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Comment by gaius | Hacker News Reader

Indeed, it muddies the issue. I am anti-NSA-spying but I am also anti-stealing-IP...

I should point out that I don't think Aaron should have been hounded to his death (tho' equally if he were mentally ill, anything could have pushed him over the edge). But that doesn't make what he did right. It has for 20 years baffled me that people can demand respect for the GPL et al but be happy to ride roughshod over anyone else's licenses.

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The reason Aaron gets so much sympathy (EDIT: for what he did as well as for how he was treated) is that 1) a substantial portion of the JSTOR data is public domain, 2) a substantial portion of the rest is work funded with public money where it is controversial that it is only available under copyright.

But even disregarding that, I don't get why you are baffled: The GPL is a hack intended to spread freedoms. Many who support the GPL do not support it out of some desire to respect IP laws, but as a means of reducing the use of more restrictive licenses. E.g. to maximise access to knowledge or maximise the ability to modify and use data.

Wanting the data in JSTOR freed up, possibly regardless of copyright status, is entirely consistent with supporting the GPL in those cases.

For some this is a moral or ethical issue - it is perfectly possible to consider the current state of copyright an immoral restriction of personal freedoms.

If GPL people are concerned about restrictive licenses why not use BSD or MIT which contain fewer restrictions?

What the GPL restricts is restrictions. Going with BSD allows more restrictions to be placed on the software by others.

It's similar in essence to forbidding slavery — some rhetorician might suggest that it abridges people's freedom to own each other, but the actual intent is to preserve a greater amount of freedom.

But the underlying principle that all parties would have to agree on is that there are these things called "laws".

The underlying principle has been given a name by philosophers and political scientists. Its called "Negative Right".

Taken from wikipedia:

  Negative rights are permissions not to do things,
  or entitlements to be left alone. Often the distinction
  is invoked by libertarians who think of a negative right
  as an entitlement to "non-interference" such as a 
  right against being assaulted.

  Rights considered negative rights may include civil and
  political rights such as freedom of speech, private property,
  freedom from violent crime, freedom of worship, habeas corpus,
  a fair trial, and freedom from slavery.

for more, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights

I find it funny that restrictions that in practice prevent people from monetizing software is compared to abolishing slavery.

I'm pretty sure the TSA also thinks its restrictions on air travel lead to greater freedom of mobility.

"I find it funny that restrictions that in practice prevent people from monetizing software"

No! The GPL and it's ilk are not and never have been about restrictions that in practice prevent people from monetizing software. When are people going to get that? The source code has to be supplied. You can still charge for access to it. I could make $KILLERAPP and charge $1000 for it, and not allow it to be public, but as long as when a customer buys it, I give them access to the source, I'm still GPL compliant.

Yeah yeah, this is where you go off about "in practice". Still wrong. In practice it doesn't prevent anything, in fact is is the practices used by companies (and people) that prevent them from using GPL, not the other way around.

> Yeah yeah, this is where you go off about "in practice". Still wrong. In practice it doesn't prevent anything, in fact is is the practices used by companies (and people) that prevent them from using GPL, not the other way around.

You're glazing over a lot of practical issues. For example, if you charge money for a product you are distributing under the GPL, once it has been purchased once, nobody else needs to purchase it because the first customer can simply give it away to everyone for free and you have no recourse.

Can you think of even one GPL product that has been successful through sales of GPL licenses? Because I really can't. In practice, companies that make money from GPL software almost never make their money from selling the software.

"Can you think of even one GPL product that has been successful through sales of GPL licenses? "

Actually yes, I can think of a quite a few. Redhat is a good example of a huge industry built around GPL software.

That really isn't the point though, and allow me to summarize your misconception.

"nobody else needs to purchase it because the first customer can simply give it away to everyone for free and you have no recourse."

Explain to me how this applies to GPL and not the BSD, (I doubt you can) and you will see how (at least this particular) argument is flawed.

Red Hat don't sell software, they sell support contracts.

That is patently not true: This Agreement establishes a framework that will enable Red Hat to provide Software and Services to Client. “Software” means Red Hat Enterprise Linux, JBoss Enterprise Middleware and other software programs branded by Red Hat, its Affiliates and/or third parties including all modifications, additions or further enhancements delivered by Red Hat.

You are absolutely correct, although the point still stands in the context of the discussion. They aren't making money from accepting money in exchange for GPL software (people can just grab CentOS if that's all they want), they're making money from support, services, and non-GPL software that gets bundled along with a bunch of GPL software.

The discussion is about whether someone could run a business that is every bit as financially successful as a business that sells proprietary software, by asking for money for GPL software, and not having any other sources of income. Some posters seem to think this is feasible; I would disagree.

Quantum Leaps does dual licencing for the QP framework and commercially licences exactly the same code that it offers under the GPL. http://www.state-machine.com/licensing/index.php#Pricing

It is a common method to monetize software development by the use of exclusion, and threaten ones customer with lawsuits if they don't comply.

Is such abuse the most effective way to reach financially success? Maybe. Does it matter?

You are not required to give that first customer the source code with BSD.

The only companies that make money on software containing GPL'd code are doing it server-side with pre-GPLV3 or AGPL'd code. I've worked at a lot of companies that used and created open source software; and the rules are invariably the same: No GPL'd software allowed into the source tree, period.

<blockquote>You are not required to give that first customer the source code with BSD.</blockquote>

That's only different if you are selling other people's software. If so, why should anybody have any simpaty?

It's also true if you are selling original software that borrows one line of code from somebody else's software.

You could conceivably try to claim fair use, in that case, although it would undoubtedly be easier (and easy enough) to replace that one line with something original.

"Yeah yeah, this is where you go off about "in practice". Still wrong. In practice it doesn't prevent anything, in fact is is the practices used by companies (and people) that prevent them from using GPL, not the other way around."

You just said that the GPL doesn't prevent people from doing anything that is allowed by the GPL, therefore the GPL doesn't prevent anything. Like, that is literally the argument you just used. Just sayin'.

I could make $KILLERAPP and charge $1000 for it, and not allow it to be public, but as long as when a customer buys it, I give them access to the source, I'm still GPL compliant.

No you wouldn't. The GPL doesn't allow you to restrict the end user's ability to redistribute it. That "not allow it to be public" clause violates that.

"restrictions that in practice prevent people from monetizing software"

http://www.redhat.com/

https://www.google.com/

https://www.facebook.com/

Yup, definitely stopping people from monetizing software!

I think this is a completely valid question in the context of GPL (quite off-topic, but invoked in the parent thread) and I do not understand why this was downvoted.

GPL might have been about freedom at the time when it was introduced. Nowadays I and most businesses are scanning every piece of software for GPL in order to verify whether it is free.

GPL software was not created in order to provide free labor and tools to all businesses in the world. If you do not want distribute your software as GPL, scanning every piece of software for GPL is exactly what is expected from you.

I'm not saying that I would not contribute it non-GPL software. I do not mind companies closing their products.

However, GPL people do mind companies closing their software. So, those companies not using GPL libraries, no matter how useful is perfectly OK result.

Without IP, what stops people incorporating GPL code in their closed source proprietary products? See you can't have your cake and eat it. Either you believe there is a thing called a license which travels with your product and binds the user as to how they can use it, or you don't, there isn't really any middle ground there. The alternative is "everything is public domain!" in which case, no GPL.

> Without IP, what stops people incorporating GPL code in their closed source proprietary products?

Nothig. But then, a company wouldn't have the entire governemnt's power to persue and extract money from people using their software. It's a completely different equilibrium, you can't just look at one side of it.

And I'm not saying it's a good thing either. Altough I defend that it's not smart to depend ("depend" excludes games, by the way) on proprietary software, I never tought it was immoral to create it, until the NSA scandal. Now I don't have any firm opinion about it.

I would expect that nearly any supporter of the GPL would also support a change to the law that eliminated copyright restrictions on the use of code.

The purpose of the GPL is not to prevent people from modifying and building on the code. The purpose... well, let me quote from http://www.gnu.org/licenses/quick-guide-gplv3.html :

  There are four freedoms that every user should have:

    the freedom to use the software for any purpose,

    the freedom to change the software to suit your needs,

    the freedom to share the software with your friends and neighbors, and

    the freedom to share the changes you make.

The GPL is a clever legal "hack" to achieve this, by allowing the code to be used only by others who agree to play by these rules. If the law were changed to enforce these rules directly, then no GPL would be needed. And eliminating intellectual property law restrictions on the use of code would get almost all the way there. (Companies would still be free to "protect" their code through secrecy: releasing only the compiled version and not the source code, but decompilers are pretty darn effective.)

I would expect that nearly any supporter of the GPL would also support a change to the law that eliminated copyright restrictions on the use of code.

WTF?!? No way! (although to be fair I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "use of code").

Companies would still be free to "protect" their code through secrecy: releasing only the compiled version and not the source code

This is exactly what the GPL is designed to avoid.

As you quoted above "the freedom to change the software to suit your needs" - that requires the source code!

"This is exactly what the GPL is designed to avoid."

...sort of. Source code access is important, sure, but here are a few more important issues that are basically orthogonal:

* The right to redistribute software

* The right to modify software (without source code?!?! Sure; imagine if I took Windows, removed the license protection code, and distributed that copy to you).

* The right to use software -- this, incredibly, can be a problem:

http://jalopnik.com/192843/robot-let-my-car-go-new-jersey-ga...

I would expect that nearly any supporter of the GPL would also support a change to the law that eliminated copyright restrictions on the use of code.

Only if distributing software without its source was also made illegal.

There is, in principle, nothing preventing us from applying "if you are distributing software, the source must be made available to your customers" to all software directly in law rather than through hacking copyright.

> Without IP, what stops people incorporating GPL code in their closed source proprietary products?

You can do this even with IP... if you're building SaaS instead of shrinkwrap, due to the GPL's most relevant restrictions here all hinging on the act of distribution of the actual software.

> The alternative is "everything is public domain!" in which case, no GPL.

There are many, myself included, who would be happy with this endgame. As long as no one can ever be prosecuted for creating a work, I am happy.

The GPL is needed because of the effects of copyright, not vice versa.

> Without IP, what stops people incorporating GPL code in their closed source proprietary products?

Without IP, there can neither be GPL (which licenses IP rights) nor close source proprietary (which is another model of licensing IP rights).

Or we could create a new system, one not based on the idea that you can own math and poetry, one not based on promoting the interests of publishers, and one that instead encourages the sharing of source code. The GPL is just a way to establish such a system by using the existing approach. There is no reason why we could not scrap copyrights (at least on software) and write a law that codifies the GPL more directly -- say, that any software user has the right to request a copy of the source code for their software.

I'm not saying it is a realistic possibility in today's world, but it is not as though the copyright system is the only system we could have.

This project was originally suggested by David Segal, Aaron's co-founder at Demand Progress, back in November. We'd been waiting for the right date to actually build and launch it, and David suggested that using Aaron's passing was likely the best marker, particularly since he and Brian Knappenberger had just uncovered some footage of Aaron talking about the need for a "moment of activism" around state surveillance (which'll be released soon). I can definitely understand the skepticism, but from my understanding it was definitely an issue he cared about.

Aaron's gripe was not having access to publicly funded research, which should be a slam dunk. Trying to tack him on to another cause, however well intentioned, is a disservice. There was an argument during the suffrage debates that they should include blacks as well, and justifiably, but if they had progress would likely have been delayed.

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