4 ms·
Bradley is pretty extreme :) It's not necessarily a bad thing to have sentinels out on the fringes, like RMS and Bradley, to remind us not to get lost. We don'
by cmsj 11y ago
Bradley is pretty extreme :)
It's not necessarily a bad thing to have sentinels out on the fringes, like RMS and Bradley, to remind us not to get lost. We don't have to go where they are, but we can at least navigate by them.
Having said that, there is a detail here which Bradley is omitting. Specifically, that is that Apple is not anti-copyleft, what Apple is (and what many other corporations are), is anti-GPLv3.
Apple shipped Samba for a very long time. They could have replaced it at any point, but they didn't need to. It was Samba switching to GPLv3 that pushed Apple into writing its own SMB implementation.
Now, it's possible that these things are unrelated, but I believe I am correct in stating that Apple has never shipped GPLv3 software, and anything that has switched to v3, simply gets replaced or held back at its last v2 release (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3559990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3559990 ). The most likely explanation is that they are not prepared to be bound by the patent/tivoisation clauses.
The deeper question is why these v3 terms are unacceptable. IANAL, but I have worked at places where there are pretty flexible policies around using/distributing Free Software, and it's not at all uncommon that blanket policies apply to v2 licensed software, but any and all use of v3 (or indeed AGPL) software require specific individual review by Legal to ensure that you aren't placing the company in an actionable position. That's a pretty heavy time/effort burden to place on the (ideally nimble) process of developing and shipping software, it's also a cost burden.
Personally, I love the GPLv2, I think it's a masterstroke of a license. I don't use it very much anymore, but I'm very glad that exists. I think v3 goes to far, and I think AGPL goes way too far.
I tend to think that there are strategic projects which should be under v3, to protect the wider Free Software community from being unreasonably locked out of their own future, however, it seems fairly clear to me that overall, v3 has hurt copyleft more than helped it.
- xerophyte12932 11y agoIf it's not too much trouble, could you please this part: >Personally, I love the GPLv2, I think it's a masterstroke of a license. I don't use it very much anymore, but I'm very glad that exists. I think v3 goes to far, and I think AGPL goes way too far. I am really not familiar with licenses and I have a feeling the legal text won't make much sense to me either if I treid reading it by my self
- cmsj 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#His... has some coverage of the changes that various versions of the GPL introduced. tl;dr is that v3 places a much broader burden on entities releasing GPL software, wrt patents and the general digital freedoms of users.
- merijnv 11y agoShort summary (from memory, so might be a little faulty): GPLv3 = GPLv2 + you can't sue any users/distributors for violating your patents + you grant an implicit license to all your relevant patents to your users + you must protect users from patents that might be covering code you contribute For companies with patents and lots of patents they are afraid of losing their ability to sue for patent violations. I'm unclear whether the license you grant is just for the GPLed code or just in general. And in general it's unknown how all this plays out in court, so most lawyers (and thus companies) avoid v3 like the plague. AGPL = GPL + must distribute even if you just provide an internet accessible service. The idea being that the GPL only applies to distribution, so if I modify some GPL software but never distribute it (because I just run it on a server I control) I never have to GPL my changes. The AGPL says you have to distribute/open source your changes even if you don't distribute if the modified software is accessible over the network to users.
- minot 11y agoI think of it as an insurance policy. If I release my server side code as agpl, I know that anyone who uses it also has to share the code in their servers has to share it with their users. In my simple mind, open source is a developer construct while free software is a user construct. Thank you for bringing a user's perspective in explaining GPL.
- cmsj 11y agoFWIW, I tend to substitute the word "user" there, for "software". I see permissive Open Source licenses as giving developers all the freedom, and copyleft licenses as giving the software itself, all the freedom. I choose this distinction only because some users are developers, and a copyleft license specifically restricts them from doing some things (i.e. closed source forks), thus restricting their absolute freedom. Instead, the software itself is promoted to the receiver of ultimate freedom, because its basic rights are enforced through all its generations/forks/integrations.
- anon1385 11y ago>Now, it's possible that these things are unrelated, but I believe I am correct in stating that Apple has never shipped GPLv3 software, and anything that has switched to v3, simply gets replaced or held back at its last v2 release (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3559990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3559990 ). The most likely explanation is that they are not prepared to be bound by the patent/tivoisation clauses. Apple have been pretty open about why they don't like the GPLv3. It's not actually the patent clauses at all (their own Apple Public Source License predates the GPLv3 by several years and includes a patent grant): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8868994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8868994 Unfortunately this bis of misinformation has become part of the public consciousness.
- cmsj 11y agoThanks, I'd not seen all of that detail before. I can certainly understand that the anti-Tivoisation clauses are concerning to Apple.