Why I use GPL - Zed Shaw | Hacker News Reader

Why I use GPL - Zed Shaw

zedshaw.com

31 pointskracekumar14 comments

That post is strange regarding its use of licenses and implications, and also is probably some years old (it is hard to say, without a date / timestamp in it).

a) The GPL does not enforce "giving back" for server software, if that software is only running on servers but not provided for download. The Affero GPL [1] is meant to close this "gap".

b) Lamson 1.0, released almost two years ago [2], is actually licensed BSD/GPL, making the point of the post moot, unless it was written before the release.

[1] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-affero-gpl.en.html

[2] http://lamsonproject.org/blog/2010-07-07.html

It looks like the post is from 2009:

"That was in 2004. Five years ago."

That would also match with the later release date. Thanks for clarifying.

"Let me give you an idea of how advanced Mongrel was. Remember the “new” attack on Apache called Slowloris that was recently released? I actually predicted that attack, and wrote Mongrel so that it was resistant (as much as Ruby could let me). I called it the “trickle attack” and even demonstrated it. That was in 2004. Five years ago."

Zed needs a history lesson. David Filo at Yahoo! figured it out at least 4 years before Zed did, and patched FreeBSD to provide accept filters in release 4.0. They buffer the request at the kernel level so that the application stack doesn't even see the HTTP request until it's fully formed.

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=accept_filter&s...

Here's a variation I reported to Twisted in 2003: http://www.twistedmatrix.com/pipermail/twisted-python/2003-J... , and an updated version at http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.twisted/3628 .

I did not come up with that myself; I had read it elsewhere.

Is this essentially the same thing?

Zed wrote this a few years ago. None of my business, but I am curious if the dual license business model for Lamson before he extended the licensing options to include BSD.

I would like to see high profile developers like Zed and Chris Granger fund more projects using services like Kickstarter (as Chris did for Light Table). People who do useful work deserve to be paid for it, and this is one good approach for well known developers.

The guy must be damn sure about how cool his projects are, because there's a situation where your project is cool enough for company to use but they won't because of GPL. It would probably work with startups (they're flexible and in a hurry — they'll take the coolest thing around without a second thought), but it may not work with bigger companies. Quite contrary, I believe that big companies tend to use software licensed under BSD, though I have no personal experience with that.

I also want to express my gratitude for a different view of startups — I definitely never thought of them as a bunch of guys who would take as much open source software as possible but hide the fact, all in a name of perceived smartness, innovativeness and productivity.

Did you miss the part about dual-licensing, GPL and paying for non-GPL?

It worked out quite well for MySQL IIRC.

Dual-licensing works for MySQL but it may not work that well for smaller projects that are easier for company to re-implement from scratch. There's a possibility that GPL may be too high price for company to pay, and it's a price, too; you as a developer pay it when you choose GPL over BSD. The purpose of my previous comment was to point that out.

I don't understand what you're suggesting the downside here is. They might decide not to take my code, lock it up in a proprietary system and profit from it without me getting anything out of it? How am I harmed by them not doing all that?

If your code was used by some company you may use that fact on the interview or to promote your project further, but if you are using GPL you are risking the chance to do so.

This is a piece of software that they aren't willing to pay for (remember, you're offering it under a proprietary license as well) — how likely do you think it is to help you if they silently use your code and don't tell anyone?

You can't even "use it on the interview"†, because they just took it silently and didn't tell you they're using it.

† Incidentally, I hope never to interview with this hypothetical company that isn't willing to pay for value-providing software but would find the fact that I gave it away for free highly compelling.

>...there's a situation where your project is cool enough for company to use but they won't because of GPL.

He obviously realizes that. From the article:

>I would actually rather nobody use my software than be in a situation where everyone is using my gear and nobody is admitting it.

Yes, he does. I wrote my comment to emphasize the other side of the coin, not to fill some gap that wasn't covered in the article. It must be kind of mistake here (I've read the posting guidelines but I'm still a newbie, thus more prone to errors), so I propose to finish the discussion.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com