5 ms·

You can spin these lines any way you want: GPL: You can use this software however you see fit as long as you provide the same courtesy for everyone else. BSD:

by zanny 13y ago

You can spin these lines any way you want: GPL: You can use this software however you see fit as long as you provide the same courtesy for everyone else. BSD: You can have my labor for free, and then profit off it all you want. Call it free money, you're welcome.

clarry 13y ago
GPL: You can have my labor for free, and then profit off it all you want. Call it free money, you're welcome. But there are some strings attached and certain things you may not do.
johnbellone 13y ago
> BSD: You can have my labor for free, and then profit off it all you want. Call it free money, you're welcome. There's a lot of software that is licensed under BSD which, for the most part, is sponsored by corporations. If you decided to license the software under BSD (e.g. you and the authority to do so) the likelihood that you're not making a living is relatively small. Because why else would you have released the software under such a liberal license?
dwc 13y ago
Those are fair enough comparisons. In fact, I think you've hit upon something there. If the idea of someone benefitting from your work in terms of money bothers you then BSD/MIT/ISC licenses seem bad. Personally, I'm fine with it. Apple takes FreeBSD userland and makes money? Ok! We still have FreeBSD. Someone incorporates OpenSSH code into a non-free for-profit Windows program? Ok! We still have OpenSSH.
- rlpb 13y ago
  > We still have FreeBSD. Someone incorporates OpenSSH code into a non-free for-profit Windows program? Ok! We still have OpenSSH. There is an argument that if a high enough proportion of the FLOSS ecosystem's software ends up being adopted into proprietary products, then the community could happily move to using those proprietary products instead and then there will no longer be enough momentum in development of free upstreams and we will lose the "still have FreeBSD" and "still have OpenSSH" cases. This argument suggested that there needs to be a certain amount of GPL software in the ecosystem to prevent the balance from being tipped this way. This is my recollection. I have not been able to find any kind of reference to this, but I hope you get the idea.
  - zanny 13y ago
    But you really have no way of verifying if these proprietary products are using permissive code. They can just run with it and save themselves a lot of work off your labor, but who knows what modifications they made.
  - thatthatis 13y ago
    Can you give a single example of your concern? You're responding to real world examples of copy middle projects and proprietary descendants coexisting happily with vague fears but no examples.
    - einhverfr 13y ago
      Indeed. SunOS/Solaris vs the free BSDs? Illustra vs Postgres? Oh wait. I found one: Internet Explorer vs. Mosaic. As I pointed out in my blog post (linked below), history is littered with the corpses of proprietary spinoffs of free/open source projects. It is telling that the only example I can find currently of a proprietary spinoff eclipsing the open source version currently a) had to be released free of charge and bundled with another program, and b) is now facing renewed competition from free/open source competition in the form of Firefox and Chrome. So it seems to be an exception which proves the rule. Proprietary spinoffs cannot, in the long run, outrun the community.
      - _delirium 13y ago
        > SunOS/Solaris vs the free BSDs? This actually seems like a counter-example: the commercial spinoffs have totally dominated in comparison to the free BSDs, which have never had particularly large market share. Through much of the 1980s and early 1990s the free BSDs had approximately zero users, whereas their commercial spinoffs had hundreds of thousands! The BSD licensing also allowed AT&T to reincorporate large chunks of the BSD code back into AT&T Unix (even Microsoft borrowed some of the sockets code for Windows). This situation was only disrupted in the 1990s by GNU and Linux, not by the free BSDs, which re-arrived only later. And even as Solaris declined, the free BSDs didn't manage to capitalize and gain its market share. On the desktop, of course, a proprietary spinoff of the free BSDs completely obliterates the usage numbers of FreeBSD and PC-BSD: Mac OS X. It's not a pure spinoff; it also includes permissively licensed code from the CMU Mach project, among others. And it's at least semi-proprietary: Apple does release some code, but it's both incomplete and doesn't even build, so there is no free version of Darwin you can actually run.
- dllthomas 13y ago
  I don't have objection to people benefiting from my work monetarily. I have some objection to people benefiting from my work by exerting power over others. How much objection and whether it is sufficient to motivate GPL (or AGPL) depends on a whole host of factors, definitely including the nature and extent of that power.
- einhverfr 13y ago
  The question, really, is what you get out of it. Again, I don't like the MIT license because it allows for license changes without actual code changes. But the question is what you get from proprietary spinoffs. If you are afraid that proprietary firms will drive away the more free software products, then the GPL seems best. On the other hand if you accept that the community will eventually prevail, then you get to see where folks think the market is, and where the community version should go to be more successful. I wonder how Green Plum is going to deal with a BSD-licensed competitor being Postgres-XC....
- gretful 13y ago
  more importantly I think, the BSD license allows you to think up new stuff, incorporate it with what I wrote, then not share it with the rest of the world. GPL means that every commit raises ALL boats.
einhverfr 13y ago
Not really. Here's how I look at it: GPL: This work must remain in the commons. Any improvements you make must be put back to the commons if you distribute it. BSD: I own my work. You own your work. You can use my work to create your work. We recommend you put your contributions back into the commons. In the end, the BSD license does heavily incentivize commons, but it doesn't require them. That's the difference.
- _delirium 13y ago
  I guess from my perspective I don't see why I would agree to license my work under the BSD's terms, unless I had already concluded it had negligible monetary value. I own my work. You own your work. But why should I let you use my work to create your work? The traditional answer is the capitalist one: because you paid me a license fee. An alternative hippie-ish idealist answer is the "commons" idea: because we both agree to dedicate our work to the commons, and everyone gets each other's work for free. But if you don't reciprocate by also dedicating your work to the commons, why should I give your proprietary product a free license to use my product? Being a blue-blooded capitalist, you aren't going to let me use your product for free; why do you expect better terms from me than you yourself are offering? If you expect me to buy a license for your product, it seems perfectly fair that I also expect you to buy a license for my product. The GPL in a sense formalizes that expectation. (It's worth noting that this line of argument is on quite different grounds than what RMS argues, though. RMS is primarily interested in the right of downstream users to modify their own computer systems, not in game-theoretic choices of software developers.)
  - einhverfr 13y ago
    > I guess from my perspective I don't see why I would agree to license my work under the BSD's terms, unless I had already concluded it had negligible monetary value. Because you want contributions from others and want to work in a vibrant community. And if you are modifying a BSD-licensed project, you probably want to encourage others to maintain your code (what this means is you will, if you want to have a successful proprietary fork, contribute almost everything back, so as to cut your maintenance costs). > The traditional answer is the capitalist one: because you paid me a license fee. An alternative hippie-ish idealist answer is the "commons" idea: because we both agree to dedicate our work to the commons, and everyone gets each other's work for free. I think that misunderstands the purpose of the commons. Commons exist because there is value in pooling resources. Commons of course, only work when there are benefits and contributions are aligned. Here, maintenance costs are reduced by contributions, and you get access to the works of others. Let's look at how this works with regard to PostgreSQL. There have been a number of proprietary forks in the past, including Illustra, Mammoth, Green Plum, EnterpriseDB, and more. In general these have all prospered when they contributed back significant work to the community, but when they didn't they found themselves cut off from community resources. Of these 4, only two are alive today, and one of those is facing renewed competition from free a free alternative (Postgres-XC). So you have a carrot and a stick. The carrot is that you can make marginal changes around the edges for your target market, particularly if the community doesn't want those changes, and you can release a proprietary product with that, using the work of everyone else. The stick is that if you don't contribute back, you will find yourself cut off from that free labor and in competition with it, and that competition is not one you can win. > (It's worth noting that this line of argument is on quite different grounds than what RMS argues, though. RMS is primarily interested in the right of downstream users to modify their own computer systems, not in game-theoretic choices of software developers.) Right, but I am talking about the right of software developers to largely work as they see fit, which strikes me as the best definition I can find. To do this, you have to have decentralized control and a movement away from a corporate-centered model. In this regard, the BSD license is a better and more radical alternative regarding freedom than the GPL is, because it insists that freedom serve practice rather than the other way around.

by zanny 13y ago

clarry 13y ago

GPL: You can have my labor for free, and then profit off it all you want. Call it free money, you're welcome. But there are some strings attached and certain things you may not do.

johnbellone 13y ago

> BSD: You can have my labor for free, and then profit off it all you want. Call it free money, you're welcome. There's a lot of software that is licensed under BSD which, for the most part, is sponsored by corporations. If you decided to license the software under BSD (e.g. you and the authority to do so) the likelihood that you're not making a living is relatively small. Because why else would you have released the software under such a liberal license?

dwc 13y ago

Those are fair enough comparisons. In fact, I think you've hit upon something there. If the idea of someone benefitting from your work in terms of money bothers you then BSD/MIT/ISC licenses seem bad. Personally, I'm fine with it. Apple takes FreeBSD userland and makes money? Ok! We still have FreeBSD. Someone incorporates OpenSSH code into a non-free for-profit Windows program? Ok! We still have OpenSSH.

rlpb 13y ago
> We still have FreeBSD. Someone incorporates OpenSSH code into a non-free for-profit Windows program? Ok! We still have OpenSSH. There is an argument that if a high enough proportion of the FLOSS ecosystem's software ends up being adopted into proprietary products, then the community could happily move to using those proprietary products instead and then there will no longer be enough momentum in development of free upstreams and we will lose the "still have FreeBSD" and "still have OpenSSH" cases. This argument suggested that there needs to be a certain amount of GPL software in the ecosystem to prevent the balance from being tipped this way. This is my recollection. I have not been able to find any kind of reference to this, but I hope you get the idea.
- zanny 13y ago
  But you really have no way of verifying if these proprietary products are using permissive code. They can just run with it and save themselves a lot of work off your labor, but who knows what modifications they made.
- thatthatis 13y ago
  Can you give a single example of your concern? You're responding to real world examples of copy middle projects and proprietary descendants coexisting happily with vague fears but no examples.
  - einhverfr 13y ago
    Indeed. SunOS/Solaris vs the free BSDs? Illustra vs Postgres? Oh wait. I found one: Internet Explorer vs. Mosaic. As I pointed out in my blog post (linked below), history is littered with the corpses of proprietary spinoffs of free/open source projects. It is telling that the only example I can find currently of a proprietary spinoff eclipsing the open source version currently a) had to be released free of charge and bundled with another program, and b) is now facing renewed competition from free/open source competition in the form of Firefox and Chrome. So it seems to be an exception which proves the rule. Proprietary spinoffs cannot, in the long run, outrun the community.
    - _delirium 13y ago
      > SunOS/Solaris vs the free BSDs? This actually seems like a counter-example: the commercial spinoffs have totally dominated in comparison to the free BSDs, which have never had particularly large market share. Through much of the 1980s and early 1990s the free BSDs had approximately zero users, whereas their commercial spinoffs had hundreds of thousands! The BSD licensing also allowed AT&T to reincorporate large chunks of the BSD code back into AT&T Unix (even Microsoft borrowed some of the sockets code for Windows). This situation was only disrupted in the 1990s by GNU and Linux, not by the free BSDs, which re-arrived only later. And even as Solaris declined, the free BSDs didn't manage to capitalize and gain its market share. On the desktop, of course, a proprietary spinoff of the free BSDs completely obliterates the usage numbers of FreeBSD and PC-BSD: Mac OS X. It's not a pure spinoff; it also includes permissively licensed code from the CMU Mach project, among others. And it's at least semi-proprietary: Apple does release some code, but it's both incomplete and doesn't even build, so there is no free version of Darwin you can actually run.
dllthomas 13y ago
I don't have objection to people benefiting from my work monetarily. I have some objection to people benefiting from my work by exerting power over others. How much objection and whether it is sufficient to motivate GPL (or AGPL) depends on a whole host of factors, definitely including the nature and extent of that power.
einhverfr 13y ago
The question, really, is what you get out of it. Again, I don't like the MIT license because it allows for license changes without actual code changes. But the question is what you get from proprietary spinoffs. If you are afraid that proprietary firms will drive away the more free software products, then the GPL seems best. On the other hand if you accept that the community will eventually prevail, then you get to see where folks think the market is, and where the community version should go to be more successful. I wonder how Green Plum is going to deal with a BSD-licensed competitor being Postgres-XC....
gretful 13y ago
more importantly I think, the BSD license allows you to think up new stuff, incorporate it with what I wrote, then not share it with the rest of the world. GPL means that every commit raises ALL boats.

einhverfr 13y ago

Not really. Here's how I look at it: GPL: This work must remain in the commons. Any improvements you make must be put back to the commons if you distribute it. BSD: I own my work. You own your work. You can use my work to create your work. We recommend you put your contributions back into the commons. In the end, the BSD license does heavily incentivize commons, but it doesn't require them. That's the difference.

_delirium 13y ago
I guess from my perspective I don't see why I would agree to license my work under the BSD's terms, unless I had already concluded it had negligible monetary value. I own my work. You own your work. But why should I let you use my work to create your work? The traditional answer is the capitalist one: because you paid me a license fee. An alternative hippie-ish idealist answer is the "commons" idea: because we both agree to dedicate our work to the commons, and everyone gets each other's work for free. But if you don't reciprocate by also dedicating your work to the commons, why should I give your proprietary product a free license to use my product? Being a blue-blooded capitalist, you aren't going to let me use your product for free; why do you expect better terms from me than you yourself are offering? If you expect me to buy a license for your product, it seems perfectly fair that I also expect you to buy a license for my product. The GPL in a sense formalizes that expectation. (It's worth noting that this line of argument is on quite different grounds than what RMS argues, though. RMS is primarily interested in the right of downstream users to modify their own computer systems, not in game-theoretic choices of software developers.)
- einhverfr 13y ago
  > I guess from my perspective I don't see why I would agree to license my work under the BSD's terms, unless I had already concluded it had negligible monetary value. Because you want contributions from others and want to work in a vibrant community. And if you are modifying a BSD-licensed project, you probably want to encourage others to maintain your code (what this means is you will, if you want to have a successful proprietary fork, contribute almost everything back, so as to cut your maintenance costs). > The traditional answer is the capitalist one: because you paid me a license fee. An alternative hippie-ish idealist answer is the "commons" idea: because we both agree to dedicate our work to the commons, and everyone gets each other's work for free. I think that misunderstands the purpose of the commons. Commons exist because there is value in pooling resources. Commons of course, only work when there are benefits and contributions are aligned. Here, maintenance costs are reduced by contributions, and you get access to the works of others. Let's look at how this works with regard to PostgreSQL. There have been a number of proprietary forks in the past, including Illustra, Mammoth, Green Plum, EnterpriseDB, and more. In general these have all prospered when they contributed back significant work to the community, but when they didn't they found themselves cut off from community resources. Of these 4, only two are alive today, and one of those is facing renewed competition from free a free alternative (Postgres-XC). So you have a carrot and a stick. The carrot is that you can make marginal changes around the edges for your target market, particularly if the community doesn't want those changes, and you can release a proprietary product with that, using the work of everyone else. The stick is that if you don't contribute back, you will find yourself cut off from that free labor and in competition with it, and that competition is not one you can win. > (It's worth noting that this line of argument is on quite different grounds than what RMS argues, though. RMS is primarily interested in the right of downstream users to modify their own computer systems, not in game-theoretic choices of software developers.) Right, but I am talking about the right of software developers to largely work as they see fit, which strikes me as the best definition I can find. To do this, you have to have decentralized control and a movement away from a corporate-centered model. In this regard, the BSD license is a better and more radical alternative regarding freedom than the GPL is, because it insists that freedom serve practice rather than the other way around.