Re: OT: GPL - was Re: My brief and torrid affair with Ruby.

On Thu, 10 Jul 2003 15:58:11 +0900, Robert Feldt wrote:
> Austin Ziegler <[e-mail]>:
>> Not at all. The GNU GPL has nothing to do with ESR's Cathedral
>> and Bazaar development methods. There are open source projects
>> that are Cathedral in nature (GCC was one until egcs; same for
>> emacs). [...]
> What I'm trying to say is that in practice it has to do with ESR's
> concepts since a commercial entity will want to protect the
> additions they do and thus do not want them to be open and thus
> are reluctant to use GPL'ed code. Can you point out where I go
> wrong here?

Licensing is orthogonal to development methodology. While open
source programs are *more likely* to be "bazaar" development
methodology, and closed source programs are *more likely* to be
"cathedral" development methodology, the choice of licence does not
guarantee a particular development methodology.

What FOSS licences do is make forking possible. Thus, we had GCC and
egcs; egcs was a fork of GCC because people felt that GCC wasn't
being developed fast enough in the right direction. After a while,
the FSF came to see the light and accepted egcs back into GCC and
development has been better since. The same applies with emacs --
it's been forked several times.

> Yes but does any of them force the full app to be open-sourced
> without requiring anything more about (the code in the app - the
> code in lib Y)?

No. Only the GNU GPL and other strong-copyleft licences force an
application that uses a library to be released under the GNU GPL.
The others only force the interface points to be open, or
modifications to the library itself. I far prefer weak copyleft to
strong copyleft. It ensures freedom without undue encumbrance.

>> Unfortunately, the conflict with the GPL's broad-based copyleft
>> is more likely to happen with someone who doesn't philosophically
>> like the GNU GPL but actually likes developing open source
>> software (me, for example). I don't like the idea that because
>> someone uses the GPL, *I* have to use the GPL for my entire
>> project. The source is still available in my case, I just don't
>> want to place what I view as unnecessary restrictions on my
>> users. (And the GNU GPL is a *very* restrictive licence, compared
>> to most other OSI-approved open source licences.)
> And I'm trying to understand in detail why you don't like the GPL.
> It seems you don't like it because of its "philosophical baggage"
> and not because you want to allow commercial entities to use your
> code in their closed apps.

It's for both reasons. As I stated, I prefer weak copyleft, where my
code is protected and must follow the binaries, but I also don't
like the GPL's philosophical ... baggage.

>> The GPL doesn't prevent this.
>> 
>> Seriously. All the GPL does is say that the source code must
>> follow the binaries, and that the source code must not have
>> restrictions exceeeding those of the GPL (so no "due credit"
>> clauses permitted).
>> 
>> So someone can pick up your software and sell it for $1,000,000
>> after improvements. They only have to give the source code to
>> those customers that purchase it.
> So the sources need not be made publicly available? Aha, I see the
> problem more clearly now.

Two points should be made. (1) A selling company must give the
source to the customers, but the customers can then give or resell
the application to anyone they wish. One of the conditions of the
GNU GPL is that you cannot encumber redistribution. In this way,
it's a good thing. (2) Any licence which *does* force resubmission
to the author or to the public is considered incompatible with the
GPL with an onerous requirement.

>>> The idea of using BSD-style license for most of the stuff and
>>> GPL for your innovative was a good one; I'll try to adopt that.
>> Might I suggest using LGPL instead of GPL if it's a library? If
>> it's an application, by all means, make it GPL if you want.
> I will need to take a renewed look at my licensing situation. I
> really wanna restrict commercial use of my code without asking me.
> Unfortunately that seems hard without people getting the
> impression my stuff is not free[|open].

Well, the GNU GPL doesn't restrict that, and any licence which did
restrict it would be considered non-free (and probably wouldn't fit
OSI open source). Let me, however, suggest a practical problem and a
possible solution to your general dilemma.

The practical problem with an "ask for permission" scheme is that it
depends on your contact information being constant ... even after
you die. That'll happen, right? So if you've died with an "ask for
permission" scheme and have *not* specified in your will what will
happen at that point, anyone who wants to use your SuperAwesome
library will be SOL. Same if you change email addresses.

The possible solution is to just ask people to drop you a note when
they're using your library. You'd be surprised how many people do
that. (Of course, I've got some postcardware that I haven't yet sent
the postcard for, but it will happen. One of these days.)

-austin
--
austin ziegler    * [e-mail] * Toronto, ON, Canada
software designer * pragmatic programmer * 2003.07.11
                                         * 11:02:08