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There is a growing sentiment that the GPL is the one source of the inability to derive economic benefit from doing productive software work. That was kind of ex

There is a growing sentiment that the GPL is the one source of the inability to derive economic benefit from doing productive software work. That was kind of explicit in RMS' manifesto, he was pissed off that people were charging $5,000 for a C compiler that "a competent engineer could write in a week", but if you remove all options of collecting some of the value that people who are getting paid by shipping you're code, it not only de-incentivizes development, the entire ecosystem is at risk.

calvinmorrison 1y ago
yeah cause charging for floppy distribution is evil, putting mmpeg behind a saas products totally ok!
kazinator 1y ago
> is the one source of the inability to derive economic benefit from doing productive software work So, evidently, not enough people have been exploited for big $$$ by platforms run on FOSS infrastructure, important parts of which are GPL licensed.
aaron_m04 1y ago
Who specifically is saying this?
- kelseyfrog 1y ago
  It's a rhetorical device. We're not meant to take it literally.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
toofy 1y ago
this ‘growing sentiment’ has always been there. particularly with the crowd who persistently wants to lock everything behind a monthly subscription or insert hidden data collecting. if the ‘growing sentiment’ wants to, they’re quite free to write their own code and use literally any license they want. disturbingly, i’ve heard more than a few of these people upset because they can’t take our code that we gpl’d intentionally and lock it away stealing it as their own.
ChuckMcM 1y ago
Sigh, serves me right I guess. How many people do you know, who write open source? If you've been in the tech industry at all its probably hundreds if not thousands. How many of them are okay with the GPL when someone used their GPL'd code in a product (and lets say they even provide an obscure URL with source code for that part of it) and that product is making them thousands if not millions of dollars in product revenue. Nearly every person I know in that position, have been offended by someone making money off their work, and they don't get any of it. That latter bit is especially irksome in most cases. Usually its some rant of "I wrote that code for people to share, not get rich off of!" or something like that. The "Busybox" story[1] is like the poster child here. Once there were successful lawsuits these folks figured out how to have their cake and eat it to. Read up on the Linksys lawsuit[2]. Forcing compliance costs money (lawyers and such) and time and the payoff is pretty much always to the lawyers and not the people who were irritated their software was being profitably sold. Contrast that with software that has an explicit non-commercial license but offers a commercial license, that stuff gets licensed and the developers get paid when it does, not a bunch of lawyers. I realize not everyone has grown up with this stuff, the point I was trying to make (poorly it seems) is that as a legal tool to "protect" developers from having others steal their work and profit from it, I feel like it failed utterly to do that. When the company I was at was acquired by IBM back in 2015 I did all of the license clearance work for all of the software in our stack. People who had "permissive" licenses that offered a way for IBM to license it with legal cover, they got whatever they needed (some wanted a token licensing fee, others a donation to FSF or another non-profit), for the parts that were covered under GPL and not available under a different license, IBM just dropped on the floor because of their history with the whole SCO/Linux lawsuits. I get that folks want to share their code with folks who can use it, I totally support that. I also know that absolutely nobody wants to be called at 3AM to fix. for free, a CVE that their code has because some Enterprise customer paying the caller is all in a twist. Having language in the license at the start that clarifies stuff like that is essential. [1] https://torquemag.io/2013/03/busybox/ https://torquemag.io/2013/03/busybox/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software_Foundation,_Inc._v._Cisco_Systems,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software_Foundation,_Inc.....
heavyset_go 1y ago
Dual/mutli licensing is one avenue towards effective monetization of GPL code. GPL use of the code is kosher, if you want to use it without being beholden to the terms of the GPL, you pay for different licensing terms. That said, the GPL is not always the best license for this and yes, it can lessen the grip you have on extracting profit from code, but the lessened grip is the point of the license.

calvinmorrison 1y ago

yeah cause charging for floppy distribution is evil, putting mmpeg behind a saas products totally ok!

kazinator 1y ago

> is the one source of the inability to derive economic benefit from doing productive software work So, evidently, not enough people have been exploited for big $$$ by platforms run on FOSS infrastructure, important parts of which are GPL licensed.

aaron_m04 1y ago

Who specifically is saying this?

kelseyfrog 1y ago
It's a rhetorical device. We're not meant to take it literally.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

toofy 1y ago

this ‘growing sentiment’ has always been there. particularly with the crowd who persistently wants to lock everything behind a monthly subscription or insert hidden data collecting. if the ‘growing sentiment’ wants to, they’re quite free to write their own code and use literally any license they want. disturbingly, i’ve heard more than a few of these people upset because they can’t take our code that we gpl’d intentionally and lock it away stealing it as their own.

ChuckMcM 1y ago

Sigh, serves me right I guess. How many people do you know, who write open source? If you've been in the tech industry at all its probably hundreds if not thousands. How many of them are okay with the GPL when someone used their GPL'd code in a product (and lets say they even provide an obscure URL with source code for that part of it) and that product is making them thousands if not millions of dollars in product revenue. Nearly every person I know in that position, have been offended by someone making money off their work, and they don't get any of it. That latter bit is especially irksome in most cases. Usually its some rant of "I wrote that code for people to share, not get rich off of!" or something like that. The "Busybox" story[1] is like the poster child here. Once there were successful lawsuits these folks figured out how to have their cake and eat it to. Read up on the Linksys lawsuit[2]. Forcing compliance costs money (lawyers and such) and time and the payoff is pretty much always to the lawyers and not the people who were irritated their software was being profitably sold. Contrast that with software that has an explicit non-commercial license but offers a commercial license, that stuff gets licensed and the developers get paid when it does, not a bunch of lawyers. I realize not everyone has grown up with this stuff, the point I was trying to make (poorly it seems) is that as a legal tool to "protect" developers from having others steal their work and profit from it, I feel like it failed utterly to do that. When the company I was at was acquired by IBM back in 2015 I did all of the license clearance work for all of the software in our stack. People who had "permissive" licenses that offered a way for IBM to license it with legal cover, they got whatever they needed (some wanted a token licensing fee, others a donation to FSF or another non-profit), for the parts that were covered under GPL and not available under a different license, IBM just dropped on the floor because of their history with the whole SCO/Linux lawsuits. I get that folks want to share their code with folks who can use it, I totally support that. I also know that absolutely nobody wants to be called at 3AM to fix. for free, a CVE that their code has because some Enterprise customer paying the caller is all in a twist. Having language in the license at the start that clarifies stuff like that is essential. [1] https://torquemag.io/2013/03/busybox/ https://torquemag.io/2013/03/busybox/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software_Foundation,_Inc._v._Cisco_Systems,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software_Foundation,_Inc.....

heavyset_go 1y ago

Dual/mutli licensing is one avenue towards effective monetization of GPL code. GPL use of the code is kosher, if you want to use it without being beholden to the terms of the GPL, you pay for different licensing terms. That said, the GPL is not always the best license for this and yes, it can lessen the grip you have on extracting profit from code, but the lessened grip is the point of the license.