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> what the goals of the GPL license are besides a warm and fuzzy feeling that no-one is ripping them off

GPL ensures freedom for users of the software, not developers of the software -- a distinction that is missed every single time licensing is discussed. Developers that use the GPL are (hopefully consciously) making a choice to ensure software freedom for their users.

This article did a very good job of tackling this this from another perspective, by addressing the usual (and tired) argument that the GPL offers less freedom than more permissive licenses due to the share-alike clause. Limiting "power" to take away freedom is a nice way to put it.

Not to derail this discussion, but my personal opinion is that the GPL is a bit ahead of its time. With the marginal cost of software being nil, the path of least resistance is just to make software free. The problem is, someone still has to produce this software, and unless we hit post-scarcity, production is going to cost money [1]. So the GPL straddles an awkward tension between ideals and economic reality right now. This is in addition to the more overt goals of FSF/GNU in terms of privacy, control and self-determination, which RMS has proven to be quite prescient about.

[1] "In the long run, making programs free is a step toward the postscarcity world, where nobody will have to work very hard just to make a living. People will be free to devote themselves to activities that are fun, such as programming, after spending the necessary ten hours a week on required tasks such as legislation, family counseling, robot repair and asteroid prospecting. There will be no need to be able to make a living from programming."

https://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html -- a very good read.

Nearly every argument against the GPL is based on convenience or desirability for developers. I think in a lot of ways that's the primary split between the FSF free/OSI open source factions.

Reading the GNU manifesto was a lifechanger for me. Even though I've strayed (i.e. am employed producing proprietary software), I still believe the GNU project and the FSF are the most important things to ever happen to the computing world.

Or to put it a different way, the GPL don't distinguish between user and developer.

Frankly i have noticed a trend towards a more hard set distinction between the two as of late. The perfect example is the Google Chromebooks, and their "developer" switch.

Thing about that switch is that when flipped, in either direction, it will wipe the device clean. Thus going from user to developer or back becomes a very big deal.

This is very different from earlier personal computers, where one would often have some kind of programming language (usually a Basic variant) right at hand.

Thinking about it brings to mind the scene in Tron: Legacy when the main profess himself not a program, and the presenter declare him a user in a mocking tone.

I almost get the feel that "users" are considered no more than cattle, to be fleeced (or worse) ever so often for cash to keep the farmers (developers) happy.

And formulating it like that i find myself reminded of the claim about magazine subscriptions, that the reader is not the customer but the product. The real business of the magazines are that of selling ad space.

I wonder if the same mentality is seeping into the "app" and "cloud service" spheres.

And all this brings to mind the enclosure movement, that brought many a former small scale farmer to the cities to become a factory worker. This because what used to be common grazing land etc, had been privatized and fenced off.

>GPL ensures freedom for users of the software, not developers of the software

GPL may be true for end user facing applications but it's terrible for libraries where the primary user is the developer.

> GPL is pretty much toothless to stop SaaS companies using your software

That's because the GPL doesn't restrict use. It is not an EULA.

(Of course, it has disclaimers related to use: by using the software, you agree with the liability disclaimers, but you don't have to agree with anything else just to be a user.)

Users are free not to share their modifications. Until you redistribute, modifications are basically a form of use.

This is in line with the GNU philosophy; Stallman certainly doesn't want you to feel that you're restricted from privately inspecting a program and altering it to suit your needs.

This is absolutely NOT in line with the GNU philosophy. See https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...

This ought to be easy to see. If I take a modified emacs, put it on a web server, and provide access to it via a terminal emulator in a web browser, I've effectively distributed it without actually distributing it. It's an end run around the GPL.

That doesn't have anything to do with my argument, which describes a scenario in which there is a user who took some program and adapted it to suit his or her needs, running on his or her own equipment.

In this situation, the program has additional users. However, they equipment doesn't belong to them. They are only visitors to someone else's private property. Even if they had the source to the modifications, they would not be able to make further modifications and put them into effect on your server, since they don't have administrative access.

There is no run around the GPL; the GPL is simply not applicable. It can't give people the right to tinker with your private property.

Never mind not having the GPL-granted rights: if the users are getting a free service, they don't even have any right to expect that it will continue. Tomorrow you might pull the plug on the server (perhaps forced to, due to economics) and that's that.

The issue here isn't whether or not there is a GPL violation. There clearly isn't; the GPL simply isn't applicable.

The issue here is that gullible users make uninformed choices such that they throw away freedoms. The "takes away your freedom" rhetoric therefore rings untrue. That's like saying a contract that you irresponsibly signed without reading it has "taken" your freedom away. Where is the personal accountability?

The only genuine freedom-related problem is that widespread use of anything creates pressure on people to become users, simply in order to interoperate with the majority. The naive lemmings who unknowingly give up their rights create pressure on others to knowingly do so. I certainly don't want to be coerced into signing up for some SaaS just because it has turned into the only way of doing business.

Thanks for the link, a few more links in I found this: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-affero-gpl.html

> We don't see any sensible way to address the SaaSS problem with license conditions on particular programs. Even to write a legal condition to distinguish between SaaSS use and non-SaaSS use would be a challenge, and if we had that, it is not clear what we would want to require in the SaaSS case. Thus, our solution to the problem of SaaSS is simple: refuse to use it.

> If a program is meant specifically and only for SaaSS, you shouldn't write it. But many programs are useful for a variety of kinds of services, including some that are SaaSS and some that are not. It's useful to write and release these programs so people can set up non-SaaSS services with them, and good to release them under the AGPL.

So it seems like they do see it as an issue, but not one they can really do anything about in terms of licensing.

> Affero LGPL

Yes, just the other day I was thinking over licensing options and realized this was needed too. The common way around it is to just grant an exception like Mongo did with their driver. Also, the Java world has been granting a classpath exception to GPL for ages.

However, many people confuse AGPL for this non-existant Affero LGPL because they think that they can use an AGPL library in their proprietary code. I believe Mongo has contributed to this confusion but that ultimately the lack of this alternative license is mostly to blame.

Regarding the rest of your post I disagree but more words explaining the value of GPL have been written than code :) so I'll not address that.

I think the number of companies taking free software and making meaningful changes that they don't contribute back to the community is not that big at all, though I don't argue that some probably do exist.

Consider the overhead involved in maintaining and packaging your own code base while still including updates from origin. Wouldn't it be much easier to submit a merge request so that you could just apt-get install the package and not worry about your own custom branch, not to mention feedback on your change from a much wider audience who are familiar with that code base? And then there's the fact that you're exposing yourself to liability that, again, would be solved by that merge request. It just seems like a lot of the ones that do, do it out of ignorance rather than malice.

I don't disagree that companies need to build up assets, but I think for most companies including SaaS ones, those assets are systems which are comprised of unmodified FOSS software used in [sometimes not] innovative ways.

That may be the case now that FLOSS is worldwide renowed and people are starting to realize that private forks are costly, but it wasn't always so.

The GPL was instrumental in forcing people to behave when nobody knew what to do, and it has been so successful that now people expect the behaviour enforced by it even when using more permissive licenses.

> But I'm a little confused by what the goals of the GPL license are besides a warm and fuzzy feeling that no-one is ripping them off though.

To make sure open source developers aren't used as sharecroppers by companies that take their work, sell it for a profit, and don't release any improvements or allow anyone else to benefit from the fact the original work is open source.

(Other version hidden by mistake.)

>>but are more than happy to release improvements to infrastructure, since that's not their core business.

Without GPL companies choose what their `core business` is. I don't want to argue with a product vision manager what to release and what not the release - its much easier for me to remind them of the law.

>> its much easier for me to remind them of the law.

Isn't the benefit of open source - to get free updates to your code base - enough?

Convincing other people is an unnecessary burden.

> But I'm a little confused by what the goals of the GPL license are besides a warm and fuzzy feeling that no-one is ripping them off though.

To make sure open source developers aren't used as sharecroppers by companies that take their work, sell it for a profit, and don't release any improvements or allow anyone else to benefit from the fact the original work is open source.

...so, a warm and fuzzy feeling.

No. That's not it, and I'm tired of people lying and claiming that's all it is.

For anybody reading Eridrus' comment, it's a bunch of non sequiturs that indicate no understanding of software licensing.

Rather than go through each sentence and point out why it's wrong myself, just read the GPL and a couple statements by Stallman first. Then as an exercise, read each sentence and point out why it's either wrong, or not even wrong.