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This is a common belief. It is, I believe, the reason Stallman wrote the GPL and the reason Torvalds continues to use the GPL 2. But Eric Raymond convinced me

This is a common belief. It is, I believe, the reason Stallman wrote the GPL and the reason Torvalds continues to use the GPL 2. But Eric Raymond convinced me that it's irrelevant ( http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=928 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=928 ): "If we live in 'Type A' a universe where closed source is more efficient, markets will eventually punish people who take closed source code open. Markets will correspondingly reward people who take open source closed. In this kind of universe, open source is doomed; the GPL will be subverted or routed around by efficiency-seeking investors as surely as water flows downhill. "If we live in a 'Type B' universe where open source is more efficient, markets will eventually punish people who take open source code closed. Markets will correspondingly reward people who take closed source open. In such a universe closed source is its own punishment; open source will capture ever-larger swathes of industry as investors chase efficiency gains. "In a Type A universe, reciprocal licensing is futile. In a Type B universe, reciprocal licensing is unnecessary. In neither universe can the GPL’s attempts to punish what we regard as misbehavior have more than short-term, temporary effects."

Demiurge 12y ago
What if we live in a universe that is of Type C, in which the market favors complicated combination of factors of which 'open source' is a very minor one, and market positioning with technical prowess of software is the major one, whereby software is opened or closed based on specific political circumstances, such that the timing and not the direction is important?
- maxlybbert 12y ago
  I'm sure you're capable of doing that analysis yourself, but in my opinion, the GPL wouldn't provide any more benefits to a Type C universe than it provides in a Type A or Type B universe.
JoshTriplett 12y ago
That assumes a company writing its own closed-source software is capable of keeping up with an entire community. If that were the case, we'd have had a proprietary version of the Linux kernel long ago, and it'd have completely replaced Linux in all the areas where Linux currently thrives. Also, assuming the case that Open Source is more efficient, some of us don't want to wait around for inefficient closed-source-based companies to fold, because they can use the large savings they're sitting on to take a very long time thrashing around and doing damage before dying or adapting. If copyleft licenses can speed that process up, great. Finally, there's a false dichotomy here: closed-source and open-source are not on a single scale of goodness measured by "efficiency", and the market does not perfectly adjust to maximize efficiency. ESR's type-A and type-B universes both presuppose free markets and perfect market efficiency. There's a difference between wanting that and assuming that it's already the case.
- maxlybbert 12y ago
  > That assumes a company writing its own closed-source software is capable of keeping up with an entire community. If that were the case, we'd have had a proprietary version of the Linux kernel long ago, and it'd have completely replaced Linux in all the areas where Linux currently thrives. Uh, yes, that's one of the reasons the license itself doesn't make much of a difference. If you want to fork the Linux kernel and not give back -- and companies do that in our world -- you'll quickly learn that the license is the least of your problems with regard to staying up to date. > Also, assuming the case that Open Source is more efficient, some of us don't want to wait around for inefficient closed-source-based companies to fold, because they can use the large savings they're sitting on to take a very long time thrashing around and doing damage before dying or adapting. That's a valid point. Then again, reciprocal licenses are based on the assumption that, fundamentally, they'll get faster results with legal action (or threatened legal action) than the results you can expect from the the added costs of running a fork of an open source project. When your first cease and desist letter works, that's true. Then again, the IBM vs. SCO fiasco showed how long it can take to get vindication from the courts. > ESR's type-A and type-B universes both presuppose free markets and perfect market efficiency. There's a difference between wanting that and assuming that it's already the case. You don't have to have perfect market efficiency. Thinking about how things would work in a perfect world is often useful for understanding the imperfect world we actually do live in. The world we live in does involve a very impersonal market that will relentlessly tell you when you're in the wrong business, or trying to do something in a silly way. People have an ability to ignore the market's message, but it certainly exists.
zanny 12y ago
I disagree with both premises, because software is not a free market. It exists in the framing context of IP and copyright, unnatural societal constructs with varying reasons for existing. But they do exist. It is not a universal truth whether or not proprietary or free software makes sense. In a world without copyright, the mechanisms of software profiteering and the utility of open or closed source radically change, since anything and everything is effectively permissively licensed. On one side, it would take the profit motive out of proprietary software. Without copyright you can not prosecute users who redistribute your binaries, and thus it is "hard" to get people to buy them from you. I would not say impossible because I would not fathom considering all the possibilities in such a foreign context. But in the general case, without copyright, it becomes impossible to profiteer off false scarcity of information in the form of copies of software. I say that because its important to contextualize why people strive to close off and lock down their software by depriving users of software freedoms - because copyright control, control of distribution, and the right to a monopoly over the idea means profit. If you take that away suddenly there is little incentive not to develop the software you want communally with others who want the same software, because your options are either do all the work yourself closed and have everyone else use it anyway, or open it up and have others contribute and lessen your burden. The mechanism though does not change - if you are distributing your software, which is the only way the GPL even takes effect to compel source release, in a copyright free world it makes more sense to at least release the source as an act of security. Because you cannot even sell visibility - ie, if someone wants to derive from you, you cannot extort them to see the source because if you do take money from them to see it once, you cannot legally compel them not to then release it once you have willfully given them a copy. In that political paradigm - not a universe, not a fundamental rule of reality - software freedom just makes sense almost all the time. And the edge cases where it does not are much easier to overcome, because today free software is an uphill battle against corporate interests who use their power over software to extort their users of revenue to then fund the enhancement of their product. It is why photoshop and office are so hard to contend with, because they get so much money by using this framework of information monopolies to entrench themselves perpetually. There are a lot of ways to frame a society that could in theory bias it towards free or proprietary software. which is in part why I don't always agree with RMS - I love the GPL and what it means in our political environment today, but I also claim it is a highly flawed economic model due to the existence of state sponsored IP in the first place. But there are many other ways to do things, and in any of those permutations free software may or may not be economically optimal, and that means it is absolutely simplifying things to claim "universes where free software make sense" exist. That is literally not seeing outside the box at all.
eli_gottlieb 12y ago
Instead, we live in a Type C universe, where the Efficient Market Hypothesis is untrue and real people regularly behave more in accordance with personal beliefs and ideologies than in accordance with the imperative to increase wealth by all means possible.
- maxlybbert 12y ago
  Although he didn't say so, Raymond's thought analysis is based on the development of software in a commercial or professional setting. The decision of whether to release personal projects as open source is a different discussion altogether.
  - maxlybbert 12y ago
    Oops: "thought experiment" or "analysis" not a silly mash of the two.

Demiurge 12y ago

What if we live in a universe that is of Type C, in which the market favors complicated combination of factors of which 'open source' is a very minor one, and market positioning with technical prowess of software is the major one, whereby software is opened or closed based on specific political circumstances, such that the timing and not the direction is important?

maxlybbert 12y ago
I'm sure you're capable of doing that analysis yourself, but in my opinion, the GPL wouldn't provide any more benefits to a Type C universe than it provides in a Type A or Type B universe.

JoshTriplett 12y ago

That assumes a company writing its own closed-source software is capable of keeping up with an entire community. If that were the case, we'd have had a proprietary version of the Linux kernel long ago, and it'd have completely replaced Linux in all the areas where Linux currently thrives. Also, assuming the case that Open Source is more efficient, some of us don't want to wait around for inefficient closed-source-based companies to fold, because they can use the large savings they're sitting on to take a very long time thrashing around and doing damage before dying or adapting. If copyleft licenses can speed that process up, great. Finally, there's a false dichotomy here: closed-source and open-source are not on a single scale of goodness measured by "efficiency", and the market does not perfectly adjust to maximize efficiency. ESR's type-A and type-B universes both presuppose free markets and perfect market efficiency. There's a difference between wanting that and assuming that it's already the case.

maxlybbert 12y ago
> That assumes a company writing its own closed-source software is capable of keeping up with an entire community. If that were the case, we'd have had a proprietary version of the Linux kernel long ago, and it'd have completely replaced Linux in all the areas where Linux currently thrives. Uh, yes, that's one of the reasons the license itself doesn't make much of a difference. If you want to fork the Linux kernel and not give back -- and companies do that in our world -- you'll quickly learn that the license is the least of your problems with regard to staying up to date. > Also, assuming the case that Open Source is more efficient, some of us don't want to wait around for inefficient closed-source-based companies to fold, because they can use the large savings they're sitting on to take a very long time thrashing around and doing damage before dying or adapting. That's a valid point. Then again, reciprocal licenses are based on the assumption that, fundamentally, they'll get faster results with legal action (or threatened legal action) than the results you can expect from the the added costs of running a fork of an open source project. When your first cease and desist letter works, that's true. Then again, the IBM vs. SCO fiasco showed how long it can take to get vindication from the courts. > ESR's type-A and type-B universes both presuppose free markets and perfect market efficiency. There's a difference between wanting that and assuming that it's already the case. You don't have to have perfect market efficiency. Thinking about how things would work in a perfect world is often useful for understanding the imperfect world we actually do live in. The world we live in does involve a very impersonal market that will relentlessly tell you when you're in the wrong business, or trying to do something in a silly way. People have an ability to ignore the market's message, but it certainly exists.

zanny 12y ago

I disagree with both premises, because software is not a free market. It exists in the framing context of IP and copyright, unnatural societal constructs with varying reasons for existing. But they do exist. It is not a universal truth whether or not proprietary or free software makes sense. In a world without copyright, the mechanisms of software profiteering and the utility of open or closed source radically change, since anything and everything is effectively permissively licensed. On one side, it would take the profit motive out of proprietary software. Without copyright you can not prosecute users who redistribute your binaries, and thus it is "hard" to get people to buy them from you. I would not say impossible because I would not fathom considering all the possibilities in such a foreign context. But in the general case, without copyright, it becomes impossible to profiteer off false scarcity of information in the form of copies of software. I say that because its important to contextualize why people strive to close off and lock down their software by depriving users of software freedoms - because copyright control, control of distribution, and the right to a monopoly over the idea means profit. If you take that away suddenly there is little incentive not to develop the software you want communally with others who want the same software, because your options are either do all the work yourself closed and have everyone else use it anyway, or open it up and have others contribute and lessen your burden. The mechanism though does not change - if you are distributing your software, which is the only way the GPL even takes effect to compel source release, in a copyright free world it makes more sense to at least release the source as an act of security. Because you cannot even sell visibility - ie, if someone wants to derive from you, you cannot extort them to see the source because if you do take money from them to see it once, you cannot legally compel them not to then release it once you have willfully given them a copy. In that political paradigm - not a universe, not a fundamental rule of reality - software freedom just makes sense almost all the time. And the edge cases where it does not are much easier to overcome, because today free software is an uphill battle against corporate interests who use their power over software to extort their users of revenue to then fund the enhancement of their product. It is why photoshop and office are so hard to contend with, because they get so much money by using this framework of information monopolies to entrench themselves perpetually. There are a lot of ways to frame a society that could in theory bias it towards free or proprietary software. which is in part why I don't always agree with RMS - I love the GPL and what it means in our political environment today, but I also claim it is a highly flawed economic model due to the existence of state sponsored IP in the first place. But there are many other ways to do things, and in any of those permutations free software may or may not be economically optimal, and that means it is absolutely simplifying things to claim "universes where free software make sense" exist. That is literally not seeing outside the box at all.

eli_gottlieb 12y ago

Instead, we live in a Type C universe, where the Efficient Market Hypothesis is untrue and real people regularly behave more in accordance with personal beliefs and ideologies than in accordance with the imperative to increase wealth by all means possible.

maxlybbert 12y ago
Although he didn't say so, Raymond's thought analysis is based on the development of software in a commercial or professional setting. The decision of whether to release personal projects as open source is a different discussion altogether.
- maxlybbert 12y ago
  Oops: "thought experiment" or "analysis" not a silly mash of the two.