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Comment by jedsmith | Hacker News Reader

> Don't like the terms of an author's library? Go write your own then.

I really hate this attitude. Isn't one of the advantages of the Internet bringing developers together to work on things? Can't we put our collective capabilities toward improving things instead of rewriting them from scratch simply because they're not our favorite license or favorite language? Gnote springs to mind.

Edit: Wow, three downvotes within 30 seconds for appealing to working together instead of segregating computing into those who agree with your license and those who do not. This comment wasn't even about the GPL, it was about the OP's demonstrated attitude (and, importantly, not about the OP himself). If you're voting me down, at least man up and disagree with me with prose. It's things like this that make me wonder why I spend so much time contributing to HN.

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cosgroveb: Don't like the terms of an author's library? Go write your own then.

jedsmith: I really hate this attitude. Isn't the point of the Internet to bring developers together to work on things? Can't we put our collective capabilities toward improving things instead of rewriting them from scratch simply because they're not our favorite license or favorite language? Gnote springs to mind.

I really can't see what this has to do with cosgroveb's comment, which is saying that a GPL program is not taking anything at all away. When you quote "Don't like .. your own then.", I think you are taking it out of context. The whole paragraph reads:

cosgroveb: How does that take away anyone's freedom? Don't like the terms of an author's library? Go write your own then.

I take this to mean that if you can't use code under the GPL license, you are exactly in the same situation as if the code is unavailable, and you are not worse off. So the GPL code has taken nothing away.

Firstly, thank you for taking the time to disagree with something in a manner that I can read. I voted you up just for that.

> I think you are taking it out of context.

Edit: Oh, okay, on third read I see what you mean. I stand by my comment, though: sure, he says that the license doesn't take away your freedom, and implies that since you're free to rewrite your own, you are still free. How is that freedom to do what you will with the software? That's the rub. I'm free to change careers to taxidermist, too, but that's irrelevant to the issue at hand.

The issue here is you disagree with FSF over the meaning of the word free. Don't worry this is a common occurrence! To RMS free means freedom to use software without violating his "golden rule." RMS believes that if a neighbor wants to use software you are using you should be able to give it to him. Just as you would neighborly share flour or a rake.

I am not going to debate RMSs ethical philosophy, I just want to point out that this is the freedom GPL gives you. If you use GPL software you will never be in the position where you can't share it with you neighbor. If some wants to use it in proprietary software they cannot, because if they did they would be unable to then share it with their neighbor. Thus, the GPL is consistent with RMSs ethical stance.

However, as you have pointed out definitions of free and freedom vary. For you GPL does not free but rather chains you up; virally spreading to other work you would like to keep private. Thus, you are prevented from using GPL software and feel less free.

Freedom is a tricky word.

> If some wants to use it in proprietary software they cannot, because if they did they would be unable to then share it with their neighbor.

So he isn't free to do what he wishes with the software.

Free is one of the most overloaded words in the English language, and I know that at least some of the Free Software movement agrees due to the prevalence of libre software (as if switching to French somehow makes it more correct).

You can't have half freedom -- there is no ambiguity. Either you are free to do what you will with what is given to you, or you are not. There is no free with restrictions; that's called a catch.

To be clear, too, what the FSF says and what those who subscribe to the belief say are often two different things, as evidenced in other places in this thread. What pains me the most is that any criticism of the GPL is automatically interpreted as trolling.

The problem is people attack the GPL hold up the BSD as if it's without restrictions. But it is (granted, the restrictions are fairly simple to address, their are restrictions places on you, and if you don't follow them, you are in the same boat as the GPL).

> There is no free with restrictions

In this case, the only option is to write it yourself, as even things put into the public domain can have a catch (Actually, I think their is a license that basically does with you'd think putting something into the pubic domain does, I just forget the name).

So basically...

> So he isn't free to do what he wishes with the software.

This is true of pretty much all licensed code, including BSD.

> (Actually, I think their is a license that basically does with you'd think putting something into the pubic domain does, I just forget the name).

CC0? https://creativecommons.org/choose/zero/

> This is true of pretty much all licensed code, including BSD.

Couldn't agree more.

Don't call it Free, and don't try to associate Free with the GPL at the expense of everything else (which seems to be the push). Libre too. Because if anything, the GPL is more restrictive than alternative licenses.

That's my gripe.

Sometimes I almost feel like Stallman intentionally used the word 'free' in the license to confuse people. Many people think that it means you can do whatever you want with it and get in legal trouble down the line. This is why I won't use any GPLd libraries in any of my projects. It's too risky.

I believe it's: http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/ though I don't really remember.

> the GPL is more restrictive than alternative licenses.

So, you don't like the GPL. That's fair. However, not everyone has the same goals as you.

Your main contention at the start, if I understood you correct, was that, we should be sharing and not repeating ourselves. I write something, publish it, share it, and you should be able to use it for your project without having to worry about licenses. And you see that as more free then with licenses that have arduous restrictions, like the GPL (Because, while the BSD does have restrictions, they are fairly easy to overcome). If I'm wrong with your overall view here, apologies.

Essentially, you want what people who use the GPL want: a community of sharing. You want it via choice, GPL users want it enforced. And that's where GPL users see the value in a license: they help push your agenda. So while BSD gives other people more freedom to do what they want with the code, it does nothing directly to push people toward that way of thinking.

My personal opinion is it's all fairly annoying. I just want to program. =)

> as even things put into the public domain can have a catch

This is, by definition, untrue: If something is in the public domain, it is without an owner. It is unowned. Anybody can do anything they want with it, including using it in proprietary software for money and passing it off as their own work. (Assuming nobody is enforcing a code that bans plagiarism, which is totally orthogonal to copyright.)

If there is a catch, then the work is not in the public domain at all. Being owned by someone but released under a liberal license does not put something into the public domain, as the work is still under copyright.

In short: Public domain vs. copyrighted is a binary distinction. 'Freedom' is a continuum on multiple axes.

It's my understanding that in the past, things have lapsed into the public domain as copyright expired. However, laws changed, and these public domain items were put back under copyright protection. I cannot remember where I read it, or under what context.

That being said, what I said was, afaik, incorrect. If something is specially put into the public domain, it's there. The things I read about weren't explicitly put into the public domain by the copyright owner. They just fell out of copyright.

My apologies.

The switch to is arguably good because in French there are two words that map to the English free --- libre = free as in speech, gratis = free as in beer. So libre is less overloaded than free, making it less ambiguous.

Citation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratis_versus_Libre

I'm sorry, but I believe gratuit is the French word, not gratis.

>> If some wants to use it in proprietary software they cannot, because if they did they would be unable to then share it with their neighbor.

> So he isn't free to do what he wishes with the software.

This is a common misconception with the GPL: you are actually allowed to use it together with proprietary software, including using it "in" proprietary software, as long as you use it, yourself. You just cannot distribute the combined software.

As a result, the GPL improves your freedom as a user, but may encroach on your value-added-reseller freedoms. This is per design - the GPL allows the original author(s) of the software to limit the value that other people who do not own it can derive from selling it.

This is something that is considered perfectly normal with other software - no one would expect to be able to use Microsoft Windows, or Oracle's database, in his proprietary software in the sense of "bundling it without giving Microsoft, or Oracle, anything in return".

Since we live in the real world, where freedoms of different people may be mutually exclusive, ensuring the freedom of the user in all possible cases means to limit the freedom of the value-added-reseller in some of the possible cases. Complaining about this is a bit like saying that public libraries are limiting your freedom because you cannot sell the books you borrow from them.

You are overloading "free" too.

You exist. You can make choices. You can act. In that sense, you are free, until you're dead. You can do whatever you want with software.

In a more practical sense, if you want to redistribute GPL-licensed software, you aren't free from the restriction of the software's license in a legal sense, because the license is your only legal means to redistribute the software.

When are you ever free to do what you wish with software? Answer, when it's your original work... and you don't violate software patents, even the ones you never heard of... and it's not export controlled or you're not exporting it... and its main purpose is not to induce copyright infringement (we are losing that one in the courts today, sad but true)... and you are not using the software to commit other crimes... AND SO ON.

Get real, there are all kinds of legal restrictions on your ability to "do what you wish" with software, even public domain software. Some of them even make sense.

It might be more accurate to call it "freed" software. The goal of the GPL is to uncage domesticated software and let it roam wild forever, never collared again. The people who distribute software in this fashion won't let you put it back in the zoo.

And again, FSF is not saying that users are free to do what they want. You are not free, according to them. They say that software is free, in the sense of the software freedoms. That sentence essentially would only parse to $0 before Stallman came along.

Am I the only person to notice the parallels between GPL and government ? BSD-style licenses can be compared to anarchism. Everyone can do what he wants. I haven't heard about anarchism producing nice societies except on small scale.*

However, a lot of people don't think a community without rules is a healthy or safe one. Freedom of one person ends where freedom of another person starts. So we sacrifice some freedom by agreeing to comply with the law. Law limits people, sure, but few argue it shouldn't exist. Only parts of it are debated (the implementation).

I think sacrificing some software rights GPL-style is good in the long term ! "I want to have the code for myself" vs "Everyone should have the code". GPL is just the more altruistic license. Not all restrictions are pointless just like we probably all agree law is beneficial for society at large. We should spend more time thinking what are the results of GPL restrictions, not automatically wave it away "it's a restriction, therefore it's wrong".

* I would really like to know some examples of successful anarchistic communities. The bigger, the better. You can make anything work on small scale.

Anarchism means 'without rulers' not 'without rules'. If you really want to grade licenses on how anarchist they are, the GPL is obviously more conducive to a world without rulers than BSD-style licenses.

For a semi anarchist society on a large scale, check out Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War. This was anarchism in the original sense of the word though, and not in the recent US sense of the word (US liberterians/anarcho-capitalists seems to long for a return to something akin to feudalism rather than freedom in my opinion).

The point of the GPL is to ensure future collaborative development is possible with anyone who has the software. It exists because of people taking software and incorporating it into proprietary programs that force others to reinvent the wheel when unnecessary.

Essentially I agree with you that we are best served by putting our capabilities towards improvment and the goals of the GPL align directly with protecting that idea.

That reads a bit like "isn't the point of newspapers to distribute solutions to crossword puzzles easily?", to me.

Not trying to say that I think "the point of the Internet" is news distribution; rather that claiming that there is a single "point" to something like the Internet is wholly non-sensical, to me. It just does not compute.

And if I write and publish some code, it should be up to me what license I want to use. If other people are jealous or think it's wasteful that they can't do as they please with something I created, that really isn't my problem.

It was a poor choice of word. I agree, and have revised my remark.

> Isn't one of the advantages of the Internet bringing developers together to work on things? Can't we put our collective capabilities toward improving things instead of rewriting them from scratch simply because they're not our favorite license or favorite language?

Well, that is pretty much the purpose of GPL, isn't it. It sets up a co-operative rule: if you want to gain from GPL software, then you must give something back, and that is to let other people gain from your additions. It is better to co-operate, and GPL reifies that instinct into a legal form to give it a bit more strength.

Not exactly. He may gain from the use of the GPL and give nothing back if he doesn't pass along his software based on GPL software. In that sense, the focus of the GPL is not the upstream developer, but the downstream user.

That's more or less what happened at the start of WebKit. Apple got KHTML, changed a lot of its inhards and published the whole thing back when Safari was launched. A lot of KHTML developers complained Apple's code was very Mac-specific and a pain to integrate back into KHTML.

Ok, let's contrast several options and see where the freedom lies:

First, the GPL software. It's copyrighted, but you can use it in spite of that if you follow the rules of the GPL. If not, then you have to obey copyright law.

Second, proprietary software. This is copyrighted, and when you use it you usually have to agree to a contract and pay money for it. If you don't follow the contract, then it's copyrighted and you can't use it.

Third, you write the software yourself. Well, you wrote it. It's copyrighted, but since YOU own the copyright, you get to decide what you use it in! The best, most free deal of them all, right?

Basically if you don't like dealing with other people owning the copyrights, the ONLY option is to make it yourself.

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