Re: [tlug] Yes! Another argument about the GPL! You knew you wanted it....

[Lars Kotthoff <lists@example.com>]

> > If you came up with [a] software product and released it under a
> > do-what-you-want-with-it license, anybody could continue to develop
> > it, make it proprietary, and sell it.
> 
> Well, two out of three. Certainly others can continue to develop it
> and sell it, but they can't make it proprietary. Once you've made
> *your* code freely available, unless everybody in the world refuses to
> distribute it, it remains freely available.

It's an ordered list -- they could add their stuff to it and then make it
proprietary :)

> > 1) any additional innovation by the profit-oriented entity would not
> > be available to the research community the original innovation came
> > from....
> 
> This is pretty typical confusion in the free software community; you
> assume that, since the GPL places some great strictures on what you can
> do with the code, other licenses are placing the opposite strictures on
> it. But there's nothing stopping the commercial developer of code under
> licenses that give them more freedom than the GPL from giving their
> changes back to the community.

I'm not assuming that. I'm simply assuming the worst case, taking human
selfishness into account.

> I requote in full here because I want to be clear. You really are saying
> that, if you had an interesting research result, you would not publish
> it unless you were reasonably certain that someone else would build on
> those results and return that additional work back to you?

No. I should've been clearer there; having work based on yours is certainly not
the only point of publishing.

> Well, I presume by this statement you're not working for a
> "profit-oriented entity." (Though it's hard to say that with a straight
> face when you come out directly demanding profit for doing your work.)

I'm not demanding profit for doing my work! (Though I won't say no if you offer
me money.) If you want to make a profit with the stuff I've done however, I
think it's only fair for me to get a share of that.

> But, as Stephen points out, does this mean that the public has to pay
> twice for your work in order to be able to do whatever they want with it?

That's exactly what that would avoid -- you fund it once, and then the work (and
its derivatives) are freely available.

> Hm. I'd call the BSD TCP/IP stack a piece of software which is "highly
> specialized and the algorithms used in it are the actual research."
> Would you rather we experience more network congestion because we force
> all those corporations building network devices to try and hack their
> own stack rather than use one that has the best available algorithms
> for avoiding network congestion and promoting fairness between nodes
> generating traffic?

That's not the point. You can always look back on something that happened long
ago and say "that was a good/bad decision". At the time you're releasing your
software you have to decide what license to use and usually you don't have an
idea what impact it will have.

> > They're paid by the general population (which includes professors and
> > graduate students) and companies.
> 
> I don't think it's fair to say that someone who receives tax money from
> the goverment and then gives some of it back is really funding himself.

I didn't say that. My point is actually similar to yours -- just because
corporations pay taxes doesn't mean that they've funded the research they're
profiting from.

> > ...it seems unfair that everybody else (including competitors of those
> > companies) should essentially subsidise their R&D.
> 
> It would indeed be unfair, but that additional research is funded by the
> entity in question, not anybody else.

I'm assuming that the additional research is small compared to the original
research. If the additional research is the larger part, there's a chance that
the corporation would have to rewrite the original software (interface issues
etc). I agree with you though that in this case a BSD-like license would make
more sense. But again, you don't know that when you're releasing the software.

> "Deal[ing] out your merchandise more efficiently" is often a public
> good. Would you prefer that we all have to pay twice as much as we
> currently do to buy a computer? I'm guessing that even you would agree
> that being able to bring the price of a notebook computer down to $100
> so that we can afford to buy them even for kids in Africa is a public
> good, even though bringing the price down to that level was done pretty
> much entirely by corporations seeking profit.

My example was probably bad, but I don't see your point here. If all software
used in the (actually more than) $100 laptop covered by BSD-like licenses had to
be paid for, how much more expensive do you think it would be? I have no idea,
but I would be surprised if it was more than a small fraction of the price.

> The GPL, come to think of it, has a particularly American point of view,
> concentrating on punishing bad behaviour over giving the opportunity for
> good behaviour to happen.

Agreed. There's a reason for that though ;)

Lars