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Something interesting has been happening in the Open Source world. In the beginning, open source software was developed mostly by academics and free software ad

Something interesting has been happening in the Open Source world. In the beginning, open source software was developed mostly by academics and free software advocates. Copyleft licenses like the GPL became very popular as a means to prevent for-profit companies from using all this free software without giving back. There seemed to be a struggle between closed source proprietary software, and free open source software on the other side. The lines have blurred, and now a lot of open source projects are developed and maintained by for-profit companies. Projects like clang, SQLite or PostgreSQL are all developed mostly by profit-oriented companies. These projects use liberal licenses; they aren't interested in "protecting" their code -- for these projects, the situation is actually reversed. Proprietary software vendors make large parts of code freely available to the world! Maybe this is a result of the GPL; evil corporations are afraid of the GPL and therefore they support projects with liberal licenses. But maybe the GPL is just not necessary anymore; companies see the inherent advantages of open source and make (some) code available even without the GPL gun pointed at their head. What a wonderful world this would be! The GPL always seemed like fighting fire with fire. Maybe the world is better than we thought.

jacquesm 12y ago
> The GPL always seemed like fighting fire with fire. That's exactly what it is. You have to really appreciate the care that went into drafting that, if there ever was a real-world hack the GPL would be it.
Nelson69 12y ago
There are a fair number of interesting PostgreSQL forks that are completely proprietary. Those guys DO care about their source code. That's the exact case GPL is designed to protect against, there are developers that contributes to PostgreSQL and cannot use that code. There does seem to be an overall shift and source code isn't seen as it once was but there is no shortage of companies that would gladly keep "their secret sauce" secret. How many web services use tons of opensource and short of reading their obfuscated javascript from their web pages, do they make the source available? And realistically, it's data and the service that is their edge. Take github for example. RMS comes across as a bit extreme at times but we are where we are in part because of him.
- jakobegger 12y ago
  In the new world, no one cares that there are proprietary forks of Postgres. Proprietary software and free/open source software can coexist peacefully in our new world. For example, the PostgreSQL project isn't harmed by CitusDB making a proprietary extension. Citus even decided to open source part of their extension, resulting in a net win for the PostgreSQL community. If PostgreSQL was GPL, Citus probably wouldn't contribute anything. Or take EnterpriseDB, probably the largest fork of PostgreSQL. Yes, they have a proprietary product that they sell to enterprise customers. But just a quick look at the Postgres hackers mailing list shows that the developers at EnterpriseDB make significant contributions to the PostgreSQL project, even though a part of their work is closed source. And I'm in a similar position: I make a living from selling a closed source client I developed for Postgres. But I also maintain Postgres.app, a completely open source server GUI for running PostgreSQL on OS X. If I couldn't sell licenses for my closed source app, I couldn't work on the open source project. (People just don't pay for open source software unless they need support. If your goal is to make software that doesn't need support, you're fucked.). I understand that Stallman objects to proprietary software in principle. If you follow that school of thought, then the GPL is the way to go. But if you don't care about proprietary software -- as long as enough open source software is available -- then the new world has a lot of liberal licenses to choose from. In this new world, open source hackers and for-profit enterprises work together, instead of fighting another.
dalke 12y ago
You use terms in a different way than I. The "Open Source world" started in late 1998. The free software world started in 1983, and some free software developers do not identify as being part of the open source world. Hence the most accurate term, though clumsy, is "free and open source software" or "FOSS". The history of the CeCILL license shows that it's possible for something to be free software according to the FSF but not regarded by the OSI as open source. (CeCILL 2.1 is both free and open; I refer to earlier versions.) Nor does free software have any requirement to "give back". A for-profit company can internally use as much free software as it wants. It's only when the free software is distributed outside of the company where the licensing clause come into force, and it only applies to the recipient. I think this is more correctly stated as "give forward".
- hga 12y ago
  Nope, open source as in for example X goes back no later than the mid-80s. It very specifically defeated the technically superior Sun NeWS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS) due to the "MIT License" it used vs. Sun's demand of ~$100K to play their game. And that was a primary driver in James Gosling and company requiring Sun to liberally licence Java, his next project. (And Gosling, BTW, created the EMACS that Gnu EMACS is a fork of.)

jacquesm 12y ago

> The GPL always seemed like fighting fire with fire. That's exactly what it is. You have to really appreciate the care that went into drafting that, if there ever was a real-world hack the GPL would be it.

Nelson69 12y ago

There are a fair number of interesting PostgreSQL forks that are completely proprietary. Those guys DO care about their source code. That's the exact case GPL is designed to protect against, there are developers that contributes to PostgreSQL and cannot use that code. There does seem to be an overall shift and source code isn't seen as it once was but there is no shortage of companies that would gladly keep "their secret sauce" secret. How many web services use tons of opensource and short of reading their obfuscated javascript from their web pages, do they make the source available? And realistically, it's data and the service that is their edge. Take github for example. RMS comes across as a bit extreme at times but we are where we are in part because of him.

jakobegger 12y ago
In the new world, no one cares that there are proprietary forks of Postgres. Proprietary software and free/open source software can coexist peacefully in our new world. For example, the PostgreSQL project isn't harmed by CitusDB making a proprietary extension. Citus even decided to open source part of their extension, resulting in a net win for the PostgreSQL community. If PostgreSQL was GPL, Citus probably wouldn't contribute anything. Or take EnterpriseDB, probably the largest fork of PostgreSQL. Yes, they have a proprietary product that they sell to enterprise customers. But just a quick look at the Postgres hackers mailing list shows that the developers at EnterpriseDB make significant contributions to the PostgreSQL project, even though a part of their work is closed source. And I'm in a similar position: I make a living from selling a closed source client I developed for Postgres. But I also maintain Postgres.app, a completely open source server GUI for running PostgreSQL on OS X. If I couldn't sell licenses for my closed source app, I couldn't work on the open source project. (People just don't pay for open source software unless they need support. If your goal is to make software that doesn't need support, you're fucked.). I understand that Stallman objects to proprietary software in principle. If you follow that school of thought, then the GPL is the way to go. But if you don't care about proprietary software -- as long as enough open source software is available -- then the new world has a lot of liberal licenses to choose from. In this new world, open source hackers and for-profit enterprises work together, instead of fighting another.

dalke 12y ago

You use terms in a different way than I. The "Open Source world" started in late 1998. The free software world started in 1983, and some free software developers do not identify as being part of the open source world. Hence the most accurate term, though clumsy, is "free and open source software" or "FOSS". The history of the CeCILL license shows that it's possible for something to be free software according to the FSF but not regarded by the OSI as open source. (CeCILL 2.1 is both free and open; I refer to earlier versions.) Nor does free software have any requirement to "give back". A for-profit company can internally use as much free software as it wants. It's only when the free software is distributed outside of the company where the licensing clause come into force, and it only applies to the recipient. I think this is more correctly stated as "give forward".

hga 12y ago
Nope, open source as in for example X goes back no later than the mid-80s. It very specifically defeated the technically superior Sun NeWS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS) due to the "MIT License" it used vs. Sun's demand of ~$100K to play their game. And that was a primary driver in James Gosling and company requiring Sun to liberally licence Java, his next project. (And Gosling, BTW, created the EMACS that Gnu EMACS is a fork of.)