4 ms·

if you are trying to make money through dual licensing, GPL is a better route because commercial entities that want to use your software now have to get the com

if you are trying to make money through dual licensing, GPL is a better route because commercial entities that want to use your software now have to get the commercial license in order to make their products commercial. This is not true of BSD licenses, and commercial entities can use your software anyway (OS X). I've never been in a situation where dual licensing was applicable, but when I give away software, I usually paste in the MIT license. I figure - if it's going to be free, it should be completely free. Maybe if I thought the GPL license stood a chance to ever make it so that all software, or at least the majority, was free and intellectual property was dead...then I would use it - but to try and make such a giant philosophical/political change just in the software industry appears naive. If intellectual property is what we want to get rid of (the philosophical reason to go with GPL rather than BSD), it should be addressed as a whole: looking at it in sciences, software, literature, all of it -- for if it is true that we don't need it, or are hampered by it, I don't see how it only applies to software. I'm far more concerned that companies are patenting found genetics than I am that this stupid iphone which erased all my music this morning because I had recently formatted and it thinks it was synced to another computer, and how the new firmware breaks it from musicmonkey again, and now I can't transfer my flac files, and have to use their junky itunes instead -- yah it sucks, but the genetic stuff is even more troublesome - philosophically.

davidw 17y ago
> GPL is a better route because commercial entities that want to use your software now have to get the commercial license They can use your software all they want. They just can't link to it or otherwise tightly integrate it with theirs (the line is a fuzzy one, but generally drawn at linking, IIRC)
deleted 17y ago
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- jules 17y ago
  Wrong opinion.
- silentbicycle 17y ago
  While I was not the one that downvoted you above, comments speculating as to why you were downvoted are typically discouraged here. (I'm guessing you're somewhat new here since your karma is in the double digits.) They don't really add to the conversion.
jmillikin 17y ago
I've never been in a situation where dual licensing was applicable, but when I give away software, I usually paste in the MIT license. I figure - if it's going to be free, it should be completely free. Free to whom? If you want developers to retain all the rights, there's already a license for that -- "all rights reserved". If you want users to have rights, then the GPL is the best choice. Maybe if I thought the GPL license stood a chance to ever make it so that all software, or at least the majority, was free and intellectual property was dead...then I would use it - but to try and make such a giant philosophical/political change just in the software industry appears naive. So because something wildly improbably and likely harmful won't happen, you refuse to use the GPL? Perhaps you don't recognize how bizarre your argument is, so lets apply it to a different situation: Maybe if I thought bicycling stood a chance to ever make it so that all transportation, or at least the majority, was human-powered and long-distance travel was dead...then I would use it. If intellectual property is what we want to get rid of (the philosophical reason to go with GPL rather than BSD) Nonsense. If somebody doesn't care about copyrights at all, they would release their software into the public domain. Obviously this is an uncommon choice. The philosophical reason to use the GPL, rather than the BSD or MIT licenses, is to ensure that users have certain rights to the software they use.
- embeddedradical 17y ago
  Free to whom? The freedom to use it in commercial software is restricted by the GPL. For this reason I consider the BSD/MIT licenses more free, for it says nothing except, go ahead use it, tinker with it, change it, republish it, whatever. Maybe if I thought bicycling..., I think your analogy would work better if it was bicycling as a strategy to fight against the cars and freeways paradigm. The GPL is a legal tactic of the FSF movement, who believe that intellectual property in software is immoral - it's not just the promotion of more free software. Being that the software industry exists within a larger social framework where intellectual property is accepted, and we have many commercial entities doing it, I don't believe that producing more GPL software will result in reversing that move that Stallman was so upset about, that led to the FSF - that move from everyone freely sharing their software in the early days, to closing it up and selling it commercially. For your bicycling analogy, I think the BSD/MIT licenses work fine. Biking is fun, and so is making free software, but biking more as a tactic to end the automotive industry, once again, seems naive. I believe that if the FSF has a moral problem with intellectual property, a legitimate philosophical argument, then it should be addressed on a larger scale than simply in software. The philosophical reason to use the GPL, rather than the BSD or MIT licenses, is to ensure that users have certain rights to the software they use. - The BSD/MIT licenses are more free for the user, for they can now use it in commercial software, a right eliminated by GPL. This protection of rights argument comes from the mentioned viral strategy of the FSF as a strategy to --combat-- proprietary software, specifically by eliminating this freedom to use it in commercial software (an immoral use). Trying to cause such a revolution from inside the software industry out doesn't seem plausible to me. Maybe I'm wrong - and maybe they'll win, but I don't think it's doing much -- so I continue to paste in the MIT license when I want to give away software, just so they know they can do whatever they want with it, and if someone wants to paste some of that into their commercial program, wonderful -- knowledge shared - which was my goal of giving it away: to contribute to the general understandings and capacities of software.

davidw 17y ago

> GPL is a better route because commercial entities that want to use your software now have to get the commercial license They can use your software all they want. They just can't link to it or otherwise tightly integrate it with theirs (the line is a fuzzy one, but generally drawn at linking, IIRC)

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jules 17y ago
Wrong opinion.
silentbicycle 17y ago
While I was not the one that downvoted you above, comments speculating as to why you were downvoted are typically discouraged here. (I'm guessing you're somewhat new here since your karma is in the double digits.) They don't really add to the conversion.

jmillikin 17y ago

I've never been in a situation where dual licensing was applicable, but when I give away software, I usually paste in the MIT license. I figure - if it's going to be free, it should be completely free. Free to whom? If you want developers to retain all the rights, there's already a license for that -- "all rights reserved". If you want users to have rights, then the GPL is the best choice. Maybe if I thought the GPL license stood a chance to ever make it so that all software, or at least the majority, was free and intellectual property was dead...then I would use it - but to try and make such a giant philosophical/political change just in the software industry appears naive. So because something wildly improbably and likely harmful won't happen, you refuse to use the GPL? Perhaps you don't recognize how bizarre your argument is, so lets apply it to a different situation: Maybe if I thought bicycling stood a chance to ever make it so that all transportation, or at least the majority, was human-powered and long-distance travel was dead...then I would use it. If intellectual property is what we want to get rid of (the philosophical reason to go with GPL rather than BSD) Nonsense. If somebody doesn't care about copyrights at all, they would release their software into the public domain. Obviously this is an uncommon choice. The philosophical reason to use the GPL, rather than the BSD or MIT licenses, is to ensure that users have certain rights to the software they use.

embeddedradical 17y ago
Free to whom? The freedom to use it in commercial software is restricted by the GPL. For this reason I consider the BSD/MIT licenses more free, for it says nothing except, go ahead use it, tinker with it, change it, republish it, whatever. Maybe if I thought bicycling..., I think your analogy would work better if it was bicycling as a strategy to fight against the cars and freeways paradigm. The GPL is a legal tactic of the FSF movement, who believe that intellectual property in software is immoral - it's not just the promotion of more free software. Being that the software industry exists within a larger social framework where intellectual property is accepted, and we have many commercial entities doing it, I don't believe that producing more GPL software will result in reversing that move that Stallman was so upset about, that led to the FSF - that move from everyone freely sharing their software in the early days, to closing it up and selling it commercially. For your bicycling analogy, I think the BSD/MIT licenses work fine. Biking is fun, and so is making free software, but biking more as a tactic to end the automotive industry, once again, seems naive. I believe that if the FSF has a moral problem with intellectual property, a legitimate philosophical argument, then it should be addressed on a larger scale than simply in software. The philosophical reason to use the GPL, rather than the BSD or MIT licenses, is to ensure that users have certain rights to the software they use. - The BSD/MIT licenses are more free for the user, for they can now use it in commercial software, a right eliminated by GPL. This protection of rights argument comes from the mentioned viral strategy of the FSF as a strategy to --combat-- proprietary software, specifically by eliminating this freedom to use it in commercial software (an immoral use). Trying to cause such a revolution from inside the software industry out doesn't seem plausible to me. Maybe I'm wrong - and maybe they'll win, but I don't think it's doing much -- so I continue to paste in the MIT license when I want to give away software, just so they know they can do whatever they want with it, and if someone wants to paste some of that into their commercial program, wonderful -- knowledge shared - which was my goal of giving it away: to contribute to the general understandings and capacities of software.