9 ms·

The issue isn't the FSF's opinion on this matter, it's that it is incredibly childish of them to go voice that opinion on other projects' issue trackers. You do

The issue isn't the FSF's opinion on this matter, it's that it is incredibly childish of them to go voice that opinion on other projects' issue trackers. You don't go to someone else's house to tell them their beliefs are wrong.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
medo-bear 5y ago
they are rewriting GNU project under a less free license. i find it pretty funny that they did do that :)
- nix23 5y ago
  Yeah stop with that, MIT/BSD/ISC is definitely more free then GNU...you know in the normal world "less restrictions = more freedom" just someone from the FSF would think otherwise.
  - colejohnson66 5y ago
    More free for developers, not users. MIT code can be used in a closed source system a lot easier than a GPL one can. Developers love to talk about the freedoms they have with licenses, while ignoring that the whole point of the GPL family is disregarding that in favor of the user's rights.
    - nix23 5y ago
      Being a user of BSD if feel more free too. Know why? Because i can do nearly everything with it, and i don't even need a Lawyer to read and understand the license.
      - colejohnson66 5y ago
        That makes no sense. You can still, as a user, do whatever you want with GPL software. The GPL is long because it has to be in order to protect the user's rights; It's an actual contract between the source provider and anyone who uses it. It also doesn't require a lawyer to read. Just sit down for 10 minutes and read it yourself; It's pretty straightforward.
        jcranmer 5y ago
        Even as a user, you cannot do "whatever you want" with GPL software. Specifically, you can't distribute the GPL unless you also adhere to the GPL's requirements for distribution. (It's even worse for the LGPL variant, because that imposes requirements on how the software is built in the first place.) What counts as a "distribution"? Well, that's a contract interpretation question, and if you are not asking that question of a lawyer, then you have a fool for a client. I suspect that there's actually a lot of technical GPL violations going on, but since the open source community is not litigious in general, there's little realization of those violations and even less care that those are going on. Personally, I am not a fan of the GPL licenses for this reason. If you are trying to use legal contracts to enforce norms, it is disingenuous to argue that you don't need lawyers to be involved. Using social contracts and pressure instead would truly allow everybody to avoid lawyers and achieve much the same goals.
        nix23 5y ago
        >It's pretty straightforward. Really? https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html >It's an actual contract between the source provider and anyone who uses it. I don't want a contract, especially NOT with the FSF and their shady GPLv3 introduction...not thanks. If i want a contract i go to Oracle.
    - einpoklum 5y ago
      > More free for developers, not users. I protest this dichotomy. But even beyond the dichotomy, you're atomizing in the way you discuss people. A community or large group of users have among them both developers and resources to recruit developers to further their collective needs. When MIT/BSD-licensed software ends up being developed beyond the original freely-accessible base within commercial entities, as in: > MIT code can be used in a closed source system a lot easier than a GPL one can. then those communities and groups are stuck with a thorn in their side they can't remove, which warps technical fields to accommodate it and is utterly frustrating. This has been my personal experience in more than one field. As an example it's like that with the CUDA ecosystem for GPU use, much of it is closed and hidden while employing technologies like LLVM, and likely a lot of other FOSS and free academic publications regarding effective computing. I really wish their choice was either much crappier closed-source commercial stuff, or, say, a GPL'ed LLVM, and having their drivers and user-mode toolchains open. If they were to choose the latter, than great; if they were to choose the former, than they would be at a competitive disadvantage and hopefully others (e.g. AMD) would use that to gain more traction with GPL'ed software. I'm not saying that this would _necessarily_ happen, but it might very well. > Developers love to talk about the freedoms they have with licenses, while ignoring that the whole point of the GPL family is disregarding that in favor of the user's rights. I think you meant MIT and BSD? Anyway, the point of the GPL and Free Software (using FSF/RMS terms) is to get enough software to have GPL-style license that it becomes unreasonable to license software any other way, with the end result being that essentially all released software will be free for use, dissemination and modification and we will be able to forget about software licenses altogether since people will stop trying to limit that and what is now the GPL would essentially be the legal default.
    - GhettoComputers 5y ago
      Why can't a company just use GPL code, if I started a company that used linux servers, I could contribute 0 code and get all the benefits.
  - medo-bear 5y ago
    :) it is less free in a sense that unlike MIT GNU ensures continuation of free software. for me if someone really cares about free software then choosing MIT is like being a hippy handing out flowers hoping that the world is nice
    - nix23 5y ago
      >for me if someone really cares about free software then choosing MIT is like being a hippy handing out flowers hoping that the world is nice. I like that, and i like free flovers. What i don't like are lawyers and stuff like the GPLv3, AGPL and all the licenses who try to put some political view on me. Look it's like that. If you fork and close down a BSD/MIT code base, you loose all those devs (no free flowers from hippies anymore), instead you have to pay your own dev's, juniper can sing a song about that problem. So without any pressure, just with the logic of economy you try to stay as near as possible to the free codes base with your product (and integrate your changes), netflix can sing a song about that too. Continuation has nothing todo with the license but with interest of developers see -> Hurd
      - medo-bear 5y ago
        what the FSF hopes for is that if there is enough GPL-type licensed critical software which self-perpetuates free software then free software will become by far the most dominant paradigm. in this sense it is really not hard to see why the license change in the rust rewrite of GNU coreutils is going to become the most dominant issue for FSF. screaming about technical merrits makes no sense >Continuation has nothing todo with the license but with interest of developers see -> Hurd i think developer interest has far more to do with technical viablity of a project than license choice. besides, as in all software some projects fail, some succeed, and some are just beginning
        nix23 5y ago
        >why the license change in the rust rewrite of GNU coreutils is going to become the most dominant issue for FSF Why is that a problem? There was already toybox (BSD), muslc (MIT), llvm (UIUC (BSD-style)). The dominant issue the FSF has is that they are no technically interested anymore but politically, and so no one need's them, no one wants them. And listening to Stallman is really boring, the last time he was kind of self-aware was with the Religion of Emacs, since then just repetition and being rude to interviewers and trying to trick devs (Linus and the GPLv3) BTW: I am NOT talking about the GNU project, just the FSF
- josephcsible 5y ago
  MIT is not a less free license than GPL. They're both equally completely free.
  - medo-bear 5y ago
    yeah i wasn't being very serious by saying it is "less free". but it is funny that so many people are so touchy about this MIT license basically allows you to do whatever you want. however it should be well noted that if you really belive in software freedom and write your code for sake of furthering free software, choosing MIT is a naive choice since you let any derivates of your work to be closed source
lvass 5y ago
How can you be so certain they're not interested in knowing what the consequences of their chosen license are? By your logic, It would be childish to ring your bell and point out you have a water leak. I'm glad my neighbors don't think like that.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

medo-bear 5y ago

they are rewriting GNU project under a less free license. i find it pretty funny that they did do that :)

nix23 5y ago
Yeah stop with that, MIT/BSD/ISC is definitely more free then GNU...you know in the normal world "less restrictions = more freedom" just someone from the FSF would think otherwise.
- colejohnson66 5y ago
  More free for developers, not users. MIT code can be used in a closed source system a lot easier than a GPL one can. Developers love to talk about the freedoms they have with licenses, while ignoring that the whole point of the GPL family is disregarding that in favor of the user's rights.
  - nix23 5y ago
    Being a user of BSD if feel more free too. Know why? Because i can do nearly everything with it, and i don't even need a Lawyer to read and understand the license.
    - colejohnson66 5y ago
      That makes no sense. You can still, as a user, do whatever you want with GPL software. The GPL is long because it has to be in order to protect the user's rights; It's an actual contract between the source provider and anyone who uses it. It also doesn't require a lawyer to read. Just sit down for 10 minutes and read it yourself; It's pretty straightforward.
      - jcranmer 5y ago
        Even as a user, you cannot do "whatever you want" with GPL software. Specifically, you can't distribute the GPL unless you also adhere to the GPL's requirements for distribution. (It's even worse for the LGPL variant, because that imposes requirements on how the software is built in the first place.) What counts as a "distribution"? Well, that's a contract interpretation question, and if you are not asking that question of a lawyer, then you have a fool for a client. I suspect that there's actually a lot of technical GPL violations going on, but since the open source community is not litigious in general, there's little realization of those violations and even less care that those are going on. Personally, I am not a fan of the GPL licenses for this reason. If you are trying to use legal contracts to enforce norms, it is disingenuous to argue that you don't need lawyers to be involved. Using social contracts and pressure instead would truly allow everybody to avoid lawyers and achieve much the same goals.
      - nix23 5y ago
        >It's pretty straightforward. Really? https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html >It's an actual contract between the source provider and anyone who uses it. I don't want a contract, especially NOT with the FSF and their shady GPLv3 introduction...not thanks. If i want a contract i go to Oracle.
  - einpoklum 5y ago
    > More free for developers, not users. I protest this dichotomy. But even beyond the dichotomy, you're atomizing in the way you discuss people. A community or large group of users have among them both developers and resources to recruit developers to further their collective needs. When MIT/BSD-licensed software ends up being developed beyond the original freely-accessible base within commercial entities, as in: > MIT code can be used in a closed source system a lot easier than a GPL one can. then those communities and groups are stuck with a thorn in their side they can't remove, which warps technical fields to accommodate it and is utterly frustrating. This has been my personal experience in more than one field. As an example it's like that with the CUDA ecosystem for GPU use, much of it is closed and hidden while employing technologies like LLVM, and likely a lot of other FOSS and free academic publications regarding effective computing. I really wish their choice was either much crappier closed-source commercial stuff, or, say, a GPL'ed LLVM, and having their drivers and user-mode toolchains open. If they were to choose the latter, than great; if they were to choose the former, than they would be at a competitive disadvantage and hopefully others (e.g. AMD) would use that to gain more traction with GPL'ed software. I'm not saying that this would _necessarily_ happen, but it might very well. > Developers love to talk about the freedoms they have with licenses, while ignoring that the whole point of the GPL family is disregarding that in favor of the user's rights. I think you meant MIT and BSD? Anyway, the point of the GPL and Free Software (using FSF/RMS terms) is to get enough software to have GPL-style license that it becomes unreasonable to license software any other way, with the end result being that essentially all released software will be free for use, dissemination and modification and we will be able to forget about software licenses altogether since people will stop trying to limit that and what is now the GPL would essentially be the legal default.
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    Why can't a company just use GPL code, if I started a company that used linux servers, I could contribute 0 code and get all the benefits.
- medo-bear 5y ago
  :) it is less free in a sense that unlike MIT GNU ensures continuation of free software. for me if someone really cares about free software then choosing MIT is like being a hippy handing out flowers hoping that the world is nice
  - nix23 5y ago
    >for me if someone really cares about free software then choosing MIT is like being a hippy handing out flowers hoping that the world is nice. I like that, and i like free flovers. What i don't like are lawyers and stuff like the GPLv3, AGPL and all the licenses who try to put some political view on me. Look it's like that. If you fork and close down a BSD/MIT code base, you loose all those devs (no free flowers from hippies anymore), instead you have to pay your own dev's, juniper can sing a song about that problem. So without any pressure, just with the logic of economy you try to stay as near as possible to the free codes base with your product (and integrate your changes), netflix can sing a song about that too. Continuation has nothing todo with the license but with interest of developers see -> Hurd
    - medo-bear 5y ago
      what the FSF hopes for is that if there is enough GPL-type licensed critical software which self-perpetuates free software then free software will become by far the most dominant paradigm. in this sense it is really not hard to see why the license change in the rust rewrite of GNU coreutils is going to become the most dominant issue for FSF. screaming about technical merrits makes no sense >Continuation has nothing todo with the license but with interest of developers see -> Hurd i think developer interest has far more to do with technical viablity of a project than license choice. besides, as in all software some projects fail, some succeed, and some are just beginning
      - nix23 5y ago
        >why the license change in the rust rewrite of GNU coreutils is going to become the most dominant issue for FSF Why is that a problem? There was already toybox (BSD), muslc (MIT), llvm (UIUC (BSD-style)). The dominant issue the FSF has is that they are no technically interested anymore but politically, and so no one need's them, no one wants them. And listening to Stallman is really boring, the last time he was kind of self-aware was with the Religion of Emacs, since then just repetition and being rude to interviewers and trying to trick devs (Linus and the GPLv3) BTW: I am NOT talking about the GNU project, just the FSF
josephcsible 5y ago
MIT is not a less free license than GPL. They're both equally completely free.
- medo-bear 5y ago
  yeah i wasn't being very serious by saying it is "less free". but it is funny that so many people are so touchy about this MIT license basically allows you to do whatever you want. however it should be well noted that if you really belive in software freedom and write your code for sake of furthering free software, choosing MIT is a naive choice since you let any derivates of your work to be closed source

lvass 5y ago

How can you be so certain they're not interested in knowing what the consequences of their chosen license are? By your logic, It would be childish to ring your bell and point out you have a water leak. I'm glad my neighbors don't think like that.