Matthew Garrett: How-To Drive Developers From OS X To Linux

[Rich Oliver]

First off the complaint about people making a profit from your work and giving nothing back seems stupid. If you write a word processor or spread sheet programme, then numerous businesses can use it, make a profit from it and give nothing back. Criminals, Mafia the government of North Korea can use you software for profit, even for evil and give nothing back. Under the GPL Amazon can deploy open source software on thousands of server make billions of pounds create monopolies and all sorts of unhealthy market domination and manipulation, all without breaking the GPL. The NSA can freely use GPL software. Far from promoting freedom and protecting the ordinary individual against the rich and powerful individuals, corporations and governments, GPL actually encourages the move from the users owned devices to the server.

in as much as Apple have profited from BSD this is bad. I disagree a lot with RMS, but his comments on the death of Steve jobs were highly appropriate, if anything I would tend to be less diplomatic. However the Linux situation is far from wonderful. i don't see Android as a victory for freedom.

Programming languages, compilers and libraries should always be produced under permissive licences. I think if there is to be Copy Left it has to be much smarter.

[Del_]

It depends on who is doing the developing. If the world you live in gets most of its open source efforts from company funded developers, you're probably better off with a permissive license. If most of the development comes from individual volunteers, you're better off with a copyleft license.

In my world we can't afford to lose either group and neither license is ideal.

In a perfect world permissive licensing would be ideal, som yes neither license is ideal. From what I have seen choice og licensing is mostly about what you want to accomplish. Company funding is not determining, funding copy-left projects can actually be easier. If you want full control of the development, if you intend proprietary usage of the code, and you are willing/able to fund all development alone, yes then permissive licensing is for you. Both android and llvm/clang falls into this category. Openstack is different in that Rackspace really want to create mutual funding. That is a lot of its though.

[curaga]

Far from promoting freedom and protecting the ordinary individual against the rich and powerful individuals, corporations and governments, GPL actually encourages the move from the users owned devices to the server.

That is why one should use AGPL.

[Luke_Wolf]

I tried to dig a bit further in that data for you, and did the tedious task of checking out the twenty developers with most commits. Eighteen are Google employees, one is the AOSP leader that left in protest, the last is a Bluez developer (yes that is the GPL bluetooth stack for linux). Google is a large software company, maybe you would like to check out the next twenty? Moreover, while linux steadily increases developers and commits, Android seems to be slowing down.

I'll take a look later, it'd be nice if Ohloh would make this easier

From your previous posting I really find that hard to believe. I took you for one that enjoyed not needing closed source on your desktop to have it functional. In any case, if you don't see any issues with open core development model, then I guess we can agree to disagree.

I think you misunderstand me, I prefer open source code and programs by far. However I recognize that people are going to make closed source software regardless of your or my preferences on the matter. For me it is preferable that they contribute to and use a common open source core that other open source software can take advantage of and build ontop of (ex. rekonq building ontop of Webkit), than that they go off and create their own proprietary core which then helps nobody but themselves. One would hope that eventually they would see the light and open source their code but it's unnecessary as long as they are at least sharing a common core with everyone else.

[Luke_Wolf]

1 min edit limit....

In short though
Open Source > Open Core > Full Proprietary

With the existence of Proprietary software held as a simple reality (A reasonable assumption in the current system), what copy-left does is take software that could be here:

Open Source| Open Core | Full Proprietary
                 ^

and forces it to be here:

Open Source | Open Code | Full Proprietary
                                ^

[Luke_Wolf]

First off the complaint about people making a profit from your work and giving nothing back seems stupid. If you write a word processor or spread sheet programme, then numerous businesses can use it, make a profit from it and give nothing back. Criminals, Mafia the government of North Korea can use you software for profit, even for evil and give nothing back. Under the GPL Amazon can deploy open source software on thousands of server make billions of pounds create monopolies and all sorts of unhealthy market domination and manipulation, all without breaking the GPL. The NSA can freely use GPL software. Far from promoting freedom and protecting the ordinary individual against the rich and powerful individuals, corporations and governments, GPL actually encourages the move from the users owned devices to the server.

This ^ is actually a very salient point that I haven't heard or thought about before.

[tuubi]

This ^ is actually a very salient point that I haven't heard or thought about before.

Nothing salient about that confused mess. Expecting any software license to stop crime or unfair business practices is absurd. Those willing to ignore a legally binding license do not care exactly which license they're breaking. The Mafia does not care if the spreadsheet they use to add up their "protection" money happens to be developed under copyleft terms or not. The Amazon and NSA examples are just as misguided. It's as if Mr. Oliver was personally let down by his irrational expectation that the gpl could and should somehow fix all the world's social injustices.

How end-users (as opposed to developers) actually use or exploit the software has no relevance to the discussion whatsoever. The one point I do agree with is that expecting others to compensate you for your volunteer work is weird, as long as they respect the license.

[Luke_Wolf]

Nothing salient about that confused mess. Expecting any software license to stop crime or unfair business practices is absurd. Those willing to ignore a legally binding license do not care exactly which license they're breaking. The Mafia does not care if the spreadsheet they use to add up their "protection" money happens to be developed under copyleft terms or not. The Amazon and NSA examples are just as misguided. It's as if Mr. Oliver was personally let down by his irrational expectation that the gpl could and should somehow fix all the world's social injustices.

How end-users (as opposed to developers) actually use or exploit the software has no relevance to the discussion whatsoever. The one point I do agree with is that expecting others to compensate you for your volunteer work is weird, as long as they respect the license.

Well the point he's getting at which is actually rather interesting is, if we don't care what the user is doing with the software, why do people care so damn much about what the developers are doing with it?

[tuubi]

Well the point he's getting at which is actually rather interesting is, if we don't care what the user is doing with the software, why do people care so damn much about what the developers are doing with it?

Why would anyone choose a copyleft license if they weren't invested (even if not in the financial sense) in the continued development and betterment of their open source software project? Sharing code and ideas with other developers is usually the whole point. It seems quite natural to care if these developers respect the license.

I'm obviously taking a rather pragmatic view as I'm honestly not quite convinced by the more philosophical aspects of the free software crusade. Running a tiny software design business here in the relative backwaters of the western world for years has taught me that there's no single type of license to rule them all.

[Del_]

In short though
Open Source > Open Core > Full Proprietary

With the existence of Proprietary software held as a simple reality (A reasonable assumption in the current system)

On this we are in full agreement. I guess we also agree that the world is not a perfect place, and that human beings need some kind of common understanding to collaborate effectively. Anarchy has been tried and tested on numerous occasions, it typically exposes human beings ability of cruelty and self destruction.

This underlines why I believe copy-left is so successful. I believe it is all about the common understanding that the copy-left project is about making an open source code through a collaborative model. Copyright transfer agreements (with the possible exception of the fsf) tends to destroy this though. Permissive licensing sends out a very different signal to all developers. It signals that the intended usage of contributions is as part of a larger proprietary software.