4 ms·

GPL is a nice idea...but you need lawyers lots of money and time. I hate lawyers and i don't have time for that bs nor do it have/want money to spend for lawyer

by nix23 5y ago

GPL is a nice idea...but you need lawyers lots of money and time. I hate lawyers and i don't have time for that bs nor do it have/want money to spend for lawyers, i was a diehard gpl evangelist in my 20`s, now it's BSD/MIT/ISC (and not diehard anymore...more like IDGAS)...and i really don't care for religion anymore...just quality and real freedom.

tssge 5y ago
>GPL is a nice idea...but you need lawyers lots of money and time. This applies to any license. BSD/MIT/ISC rules can be broken as well and the only means to rectify it in the case that the other party refuses to cooperate is to resort to litigation.
- nix23 5y ago
  >BSD/MIT/ISC rules can be broken as well No one cares and no one has interests to break them for financial gain...not even lawyers (that's the good part)
  - pabs3 5y ago
    My router violates the BSD license and they got financial gain from that.
    - charcircuit 5y ago
      That was probably done because of laziness or incompetence and not for financial gain. The financial loss of attributing someone is very tiny compared to having to release all of your source.
      - nix23 5y ago
        >That was probably done because of laziness or incompetence You know what the BSD license is right?
    - nix23 5y ago
      How is your router violating the bsd-license?
assttoasstmgr 5y ago
My company does whatever it can to comply with GPL requirements and it is nothing short of a goddamn nightmare. Nothing like sitting in a conference room for hours with lawyers while we poured through the licenses for 250 different packages; we would have been better off just burning the money. My conclusions are that most Linux distributions are an amalgam of software packages with licenses that are fundamentally incompatible with each other; the GPL is extremely poorly written with lots of vagaries. I don't think there is a path to 100% compliance; you just make sure your heart is in the right place and hope for the best. Ultimately, we concluded we are moving to BSD on future projects where possible. Not because of some overwhelming need to keep source closed from customers, rather just to avoid the mess.
- nix23 5y ago
  >short of a goddamn nightmare It is....don't touch lawyers if you want to get real wok done.
- posguy 5y ago
  Those 250 packages likely don't have custom forks of the GPL license. Handling of legal requirements for each package should be templatable by management based on whether a particular package is GPLv2, GPLv3 or AGPLv3 and has a linking exception.
- jka 5y ago
  The other way to avoid this would be to lean copyleft for your own codebase(s). If they're made public and you include the appropriate source code references for the dependencies you rely on, then you should be in the clear legally (and perhaps morally, although that's a separate topic).
- simion314 5y ago
  >Ultimately, we concluded we are moving to BSD on future projects where possible. Not because of some overwhelming need to keep source closed from customers, rather just to avoid the mess. It makes sense that developers or slave owners want different freedoms then users or slaves. If your code was BSD or GPL do you still need a layer ? If you are not a slave owner you are not affected by the fact there is a law that does not allow owning slaves.
badsectoracula 5y ago
> and i really don't care for religion anymore...just quality and real freedom. The freedom that GPL is about isn't about the developer's freedom to do whatever they please but about the user's freedom from the developers' whims. This isn't some arbitrary nebulous religion-like dogma but comes from the very practical issue of developers inherently having power over the programs they write and, by extension, power over the users who rely on those programs. Remember that the entire free software thing didn't start because the Emacs god visited Stallman in his sleep but because he was denied access to the source code that would help him fix his lab's printer.
- nix23 5y ago
  >denied access to the source code that would help him fix his lab's printer. Blablabla still the same nothing changed.....

by nix23 5y ago

tssge 5y ago

>GPL is a nice idea...but you need lawyers lots of money and time. This applies to any license. BSD/MIT/ISC rules can be broken as well and the only means to rectify it in the case that the other party refuses to cooperate is to resort to litigation.

nix23 5y ago
>BSD/MIT/ISC rules can be broken as well No one cares and no one has interests to break them for financial gain...not even lawyers (that's the good part)
- pabs3 5y ago
  My router violates the BSD license and they got financial gain from that.
  - charcircuit 5y ago
    That was probably done because of laziness or incompetence and not for financial gain. The financial loss of attributing someone is very tiny compared to having to release all of your source.
    - nix23 5y ago
      >That was probably done because of laziness or incompetence You know what the BSD license is right?
  - nix23 5y ago
    How is your router violating the bsd-license?

assttoasstmgr 5y ago

My company does whatever it can to comply with GPL requirements and it is nothing short of a goddamn nightmare. Nothing like sitting in a conference room for hours with lawyers while we poured through the licenses for 250 different packages; we would have been better off just burning the money. My conclusions are that most Linux distributions are an amalgam of software packages with licenses that are fundamentally incompatible with each other; the GPL is extremely poorly written with lots of vagaries. I don't think there is a path to 100% compliance; you just make sure your heart is in the right place and hope for the best. Ultimately, we concluded we are moving to BSD on future projects where possible. Not because of some overwhelming need to keep source closed from customers, rather just to avoid the mess.

nix23 5y ago
>short of a goddamn nightmare It is....don't touch lawyers if you want to get real wok done.
posguy 5y ago
Those 250 packages likely don't have custom forks of the GPL license. Handling of legal requirements for each package should be templatable by management based on whether a particular package is GPLv2, GPLv3 or AGPLv3 and has a linking exception.
jka 5y ago
The other way to avoid this would be to lean copyleft for your own codebase(s). If they're made public and you include the appropriate source code references for the dependencies you rely on, then you should be in the clear legally (and perhaps morally, although that's a separate topic).
simion314 5y ago
>Ultimately, we concluded we are moving to BSD on future projects where possible. Not because of some overwhelming need to keep source closed from customers, rather just to avoid the mess. It makes sense that developers or slave owners want different freedoms then users or slaves. If your code was BSD or GPL do you still need a layer ? If you are not a slave owner you are not affected by the fact there is a law that does not allow owning slaves.

badsectoracula 5y ago

> and i really don't care for religion anymore...just quality and real freedom. The freedom that GPL is about isn't about the developer's freedom to do whatever they please but about the user's freedom from the developers' whims. This isn't some arbitrary nebulous religion-like dogma but comes from the very practical issue of developers inherently having power over the programs they write and, by extension, power over the users who rely on those programs. Remember that the entire free software thing didn't start because the Emacs god visited Stallman in his sleep but because he was denied access to the source code that would help him fix his lab's printer.

nix23 5y ago
>denied access to the source code that would help him fix his lab's printer. Blablabla still the same nothing changed.....