5 ms·

> IT companies are leveraging a huge value from OSS without providing enough back to pay developments of more OSS. It is one of the biggest injustices currently

by Avalaxy 12y ago

> IT companies are leveraging a huge value from OSS without providing enough back to pay developments of more OSS. It is one of the biggest injustices currently happening in the "rich world", but there is no easy fix. GPL?

lclarkmichalek 12y ago
AGPL
icebraining 12y ago
As someone who likes the GPL and supports the idea that all software should be Free, the thing that bothers me about it is how "closed" it is to projects based on other Free licenses. GPL projects "take" from BSD/MIT/Apache/etc projects (in the form of libraries, supporting software, etc) and only give back with conditions they can't accept. You can say it's on them, for choosing the license they chose, they accepted that this could happen, but on the other hand, isn't that exactly what we're criticizing companies for?
- pygy_ 12y ago
  The aim of the GPL is to ensure that the recipient of a program has the right, from a legal stand point, to obtain and modify its source code and redistribute the result under the same license. The FSF is hostile to proprietary software and criticize liberal licenses because they don't provide these guaranties.
  - icebraining 12y ago
    I understand that, but while the FSF might criticize liberal licenses, both GNU and many other GPL projects use code under those licenses, while their code is closed to the original projects. That's what bothers me.
    - mrec 12y ago
      And by choosing liberal licenses, those original projects have indicated that they're fine with that. Seriously, I don't see the problem. If you don't want people to use your code without making their changes available to you, license it under the GPL. That's what the GPL is for. Criticizing GPL projects for the fact that some projects are not GPL seems an odd way to spend your outrage budget.
      - icebraining 12y ago
        I'm not outraged. I'm torn over the ethics of my personal creations and contributions to GPL-licensed projects. And I don't agree that choosing a license means the authors are necessarily fine with their code being used in such a way - it might just mean they don't believe in using (copyright) law to enforce it. And even if they are fine with my activity, that still doesn't mean I must be OK doing it. As an analogy, I wouldn't sell tobacco, despite the buyers actually wanting to buy it.
        belorn 12y ago
        A copyright license is the tool used by authors to tell the world how they want their code to be used. If someone publicly state that they like vanilla ice cream, but personally don't, then their public statement is silly. If someone do not believe in using copyright law and dislike those who do, they should act accordingly and not deal with proprietary companies at all. Those are the majority users of copyright law in the software industry, as the number of GPL law suits vs proprietary ones is several order smaller.
        icebraining 12y ago
        If someone do not believe in using copyright law and dislike those who do, they should act accordingly and not deal with proprietary companies at all. Sure. But that still doesn't resolve my dilemma, it just narrows it down. Is it legitimate to take code published under a liberal license by someone who doesn't deal with proprietary companies at all and use it in a GPL project, knowing that it prevents the original project from using that derived code?
- pjmlp 12y ago
  No, because thanks to GPL the code is available. LLVM is a great project and brought the possibility of .NET/Java tooling to C and C++, but just check the amount of GPU shader drivers, Swift and some embedded compilers for examples of companies abusing BSD/MIT/Apache/etc projects.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > LLVM is a great project and brought the possibility of .NET/Java tooling to C and C++, but just check the amount of GPU shader drivers, Swift and some embedded compilers for examples of companies abusing BSD/MIT/Apache/etc projects. Its not "abuse" to do something the license is designed to permit. Not everyone -- and particularly not everyone who chooses non-copyleft free software licenses for their projects -- agrees that the reciprocal obligations enshrined in the GPL represent fundamental moral obligations that exist without the GPL and that violation of them is "abuse" in the absence of a agreed requirement, e.g. contained in a license, to adhere to them.
  - icebraining 12y ago
    Code under the Microsoft Reference Source License is also available, but would you not consider it an abuse if, say, Microsoft made a LLVM-based language under that license? The code being available is only useful if you can use it, and my point is that projects under most FOSS licenses can't use GPL-licensed code, which only takes without giving back in a usable form.
  - ihnorton 12y ago
    On the other hand, consider the following: Emscripten, Numba, Julia, Rust, Pyston, Pure, Polly, Mono-LLVM, ghc -fllvm, Terra, ... and those are just the ones I can think of in a few seconds. Several of these have the potential for huge impact over the next decade, and nearly all of them would have been significantly less viable either using GCC tooling (due to license-driven architectural decisions) or building a backend from scratch. LLVM is known for being rather ruthless with their API refactorings. This has the twin advantages of keeping the code quality very high, and giving people an extra incentive to contribute upstream (e.g. the PS4 compiler backend). I won't go so far as to say this is intentional, but it does represent a rather amusing way to discourage users from keeping everything in-house.
hastly 12y ago
Making everything virally GPL doesn't solve the problem of nobody paying for open source development. I actually think if everything out there was GPL'd, it would make it even more difficult to build businesses and make money from open source software, because you couldn't use open source in a proprietary project if you so chose. I think instead we need a set of incentives in which it's a terrible idea to use software, open source or not, without sharing a fair slice of the value you're getting with the author(s). How to actually implement this is left as an exercise for the reader.
- norswap 12y ago
  What about dual licensing? People who don't pay get GPL, while those who pay get BSD/MIT?
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    Then one person pays, gets BSD/MIT code, and shares it freely. So, if you set the cost of BSD/MIT code for each release enough for one sale to fund the whole cost of the release, it might work.
    - vinceguidry 12y ago
      They have to maintain it too if they want other people to use it. Red Hat and CentOS comes to mind. Nobody can run OSS RHEL without doing the same work the CentOS people are doing.
      - dragonwriter 12y ago
        > They have to maintain it too if they want other people to use it. Sure, but BSD/MIT projects can sell premium proprietary derivatives and services to fund both the open source and proprietary parts of the project -- heck, a company planning to do the proprietary aspects could buy the BSD/MIT license to the project and contribute that to a community project, and then contribute some staff development time to the open parts of the project while also building a proprietary derivative (see, e.g., EnterpriseDB and PostgreSQL.) And, the people that are likely to do that are the most likely to spend money to get a BSD/MIT license for something with a free GPL license, since they would actually have a financial interest which would justify the cost.

by Avalaxy 12y ago

lclarkmichalek 12y ago

AGPL

icebraining 12y ago

As someone who likes the GPL and supports the idea that all software should be Free, the thing that bothers me about it is how "closed" it is to projects based on other Free licenses. GPL projects "take" from BSD/MIT/Apache/etc projects (in the form of libraries, supporting software, etc) and only give back with conditions they can't accept. You can say it's on them, for choosing the license they chose, they accepted that this could happen, but on the other hand, isn't that exactly what we're criticizing companies for?

pygy_ 12y ago
The aim of the GPL is to ensure that the recipient of a program has the right, from a legal stand point, to obtain and modify its source code and redistribute the result under the same license. The FSF is hostile to proprietary software and criticize liberal licenses because they don't provide these guaranties.
- icebraining 12y ago
  I understand that, but while the FSF might criticize liberal licenses, both GNU and many other GPL projects use code under those licenses, while their code is closed to the original projects. That's what bothers me.
  - mrec 12y ago
    And by choosing liberal licenses, those original projects have indicated that they're fine with that. Seriously, I don't see the problem. If you don't want people to use your code without making their changes available to you, license it under the GPL. That's what the GPL is for. Criticizing GPL projects for the fact that some projects are not GPL seems an odd way to spend your outrage budget.
    - icebraining 12y ago
      I'm not outraged. I'm torn over the ethics of my personal creations and contributions to GPL-licensed projects. And I don't agree that choosing a license means the authors are necessarily fine with their code being used in such a way - it might just mean they don't believe in using (copyright) law to enforce it. And even if they are fine with my activity, that still doesn't mean I must be OK doing it. As an analogy, I wouldn't sell tobacco, despite the buyers actually wanting to buy it.
      - belorn 12y ago
        A copyright license is the tool used by authors to tell the world how they want their code to be used. If someone publicly state that they like vanilla ice cream, but personally don't, then their public statement is silly. If someone do not believe in using copyright law and dislike those who do, they should act accordingly and not deal with proprietary companies at all. Those are the majority users of copyright law in the software industry, as the number of GPL law suits vs proprietary ones is several order smaller.
        icebraining 12y ago
        If someone do not believe in using copyright law and dislike those who do, they should act accordingly and not deal with proprietary companies at all. Sure. But that still doesn't resolve my dilemma, it just narrows it down. Is it legitimate to take code published under a liberal license by someone who doesn't deal with proprietary companies at all and use it in a GPL project, knowing that it prevents the original project from using that derived code?
pjmlp 12y ago
No, because thanks to GPL the code is available. LLVM is a great project and brought the possibility of .NET/Java tooling to C and C++, but just check the amount of GPU shader drivers, Swift and some embedded compilers for examples of companies abusing BSD/MIT/Apache/etc projects.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > LLVM is a great project and brought the possibility of .NET/Java tooling to C and C++, but just check the amount of GPU shader drivers, Swift and some embedded compilers for examples of companies abusing BSD/MIT/Apache/etc projects. Its not "abuse" to do something the license is designed to permit. Not everyone -- and particularly not everyone who chooses non-copyleft free software licenses for their projects -- agrees that the reciprocal obligations enshrined in the GPL represent fundamental moral obligations that exist without the GPL and that violation of them is "abuse" in the absence of a agreed requirement, e.g. contained in a license, to adhere to them.
- icebraining 12y ago
  Code under the Microsoft Reference Source License is also available, but would you not consider it an abuse if, say, Microsoft made a LLVM-based language under that license? The code being available is only useful if you can use it, and my point is that projects under most FOSS licenses can't use GPL-licensed code, which only takes without giving back in a usable form.
- ihnorton 12y ago
  On the other hand, consider the following: Emscripten, Numba, Julia, Rust, Pyston, Pure, Polly, Mono-LLVM, ghc -fllvm, Terra, ... and those are just the ones I can think of in a few seconds. Several of these have the potential for huge impact over the next decade, and nearly all of them would have been significantly less viable either using GCC tooling (due to license-driven architectural decisions) or building a backend from scratch. LLVM is known for being rather ruthless with their API refactorings. This has the twin advantages of keeping the code quality very high, and giving people an extra incentive to contribute upstream (e.g. the PS4 compiler backend). I won't go so far as to say this is intentional, but it does represent a rather amusing way to discourage users from keeping everything in-house.

hastly 12y ago

Making everything virally GPL doesn't solve the problem of nobody paying for open source development. I actually think if everything out there was GPL'd, it would make it even more difficult to build businesses and make money from open source software, because you couldn't use open source in a proprietary project if you so chose. I think instead we need a set of incentives in which it's a terrible idea to use software, open source or not, without sharing a fair slice of the value you're getting with the author(s). How to actually implement this is left as an exercise for the reader.

norswap 12y ago
What about dual licensing? People who don't pay get GPL, while those who pay get BSD/MIT?
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  Then one person pays, gets BSD/MIT code, and shares it freely. So, if you set the cost of BSD/MIT code for each release enough for one sale to fund the whole cost of the release, it might work.
  - vinceguidry 12y ago
    They have to maintain it too if they want other people to use it. Red Hat and CentOS comes to mind. Nobody can run OSS RHEL without doing the same work the CentOS people are doing.
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      > They have to maintain it too if they want other people to use it. Sure, but BSD/MIT projects can sell premium proprietary derivatives and services to fund both the open source and proprietary parts of the project -- heck, a company planning to do the proprietary aspects could buy the BSD/MIT license to the project and contribute that to a community project, and then contribute some staff development time to the open parts of the project while also building a proprietary derivative (see, e.g., EnterpriseDB and PostgreSQL.) And, the people that are likely to do that are the most likely to spend money to get a BSD/MIT license for something with a free GPL license, since they would actually have a financial interest which would justify the cost.