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This just makes me more confident in choosing GPL licenses for my projects in order to ensure user freedom.

dcow 5y ago
Exactly. The choice of GPL is an explicit choice to protect end user freedom over reducing intermediate developer & corporation hassle. If you want to ensure end-user freedom, BSD, MIT, Apache style permissive licenses don't cut it. If you want to become a developer celebrity and have your open source project used in projects everywhere, or if you are a company and you want to hook other devs on your freemium open core product, then those licenses are for you. The decision about whether to use the GPL or not is far more nuanced and there is no one-size-fits-all license out there. If there was I suspect we'd all use it... Interestingly in this case, this ruling also reduces intermediate developer hassle for devs who are already used to working with GPL code. So that's a nice win (=
- tempnow987 5y ago
  Agreed. Will be interesting to see where development / contributions by various players go in the future.
- goodpoint 5y ago
  > protect end user freedom over reducing intermediate developer & corporation hassle Actually it also reduces intermediate developer hassle: it's better if I don't have to rely on closed source firmware, firmware updaters, drivers, SDKs, proprietary tools. It create openness in the whole software stack.
tempnow987 5y ago
Then this will be a good result. You of course may be sued yourself if you have a project using GPL'ed code that doesn't comply with the the current view of GPL (ie, release of encryption keys) or if you infringe your own GPL copyright in some proprietary project (ie, GPL code where user was promised access is in something that you don't want available broadly). This is all good for users for sure for things like open core projects and projects that used to be open but moved away etc
- bregma 5y ago
  You could only infringe the GPL copyright if you change the GPL license wording itself. The GPL license is a license that allows software using your copyright code to be used by others under certain conditions but at no point does it violate the law and remove your copyright in your own work, so there is no way someone could sue you (and win) for using your copyrighted work as you see fit, including licensing it under a separate distribution license to some third party.
  - tempnow987 5y ago
    That's the change here. Historically the GPL distribution language was a condition of the copyright license, so exactly as you said, no one could sue you because there was no separate contract element to end users binding them into a contract with anyone. That is what is so exciting / different about this. When you make available software under the GPL, you have now entered into a CONTRACT (not copyright anymore) with all users that binds you to the terms of the GPL and gives them a right to sue for violations of THEIR independent rights. This is the power of this new ruling, they can then sue you or anyone for breaking this agreement with them. Obviously will take some experience to see how far this can be taken. My understanding is the conservancy may want to try to leverage this to try to get GPLv3 effects into GPLv2 and a few other things the developers of for example Linux are not so hot on.
    - shkkmo 5y ago
      > When you make available software under the GPL, you have now entered into a CONTRACT (not copyright anymore) with all users that binds you to the terms of the GPL and gives them a right to sue for violations of THEIR independent rights. Sure, anyone can sue you for anything. However nothing in this removes the copyright holders' ability to issue non-GPL licenses. A user of a product that uses a non-GPL license for that code would still have no standing for that suit.
      - tempnow987 5y ago
        Correct. Historically one could contribute to a GPL project (potentially on a significant level for a corp) but wouldn't worry too much about using it in your own product that was potentially locked down - ie, DRM / motor duty cycle control, rev limits etc. Linus / Linux have a long history of being pretty relaxed about your use cases, with the one key provision that you share your code. Now, the group of people who can sue you is much larger. And some of them (conservancy in particular) may have views that don't align with your GPLv2 interpretation (particularly around tivoization / lock down issues for hardware devices). So if you are contributing too and shipping GPLv2 code - yes, you as the distributor of a larger body of code probably have a higher risk now of being sued.

dcow 5y ago

Exactly. The choice of GPL is an explicit choice to protect end user freedom over reducing intermediate developer & corporation hassle. If you want to ensure end-user freedom, BSD, MIT, Apache style permissive licenses don't cut it. If you want to become a developer celebrity and have your open source project used in projects everywhere, or if you are a company and you want to hook other devs on your freemium open core product, then those licenses are for you. The decision about whether to use the GPL or not is far more nuanced and there is no one-size-fits-all license out there. If there was I suspect we'd all use it... Interestingly in this case, this ruling also reduces intermediate developer hassle for devs who are already used to working with GPL code. So that's a nice win (=

tempnow987 5y ago
Agreed. Will be interesting to see where development / contributions by various players go in the future.
goodpoint 5y ago
> protect end user freedom over reducing intermediate developer & corporation hassle Actually it also reduces intermediate developer hassle: it's better if I don't have to rely on closed source firmware, firmware updaters, drivers, SDKs, proprietary tools. It create openness in the whole software stack.

tempnow987 5y ago

Then this will be a good result. You of course may be sued yourself if you have a project using GPL'ed code that doesn't comply with the the current view of GPL (ie, release of encryption keys) or if you infringe your own GPL copyright in some proprietary project (ie, GPL code where user was promised access is in something that you don't want available broadly). This is all good for users for sure for things like open core projects and projects that used to be open but moved away etc

bregma 5y ago
You could only infringe the GPL copyright if you change the GPL license wording itself. The GPL license is a license that allows software using your copyright code to be used by others under certain conditions but at no point does it violate the law and remove your copyright in your own work, so there is no way someone could sue you (and win) for using your copyrighted work as you see fit, including licensing it under a separate distribution license to some third party.
- tempnow987 5y ago
  That's the change here. Historically the GPL distribution language was a condition of the copyright license, so exactly as you said, no one could sue you because there was no separate contract element to end users binding them into a contract with anyone. That is what is so exciting / different about this. When you make available software under the GPL, you have now entered into a CONTRACT (not copyright anymore) with all users that binds you to the terms of the GPL and gives them a right to sue for violations of THEIR independent rights. This is the power of this new ruling, they can then sue you or anyone for breaking this agreement with them. Obviously will take some experience to see how far this can be taken. My understanding is the conservancy may want to try to leverage this to try to get GPLv3 effects into GPLv2 and a few other things the developers of for example Linux are not so hot on.
  - shkkmo 5y ago
    > When you make available software under the GPL, you have now entered into a CONTRACT (not copyright anymore) with all users that binds you to the terms of the GPL and gives them a right to sue for violations of THEIR independent rights. Sure, anyone can sue you for anything. However nothing in this removes the copyright holders' ability to issue non-GPL licenses. A user of a product that uses a non-GPL license for that code would still have no standing for that suit.
    - tempnow987 5y ago
      Correct. Historically one could contribute to a GPL project (potentially on a significant level for a corp) but wouldn't worry too much about using it in your own product that was potentially locked down - ie, DRM / motor duty cycle control, rev limits etc. Linus / Linux have a long history of being pretty relaxed about your use cases, with the one key provision that you share your code. Now, the group of people who can sue you is much larger. And some of them (conservancy in particular) may have views that don't align with your GPLv2 interpretation (particularly around tivoization / lock down issues for hardware devices). So if you are contributing too and shipping GPLv2 code - yes, you as the distributor of a larger body of code probably have a higher risk now of being sued.