A license to kill -9 -l
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| Author | Content |
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| dotmatrix May 21, 2016 10:40 AM EDT |
Posted Article wrote:The free software versus open source argument has to stop! The new people don't care about this argument and it puts them to sleep. It's leading to newcomers not picking a license so they don't have to pick a side. We need to decide we're on the same side basically and move on. No. FOSS and OSS are not the same. The 'open' license of a project matters a great deal to the future direction of the project as well as which kind of libraries and other pre-built software components can be included in the source tree. And not all OSS vs. FOSS argument-ers are on the same side... My understanding of copyright ...which is probably wrong... is that if a given 'open-sourced' project has no license, then the open code can not be reused. My understanding is it's like publishing a book. |
| AwesomeTux May 21, 2016 11:40 AM EDT |
dotmatrix wrote:My understanding of copyright ...which is probably wrong... is that if a given 'open-sourced' project has no license, then the open code can not be reused. My understanding is it's like publishing a book. Yes, exactly. A few years back Github received a lot of criticism for allowing so many people to ignorantly create projects without choosing a license. They have since improved about that by informing people what "no license" means for a project: http://www.infoworld.com/article/2611422/open-source-softwar... |
| nmset May 21, 2016 12:32 PM EDT |
>This means that you retain all rights to your source code and that nobody else may reproduce, distribute, or create derivative works from your work. It's hard to understand how this is possible. If you find a few thousand bucks on the street, what would you do ? |
| mbaehrlxer May 22, 2016 1:05 PM EDT |
hmm? dotmatrix, it seems you both argue for the same thing: the article says that people avoid picking a license in order to avoid picking a side in Open Source vs Free Software. now, whether that's true or not, the claim goes that, if we stop arguing about Open Source vs Free Software then developers would be more comfortable with choosing a license. so the article says that a license is important, and so do you. now where is the problem? personally, i agree that we should stop arguing about Open Source vs Free Software. the licenses in both cases are the same. we are on the same side legally. we may have philosophical differences, but most arguments make a mount out of a molehill. the thing is, there are more than two positions: Open Source vs Free Software arguments often only look at the two extremes: copyleft is bad, and only BSD/MIT like licenses are truly free. copyleft is the only way to go. BSD/MIT like licenses are not enough to protect users and developers. there is a lot of middle ground though: like for example the believe that copyleft is great, and is what we wish we had, but it's to extreme to "sell" to businesses. let's get them used to Open Source first, and nudge them towards Free Software later. (in fact i believer this to be the original Open Source position. Open Source was not meant to be divisive. it was meant to be Free Software with training wheels. a gateway drug. pick your metaphor...) there is also a school of thought that believes that businesses owning a copyleft project have an unfair advantage over the community. since they own the code they can build non-free features into their products, but noone else in the community can. it prevents developers in the project to fork and create a competing product on equal terms. take mysql vs mariadb for example: oracle can sell mysql under different licenses to companies who don't want to comply with the GPL. mariadb does not have that option. there are more positions, and many of them are not extreme. i believe that most of us are fine with either. Free Software is good, and Open Source is good. if that weren't the case then terms like FOSS would not be so popular. greetings, eMBee. ps: my own pet peeve is that while i prefer Free Software, "open source" is simply a better search term. go try searching for "free software" in an app-store, then try searching for "open source" compare the difference and weep. |
| jdixon May 23, 2016 9:27 AM EDT |
> It's hard to understand how this is possible. The changes in copyright law over the years. Now, IANAL, but here's my understanding of the situation: It used to be (up until the 70's or so, I believe) that when you wrote something you had to apply for a copyright on it, and if you didn't it was considered in the public domain. Now, anything you write is considered to be automatically copyrighted, whether you registered the copyright on it or not. The license on your code grants the user the right to their copy of it, under the conditions granted by your license. With no license, there's no right to the copy. |
| dotmatrix May 23, 2016 9:28 AM EDT |
@mbaehrlxer: There are several problems with the argument that Open Sources licenses are pretty much all the same.
While some of the above is vague or may seem nitpicking, the type of license on a given software package plays a very real and active role in where that package is used and how it is used. openssl is a great example of a weird chimaera license which makes life very difficult for many projects. Here is the license text: https://www.openssl.org/source/license.html Here is what openssl is incompatible with: https://people.gnome.org/~markmc/openssl-and-the-gpl.html That's right... the openssl license is legally incompatible with the GPL! Several well known 'open source' projects do not [or did not or have needed to implement workarounds to] use openssl because of the license weirdness. In short: The 'open source' license of an 'open source' project matters a great deal even if simply speaking logistically. The licenses are also very different philosophically. A restrictive FOSS license 'frees the software sharing', while a permissive 'OSS' license 'frees the business sharing'. This is a real world difference and seems to be the general crux of the matter. In all cases: The choice of a license is both very important as well as very complex and most of the time whatever choice is made will be the 'wrong' choice for at least nearly all of your user base. My own preference is for restrictive licenses because those licenses ensure the most freedom for the most persons while also ensuring that businesses trying to 'leverage free software from the community' can not do so... this last point I generally refer to as "theft-lite." Of course there are major open source projects that use both general types of license -- restrictive and permissive. However, my advice would be: If a small time developer is creating something that will 'stand on its own', use a restrictive license in order to maintain control over the usage. If a developer is creating something that will integrate will many other projects, use a permissive license in order to allow the 'leverage hawks' to use the code -- even though its likely you will eventually lose control over the code base. If a given project uses a given library, make sure the licenses are compatible. |
| mbaehrlxer May 23, 2016 12:48 PM EDT |
Quoting:There are several problems with the argument that Open Sources licenses are pretty much all the same.i didn't claim that licenses themselves are the same. i claim that the set of licenses that are acceptable as Free Software and the set of licenses that are acceptable as Open Source are the same (well almost, there are a few exceptions) to elaborate: the extremists believe that only GPL is a good Free Software license. and only BSD is a good Open Source license. moderates believe that both GPL and BSD are good Free Software licenses. (because we can use BSD code in our GPL apps) and, both GPL and BSD are good Open Source licenses. (because both give access to the source) incompatibility of licenses is not relevant. the GPL is incompatible with the GFDL yet both are Free Software licenses. greetings, eMBee. |
| cybertao May 23, 2016 1:14 PM EDT |
Richard Stallman banging on about 'free-software' as opposed to 'open-source' makes a lot of sense when you read an article from the other side of the coin, Jack Wallen. http://www.techrepublic.com/article/time-linux-fans-open-their-arms-to-closed-source/
Replace 'open-source' with 'free-software' and the article makes even less sense. Freedom is not a concern for good ol' Jack. Having the source-code available for free-software is a side-effect of freedom (because there is none without it). Open-source can have very restrictive licenses which have greater consequences. There is a difference between the two distinct concepts. |
| dotmatrix May 23, 2016 1:33 PM EDT |
The GPL and the GFDL are designed for different purposes. Source code should not be released under GFDL, since that is not its purpose. 'Extremists' as termed by some, might be viewed as 'truth seekers' by others or 'scientists' by still others... The 'truth' or the 'why' matters to some people. This does not make those people 'extremists'. It simply means that those people have different objectives than 'non-extremists'... I would definitely be called an 'extremist' for my own views... however, it is just as easy to apply that term to those whose objectives lay outside of the 'software freedom' world. It is just as extreme to minimize the importance of software freedom through the intended but much maligned 'viral' nature of the GPL, as it is 'extreme' to insist that software freedom has greater assurance through adherence to the 'viral' nature of the GPL. Both views could be called or justified as extreme. Perhaps, one view is more sociably accepted within some groups... but that social acceptance does not necessarily make the idea less extreme [meaning less one sided] It's easy to fool oneself. It's easy to justify one's actions through popularity of those actions, but popularity is not equitable to either moderation or soundness of ideal. It's arguable that BSD-type and other permissive licenses weaken the open source community. It's also arguable that permissive licenses in general allow a 'soft' theft of intellectual property. And clearly, the BSD licensed code base has been swept up and re-packaged into proprietary software by many corporations... and left behind, what seems to me, a weakened open source code base -- a code base which gets fewer updates, less support, and will probably ultimately be lost entirely over time. The 'viral' nature of the GPL and other restrictive licenses is generally the first complaint of many who would seek a 'soft' theft of intellectual property for monetary gain at little to no initial expense. To say there is a middle ground, and that the middle ground is somehow less extreme, is a little like saying that over grazing of the commons is fine and is not extreme because 'everyone is doing it'... However, I have 'extreme' views, and hardly expect other persons or organizations to accept my views let alone see those views as 'better' than some sort of 'middle ground'... |
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