4 ms·

Moving away from the GPL is a very bad idea for such critical component. Exactly for the reason you give. (this post is just here to insist on the issue)

by wiz21c 3y ago

mhh__ 3y ago
In general a lot of "[GNU tool] but in rust" projects do seem to come very close to violating the GPL, especially in spirit.
- tsimionescu 3y ago
  In what sense? It is completely in the spirit of the GPL to reimplement a GPL tool from scratch with the same behavior and a different license. After all, that's how the free Unixes came about (though admittedly those were BSD licensed typically).
  - zorked 3y ago
    Kinda? Historically there were indeed concerns about reimplementation and copyright. One of the ways that the GNU Project tried to fight claims was to reimplement the tools using dynamically-allocated memory (instead of Unix's traditional fixed-size buffers) to make sure the implementation was sufficiently different. Other ways were making the implementation Posixly correct, adding internationalization or trying to pick different approaches (like using more modern algorithms for sorting). The GNU tools were better, not just direct ports, and that's why it was common to install them in systems like Solaris or HP-UX.
    - iudqnolq 3y ago
      Arguably writing in Rust will force a similar magnitude difference to those examples. For example, you'll probably replace that modern sorting algorithm with a call to .sort
    - mustache_kimono 3y ago
      > Kinda? Historically there were indeed concerns about reimplementation and copyright. Free software projects should welcome multiple implementations and interoperability, because these are the mother's milk of free software. It's frankly incoherent, given values of free software, that a reimplementation of, for example, Unix coreutils (GNU) would find fault with a reimplementation of itself (uutils). Notwithstanding how philosophically incoherent it is, a desire, now that Linux and free software have some market power, to be a bully back, to grasp for monopoly power, to play AT&T, is really distasteful. What's exciting about free software is not the artifact, Linux or coreutils or sudo, but that anyone can create new and interesting alternatives. That users get to make choices about which implementation to use. The existence of FreeBSD does not make Linux worse. It makes it better! The "solution" to an MIT licensed coreutils is a GNU licensed fork which is 10x better. Instead, we get complaints which amount to a kind of free software entitlement, an endless pissing and moaning about how other people won't do new things your way. This is a major problem in the way that most normies view the GNU and the GPL. In the past, I may not have chosen the GPL for my own projects, but I'd be pleased to contribute to a GPL project. Now, I'd have a hard contributing to a GPL project, because of just how toxic this attitude (no other license matters but ours) is.
      - zorked 3y ago
        The fact that it is free software shouldn't make things different since it's a matter of copyright law. It's fine to copy the interface - the implementation not really. There would certainly be NO problem if a close reimplementation was under the GNU GPL (as a derivive work). But a close reimplementation can't have a different license.
        zorked 3y ago
        *derivative work
        slikrick 3y ago
        a reimplementation that copies the interface has no need to copy the license. GPL people just get scared because they know their license can't prevent people from rewriting their own software (of course, such an idea is ridiculous). the GPL is not a perfect license, there is no such thing.
  - oynqr 3y ago
    Pretty sure you'd have to clean room the whole thing. Which these Rust implementation might not have. This is not legal advice.
    - mhh__ 3y ago
      I can't remember enough to name names but one obviously didn't to the point that it mentioned what the GNU code does in comments.
      - mustache_kimono 3y ago
        I'm really not certain this is enough to be a copyright problem. For instance, GNU and POSIX both publish their specs for the coreutils. If a coder were to take a look at the actual GNU code (which BTW is published for everyone to see), copyright law has a well trodden distinction between the idea and the expression -- that is, ideas are not copyrightable. If the "idea" simply amounts to what would be a more a detailed specification, I'm not sure there is a problem, like ... GNU uses this kernel facility for X. The problem would be vast amounts of "expression", especially "creative expression", directly copied and reimplemented in Rust. If the code is meat and potatoes, not 10xer galaxy brain fare ("I wrote a custom allocator which is suspiciously like the custom allocator implemented by GNU"), there shouldn't be an issue. Think about what copyright to a play, or a novel, or a screenplay is. Now imagine a comment in the text/source: "This is how Toni Morrison did her characterizations in Beloved". This obviously isn't a copyright violation, unless you're copying the actual expression or a translation of the actual expression found in Beloved.
nindalf 3y ago
But it wasn’t GPL to begin with - https://www.sudo.ws/about/license/ https://www.sudo.ws/about/license/
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

Moving away from the GPL is a very bad idea for such critical component. Exactly for the reason you give. (this post is just here to insist on the issue)

by wiz21c 3y ago

Moving away from the GPL is a very bad idea for such critical component. Exactly for the reason you give. (this post is just here to insist on the issue)

mhh__ 3y ago

In general a lot of "[GNU tool] but in rust" projects do seem to come very close to violating the GPL, especially in spirit.

tsimionescu 3y ago
In what sense? It is completely in the spirit of the GPL to reimplement a GPL tool from scratch with the same behavior and a different license. After all, that's how the free Unixes came about (though admittedly those were BSD licensed typically).
- zorked 3y ago
  Kinda? Historically there were indeed concerns about reimplementation and copyright. One of the ways that the GNU Project tried to fight claims was to reimplement the tools using dynamically-allocated memory (instead of Unix's traditional fixed-size buffers) to make sure the implementation was sufficiently different. Other ways were making the implementation Posixly correct, adding internationalization or trying to pick different approaches (like using more modern algorithms for sorting). The GNU tools were better, not just direct ports, and that's why it was common to install them in systems like Solaris or HP-UX.
  - iudqnolq 3y ago
    Arguably writing in Rust will force a similar magnitude difference to those examples. For example, you'll probably replace that modern sorting algorithm with a call to .sort
  - mustache_kimono 3y ago
    > Kinda? Historically there were indeed concerns about reimplementation and copyright. Free software projects should welcome multiple implementations and interoperability, because these are the mother's milk of free software. It's frankly incoherent, given values of free software, that a reimplementation of, for example, Unix coreutils (GNU) would find fault with a reimplementation of itself (uutils). Notwithstanding how philosophically incoherent it is, a desire, now that Linux and free software have some market power, to be a bully back, to grasp for monopoly power, to play AT&T, is really distasteful. What's exciting about free software is not the artifact, Linux or coreutils or sudo, but that anyone can create new and interesting alternatives. That users get to make choices about which implementation to use. The existence of FreeBSD does not make Linux worse. It makes it better! The "solution" to an MIT licensed coreutils is a GNU licensed fork which is 10x better. Instead, we get complaints which amount to a kind of free software entitlement, an endless pissing and moaning about how other people won't do new things your way. This is a major problem in the way that most normies view the GNU and the GPL. In the past, I may not have chosen the GPL for my own projects, but I'd be pleased to contribute to a GPL project. Now, I'd have a hard contributing to a GPL project, because of just how toxic this attitude (no other license matters but ours) is.
    - zorked 3y ago
      The fact that it is free software shouldn't make things different since it's a matter of copyright law. It's fine to copy the interface - the implementation not really. There would certainly be NO problem if a close reimplementation was under the GNU GPL (as a derivive work). But a close reimplementation can't have a different license.
      - zorked 3y ago
        *derivative work
        slikrick 3y ago
        a reimplementation that copies the interface has no need to copy the license. GPL people just get scared because they know their license can't prevent people from rewriting their own software (of course, such an idea is ridiculous). the GPL is not a perfect license, there is no such thing.
- oynqr 3y ago
  Pretty sure you'd have to clean room the whole thing. Which these Rust implementation might not have. This is not legal advice.
  - mhh__ 3y ago
    I can't remember enough to name names but one obviously didn't to the point that it mentioned what the GNU code does in comments.
    - mustache_kimono 3y ago
      I'm really not certain this is enough to be a copyright problem. For instance, GNU and POSIX both publish their specs for the coreutils. If a coder were to take a look at the actual GNU code (which BTW is published for everyone to see), copyright law has a well trodden distinction between the idea and the expression -- that is, ideas are not copyrightable. If the "idea" simply amounts to what would be a more a detailed specification, I'm not sure there is a problem, like ... GNU uses this kernel facility for X. The problem would be vast amounts of "expression", especially "creative expression", directly copied and reimplemented in Rust. If the code is meat and potatoes, not 10xer galaxy brain fare ("I wrote a custom allocator which is suspiciously like the custom allocator implemented by GNU"), there shouldn't be an issue. Think about what copyright to a play, or a novel, or a screenplay is. Now imagine a comment in the text/source: "This is how Toni Morrison did her characterizations in Beloved". This obviously isn't a copyright violation, unless you're copying the actual expression or a translation of the actual expression found in Beloved.

nindalf 3y ago

But it wasn’t GPL to begin with - https://www.sudo.ws/about/license/ https://www.sudo.ws/about/license/

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]