New Essay - "FOSS Licences Wars"

Sun Aug 23 12:43:55 IDT 2009

Hi Steve, and everybody!

On Saturday 22 August 2009 21:54:35 Steve Litt wrote:
> On Saturday 22 August 2009 03:21:13 you wrote:
> > On Friday 21 August 2009 22:07:17 Steve Litt wrote:
> > > I disagree with some of your
> > > conclusions, but obviously your facts are spot on.
> >
> > Thanks. I would be happy to hear any arguments you have against my
> > conclusions. Maybe I'll change my opinions.
>
> OK, here's an example. You implied in a few places that if software 1 was
> GPL, software 2 never would have existed, but if software 1 was MIT/BSD,
> software 2 would have existed though possibly not as free software. For
> instance:
>
> ========================
> "My response is that this was indeed a problem and inconvenienced the users
> of Exceed. However, if X-Windows were GPLed, then the people who made
> Exceed and wanted to sell it, would not have made it in the first place,
> because they had to make it GPLed and keep it as FOSS. So either they would
> have implemented it from scratch or not at all."
> ========================
>
> My opinion is they very well might have made an Exceed GPL package,
> depending on how much of their incentive was selling software (notice I
> didn't say "making money"), vs how much priority was scratching an itch on
> Windows.
>

Yes, you're right about that. I'm not ruling out that in case X-Windows was 
GPLed, then Exceed would have been created and released as FOSS, but it's 
still possible it would not have been created at all.

> Then there's this:
> ========================
> Furthermore, If X11 had been initiated under a non-BSD-style-licence, then
> it is possible it would not have become as ubiquitous as it is in the UNIX
> world, thus making it irrelevant to port it to Windows in the first place.
> ========================
>
> My opinion would be the opposite -- it would have been adopted even more
> universally  had it been GPL. After all, the GPL Linux kernel plus the GNU
> utilities greatly "outsold" the older and more established BSDs.
>

I don't think the GPL is what made the Linux kernel popular. Apache, X-
Windows, bind, and a lot of other software is very ubiquitous and is under a 
permissive licence, and it is also commonly used on Linux. I now think the 
open-development model of Linux, as well as Linus Torvalds' extraordinary 
leadership (and the fact the BSD code was initially caught in the ugly AT&T 
lawsuit, which clouded its future), are what ultimately made Linux popular. 
For all we know, it could have been BSDLed and just as popular.

> I think a lot of people (including me) like GPL's guarantee that they're
> not doing unpaid work for Microsoft (or Apple). My experience with
> VimOutliner, which is the only one of my free software projects that
> actually attracted other developers, indicates that its GPL nature is
> attractive to developers.
>

I don't mind companies or individuals using my software commercially. In fact, 
I absolutely would be delighted in any beneficial use of it. I should also 
note that Microsoft, Apple or whoever are still free to use your GPLed 
software as long as they comply with the GPL, which allows them to sell it. 
For example, RHEL and commercial UNIXes contain a lot of GPLed and other FOSS 
code, and that's OK.

My experience with Freecell Solver has been that developers are also happy 
with Public Domain-like licences. While relatively few code contributions made 
it into the main code, it was integrated into several larger projects (both 
FOSS and non-FOSS) and it was even forked once (privately at first, and then 
the fork was published). And I received a lot of useful input and inspirations 
from my users, co-developers and even competitors, which greatly enhanced the 
product.

It is possible VimOutliner is simply the most attractive project of yours, not 
due to its licence, but due to its technological nature.

> My view is license should depend on use. For instance, it's fine that
> VimOutliner is GPL because it's not a development tool and it's unlikely
> someone would use its parts to make something else.
>
> On the other hand, my Node.pm tool
> (http://www.troubleshooters.com/projects/Node/index.htm) is meant as a
> development tool that I wanted to be able to produce a proprietary program,
> so I made it GPL with an exception
> (http://www.troubleshooters.cxm/projects/Node/COPYING.LPDTL.1.0).
>

OK.

> Another use of some restrictive licenses is to make war on software
> patents, which I think almost everyone believes to be unnecessary and
> obnoxious.
>

The Apache Licence also has an anti-patent clause of some sort, and is a 
permissive licence. The GPL and friends do not prevent the software patents 
problem (which I agree is a huge problem), but they may make it better. Don't 
know. In any case, I think we should fight software patents in other ways 
aside from using restrictive licences.

> Another use of restrictive licenses is to prevent things similar to the
> kerberos mess. See
> http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/ms_tuncom/major/mtc-00029523.htm and search
> for Kerberos to see what I'm talking about.
>

Yes, I remember that. I think such tactics would bite Microsoft or whoever is 
trying to employ them, regardless of the licence that will be used. Therefore, 
it should not be a major concern. See more here:

http://onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/06/30/esr_interview.html

And again, if Kerberos had been GPLed, Microsoft may probably have opted 
against adopting its code as is, which would mean less platforms where 
Kerberos would be available, which in turn would make introducing proprietary 
changes to it irrelevant.

> I do completely understand the attractiveness of the MIT license. It's
> simple and can't come back to bite you later. I'm just saying the GPL has
> plenty of benefits.
>

I agree that the strong copyleft licences may be attractive to many 
developers, and I accept that, just as I accept the fact that many developers 
are working on proprietary, non-free software and that's also OK. I didn't 
argue against copyleft licences, but against the GPL and the LGPL due to their 
complexity, opaqueness and lack of compatibility, even between various 
versions of themselves. If you want to use a different strong copyleft or 
weak copyleft licence - that will be acceptable to me. But I would recommend 
against using the GPL and LGPL.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

> Thanks
>
> SteveT
>
> Steve Litt
> Recession Relief Package
> http://www.recession-relief.US
> Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt
>
>
>
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Shlomi Fish       http://www.shlomifish.org/
Understand what Open Source is - http://xrl.us/bjn82

God gave us two eyes and ten fingers so we will type five times as much as we
read.