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Isn't that a little rich, considering a lot of GNU software itself started as a reimplementation of proprietary UNIX applications under a different license.

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If you have a proprietary program, reimplementing it under a FOSS license is a good thing. If you have a copyleft program, reimplementing it under a license that allows proprietary modifications is a bad thing.

Why? You're allowed to build whatever you want, however you want? Why police people's licenses? Are they misrepresenting something, misleading people?

It's thanks to open source that you are allowed to build what whatever you want. You don't have to give back if you don't want to.

Besides the core aspect of your comment, you are aware that this entire subthread is about:

* GNU Coreutils: GPL licensed

* uutils: MIT licensed

right?

The MIT license is not only an Open Source license, but it's even a Free Software license according to the FSF itself.

So this is nitpicking of the 100th degree at this point.

Not really. It has to be possible in practise to make proprietary modifications, get them accepted into common use, somehow prevent other people just cloning them, and steal the momentum of the open source project.

If someone makes proprietary extensions to "ls", they are just going to be stuck maintaining a fork. There is no realistic threat here.

From the OpenBSD Copyright Policy (https://www.openbsd.org/policy.html) just for a different perspective from another FOSS project:

"While this may superficially look like a noble strategy, it is a condition that is typically unacceptable for commercial use of software. So in practice, it usually ends up hindering free sharing and reuse of code and ideas rather than encouraging it..."

  > it is a condition that is typically unacceptable for commercial use of software

whats the reason for that?

Because the GPL, specifically v3 is viral. The point being made in this statement is that the requirement to give back is potentially onerous for many commercial entities, and that this hinders open sharing rather than promoting it. It's a differing point of view. Notice that, unlike the majority of pro GPL comments, it doesn't use pejoratives or appeals to emotion to make it's point.

“Viral” is a term with a fairly pejorative emotional connotation and is not a very accurate way of describing copyleft.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_license#Criticism_of_t...

The original statement doesn’t use pejoratives. Viral is the best way that I can describe it, I suppose insidious is better, but that too could be considered a pejorative. I’m struggling to find a word because I view it negatively.

Maybe "self-propagating", or "self-preserving"? The term "insidious" would not be appropriate for sure, as it means "dangerous".

Self-preserving is the best. Thank you. I personally don't like self-propagating, when the truth is that it's free, but with a catch. Forcing people to do the right thing, even if the intent is good, is still forcing someone to do something the don't want to, or even can't.

I like the viral word personally, I see it positively as popular. Free software is pretty popular its so popular that even non free software is turned into "free beer" free software! ;) If its free and open source, free to use (legal or not) people will use it virally, like Windows was virally pirated because it was free, and linux is virally used in servers since they don't have to pay per core to Microsoft.

I don't see it as pejorative, its used positively in social media for popular. Making GPL licenses popular is good.

I find this claim hard to believe since Linux is GPL, and it's used commercially way more than OpenBSD is.

Linux is something of a special case, as the vast majority of the users can "use it" without thinking about the implications of the GPL. Because, for example, there's a specific exception for software that uses Linux syscalls, and that glibc is licensed LGPL.

That's not true for most uses of other GPL licensed libraries and software, where the license makes your code a "derivative work".

If you're just using Linux on your own servers, or writing userland software for it, then sure, the GPL is easy to comply with. But if you distribute hardware with Linux preinstalled on it, then you do have to provide all the source code. How is this meaningfully different from basic userland tools?

Not that I'm agreeing with them, but many companies are wary of sharing their code because it opens up a path to replicate their services without paying for them. Vendors that distribute devices with Linux, though, are able to avoid that because the hardware is often still proprietary. Binary blobs still exist despite the Linux GPL license too. Even in projects that seem lauded by the "open source" community, like the Rpi.

I just don't think Linux is a great example to explain to a company why they should be fine with licensing their software under the GPL. It's not a good direct comparison in most cases.

Of course, Linux is special case, KHTML/WebKit/Blink is special case, Android is special case, etc. Blame special cases.

? Android is, AFAIK, completely permissively licensed except for the kernel, and KHTML/WebKit/Blink are BSD/LGPL; what would be special about them in this context?

KHTML/Webkit/Blink are all LGPL and/or BSD, which is specifically not restrictive for linking to.

Many people assume all of Linux is GPL. I say "special case" because not everyone knows the most-linked-to stuff isn't.

> used commercially way more

Depends by what metric and the definition of "commercially". I'm not sure this is the case for (physical) devices sold with software pre-installed.

I mainly see BSD licensed binaries on network appliances (routers, firewalls and other security appliances), apple hardware, automotive headunits, ...

There are some that are Linux based. F5 load balancers is a good example. I don't know what strategy they use to avoid it, but as far as I know, you can't replicate your own F5 with whatever GPL compliance code releases they do.

But, for some manufacturers, you can. Synology is a good example...see Xpenology.

"good" according to whom?

How is that assertion not a double standard?

Not if you dust out your history books :-)

"Were all Unix commands re-written in Linux?"' https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/85189/were-all-unix...

"Is the GNU Coreutils copied from Unix?" https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/81302/is-the-gnu-co...

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but both of your links seem to disagree with you.

The point is they re-implemented Posix, an open standard. Not copied a proprietary system.

Yeah, but POSIX was just codifying the proprietary UNIX standards. UNIX got bootlegged in a era where license enforcement wasn't strict because people didn't even know what licenses where. These days UNIX would have been a strictly proprietary AT&T product, from day 1.

Heck, POSIX stands for Portable Operating System (POS) + IX because X is a cool letter and IX because POSIX is cooler than POSIX plus, you know, UNIX.

MQTT was created by IBM

https://mqtt.org/

If I implement it in Rust now, dont think I will be accused of copying IBM?

Would Ecmascript[1] be another example?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECMAScript#History

The GNU project chose a much better license, which lended itself towards free use and further public development continuing. The Rust re-implementation uses what many - including the FSF and myself - consider to be an inferior license with respect to public interest. So it's going back a step from the direction of the GNU project.

Personally, most of the software I write is under a 3-BSD or MIT license - unfortunately. I wish I were in a position to write more GPL code.

I think the insinuation is more that the GNU project probably was also breaking license terms in order to do the rewrites. (Not commenting on the veracity of that claim though)

I don't think anyone is accusing either project of breaking license terms. In fact, I find the GP's argument tenuous, since the Kelling says "you're making less free coreutils than their predecessors" and the GP says "that's rich, considering that the original coreutils were more free than their predecessors".

That would be quite a feat, given that the proprietary unices didn't have source available for their utils. Where would the GNU project get it?

While I don't for a moment believe that they were ripping off code or otherwise violating copyright, unix source code wasn't that hard to get if you wanted it; sure, it wasn't freely available on the net, but plenty of companies, research groups, and even schools were working with it.

I really don't get why you're being downvote. Your explanation is perfectly rational and demonstrates a political stance. People can disagree with it but its expression is most definitely correct.

GNU coreutils are protected against a hypothetical proprietary ownership and I value that protection a lot.

The issue isn't the FSF's opinion on this matter, it's that it is incredibly childish of them to go voice that opinion on other projects' issue trackers. You don't go to someone else's house to tell them their beliefs are wrong.

they are rewriting GNU project under a less free license. i find it pretty funny that they did do that :)

Yeah stop with that, MIT/BSD/ISC is definitely more free then GNU...you know in the normal world "less restrictions = more freedom" just someone from the FSF would think otherwise.

More free for developers, not users. MIT code can be used in a closed source system a lot easier than a GPL one can. Developers love to talk about the freedoms they have with licenses, while ignoring that the whole point of the GPL family is disregarding that in favor of the user's rights.

Being a user of BSD if feel more free too. Know why? Because i can do nearly everything with it, and i don't even need a Lawyer to read and understand the license.

That makes no sense. You can still, as a user, do whatever you want with GPL software. The GPL is long because it has to be in order to protect the user's rights; It's an actual contract between the source provider and anyone who uses it. It also doesn't require a lawyer to read. Just sit down for 10 minutes and read it yourself; It's pretty straightforward.

Even as a user, you cannot do "whatever you want" with GPL software. Specifically, you can't distribute the GPL unless you also adhere to the GPL's requirements for distribution. (It's even worse for the LGPL variant, because that imposes requirements on how the software is built in the first place.)

What counts as a "distribution"? Well, that's a contract interpretation question, and if you are not asking that question of a lawyer, then you have a fool for a client. I suspect that there's actually a lot of technical GPL violations going on, but since the open source community is not litigious in general, there's little realization of those violations and even less care that those are going on.

Personally, I am not a fan of the GPL licenses for this reason. If you are trying to use legal contracts to enforce norms, it is disingenuous to argue that you don't need lawyers to be involved. Using social contracts and pressure instead would truly allow everybody to avoid lawyers and achieve much the same goals.

>It's pretty straightforward.

Really?

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html

>It's an actual contract between the source provider and anyone who uses it.

I don't want a contract, especially NOT with the FSF and their shady GPLv3 introduction...not thanks. If i want a contract i go to Oracle.

> More free for developers, not users.

I protest this dichotomy. But even beyond the dichotomy, you're atomizing in the way you discuss people. A community or large group of users have among them both developers and resources to recruit developers to further their collective needs. When MIT/BSD-licensed software ends up being developed beyond the original freely-accessible base within commercial entities, as in:

> MIT code can be used in a closed source system a lot easier than a GPL one can.

then those communities and groups are stuck with a thorn in their side they can't remove, which warps technical fields to accommodate it and is utterly frustrating.

This has been my personal experience in more than one field. As an example it's like that with the CUDA ecosystem for GPU use, much of it is closed and hidden while employing technologies like LLVM, and likely a lot of other FOSS and free academic publications regarding effective computing. I really wish their choice was either much crappier closed-source commercial stuff, or, say, a GPL'ed LLVM, and having their drivers and user-mode toolchains open. If they were to choose the latter, than great; if they were to choose the former, than they would be at a competitive disadvantage and hopefully others (e.g. AMD) would use that to gain more traction with GPL'ed software. I'm not saying that this would _necessarily_ happen, but it might very well.

> Developers love to talk about the freedoms they have with licenses, while ignoring that the whole point of the GPL family is disregarding that in favor of the user's rights.

I think you meant MIT and BSD? Anyway, the point of the GPL and Free Software (using FSF/RMS terms) is to get enough software to have GPL-style license that it becomes unreasonable to license software any other way, with the end result being that essentially all released software will be free for use, dissemination and modification and we will be able to forget about software licenses altogether since people will stop trying to limit that and what is now the GPL would essentially be the legal default.

Why can't a company just use GPL code, if I started a company that used linux servers, I could contribute 0 code and get all the benefits.

:) it is less free in a sense that unlike MIT GNU ensures continuation of free software. for me if someone really cares about free software then choosing MIT is like being a hippy handing out flowers hoping that the world is nice

>for me if someone really cares about free software then choosing MIT is like being a hippy handing out flowers hoping that the world is nice.

I like that, and i like free flovers. What i don't like are lawyers and stuff like the GPLv3, AGPL and all the licenses who try to put some political view on me.

Look it's like that. If you fork and close down a BSD/MIT code base, you loose all those devs (no free flowers from hippies anymore), instead you have to pay your own dev's, juniper can sing a song about that problem. So without any pressure, just with the logic of economy you try to stay as near as possible to the free codes base with your product (and integrate your changes), netflix can sing a song about that too.

Continuation has nothing todo with the license but with interest of developers see -> Hurd

what the FSF hopes for is that if there is enough GPL-type licensed critical software which self-perpetuates free software then free software will become by far the most dominant paradigm. in this sense it is really not hard to see why the license change in the rust rewrite of GNU coreutils is going to become the most dominant issue for FSF. screaming about technical merrits makes no sense

>Continuation has nothing todo with the license but with interest of developers see -> Hurd

i think developer interest has far more to do with technical viablity of a project than license choice. besides, as in all software some projects fail, some succeed, and some are just beginning

>why the license change in the rust rewrite of GNU coreutils is going to become the most dominant issue for FSF

Why is that a problem? There was already toybox (BSD), muslc (MIT), llvm (UIUC (BSD-style)). The dominant issue the FSF has is that they are no technically interested anymore but politically, and so no one need's them, no one wants them.

And listening to Stallman is really boring, the last time he was kind of self-aware was with the Religion of Emacs, since then just repetition and being rude to interviewers and trying to trick devs (Linus and the GPLv3)

BTW: I am NOT talking about the GNU project, just the FSF

>Why is that a problem?

simple. imagine: you value free software; you invest a lot of effort to make a really important critical piece of software; you license it under MIT; some company uses your software as a critical component, develops a lot of software on top of it, keeps the source closed, makes massive profit for itself, dominates the market and becomes a monopoly, all thanks to your critical component.

now the question is: are you pissed off? if you are not, choose MIT. if you are pissed off choose a self-perpetuating copyleft license

>all thanks to your critical component

Like to give a real world example for that? Or is it just theory?

sure. i know hedgefunds and banks that critically relly on a lot of permissive-licensed software and develop heavily on that code base. conversely, they wouldn't touch copyleft software with a 10 ft pole

one of the other posters also mentioned CUDA's reliance on LLVM. i think that is a very good example also

So you think they would choose GPL-Code because that one component is so immensely good that you can take over the world?

take the example of nvidia and their use of llvm in nvcc[0]. if llvm used a copyleft license, nvidia would either need to invest into an effort to replace llvm (a huge undertaking), or have cuda released under a free license. given the importance of cuda in parallel data computation, as well as nvidia's monopoly in the machine learning community, i think a copyleft license would have made a world of difference

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_CUDA_Compiler

>nvidia would either need to invest into an effort to replace llvm

No they would buy a license for one of the hundreds proprietary compilers, and you will eat their dogfood like you do today with cuda itself.

>or have cuda released under a free license.

Dreamer...it's nvidia....you know the ones with the "driver" that runs with the GPLv2 kernel.

> Dreamer ...

i thought you said you are a hippy

anyway at this point everything becomes hypothetical. however what is certain is that copyleft licenses could make life much more difficult for monopoly companies than permissive licenses, and i am ok with that, just as i am ok with FSF being agressive about matters pertaining to software freedom. could they have a better and more effective approach, i dont know. maybe. i am not involved in any shape or form with them, but i guess that right now they have my support

I said i like free flowers...flowers without a contract attached to it.

FSF can be as aggressive as they want, they will not change anything...quite the opposite actually.

> they will not change anything

they exist for over 35 years now. are you sure they haven't achieved anything? :)

MIT is not a less free license than GPL. They're both equally completely free.

yeah i wasn't being very serious by saying it is "less free". but it is funny that so many people are so touchy about this

MIT license basically allows you to do whatever you want. however it should be well noted that if you really belive in software freedom and write your code for sake of furthering free software, choosing MIT is a naive choice since you let any derivates of your work to be closed source

How can you be so certain they're not interested in knowing what the consequences of their chosen license are? By your logic, It would be childish to ring your bell and point out you have a water leak. I'm glad my neighbors don't think like that.

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