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That's funny, because the "network effect" of the GPL was always extremely obvious to me as part of the point. The idea being that the more that GPL software fo
by dTal 7mo ago
That's funny, because the "network effect" of the GPL was always extremely obvious to me as part of the point. The idea being that the more that GPL software forms a cohesive ecosystem, the less financially viable it becomes to operate outside of that ecosystem. It's viral, right? And software builds on software, we're about 15 layers deep at this point. The hope is that eventually, so much software is GPL that you effectively have two choices when writing something new: 1) join the GPL borg, or 2) boil the ocean reimplementing the entire stack from scratch.
Unfortunately, free software was successful enough that the latest generation takes it for granted, and has forgotten why radical software politics is necessary. They do not understand, if they even think to ask, why so many nerds ran GNU/Linux even when it was objectively kind of terrible - why so many people were motivated to pour time into a half-broken thing. I hope by the time they do understand, it will not be too late.
My controversial opinion: the problem with the GPL is that it isn't viral enough. It was written by nerds with a good understanding of computers, and poor understanding of people. As such, it focuses too much on technicalities like what it means "link" programs together, in an attempt to rigorously specify definitions that permit running proprietary programs on free operating systems, and vice versa.
But it doesn't work. Every time your Android phone downloads a firmware update, by rights that should be a GPL violation, as it's a single giant executable that mixes together GPL and proprietary code, deliberately made in such a way that separating them out after the fact is impossible - in fact, the program is explicitly designed to fail to run if you so much as tamper with a single bit (signed images). It is hard to imagine something further from Stallman's vision - hard to imagine something less respectful of user freedom. And yet this is permitted on technicalities, because this functionally unmodifiable binary blob happens to be structured in a particular way that computer nerds recognize as a type of database called a "filesystem", and the GPL parts are neatly organized into database entries called "files". And they all agree that that's okay, whereas if you mix the code in a different type of database called a "link table", well that's bad and wrong.
- tptacek 7mo agoWhy does the GPL network effect mean that I, as a library developer, am incentivized to choose GPL over MIT?
- dTal 7mo agoLibraries or executables, it makes no difference. You are incentivized to use GPL because you wish to build on top of work that is GPL. Obviously in large part that didn't happen, because of a cultural tendency to use more permissive licence variants (such as AGPL) for libraries, in the pragmatic hope that this would encourage their use even in proprietary programs, and therefore incentivize back-contributions from a wider audience. But this indeed halts the "virality" of the GPL, and so one is once again forced to conclude - incredibly - that Stallman was not radical enough...
- akerl_ 7mo ago> The hope is that eventually, so much software is GPL that you effectively have two choices when writing something I’m really glad then that it didn’t work out this way, because I wasn’t really keen on all the individual freedom of joining the borg.
- dTal 7mo agoWhich "individual freedom" do you feel the GPL denies you? As far as I can tell, it only prevents you from piggybacking on other people's work, and adding unfair stipulations to the resulting product. It is a very symmetrical, "do-unto-others" type license.
- akerl_ 7mo agoIn the scenario you’re describing, when I write my own code, I am limited in what license I can pick for that code because of licensing choices other people made.
- dTal 7mo agoBut you're not actually restricted from doing anything, are you? What is it exactly you want to do that other people's choice of GPL prevents? Steal their work and sell it? Oh how unfair!
- akerl_ 7mo agoSay more about how licensing my code as MIT would be unfair.
- dTal 7mo agoMy pleasure! We are talking about a hypothetical universe in which nearly all software is GPL, such that it is almost impossible to write useful software without building upon other GPL code. In such a universe, licensing "your" code as MIT would indeed be unfair, because you would be taking the work of others, illegally stripping the label, and making it available to profitable interests to use without compensation to the original developers against their express wishes - said compensation merely being the extremely reasonable request to share back, as you were shared to. You still haven't really explained why you're so keen on doing that sort of thing.