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I'm still bummed out that for years, GPL was the "standard" go-to open source license. So many projects became useless for any commercial projects whatsoever.

by epaga 5y ago

I'm still bummed out that for years, GPL was the "standard" go-to open source license. So many projects became useless for any commercial projects whatsoever. GPL advocates say it's so that your code isn't exploited by corporations. But I'd say that choosing GPL means it's more important to you that your code "is not exploited by corporations" than that it can be used for good by people with commercial interests. Those two things do not have to be synonyms. I'd much rather allow the second if it means tolerating the first. (Edit: Seeing the downvotes, I'd be genuinely interested in counter-arguments or thoughts on this) (Edit 2: Just because it keeps coming up, let me make absolutely clear that I do NOT in any way think GPL might never be a valid choice, nor that anyone, myself included, should feel "entitled" to "free as in *.*" code.)

CorrectHorseBat 5y ago
Why does the GPL license make it "useless for any commercial projects whatsoever"? Many commercial projects use GPL software. The only thing you have to do is provide sources under the same license if you release binaries. If you're not even willing to do that I understand some people rather have you not use their software.
- epaga 5y ago
  "Not even"? This is a huge requirement for most cases. A small GPL library for, say, some statistics calculation, would mean an entire product's source code would need to be released if it used the library.
  - 3np 5y ago
    In that case you’re very free to not use such a GPL library.
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  - dspillett 5y ago
    Exactly as intended, by most people choosing GPL. For a small libraries like that there is probably the option of negotiating a different license for your use. If the larger software is so much more expansive than the little GPL covered work and so valuable, then the commercial interest presumably has the resources to either write their own or license a commercial variant. I find a lot of complaints about the GPL come down to "why can't I do what I want to do with your stuff?" and the obvious answer, started before the question is even asked, is "because that is what we don't want". It isn't one extreme getting in the way and being a bad guy, it is the two ends of the spectrum being incompatible by default. This can be dealt with amicably by either negotiation or moving on and leaving the other "side" to do their thing without you. IMO trying to frame it, as some very much do with comments about viral licensing and such, as good-vs-bad, is either naive, entitled, or bad in itself, or some mix of the three.
    - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      "there is probably the option of negotiating a different license for your use." I feel most people don't understand that their projects are unbillable and "negotiating" is not an option. If you project is avaliable through AWS/GCP console I could "pay" at my discresion. If there was a clear price and billing details, I can email my boss and get it authorised If something needs to be negotiated, we have to get senior stakeholders involved - those people don't move for less than 100k, you will never get paid.
      - stavros 5y ago
        This is a great point, and something that definitely needs to change. However, as you say, the solution to "you don't have an easy way for me to pay you" isn't best solved by "so make your stuff free".
      - elevader 5y ago
        I'd guess that most simply don't care as this is really just an issue for the company, not the author. If the project is licensed with MIT/BSD it still isn't really likely that the company will contribute/donate/whatever. So I'd argue that companies not wanting to negotiate doesn't really change anything for >90% of OS projects, they would not gain anything with a more permissive license either.
  - mannerheim 5y ago
    You could alternatively go to the owner of the copyright for the software and pay for a license to use it in proprietary software. This is commonly done (see Qt).
  - jefftk 5y ago
    That's why GPL proponents typically use LGPL for libraries
  - x4e 5y ago
    If it is so small then just write your own alternative. Otherwise it sounds like the small library is actually quite valuable and perhaps such a license is justifiable.
matkoniecz 5y ago
Why GPL makes them useless? In my view, if your business requires leeching on unpaid work without contributing back I am happy about my code being useless for you.
- epaga 5y ago
  GPL makes "them" (especially small one-off libraries) useless because even the smallest part can not be used without therefore needing to "contribute back" the ENTIRE app. (edited to clarify I don't mean ALL projects become useless through GPL)
  - drran 5y ago
    Which is very useful feature for me, the author of GPL'ed code.
    - trasz 5y ago
      Making your code useless to some of potential users is a useful feature?
      - malka 5y ago
        I do not care if "potential user" is big corp that do not intend to contribute back. So yeah, it is a feature.
        trasz 5y ago
        Still, how preventing said corp from using this software help you, or anyone else?
        ric2b 5y ago
        Less time wasted on free support requests would be one way.
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saurik 5y ago
The GNU Foundation--and the GPL--put one thing at its most important focus: that "users"--the people who are actually using the software and entrusting it with their data or their lives--have guaranteed freedoms. People--such as myself--who use the GPL believe that these freedoms are extremely important: that "users" should be able to get access to the source code for programs and be able to modify them (...and before anyone whines "but users don't know how to modify programs", users know how to hire people to modify programs... most people also don't know how to do woodworking or autowork and yet people routinely get their cabinets done or their cars tricked out: a healthy aftermarket for software exists, and in fact if you look at stuff like jailbreaks for phones, advertising "we jailbreak your phone here" was a good way for such stores to make money). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReKCp9K_Jqw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReKCp9K_Jqw If you believe that users should have such freedom, then letting someone who isn't a "user"--and I think this is where people get so stuck on forums like this, as most of the people here are developers and they want everything to be maximally biased in their favor--be able to modify your software and then not grant the freedoms we GPL-folk care about to actual "users" is unacceptable: it simply isn't why we are writing open source software, as the open source part is supposed to be able to benefit "users". So it frankly shouldn't be at all confusing why the GPL has the properties it does: if you think my open source code is so beneficial to your project that you want to use it in your project, you are more than welcome to do so!!! Only... you have to be willing to respect the freedom / rights of "users" that is codified in the license.
- jokoon 5y ago
  > and then not grant the freedoms we GPL-folk care about to actual "users" is unacceptable: it simply isn't why we are writing open source software, as the open source part is supposed to be able to benefit "users". Why is it unacceptable? Why are people writing open source software then? "Benefiting users" can be done in various ways. In my view, the GPL only manages to protest and protect software against the problems of intellectual property, copyright and capitalism. It's only about politics. I agree with the sentiment, but that's really all it does, it doesn't solve legal problems. I'm curious to see which software licensed under BSD or similar suffered problems where the GPL would have protected them against.
pjmlp 5y ago
You will see my opinions are mostly commercial, however it was GPL and its religious movement (against the man, 70's style) that gave us Linux and GCC. Most likely Windows and UNIX clones would have kept taking their pieces out of BSD, after the 386BSD lawsuit was settled without any other alternatives to reach out for. You can see this from how much Playstation OS gets upstreamed into FreeBSD.
- trasz 5y ago
  Compared to how much PlayStation OS gets upstreamed into Linux? If you don’t want to upstream, you won’t; if you want, you will. GPL doesn’t force anyone to give back, it merely prevents one from using your project if they don’t.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Playstation OS is based on FreeBSD, there is nothing to upstream into Linux. If you want to talk GNU/Linux, then we can switch to Android and ChromeOS, which have indeed done several contributions, in fact many of those left out weren't accepted.
    - trasz 5y ago
      So, as you can see, there's nothing to gain from GPL in this scenario: the choice is between Sony not upstreaming their changes because they don't want to (BSD), or not upstreaming their changes because they couldn't use your code in the first place (GPL). With Android, Google wanted to give their changes back, so they were able to use GPL-ed code. They would give the changes back without GPL too. You can see that with non-GPL-ed projects they contribute to.
      - elevader 5y ago
        I feel like this isn't really framing the issue fairly. The issue isn't that Sony couldn't use GPL code, there is no law preventing them from doing so, they just choose not to (for a variety of reasons, I'd imagine). Just as the could contribute to FreeBSD but choose not to. And OS developers have the choice to prevent Sony (or some other company) from essentially using free labor to make money without any obligation on their side.
jobigoud 5y ago
> GPL advocates say it's so that your code isn't exploited by corporations. GPL advocates love when their code is used by corporation, as long as they don't violate the license. GPL advocates say it's so that improvements to the code are still benefiting the group.
ognarb 5y ago
Blender, Krita, Wordpress, Drupal, Nextcloud and many other projects are commercial and (A)GPL. As long as you share the sources of your modifications, you are free to use their code.
- paavohtl 5y ago
  All of the projects you mentioned except Nextcloud are owned and developed by non-profits.
  - marcodiego 5y ago
    I'm sure paid developers are not only doing so out of altruism.
  - x4e 5y ago
    And? The point is that they are still able to operate commercially and collect revenue.
CyberRabbi 5y ago
Why do people feel entitled to GPL-licensed work? If you are producing code for a commercial purpose then you have the resources to pay for the code to be written. Just because GPL code is in the open does not mean it’s wasted if companies can’t use it for their own profit.
- benhurmarcel 5y ago
  If you make a cake and smash it on the floor, I can call it a waste without feeling entitled to get some.
  - ric2b 5y ago
    Awful comparison. GPL is more like a group of people that meet regularly to share cake recipes with the agreement that if anyone has new ideas for those recipes they should share them with whoever they bake cakes for instead of keeping them secret. And then along comes CakeCompany LTD, complaining that they just want to be part of the group to learn recipes for free without sharing any ideas back, because it would be bad for business, and calling the group a bunch of idiot zealots that are wasting cake recipes by not letting CakeCompany LTD add some nicotine to one of the group's recipes without letting their customers know what their modified recipe is.
franga2000 5y ago
> But I'd say that choosing GPL means it's more important to you that your code "is not exploited by corporations" than that it can be used for good by people with commercial interests. My take on this is that those two things are almost equivalent. There are very few cases where I wouldn't consider someone using my open source code for financial gain without contributing back to not be exploitation. If you're making something for personal use or even for some business cases, I see no valid reason you couldn't adhere to the GPL. If, however, you insist that what you make should be your own property and you just want to take what I made as your own and give nothing back to me or the project, then you should pay for dual-licensing or pay your own engineers to develop an alternative. Open source developers are volunteers - many of us would gladly volunteer at a homelrss shelter, give blood, etc., but I can't imagine you'd find many people willing to volunteer for a company. For reasons why that is, ask anyone who's been in an unpaid internship.
throwaway984393 5y ago
Nobody knew back in the day that this strange idea called "open source licensed software" would become a big deal. And when it did become a big deal, there still wasn't enough practical examples to inform us which license to choose. At the time, corporations were not "taking advantage" of open source licenses, and we had no idea they would later on. So corporations weren't really a factor for us. It was more about source code freedom / user freedom.
dspillett 5y ago
> But I'd say that choosing GPL means it's more important to you that your code "is not exploited by corporations" than that it can be used for good by people with commercial interests. I'd say that for a lot of people using the GPL that is exactly correct, but they distinguish between the people using the code and the commercial interest that they work for much more than your wording suggests. That good person will eventually move on, potentially leaving just the commercial interest. Of course there are more extreme views (that good people and commercial interests do not mix) so it isn't that simple for all. And there is the obvious twist of the point that by avoiding the use code covered by GPL, someone is tacitly stating that the potential for commercial exploitation is an option that they (directly or via following their employers' wishes) expressly want to keep available. This is why some projects dual license, but that can have its own problems for projects with many maintainers or forks - sharing back becomes a relicensing issue of it's own (it is less of an issue for a protect maintained by small team, or a team of one).
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bruce343434 5y ago
Yeah right, you like to make money of off my work that I made available for free? You can buy the commercial license.
- epaga 5y ago
  Not at all. I don't feel entitled to anything. Here's where I think the misunderstanding is, and maybe I should have made this point in my original comment: I do think there can absolutely be cases where a dual license of GPL / commercial can make a ton of sense. I think those cases tend to be for projects like Linux, Blender, etc. But what I'm saying I personally think is a bummer is that for years, most open source projects - down to even small but useful libraries - were put under GPL simply because it was "the thing to do". Like Carmack says, in my mind that is a net negative, since these libraries then were not able to be used by projects which were under other licenses, due to their copy-left viral nature.
  - dendriti 5y ago
    We don't know how many projects would never have been written at all without GPL as a license option. Making it difficult to determine whether it's a net negative or not.
belorn 5y ago
Licenses are about choices. I do not want 7 year old girls to be sued. I don't want people to go to jail for helping others to take part in culture and enjoy art. I want children (or everyone?) to have access to all of culture, knowledge and art regardless of their parents wealth. I want that researcher has access to research papers and software technology in order to enable the improvement of the human race, especially on the medical side. I want life-critical and life-saving technology to be transparent and verifiable. I want technology that can be repaired and not arbitrary prevented from being repaired. I want that people have the ability to remove malicious code from devices that they own. I do not want 20 years long government enforced monopolies on vague concepts. I do not want multiple lifetimes worth of government enforced monopolies on concrete art, culture and life-improving technologies. People who want to use code for good with commercial interests could sign an agreement that follow those above wishes, including additional corner cases or obvious bad behavior which I might have forgotten. Alternative I can use a license that get me as close as I can using preexisting understanding of those licenses.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  "People who want to use code for good with commercial interests could sign an agreement that follow those above wishes" WI absolitely support the idea of getting comoanies to contribute to OSS they use, but in most cases the projects are not prepared for this. There is no obvious standard way to pay that I could take to my boss
- tpoacher 5y ago
  a.k.a. "For God's sake, think of the children!!!1!"
  - belorn 5y ago
    Many games are designed towards the younger part of the population. But I am not sold on the idea that only children have a right to culture, art and knowledge regardless of social economic status. There is plenty of good arguments in favor of giving everyone equal access regardless of the ability to pay. The issue tend to come to how society should then go around incentivize and enable those who produce such culture, art and knowledge. The struggle for economic justice and the equality of persons is not universally admired, so we have to start somewhere. Not suing children for accessing culture, art and knowledge is such start, and it would be great if the law recognized that.
cblconfederate 5y ago
there is value to keeping something public in itself, like with parks and roads. If anything i d say that todays feudal state of tech proves that gpl was right it s hard to deny that the most-used OSS software, is GPL
- trasz 5y ago
  Not necessarily. Linux kernel is GPL, sure, but if you look at eg language runtimes, or various servers, GPL is no longer obviously dominant.
- paavohtl 5y ago
  It's easy to deny, as long as we include libraries in the definition of "software". ZLib is bundled with macOS, iOS, basically every Linux distribution, every game console and even every Windows 10 installation [1] [2]. Same for extremely common libraries like libpng, Curl, SQLite, Boost and OpenSSL. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zlib https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zlib [2] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/products/notices/win https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/products/notices/win
mannerheim 5y ago
> So many projects became useless for any commercial projects whatsoever. Which is why Linux is used in zero commercial projects.
- cgh 5y ago
  Linux has GPL linking exceptions so the full terms of the license do not apply.
Dylan16807 5y ago
There are lots of ways to combine GPL and proprietary code without having to release the proprietary source. And how do you feel about LGPL? Many companies seem to be terrified of it for no reason.
oliwarner 5y ago
Id engines —as well as many other projects— were dual licensed, GPL or Proprietary. If you wanted to make a game with one, it either had to be GPL too, or you paid for a traditional licence. This got Id paid and let modders and the open source gaming community go wild. What's the downside? Carmack's argument about perception, but his view is really about having had more people use his software. I think he's wrong. Brave thing for any SWE to claim but Id wouldn't have open sourced a second engine if the first was freely taken by a dozen companies and sold in competition with for game sales, giving no source improvements back. And no, GPL advocates say it protects users of downstream projects. Software freedom is a huge topic, but the user is the focus. The arrangement Id had protected them too. Carmack's take is just odd.
- jbluepolarbear 5y ago
  I know a lot of game developers that have never messed with Id tech because of the license, so what Carmack is saying makes sense. Yes I’ve read the Id tech code that’s been released but I’ve never thought for one second to use the code because of the license.
  - oliwarner 5y ago
    What you're both saying is there is licensing ignorance. People read "open source" ignore the small print, get in trouble. GPL isn't special there, EULAs and enterprise software licenses are horrible, but I can understand the broader point that GPL makes you think, and thinking hurts. The point I maintain is, in Id's position at the time, a MIT/BSD license would have just cost them their engine business. Their code would have been everywhere, but they'd lose the business case for future open sourcing. The net amount of usage would be way down on what we have today.
    - jbluepolarbear 5y ago
      I’ve been in software a long time and I’ve had to navigate the gpl and it derivatives the entire time. I primarily work in games and I’ve run into a lot of issues with gpl along my career. For most of my career lawyers dictate what is and isn’t acceptable for software licenses and gpl is always the biggest issue. Which gpl license? Is there a single license holder? I feel the gpl was enacted with good intentions, but I feel the wrong people enacted it. Too radical in many ways, too restrictive, and so aggressively enforced that it at least makes using gpl libraries a hard decision. I think that open source projects, that aren’t gpl, have proved that you can build software and still money from it. Godot, React, Chromium, and Node to name a few. Active development is worth much more than the actual code and encouraging your users to contribute back without the cost of giving away their product has allowed these and similar projects to grow. I think ID would have had a similar experience had they gone with a different license.
yosamino 5y ago
>GPL advocates say it's so that your code isn't exploited by corporations. I am not sure which GPL advocates you have spoken to, but I like the GPL, because it puts me center as a user. I can use and copy a programm as I see fit. And if I come to a point where I think something has gone wrong with it or something is missing, then I can modify it myself, or pay someone to help me do that, and I can distribute these modifications. This ensures my freedom as a user. Maybe the software got abandoned, maybe someone added telemetry, maybe xyz, it's helpful in many cases. More restrictive licenses, let's say the MIT one, do not prevent me from making making my contributions closed source. This ensures the freedom of the developer to prevent users gaining access to the code. Thus it restricts the rights of the user, that they would have under the GPL. If a commercial project feels it's within their right to prevent me from accessing the code that is running on my machine, that is their decision, but that is at odds with the freedoms that are granted by the GPL. Given all that, I would like to disagree with your conclusion > But I'd say that choosing GPL means it's more important to you that your code "is not exploited by corporations" than that it can be used for good by people with commercial interests. Chosing the GPL means it's more important to me that my users, not my code, is not exploited "by corporations". The GPL then does not prevent "good people with commercial interests" from using my code - but given that "good" is a relative term: from my point of view preventing someone from having meaningfull access to the code that is running on their machine is not good - it is bad.
- yeahforsureman 5y ago
  What if that "bad" is insignificant compared to the good produced by that code as part of proprietary software? That scenario is impossible with GPL. Effectively, you're just restricting the business models of your users. It has worked for some projects (Linux above all) but if you're talking about a small project that likely stays small, I don't know if it usually makes much sense. Also, your convoluted explanation of why permissive licenses should be called "restrictive" is hilarious.
  - yosamino 5y ago
    I agree with your point on the usage of the word "bad", this is what the term "relative" that I used implied, as well as the explaination of which specific aspect I think it applies to. I am not sure why you are trying to make fun of me: Permissive licenses ensure that the first generation of users/developers benefit from the code in question being free, and then allow restrictions. Licenses along the lines of the GPL make sure software stays free even after generations of copies. The restriction in the GPL that sets it apart from, let's say, the BSD license, is that it doesn't allow further restrictions. So the tree of descendants of an originally "permissively" licensed code contains potentially more restrictions, that the tree of descendants of originally GPL licensed code. Quite possible that this makes the GPL the less successfull of the bunch. That shares a similarity to the paradox of tolerance: To ensure a society stays tolerant, it has to be intolerant against it's intolerant subgroups. You can argue that a society should be so free that is does not do this, but that just diminishes tolerance in the long run, so of the two paradigms, paradoxically, the more tolerant society is the one with a specific intolerant rule against intolerant minorities. This is, as you rightly noted, not how modern business models function.
hankman86 5y ago
I think one of the reasons for why the GPL as once more popular than other licenses has to do with the fact that it was created for the GNU operating system, basically a collection of simple command line utilities. No one would think of using these in other ways than to run them on the command line (or in a batch file), which is explicitly excluded from the “derivative work” concept of the GPL. Things got complicated once people put libraries under the GPL, which is when all the legal uncertainties cropped up about what constitutes derivative work.
marcodiego 5y ago
It is not only a matter of "that your code isn't exploited by corporations". It also a guarantee that any improvement to that code will be available to everyone.
jrochkind1 5y ago
The "it's more important that your code is not exploited by corporations" crowd doesn't actually find GPL suitable anymore either, it still allows too much exploitation. This position increasingly wants technically not-open-source licenses that reserve the right to profit from the code for... actually, a certain corporation, the one of the "original developers". It's not really about "by corporations", but "big corporations" vs "plucky entrepeneurs who deserve to get rich from their innovation". Whereas before, for open source enthusiasts, it was about "those who get rich from code" (whether big corporations or 'plucky entrepeneurs') vs some kind of 'commons' or 'public good'. (The new ideological position believes they are still open source enthusiasts somehow, but that their non-open-rights-reserved licenses are somehow 'more truly' open source than... actual open source licenses including the GPL. The term 'open source' still has too much credit for them to say they are opposed to it, even when they are). There is definitely an ideological shift going on. I am curious if anyone has written/researched more about it.
- x4e 5y ago
  To give an example of this: https://polyformproject.org/licenses/small-business/1.0.0/ https://polyformproject.org/licenses/small-business/1.0.0/ and https://polyformproject.org/licenses/noncommercial/1.0.0/ https://polyformproject.org/licenses/noncommercial/1.0.0/
mrtweetyhack 5y ago
you're bummed out because you can't steal people's code to make money
aabccd 5y ago
>Seeing the downvotes, I'd be genuinely interested in counter-arguments or thoughts on this They are probably downvoting because time and time again people explain that the _purpose_ of GPL isn't to stop commercial use (commercial use is fine), it's to stop developers from depriving users of the same rights to the source code that you, the developer had. I'm not even a GPL guy, just a guy that can take 10 minutes to read a license and an FAQ. I've also used GPL in commercial software, it's very simple to comply with the license.
sdxsd 5y ago
I understand, I personally would not like a company, especially one that does not respects users privacy using my code in any way.
bcrl 5y ago
There is an example of 2 projects that started around the same time, one of which used the GPL and one of which used the BSD license. Almost 30 years after the projects started, the one one using the GPL is vibrate and healthy, while the other project using the BSD license has trouble getting companies to contribute their changes back and barely has enough developers participating in the community to survive. This is the tale of Linux vs FreeBSD. Companies like Juniper that made heavy use of FreeBSD as the basis for JunOS have an atrocious history of failing to contribute their changes back to the community, and Juniper isn't the only one engaging in this behaviour. Sure there are other reasons that Linux took off and FreeBSD didn't, but license is a major factor in how their respective communities behave. Yes, there are times when copying BSD licensed code is easier if you don't want to publish your source, but it isn't too difficult to adapt business processes to this constraint for the vast majority of applications. Look at what happened in the wireless router market. Early in the 2000s many products made use of the various vendors' Linux based SDKs and weren't compliant at publishing their source. Today OpenWRT is vibrant and most vendors offer GPL archive downloads on their websites. Personally, I don't think this would have happened if Linux wasn't GPLed and there wasn't the pressure the GPL afforded on vendors to open up their code. I understand and respect John Carmack's position, and the GPL isn't for everyone, but people need to understand that license can result in significant differences in the viability of a community built around a software project on the longer term scales of 10-20 years.
- cout 5y ago
  Linux isn't purely GPL; it's GPL with an exception carved out for system calls. I think that's an important distribution, because the userspace equivalent would be GPL with an exception carved out for dynamic linking (i.e. the LGPL).
- emaste 5y ago
  This is quite far off the mark. Many companies using FreeBSD, including Juniper, NetApp, Netflix, Netgate (pfSense), iXsystems (TrueNAS), Dell (Isilon) contribute significant code to FreeBSD. It's very expensive to maintain long-lived changes from upstream, so there's a large incentive not to do so. Code that's "not contributed back" is largely code that isn't suitable for upstream anyhow - because it is incomplete, limited in scope, etc. Looking at "Sponsored by" tags on the last 6 months of commits to FreeBSD I see the following: The FreeBSD Foundation Netflix Rubicon Communications, LLC ("Netgate") Chelsio Communications NetApp, Inc. Mellanox Technologies // NVIDIA Networking Innovate UK Klara, Inc. Diablotin Systems Dell EMC Isilon iXsystems, Inc. Citrix Systems R&D Axcient Netflix, Inc. DARPA Alstom Group Eldorado Research Institute (eldorado.org.br) Ampere Computing Marvell Stormshield Amazon, Inc. (and a long list of entries with one or two commits each) There's a backlog of work that contributors would like to get into FreeBSD; a limiting factor is availability of mentor and reviewer time to guide contributors through the process and iterating on bringing the code into a committable state.
anoncake 5y ago
If I make my code non-GPL specifically so other people can use it for profit, I effectively donated to a for-profit company. Why the hell would I do that?

by epaga 5y ago

CorrectHorseBat 5y ago

Why does the GPL license make it "useless for any commercial projects whatsoever"? Many commercial projects use GPL software. The only thing you have to do is provide sources under the same license if you release binaries. If you're not even willing to do that I understand some people rather have you not use their software.

epaga 5y ago
"Not even"? This is a huge requirement for most cases. A small GPL library for, say, some statistics calculation, would mean an entire product's source code would need to be released if it used the library.
- 3np 5y ago
  In that case you’re very free to not use such a GPL library.
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- dspillett 5y ago
  Exactly as intended, by most people choosing GPL. For a small libraries like that there is probably the option of negotiating a different license for your use. If the larger software is so much more expansive than the little GPL covered work and so valuable, then the commercial interest presumably has the resources to either write their own or license a commercial variant. I find a lot of complaints about the GPL come down to "why can't I do what I want to do with your stuff?" and the obvious answer, started before the question is even asked, is "because that is what we don't want". It isn't one extreme getting in the way and being a bad guy, it is the two ends of the spectrum being incompatible by default. This can be dealt with amicably by either negotiation or moving on and leaving the other "side" to do their thing without you. IMO trying to frame it, as some very much do with comments about viral licensing and such, as good-vs-bad, is either naive, entitled, or bad in itself, or some mix of the three.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    "there is probably the option of negotiating a different license for your use." I feel most people don't understand that their projects are unbillable and "negotiating" is not an option. If you project is avaliable through AWS/GCP console I could "pay" at my discresion. If there was a clear price and billing details, I can email my boss and get it authorised If something needs to be negotiated, we have to get senior stakeholders involved - those people don't move for less than 100k, you will never get paid.
    - stavros 5y ago
      This is a great point, and something that definitely needs to change. However, as you say, the solution to "you don't have an easy way for me to pay you" isn't best solved by "so make your stuff free".
    - elevader 5y ago
      I'd guess that most simply don't care as this is really just an issue for the company, not the author. If the project is licensed with MIT/BSD it still isn't really likely that the company will contribute/donate/whatever. So I'd argue that companies not wanting to negotiate doesn't really change anything for >90% of OS projects, they would not gain anything with a more permissive license either.
- mannerheim 5y ago
  You could alternatively go to the owner of the copyright for the software and pay for a license to use it in proprietary software. This is commonly done (see Qt).
- jefftk 5y ago
  That's why GPL proponents typically use LGPL for libraries
- x4e 5y ago
  If it is so small then just write your own alternative. Otherwise it sounds like the small library is actually quite valuable and perhaps such a license is justifiable.

matkoniecz 5y ago

Why GPL makes them useless? In my view, if your business requires leeching on unpaid work without contributing back I am happy about my code being useless for you.

epaga 5y ago
GPL makes "them" (especially small one-off libraries) useless because even the smallest part can not be used without therefore needing to "contribute back" the ENTIRE app. (edited to clarify I don't mean ALL projects become useless through GPL)
- drran 5y ago
  Which is very useful feature for me, the author of GPL'ed code.
  - trasz 5y ago
    Making your code useless to some of potential users is a useful feature?
    - malka 5y ago
      I do not care if "potential user" is big corp that do not intend to contribute back. So yeah, it is a feature.
      - trasz 5y ago
        Still, how preventing said corp from using this software help you, or anyone else?
        ric2b 5y ago
        Less time wasted on free support requests would be one way.
        5y ago

deleted 5y ago

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saurik 5y ago

The GNU Foundation--and the GPL--put one thing at its most important focus: that "users"--the people who are actually using the software and entrusting it with their data or their lives--have guaranteed freedoms. People--such as myself--who use the GPL believe that these freedoms are extremely important: that "users" should be able to get access to the source code for programs and be able to modify them (...and before anyone whines "but users don't know how to modify programs", users know how to hire people to modify programs... most people also don't know how to do woodworking or autowork and yet people routinely get their cabinets done or their cars tricked out: a healthy aftermarket for software exists, and in fact if you look at stuff like jailbreaks for phones, advertising "we jailbreak your phone here" was a good way for such stores to make money). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReKCp9K_Jqw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReKCp9K_Jqw If you believe that users should have such freedom, then letting someone who isn't a "user"--and I think this is where people get so stuck on forums like this, as most of the people here are developers and they want everything to be maximally biased in their favor--be able to modify your software and then not grant the freedoms we GPL-folk care about to actual "users" is unacceptable: it simply isn't why we are writing open source software, as the open source part is supposed to be able to benefit "users". So it frankly shouldn't be at all confusing why the GPL has the properties it does: if you think my open source code is so beneficial to your project that you want to use it in your project, you are more than welcome to do so!!! Only... you have to be willing to respect the freedom / rights of "users" that is codified in the license.

jokoon 5y ago
> and then not grant the freedoms we GPL-folk care about to actual "users" is unacceptable: it simply isn't why we are writing open source software, as the open source part is supposed to be able to benefit "users". Why is it unacceptable? Why are people writing open source software then? "Benefiting users" can be done in various ways. In my view, the GPL only manages to protest and protect software against the problems of intellectual property, copyright and capitalism. It's only about politics. I agree with the sentiment, but that's really all it does, it doesn't solve legal problems. I'm curious to see which software licensed under BSD or similar suffered problems where the GPL would have protected them against.

pjmlp 5y ago

You will see my opinions are mostly commercial, however it was GPL and its religious movement (against the man, 70's style) that gave us Linux and GCC. Most likely Windows and UNIX clones would have kept taking their pieces out of BSD, after the 386BSD lawsuit was settled without any other alternatives to reach out for. You can see this from how much Playstation OS gets upstreamed into FreeBSD.

trasz 5y ago
Compared to how much PlayStation OS gets upstreamed into Linux? If you don’t want to upstream, you won’t; if you want, you will. GPL doesn’t force anyone to give back, it merely prevents one from using your project if they don’t.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Playstation OS is based on FreeBSD, there is nothing to upstream into Linux. If you want to talk GNU/Linux, then we can switch to Android and ChromeOS, which have indeed done several contributions, in fact many of those left out weren't accepted.
  - trasz 5y ago
    So, as you can see, there's nothing to gain from GPL in this scenario: the choice is between Sony not upstreaming their changes because they don't want to (BSD), or not upstreaming their changes because they couldn't use your code in the first place (GPL). With Android, Google wanted to give their changes back, so they were able to use GPL-ed code. They would give the changes back without GPL too. You can see that with non-GPL-ed projects they contribute to.
    - elevader 5y ago
      I feel like this isn't really framing the issue fairly. The issue isn't that Sony couldn't use GPL code, there is no law preventing them from doing so, they just choose not to (for a variety of reasons, I'd imagine). Just as the could contribute to FreeBSD but choose not to. And OS developers have the choice to prevent Sony (or some other company) from essentially using free labor to make money without any obligation on their side.

jobigoud 5y ago

> GPL advocates say it's so that your code isn't exploited by corporations. GPL advocates love when their code is used by corporation, as long as they don't violate the license. GPL advocates say it's so that improvements to the code are still benefiting the group.

ognarb 5y ago

Blender, Krita, Wordpress, Drupal, Nextcloud and many other projects are commercial and (A)GPL. As long as you share the sources of your modifications, you are free to use their code.

paavohtl 5y ago
All of the projects you mentioned except Nextcloud are owned and developed by non-profits.
- marcodiego 5y ago
  I'm sure paid developers are not only doing so out of altruism.
- x4e 5y ago
  And? The point is that they are still able to operate commercially and collect revenue.

CyberRabbi 5y ago

Why do people feel entitled to GPL-licensed work? If you are producing code for a commercial purpose then you have the resources to pay for the code to be written. Just because GPL code is in the open does not mean it’s wasted if companies can’t use it for their own profit.

benhurmarcel 5y ago
If you make a cake and smash it on the floor, I can call it a waste without feeling entitled to get some.
- ric2b 5y ago
  Awful comparison. GPL is more like a group of people that meet regularly to share cake recipes with the agreement that if anyone has new ideas for those recipes they should share them with whoever they bake cakes for instead of keeping them secret. And then along comes CakeCompany LTD, complaining that they just want to be part of the group to learn recipes for free without sharing any ideas back, because it would be bad for business, and calling the group a bunch of idiot zealots that are wasting cake recipes by not letting CakeCompany LTD add some nicotine to one of the group's recipes without letting their customers know what their modified recipe is.

franga2000 5y ago

> But I'd say that choosing GPL means it's more important to you that your code "is not exploited by corporations" than that it can be used for good by people with commercial interests. My take on this is that those two things are almost equivalent. There are very few cases where I wouldn't consider someone using my open source code for financial gain without contributing back to not be exploitation. If you're making something for personal use or even for some business cases, I see no valid reason you couldn't adhere to the GPL. If, however, you insist that what you make should be your own property and you just want to take what I made as your own and give nothing back to me or the project, then you should pay for dual-licensing or pay your own engineers to develop an alternative. Open source developers are volunteers - many of us would gladly volunteer at a homelrss shelter, give blood, etc., but I can't imagine you'd find many people willing to volunteer for a company. For reasons why that is, ask anyone who's been in an unpaid internship.

throwaway984393 5y ago

Nobody knew back in the day that this strange idea called "open source licensed software" would become a big deal. And when it did become a big deal, there still wasn't enough practical examples to inform us which license to choose. At the time, corporations were not "taking advantage" of open source licenses, and we had no idea they would later on. So corporations weren't really a factor for us. It was more about source code freedom / user freedom.

dspillett 5y ago

> But I'd say that choosing GPL means it's more important to you that your code "is not exploited by corporations" than that it can be used for good by people with commercial interests. I'd say that for a lot of people using the GPL that is exactly correct, but they distinguish between the people using the code and the commercial interest that they work for much more than your wording suggests. That good person will eventually move on, potentially leaving just the commercial interest. Of course there are more extreme views (that good people and commercial interests do not mix) so it isn't that simple for all. And there is the obvious twist of the point that by avoiding the use code covered by GPL, someone is tacitly stating that the potential for commercial exploitation is an option that they (directly or via following their employers' wishes) expressly want to keep available. This is why some projects dual license, but that can have its own problems for projects with many maintainers or forks - sharing back becomes a relicensing issue of it's own (it is less of an issue for a protect maintained by small team, or a team of one).

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

bruce343434 5y ago

Yeah right, you like to make money of off my work that I made available for free? You can buy the commercial license.

epaga 5y ago
Not at all. I don't feel entitled to anything. Here's where I think the misunderstanding is, and maybe I should have made this point in my original comment: I do think there can absolutely be cases where a dual license of GPL / commercial can make a ton of sense. I think those cases tend to be for projects like Linux, Blender, etc. But what I'm saying I personally think is a bummer is that for years, most open source projects - down to even small but useful libraries - were put under GPL simply because it was "the thing to do". Like Carmack says, in my mind that is a net negative, since these libraries then were not able to be used by projects which were under other licenses, due to their copy-left viral nature.
- dendriti 5y ago
  We don't know how many projects would never have been written at all without GPL as a license option. Making it difficult to determine whether it's a net negative or not.

belorn 5y ago

Licenses are about choices. I do not want 7 year old girls to be sued. I don't want people to go to jail for helping others to take part in culture and enjoy art. I want children (or everyone?) to have access to all of culture, knowledge and art regardless of their parents wealth. I want that researcher has access to research papers and software technology in order to enable the improvement of the human race, especially on the medical side. I want life-critical and life-saving technology to be transparent and verifiable. I want technology that can be repaired and not arbitrary prevented from being repaired. I want that people have the ability to remove malicious code from devices that they own. I do not want 20 years long government enforced monopolies on vague concepts. I do not want multiple lifetimes worth of government enforced monopolies on concrete art, culture and life-improving technologies. People who want to use code for good with commercial interests could sign an agreement that follow those above wishes, including additional corner cases or obvious bad behavior which I might have forgotten. Alternative I can use a license that get me as close as I can using preexisting understanding of those licenses.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago
"People who want to use code for good with commercial interests could sign an agreement that follow those above wishes" WI absolitely support the idea of getting comoanies to contribute to OSS they use, but in most cases the projects are not prepared for this. There is no obvious standard way to pay that I could take to my boss
tpoacher 5y ago
a.k.a. "For God's sake, think of the children!!!1!"
- belorn 5y ago
  Many games are designed towards the younger part of the population. But I am not sold on the idea that only children have a right to culture, art and knowledge regardless of social economic status. There is plenty of good arguments in favor of giving everyone equal access regardless of the ability to pay. The issue tend to come to how society should then go around incentivize and enable those who produce such culture, art and knowledge. The struggle for economic justice and the equality of persons is not universally admired, so we have to start somewhere. Not suing children for accessing culture, art and knowledge is such start, and it would be great if the law recognized that.

cblconfederate 5y ago

there is value to keeping something public in itself, like with parks and roads. If anything i d say that todays feudal state of tech proves that gpl was right it s hard to deny that the most-used OSS software, is GPL

trasz 5y ago
Not necessarily. Linux kernel is GPL, sure, but if you look at eg language runtimes, or various servers, GPL is no longer obviously dominant.
paavohtl 5y ago
It's easy to deny, as long as we include libraries in the definition of "software". ZLib is bundled with macOS, iOS, basically every Linux distribution, every game console and even every Windows 10 installation [1] [2]. Same for extremely common libraries like libpng, Curl, SQLite, Boost and OpenSSL. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zlib https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zlib [2] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/products/notices/win https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/products/notices/win

mannerheim 5y ago

> So many projects became useless for any commercial projects whatsoever. Which is why Linux is used in zero commercial projects.

cgh 5y ago
Linux has GPL linking exceptions so the full terms of the license do not apply.

Dylan16807 5y ago

There are lots of ways to combine GPL and proprietary code without having to release the proprietary source. And how do you feel about LGPL? Many companies seem to be terrified of it for no reason.

oliwarner 5y ago

Id engines —as well as many other projects— were dual licensed, GPL or Proprietary. If you wanted to make a game with one, it either had to be GPL too, or you paid for a traditional licence. This got Id paid and let modders and the open source gaming community go wild. What's the downside? Carmack's argument about perception, but his view is really about having had more people use his software. I think he's wrong. Brave thing for any SWE to claim but Id wouldn't have open sourced a second engine if the first was freely taken by a dozen companies and sold in competition with for game sales, giving no source improvements back. And no, GPL advocates say it protects users of downstream projects. Software freedom is a huge topic, but the user is the focus. The arrangement Id had protected them too. Carmack's take is just odd.

jbluepolarbear 5y ago
I know a lot of game developers that have never messed with Id tech because of the license, so what Carmack is saying makes sense. Yes I’ve read the Id tech code that’s been released but I’ve never thought for one second to use the code because of the license.
- oliwarner 5y ago
  What you're both saying is there is licensing ignorance. People read "open source" ignore the small print, get in trouble. GPL isn't special there, EULAs and enterprise software licenses are horrible, but I can understand the broader point that GPL makes you think, and thinking hurts. The point I maintain is, in Id's position at the time, a MIT/BSD license would have just cost them their engine business. Their code would have been everywhere, but they'd lose the business case for future open sourcing. The net amount of usage would be way down on what we have today.
  - jbluepolarbear 5y ago
    I’ve been in software a long time and I’ve had to navigate the gpl and it derivatives the entire time. I primarily work in games and I’ve run into a lot of issues with gpl along my career. For most of my career lawyers dictate what is and isn’t acceptable for software licenses and gpl is always the biggest issue. Which gpl license? Is there a single license holder? I feel the gpl was enacted with good intentions, but I feel the wrong people enacted it. Too radical in many ways, too restrictive, and so aggressively enforced that it at least makes using gpl libraries a hard decision. I think that open source projects, that aren’t gpl, have proved that you can build software and still money from it. Godot, React, Chromium, and Node to name a few. Active development is worth much more than the actual code and encouraging your users to contribute back without the cost of giving away their product has allowed these and similar projects to grow. I think ID would have had a similar experience had they gone with a different license.

yosamino 5y ago

>GPL advocates say it's so that your code isn't exploited by corporations. I am not sure which GPL advocates you have spoken to, but I like the GPL, because it puts me center as a user. I can use and copy a programm as I see fit. And if I come to a point where I think something has gone wrong with it or something is missing, then I can modify it myself, or pay someone to help me do that, and I can distribute these modifications. This ensures my freedom as a user. Maybe the software got abandoned, maybe someone added telemetry, maybe xyz, it's helpful in many cases. More restrictive licenses, let's say the MIT one, do not prevent me from making making my contributions closed source. This ensures the freedom of the developer to prevent users gaining access to the code. Thus it restricts the rights of the user, that they would have under the GPL. If a commercial project feels it's within their right to prevent me from accessing the code that is running on my machine, that is their decision, but that is at odds with the freedoms that are granted by the GPL. Given all that, I would like to disagree with your conclusion > But I'd say that choosing GPL means it's more important to you that your code "is not exploited by corporations" than that it can be used for good by people with commercial interests. Chosing the GPL means it's more important to me that my users, not my code, is not exploited "by corporations". The GPL then does not prevent "good people with commercial interests" from using my code - but given that "good" is a relative term: from my point of view preventing someone from having meaningfull access to the code that is running on their machine is not good - it is bad.

yeahforsureman 5y ago
What if that "bad" is insignificant compared to the good produced by that code as part of proprietary software? That scenario is impossible with GPL. Effectively, you're just restricting the business models of your users. It has worked for some projects (Linux above all) but if you're talking about a small project that likely stays small, I don't know if it usually makes much sense. Also, your convoluted explanation of why permissive licenses should be called "restrictive" is hilarious.
- yosamino 5y ago
  I agree with your point on the usage of the word "bad", this is what the term "relative" that I used implied, as well as the explaination of which specific aspect I think it applies to. I am not sure why you are trying to make fun of me: Permissive licenses ensure that the first generation of users/developers benefit from the code in question being free, and then allow restrictions. Licenses along the lines of the GPL make sure software stays free even after generations of copies. The restriction in the GPL that sets it apart from, let's say, the BSD license, is that it doesn't allow further restrictions. So the tree of descendants of an originally "permissively" licensed code contains potentially more restrictions, that the tree of descendants of originally GPL licensed code. Quite possible that this makes the GPL the less successfull of the bunch. That shares a similarity to the paradox of tolerance: To ensure a society stays tolerant, it has to be intolerant against it's intolerant subgroups. You can argue that a society should be so free that is does not do this, but that just diminishes tolerance in the long run, so of the two paradigms, paradoxically, the more tolerant society is the one with a specific intolerant rule against intolerant minorities. This is, as you rightly noted, not how modern business models function.

hankman86 5y ago

I think one of the reasons for why the GPL as once more popular than other licenses has to do with the fact that it was created for the GNU operating system, basically a collection of simple command line utilities. No one would think of using these in other ways than to run them on the command line (or in a batch file), which is explicitly excluded from the “derivative work” concept of the GPL. Things got complicated once people put libraries under the GPL, which is when all the legal uncertainties cropped up about what constitutes derivative work.

marcodiego 5y ago

It is not only a matter of "that your code isn't exploited by corporations". It also a guarantee that any improvement to that code will be available to everyone.

jrochkind1 5y ago

The "it's more important that your code is not exploited by corporations" crowd doesn't actually find GPL suitable anymore either, it still allows too much exploitation. This position increasingly wants technically not-open-source licenses that reserve the right to profit from the code for... actually, a certain corporation, the one of the "original developers". It's not really about "by corporations", but "big corporations" vs "plucky entrepeneurs who deserve to get rich from their innovation". Whereas before, for open source enthusiasts, it was about "those who get rich from code" (whether big corporations or 'plucky entrepeneurs') vs some kind of 'commons' or 'public good'. (The new ideological position believes they are still open source enthusiasts somehow, but that their non-open-rights-reserved licenses are somehow 'more truly' open source than... actual open source licenses including the GPL. The term 'open source' still has too much credit for them to say they are opposed to it, even when they are). There is definitely an ideological shift going on. I am curious if anyone has written/researched more about it.

x4e 5y ago
To give an example of this: https://polyformproject.org/licenses/small-business/1.0.0/ https://polyformproject.org/licenses/small-business/1.0.0/ and https://polyformproject.org/licenses/noncommercial/1.0.0/ https://polyformproject.org/licenses/noncommercial/1.0.0/

mrtweetyhack 5y ago

you're bummed out because you can't steal people's code to make money

aabccd 5y ago

>Seeing the downvotes, I'd be genuinely interested in counter-arguments or thoughts on this They are probably downvoting because time and time again people explain that the _purpose_ of GPL isn't to stop commercial use (commercial use is fine), it's to stop developers from depriving users of the same rights to the source code that you, the developer had. I'm not even a GPL guy, just a guy that can take 10 minutes to read a license and an FAQ. I've also used GPL in commercial software, it's very simple to comply with the license.

sdxsd 5y ago

I understand, I personally would not like a company, especially one that does not respects users privacy using my code in any way.

bcrl 5y ago

There is an example of 2 projects that started around the same time, one of which used the GPL and one of which used the BSD license. Almost 30 years after the projects started, the one one using the GPL is vibrate and healthy, while the other project using the BSD license has trouble getting companies to contribute their changes back and barely has enough developers participating in the community to survive. This is the tale of Linux vs FreeBSD. Companies like Juniper that made heavy use of FreeBSD as the basis for JunOS have an atrocious history of failing to contribute their changes back to the community, and Juniper isn't the only one engaging in this behaviour. Sure there are other reasons that Linux took off and FreeBSD didn't, but license is a major factor in how their respective communities behave. Yes, there are times when copying BSD licensed code is easier if you don't want to publish your source, but it isn't too difficult to adapt business processes to this constraint for the vast majority of applications. Look at what happened in the wireless router market. Early in the 2000s many products made use of the various vendors' Linux based SDKs and weren't compliant at publishing their source. Today OpenWRT is vibrant and most vendors offer GPL archive downloads on their websites. Personally, I don't think this would have happened if Linux wasn't GPLed and there wasn't the pressure the GPL afforded on vendors to open up their code. I understand and respect John Carmack's position, and the GPL isn't for everyone, but people need to understand that license can result in significant differences in the viability of a community built around a software project on the longer term scales of 10-20 years.

cout 5y ago
Linux isn't purely GPL; it's GPL with an exception carved out for system calls. I think that's an important distribution, because the userspace equivalent would be GPL with an exception carved out for dynamic linking (i.e. the LGPL).
emaste 5y ago
This is quite far off the mark. Many companies using FreeBSD, including Juniper, NetApp, Netflix, Netgate (pfSense), iXsystems (TrueNAS), Dell (Isilon) contribute significant code to FreeBSD. It's very expensive to maintain long-lived changes from upstream, so there's a large incentive not to do so. Code that's "not contributed back" is largely code that isn't suitable for upstream anyhow - because it is incomplete, limited in scope, etc. Looking at "Sponsored by" tags on the last 6 months of commits to FreeBSD I see the following: The FreeBSD Foundation Netflix Rubicon Communications, LLC ("Netgate") Chelsio Communications NetApp, Inc. Mellanox Technologies // NVIDIA Networking Innovate UK Klara, Inc. Diablotin Systems Dell EMC Isilon iXsystems, Inc. Citrix Systems R&D Axcient Netflix, Inc. DARPA Alstom Group Eldorado Research Institute (eldorado.org.br) Ampere Computing Marvell Stormshield Amazon, Inc. (and a long list of entries with one or two commits each) There's a backlog of work that contributors would like to get into FreeBSD; a limiting factor is availability of mentor and reviewer time to guide contributors through the process and iterating on bringing the code into a committable state.

anoncake 5y ago

If I make my code non-GPL specifically so other people can use it for profit, I effectively donated to a for-profit company. Why the hell would I do that?