Re: [tlug] Bill Gates and the GPL , let the flames begin

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

Curt Sampson writes:

 > So the open source community just lost several hours of development
 > (one directly attributable to readline not being usable in BSD, and
 > a few others that you might count for less because I'm moody), and
 > will doubtless lose many more for similar reasons, not even yet
 > counting the time spent on actual editline development.

Since according to your account, no productive effort has yet been
spent on editline development :-/ it's all in the future.  So it's
purely an investment.

 > So here's how you tell if you really believe in the GPL. Ask yourself,
 > do you honestly thing that this is a good thing, and that not only me,
 > but my customers and others who were about to get free, open-source
 > software, should not have it because they agreed to use any non-GPL
 > software?

That's only half the question, of course.  The other half is

    Ask yourself, do you honestly think that Steve Baur's struggles
    with closed-source drivers for his display are a good thing, and
    that not only he, but his customers and others who would get free,
    open-source software if only he had some free time to hack it,
    should not have it because x.org doesn't use the GPL?

Since any sane person will answer "no" to both questions as stated,
we've learned nothing.

 > A) Does not write software
 > B) Writes software only when paid by others
 > C) Writes software when not paid by others, and
 >     C1) makes primary living from other than writing software
 >     C2) makes primary living from writing software
 > D) Writes software when not paid by others and gives it away, and
 >     D1) makes primary living from other than writing software

That's me.

 > (Is it to early to jump up and down yelling, "Yes! Yes! They really
 > *are* communists!"? :-))

Yes, it is, at least for the leading lights.  As wilfully ignorant as
he is about economics, Stallman does have a more sophisticated
understanding of Das Kapital than Marx or Lenin did.

 > On 2008-04-29 14:06 +0900 (Tue), Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
 > 
 > > Hey, IP is the legal version of the dog in the manger. It *doesn't*
 > > hurt me to let other people use my software, I lose nothing (except
 > > revenue). I think that when you've got an infinite amount of sand,
 > > putting up a fence around the sandbox is *not nice*.
 > 
 > Nah, I'm not going to buy the infinite amount of sand analogy. First of
 > all, it's not even free to copy free software; someone's got to spend
 > time to do it. It may be taking less and less time now, but only because
 > people have spent time writing new software to make the copying take
 > less work. Perhaps, for just this, an analogy involving an infinite
 > amount of sand "over there," where you still have to get it to where you
 > want to use it, would apply.

You're making the mistake of arguing about free beer when you want to
talk about free speech.  Sure, I have to pull my own draft; so what?
The keg is still bottomless and has an infinite number of taps (half
of which are being used by Keith Bawden at any given time, but that
still leaves an infinite number for the rest of us!)

 > But more importantly, we are talking about spending time and effort
 > writing new software (or expanding existing software, or even locating
 > bugs and filing bug reports, which is a surprisingly time-consuming [and
 > of course valuable] activity).

Tell me about "time-consuming".  I had to file a bug stating I
couldn't log in to the MacPorts Trac bug-tracker yesterday.

 > So where does, "I used readline in my the giant office productivity app
 > I was silly enough to write" fit in?

Really, to lower your blood pressure (and raise that of copyleft
advocates ;-) you (FVO you == Curt) should just think of the GPL as a
proprietary license, as well as a free software license (as defined by
all of the FSF, the OSI, and Larry Rosen's book).  Proprietary and
free are not mutually exclusive; copyleft is a prominent example.

 > > The world is not a nice place.
 > 
 > I agree with this, in the sense that you're using it. So where's the
 > analogy that works for this?

*There is no analogy*.  Software is SomethangNew[tm].  Maybe it will
be an analogy to other things later.

 > I might even say (pending further thought) that I think BSD-style
 > licensing makes the world a nicer place than GPL-style licensing
 > does.

I agree.  If people *really* believed in freedom (the kind "bought
with the blood of patriots" vs. hackers' rights, bought with others'
loss of freedom) it would be a lock.

On more quantitative terms, I think it's arguable that BSD-style
licensing results in *more* free software than GPL does.

I don't know whether it would bear out under careful study, or what to
make of it, but it's interesting to me that many of the cases of dual
licensing I know of involve permissive licensing rather than copyleft.