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Racket had to do this to go from lGPL to Mit, it was a long process. But they did it to make the language more accessible to developers. Developers are scared a

Racket had to do this to go from lGPL to Mit, it was a long process. But they did it to make the language more accessible to developers. Developers are scared away by lGPL. Not all contributions were relicensed (resulting in code being rewritten), and we lost some code in the standard library (the csv parser). Now Racket is trying to make it more friendly to people by created a new language (called Rhombus for now) that is Racket without the parenthesis. They are playing the long game. But I hope these changes attract new Racketeers in the future

still_grokking 5y ago
> Developers are scared away by lGPL. I see GPL as a sign of quality and am attracted by projects using it. It's a promise nobody will ever take that thing away from me once I've started using it. I'm a developer, by the way. :-) Edit: Not to mention that some people even using GCC, Linux and Java.
- dagmx 5y ago
  Out of curiosity, how does the GPL promise that versus the other common open source licenses? E.g MIT, BSD or Apache?
  - purple_turtle 5y ago
    As I understand it: MIT code can be freely taken into proprietary fork, with software modified and sold and no patches contributed. Not sure how often it happens? Has it actually happened and is it a plausible attack? Nowadays at least AGPL is needed to defang "and we will sell it as service rather than selling software" workaround for GPL.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - arka2147483647 5y ago
      As a practical matter, it means you cant just copy the files into your sources to some subdir, or you cant just link it statically. So you cant release a single-exe version of your project. These are things some projects like to do, and GPL blocks that. So all thing considered, it may be easiest to just not use GPL code.
      - chayleaf 5y ago
        you can't copy MIT-licensed files without crediting it either. And you can statically link GPL code, assuming you release the source to all app users. You might be confusing it with LGPL, which says you can link to proprietary apps dynamically, but have to release source in all other cases.
        shoozza 5y ago
        You can also link to proprietary apps statically if you provide the object files: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/312758/does-providing-object-files-satisfy-lgpl-relink-clause#312759 https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3127...
        rocqua 5y ago
        I thought useing GPL code without modifications was acceptable without any licensing, or is that a 'lesser GPL' license?
        orra 5y ago
        You're thinking on the LGPL. The GPL is the prototypical copyleft licence, designed to encourage the liberation of software, in part via its dependencies.
        still_grokking 5y ago
        You can use GPL code however you want. You have only obligations when you distribute the results. Whatever you do in your private basement is completely unaffected by that. The GPL gives you freedom to do whatever you please. That's the whole point of it! When you distribute binaries resulting form work based on GPL code than the people receiving those binaries (and only them) are eligible to get alongside the source code which allows them to rebuild the binaries you distributed to them. That makes sure that those other people also have the same freedom as you to do whatever they please with the programs and code. So the GPL preserves freedom among users of GPL code.
    - rocqua 5y ago
      Apple's OS is a fork of BSD without the fork being open source.
      - kergonath 5y ago
        It’s more complicated than that. It was not a fork, they just copied some parts of FreeBSD and OpenBSD. The kernel is XNU, and descended from Mach. Also, Darwin (the base OS, which includes the BSD bits) is open source. What isn’t is the GUI on top of it, which comes from OPENSTEP.
        chalst 5y ago
        The open source part of Darwin/XNU doesn't deserve to be called a "base OS" since version 6, when Apple closed the sources of a lot of drivers. There's no hardware that will boot these systems if you restrict to what is available under the APSL. https://web.archive.org/web/20091118172944/http://www.puredarwin.org/legal/binarydrivers https://web.archive.org/web/20091118172944/http://www.pureda...
      - TravelPiglet 5y ago
        https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      Apple derived OSes, the Windows TCP/IP stack before Windows Vista, PlayStation OSes, Nintendo and Playstation SDK, the BSD stuff taken into commercial UNIXes, just from top of my head, there are surely other examples.
  - still_grokking 5y ago
    GPL software, and extensions to it, are free and will stay like that. That can't be said about software under the above mentioned licenses.
    - dagmx 5y ago
      I'm not sure how the GPL guarantees that it will stay like that anymore than those other licenses? You can always relicense GPL content as long as everyone agrees. You can also change it to source on request versus always accessible.
      - chayleaf 5y ago
        key is "as long as everyone agrees"
      - rocqua 5y ago
        If you wrote the code, you can refuse to relicense.
    - kitd 5y ago
      OP also said it was a sign of 'quality'. Not sure how GPL promises that over other OS licenses.
      - still_grokking 5y ago
        I'm the OP and I'm not a native speaker but to my knowledge "quality" denotes in English besides a few other things the meaning of "value" (in the sense of worthiness) or (related to that meaning) "excellence". Something being high-quality makes this thing valuable. I didn't mean "code quality", or the like, as a license can not enforce that obviously.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  > I see GPL as a sign of quality Personal opinion is that BSD > GPL. Free as in properly free. I always donate to BSD license folks. When corporations use BSD software, they usually get engaged in the BSD community - under the stilts of management, suited lawyers and spreadsheet bean counters, it's just us programmer folk... you know. We like tinkering things and BSD software tends to have a different philosophy. Very welcoming to people who want to propel the world forward. Truly liberating, try BSD software.
  - rapnie 5y ago
    This is a matter of hot debate, and I don't want to trigger such discussion. AFAIU it is a bit of perspective of where the freedom is. With BSD there's more 'freedom' to incorporate with proprietary code, which eases commercialization. Companies like it better because of that and are likelier contributors. With GPL, while you can still monetize your code, protects the freedom of the Commons better by preventing the proprietary commercialization of open source code. And that is a reason why many businesses shun it. Personally I am in favor of the 4 freedoms of open-source and like to use (A)GPL.
    - systemvoltage 5y ago
      Yeah, agree it is hotly debated and not worth discussing further. I've recently been bitten by GPL and it's fresh on my mind how insidious it can be. That said, I work in commercial environment where BSD-licensed software is highly regarded.
      - tarsinge 5y ago
        Saying that corporations prefer something they can profit from without giving back vs something they can not is circular reasoning to me. Conversely if you look on the other side you'll see developers bitten by permissive software licences (MongoDB, Elasticsearch, ...).
        snovv_crash 5y ago
- Vinnl 5y ago
  People can't simply take away MIT-licensed code either - it grants you the right to use that code, and does so irrevocably. What GPL does is make sure that code that is built on top of that will also be accessible to you, if the product it's used in is made public. But your own contributions and anything MIT-licensed it is added to will never be legally taken away from you.
  - kzrdude 5y ago
    With software, we don't see any frozen particular version as the main asset, but the continuity of the project is the asset. Otherwise we wouldn't de-value unmainted software so much. (The code is there, the license is clear, it could be used). GPL makes sure the project's main strand of development stays accessible to you.
    - Vinnl 5y ago
      Well, unless the copyright holder of that code decide to use another licence in the future — then the snapshot that was licensed as GPL will remain available to you, but the main strand of development may not. But yes, if this copyright is spread over many people (as it is in this case), then re-licensing is a herculean effort that is especially unlikely to succeed if it's designed to take away user rights, so in that sense a GPL'd project is more likely to remain open.
rectang 5y ago
That's a different situation, because the LGPL is not a problematic license in terms of drafting. With LLVM, the license isn't really changing in spirit. The concerns seem to be more practical — my understanding is that they're trying to get out from under a poorly drafted patent clause and also unify the code under a single license so they can move stuff around more easily.
wumpus 5y ago
Many major corporations (like, say, IBM) have no problem with LGPL. Where did you find a bunch of developers who thought it was a problem?
- varajelle 5y ago
  It's not the developers who are afraid, it's the companies who want to use the code for free, for proprietary purpose, and redistribute it. They want to take as much as possible but don't want to give anything.
  - rocqua 5y ago
    I would rephrase to "they want to take as much as possible but don't want to give back the entire codebase using the free software".
    - varajelle 5y ago
      LGPL doesn't require to make the entire codebase free software (GPL does. It is part of the contract: get some, give some.)
robbintt 5y ago
Thanks, I was just thinking this month how I would like to write lisp without parens.
Smithalicious 5y ago
> Developers are scared away by lGPL. For me it's very much the opposite, I refuse to contribute code to anything licensed under the MIT/BSD/etc family of languages. It makes me sad to see so much confusion, incorrect information, naiveté and paranoia going around regarding the GPL that it's scaring people off. I think that most of these people would feel differently if they understood better. I think the systematic defanging and watering down of the free software movement is a great loss.
- rocqua 5y ago
  I don't think people who shy away from GPL are in favor of the free software movement. People who advocate for MIT like licenses like 'open source', but they usually explicitly reject the ideas from free software. Some of these concerns are simply commercial, and some are philosophical. I think people might have been convinced to dislike GPL. But I don't think that was misinformation or confusion. It might be fear-mongering about the effects of a 'viral license', but we can only guess at their effects. Personally I dislike GPL because it limits developers like me, and because I find the (roughly true) idea 'you can only use GPL code if you're own code is GPL' too coercive. I don't think that is a virtuous method for improving the world.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    If those people are coherent I assume they are also contributing and running one of the BSDs as their main UNIX.
    - jabl 5y ago
      Huh? I would guess most people are pragmatic and are happy to use and contribute to any software licensed under OSD-compliant terms. You can do that while still preferring to contribute to permissively licensed projects. Of course that goes both ways, I don't see many free software purists that refuse to use permissively licensed software either.
  - jcelerier 5y ago
    I have yet to see BSD / MIT meaningfully improving my personal life, quite unlike the GPL which pretty much made my career possible thanks to the wealth of GPL software under Linux
pjmlp 5y ago
Without GPL, people wouldn't be enjoying their Linux distribution, but naturally this is a moot point given how the BSD distributions have taken over the UNIX world.
- seabird 5y ago
  Commenting on BSDs losing out to Linux seems like a weird dig in this context, considering that a large contributing factor to that was legal threats from AT&T.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Something that keeps being forgotten, those legal issues were settled in 1994, after USL also getting a counter lawsuit for their own use of BSD code, while Linux itself was a target of a lawsuit a decade later thanks SCO.
    - ksec 5y ago
      >while Linux itself was a target of a lawsuit a decade later thanks SCO. The dust was settled then, Google and all were on linux. Compared to BSD era. Not to mention the legal threats were not in the same order of magnitude.
      - pjmlp 5y ago
        Yet the licence that provided an escape route gets bashed, so much gratitude.
    - jabl 5y ago
      I think there are many reasons for Linux 'winning', and it's not easy to attribute weights to each one. GPL is probably one, Linux having a better development model more open to outsiders is another, arguably more important, one.
      - cesarb 5y ago
ksec 5y ago
>Racket had to do this to go from "lGPL" Is that a typo of LGPL or does lGPL means something else? I even had to google it to make sure it was a "L" and not an "I".
andybak 5y ago
> lGPL I was googling "I" GPL. Maybe consider upper-casing the L next time so it's not as ambiguous?

still_grokking 5y ago

> Developers are scared away by lGPL. I see GPL as a sign of quality and am attracted by projects using it. It's a promise nobody will ever take that thing away from me once I've started using it. I'm a developer, by the way. :-) Edit: Not to mention that some people even using GCC, Linux and Java.

dagmx 5y ago
Out of curiosity, how does the GPL promise that versus the other common open source licenses? E.g MIT, BSD or Apache?
- purple_turtle 5y ago
  As I understand it: MIT code can be freely taken into proprietary fork, with software modified and sold and no patches contributed. Not sure how often it happens? Has it actually happened and is it a plausible attack? Nowadays at least AGPL is needed to defang "and we will sell it as service rather than selling software" workaround for GPL.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - arka2147483647 5y ago
    As a practical matter, it means you cant just copy the files into your sources to some subdir, or you cant just link it statically. So you cant release a single-exe version of your project. These are things some projects like to do, and GPL blocks that. So all thing considered, it may be easiest to just not use GPL code.
    - chayleaf 5y ago
      you can't copy MIT-licensed files without crediting it either. And you can statically link GPL code, assuming you release the source to all app users. You might be confusing it with LGPL, which says you can link to proprietary apps dynamically, but have to release source in all other cases.
      - shoozza 5y ago
        You can also link to proprietary apps statically if you provide the object files: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/312758/does-providing-object-files-satisfy-lgpl-relink-clause#312759 https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3127...
      - rocqua 5y ago
        I thought useing GPL code without modifications was acceptable without any licensing, or is that a 'lesser GPL' license?
        orra 5y ago
        You're thinking on the LGPL. The GPL is the prototypical copyleft licence, designed to encourage the liberation of software, in part via its dependencies.
        still_grokking 5y ago
        You can use GPL code however you want. You have only obligations when you distribute the results. Whatever you do in your private basement is completely unaffected by that. The GPL gives you freedom to do whatever you please. That's the whole point of it! When you distribute binaries resulting form work based on GPL code than the people receiving those binaries (and only them) are eligible to get alongside the source code which allows them to rebuild the binaries you distributed to them. That makes sure that those other people also have the same freedom as you to do whatever they please with the programs and code. So the GPL preserves freedom among users of GPL code.
  - rocqua 5y ago
    Apple's OS is a fork of BSD without the fork being open source.
    - kergonath 5y ago
      It’s more complicated than that. It was not a fork, they just copied some parts of FreeBSD and OpenBSD. The kernel is XNU, and descended from Mach. Also, Darwin (the base OS, which includes the BSD bits) is open source. What isn’t is the GUI on top of it, which comes from OPENSTEP.
      - chalst 5y ago
        The open source part of Darwin/XNU doesn't deserve to be called a "base OS" since version 6, when Apple closed the sources of a lot of drivers. There's no hardware that will boot these systems if you restrict to what is available under the APSL. https://web.archive.org/web/20091118172944/http://www.puredarwin.org/legal/binarydrivers https://web.archive.org/web/20091118172944/http://www.pureda...
    - TravelPiglet 5y ago
      https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Apple derived OSes, the Windows TCP/IP stack before Windows Vista, PlayStation OSes, Nintendo and Playstation SDK, the BSD stuff taken into commercial UNIXes, just from top of my head, there are surely other examples.
- still_grokking 5y ago
  GPL software, and extensions to it, are free and will stay like that. That can't be said about software under the above mentioned licenses.
  - dagmx 5y ago
    I'm not sure how the GPL guarantees that it will stay like that anymore than those other licenses? You can always relicense GPL content as long as everyone agrees. You can also change it to source on request versus always accessible.
    - chayleaf 5y ago
      key is "as long as everyone agrees"
    - rocqua 5y ago
      If you wrote the code, you can refuse to relicense.
  - kitd 5y ago
    OP also said it was a sign of 'quality'. Not sure how GPL promises that over other OS licenses.
    - still_grokking 5y ago
      I'm the OP and I'm not a native speaker but to my knowledge "quality" denotes in English besides a few other things the meaning of "value" (in the sense of worthiness) or (related to that meaning) "excellence". Something being high-quality makes this thing valuable. I didn't mean "code quality", or the like, as a license can not enforce that obviously.
systemvoltage 5y ago
> I see GPL as a sign of quality Personal opinion is that BSD > GPL. Free as in properly free. I always donate to BSD license folks. When corporations use BSD software, they usually get engaged in the BSD community - under the stilts of management, suited lawyers and spreadsheet bean counters, it's just us programmer folk... you know. We like tinkering things and BSD software tends to have a different philosophy. Very welcoming to people who want to propel the world forward. Truly liberating, try BSD software.
- rapnie 5y ago
  This is a matter of hot debate, and I don't want to trigger such discussion. AFAIU it is a bit of perspective of where the freedom is. With BSD there's more 'freedom' to incorporate with proprietary code, which eases commercialization. Companies like it better because of that and are likelier contributors. With GPL, while you can still monetize your code, protects the freedom of the Commons better by preventing the proprietary commercialization of open source code. And that is a reason why many businesses shun it. Personally I am in favor of the 4 freedoms of open-source and like to use (A)GPL.
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    Yeah, agree it is hotly debated and not worth discussing further. I've recently been bitten by GPL and it's fresh on my mind how insidious it can be. That said, I work in commercial environment where BSD-licensed software is highly regarded.
    - tarsinge 5y ago
      Saying that corporations prefer something they can profit from without giving back vs something they can not is circular reasoning to me. Conversely if you look on the other side you'll see developers bitten by permissive software licences (MongoDB, Elasticsearch, ...).
      - snovv_crash 5y ago
Vinnl 5y ago
People can't simply take away MIT-licensed code either - it grants you the right to use that code, and does so irrevocably. What GPL does is make sure that code that is built on top of that will also be accessible to you, if the product it's used in is made public. But your own contributions and anything MIT-licensed it is added to will never be legally taken away from you.
- kzrdude 5y ago
  With software, we don't see any frozen particular version as the main asset, but the continuity of the project is the asset. Otherwise we wouldn't de-value unmainted software so much. (The code is there, the license is clear, it could be used). GPL makes sure the project's main strand of development stays accessible to you.
  - Vinnl 5y ago
    Well, unless the copyright holder of that code decide to use another licence in the future — then the snapshot that was licensed as GPL will remain available to you, but the main strand of development may not. But yes, if this copyright is spread over many people (as it is in this case), then re-licensing is a herculean effort that is especially unlikely to succeed if it's designed to take away user rights, so in that sense a GPL'd project is more likely to remain open.

rectang 5y ago

That's a different situation, because the LGPL is not a problematic license in terms of drafting. With LLVM, the license isn't really changing in spirit. The concerns seem to be more practical — my understanding is that they're trying to get out from under a poorly drafted patent clause and also unify the code under a single license so they can move stuff around more easily.

wumpus 5y ago

Many major corporations (like, say, IBM) have no problem with LGPL. Where did you find a bunch of developers who thought it was a problem?

varajelle 5y ago
It's not the developers who are afraid, it's the companies who want to use the code for free, for proprietary purpose, and redistribute it. They want to take as much as possible but don't want to give anything.
- rocqua 5y ago
  I would rephrase to "they want to take as much as possible but don't want to give back the entire codebase using the free software".
  - varajelle 5y ago
    LGPL doesn't require to make the entire codebase free software (GPL does. It is part of the contract: get some, give some.)

robbintt 5y ago

Thanks, I was just thinking this month how I would like to write lisp without parens.

Smithalicious 5y ago

> Developers are scared away by lGPL. For me it's very much the opposite, I refuse to contribute code to anything licensed under the MIT/BSD/etc family of languages. It makes me sad to see so much confusion, incorrect information, naiveté and paranoia going around regarding the GPL that it's scaring people off. I think that most of these people would feel differently if they understood better. I think the systematic defanging and watering down of the free software movement is a great loss.

rocqua 5y ago
I don't think people who shy away from GPL are in favor of the free software movement. People who advocate for MIT like licenses like 'open source', but they usually explicitly reject the ideas from free software. Some of these concerns are simply commercial, and some are philosophical. I think people might have been convinced to dislike GPL. But I don't think that was misinformation or confusion. It might be fear-mongering about the effects of a 'viral license', but we can only guess at their effects. Personally I dislike GPL because it limits developers like me, and because I find the (roughly true) idea 'you can only use GPL code if you're own code is GPL' too coercive. I don't think that is a virtuous method for improving the world.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  If those people are coherent I assume they are also contributing and running one of the BSDs as their main UNIX.
  - jabl 5y ago
    Huh? I would guess most people are pragmatic and are happy to use and contribute to any software licensed under OSD-compliant terms. You can do that while still preferring to contribute to permissively licensed projects. Of course that goes both ways, I don't see many free software purists that refuse to use permissively licensed software either.
- jcelerier 5y ago
  I have yet to see BSD / MIT meaningfully improving my personal life, quite unlike the GPL which pretty much made my career possible thanks to the wealth of GPL software under Linux

pjmlp 5y ago

Without GPL, people wouldn't be enjoying their Linux distribution, but naturally this is a moot point given how the BSD distributions have taken over the UNIX world.

seabird 5y ago
Commenting on BSDs losing out to Linux seems like a weird dig in this context, considering that a large contributing factor to that was legal threats from AT&T.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Something that keeps being forgotten, those legal issues were settled in 1994, after USL also getting a counter lawsuit for their own use of BSD code, while Linux itself was a target of a lawsuit a decade later thanks SCO.
  - ksec 5y ago
    >while Linux itself was a target of a lawsuit a decade later thanks SCO. The dust was settled then, Google and all were on linux. Compared to BSD era. Not to mention the legal threats were not in the same order of magnitude.
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      Yet the licence that provided an escape route gets bashed, so much gratitude.
  - jabl 5y ago
    I think there are many reasons for Linux 'winning', and it's not easy to attribute weights to each one. GPL is probably one, Linux having a better development model more open to outsiders is another, arguably more important, one.
    - cesarb 5y ago

ksec 5y ago

>Racket had to do this to go from "lGPL" Is that a typo of LGPL or does lGPL means something else? I even had to google it to make sure it was a "L" and not an "I".

andybak 5y ago

> lGPL I was googling "I" GPL. Maybe consider upper-casing the L next time so it's not as ambiguous?