8 ms·

12 Years of GPL Compliance: A Historical Perspective

93 points by Danieru 13y ago

Nursie 13y ago
Is that the on-screen display from a talk? Because I really don't like it as an actual web page. --edit-- thanks to both replies below. Wasn't meant as a criticism, I was just expecting an article rather than slides.
- jlgaddis 13y ago
  You can download an audio version of the same talk (albeit from a different event): http://faif.us/cast/2011/sep/13/0x18/ http://faif.us/cast/2011/sep/13/0x18/
- chalst 13y ago
  That's generated using Pandoc targetting S5/slides.js. You can get all the slide content as one plain HTML page by navigating to the bottom right hand corner and clicking on the large "Ø" that appears. I guess there will be a Beamer version of the talk as well.
iuguy 13y ago
A couple of years back I started breaking MiFi hotspots and found an alarming number of violators. I spoke to Bandluxe who make a lot of Mifi tools and managed to get them to comply on one platform. My favourite is Novatel who no longer respond to me calling them out on their MiFiOS kit based on Linux. Edit: A talk I did about Bandluxe's PR39 at BlackHat Europe 2012 is here for those interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZAjtxmxTkg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZAjtxmxTkg
pron 13y ago
I have great sympathy and admiration for GNU GPL and the FSF. It's so unusual and refreshing to see clear politics in an industry that tries to shy away from it. This is an interesting piece about how Tim O'Reilly tried, and succeeded, to de-politicize free software, and make it "business friendly": http://www.thebaffler.com/past/the_meme_hustler http://www.thebaffler.com/past/the_meme_hustler The OSI's own account gives O'Reilly a far smaller role than the Baffler piece: * http://opensource.org/history http://opensource.org/history * http://opensource.org/faq#free-software http://opensource.org/faq#free-software * http://web.archive.org/web/19981206185148/http://www.opensource.org/history.html http://web.archive.org/web/19981206185148/http://www.opensou...
- m_ram 13y ago
  For the curious, here's the HN discussion of "The Meme Hustler": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5472759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5472759
- bowlofpetunias 13y ago
  The industry doesn't shy away from politics. It just pretends that it's opinions and practices aren't political, despite their enormous and very deliberate impact on the way society functions and public policy is made. The industry's politics are mostly disguised by claiming it's the objective truth, or "that's just the way things work". You can see examples of it here on HN in pretty much every thread that isn't 100% technical. And even then, like Mitch Kapor said "Architecture is policy". The fact that we don't feel comfortable acknowledging it in a society that has become anti-political doesn't mean it isn't about politics. Hell, attempts to de-politicize such things are in themselves expressions of political ideology.
  - pron 13y ago
    You are absolutely right.
jes5199 13y ago
Okay, uh, enforcing GPL in this way doesn't particularly seem worthwhile to me. If the end result of GPL is 1) a few companies completely refuse to distribute GPLed software (Apple, for example) and 2) the rest of the companies use GPLed code without following the rules but with no consequence 3) huge amounts of money and effort are thrown against these forces, with only symbolic levels of success in changing company behavior ... why are we even bothering? That Don Quixote slide seems especially appropriate.
- justinpombrio 13y ago
  Which other way would you suggest? Also, I was under the impression that very little money and effort was put into attempting to enforce the GPL through lawsuits (and these slides don't seem to suggest otherwise, naming just a few people and suites over the years). Is it more common than I think?
  - jes5199 13y ago
    No, you're right, I didn't get any actual sense of the scale of the endeavor. Maybe this guy just loves doing it full time. But to answer your question: this whole thing makes me want to reconsider licensing my software as GPL. Just do MIT and not have to think about it.
    - gillianseed 13y ago
      Well you don't 'have to think about it' even if you licence your code as GPL (or any other licence). It's not as if someone forces you to chase after violators.
      - jes5199 13y ago
        I guess you're right. That article a few days ago has me fretting about GPL 2 vs GPL 3 and the incompatibility between them. I mean, I'd like my code to be used in whatever projects need it, and I'd like to be able to accept code back from them. But it seems like it would be really easy to accept code that accidentally constrains you to a particular license.
bkuhn 13y ago
Weird that my slides from almost three years ago got posted just a few days ago. :) I am glad some enjoyed them. My answer to most of the naysaying here would be simply to say that GPL is the Constitution of a Free Software community who chose to refuse any proprietarization of their work. If you believe in the principles of a Constitution, then it's worth upholding that Constitution. And, I don't do this full-time. GPL enforcement has never been my full-time work, but has been the minority plurality of my work since 1999. And I get paid less than every software developer I know, BTW, and my salaries since 2001 are all publicly known. :)

93 points by Danieru 13y ago

Is that the on-screen display from a talk? Because I really don't like it as an actual web page. --edit-- thanks to both replies below. Wasn't meant as a criticism, I was just expecting an article rather than slides.

jlgaddis 13y ago
You can download an audio version of the same talk (albeit from a different event): http://faif.us/cast/2011/sep/13/0x18/ http://faif.us/cast/2011/sep/13/0x18/
chalst 13y ago
That's generated using Pandoc targetting S5/slides.js. You can get all the slide content as one plain HTML page by navigating to the bottom right hand corner and clicking on the large "Ø" that appears. I guess there will be a Beamer version of the talk as well.

iuguy 13y ago

A couple of years back I started breaking MiFi hotspots and found an alarming number of violators. I spoke to Bandluxe who make a lot of Mifi tools and managed to get them to comply on one platform. My favourite is Novatel who no longer respond to me calling them out on their MiFiOS kit based on Linux. Edit: A talk I did about Bandluxe's PR39 at BlackHat Europe 2012 is here for those interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZAjtxmxTkg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZAjtxmxTkg

pron 13y ago

I have great sympathy and admiration for GNU GPL and the FSF. It's so unusual and refreshing to see clear politics in an industry that tries to shy away from it. This is an interesting piece about how Tim O'Reilly tried, and succeeded, to de-politicize free software, and make it "business friendly": http://www.thebaffler.com/past/the_meme_hustler http://www.thebaffler.com/past/the_meme_hustler The OSI's own account gives O'Reilly a far smaller role than the Baffler piece: * http://opensource.org/history http://opensource.org/history * http://opensource.org/faq#free-software http://opensource.org/faq#free-software * http://web.archive.org/web/19981206185148/http://www.opensource.org/history.html http://web.archive.org/web/19981206185148/http://www.opensou...

m_ram 13y ago
For the curious, here's the HN discussion of "The Meme Hustler": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5472759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5472759
bowlofpetunias 13y ago
The industry doesn't shy away from politics. It just pretends that it's opinions and practices aren't political, despite their enormous and very deliberate impact on the way society functions and public policy is made. The industry's politics are mostly disguised by claiming it's the objective truth, or "that's just the way things work". You can see examples of it here on HN in pretty much every thread that isn't 100% technical. And even then, like Mitch Kapor said "Architecture is policy". The fact that we don't feel comfortable acknowledging it in a society that has become anti-political doesn't mean it isn't about politics. Hell, attempts to de-politicize such things are in themselves expressions of political ideology.
- pron 13y ago
  You are absolutely right.

jes5199 13y ago

Okay, uh, enforcing GPL in this way doesn't particularly seem worthwhile to me. If the end result of GPL is 1) a few companies completely refuse to distribute GPLed software (Apple, for example) and 2) the rest of the companies use GPLed code without following the rules but with no consequence 3) huge amounts of money and effort are thrown against these forces, with only symbolic levels of success in changing company behavior ... why are we even bothering? That Don Quixote slide seems especially appropriate.

justinpombrio 13y ago
Which other way would you suggest? Also, I was under the impression that very little money and effort was put into attempting to enforce the GPL through lawsuits (and these slides don't seem to suggest otherwise, naming just a few people and suites over the years). Is it more common than I think?
- jes5199 13y ago
  No, you're right, I didn't get any actual sense of the scale of the endeavor. Maybe this guy just loves doing it full time. But to answer your question: this whole thing makes me want to reconsider licensing my software as GPL. Just do MIT and not have to think about it.
  - gillianseed 13y ago
    Well you don't 'have to think about it' even if you licence your code as GPL (or any other licence). It's not as if someone forces you to chase after violators.
    - jes5199 13y ago
      I guess you're right. That article a few days ago has me fretting about GPL 2 vs GPL 3 and the incompatibility between them. I mean, I'd like my code to be used in whatever projects need it, and I'd like to be able to accept code back from them. But it seems like it would be really easy to accept code that accidentally constrains you to a particular license.

bkuhn 13y ago

Weird that my slides from almost three years ago got posted just a few days ago. :) I am glad some enjoyed them. My answer to most of the naysaying here would be simply to say that GPL is the Constitution of a Free Software community who chose to refuse any proprietarization of their work. If you believe in the principles of a Constitution, then it's worth upholding that Constitution. And, I don't do this full-time. GPL enforcement has never been my full-time work, but has been the minority plurality of my work since 1999. And I get paid less than every software developer I know, BTW, and my salaries since 2001 are all publicly known. :)