Re: [tlug] Samba and licensing

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

On 10/16/07, Scott Robbins <scottro@example.com> wrote:
> Interesting article in the Fedora weekly.
>
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue105
>
> Samba: The GPLv3 License Dance Begins

Free software has its quota of fascists.

> I don't know if it's just my ignorance of the situation, but it seems
> that some of the GPL licensing is become as restrictive as some of the
> commercial licenses, despite the fact that it is free of charge.

Of course not!  There's a big difference between "restrictive" and
"incompatible".  I don't know why KDE decided to stay GPLv2-only,
and I don't know that much about why Linus did, but these are
decisions made by people who have thought carefully about what
they are doing thank-you-very-much-for-YHO-now-shut-up. :-)
Similarly for the TrueGNU camp, and Samba.  They all are still
free software advocates, and their chosen licenses are very much
free software licenses.

The point is that a copyleft license is not about doing what you think
is right, and freeing the software you distribute.  It's about encouraging
third parties to free their distributions, too.  This is a thorny problem,
since some people feel strongly about any device that downstream
might use to make some copies of their code unfree.  But with a
copyleft license that means any variation in what you do and don't
allow your downstream to do results in an incompatible license.  And
that leaves all open source hostage to the FSF's quixotic attempts to
tilt against the windmills of patents and the DMCA via GPLv3.

In my opinion, the free software fascists should adopt the strategy of
that other famous fascist, Richard Milhouse Nixon, i.e. declare victory,
and move on.  (ESR also advocates this route.)  However, at GNU and
some other major projects like Samba there's this "circle the wagons
and protect the virgins from them Injuns!" attitude.  There's no doubt
that there are some vicious vermin out there.  But you'd think the PC
fascists at GNU would realize that since about 40 years ago there
ain't no "Injuns", just peaceful Native Americans, and that circling their
wooden wagons with cloth roofs is going to be even less effective
against fugitives from Biohazard III armed with nuke-tipped RPGs (aka
Software Patents and DMCA-protected Technical Measures) than they
were against flaming arrows.

Again IMO, what we need to do is get free software into every nook and
cranny where software is doing valuable work; we want people to be aware
of just how this helps them improve their UIs (with no more effort than
clicking on "Download Current Version").  Unfortunately, RMS et al don't
agree.  Just today somebody posted to emacs-devel that they have an
Emacs mode that allows video editing via mplayer and some other software.
Stallman's response?  "Cool! <whine>But couldn't you make it work with
VLC?  mplayer makes it easy to use proprietary codecs!</whine>"

Spit, barf, gag, and barf again.  (And perhaps you can see what my
excuse for this <rant /> is. ;-)

The problem is that copyright (which is all that the free software movement
owns, because of its adamant stand against software patents, not to mention
the expense of acquiring them) simply is not a satisfactory retort to the
power of patents and Congress.  The anti-patent, anti-DMCA clauses in
GPLv3 were largely shaped by patent-owning corporations who also have
substantial investment in open source software, like IBM.  These companies
don't really care that much about incompatibility; they can afford to deal
with it.  Beg, buy, build -- IBM has no need for "beg", it can buy or build the
whole GNU Project and the check won't even need to be reported to the CFO.
It's SMEs, freelance hackers, and hobbyists who suffer, not to mention the
users they serve.

I don't know what the GPLv3 activists think they are buying, except forks
and other weakness in the community.

> It strikes me as something that, from an advocacy standpoint, is very
> bad.  As it's still an MS world, and KDE is one of the popular ways to
> help people make the adjustment, and samba is a way for them to continue
> using MS files, as well as its importance to various Unix and Unix like
> system file servers, I think that this will hinder growth.

Sure.  But I've had that conversation with RMS several times.

RMS doesn't care about growth, now that his whole toolchain from the OS
to Emacs is free.  He cares about purity first, and growth is a luxury.  Nice
to have, but always dispensable.  He no longer has hands on experience
with most of the cutting edge software provided by the GNU project.  I
suspect he's never used the GIMP, he has no clue about GNOME and
freedesktop.org protocols (which are central to the recent surge of eye
candy in Emacs).  He repeatedly asks people to post content, not URLs;
I suspect he doesn't use web browsers at all.  At the very least, he's
perfectly happy to be cut off from the 'net for days at a time, his only
connectivity coming in the form of POP3 downloads of email.

I doubt that using GIMP or getting addicted to Firefox add-ons would
change his principles or his policy initiatives in GNU or the FSF, of course.
But it certainly adds to the sense of disconnect I feel when reading El
Pronunciamento de la Dia de El Jefe del FSF.

> Hopefully, that's just my ignorance of the entire situation, but it does
> seem that the ones who will be most affected will be the end users.

RMS doesn't care about them, and neither do any other free software
movementistas I know.  That's what the open source movement is about:
free software for real people and real businesses.  The free software
movement is of the hackers, for the hackers, and by the hackers.  Never
been anything else, never will be.

Parables about "welding the hood shut" notwithstanding....

-- 
Ask not how to "do" free software business.
Rather, ask what your business can "do for" free software!