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Obligatory "Stallman was right?" I'm not much familiar with what the OSI is in any specific sense; but yes, "Open Source" has always been a nebulous term that
by jrm4 3y ago
Obligatory "Stallman was right?"
I'm not much familiar with what the OSI is in any specific sense; but yes, "Open Source" has always been a nebulous term that fits the container of who's using it. I like the great point of e.g. JS being the real "on the ground open source" for better and (often) worse; it's provided a lot of good real life lessons on the limitations of vague ideas and why real licenses with hard tooth legal rules are important.
Generally, I think we've seen "why you really do need lawyers." I like ideas like Creative Commons and e.g. the Do WTF you want license, but they're no substitute for grown-up law.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Brian_K_White 3y agoMIT is a do wtf you want license, and all the people who call themselves adults and call gnu children LOVE it. I don't think they are adults, it's usually not adults who use the word. No one cries "unfair!" or "selfish!" more than a proprietary coder who can't use some gpl code, and the louder they cry the more they themselves advertise how simply correct and necessary that license is. Stallman was and is right.
- pessimizer 3y agoI've gotten to prefer referring to FSF licenses as "restrictive licenses," which was the name that open source or even the "public domain software" people would throw at them. I'm happy to say that FSF licenses are more like "proprietary" licenses than open source licenses. So when a proprietary coder complains about not being able to use GPL'd code, I just ask them why we can't use all of their proprietary code. They have as much right to steal from the public as the public has to steal from them. Or maybe a little less, due to democracy. The GPLs restrict software authors from being the masters of their users, without requiring them to be the servants of their users. Since the author is choosing the license, it's a voluntary relinquishment of rights that should never have been given by government to merchants. You choose open source if instead you want to give away the those rights (the rights to obscure functionality and lock people out of their own possessions) to whoever wants them. When Amazon picks those up, don't cry about it.
- Brian_K_White 3y agoGPL only restricts one from being a dick. "Unfair!" If someone requires other terms, the existence of GPL code in no way restricts them from writing or buying other code that is compatible with whatever terms they require. Anyone crying about that is only crying that they are not allowed to steal something that is already free. From an authors perspective, do what you want. Don't use GPL if you don't share the single value it enshrines. It doesn't make you righter or more rational or the GPL wrong or anything like that, and the desire to rent out access to the use of a secret is the most common and least interesting thing in the world, as is the desire to try to present that as being any sort of principle about freedom instead of the crass food-gathering thing that it is.
- iraqmtpizza 3y ago[flagged]
- Dah00n 3y agoTake a deep breath and try again.
- iraqmtpizza 3y agoLOL where's the lie? if you have to send lawyers after someone for stealing something which was free, it's not free. it's just a cult of flatulence inhalers that think that permissively licensed code is breaking their precious rules by declining to sue innocent people for keeping their own work. as has been made readily apparent in this thread
- brenns10 3y agoGPL breakers wouldn't be breaking GPL if they kept their own work. They break it when they distribute a compiled work that's only partly theirs, and mainly somebody else's, without sharing the source code for it. You're more than welcome to build on GPL code and keep your own work. Just don't distribute it.
- iraqmtpizza 3y agogo sue more schoolchildren for not publishing their modifications to "libre" code
- Dah00n 3y agoLots of angry posts. How about adding something interesting?
- iraqmtpizza 3y ago[flagged]
- vincent-manis 3y agoYour comments would bear more weight if you were to describe your philosophical objections to the GPL.
- iraqmtpizza 3y agoHow about its unenforceable self-aggrandizing nonsense about how everything is a derivative work as long as two files were ever in the same room together? Sounds like the easiest way to get the code to the nuclear football--just trick them into touching a GPL file. Just because a contract says something is a derivative work doesn't mean that it is legally. I see GPL bros as vexatious children armed with lawyers. Like Oracle.
- mdwalters 3y agoI am struggling to see your point. Are you trying to say that "GPLers" are supposed to stop using GPL because of popularity and strict terms?
- iraqmtpizza 3y agoPopularity? Yeah, among corporate lawyers. It's no accident that Oracle v. Google went like 12 years. Strict terms? Yeah. When free and permissive are said to be opposites, you know you're in a psych ward.
- iraqmtpizza 3y agoif you dump your shitty code into piles of non-shit code, of course people are going to look at you like you're a degen. especially when they're forced to clean up your mess