7 ms·

Do you not see how ridiculous you sound? Working around licensing by building a hackisb fork-based plugin system? We're in this business to write software for

by pbsdp 13y ago

Do you not see how ridiculous you sound? Working around licensing by building a hackisb fork-based plugin system? We're in this business to write software for people to actually use.

spacelizard 13y ago
Yes, I agree, it is ridiculous. That's what happens when you have to deal with software licensing. The whole point of licenses is to be incompatible, if all licenses were compatible then we would only have one license. I didn't come up with this system, if you must blame something, blame copyright. If you think it's bad this way, it's even worse when the two licenses in question are proprietary; often times in that situation you won't even have the option of a rewrite or a workaround. The nature of copyright is that not even free software licenses can give you the legal ability to do everything you could possibly think of doing, but they give you enough to ensure that every user is granted the four freedoms as long as the copyright holds. The FSF's position is that it would be more meaningful for the community to convince RibbonSoft to re-license as GPLv3 than it would be to have the short term gain of having DWG support available sooner.
- pbsdp 13y ago
  Why shouldn't I blame the GPL? If they'd used a liberal OSS license, the code would be open source, unencumbered, and this problem wouldn't exist. The GPL introduces license incompatibilities; no GPL, no problem.
  - spacelizard 13y ago
    A lax permissive license could potentially lead to a whole host of other problems including licensing problems. These licenses are not free from incompatibilities either, see the infamous BSD advertising clause for an example of that. And a permissive license certainly would not guarantee the project stay "unencumbered" either. The most adequate solution to this would be to either work on persuading RibbonSoft to relicense under GPLv3, or to just do a workaround. Attacking the GPL serves no purpose, even if you disputed the choice of license it would make more sense to criticize RibbonSoft than it would to criticize the FSF just for writing the GPL.
    - pbsdp 13y ago
      The BSD advertising clause has been dead for years, and it was primarily incompatible with ... the GPL. The GPL is incompatible with licenses that impose more restrictions than it does, even if those restrictions are fairly limited, like the advertising clause. I can't say I've ever heard of license incompatibility stupidity outside of the GPL. Lots of GPL problems, though: OpenSSL, dtrace, ZFS. Apple actually dropped GCC and invested in producing the liberally licensed clang BECAUSE of the GPLv3.
      - spacelizard 13y ago
        It's a bit strange that you blame then GPL when it is just as much the authors of the incompatible licenses' fault, especially when in some cases it's completely their fault because the authors of those licenses deliberately wrote them with the intent of being incompatible with the GPL. Additionally I find it strange that you fault the values of the GPLv3 for Apple ditching gcc, rather than faulting Apple for being an abusive proprietary company that has problems with the values that the GPLv3 imposes. As if the FSF should be working to please Apple?
        pbsdp 13y ago
        Everyone else gets along; GPL is the outlier.
        spacelizard 13y ago
        No, if you'll re-read my post you'll see how I described that even if you view this issue in a vacuum, the other parties are still at fault as well. Apple especially does not want you to "get along," and especially not if you're releasing something on their app store. Now please stop this blind hatred and FUD spreading, it's not constructive.
        pbsdp 13y ago
        Apple implemented a full AOT/JIT/Disassembler (LLVM), debugger (lldb), static code analyzer (clang), C and C compiler (clang), and c++11 stdlib, all under a free MIT-like OSS license. There all built as libraries, can be linked against to build IDEs, JITs, etc etc etc. So how is it that they don't get along, exactly?
- synchronise 13y ago
  I should lay out the options for you, so you can understand them. LibreCAD is GPLv2 only, it has code from Ribbonsoft and also from independent contributors. In order for them to transition to GPLv3, the following must occur: - Ribbonsoft has to clear the code release with their legal department again to see if any contracts prevented parts of the code being released with such a license, then to approach the contractors who contributed to the program and get their input, then they have to go through and see if any patent licenses they have for their code would prevent such a transition. This equates to a lot of money that Ribbonsoft may not want to dish out again. - Any contributors to LibreCAD who used GPLv2 only licenses or didn't assign copyright to the team would have to be contacted and their permission would have to be obtained for a change. - Any other GPLv2 only code would have to be stripped out in order to obtain compatibility with GPLv3 On the other hand, the FSF holds all the copyrights to the LibreDWG codebase. It would cost them nothing to change the license to GPLv2, nor would it waste any time with reimplementation of code already out there. The answer is so simple that I'm finding it difficult to believe that you still can't see it.
  - pessimizer 13y ago
    >The answer is so simple that I'm finding it difficult to believe that you still can't see it. That the FSF should compromise its entire purpose so Ribbonsoft can save money and avoid duplicating code? I don't think anybody donates to the FSF in order that Ribbonsoft can maintain their business model.
    - synchronise 13y ago
      It's not its entire purpose, the GPLv2 is still a valid GNU license, it's still copyleft and this sort of behaviour from them isn't helping the community at all, nor is it helping free software. It's pragmatic and idiotic.

by pbsdp 13y ago

Do you not see how ridiculous you sound? Working around licensing by building a hackisb fork-based plugin system? We're in this business to write software for people to actually use.

spacelizard 13y ago

Yes, I agree, it is ridiculous. That's what happens when you have to deal with software licensing. The whole point of licenses is to be incompatible, if all licenses were compatible then we would only have one license. I didn't come up with this system, if you must blame something, blame copyright. If you think it's bad this way, it's even worse when the two licenses in question are proprietary; often times in that situation you won't even have the option of a rewrite or a workaround. The nature of copyright is that not even free software licenses can give you the legal ability to do everything you could possibly think of doing, but they give you enough to ensure that every user is granted the four freedoms as long as the copyright holds. The FSF's position is that it would be more meaningful for the community to convince RibbonSoft to re-license as GPLv3 than it would be to have the short term gain of having DWG support available sooner.

pbsdp 13y ago
Why shouldn't I blame the GPL? If they'd used a liberal OSS license, the code would be open source, unencumbered, and this problem wouldn't exist. The GPL introduces license incompatibilities; no GPL, no problem.
- spacelizard 13y ago
  A lax permissive license could potentially lead to a whole host of other problems including licensing problems. These licenses are not free from incompatibilities either, see the infamous BSD advertising clause for an example of that. And a permissive license certainly would not guarantee the project stay "unencumbered" either. The most adequate solution to this would be to either work on persuading RibbonSoft to relicense under GPLv3, or to just do a workaround. Attacking the GPL serves no purpose, even if you disputed the choice of license it would make more sense to criticize RibbonSoft than it would to criticize the FSF just for writing the GPL.
  - pbsdp 13y ago
    The BSD advertising clause has been dead for years, and it was primarily incompatible with ... the GPL. The GPL is incompatible with licenses that impose more restrictions than it does, even if those restrictions are fairly limited, like the advertising clause. I can't say I've ever heard of license incompatibility stupidity outside of the GPL. Lots of GPL problems, though: OpenSSL, dtrace, ZFS. Apple actually dropped GCC and invested in producing the liberally licensed clang BECAUSE of the GPLv3.
    - spacelizard 13y ago
      It's a bit strange that you blame then GPL when it is just as much the authors of the incompatible licenses' fault, especially when in some cases it's completely their fault because the authors of those licenses deliberately wrote them with the intent of being incompatible with the GPL. Additionally I find it strange that you fault the values of the GPLv3 for Apple ditching gcc, rather than faulting Apple for being an abusive proprietary company that has problems with the values that the GPLv3 imposes. As if the FSF should be working to please Apple?
      - pbsdp 13y ago
        Everyone else gets along; GPL is the outlier.
        spacelizard 13y ago
        No, if you'll re-read my post you'll see how I described that even if you view this issue in a vacuum, the other parties are still at fault as well. Apple especially does not want you to "get along," and especially not if you're releasing something on their app store. Now please stop this blind hatred and FUD spreading, it's not constructive.
        pbsdp 13y ago
        Apple implemented a full AOT/JIT/Disassembler (LLVM), debugger (lldb), static code analyzer (clang), C and C compiler (clang), and c++11 stdlib, all under a free MIT-like OSS license. There all built as libraries, can be linked against to build IDEs, JITs, etc etc etc. So how is it that they don't get along, exactly?
synchronise 13y ago
I should lay out the options for you, so you can understand them. LibreCAD is GPLv2 only, it has code from Ribbonsoft and also from independent contributors. In order for them to transition to GPLv3, the following must occur: - Ribbonsoft has to clear the code release with their legal department again to see if any contracts prevented parts of the code being released with such a license, then to approach the contractors who contributed to the program and get their input, then they have to go through and see if any patent licenses they have for their code would prevent such a transition. This equates to a lot of money that Ribbonsoft may not want to dish out again. - Any contributors to LibreCAD who used GPLv2 only licenses or didn't assign copyright to the team would have to be contacted and their permission would have to be obtained for a change. - Any other GPLv2 only code would have to be stripped out in order to obtain compatibility with GPLv3 On the other hand, the FSF holds all the copyrights to the LibreDWG codebase. It would cost them nothing to change the license to GPLv2, nor would it waste any time with reimplementation of code already out there. The answer is so simple that I'm finding it difficult to believe that you still can't see it.
- pessimizer 13y ago
  >The answer is so simple that I'm finding it difficult to believe that you still can't see it. That the FSF should compromise its entire purpose so Ribbonsoft can save money and avoid duplicating code? I don't think anybody donates to the FSF in order that Ribbonsoft can maintain their business model.
  - synchronise 13y ago
    It's not its entire purpose, the GPLv2 is still a valid GNU license, it's still copyleft and this sort of behaviour from them isn't helping the community at all, nor is it helping free software. It's pragmatic and idiotic.