6 ms·

I understand your argument, but there's another side of that coin. An MIT licensed piece of software can be taken by a company, improved in-house and distribute

I understand your argument, but there's another side of that coin. An MIT licensed piece of software can be taken by a company, improved in-house and distributed as proprietary, thereby depleting the community of improvements to the work they have made freely available under good faith. GPL also demands that all distributions contain source code so the user has freedom of tinkering with and inspecting the piece of software as they see fit; the core philosophy, as I understand it, is that since software is to be run on users' computers, they have a right to see how it works, what it does, and change its behavior if there is a need for that. I'm not advocating for blindly using GPL wherever one gets a chance (even RMS and the FSF use the more permissive LGPL for some of their work, most notably GNU Readline), but there are some compelling reasons for releasing your code under GPL, which are of course dependent on your particular case (there seems to be no one-size-fits-all solution for open-source/free software licensing).

Karunamon 11y ago
An MIT licensed piece of software can be taken by a company, improved in-house and distributed as proprietary, thereby depleting the community of improvements to the work they have made freely available under good faith. However, this hypothetical ignores the reality that companies will often simply not touch GPL code rather than deal with compliance. It's not a choice between the MIT licensed code and the GPL licensed code, it's a choice between the MIT licensed code or anything else. Including reinventing that particular wheel in house. (opinion follows) In other words, the GPL reduces the amount of quality (software) in the world and ties developers' hands for the purposes of an ill-thought-out political goal. More annoyingly, it does so in the guise of user freedom, when in reality, the GPL does almost nothing for people who don't hack on code.
- mordocai 11y ago
  See Linux as a counter-point to this argument. If your software is good enough, has enough grass-roots support from developers, and has a good/large community around it then companies will bit the bullet and use it despite it being GPL.
  - Aldo_MX 11y ago
    The kernel? Because I've yet to see a Linux distro that doesn't work better with non-GPL parts (ex. Proprietary Drivers).
    - mordocai 11y ago
      Only for hardware. Typically for wireless and video drivers. If you use an Intel video card and Intel wireless (the former of which you can only do if you don't care for intensive 3D apps) then you can get away with no OS level proprietary software. Pretty easy to do if your only use of the machine is development work. Once you get into gaming you have to pile a ton of proprietary software (OS and otherwise) if you want to play anything recent.
  - baddox 11y ago
    An example of a GPL project that companies do touch is not a counterpoint to the argument that lots of companies refuse to touch lots of GPL code.
    - pessimizer 11y ago
      An example of a GPL project that most companies do touch is a counterpoint to the argument that the GPL prevents companies from using software. That lots of companies refuse to touch GPL code is not an argument for the proposition that "the GPL reduces the amount of quality (software) in the world."
- rdtsc 11y ago
  > However, this hypothetical ignores the reality that companies will often simply not touch GPL code rather than deal with compliances Some companies do they get a proprietary license from the authors in return for payment. I've seen companies pay for that. So answer doesn't necessarily have to be "we have to release all our code" it could also be the common business answer of -- pay and get a license.
- minot 11y ago
  > In other words, the GPL reduces the amount of quality (software) in the world and ties developers' hands for the purposes of an ill-thought-out political goal. I believe this is a plus point of GPLv3 (although more of a side-effect than a goal). I cheer for companies like Artifex which develops Ghostscript. It makes sense to me that if you're not willing to pay forward, you must pay back towards the cost of developing software. But then, I've never had to make these hard choices so my naivety shows here.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  the GPL does almost nothing for people who don't hack on code Yes, it does. Because of copyleft reciprocity, all users benefit from modified and enhanced copies to the software.
  - kstenerud 11y ago
    Except for the loss in innovation due to companies that will not touch GPL for fear of being forced to divulge the trade secrets in their code. If a company could be sure that nothing in their code could jeopardize their competitive advantage, there'd be no problem with exposing it to the world. But the real world often doesn't work that way. And to make matters even worse, people often get it wrong when deciding what needs to be protected, and what doesn't.
    - Spivak 11y ago
      > Except for the loss in innovation due to companies that will not touch GPL for fear of being forced to divulge the trade secrets in their code. That's exactly the point of the GPL. Look, we as human beings would be all better off without trade secrets, without closed source, and with the explicit permission to tinker, modify, and improve the products we use every day. You as a user should want all of the rights afforded to you by the GPL. You should want to know how all of your devices work. You should want to be able to do what you please with them and not just what the company you bought it from wants you to do with it. Yes, we get it, companies don't want to tell people their secrets, but that's not the fault of the GPL. It's the fault of every user like you who is apathetic toward proprietary software, who thinks it's okay to exploit and profit off of others ignorance while perpetuating a legal framework that mandates that ignorance.
      - pbreit 11y ago
        "we as human beings would be all better off without trade secrets, without closed source, and with the explicit permission to tinker, modify, and improve the products we use every day." So, without Apple products? I don't think so. Far from it.
- zobzu 11y ago
  Since MIT-style licensed code gets close sourced I don't see how your logic works at all. Only few huge projects will share back, and generally only share back partially. If companies are going to choose closed-source license over open sourcing their own code if not GPL or MIT or similar code is available, they weren't going to help open source code to being with.
superuser2 11y ago
>depleting the community of improvements to the work they have made freely available under good faith. You pretend those improvements would happen anyway. In RMS's world, proprietary software is not a business. The only way those improvements get created are 1) People individually fix their own problems and support their own use cases. Then boring, unsexy problems that no one is passionate about don't get solved. See: Linux desktop. 2) Businesses perform the least amount of development they can as a cost center; their actual business is consulting. 3) Some wealthy, benevolent patron lights money on fire so that the engineers making that software can keep warm.
- dllthomas 11y ago
  Listing "Linux Desktop" as a problem unsolved because of a lack of sex appeal is bizarre. It has long seemed to be treated as "sexier" than it (to my mind) has deserved, and a tremendous amount of work has gone into a plethora of projects in this area. Moreover, in my experience it has always been basically solved (handwringing articles notwithstanding). I wouldn't be surprised if a part of that has been my needs being unusual, though.
SomeCallMeTim 11y ago
>depleting the community of improvements to the work they have made freely available under good faith What is this insane logic? If someone modifies my code and doesn't give it to me, it doesn't deplete me of anything. For that to be true I would have to lose something I already possessed. You maybe meant "deprive," but at no time did I ever have a right to anything that they created. It seems you're asserting that because they used my code I suddenly should have a right to use their modifications. I think that logic is flawed. I do believe I should have a right to use anything I've created [1]. And if someone feels they've made changes that would be generally useful, and submits code to add to the code I've released, then I would be thankful. But I wouldn't feel that I had the right to something created by someone else just because I gave them a gift that didn't even cost me anything to give them (aside from possible opportunity costs). That's not to say that GPLv2 isn't useful for dual-licensing situations (like Qt), so as to convince companies to pay for full commercial use. But the latter situation does NOT guarantee user freedom (people will only pay if they AREN'T willing to release code, after all), and the pro-GPL arguments on this article seem to focus on user freedom, so you can't really have it both ways. [1] I would love to see a programmer's bill-of-rights that guaranteed a developer the ability to reuse any code that they'd ever written that didn't include any actual business or trade secrets. I once wrote an awesome string class for one employer that was even actually open source, but that was licensed in such an annoying proprietary manner that, even though I can still legally have and use the source code, I can never redistribute the source code. The company made games, so there was nothing at all about the string class that anyone would ever have cared about in a business sense.
- baddox 11y ago
  It's the same kind of logic that the RIAA would use to conclude that my downloading a terabyte of music is equivalent to my stealing x trillion dollars from the record labels, regardless of whether I ever would have spent money on the music (or whether I ever even listen to it). It is, simply put, the logic of intellectual property laws. It's why I don't like intellectual property laws or things that rely on them (like the GPL).
  - marrs 11y ago
dzsekijo 11y ago
> even RMS and the FSF use the more permissive LGPL for some of their work, most notably GNU Readline "Readline is free software, distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 3" -- https://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/php/chet/readline/rltop.html#Introduction https://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/php/chet/readline/rltop.html#Int...
- thegeomaster 11y ago
  Oh, it was a slip of the tongue---I was thinking of this essay [1], and remembered it mentioning Readline and GNU libc, but for some reason thought that Readline was LGPL and libc was GPL (when the opposite is true and indeed makes way more sense). [1]: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.en.html http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.en.html

Karunamon 11y ago

An MIT licensed piece of software can be taken by a company, improved in-house and distributed as proprietary, thereby depleting the community of improvements to the work they have made freely available under good faith. However, this hypothetical ignores the reality that companies will often simply not touch GPL code rather than deal with compliance. It's not a choice between the MIT licensed code and the GPL licensed code, it's a choice between the MIT licensed code or anything else. Including reinventing that particular wheel in house. (opinion follows) In other words, the GPL reduces the amount of quality (software) in the world and ties developers' hands for the purposes of an ill-thought-out political goal. More annoyingly, it does so in the guise of user freedom, when in reality, the GPL does almost nothing for people who don't hack on code.

mordocai 11y ago
See Linux as a counter-point to this argument. If your software is good enough, has enough grass-roots support from developers, and has a good/large community around it then companies will bit the bullet and use it despite it being GPL.
- Aldo_MX 11y ago
  The kernel? Because I've yet to see a Linux distro that doesn't work better with non-GPL parts (ex. Proprietary Drivers).
  - mordocai 11y ago
    Only for hardware. Typically for wireless and video drivers. If you use an Intel video card and Intel wireless (the former of which you can only do if you don't care for intensive 3D apps) then you can get away with no OS level proprietary software. Pretty easy to do if your only use of the machine is development work. Once you get into gaming you have to pile a ton of proprietary software (OS and otherwise) if you want to play anything recent.
- baddox 11y ago
  An example of a GPL project that companies do touch is not a counterpoint to the argument that lots of companies refuse to touch lots of GPL code.
  - pessimizer 11y ago
    An example of a GPL project that most companies do touch is a counterpoint to the argument that the GPL prevents companies from using software. That lots of companies refuse to touch GPL code is not an argument for the proposition that "the GPL reduces the amount of quality (software) in the world."
rdtsc 11y ago
> However, this hypothetical ignores the reality that companies will often simply not touch GPL code rather than deal with compliances Some companies do they get a proprietary license from the authors in return for payment. I've seen companies pay for that. So answer doesn't necessarily have to be "we have to release all our code" it could also be the common business answer of -- pay and get a license.
minot 11y ago
> In other words, the GPL reduces the amount of quality (software) in the world and ties developers' hands for the purposes of an ill-thought-out political goal. I believe this is a plus point of GPLv3 (although more of a side-effect than a goal). I cheer for companies like Artifex which develops Ghostscript. It makes sense to me that if you're not willing to pay forward, you must pay back towards the cost of developing software. But then, I've never had to make these hard choices so my naivety shows here.
vezzy-fnord 11y ago
the GPL does almost nothing for people who don't hack on code Yes, it does. Because of copyleft reciprocity, all users benefit from modified and enhanced copies to the software.
- kstenerud 11y ago
  Except for the loss in innovation due to companies that will not touch GPL for fear of being forced to divulge the trade secrets in their code. If a company could be sure that nothing in their code could jeopardize their competitive advantage, there'd be no problem with exposing it to the world. But the real world often doesn't work that way. And to make matters even worse, people often get it wrong when deciding what needs to be protected, and what doesn't.
  - Spivak 11y ago
    > Except for the loss in innovation due to companies that will not touch GPL for fear of being forced to divulge the trade secrets in their code. That's exactly the point of the GPL. Look, we as human beings would be all better off without trade secrets, without closed source, and with the explicit permission to tinker, modify, and improve the products we use every day. You as a user should want all of the rights afforded to you by the GPL. You should want to know how all of your devices work. You should want to be able to do what you please with them and not just what the company you bought it from wants you to do with it. Yes, we get it, companies don't want to tell people their secrets, but that's not the fault of the GPL. It's the fault of every user like you who is apathetic toward proprietary software, who thinks it's okay to exploit and profit off of others ignorance while perpetuating a legal framework that mandates that ignorance.
    - pbreit 11y ago
      "we as human beings would be all better off without trade secrets, without closed source, and with the explicit permission to tinker, modify, and improve the products we use every day." So, without Apple products? I don't think so. Far from it.
zobzu 11y ago
Since MIT-style licensed code gets close sourced I don't see how your logic works at all. Only few huge projects will share back, and generally only share back partially. If companies are going to choose closed-source license over open sourcing their own code if not GPL or MIT or similar code is available, they weren't going to help open source code to being with.

superuser2 11y ago

>depleting the community of improvements to the work they have made freely available under good faith. You pretend those improvements would happen anyway. In RMS's world, proprietary software is not a business. The only way those improvements get created are 1) People individually fix their own problems and support their own use cases. Then boring, unsexy problems that no one is passionate about don't get solved. See: Linux desktop. 2) Businesses perform the least amount of development they can as a cost center; their actual business is consulting. 3) Some wealthy, benevolent patron lights money on fire so that the engineers making that software can keep warm.

dllthomas 11y ago
Listing "Linux Desktop" as a problem unsolved because of a lack of sex appeal is bizarre. It has long seemed to be treated as "sexier" than it (to my mind) has deserved, and a tremendous amount of work has gone into a plethora of projects in this area. Moreover, in my experience it has always been basically solved (handwringing articles notwithstanding). I wouldn't be surprised if a part of that has been my needs being unusual, though.

SomeCallMeTim 11y ago

>depleting the community of improvements to the work they have made freely available under good faith What is this insane logic? If someone modifies my code and doesn't give it to me, it doesn't deplete me of anything. For that to be true I would have to lose something I already possessed. You maybe meant "deprive," but at no time did I ever have a right to anything that they created. It seems you're asserting that because they used my code I suddenly should have a right to use their modifications. I think that logic is flawed. I do believe I should have a right to use anything I've created [1]. And if someone feels they've made changes that would be generally useful, and submits code to add to the code I've released, then I would be thankful. But I wouldn't feel that I had the right to something created by someone else just because I gave them a gift that didn't even cost me anything to give them (aside from possible opportunity costs). That's not to say that GPLv2 isn't useful for dual-licensing situations (like Qt), so as to convince companies to pay for full commercial use. But the latter situation does NOT guarantee user freedom (people will only pay if they AREN'T willing to release code, after all), and the pro-GPL arguments on this article seem to focus on user freedom, so you can't really have it both ways. [1] I would love to see a programmer's bill-of-rights that guaranteed a developer the ability to reuse any code that they'd ever written that didn't include any actual business or trade secrets. I once wrote an awesome string class for one employer that was even actually open source, but that was licensed in such an annoying proprietary manner that, even though I can still legally have and use the source code, I can never redistribute the source code. The company made games, so there was nothing at all about the string class that anyone would ever have cared about in a business sense.

baddox 11y ago
It's the same kind of logic that the RIAA would use to conclude that my downloading a terabyte of music is equivalent to my stealing x trillion dollars from the record labels, regardless of whether I ever would have spent money on the music (or whether I ever even listen to it). It is, simply put, the logic of intellectual property laws. It's why I don't like intellectual property laws or things that rely on them (like the GPL).
- marrs 11y ago

dzsekijo 11y ago

> even RMS and the FSF use the more permissive LGPL for some of their work, most notably GNU Readline "Readline is free software, distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 3" -- https://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/php/chet/readline/rltop.html#Introduction https://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/php/chet/readline/rltop.html#Int...

thegeomaster 11y ago
Oh, it was a slip of the tongue---I was thinking of this essay [1], and remembered it mentioning Readline and GNU libc, but for some reason thought that Readline was LGPL and libc was GPL (when the opposite is true and indeed makes way more sense). [1]: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.en.html http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.en.html