3 ms·

I wonder if the reactions are from gut-level social norms? It feels like Zed is violating a social norm for equal exchange--like showing up at a party empty han

by ericb 17y ago

I wonder if the reactions are from gut-level social norms? It feels like Zed is violating a social norm for equal exchange--like showing up at a party empty handed. Maybe Apple showed up empty handed, but Zed showed up with a pie and refused to share it which seems worse. The BSD code he is using was given with no restrictions and his "reciprocation" is restricted code that cannot be shared in a BSD project without ruining the license.

ajross 17y ago
To be fair: that's a little spun. He certainly didn't refuse to share it. To extend the metaphor past the breaking point: he offered it only to those willing to bake pies for others. But the partygoers just wanted dessert, they didn't want to be stuck baking for others. If you like pies and think people should bake them for each other, that's hardly a crisis. But you're absolutely right that this is about social issues, and not pies or licenses at all. What people are really angry about isn't the pie they have to bake, it's that Zed showed up with a blueberry pie, when everyone had agreed that they would eat only apple pies. And even though that blueberry pie looks good, it marks Zed as one of the enemy. So he must be shunned.
- ericb 17y ago
  By sharing, I meant that he is not sharing his code in such a way that they can feed it back in their own BSD...pies.
- apotheon 17y ago
  No no no . . . it's more like the others didn't want to be required to demand that other people bake pies for them. "Look, when I bake a pie and give it away to other people, I just want other people to have the pie and be happy. Why the fuck do I have to promise to demand that other people bake pies for me if I use your recipe when I bake pies for them?"
drewcrawford 17y ago
I think you're close. When we download an OSS project I think we have the expectation of being able to integrate it into our own projects, and there's some amount of disappointment when it triggers a GPL conversion. When Steve Jobs comes to the party, you don't say to him "Look, you're not sharing your cake with us, so we're going to kick you out." You say "Holy crap! Steve Jobs!" But when Joe-decent-coder-not-a-celebrity does the same thing, it leaves a different taste in your mouth. I think another (similar) part of the equation is the hoity-toityness of the GPL and/or FSF. Just read the GPL preample (WTF does a license have a preable for, anyway?). The first time I read it, it sounded to me like Stallman and/or the FSF were called forth from the burning bush to save us from the horrible slavery of permissive licenses. If you ask a random person off the street what sort of license an organization called the "Free Software Foundation" would use, I guarantee they wouldn't invent a whole Gettysburg address worth of rhetoric for why free software needs a handful of restrictions. We can have a debate about whether copyleft is good or bad in the long run all day long. I'm just saying, on a gut level, on a prejudicial level, if somebody presents you with a barely-half-page BSD/MIT license of "Use this and don't sue us", and then an epic novel about how you can have patents as long as they're nondiscriminatory, or granted prior to March 28, 2007, or that we'll put you on probation for 30 days (or maybe 60) if you violate something-or-other, and you must provide installation instructions with such-and-such, and you can't distribute such-and-such in a password protected RAR... On a gut reflex level, the second one hardly sounds like free software. Maybe after researching it, you come around to their point of view. But most people don't research it, and some of the ones who do disagree.

by ericb 17y ago

ajross 17y ago

To be fair: that's a little spun. He certainly didn't refuse to share it. To extend the metaphor past the breaking point: he offered it only to those willing to bake pies for others. But the partygoers just wanted dessert, they didn't want to be stuck baking for others. If you like pies and think people should bake them for each other, that's hardly a crisis. But you're absolutely right that this is about social issues, and not pies or licenses at all. What people are really angry about isn't the pie they have to bake, it's that Zed showed up with a blueberry pie, when everyone had agreed that they would eat only apple pies. And even though that blueberry pie looks good, it marks Zed as one of the enemy. So he must be shunned.

ericb 17y ago
By sharing, I meant that he is not sharing his code in such a way that they can feed it back in their own BSD...pies.
apotheon 17y ago
No no no . . . it's more like the others didn't want to be required to demand that other people bake pies for them. "Look, when I bake a pie and give it away to other people, I just want other people to have the pie and be happy. Why the fuck do I have to promise to demand that other people bake pies for me if I use your recipe when I bake pies for them?"

drewcrawford 17y ago

I think you're close. When we download an OSS project I think we have the expectation of being able to integrate it into our own projects, and there's some amount of disappointment when it triggers a GPL conversion. When Steve Jobs comes to the party, you don't say to him "Look, you're not sharing your cake with us, so we're going to kick you out." You say "Holy crap! Steve Jobs!" But when Joe-decent-coder-not-a-celebrity does the same thing, it leaves a different taste in your mouth. I think another (similar) part of the equation is the hoity-toityness of the GPL and/or FSF. Just read the GPL preample (WTF does a license have a preable for, anyway?). The first time I read it, it sounded to me like Stallman and/or the FSF were called forth from the burning bush to save us from the horrible slavery of permissive licenses. If you ask a random person off the street what sort of license an organization called the "Free Software Foundation" would use, I guarantee they wouldn't invent a whole Gettysburg address worth of rhetoric for why free software needs a handful of restrictions. We can have a debate about whether copyleft is good or bad in the long run all day long. I'm just saying, on a gut level, on a prejudicial level, if somebody presents you with a barely-half-page BSD/MIT license of "Use this and don't sue us", and then an epic novel about how you can have patents as long as they're nondiscriminatory, or granted prior to March 28, 2007, or that we'll put you on probation for 30 days (or maybe 60) if you violate something-or-other, and you must provide installation instructions with such-and-such, and you can't distribute such-and-such in a password protected RAR... On a gut reflex level, the second one hardly sounds like free software. Maybe after researching it, you come around to their point of view. But most people don't research it, and some of the ones who do disagree.