4 ms·

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

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.
- jmillikin 17y ago
  The freedom to use it in commercial software is restricted by the GPL. Not at all. Software licensed under the GPL cannot be used in proprietary software. There is no restriction on commercial use. 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. Again: "free to whom?". From the user's perspective, the GPL provides more freedoms than the BSD and MIT license. The GPL is a legal tactic of the FSF movement, who believe that intellectual property in software is immoral This is not correct. The FSF is against use of the term "intellectual property", because it conflates unrelated sections of law, but they are not against copyright. The FSF site is copyrighted, their licenses are copyright licenses, and they even require assignment of copyright for any patches applied to GNU software. I do not understand where the belief that the FSF opposes copyright springs from, but it has no basis in reality. The BSD/MIT licenses are more free for the user, for they can now use it in commercial software, a right eliminated by GPL. That's an odd definition of "user". What about the person sitting at the terminal, using the software? Are they guaranteed the right to inspect, modify, and distribute it? Remember that Stallman launched the FSF out of frustration with a poorly-implemented printer driver that he was not allowed to fix. Every right granted to somebody is taken from somebody else. The emancipation proclamation stripped rights from slave-owners. Women's suffrage stripped rights from men. The GPL strips rights from distributors. Nevertheless, these things are named as increasing freedom because the rights they remove are ways to hold power over others.
  - cschwarm 17y ago
    >> The GPL is a legal tactic of the FSF movement, who believe that intellectual property in software is immoral > This is not correct. Well, it is basically correct. The core idea of the Free Software movement is that all software should be free. They believe that software not fitting their subjective definition of "free" is immoral (or evil). This has been declared quite a few times by Richard Stallman; for example, here: “The free software movement aims for a social change: to make all software free so that all software users are free […]. Every non-free program gives its developer unjust power over the users. Our goal is to put an end to that injustice.” -- http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/compromise.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/compromise.html I admit, the word "intellectual property" was an unlucky choice by the previous poster.
petercooper 17y ago
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. What rights do software users benefit from with GPL licensed software that they do not with BSD licensed software? You seem to make the point a couple of times that the GPL is more free and gives more rights to users.. could you elaborate on that as, to how I see it currently, little is more free than the BSD license except the public domain. The GPL places all sorts of restrictions on users if they choose to modify the software.
- jmillikin 17y ago
  Software under the BSD license may be given to a user without providing the corresponding source code, effectively preventing the user (or an agent authorized by the user) from modifying their copy of the software.
- boucher 17y ago
  You're confused about who the user is in this discussion. The user is the end user of software, not the developer who is using your code. GPL protects the rights of end users, no matter how many developers sit in between the original code and the end user. In other words, as an end user, if I'm using a GPL program, I know that I can access the source code and fix anything I need to or change anything that needs changing. To be as specific as possible, in what I described, you don't count as a developer until you actually take your changes and give them to someone else, so distributor may be a more accurate term.
ubernostrum 17y ago
"If you want users to have rights" Depends on the users you're talking about. The GPL trades away some of your freedom right now to maximize the potential freedom of people who have not yet received the software. The BSD license maximizes your freedom now at the potential expense of the freedom of people who have not yet received the software. As someone who builds and uses tools for developers, BSD is thus more useful to me, because it grants the maximum freedom to the people I target -- myself, and other developers to whom I distribute BSD-licensed tools.
- jmillikin 17y ago
  The typical path for software looks like this: Developer -> Distributor [-> Distributor ...] -> User The BSD license grants rights from the developer to the first distributor in the chain. Other distributors, and the end user, are completely dependent on that first distributor to pass on the rights he received. The GPL requires that certain fundamental software rights are passed down the chain. This ensures that a single ill-behaved distributor will not restrict the rights of the end user. As someone who builds and uses tools for developers, BSD is thus more useful to me, because it grants the maximum freedom to the people I target -- myself, and other developers to whom I distribute BSD-licensed tools. There is no need to pick a license to maximize your own rights -- by the nature of international copyright law, you already have all possible rights to your work. The difference is whether rights should be transmitted. Apparently you believe that some users do not deserve the same rights to their copies of your software as others. While this is a common belief, I feel it is unfortunate and ill-considered.
  - m_eiman 17y ago
    Apparently you believe that some users do not deserve the same rights to their copies of your software as others. Well, they can still get the software directly from me - regardless of what Company A does to it. BSD won't guarantee that Company A doesn't do anything "bad" and apply restrictions to what I've created, but it does guarantee that anyone can get -my- software from -me-.
    - 17y ago
costan 17y ago
Releasing software into the public domain is tricky. I don't know a good way to do that, without running the risk that big company M will take the software, get a patent on it, and then sue me for writing my own software. Disclaimer: this is an over-simplification. I wanted to point out that simply releasing code into the public domain can bite back. I use the MIT license because it's as close as possible. The BSD license has too much baggage due to that stupid advertising clause in the old 4-clause version.

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.

jmillikin 17y ago
The freedom to use it in commercial software is restricted by the GPL. Not at all. Software licensed under the GPL cannot be used in proprietary software. There is no restriction on commercial use. 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. Again: "free to whom?". From the user's perspective, the GPL provides more freedoms than the BSD and MIT license. The GPL is a legal tactic of the FSF movement, who believe that intellectual property in software is immoral This is not correct. The FSF is against use of the term "intellectual property", because it conflates unrelated sections of law, but they are not against copyright. The FSF site is copyrighted, their licenses are copyright licenses, and they even require assignment of copyright for any patches applied to GNU software. I do not understand where the belief that the FSF opposes copyright springs from, but it has no basis in reality. The BSD/MIT licenses are more free for the user, for they can now use it in commercial software, a right eliminated by GPL. That's an odd definition of "user". What about the person sitting at the terminal, using the software? Are they guaranteed the right to inspect, modify, and distribute it? Remember that Stallman launched the FSF out of frustration with a poorly-implemented printer driver that he was not allowed to fix. Every right granted to somebody is taken from somebody else. The emancipation proclamation stripped rights from slave-owners. Women's suffrage stripped rights from men. The GPL strips rights from distributors. Nevertheless, these things are named as increasing freedom because the rights they remove are ways to hold power over others.
- cschwarm 17y ago
  >> The GPL is a legal tactic of the FSF movement, who believe that intellectual property in software is immoral > This is not correct. Well, it is basically correct. The core idea of the Free Software movement is that all software should be free. They believe that software not fitting their subjective definition of "free" is immoral (or evil). This has been declared quite a few times by Richard Stallman; for example, here: “The free software movement aims for a social change: to make all software free so that all software users are free […]. Every non-free program gives its developer unjust power over the users. Our goal is to put an end to that injustice.” -- http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/compromise.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/compromise.html I admit, the word "intellectual property" was an unlucky choice by the previous poster.

petercooper 17y ago

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. What rights do software users benefit from with GPL licensed software that they do not with BSD licensed software? You seem to make the point a couple of times that the GPL is more free and gives more rights to users.. could you elaborate on that as, to how I see it currently, little is more free than the BSD license except the public domain. The GPL places all sorts of restrictions on users if they choose to modify the software.

jmillikin 17y ago
Software under the BSD license may be given to a user without providing the corresponding source code, effectively preventing the user (or an agent authorized by the user) from modifying their copy of the software.
boucher 17y ago
You're confused about who the user is in this discussion. The user is the end user of software, not the developer who is using your code. GPL protects the rights of end users, no matter how many developers sit in between the original code and the end user. In other words, as an end user, if I'm using a GPL program, I know that I can access the source code and fix anything I need to or change anything that needs changing. To be as specific as possible, in what I described, you don't count as a developer until you actually take your changes and give them to someone else, so distributor may be a more accurate term.

ubernostrum 17y ago

"If you want users to have rights" Depends on the users you're talking about. The GPL trades away some of your freedom right now to maximize the potential freedom of people who have not yet received the software. The BSD license maximizes your freedom now at the potential expense of the freedom of people who have not yet received the software. As someone who builds and uses tools for developers, BSD is thus more useful to me, because it grants the maximum freedom to the people I target -- myself, and other developers to whom I distribute BSD-licensed tools.

jmillikin 17y ago
The typical path for software looks like this: Developer -> Distributor [-> Distributor ...] -> User The BSD license grants rights from the developer to the first distributor in the chain. Other distributors, and the end user, are completely dependent on that first distributor to pass on the rights he received. The GPL requires that certain fundamental software rights are passed down the chain. This ensures that a single ill-behaved distributor will not restrict the rights of the end user. As someone who builds and uses tools for developers, BSD is thus more useful to me, because it grants the maximum freedom to the people I target -- myself, and other developers to whom I distribute BSD-licensed tools. There is no need to pick a license to maximize your own rights -- by the nature of international copyright law, you already have all possible rights to your work. The difference is whether rights should be transmitted. Apparently you believe that some users do not deserve the same rights to their copies of your software as others. While this is a common belief, I feel it is unfortunate and ill-considered.
- m_eiman 17y ago
  Apparently you believe that some users do not deserve the same rights to their copies of your software as others. Well, they can still get the software directly from me - regardless of what Company A does to it. BSD won't guarantee that Company A doesn't do anything "bad" and apply restrictions to what I've created, but it does guarantee that anyone can get -my- software from -me-.
  - 17y ago

costan 17y ago

Releasing software into the public domain is tricky. I don't know a good way to do that, without running the risk that big company M will take the software, get a patent on it, and then sue me for writing my own software. Disclaimer: this is an over-simplification. I wanted to point out that simply releasing code into the public domain can bite back. I use the MIT license because it's as close as possible. The BSD license has too much baggage due to that stupid advertising clause in the old 4-clause version.