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Comment by jwr | Hacker News Reader

I'm genuinely curious — if I understand you correctly, you consider a "permissive license" (such as BSD or MIT) to be inferior: less community-friendly, less "free". Why?

The reason I ask is because I think the opposite is the case: what you call "permissive licenses" give me freedom to do whatever I want, while GPL, especially v3, is very restrictive as to what it allows me to do.

Please, I do not want to discuss the merits of each approach, I would just like to understand the point of view, especially the seemingly conflicting uses of the words "free" and "permissive".

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"Permissive" licenses like MIT and BSD literally permit you do more things with the software. In particular, it is not legal to combine GPL software with GPL-incompatible software (e.g. anything proprietary) and redistribute the result. This is why we cannot distribute a version of Julia pre-built with Intel's MKL even though we have MKL developer licenses that were generously donated by Intel. The fact that we use some GPL libraries makes the combination illegal to distribute. With permissive licenses like MIT and BSD, that isn't a problem.

In terms of choosing a license for an open source project, I think you should choose the most permissive license that will sufficiently encourage people not to make proprietary forks. The GPL was designed on the premise that it would be necessary to legally force people to contribute changes back, but the success of so many projects with MIT and BSD licenses shows this often isn't necessary. I think the choice depends on how "infrastructurey" or "producty" the project is. For projects like libraries, compilers or programming languages, it turns out that proprietary forks don't happen because of simple economics. Why would anyone pay for a forked proprietary version of a library when the original open source project is available? And if no one wants to directly pay for a forked version of some library, why would any company bother maintaining a fork when they can just contribute their improvements back and let the open source community maintain them for free?

With a self-contained product like Light Table, on the other hand, there's a very real danger that some company could come along, fork the code base, make a bunch of improvements and start selling their version. Using a viral open source license like the GPL makes this illegal, ensuring that only the original author can sell forks of the product.

tl;dr – GPLv3 is a great choice of license for Light Table because it is a product, but it's overkill for most open source projects which provide much lower level functionality.

I was pondering what the key psychological difference between "product" and "infrastructure" is – why are people willing to pay for one and not for the other? I'm not sure, but I think that for products polish is paramount, whereas for infrastructure, maintainability is paramount. Proprietary software is a nightmare for installation, deployability and maintenance, whereas open source is great. This is why open source has won the hearts and minds of people who build and deploy websites and other computing systems everywhere while companies producing polished products still rule the desktop.

> The GPL was designed on the premise that it would be necessary to legally force people to contribute changes back

This is the rationale Linus gives for using GPL: Wanting to let people use your stuff while requiring them to give you access to any modifications. However, Richard Stallman (who wrote the GPL) has been very explicit that it is not the premise behind the license and that he disagrees with Linus on that point.

The premise behind GPL is to promote freedom[1]. In short, to ensure that the user always has complete control over the software they run. GPL ensures these freedoms, while permissive licenses that allow distribution of derivative binaries without sources do not.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

The argument that software that you're not allowed to use in certain ways is somehow more free just doesn't pass the sniff test for me. RMS's rationale is very much an "ends justify the means" argument: it takes away immediate freedoms to promote freedom at large. My point is that for many kinds of software the means of imposing legal restrictions simply isn't necessary to achieve the same ends – the freedom of the software maintains itself just fine for technical rather than legal reasons.

GPL ensures that your fork's users get the same freedom to use the software that you get from the original/base... If you don't like the license, don't use it. There are plenty of people that don't use any commercial software if they can avoid it.

> GPL ensures that your fork's users get the same freedom to use the software that you get from the original/base...

That phrasing presumes that the existence of a fork is not determined by the license terms.

GPL guarantees that the would-be users of a fork that would have been made by someone not interested in (or able to, because of conflicting requirements necessary to actually produce the fork in question) providing Free software on the particular terms in the version of the GPL used by the particular upstream provider on which the putative fork would depend get nothing at all.

Well, the way I understand RMS's fomulation of the 4 basic freedoms is that the right to keep your code secret is a freedom of the individual, not of the software, because no one can enjoy software that they couldn't have had if that right hadn't been granted. On the other hand, removing this right "frees" the software. You see, the FSF is all about "free software", not free people. Only indirectly do the people benefit from the software being free.

More practically, history has shown us that the GPL is necessary in order to ensure that companies don't short the community, suddenly improve everything and leave us with 99% of people using the proprietary fork. To illustrate my point, the clearest example (and the only large one) is the free distributions of BSD, mainly used by companies developing proprietary forks for it and contributing back very little. On the other side is Linux, used by companies for its freedom, security and reliability. The companies using it contribute back because they have to, continually making it stronger and always remaining free (unlike BSD, which can have many proprietary and untrusted libraries which cannot be used with security or reliability in mind). Linux is therefore getting larger only thanks to the GPL and its strong enforcement.

And this example can be applied to the entire copyleft vs permissive license debate, showing how software being free benefits the people more than people being free.

While it doesn't really changes the conclusions, you're a bit off the mark.

The FSF is about free people. Free software is just a mean, and they will use whatever licenses they think promotes freedom the most. That's why the GNU C standard library is in LGPL: the GPL itself would have prevented GCC from becoming popular, resulting in less freedom for the people. Also, looking at the history of GCC and the Hurd kernel, you can see they don't limit themselves to licenses.

You seem to imply that the GPL forbids you to keep your code secret. It doesn't. The right for private modification is preserved by the GPL. Only public modifications must be distributed in source form.

Companies don't contribute back to Linux because they have to. First, it's often more cost-effective to push changes upstream than maintaining them yourself. Second, monetizing private changes with GPL software is very very hard when the main distribution channel is gratis. Third people like to be good citizen. If I do changes for my company, and my company cannot possibly monetize the secrecy of those changes, why not contribute back?

If people and companies were forced to contribute back changes, they probably wouldn't use the software in the first place.

Now yeah, Linux is indeed larger than BSD thanks to the GPL.

you're not allowed to use in certain ways

What ways would those be? In what way does refusing to contribute the source code to your modifications qualify as using the software in certain ways?

> What ways would those be?

In the case of GPLv3, the development of software for hardware devices that are tamperproofed -- unless those devices are intended for "business" rather than "consumer" markets. [1]

The GPLv3 restricts the features of products made with software licensed under it based on how the products are intended to be used.

[1] "business" and "consumer" are rough descriptions, the actual definitions are more complicated and are contained in the GPLv3.

In the case of GPLv3, the development of software for hardware devices that are tamperproofed

This is not true. All the GPLv3 requires is for you to provide the means to modify or replace the software contained in the device. In the case of a tamper-proof device, this would entail providing the user with a master key or password which would allow her to unlock a developer mode of some kind.

Alternative, a tamperproofed device can be immune to any form of modification or replacement of the software contained in the device.

The issue GPL fixes is when device manufacturers exercise ownership control of the device after sale (ie, do things that the owner is not allowed/enabled to do). If the manufacturers can modify or replace the software, then the device owner must be able to do the same.

Alternative, a tamperproofed device can be immune to any form of modification or replacement of the software contained in the device.

Sure, you can develop one of those, as long as you subsequently provide a means to circumvent the tamper-proof mechanism. There is a critical semantic distinction that I think a lot of people are missing: the GPL does not restrict your ability to develop any sort of product you wish, it merely imposes additional obligations designed to ensure your users have the same freedom of development that you had when you developed the device.

> Sure, you can develop one of those, as long as you subsequently provide a means to circumvent the tamper-proof mechanism

No, you do not need to add a way to circumvent the tamper-proof mechanism. Thats the whole point of my comment.

Section 6, Conveying Non-Source Forms: "this requirement does not apply if neither you nor any third party retains the ability to install modified object code on the User Product (for example, the work has been installed in ROM)."

If the device is completely immune to software modifications, the anti-drm requirement of GPLv3 won't come into effect.

Last, a device which the manufacturer has ability to tamper with is not a device I would call tamper-proof. The attacker just need to get the developer key, so maybe Tamper-resistant is a better description?

If the device is completely immune to software modifications, the anti-drm requirement of GPLv3 won't come into effect.

Right, I had forgotten that. The reasoning behind it is that a non-programmable ROM chip might just as well be considered hardware for the purposes of programmability. Of course, the user might decap the chip and modify the code stored there with a scanning-tunneling microscope so the term tamper-proof in the absolute sense is probably not applicable to any device made by humans.

There is an old saying in computer security that the only secure program is one that is in a computer that is turned off, locked inside a safe, located in a bunker.

So maybe tamper-proof is not the best term, but at least physical security add something more than just a digital signature. The device owner has a much better chance to see if someone took apart the device, decapped the chip and then put it together. If I as the consumer want a tamper-proof device, I would go with physical security every time.

I guess you didn't read my post higher up. You cannot redistribute software that uses both GPL libraries and proprietary libraries. This is not an academic concern: we cannot distribute Julia with Intel's MKL even though we have developer licenses because we also use some GPL libraries (readline, FFTW) – the result would have to be GPL but we cannot provide the source for MKL because we don't have it. Lots of people would be very happy if they could download Julia and just flip a switch to choose between OpenBLAS and MKL; we can technically do that but we can't legally do it because of the GPL.

You cannot redistribute software that uses both GPL libraries and proprietary libraries.

But is redistribution a use? I would say no.

There is a way: acquire a GPL licensed copy of MKL.

Okay, you can't. Well, this is a textbook example of the GPL discouraging people from distributing proprietary software, and seeking free alternatives instead. This is its exact purpose.

I feel somewhat sorry for you, but this looks like a net win.

RMS's rationale is to protect the freedoms of the end users of the software: The freedom to run the software however you want, the freedom to modify the software however you want and the freedom to distribute your modifications of the software to whoever you want. The rationale is to ensure all users of GPL software have those freedoms.

The only restriction is that you cannot remove any of those freedoms from any users of your derivative works. That restriction is enforced by the license.

For example, if you create a derivative work, as long as you keep using it only yourself, you're not required to give the sources to your modifications to anyone (you are the only one using it and you have all the freedoms). However, if you wish to share your derivative work with someone else (which you always have the freedom to do), you cannot limit that user's freedoms. You cannot, for example, refuse to give them the source code because it would take away the user's freedom to modify the software. You also cannot attach a proprietary license that would remove the user's freedom to distribute copies of the software to whoever they want.

> The argument that software that you're not allowed to use in certain ways is somehow more free just doesn't pass the sniff test for me.

Intuition. If I may, you should learn to "shut up and multiply"[1]. The various costs and benefits (in terms of freedom) are pretty much nailed down: freedom at large is simply way bigger than immediate freedoms, for a simple reason: the only freedom the GPL doesn't give you, is the freedom to further restrict your users. (Contrary to how most comments are worded here,, you don't have to contribute back changes. You have to contribute back public changes.)

The end doesn't always justify the means, but sometimes it does.

[1]: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Shut_up_and_multiply

"You have to contribute back public changes."

Even that isn't strictly true - you only have to contribute forward public changes. Of course, since your users have the ability to share things, and since your changes are probably "out there" you might as well contribute them back at that point and doing so usually eases development.

Great post!

For those interested, GNU's Lesser General Public License (LGPL) was created to address these concerns.

It's not a particularly good one unless a static linking exception is included (dylibs on OS X are a pain for no serious benefit, it's not viable at all on Android or iOS).

LGPL is just fine in this regard – you can ship with and link against an LGPL library together with proprietary libraries because the combined result need not be under the LGPL. Whether you link dynamically or statically is irrelevant from a legal perspective.

Except that's not actually true. See, the point of the LGPL is not just that the user has access to the source, but that the user can modify the source and run it. Dynamic linking allows the user this freedom. Static linking generally does not, so unless you provide a way for users to delink your binary then you have to distribute the entire binary as LGPL.

The parent poster is talking about static linking against a third-party LGPL library, not your own library. In such a case, failing to provide the complete source code, or the original compilation dependencies (.o, .a, .so) and the build chain, is very much against the LGPL.

(Edit: I can't seem to quote the LGPL section 4, so here is a link to it: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html#section4)

There is a massive reluctance in the QT community over this currently -- people want to distribute single-binary applications, and they are told to be careful about doing it.

This exactly. And you straight-up can't do it on Android or iOS.

> ensuring that only the original author can sell forks of the product

I consider this the absolutely worst reason to use the GPL. Quite a few companies (large companies like MySQL/now Oracle or small ones like Macromates) require contributors to sign an agreement that allows the company to distribute the code under a different, proprietary license.

Doesn't this circumvent everything the GPL stands for? If I contribute to such a project, what guarantee do I have that the owner doesn't just distribute the software, including my contributions, under a proprietary license and stops making improvements public?

You don't. And that's why people stop contributing to such projects and forks are created (see MariaDB). But that's not really a fault of the GPL. You could require contributors to agree to whatever you want regardless of the license you choose. Contributing to proprietary software (often as a result of an employment) sure comes with requirements other than the code itself.

I didn't mean to imply that it was a good thing that the original author could sell forks but rather that it was better that only the original author(s) could. This is one of the reasons I'm not fond of CLAs (contributor license agreements) and why Julia doesn't have one – the code belongs to the whoever wrote it and we can't relicense their contributions any more than they can relicense ours.

>> ensuring that only the original author can sell forks of the product

> I consider this the absolutely worst reason to use the GPL.

I think rms is right here. Selling exceptions is a good thing. It's certainly no worse than selling proprietary forks of non-copyleft free software:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.html

Why would it be ok to take non-copyleft software like clang and make proprietary forks with it, but not ok to sell exceptions in order to fund copyleft software?

EDIT: As an Octave developer, I greatly respect how FFTW's copyleft is used, for example. Matlab buys a license exception to use FFTW. Octave gets FFTW under the terms of the GPLv3, just like Octave itself, which we in turn contribute back to everyone else. Matlab and Octave are both using the exact same library for Fourier tranforms.

I like this model. Everyone is paying one way or another, no freeloaders, just lots of freedom.

Thanks for the link, those were some good thoughts on the topic. However, I disagree with Stallman. (probably because I make a living from selling something that he might call a 'proprietary extensions')

I think the problem I have with the practice of selling exceptions is that it gives more rights to the owner. I feel that open source licenses should give equal rights to everyone. Dual licenses undermine that equality. I understand that people want to stay in control of their software, but for me the words 'free' and 'open' somehow imply 'equal rights for everyone'.

I see. You would like it if anyone could sell exceptions, not just the copyright holders. Hm. I'd have to think about this.

This is what permissive licenses allow for.

But they provide no hard incentive for someone to pay in order to benefit non-freely from free software. I prefer to attack the problem from the point of view of figuring out what proper revenue sharing would be with copyright assignments. What the MIT guys are doing with FFTW is doing is good. What Oracle is doing with MySQL and Virtualbox is bad.

I'll ask the FFTW guys what do they do about external contributions.

Also, thinking about it more, there is nothing wrong with copyright holders having extra rights as long as they do not use these rights abusively. After all, they did the work, so they deserve to be compensated for it. Nobody would dispute that. It is problematic if they use these extra rights to try to make people pay for proprietary software that is not otherwise available freely. This is what I dislike about what Oracle does.

> After all, they did the work, so they deserve to be compensated for it.

The problem is that many Open Source projects aren't created by an individual, or even a single company. Large projects have hundreds of contributors. If a project requires copyright assignment, all these contributors have fewer rights than the maintainer of the project.

If a project doesn't require coypright assignment, and uses a single license, all contributors have equal rights to the collective work.

> The problem is that many Open Source projects aren't created by an individual, or even a single company. Large projects have hundreds of contributors.

It's some sort of empirical law that almost all of the code in free projects is written by at most a handful of all contributors. If this law holds, and I can think of only few examples where it doesn't, it seem fair for the tiny minority to benefit the most from selling exceptions.

What the FSF does when requesting copyright is a two-way agreement. The FSF drafts a contract that promises that they will never use the copyright aassignment for creating non-free software. Similar contracts could be drafted that agree to share revenue proportionally and provides clauses for arbitration if this proportion is in dispute.

The GPL is meant to preserve equal rights for everyone other than the owner. A more permissive license allows freeloading, while the GPL does not.

I wasn't talking about GPL, but the combination GPL+copyright assignment.

> If I contribute to such a project, what guarantee do I have that the owner doesn't just distribute the software, including my contributions, under a proprietary license and stops making improvements public?

None. But if they do that then you can fork the latest free release and carry on improving that (e.g. OpenOffice -> LibreOffice), and from then on the company's version receives no more contributions from the community.

And it's unambiguously better for the principles of the GPL than the alternative of licensing the project under a BSD-style license and requiring contributions to be made under such a license, which allows not only the original maintainer but anybody whatsoever to do the thing you're objecting to.

Just to clarify - it's not illegal to sell GPL'd code, so long as you provide the source with the binary.

In fact, this is exactly what happened with Dosbox Turbo (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fishstix.d...). Dosbox is licensed under GPL, but here it's still being sold on Google Play. The author, fishstix, will send you the source if you've paid for the binary. This is completely legal.

https://sites.google.com/site/dosboxturbo/gpl

There were a couple of good discussions on this on SlashDot and VOGONS:

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/12/09/1721200/ask-slashdot-...

http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=34107

What happens if your software haves 2 binaries that talk to each other and one of them contains the GPL'd code; can I just give the code for that one or do I have to release the source of both?

It's a bit of a grey area, but the FAQ states that so long as they're kept separate, and they communicate "at arms length", they should be ok:

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLInProprietarySy...

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/110380/call-g...

Disclaimer: IANAL

Sooner or later, laws will get interpreted by a judge/jury. You question is equal to asking at what point a work should be considered a derivative work.

The answer is sadly quite blurry, and country specific. US law say something like: "A “derivative work” is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as ... abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted."

What would a judge say about two separate programs that talk to each other? A lot of people and companies has their opinion about it, but there is not much of case law in existence. All one can say is that the GPL author does not consider IPC level of communication to trigger a derivative work.

> Just to clarify - it's not illegal to sell GPL'd code, so long as you provide the source with the binary.

This is, however, not much of a business model, because the customers get the code under a license that allows them to redistribute it. Your first customer could buy the binary and then start selling it on Google Play themselves or give it away to everyone. Selling GPL code is pretty much just syntactic sugar over asking for donations.

True. It's not illegal, but it's not a particularly good business model!

You underestimate the friction there I think.

Conversely you could also argue "it's not much of a business model to sell apps on app stores, because Chinese companies will copy and resell your app".

In my experience, dealing with GPL software that was sold for $5k+ -- no one ever bothered doing so. And this was a PHP app, so it's not like distribution would be difficult for the would be pirate, nor was there any copy protection. It's just, for those sorts of products, no one ever bothered. I thought it was interesting.

Could you really classify someone who has a GPL enforced legal right to distribute your code a 'pirate' though?

I'm not sure you can really classify someone who has no right to distribute your code a 'pirate' - real pirates kill people. Your point stands, though, to be sure.

Real pirates often try as hard as possible not to kill people. Crew are usually worth more money alive. If you do kill someone, often you get fined by your captain and have to continue piracy to work off the debt.

So real pirates and music "pirates" share that it's not their goal to kill people. The latter still kill far fewer people, and the former still engage in much more violence.

Sorry, I'm just being horribly pedantic, but I suspect that music pirates kill far more people than real pirates, purely because so many people are technically music pirates, wheras the real pirates are very few in number and are also quite likely to be pirating the latest sea-shanties, so there is a lot of overlap.

Sure, to be more precise... "real pirates are disproportionately more likely to kill people by virtue of being real pirates; the same is not true of music pirates."

Eh, I couldn't be bothered thinking of the right word, but I'm sure you knew what I meant :)

Well, I could guess your sentiment even though I thought it was wrong.

It just made me think of those stupid 'you wouldn't steal a car' ads before movies and I thought I'd point out that they have every legal right to re-sell GPL code if they want.

My feeling is that the fairness effect comes into play strongly with open source distribution models. People are willing to play fairly (i.e. not re-distribute source code that's probably only a google search away anyway) when the author does the same.

Frans De Waal demonstrates an experiment with Capuchin Monkeys showing this effect in action.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v425/n6955/abs/nature01...

http://youtu.be/lKhAd0Tyny0

You can only strictly expect to sell the first copy. That's not a problem if selling the first copy covers your costs (contract work), but that can sometimes be a business model.

The QP framework does this through dual licencing, so they sell a commercial version of exactly the same code that they also release under GPL.

http://www.state-machine.com/licensing/faq.php

| Using a viral open source license like the GPL

A common misconception. Copyright law is viral.

> For projects like libraries, compilers or programming languages, it turns out that proprietary forks don't happen because of simple economics.

Apple's/NeXT's compilers were a high profile counterexample for many years.

Not the OP, but: the GPL is more restrictive, in that you are not free to reduce the software freedom of some other person (say, by turning it into a proprietary product). This is the perspective that considers GPL more 'free': though the software itself is more restricted, the freedom of all of the users of the software is protected.

Not everyone agrees with this position (I also am not interested in arguing about it) but this is my explanation of this point of view.

That's not accurate, since making a proprietary fork of, say, a BSD project, does not deprive anyone of the original project.

> Not the OP, but: the GPL is more restrictive, in that you are not free to reduce the software freedom of some other person (say, by turning it into a proprietary product).

No one's software freedom is reduced if I release a closed source derivative of a permissively-licensed open source product. All the rights that existed to the originally permissively-licensed product are intact.

Your users can't modify (and must pay for) your derivative.

> Your users can't modify (and must pay for) your derivative.

Which doesn't reduce their freedom, since they couldn't modify it -- or have the choice to pay for it and use it -- before I made the proprietary derivative.

The only "reduction in freedom" is based on the assumption that I would have made and shared a Free derivative if I did not have the choice to distribute a proprietary one, rather than either not making a derivative, or making a derivative for my own use and not providing it to others.

If you make a superior, closed-source derivative and users switch to it (or new users choose it instead), the proportion of people in the world who have the ability to modify the software they're using is smaller because of you. That is a reduction in software freedom.

I'm perfectly okay with this. The abysmal UX of desktop linux is proof that profit motive is necessary to drive the development of high-quality end user software when that development is difficult and/or not sexy.

But the only assumption required is that someone uses your product instead of the free alternative. He might have higher quality software, but he does have less software freedom.

> But the only assumption required is that someone uses your product instead of the free alternative. He might have higher quality software, but he does have less software freedom.

No, he has the same software freedom -- he has the freedom to choose to use and/or modify the free version and any free derivatives people have chosen to make, and the freedom to choose to use the non-free derivative, with perhaps less freedom to modify it.

If anything, he has less freedom when the creation of non-free derivatives is prohibited.

Once he becomes locked in to the non-free platform, his is not free to modify the platform he relies on and is instead required to migrate to a completely different platform in order to make (potentially small) modifications.

By this logic, OSX is free software because I have the freedom to choose Windows instead.

I'm not advocating for the prohibition of non-free derivatives, but the position that adoption of propriety software doesn't reduce software freedom is ridiculous.

You "by this logic..." is wrong because the post you are responding to doesn't make any argument about what is a piece of "free software", it discusses what the effects on software freedom are of the exercise of rights under particular free software licenses.

Freedom is the power to make choices rather than suffer external dictates. If a particular piece of free software exists, the existence of non-free derivatives doesn't reduce anyone's freedom, as they are free to choose the free software.

Speaking as a user of commercial software, and speaking as someone who prefers to enforce no copyright whatsoever over the code that he writes: STOP IT.

Stop this condescending, paternalistic treating me like an imbecile who can't make informed decisions about what kind of software to use. Stop acting like you can decide for me what rights I do and do not wish to exercise. Stop acting like the freedoms I want to have, including the freedom to enter into a lawful contract with a provider of proprietary software, don't count because they don't correspond with your values. Stop preaching that my entire system for deciding what software I do and do not want to install on my own computer is wrong because it doesn't match up with your ideology. Just stop being such a @$%^! ideologically-motivated authoritarian. And most of all, stop pretending that your authoritarianism is somehow defending my liberties.

I've got no problem with the GPL. If you want to maintain some sort of legal control over how others are allowed to use intellectual property that you create, you've every right to do so. That goes for releasing the source code with limitations on incorporating it into proprietary software every bit as much as it does for keeping it all proprietary in the first place. What I do have a problem with is you trying to tell me that I'm doing something wrong by choosing to be less controlling about the code I create. And what I have a problem with is you trying to tell me that my choice to place no restrictions whatsoever on what people do with the code I share is somehow stomping on somebody's rights. That includes allowing third parties to incorporate it into proprietary software. If you're uninterested in using that proprietary software, fine, it makes no difference to you whether the software existed or not. OTOH, people who are willing to pay for a proprietary modification might benefit from one existing, and in that case, more power to them - I don't care, and I don't see why 4th parties who don't have any basis for claiming ownership of the software should care.

And the author of that software doesn't need to use software that is GPL if they want to create a commercial product... they can use more permissive software (MIT etc), license commercial libraries, or write their own.

Yup. . . and as others have pointed out, there are some very good reasons why it makes sense to prefer the GPL over a more permissive license for a product light Light Table. I've got no argument there; if I were in the same circumstances I might have made the same choice.

What I'm bristling at is the line of thinking that says that I would somehow be harmed if Light Table's maintainers had chosen a license that permits proprietary derivatives.

ok, so perhaps you exercise some restraint with copyright. you're making the world an easier place to live in.

however, you are not representative of the commercial world. patents/copyright mean money, and no business with rational business leadership would choose not to shutdown competitors with patent disputes if possible, let alone not licence code in a restrictive fashion (i.e closed source, not free, etc.)

regardless, this isn't just about copyright and patent disputes. it's about trust. i'm using a computer right now, and i don't trust the hardware, or even the software i'm using. i have no way of verifying that it's doing exactly what it says it's doing, and that it's not doing something that i don't want it to.

which is weird, because.. i own it.

i get into my car, and there are (probably) hundreds and thousands of lines of code between me and the wheels. but i don't know what's going on really? maybe there's something wrong with ECU's management of fuel injection. maybe there's a bug in the ABS controller.

i can't trust any of the electronic equipment that i use. that's.. pretty bizarre, given that i am employed to work on these things, don't you think?

so what purpose does the viral clause in the GPL have? it's simple really -

lets say i program.. a home automation system (one that's not just.. terrible). i've got a few raspberry pi's, some arduinos, all talking over wifi/ethernet. control of things like lights, heating, doors, the whole thing. i've got an app i run on my phone, it's looking pretty slick. the source is a bit of a hack, probable buffer over/underflows, no comments, i only have the app on my iphone.. it's not perfect, but it works. and if it doesn't, i can fix it. the literal last thing i'm thinking about (i almost forgot to write about it, in fact), is the code licence. but fuck it, i can't be bothered. MIT looks simple enough, why the hell not.

a few months later, PicoHard (c) release something amazingly similar, but with more functionality. they have android apps, more polish, they have their own custom wall sockets that switch on and off the power.. you get the idea. it's on sale for a few thousand dollars. but hey, i don't care, i can do all that if i want to. i haven't lost anything, and this company hasn't infringed on my rights.

thousands of people have installed this system now, but nobody (except maybe the original author) knows really anything about how it works.

june 2013 happens, and suddenly there is a guy on TV saying that the government have almost certainly got backdoors in my software. now thousands of peoples rights are infringed.

so, no, please, may you STOP IT.

(the story was, of course, entirely fictional)

You made a false claim. Your choice of a closed-source license means no one can make derivatives of your work; if you had chosen a permissive license, your users would have greater software freedom. Hence, someone's software freedom is impeded.

Your ad hominem, however, is misdirected. I too oppose FSF's mission to value our craft at $0.00/hour. People have the right to compensation when others enjoy their creative output and if that impedes software freedom, so be it. Software freedom is a good thing but by no means an inalienable right.

I support open source because it's in our collective interests to subsidize the creation of freely available and high-quality platforms/tools with our earnings from proprietary software. I don't think we'd have those earnings without proprietary software, though.

Some people point to the Red Hat model. But most people don't need those kinds of guarantees. Third parties (i.e. every system administrator who's ever been responsible for at least one CentOS box and is not a Red Hat employee) can provide good enough support for drastically cheaper because they don't have the extra costs associated with developing the product.

Without proprietary software, it is in no one's interest to make software. (Well, maybe for personal amusement.) Not even line-of-business software, because you're just handing your competitors the ability to undercut your prices and push you out of the market (similar productivity boost, lower costs than you).

> someone's software freedom is impeded

Nobody's freedom is impeded. They didn't have the freedom to modify the code in the first place, since they didn't have the source code. Nothing they could do before has been taken away.

It's really intellectually dishonest to use this freedom and morality rhetoric when you're actually talking about compelling people to give away something they have created.

Not that I think it's conceptually a bad idea. I see nothing wrong with the idea of the GPL as a concept. A contract that says 'if you use this software, you agree to also give away any code you base on it' seems fine.

But I see no reason not to just call it 'permanenrly malleable' software or something like that.

It's the faulty rhetoric around freedom that is presented as a moral crusade that is a problem.

Someone switches to your product, or a new user chooses your product over the open-source alternative. The proportion of people who can modify their software decreases. That is a decrease in software freedom.

Not necessarily a bad thing (your product might be legitimately better), but it is a decrease in software freedom.

Freedom hasn't decreased at all. Those people have exactly the same choices as before. They can use the open-source alternative if they want to change the code. Merely 'using' a closed source product doesn't prohibit them from doing that.

Lots of people who would otherwise be Linux or BSD users instead use OSX. Consequently, they are not free to modify their operating systems where (had it not been for Apple) they would have been. Their freedom has been reduced voluntarily, but it has been reduced.

Forking FreeBSD is not remotely the same thing as forking OSX and you can't "just use the open-source alternative if they want to change the source code" of OSX.

Their freedom has not been reduced, as they are still free to choose an alternate, FOSS operating system if they prefer. Instead, they have access to more options than they otherwise would have, because it's highly unlikely that Apple would have expended so much effort in improving their OS, which is a competitive advantage for them, if they were forced to turn over all of that work to anyone who wanted it.

I really don't like the idea of licences which compel their users to act in a certain way. Freedom cuts both ways.

Software freedom has a specific meaning which necessarily encompasses freedom to study and modify the software you're running.

OSX users do not have this freedom. Hence, prevalence of OSX reduces software freedom. Ability to choose between OSX and alternatives is something but it is not software freedom.

That seems like a narrow definition of software freedom , but in that case I'd argue that the utility gained from software freedom is not as valuable to users as the incentive gained by developers for being able to distribute their software under a more permissive licence.

There's never a need to distribute software under a more permissive license except enabling distribution of software under less permissive licenses.

That's a very important need.

You're going to need to elaborate, for discussion to be useful.

So that people can make money out of software and incentivize its development.

If such an amount of software is being produced under the GPL that inability to borrow from that pool of work is significantly hampering proprietary development, I'd say it's plainly false that this is the only way to incentivize software development and quite possibly the case that it's not the best way.

So your absolutist position about "there's never a need..." translates into a dislike for paid software as a business model.

What business models for software do you prefer, and why?

You removed my qualification, attributed the result to me, and called it an absolute position. I would not make, with confidence, the statement "There is never a need to release under a more permissive license." To get there from what I said, you would need "There is never a need to distribute under a less permissive license." I do think this need is exaggerated, but labeling that "absolutist" strikes me as odd.

I have no objection to "paid software" as a business model, because the term is too broad. Paying someone to add a feature I want to a GPL project and release the result is, I think, not something anyone would object to. I have objection to "proprietary software" as a business model, because it collapses the value that the software can provide; I am not convinced that this objection is sufficient to say that proprietary software is always the wrong choice. I have more objection to proprietary software where, having paid, I cannot see the source and make changes (or pay others to make changes).

There are a number of alternatives for funding development of mass-market software that are more compatible with copyleft licenses (donations, threshold pledge models, consulting) and I'm currently working on an innovative project in this space.

That's why this rhetoric is dishonest. It's the use of this specialist meaning of the word freedom in a way which is opposite to it's conventional meaning.

If you stop using this misleading word, the whole GPL thing looks more reasonable, but also less like a moral crusade.

Not really. Freedom to modify your software is a kind of freedom which cannot exist when you are exercising your freedom to use proprietary software. Like many things in our world, it's a tradeoff.

This is doublespeak. You are conflating the words freedom and choice.

> OSX users do not have this freedom. Hence, prevalence of OSX reduces software freedom.

This doesn't follow. Like most arguments about proprietary software reducing, rather than not providing, software freedom, it seems to rest on the assumption that if proprietary software did not exist, it would be replaced use-for-use with Free software, that is, that license models have no impact on the creation or distribution of software.

Freedom has still not been reduced. This so-called gain in freedom of OSX users to modify the code has come at the expense of a corresponding loss of freedom of Apple to choose whether to release their code or not.

I make software, and I do not want people who use it, share it, or modify it to be under the threat of being sued. Legal violence is to me is near equal to physical violence, and thus a moral issue.

I do also not care if the legal violence happened because of changes an other developer did on my work. Just because they added something does not give them the right to use what I made into a legal weapon.

It's hard to know whether you are supporting or rejecting the GPL.

There's no intellectual dishonesty here, just a semantic mismatch. You're using the negative definition of freedom, which is the lack of explicit restrictions on behavior; the logic you expose only holds under that particular school of thought.

The GPL is instead defined on the tradition of positive liberty, which defines freedom as the number of options freely available to each person to choose. There's a very real risk of those being reduced by permissive licenses, as you can no longer ignore network effects, as negative freedom (being defined over individual atomic actions) does.

History shows us that if you allow open source code to be relicensed as proprietary, the competitive advantage of companies building and selling products with enhanced features tend to displace the original project, which gets abandoned. This happened to Unix, to Mac OS X, and is now happening to Android. If this continues for an extended time, the whole ecosystem evolves and the old software becomes unusable, greatly reducing the total options that users can effectively perform - not by an legal or coercive restriction, but because of pragmatic impossibility. There are permissive projects where this doesn't happen (at least for a while) because of the economic incentives of remaining close to the free+open project, but the risk is always there.

What good is the permission to run the original, abandoned version of a software project if all the available hardware has been locked and is uncapable of running it, and it's impossible to modify it to support the modern functions that are available in the proprietary platform and required for any productive usage? Those are very real threaths, and the GPL was designed to combat them (as a reaction to the first time they happened on a large scale). Avoiding this "reduced total available options" scenario is what GPL projects call freedom, not "reducing the number of restrictions" definition that you use. Not a problem of rhetoric, but of chosen vocabulary.

I don't use a 'reducing number of restrictions' definition. That's a straw man that I was responding to.

I also don't accept "history shows us" as establishing some law of nature when the history we're talking about is a couple of decades.

I think the abandoning of ecosystems can just as easily be explained by them being based on inadequate foundations, than by a mythical horde of developers somehow being prevented from working on them. Usually systems are abandoned because of a lack of economic incentive, after all the displacement you describe can only happen if proprietary development produces enhancements more efficiently than open source. Witness the failure of the Linux desktop.

I think 'greatly reducing the total options that users can effectively perform' is a statement that needs much more qualification. To me, that's a function of design, extensibility, and how much leverage a system provides, and is independent of whether the source is available or not. Extending by forking is a last resort.

Nevertheless, I do respect the hypothesis that a GPL style open system provides an important counterbalance to proprietary systems.

What I do not support is the dishonest use of language and morality to further it.

If you are using positive freedom, then there is much more to be gained through improvements in software design - e.g. along the lines of Alan Kay's FONC - to increase leverage - than through ideology.

We are talking of UNIX here. It has not been abandoned as an unsuccessful ecosystem, it has been rewritten away from the legalistic minefield that its permissive licensing allowed it to be; and that ''did'' prevent developers from freely working on it, and business from freely deploying it despite its open source origins. The history we've watched is that of Linux and GNU on the server (UNIX didn't have any strong desktop environment to begin with); and the UNIX wars span nearly 40 years, with Linux being the last half of it.

I still fail to see what is it that you call dishonest use of language. If freely talking of one's perspective and goals is dishonest, then all ideologies are.

Except that FreeBSD is just as freely deployable without the need for the GPL, so it is not the GPL that causes this property to come about.

The dishonest use of language is the misappropriation of the word 'freedom', and the moralizing around what is essentially a business problem. But, if you are claiming to be an ideologue, then fair enough.

In which case, I'd love to hear more about how that ideology translates into a better future economic future for software developers. To me it seems to just translate into greater dependence on powerful corporations.

"I [...] oppose FSF's mission to value our craft at $0.00/hour" - where did you get this is FSF's mission?

Stallman advocates for a utopia in which software is developed by the masses for enjoyment and individual utility.

Programmers are expected to work other jobs to subsidize their hobby. IIRC he also suggested that they could sell copies of their software on physical media, but this is irrelevant in the bittorrent era.

He acknowledges that realization of the FSF's goals would most likely end the phenomenon of professional developers and is perfectly okay with this.

It's somewhere on the Philosophy section of the gnu project's website. It's late, but I'll find the specific link later.

"I too oppose FSF's mission to value our craft at $0.00/hour."

Eliminating the revenue from selling the same work multiple times is probable consequence of the FSF's mission. It is uncharitable to say that it is the FSF's mission. It is also false that this implies an hourly rate of $0.00 - there is a huge amount of programming work for which the first copy is the only copy, and that can be sold just as readily as ever in a world using even the strictest AGPL for everything. And that's not even considering donations, threshold pledge systems, &c.

> Speaking as a user of commercial software

I'm both a user and a developer of commercial software, and I would like for you to apologize for speaking as if you represented anyone other than yourself in this ignorant and hateful screed.

> No one's software freedom is reduced if I release a closed source derivative of a permissively-licensed open source product

So no ones freedom is reduced if you get the power to sue anyone who modify or share the derivative product? Is this the statement being made?

This kind of ages old flame war is discouraged on Hacker News. From the guidelines: "Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them. "

The BSD vs. GPL, which is more "free" or "permissive", argument has been going on for decades and is not going to be settled in this thread.

Your trying to pour oil on untroubled waters. Discussing the rationale and pro/con for selecting a specific Open Source License for a particular project _is_ generally interesting.

I'm trying to encourage people to respect the guidelines of the site. And, I happen to strongly agree with said guidelines.

Can you not see that no one is changing anybody's minds here, and everyone who is chiming in has a fiercely held position? This is one of the classic hacker flame wars, and flame wars are a waste of everybody's time.

In short: Arguing about GPL vs BSD is a shitty thing to waste this great community on, and I felt like it was worth risking the ire of all the people who love flame wars in order to say so. The guidelines exist for a reason (and this thread is more evidence that this particular guideline is useful and relevant; if pg didn't have this particular argument in mind when he wrote it, I'd be moderately surprised).

The difference can be broadly characterized as individual vs. societal freedom. To resolve your problem with the meaning of "free", you have to think about who the intended recipients of the freedom are.

If there are no restrictions against (to pick a colorful example) letting your dog go to the toilet on the sidewalk, then individually you have more "freedom to do whatever I want", but societies work better when you can walk around without constantly stepping in dog poop.

So, the way I look at it is that the GPL attempts to build a society where total happiness is greater than in the society that gave more permissions to everyone. If you agree with the existence of laws that prevent poor behaviors, you're already sympathetic to this view in principle; it just becomes a practical question of whether the harms that the GPL is trying to avoid are serious enough for it to make it worth the trade-off with individual liberty. Reasonable people disagree about this.

> what you call "permissive licenses" give me freedom to do whatever I want, while GPL, especially v3, is very restrictive as to what it allows me to do.

A common distinction is that 'permissive licenses' give the developer more freedom, where 'free licenses' give the end user more freedom.

Giving the developer freedom allows them to constrain the freedoms of the end user, where giving the end user freedoms constrains the freedom of the developer.

So yes, if you're optimizing for your own personal freedom, a permissive license is best, but if you're optimizing for ecosystem or social freedom, a 'free' license is best.

In what way is GPLv3 'especially very restrictive as to what it allows you to do'?

It added the tivoization clause which prevents companies from selling hardware to you with GPLv3 code and not allow you to run your own modified version of the code on said hardware.

Also if you distribute GPLv3 licenced code, you grant all recepients of that code a patent grant to any patents you hold within that code.

I find these to be perfectly valid additions of what the GPL licence is for: granting and preserving end user rights.

> It added the tivoization clause which prevents companies from selling hardware to you with GPLv3 code and not allow you to run your own modified version of the code on said hardware.

That depends on who "you" are. In the FSF's view some users are permitted to want to purchase hardware that can't be tampered with, and others are not.

Please don't spout this false old lie. Its been correct a few hundred times already on HN, so how can you have missed it?

If the tamper proof hardware resist modification by everyone (including the people who produce/sell them), GPL is perfectly fine with it. Sell it, bake it, do what ever you want. However, if a producer want to sell tamper proof hardware which they exclusively have a way to tamper with, its not tamper proof and it is not fair to the person who bought it. At minimum, give the owner of the device the same right to do modifications.

If you want to quibble over the wording describing the exact combination of features the FSF is willing to allow some users the freedom to choose to have served by products with GPL-licensed software from anyone but the copyright owner, but where they would deny that freedom to other users, you are missing the point of the objection.

I am not sure what you are trying to argue for.

Is your argument that giving someone else exclusive control of things you own is a feature? I guess a thief could argue that stealing stuff from people house is a feature too.

GPL denies people to circumvent property rights of the devices owner - ie, the person who bought it. If you object to stopping such activities, I hope you don't object when people circumvent other laws.

> I am not sure what you are trying to argue for.

There are three possible, reasonably coherent views of the anti-tivoization clause I can see:

1. Either the restrictions it places on device features in the consumer market are essential to software freedom, in which case GPLv3 segregates markets and prioritizes something else over essential elements of software freedom in the business market, or

2. The restrictions it places on device features in the consumer market are not essential to software freedom, and the GPLv3 segregates markets and imposes restrictions on what can be done with GPL-licensed software in ways that restrict rather than promote freedom in the consumer market.

3. Or "software freedom" means different things in different markets.

My personal view aligns more with the second of those options, but I wouldn't be happy with any of them.

> Is your argument that giving someone else exclusive control of things you own is a feature?

If it is in the business market (where the FSF seems to think it is) then it is in the consumer market.

> GPL denies people to circumvent property rights of the devices owner - ie, the person who bought it.

It would be more accurate to say, for what it defines as "User Products", that the GPLv3 actively encourages device renters to circumvent the property rights of devices' owners, and bars device owners from having the technical tools to prevent that.

1: A license that do not allow circumvention of property law is friendly to the business market. As such, your claim that it would prioritize "something" over "essential elements of software freedom" are wrong.

2: Not allowing circumvention of property law is neither promotion or restriction of freedom. It has the same purpose such as anti-theft laws. business markets depend on property law, and could not operate without it. However, selecting enforcement of property law can be exploited in the market, and a segregation between those who exploit and those who don't then happens.

3: anti-theft laws and "software freedom" are not directly related. This is where the confusion comes from.

> It would be more accurate to say, for what it defines as "User Products", that the GPLv3 actively encourages device renters to circumvent the property rights of devices' owners, and bars device owners from having the technical tools to prevent that.

You seem to imply that manufacturer are the device owner after they have sold the device. Here we must come to a disagreement, as I follow the classic view that a trade results in a change in ownership. The financial transaction causes the manufacturer to assign ownership of a specific device over to the buyer in exchange for money. The new owner of the device is thus no longer the manufacturer, but the person who paid money for it.

Maybe the wikipedia article, or a dictonary would help you here. Renting is not the same as a trade. I can see how you might get those two words confused, but really, they are not the same thing.

If device manufacturers want lease out devices rather then trade them, they can likely do so without having comply with the requirements in the GPLv3 license. Leasing out devices is commonly not viewed as distribution (case law lacking).

> You seem to imply that manufacturer are the device owner after they have sold the device.

No, that's irrelevant.

> If device manufacturers want lease out devices rather then trade them, they can likely do so without having comply with the requirements in the GPLv3 license.

The anti-tivoization clause specifically applies to transfer of a "User Product" with the right to possession and use of the device either permanently (sale) or for a period of time (rental).

With both "free" and "permissive" licenses, everyone who gets code from the original author can use the code for pretty much whatever they want—boil it, mash it, stick it in a stew—but for code under a "permissive" licence, downstream recipients do not necessarily have the same rights. For example, Microsoft used some of the BSD sockets implementation in NT's network stack, but Windows users do not have the same rights of modification and redistribution for that code that Microsoft enjoyed, even if they separately obtain a permissive licence to that code by downloading a fresh copy of the code from the original authors.

Thus, "permissive" licenses tend to split a community into at least two groups: developers who can make use of the original code directly and enjoy the liberties the "permissive" licence allows, and users who are only allowed to use the things the developers create for them, and have none of the liberties granted by the original licence. By contrast, a "Free" licence (in the FSF sense) guarantees that everybody who obtains some piece of code, no matter how far removed from the original developer, has exactly the same rights to it. Thus, it does not split the community in the same way, and that's why some people regard "Free" licences as more community-friendly and useful than "permissive" licences.

>but Windows users do not have the same rights of modification and redistribution for that code that Microsoft enjoyed, even if they separately obtain a permissive licence to that code by downloading a fresh copy of the code from the original authors.

Yes they do. They have exactly the same rights microsoft enjoyed, over the exact same code microsoft enjoyed those rights. They don't have the rights to microsofts code, which is a completely different thing.

> With both "free" and "permissive" licenses

"Permissive" licenses are a subset of "free" licenses; the contrast you probably intend is between "copyleft" and "permissive" licenses.

I'm sorry, I may be misunderstanding what you're asking, but it seems you're asking about the old GPL vs. BSD/Apache/whatever, free software vs. open source software. If I'm misunderstanding you, I apologize.

[1] explains the difference. Why is a BSD license not free but the GPL is? Because a BSD type license allows you to take software and turn it into non-free software. IOW, you could take BSD software, base your new software on that software and not release your changes or your source code.

I'm not imparting morality here, just trying to explain to you the difference between BSD and GPL and why some consider BSD to be not free.

[1] http://understandinglimited.com/2007/12/13/rms-on-bsd-vs-gpl...

Except you don't "turn it into" anything else ... the original is still out there, and still available to be used as anyone else wishes.

See my reply above, I meant that derivatives could be turned into non-free (free as defined by RMS) distributions of the software.

> Because a BSD type license allows you to take software and turn it into non-free software.

No, it doesn't. A BSD-type license doesn't let a third party make the software anything but BSD-licensed software. It does let them distribute derivatives under different licenses, but that doesn't change anything about the original.

I apologize, I should have said it allows you to turn a derivative work into non-free software. The link explains what is really meant (note that it isn't my opinion here).

GPL ensures that any derivatives will also remain open source, permissive licencing permits proprietary derivatives.

The benefits of GPL when it comes to derivatives is that all the code will remain open, so if someone forks project A into B and make changes, project A can incorporate those changes or maybe everyone jumps onto project B, and perhaps someone will later combine project A and project B into forked project C, etc.

Either way the source code of all derivatives remain open.

With permissive licencing there is the option of proprietary forks, which means that nothing ensures that any changes made in a proprietary derivative will ever reach the open project. That doesn't mean that no code will be contributed back, but again there's nothing saying it will.

Yes, thank you, you understood what I meant and I appreciate the clarification.

BSD/MIT - more "rights" for the developer

GPL/Copyleft - more "rights" for the users

I thought you got this backwards, then I realized that it depends on how you classify "developer" and "user".

I think of "user" as someone who downloads the licensed software and uses it. And "developer" I associate with whoever wrote the licensed software that was downloaded.

Based on this definition, GPL gives more right to the developer, and less rights to the user. The user can't create derivative works from it and distribute it without also releasing the source code. This is a restriction that affects the use of the code by someone who downloaded it. Any derivatives are contributed back, giving the developer the right to integrate it to the original.

Just for the record, the FSF considers software licensed under permissive licenses to be "free software" (assuming no patent issues). The worry is that future modifications may not remain free software.

Ok, asking this question here was a bad idea. I now regret doing this.

You should be ashamed. You've just reduced the productivity of the software development community as a whole by a non-negligible amount.

I’m not the parent, but is it possible he’s referring to the restrictions on derivative software?

If someone develops something amazing based off of LightTable with LightTable on GPL, aren’t they required to release that something on GPL as well? I believe under MIT derivative products can be created for commercial purposes (please correct me if I’m wrong!).

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