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Comment by specialk | Hacker News Reader

> "Amazon cut off service to Wikileaks, claiming that whistleblowing violates its terms of service. It had no need to go to court to prove this, because if you rent a server from Amazon, you have no rights."

I find it highly amusing that RMS doesn't seem to agree with Amazon's restrictive ToS agreement but his GNU software license is one of the most restrictive licenses out there. If I include a GNU licensed library I accidentally lose all my rights too. Funny that.

> "A study found that people who read novels on the Amazon Swindle remember less of the events."

Replace 'Swindle' with 'Kindle' then with any ebook reader ever. I doubt there is anything about the Kindle in particular, over other ereaders, that causes people to remember less. This is attacking Amazon with everything and hoping some of it sticks.

I'm trying not to defend Amazon but RMS's arguments are painfully bad at times.

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> "his GNU software license is one of the most restrictive licenses out there."

Of "open source" licenses perhaps. In the grand scheme of software licenses, it is pretty fucking permissive. Most software licenses don't let you anywhere near the source, don't let you modify the code, and don't let you redistribute or share the software.

> Most software licenses don't let you anywhere near the source, don't let you modify the code,

Are there any software licenses where the source code is provided but you are prohibited to view or modify it?

I wager so. Many commercial video games have plaintext script files buried in their installations. I am not in the habit of reading licenses very carefully, but I suspect more than a few of those do not lay out the right to view or modify those files. (Although 'modders' do anyway of course.)

Software licenses which allow you to view the code but not to modify it are fairly common.

Typically, software licenses grant none of these rights.

I can't think of any where you can't view it, but there are several licenses that allow you to view but not modify.

Microsoft is in the habit of letting development partners view their source but not publish or modify it, and then there's software like UW Pico that have licenses that allow viewing by the general public but not modification.

Microsoft is certainly not the only one who did this. Many business to business deals involve read only access to source code (usually by platform providers).

I mean, the GPL technically isn't an open source license. It's a Free Software license.

Restrictive in that it prevents you from fucking people over. This is like saying laws against slavery restrict freedom (freedom to own slaves).

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/freedom-or-power.html

> Restrictive in that it prevents you from fucking people over.

Restrictive in that it controls how you must license derivative works and release source code. It imposes an ideology on others.

> This is like saying laws against slavery restrict freedom (freedom to own slaves).

No, really, it's absolutely nothing like saying that, and if you care about free software (however defined, but in particular along the lines RMS endorses), you should stop using such a fantastically stupid analogy.

If you build something you should definitely have something to say about what others can do with your work, especially if you give it away for free. And nobody imposes something on you - you are perfectly free not to use GNU licensed things.

I don't recall arguing otherwise. But compared to the BSD license, it's definitely more restrictive about derivative works. Also, the slavery analogy is stupid.

I think it would be helpful to be clearer as to why you disagree with the analogy rather than simply calling it stupid.

If I had to guess, I would suspect that your real issue is that you do not find the things being restricted to be comparable (i.e., human life/will vs. the use of software), rather than believing that the comparison is somehow invalid for other reasons.

First of all, it's not a good analogy. Software licenses are a contract that you can choose to agree to, whereas laws give you no choice.

Second of all, it is highly debated wheter the restrictions imposed by the GPL are a worthwhile tradeoff; while noone in their right mind claims anybody has a right to own slaves...

And lastly, by comparing the GPL to laws against slavery you are trying to evoke certain associations, much like stallman uses the word swindle instead of kindle -- those are just cheap tricks that distract and make fruitful discussions hard.

The slavery analogy holds because in both cases we are talking about freedom. A word you aren't using.

Really, the only thing the GPL restricts is your ability to restrict.

(Incidentally, this is comparable to restricting the freedom to enslave; it is a restriction on restriction.)

If you think the GPL somehow "imposes an ideology on others" but literally any other license does not, I am curious as to how. (Hint: a license cannot "impose an ideology"; if you do not agree, you are free to avoid it and stick with BSD code, or whatever else might suit your fancy.)

I think you are free to not to use GPL libraries.

Your options are at least as:

1) acquire a licence of some commercial library, 2) use library with different open source licence, 3) develop your own library.

Whereas you are forced to use an Amazon Kindle (sorry, Swindle)?

Your options there are similar, acquire a license for a commercial book (that you like), hit Project Gutenberg for an open source book, or write your own book...

That's a strawman. It could also be like saying laws against gay marriage restrict freedom. You aren't making a point about reality, you're just comparing two things that have one thing in common.

You lose your rights to your code if any of your code includes GPL code. Many people who write code necessarily avoid the GPL because of this.

> That's a strawman

We need a hotkey for that one.

You don't lose the rights to your code. The original copyright owner still owns the copyright on their code. That's why you have to follow the rules of the license they gave you. You can still distribute your code under whatever license you want.

> You can still distribute your code under whatever license you want.

That actually isn't true.

> You must license the entire work, as a whole, under this License to anyone who comes into possession of a copy.

You are required to distribute it under GPL v3. I don't know enough legalese to determine if distributing the modifications alone as a parallel license is allowed.

This is only true if "your" code is a derivative of someone else's code. Putting code that's actually original into a project that also has GPL code in it doesn't mean you have to GPL your code.

Distributing binaries with mixed sources is where it gets hairy.

A parallel license is allowed, if you remove any third party GPL'd code.

How do laws against gay marriage not restrict freedom?

I'm not sure what you intend with this. I am using that as a counter example to "laws against slavery restrict freedom", because the person I'm responding to was implying that restriction is inherently good: restricting slavery is generally a positive, but restricting gay marriage is generally a negative. The fact that the same idea in two different scenarios can be good or bad means you can't use it as a maxim.

No, the implication of the post to which you were responding is not that restriction is inherently good, but rather that restriction is not inherently bad.

Laws against gay marriage actively restrict freedoms, if you can somehow make a counter argument specifically specifically related to freedoms, please try.

>This is like saying laws against slavery restrict freedom (freedom to own slaves).

They do. Because at current, corporations (aka private prisons) are allowed to own slaves, but I as an individual am not. We can either increase freedom by banning anyone from owning slaves or increase freedom by allowing anyone to own slaves.

Actually, allowing anyone to own slaves is not an increase in freedoms, it's a net decrease in freedom.

As long as the number of current slaves does not increase (anymore than it would have anyways), it would lead to more freedom.

Sweet fucking Jesus, do we need to talk about the GPL here? It's an utter derail here, and the way comments are ranked here means that the top pages of this thread are going to be the same hashing out of pros and cons and it's incredibly tedious.

Since the only reason anyone ever listens to anything Stallman says is the GPL, it's on-topic.

It's a tribal thing; people have already made their minds up about it, and we're just going to spout talking points at each other.

Instead of talking about the post, we're doing the lazy "and what's up with the GPL?" comedy bit.

These discussions remind me of the "old days" of /. Discussing the GPL is like discussing Catholicism, points of view are strongly rooted in ideology, these type of discussions are never constructive.

The only difference for me, is that at the time (when I participated in these on /.) I was young, full of energy to spend on idealisms, and thought everything was black or white. Nowadays, I just chuckle reading how people get their panties in a bunch (for some reason, I like this English phrase) instead of using the tools that comply with whatever license they like.

"GNU software license is one of the most restrictive licenses out there"

But those restrictions are in place to protect your freedom!

So its like the Patriot Act of licenses? Everything you do must be done in the open for the sake of freedom!

In all seriousness - do you see an equivalence between the Patriot act and the GPL?

Playing devil's advocate here, as I whole-heartedly support OSS and the myriad license under which it is distributed, including the GPL. But ...

That's a really interesting argument. One could argue that the GPL is like the snake eating it's tail on the far side of liberalness. I'm sure this is not a new argument, but I'd never considered that the "polluting" of code with the GPL actually decreases individual liberty for the sake of communal liberty.

Again, not making a judgement one way or the other, but the world is nothing if not a series of bad compromises, and I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that the GPL and OSS in general is included in "the world" :)

The GPL is not ouroboros. Restricting the freedom to restrict is not at all comparable to the PATRIOT Act. It is more akin to the Bill of Rights, or other such laws preventing certain types of laws from being made.

You'd have to go to court to actually enforce that though. If the law didn't give you the right to license your software that way, there's nothing you could do about it. Amazon gets to make up their own rules and enforce them on their own hardware, even if there's no law against what you're doing.

"If I include a GNU licensed library I accidentally lose all my rights too" That's not true. You can't lose a right that you never had. You could argue the GNU license it's not fear, then write an article titled "Reasons why not to use GNU license". GNU restriction is in favor of the end user, to make them free to know what they are executing(oversimplifying). RSM's point is always about the freedom of the end user.

About the second quote: > "A study found that people who read novels on the Amazon Swindle remember less of the events." Yes, I also see this as a weak argument, but to be fear he is saying "I think issues like this are less important than the injustice of the Swindle." pointing to a pdf titled ebooks.pdf which is not Swindle specific.

Your thinking is short-sighted and selfish. Tell us what it says about the GPL that GNU tools are still actively used and maintained decades later?

lose all my rights? Now lets follow that logic a bit.

If I go outside, I lose all my rights! I can't kill anyone, steal from people, or fire a weapon intro crowds. I am not even allowed to wave a knife around, or stab anyone. Its completely unfair, and people have the gall to claim that I live in a free country. Its the most restrictive country out there!

And parks. They have the most restrictions I know. I can't put it on fire, use it as a garbage dump, or as a dumping ground for my killing sprees. How dare the government spend tax money on parks and claim its for public use. Public use?!? I just happen to walk in there and I get all this restrictions put on me.

(I think "one of the most restrictive licenses out there" is a tad over-exaggerated, but then, anyone is allowed to their view about restrictions...)

And this is why nobody takes anti-GPL zealots seriously.

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