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As a developer my problem with the GPL is that it's less free than other licenses. It's an interesting legal hack, but it can only succeed in its goals by boili

by ynniv 3y ago

As a developer my problem with the GPL is that it's less free than other licenses. It's an interesting legal hack, but it can only succeed in its goals by boiling the ocean. I just want to write things, and sometimes making money involves not publishing all of your source code. Having to choose between options and idealism limits the popularity of GPL projects.

binary132 3y ago
Isn't that kind of the point? The purpose of GPL and Free Software (which it has actually had resounding success in) is to develop a free commons which will stay free and not be exploited. It's not for you to exploit to make a buck, and if that excludes your project, that's fine. There are lots of things I would never consider free-licensing, but I think people badly miss the point of free software because they are stuck thinking only in terms of their own needs and personal benefit. Again, if you don't want to use or contribute to free software, that is perfectly reasonable. But just bear in mind that the Linux kernel and GCC are incredibly valuable tools which are firmly in the commons and will remain free, and which you have benefited enormously from the use and free availability of.
- bigstrat2003 3y ago
  The GPL is not required for such a commons to flourish. Most Rust projects are published under a permissive license, and that scene is flourishing just fine. I think that open source software as a whole, not the GPL specifically, is what has enabled the flourishing you mention. It seems to me that in the counterfactual world where Linus chose to use the BSD license for his kernel, Linux would thrive just as much as it does today.
  - pama 3y ago
    I don’t like hypothetical counterfactuals but of course it is your choice to use them. It is hard to meaningfully compare recent programs, rust or otherwise, with established behemoths like Linux, gcc, Emacs, etc, that did the heavy lifting and allowed the playing field to remain even over multiple decades. If gcc did not exist it is not clear at all how a hypothetical computerized world would develop.
  - MYEUHD 3y ago
    The reason we have custom roms on android phones, is because of Linux's copyleft license: Phone vendors are required to publish their kernel modifications shipped with their devices. This already reduces e-waste by lowering the purchases of new phones, when old ones are perfectly functional. Thus, copyleft helped the environment
    - kelnos 3y ago
      To me this is also an example of how the GPL fails. The requirement for phone vendors to publish their Linux source trees does in part enable custom ROMs, but vendors still have found ways around the license in the form of proprietary kernel modules. This gives these phones a shelf life: after the latest OS version requires a kernel newer than the one the proprietary modules are shipped with, and efforts to write shims (which are always error-prone and hacky) start to fail, the phone can't even get updated versions of the custom ROM.
      - niutech 3y ago
        It's not GPL's fault, but greedy vendors which don't want to open source their drivers.
  - binary132 3y ago
    The point of copyleft is to protect the continued existence and welfare of such a commons. I'm not even necessarily saying it is the only way to achieve a healthy free commons, I'm simply explaining what GPL is for. That said, do you think it is in fact protecting the user from exploitation, or promoting the health of a free commons, to use "free" software in nonfree products which do not provide their source code to the user nor guarantee the user's ability to study, extend, and modify the software that they are using? I think the argument for Free Software is at the very least strong and good. There can be other approaches to solving the problems FSF wants to solve, too, but it is a totally valid and non-debatably historically useful position at the very least.
- ynniv 3y ago
  It's not for you to exploit to make a buck Of course it is... That’s what Google does, that’s what all companies who are large enough to know how to work around the GPL do. Every company who uses it on their own servers without telling you, or even compiles and distributes it hoping that no one notices, does. And when they do, they sometimes contribute resources back to the project, which helps it to thrive. The GPL is very ideological, and there’s nothing wrong with that but you can see the cost of that right here: where someone pointing out there is a hidden cost is shamed for doing so. Given the chance of contributing code or community to two similar projects, I prefer the one that’s more about building than it is about contracts.
  - binary132 3y ago
    I'm simply explaining the point of GPL. Being able to work around the point doesn't mean it's not the point. Do you really think it's fine and good for Google to take work explicitly intended by its authors to preserve free computing and work around the licensing to make money without preserving the intent and purpose of its license? Shaming would be much stronger. I even pointed out that participating in it is totally elective and I personally would not in many cases. Framing it in terms of your own cost/benefit is missing the point, though, and there is a meaningful and valuable purpose to it outside of maximizing your personal benefit in the moment of choosing a particular library.
phkahler 3y ago
>> As a developer my problem with the GPL is that it's less free than other licenses. The freedom to deny other people the freedom you are enjoying is not compatible with the notion of freedom. It's hypocrisy. That's not to say there is no place for MIT/BSD licenses, but it is not with general application software or libraries used to build such.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Scubabear68 3y ago
  The fundamental problem I have with the GPL, and I think is echoed elsewhere here, is that the GPL is not about my code. It is trying to force my will on other people’s code. It is inherently less free because it is trying to exert dominance over things I do not own and have never been involved in. In theory, a 10 liner GPL Python script could infect an org with 20 millions lines of closed source code and try to dictate the licensing of those 20 million lines. To me that is just wrong.
  - carapace 3y ago
    The GPL started when RMS wanted to fix his printer and Xerox said "No."
    - Thiez 3y ago
      So are printer drivers GPL licensed these days or did the GPL fail?
      - carapace 3y ago
        Speaking as a GPL/"Free" software partisan, we failed. Although I don't like it, I think it's pretty clear. Most people have no idea what the GPL is, even most people who have heard of it don't seem to understand what it was trying to accomplish. The farmers fighting for the "right to repair" their own tractors are the front of the battle now.
sneak 3y ago
> I just want to write things, and sometimes making money involves not publishing all of your source code. I've made lots of money and I publish every piece of code I've ever written to do it. What you are describing must have been written by someone who does not believe in software freedoms. Software freedom is an ideology, not a license. If you license part of your software as free software but not other parts of your software, you do not believe in software freedoms for the users of that software. It's sort of like a factory that only uses slave labor for one step of production. Does that factory operator believe in human rights if their line is 90% respectful of the dignity of mankind?
- seabass-labrax 3y ago
  > I've made lots of money and I publish every piece of code I've ever written to do it. I'm curious to know what your personal method is. Consulting, paid support, proprietary dual-licensing maybe? There are indeed many ways to make money and still publish code as FOSS; the tricky thing, as always, is to work out which way is the right one for you.
  - mixmastamyk 3y ago
    For most people, a pile of software is not nearly enough. They need help of every sort to use it effectively.
- ynniv 3y ago
  What you are describing must have been written by someone who does not believe in software freedoms. That seems to be a common sentiment, that preferring non-GPL projects is about exploitation, and I don’t think it makes any sense. The GPL is a contact that takes away some rights of the people using it, and that makes everyone freer? I understand the goal of wanting users to have rights that they would not otherwise have, but binding every developer in the hope of eventually binding multinational organizations seems like an awfully high price to pay. I've made lots of money and I publish every piece of code I've ever written to do it. If only this were the common case. I once asked Stallman if he had any ideas on how we might make that more common, and all he said was it wasn’t his problem. I agree that it’s not his problem, but the prevailing solution seems to be to avoid the GPL. I think that many people would love to hear your thoughts on it.
rakoo 3y ago
But you allowing yourself to not provide me with the code makes me less free, so you are the problematic one in this situation. GPL's freedom is not about you as a dev, it's about me as a user.
- rileymat2 3y ago
  Yeah, it strikes me a bit like, this will be hyperbole, complaining about forbidding slavery reduces freedom because you are not allowed to have slaves.
  - bigstrat2003 3y ago
    The difference is that nobody is harmed in the scenario where someone makes a closed source product with permissively licensed code. The original project is still there and still just as usable. Everyone still has the same freedoms as they did previously.
    - rakoo 3y ago
      Yes, if you jeep your code closes then society is losing because everyone relies on you for everything. It's not about being usable, it's about being in control.
    - jjav 3y ago
      > The difference is that nobody is harmed in the scenario where someone makes a closed source product with permissively licensed code. This is not true. What is harmed (and has effectively been destroyed) is the market to make money from selling libraries. Many might be too young to remember, but it used to be that one could make a nice living selling libraries to companies. In 1990 (just to pick a year) when BigCo Inc was developing a software project and needed library foo, they generally had two choices: build it internally or purchase one for money from a third party. This meant there was a nice market for small software houses to sell all kinds of libraries to BigCo. Imagine for a moment a world where all open source is GPL. BigCo wouldn't touch the GPL libraries so they still either build or buy and we (developers) can continue to make money from our work. Unfortunately it is no longer possible to make money from libraries because anything BigCo wants can be had for free in a BSD/MIT license so they get to take all the volunteer work, profit from it and give nothing back.
rileymat2 3y ago
> As a developer my problem with the GPL is that it's less free than other licenses. This is true for you, now. But that's not to say it does not increase freedom over time, over a couple of generations of software enhancements.
JohnFen 3y ago
> I just want to write things, and sometimes making money involves not publishing all of your source code. This is why I do both. I copyleft some projects. Others, I don't. It all depends on the balance of needs. Although, for me, the issue isn't releasing source code at all. That's orthogonal to the issue of whether or not to use an open source license. I have yet to release software, open source or otherwise, where I haven't made the source available. For my non-OSS projects, that source is only available to people who have purchased the software, though.
domador 3y ago
I have the same problem with GPL, specifically in that as far as I can tell it doesn't give one the freedom of making a living out of making software as a product. I'd love to be proven wrong and find out that there are practical, viable ways to develop new GPL software and be paid strictly for doing this. However, what I tend to hear is that people don’t get paid for this, but rather for customizing that software (once it’s made) for individual clients, or setting up that software on a server and charging for access to that service. The few that do get paid directly for writing new GPL software seem to be funded by a patron who doesn't care about the software's direct commercial viability, either out of principle (e.g. the FSF and GNU) or because the software is a loss leader that bolsters the patron's primary business (e.g. Google and the Android codebase.) To put it another way, as a software developer I would personally like to make a living analogously to how a successful book’s author makes a living. Such an author can make a living primarily or even exclusively from writing each book, not from giving away the book for free and making custom versions of that book for individual readers, or by offering and charging for live, public readings of the book, or by asking for voluntary donations from those that download the book, or by selling merchandise related to the book. I personally want to make a living making software products, not services. GPL doesn’t seem to offer me a way to do this.
- progmetaldev 3y ago
  You might be surprised. Unless you are dealing with clients that have been burned by software licensing, or have attorneys knowledgeable in software patent/licensing law, you could charge clients for building software and release it as GPL. You then also provide the setup of that software, which you can include in the total cost. There is lots of GPL software out there, but not many people that understand how to setup or support that software. It is very possible to make a good living off the setup and support of GPL and other open source software. If you don't feel right for open sourcing software you wrote for someone else, you could always offer your client a discount to let you open source the software. There are quite a few companies that now make their money supporting open source software, even when they aren't writing it themselves. I've done this myself, and I think it's a lucrative business model that still gives everyone involved freedom.
- 3y ago
clankyclanker 3y ago
That’s the thing: the GPL isn’t there for you, the developer. The GPL exists to ensure freedoms for the user and it does this by requiring responsibilities of the developer. This creates an interesting and important second-order effect that allows it to accomplish its goals without needing to boil the ocean by ensuring every user has the same ability to develop the same software, blurring and reducing the line between user and developer, creator and consumer. Practical considerations often prevent the expression of this effect but the opportunity doesn’t even exist in most other situations, particularly when you get to web services. I didn’t reply to the important issue of money, the fundamental developer problem, because I’ve never been in a situation to sell my own code: my own projects have zero to do with my rent work.

by ynniv 3y ago

binary132 3y ago

Isn't that kind of the point? The purpose of GPL and Free Software (which it has actually had resounding success in) is to develop a free commons which will stay free and not be exploited. It's not for you to exploit to make a buck, and if that excludes your project, that's fine. There are lots of things I would never consider free-licensing, but I think people badly miss the point of free software because they are stuck thinking only in terms of their own needs and personal benefit. Again, if you don't want to use or contribute to free software, that is perfectly reasonable. But just bear in mind that the Linux kernel and GCC are incredibly valuable tools which are firmly in the commons and will remain free, and which you have benefited enormously from the use and free availability of.

bigstrat2003 3y ago
The GPL is not required for such a commons to flourish. Most Rust projects are published under a permissive license, and that scene is flourishing just fine. I think that open source software as a whole, not the GPL specifically, is what has enabled the flourishing you mention. It seems to me that in the counterfactual world where Linus chose to use the BSD license for his kernel, Linux would thrive just as much as it does today.
- pama 3y ago
  I don’t like hypothetical counterfactuals but of course it is your choice to use them. It is hard to meaningfully compare recent programs, rust or otherwise, with established behemoths like Linux, gcc, Emacs, etc, that did the heavy lifting and allowed the playing field to remain even over multiple decades. If gcc did not exist it is not clear at all how a hypothetical computerized world would develop.
- MYEUHD 3y ago
  The reason we have custom roms on android phones, is because of Linux's copyleft license: Phone vendors are required to publish their kernel modifications shipped with their devices. This already reduces e-waste by lowering the purchases of new phones, when old ones are perfectly functional. Thus, copyleft helped the environment
  - kelnos 3y ago
    To me this is also an example of how the GPL fails. The requirement for phone vendors to publish their Linux source trees does in part enable custom ROMs, but vendors still have found ways around the license in the form of proprietary kernel modules. This gives these phones a shelf life: after the latest OS version requires a kernel newer than the one the proprietary modules are shipped with, and efforts to write shims (which are always error-prone and hacky) start to fail, the phone can't even get updated versions of the custom ROM.
    - niutech 3y ago
      It's not GPL's fault, but greedy vendors which don't want to open source their drivers.
- binary132 3y ago
  The point of copyleft is to protect the continued existence and welfare of such a commons. I'm not even necessarily saying it is the only way to achieve a healthy free commons, I'm simply explaining what GPL is for. That said, do you think it is in fact protecting the user from exploitation, or promoting the health of a free commons, to use "free" software in nonfree products which do not provide their source code to the user nor guarantee the user's ability to study, extend, and modify the software that they are using? I think the argument for Free Software is at the very least strong and good. There can be other approaches to solving the problems FSF wants to solve, too, but it is a totally valid and non-debatably historically useful position at the very least.
ynniv 3y ago
It's not for you to exploit to make a buck Of course it is... That’s what Google does, that’s what all companies who are large enough to know how to work around the GPL do. Every company who uses it on their own servers without telling you, or even compiles and distributes it hoping that no one notices, does. And when they do, they sometimes contribute resources back to the project, which helps it to thrive. The GPL is very ideological, and there’s nothing wrong with that but you can see the cost of that right here: where someone pointing out there is a hidden cost is shamed for doing so. Given the chance of contributing code or community to two similar projects, I prefer the one that’s more about building than it is about contracts.
- binary132 3y ago
  I'm simply explaining the point of GPL. Being able to work around the point doesn't mean it's not the point. Do you really think it's fine and good for Google to take work explicitly intended by its authors to preserve free computing and work around the licensing to make money without preserving the intent and purpose of its license? Shaming would be much stronger. I even pointed out that participating in it is totally elective and I personally would not in many cases. Framing it in terms of your own cost/benefit is missing the point, though, and there is a meaningful and valuable purpose to it outside of maximizing your personal benefit in the moment of choosing a particular library.

phkahler 3y ago

>> As a developer my problem with the GPL is that it's less free than other licenses. The freedom to deny other people the freedom you are enjoying is not compatible with the notion of freedom. It's hypocrisy. That's not to say there is no place for MIT/BSD licenses, but it is not with general application software or libraries used to build such.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Scubabear68 3y ago
The fundamental problem I have with the GPL, and I think is echoed elsewhere here, is that the GPL is not about my code. It is trying to force my will on other people’s code. It is inherently less free because it is trying to exert dominance over things I do not own and have never been involved in. In theory, a 10 liner GPL Python script could infect an org with 20 millions lines of closed source code and try to dictate the licensing of those 20 million lines. To me that is just wrong.
- carapace 3y ago
  The GPL started when RMS wanted to fix his printer and Xerox said "No."
  - Thiez 3y ago
    So are printer drivers GPL licensed these days or did the GPL fail?
    - carapace 3y ago
      Speaking as a GPL/"Free" software partisan, we failed. Although I don't like it, I think it's pretty clear. Most people have no idea what the GPL is, even most people who have heard of it don't seem to understand what it was trying to accomplish. The farmers fighting for the "right to repair" their own tractors are the front of the battle now.

sneak 3y ago

> I just want to write things, and sometimes making money involves not publishing all of your source code. I've made lots of money and I publish every piece of code I've ever written to do it. What you are describing must have been written by someone who does not believe in software freedoms. Software freedom is an ideology, not a license. If you license part of your software as free software but not other parts of your software, you do not believe in software freedoms for the users of that software. It's sort of like a factory that only uses slave labor for one step of production. Does that factory operator believe in human rights if their line is 90% respectful of the dignity of mankind?

seabass-labrax 3y ago
> I've made lots of money and I publish every piece of code I've ever written to do it. I'm curious to know what your personal method is. Consulting, paid support, proprietary dual-licensing maybe? There are indeed many ways to make money and still publish code as FOSS; the tricky thing, as always, is to work out which way is the right one for you.
- mixmastamyk 3y ago
  For most people, a pile of software is not nearly enough. They need help of every sort to use it effectively.
ynniv 3y ago
What you are describing must have been written by someone who does not believe in software freedoms. That seems to be a common sentiment, that preferring non-GPL projects is about exploitation, and I don’t think it makes any sense. The GPL is a contact that takes away some rights of the people using it, and that makes everyone freer? I understand the goal of wanting users to have rights that they would not otherwise have, but binding every developer in the hope of eventually binding multinational organizations seems like an awfully high price to pay. I've made lots of money and I publish every piece of code I've ever written to do it. If only this were the common case. I once asked Stallman if he had any ideas on how we might make that more common, and all he said was it wasn’t his problem. I agree that it’s not his problem, but the prevailing solution seems to be to avoid the GPL. I think that many people would love to hear your thoughts on it.

rakoo 3y ago

But you allowing yourself to not provide me with the code makes me less free, so you are the problematic one in this situation. GPL's freedom is not about you as a dev, it's about me as a user.

rileymat2 3y ago
Yeah, it strikes me a bit like, this will be hyperbole, complaining about forbidding slavery reduces freedom because you are not allowed to have slaves.
- bigstrat2003 3y ago
  The difference is that nobody is harmed in the scenario where someone makes a closed source product with permissively licensed code. The original project is still there and still just as usable. Everyone still has the same freedoms as they did previously.
  - rakoo 3y ago
    Yes, if you jeep your code closes then society is losing because everyone relies on you for everything. It's not about being usable, it's about being in control.
  - jjav 3y ago
    > The difference is that nobody is harmed in the scenario where someone makes a closed source product with permissively licensed code. This is not true. What is harmed (and has effectively been destroyed) is the market to make money from selling libraries. Many might be too young to remember, but it used to be that one could make a nice living selling libraries to companies. In 1990 (just to pick a year) when BigCo Inc was developing a software project and needed library foo, they generally had two choices: build it internally or purchase one for money from a third party. This meant there was a nice market for small software houses to sell all kinds of libraries to BigCo. Imagine for a moment a world where all open source is GPL. BigCo wouldn't touch the GPL libraries so they still either build or buy and we (developers) can continue to make money from our work. Unfortunately it is no longer possible to make money from libraries because anything BigCo wants can be had for free in a BSD/MIT license so they get to take all the volunteer work, profit from it and give nothing back.

rileymat2 3y ago

> As a developer my problem with the GPL is that it's less free than other licenses. This is true for you, now. But that's not to say it does not increase freedom over time, over a couple of generations of software enhancements.

JohnFen 3y ago

> I just want to write things, and sometimes making money involves not publishing all of your source code. This is why I do both. I copyleft some projects. Others, I don't. It all depends on the balance of needs. Although, for me, the issue isn't releasing source code at all. That's orthogonal to the issue of whether or not to use an open source license. I have yet to release software, open source or otherwise, where I haven't made the source available. For my non-OSS projects, that source is only available to people who have purchased the software, though.

domador 3y ago

I have the same problem with GPL, specifically in that as far as I can tell it doesn't give one the freedom of making a living out of making software as a product. I'd love to be proven wrong and find out that there are practical, viable ways to develop new GPL software and be paid strictly for doing this. However, what I tend to hear is that people don’t get paid for this, but rather for customizing that software (once it’s made) for individual clients, or setting up that software on a server and charging for access to that service. The few that do get paid directly for writing new GPL software seem to be funded by a patron who doesn't care about the software's direct commercial viability, either out of principle (e.g. the FSF and GNU) or because the software is a loss leader that bolsters the patron's primary business (e.g. Google and the Android codebase.) To put it another way, as a software developer I would personally like to make a living analogously to how a successful book’s author makes a living. Such an author can make a living primarily or even exclusively from writing each book, not from giving away the book for free and making custom versions of that book for individual readers, or by offering and charging for live, public readings of the book, or by asking for voluntary donations from those that download the book, or by selling merchandise related to the book. I personally want to make a living making software products, not services. GPL doesn’t seem to offer me a way to do this.

progmetaldev 3y ago
You might be surprised. Unless you are dealing with clients that have been burned by software licensing, or have attorneys knowledgeable in software patent/licensing law, you could charge clients for building software and release it as GPL. You then also provide the setup of that software, which you can include in the total cost. There is lots of GPL software out there, but not many people that understand how to setup or support that software. It is very possible to make a good living off the setup and support of GPL and other open source software. If you don't feel right for open sourcing software you wrote for someone else, you could always offer your client a discount to let you open source the software. There are quite a few companies that now make their money supporting open source software, even when they aren't writing it themselves. I've done this myself, and I think it's a lucrative business model that still gives everyone involved freedom.
3y ago

clankyclanker 3y ago

That’s the thing: the GPL isn’t there for you, the developer. The GPL exists to ensure freedoms for the user and it does this by requiring responsibilities of the developer. This creates an interesting and important second-order effect that allows it to accomplish its goals without needing to boil the ocean by ensuring every user has the same ability to develop the same software, blurring and reducing the line between user and developer, creator and consumer. Practical considerations often prevent the expression of this effect but the opportunity doesn’t even exist in most other situations, particularly when you get to web services. I didn’t reply to the important issue of money, the fundamental developer problem, because I’ve never been in a situation to sell my own code: my own projects have zero to do with my rent work.