussion! Companies are taking permissively licensed work, making billions, not contributing back, and building massive platforms we'll all be forced to build upon. AWS and the like are a step forward in terms of not needing to image and upgrade machines, but it's ten steps back in terms of computing freedom. The future of computing is closed and they're using open source to corral us in.
- tytso 6y ago
  > Wider GPL adoption is central to the discussion! Sure. And so the question is, did the GPLv3 improve or degrade adoption of copyleft licensing? To quote from Star Wars, "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." Like it or not, companies fund the vast majority of open source software development, not hobbists, and when the FSF tried to "tighten its grip" by making a license which moved the balance of benefits more towards free software users, and away from the companies which funded the work, things didn't go well for them. And so what the FSF has found is that the the goals of the free software manifesto has been, more and more, slipping through its fingers. Unless you can make non-free software illegal across all countries, at the end of the day, you need to find a balance where all stakeholders are comfortable with the result so that users, developers, and company freely and happily choose to use free software. This is a negotiation, and if there is more value that can be gained by signing onto the free software ecosystem, then perhaps the balance can be shifted a bit more towards the free software goals. But until you can, given that most open source developers do like food with their meals, a successful open source strategist has to be grounded in the economic and business realities. Just raising your right hand in a fist and shouting, "power to the people" and "freedom" is generally not going to get you very far.
  - pseudalopex 6y ago
    The FSF reacted to companies like TiVo tightening their grip. I don't think GPL3 really affected adoption of copyleft licensing. Permissive licenses were gaining already.[1] [1] https://redmonk.com/dberkholz/2013/04/02/quantifying-the-shift-toward-permissive-licensing/ https://redmonk.com/dberkholz/2013/04/02/quantifying-the-shi...
    - tytso 6y ago
      I don't think your reference shows that. The GPLv3 was released in 2007. It obviously depends a lot on the language, since each language tends to have its own ecosystem, but the massive shift to permissive licenses really didn't start until 2008-2010, which is after the GPLv3 was promulgated. C didn't tip over to being majority permissive until 2011. So I'd argue that the analysis in the graph tends to support my contention that the GPLv3 hurt rather than helped the copyleft cause.
      - mr_toad 6y ago
        I think it’s irrelevant. Post 2005 is when cloud computing & the web as an app platform began to gain traction, and a lot of open source software from ‘big tech’ is either cloud or web related. The adoption of more permissive licenses is just because the big players favour those licences.
      - pseudalopex 6y ago
        The ratio went from 0.2 in 2000 to 0.6 in 2006 to 1.1 in 2012. The trend started before it crossed 1.0.
  - carapace 6y ago
    Did you really use the Empire from Star Wars as a metaphor for GPL/FSF? My head is spinning.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
adamc 6y ago
Not so much an attack, but my reaction was something like the post you respond to: "GPL3 doesn't work because people are abandoning GPL 3" seems like a self-reinforcing prophecy. I am OK with people using whatever license they want for software they write. But if you think GPL 3 is ideal, by using something else you are just killing your ideal.
- mumblemumble 6y ago
  To me, it's not a self-fulfilling prophecy so much as a hard lesson in pragmatism. Some people care very deeply about Free-as-in-FSF. Others like the idea in vague terms, but don't assign much moral weight to it. I suspect that there's a tendency for the former group to project their feelings upon members of the latter. And that that, in turn, leads to some bewilderment when someone makes a blithely practical choice such as, "Among this range of licenses, all of which are perfectly acceptable to me, I'm going to just pick the one that I think will result in more people using the thing I made," or, "I'm going to just pick the one that's easiest for me to understand."
pydry 6y ago
>For example, while I don't mind the GPL, I prefer to use more permissive licenses for my own code This argument does little to advance the discussion either. Some projects take a weekend to build. Others are the result of years of blood, sweat and tears. The latter is probably where you're going to want to have a little more control over how the fruits of your labor are used and maybe get yourself paid a bit more than $0.
saurik 6y ago
If you don't like "strings attached" then it certainly makes no sense to use a so-called "permissive" license, as the core--in fact, only--permission that such licenses offer over the various copyleft licenses is the permission to take all the other permissions away from downstream users... the people we should all be fighting for! "The only string attached to usage of this software is that you are not allowed to attach additional strings to this software."
- marcinzm 6y ago
  >the people we should all be fighting for! Why? These users overall aren't even willing to pay token money to support the creator so why should the creator care about them more than their own goals and desires?
- mumblemumble 6y ago
  I just can't bring myself to see it that way. If someone incorporates code I've open sourced into a commercial product, that takes nothing away from me or anyone else. The only permission I ever gave was for others to use some code I wrote for their own purposes. That doesn't change if someone incorporates it into a closed source product. It's not like someone else choosing not to open source their additions causes the original software license on the original code to disappear in a puff of smoke.

echelon 6y ago

> All you're doing is steamrollering over legitimate opinions with an ad hominem attack. Where? > This kind of comment does little to advance the discussion. What are you talking about? Wider GPL adoption is central to the discussion! Companies are taking permissively licensed work, making billions, not contributing back, and building massive platforms we'll all be forced to build upon. AWS and the like are a step forward in terms of not needing to image and upgrade machines, but it's ten steps back in terms of computing freedom. The future of computing is closed and they're using open source to corral us in.

tytso 6y ago
> Wider GPL adoption is central to the discussion! Sure. And so the question is, did the GPLv3 improve or degrade adoption of copyleft licensing? To quote from Star Wars, "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." Like it or not, companies fund the vast majority of open source software development, not hobbists, and when the FSF tried to "tighten its grip" by making a license which moved the balance of benefits more towards free software users, and away from the companies which funded the work, things didn't go well for them. And so what the FSF has found is that the the goals of the free software manifesto has been, more and more, slipping through its fingers. Unless you can make non-free software illegal across all countries, at the end of the day, you need to find a balance where all stakeholders are comfortable with the result so that users, developers, and company freely and happily choose to use free software. This is a negotiation, and if there is more value that can be gained by signing onto the free software ecosystem, then perhaps the balance can be shifted a bit more towards the free software goals. But until you can, given that most open source developers do like food with their meals, a successful open source strategist has to be grounded in the economic and business realities. Just raising your right hand in a fist and shouting, "power to the people" and "freedom" is generally not going to get you very far.
- pseudalopex 6y ago
  The FSF reacted to companies like TiVo tightening their grip. I don't think GPL3 really affected adoption of copyleft licensing. Permissive licenses were gaining already.[1] [1] https://redmonk.com/dberkholz/2013/04/02/quantifying-the-shift-toward-permissive-licensing/ https://redmonk.com/dberkholz/2013/04/02/quantifying-the-shi...
  - tytso 6y ago
    I don't think your reference shows that. The GPLv3 was released in 2007. It obviously depends a lot on the language, since each language tends to have its own ecosystem, but the massive shift to permissive licenses really didn't start until 2008-2010, which is after the GPLv3 was promulgated. C didn't tip over to being majority permissive until 2011. So I'd argue that the analysis in the graph tends to support my contention that the GPLv3 hurt rather than helped the copyleft cause.
    - mr_toad 6y ago
      I think it’s irrelevant. Post 2005 is when cloud computing & the web as an app platform began to gain traction, and a lot of open source software from ‘big tech’ is either cloud or web related. The adoption of more permissive licenses is just because the big players favour those licences.
    - pseudalopex 6y ago
      The ratio went from 0.2 in 2000 to 0.6 in 2006 to 1.1 in 2012. The trend started before it crossed 1.0.
- carapace 6y ago
  Did you really use the Empire from Star Wars as a metaphor for GPL/FSF? My head is spinning.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

adamc 6y ago

Not so much an attack, but my reaction was something like the post you respond to: "GPL3 doesn't work because people are abandoning GPL 3" seems like a self-reinforcing prophecy. I am OK with people using whatever license they want for software they write. But if you think GPL 3 is ideal, by using something else you are just killing your ideal.

mumblemumble 6y ago
To me, it's not a self-fulfilling prophecy so much as a hard lesson in pragmatism. Some people care very deeply about Free-as-in-FSF. Others like the idea in vague terms, but don't assign much moral weight to it. I suspect that there's a tendency for the former group to project their feelings upon members of the latter. And that that, in turn, leads to some bewilderment when someone makes a blithely practical choice such as, "Among this range of licenses, all of which are perfectly acceptable to me, I'm going to just pick the one that I think will result in more people using the thing I made," or, "I'm going to just pick the one that's easiest for me to understand."

pydry 6y ago

>For example, while I don't mind the GPL, I prefer to use more permissive licenses for my own code This argument does little to advance the discussion either. Some projects take a weekend to build. Others are the result of years of blood, sweat and tears. The latter is probably where you're going to want to have a little more control over how the fruits of your labor are used and maybe get yourself paid a bit more than $0.

saurik 6y ago

If you don't like "strings attached" then it certainly makes no sense to use a so-called "permissive" license, as the core--in fact, only--permission that such licenses offer over the various copyleft licenses is the permission to take all the other permissions away from downstream users... the people we should all be fighting for! "The only string attached to usage of this software is that you are not allowed to attach additional strings to this software."

marcinzm 6y ago
>the people we should all be fighting for! Why? These users overall aren't even willing to pay token money to support the creator so why should the creator care about them more than their own goals and desires?
mumblemumble 6y ago
I just can't bring myself to see it that way. If someone incorporates code I've open sourced into a commercial product, that takes nothing away from me or anyone else. The only permission I ever gave was for others to use some code I wrote for their own purposes. That doesn't change if someone incorporates it into a closed source product. It's not like someone else choosing not to open source their additions causes the original software license on the original code to disappear in a puff of smoke.