4 ms·

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

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.

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.