4 ms·

It feels like the influence of (L)GPL and perhaps even Stallman is almost at a close. These days I'm genuinely surprised if I see something new released under a

It feels like the influence of (L)GPL and perhaps even Stallman is almost at a close. These days I'm genuinely surprised if I see something new released under an (L)GPL license. And when it does happen it's often released under a more free MIT or BSD license soon thereafter.

yuhong 12y ago
I think the GPL is still useful.
- forrestthewoods 12y ago
  It absolutely is. That doesn't change anything in my comment though.
- __david__ 12y ago
  Yes, the grandparent is crazy to think the GPL isn't relevant. In certain circles it isn't as popular, the GP must travel in those circles. It's still wonderful to be on a linux system where I can just "apt-get source <pckage>" and look at how it works, try to work around bugs, etc. The attitude that you should be able to break apart anything you're running and hack on it is the fundamental principal of the GPL. I have a suspicion that people who dismiss the GPL nowadays are young enough to have never lived through the times where the standard unix server was running SunOS and good luck to you if you ever found a bug in the system. You know, the days where you had to pay for a (sucky) compiler.
  - rdtsc 12y ago
    I think a lot of people are shortsighted and they sort of see the world immediately in front of their eyes. I am building a product, I need a library, GPL, fuck GPL! Gah, gotta search for a BSD one and curse GPL in the process. They probably never lived in the days before Linux, GCC and free software as something that can happen in reality. Yet looking back here we are. People sharing code on github, companies sharing their code (either licensed as GPL or other open source licenses). High grade languages, compilers, OSes, kernels, crypto libraries all free and/or open. I think that would not have happened had it not beed for Stallman and GPL. A lot of developers I find are also bored or ignorant to study or understand licensing. Concepts like "copyright", "license", "open", "free" are all confused and relegated to mumbo-jumbo legalese. Today most have internalized the simple heuristic "GPL" = stay the fuck back or our legal department will slap me on the head, "BSD" = good, use anyway you like.
santacluster 12y ago
I would say that is mostly because, thanks to RMS and the GPL, we now live mostly in an ecosystem where the threat of a world dominated by closed, proprietary software has been pushed to the background. People don't feel a strong need to "weaponize" their licenses against a dormant enemy. Hell, there's a whole generation of hackers for whom the threat is merely theoretical, a bit of historical hacker folklore. For them, copyleft clauses are merely a nuisance that serves no immediate practical purpose. However, should one or more major players be stupid enough start abusing this and stop playing nice with the open source community, my guess is you'll suddenly see an upsurge of GPL licensed projects. MIT and BSD licensed projects are cool as long as everyone plays nice, and most companies, even Microsoft, have learned to play nice. That may not always remain the case.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  > I would say that is mostly because, thanks to RMS and the GPL, we now live mostly in an ecosystem where the threat of a world dominated by closed, proprietary software has been pushed to the background. I think that threat is alive and well, especially in mobile and sooner or later everything will be mobile except for server side. Some battles were won but that war may still very well be lost.
- TallGuyShort 12y ago
  The way I see it is that the GPL is inconvenient as long as not everyone is using it. I'd love to live in a world where everything was GPL, but as long as something is not GPL, it's very difficult to work with anything other than BSD / MIT / Apache-style licenses. I work in an almost entirely open-source ecosystem, and find that most customers want free-as-in-freedom software, but (especially in some industries) they're terrified of the GPL because they don't want to restrict their options in the future if they need to use software that isn't "free" but is required for them to be successful.
  - spopejoy 12y ago
    but (especially in some industries) they're terrified of the GPL because they don't want to restrict their options in the future if they need to use software that isn't "free" but is required for them to be successful. I would love to hear a succinct response to this concern, which I've encountered numerous times when I've sought to use a GPL library or solution and the boss/manager goes pale at the thought of GPL. What is so terrible about it? - Are there libraries/solutions you cannot use simply b/c you have a GPL piece in your toolbox? - "derivative works" as I understand this is only if you modify the source code itself. Does stuff built on-top-of or next-to the GPL'd code have to be GPL too?
tokenrove 12y ago
I dunno. I used to feel this way, even feeling that the GPL had outlived its usefulness, but I have had a change of heart in the last decade or so. I think the GPL might be the only hope for long-lived software that serves the interests of its users. I hope that programmers who sneer at the impracticality of the GPL and RMS's zealousness can take another pass at appreciating it, when you think about what its implications might be for a project thirty years in the future.
- mark_l_watson 12y ago
  Thanks, I could not agree with you more. Last year I released something under the GPL, and when a few potential users complained I wimped out and switched licenses. I think that I made a mistake doing that. I am working on something else interesting and I plan on sticking with the GPL, even though my project is for Pharo Smalltalk and I think GPL use for Smalltalk projects is rare. I think that in the distant future we will see very old, very well tested software that changes only slowly. I would like to see that software using GPL or AGPL.
  - wolfgke 12y ago
    > Last year I released something under the GPL, and when a few potential users complained I wimped out and switched licenses. I think that I made a mistake doing that. If it's your own code, you can change licenses back (say, for the next version) if you want to.
    - eli 12y ago
      Only if you wrote 100% of it or got other contributors to sign over their copyrights. (right?)
      - wolfgke 12y ago
        "it's your own code" is a special case of this.
      - dllthomas 12y ago
easytiger 12y ago
If the GPL is at a close it is because enough critical infrastructure is, for historical reasons, based on BSD. I think GPL is more important today than it ever has been. Core infra software should all be GPLv3. GPL is one of the most clearly logical apolitical instruments of change that has ever existed.
gillianseed 12y ago
I don't see any change in the licensing landscape at all, permissive licensing remains king for libraries, frameworks, while copyleft remains king for 'full end product' style projects. Some people seem to take the upswing of web oriented frameworks as a sign of permissive licensing being favored across the entire OSS ecosystem, but it's simply in an area where permissive licensing was already entrenched (again frameworks, libraries) that has seen a lot of recent developer activity.

yuhong 12y ago

I think the GPL is still useful.

forrestthewoods 12y ago
It absolutely is. That doesn't change anything in my comment though.
__david__ 12y ago
Yes, the grandparent is crazy to think the GPL isn't relevant. In certain circles it isn't as popular, the GP must travel in those circles. It's still wonderful to be on a linux system where I can just "apt-get source <pckage>" and look at how it works, try to work around bugs, etc. The attitude that you should be able to break apart anything you're running and hack on it is the fundamental principal of the GPL. I have a suspicion that people who dismiss the GPL nowadays are young enough to have never lived through the times where the standard unix server was running SunOS and good luck to you if you ever found a bug in the system. You know, the days where you had to pay for a (sucky) compiler.
- rdtsc 12y ago
  I think a lot of people are shortsighted and they sort of see the world immediately in front of their eyes. I am building a product, I need a library, GPL, fuck GPL! Gah, gotta search for a BSD one and curse GPL in the process. They probably never lived in the days before Linux, GCC and free software as something that can happen in reality. Yet looking back here we are. People sharing code on github, companies sharing their code (either licensed as GPL or other open source licenses). High grade languages, compilers, OSes, kernels, crypto libraries all free and/or open. I think that would not have happened had it not beed for Stallman and GPL. A lot of developers I find are also bored or ignorant to study or understand licensing. Concepts like "copyright", "license", "open", "free" are all confused and relegated to mumbo-jumbo legalese. Today most have internalized the simple heuristic "GPL" = stay the fuck back or our legal department will slap me on the head, "BSD" = good, use anyway you like.

santacluster 12y ago

I would say that is mostly because, thanks to RMS and the GPL, we now live mostly in an ecosystem where the threat of a world dominated by closed, proprietary software has been pushed to the background. People don't feel a strong need to "weaponize" their licenses against a dormant enemy. Hell, there's a whole generation of hackers for whom the threat is merely theoretical, a bit of historical hacker folklore. For them, copyleft clauses are merely a nuisance that serves no immediate practical purpose. However, should one or more major players be stupid enough start abusing this and stop playing nice with the open source community, my guess is you'll suddenly see an upsurge of GPL licensed projects. MIT and BSD licensed projects are cool as long as everyone plays nice, and most companies, even Microsoft, have learned to play nice. That may not always remain the case.

jacquesm 12y ago
> I would say that is mostly because, thanks to RMS and the GPL, we now live mostly in an ecosystem where the threat of a world dominated by closed, proprietary software has been pushed to the background. I think that threat is alive and well, especially in mobile and sooner or later everything will be mobile except for server side. Some battles were won but that war may still very well be lost.
TallGuyShort 12y ago
The way I see it is that the GPL is inconvenient as long as not everyone is using it. I'd love to live in a world where everything was GPL, but as long as something is not GPL, it's very difficult to work with anything other than BSD / MIT / Apache-style licenses. I work in an almost entirely open-source ecosystem, and find that most customers want free-as-in-freedom software, but (especially in some industries) they're terrified of the GPL because they don't want to restrict their options in the future if they need to use software that isn't "free" but is required for them to be successful.
- spopejoy 12y ago
  but (especially in some industries) they're terrified of the GPL because they don't want to restrict their options in the future if they need to use software that isn't "free" but is required for them to be successful. I would love to hear a succinct response to this concern, which I've encountered numerous times when I've sought to use a GPL library or solution and the boss/manager goes pale at the thought of GPL. What is so terrible about it? - Are there libraries/solutions you cannot use simply b/c you have a GPL piece in your toolbox? - "derivative works" as I understand this is only if you modify the source code itself. Does stuff built on-top-of or next-to the GPL'd code have to be GPL too?

tokenrove 12y ago

I dunno. I used to feel this way, even feeling that the GPL had outlived its usefulness, but I have had a change of heart in the last decade or so. I think the GPL might be the only hope for long-lived software that serves the interests of its users. I hope that programmers who sneer at the impracticality of the GPL and RMS's zealousness can take another pass at appreciating it, when you think about what its implications might be for a project thirty years in the future.

mark_l_watson 12y ago
Thanks, I could not agree with you more. Last year I released something under the GPL, and when a few potential users complained I wimped out and switched licenses. I think that I made a mistake doing that. I am working on something else interesting and I plan on sticking with the GPL, even though my project is for Pharo Smalltalk and I think GPL use for Smalltalk projects is rare. I think that in the distant future we will see very old, very well tested software that changes only slowly. I would like to see that software using GPL or AGPL.
- wolfgke 12y ago
  > Last year I released something under the GPL, and when a few potential users complained I wimped out and switched licenses. I think that I made a mistake doing that. If it's your own code, you can change licenses back (say, for the next version) if you want to.
  - eli 12y ago
    Only if you wrote 100% of it or got other contributors to sign over their copyrights. (right?)
    - wolfgke 12y ago
      "it's your own code" is a special case of this.
    - dllthomas 12y ago

easytiger 12y ago

If the GPL is at a close it is because enough critical infrastructure is, for historical reasons, based on BSD. I think GPL is more important today than it ever has been. Core infra software should all be GPLv3. GPL is one of the most clearly logical apolitical instruments of change that has ever existed.

gillianseed 12y ago

I don't see any change in the licensing landscape at all, permissive licensing remains king for libraries, frameworks, while copyleft remains king for 'full end product' style projects. Some people seem to take the upswing of web oriented frameworks as a sign of permissive licensing being favored across the entire OSS ecosystem, but it's simply in an area where permissive licensing was already entrenched (again frameworks, libraries) that has seen a lot of recent developer activity.