Picking a license
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From: Lie Ryan on 12 May 2010 03:19 On 05/12/10 06:50, Patrick Maupin wrote: > On May 11, 5:34 am, Paul Boddie <p...(a)boddie.org.uk> wrote: >> On 10 Mai, 20:36, Patrick Maupin <pmau...(a)gmail.com> wrote: >>> The fact is, I know the man would force me to pay for the chocolate, so in >>> some cases that enters into the equation and keeps me from wanting the >>> chocolate. >> >> If the man said, "please take the chocolate, but I want you to share >> it with your friends", and you refused to do so because you couldn't >> accept that condition, would it be right to say, "that man is forcing >> me to share chocolate with my friends"? > > But the thing is, he's *not* making me share the chocolate with any of > my friends. He's not even making me share my special peanut butter > and chocolate. What he's making me do is, if I give my peanut butter > and chocolate to one of my friends, he's making me make *that* friend > promise to share. I try not to impose obligations like that on my > friends, so obviously the "nice" man with the chocolate isn't my > friend! The analogy breaks here; unlike chocolate, the value of software/source code, if shared, doesn't decrease (in fact, many software increases its value when shared liberally, e.g. p2p apps). There might be certain cases where the software contains some trade secret whose value decreases the more people knows about it; but sharing does not decrease the value of the software, at least not directly, it is the value of the secret that decreases because of the sharing.
From: Paul Boddie on 12 May 2010 08:10 On 11 Mai, 22:39, Patrick Maupin <pmau...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > OK. Now I'm REALLY confused. I said "Certainly RMS > carefully lays out that the LGPL should be used sparingly in his "Why > you shouldn't use the Lesser GPL for your next library" post. (Hint: > he's not suggesting a permissive license instead.)" > > to which you replied: > > "Sure, but all he's asking you to do is to make the software available > under a GPL-compatible licence." Alright, then, all he's asking you to do is to make *your* software available under a GPL-compatible licence. That's what I meant in the context of the discussion. Usually, people complain about how the GPL dictates a single licence, forbidding all others, that is then inseparable from their work ("It's my work but they make me GPL it! I can't even control my own work any more! The FSF owns it!" and such nonsense), but I've already given examples of this not being the case at all. > and then I tried to politely show that you were wrong about RMS's > intentions, but now, but you're saying "oh, of course, he'd say that > -- he wrote the license" which is basically what I've been saying all > along. But if you have read it like you say, then it appears you were > being very disingenuous in your original reply! What the licence asks you to do and what the author of the licence wants you to do are two separate things. [...] > NO. If you are building an application, and distributing GPLed stuff > as part of it, the FSF still maintains that the license is such that > the entire application must be GPLed. You keep acting like this isn't > true, but it absolutely is if you're distributing the entire > application. I wrote "the software" above when I meant "your software", but I have not pretended that the whole system need not be available under the GPL. Otherwise the following text would be logically inconsistent with such claims: [...] > On May 11, 5:24 am, Paul Boddie <p...(a)boddie.org.uk> wrote: > > Again, you have to consider the intent of the licensing: that some > > software which links to readline results in a software system that > > should offer the "four freedoms", because that's the price of linking > > to readline whose licence has promised that any system which builds > > upon it shall offer those privileges. > > But I did consider the intent, and as I have made clear, I think > that's a bullying tactic that fragments the software world > unnecessarily. Obviously YMMV. More loaded terms to replace the last set, I see. > > > > As for rst2pdf, what your modifications would mean is that the > > > > software would need to be redistributed under a GPL-compatible > > > > licence. > > NO. You're still not paying attention. The FSF's clear position is > that if you actually *redistribute* software under the GPL as *part of > a system* then the full package must be licensed *under the GPL*. Again, what I meant was "your software", not the whole software system. As I more or less state below... > > Once again, I refer you to the intent of the licensing: if someone has > > the software in front of them which uses svglib, then they need to > > have the privileges granted to them by the GPL. Yes, if the software > > also uses some component with a GPL-incompatible licence, then this > > causes a problem. > > It appears that the FSF's position is the ability to link to svglib > would require software to be licensed under the GPL. It would require the resulting system to be licensed under the GPL. As it stands by itself, rst2pdf would need to be licensed compatibly with the GPL. > I don't believe > that, but I do believe that if rst2pdf distributed svglib (or even > patches to svglib which were clearly derivative works) then yes, > rst2pdf would have to be distributed under the GPL. This kind of > bullshit is only acceptable to people who only think a single license > is acceptable. Take it or leave it, then. [...] > > Well, I have referred several times to WebKit without you taking the > > hint, > > OK, I don't work with webkit. I knew you were hinting at something, > but why the games, I don't know. I guess it's all about mystique and > games. You mentioned WebKit as a non-GPL-licensed project which attracted contributions from hard-nosed business. WebKit started life as KHTML and was (and still is) LGPL-licensed, but for all practical purposes, KHTML was only ever experienced by KDE users whilst linked to the Qt framework, then available under the GPL. Now, given that WebKit now works with other GUI frameworks, yet is still LGPL-licensed (and this has nothing to do with recent Qt licensing developments, since this applies to the period before those changes), it is clear that any assertion that WebKit "was made GPL-only", which is what a lot of people claim, is incorrect. > > but that provides a specific case of a project which is LGPL- > > licensed despite being based on (in GPLv3 terminology) libraries which > > were distributed under the GPL and combined with that software. > > What other libraries? I don't know it's history. I give you specific > examples at problems; you hint around at things you claim are not > problems and then still don't give specifics. I've now given you the specifics. > > Similarly, the effort to ensure that CPython's licence was GPL- > > compatible had a lot to do with the right to redistribute with GPL- > > licensed code (actually readline, if I remember correctly). > > Yes, but the Python project doesn't actually distribute readline, and > (as I mentioned) people are more informed now, and it would be > difficult for RMS to bully Python into relicensing. All RMS and the FSF's lawyers wanted was that the CNRI licences be GPL- compatible. There are actually various aspects of GPL-compatibility that are beneficial, even if you don't like the copyleft-style clauses, so I don't think it was to the detriment of the Python project. > But if the Python > distribution *included* GNU Readline, then RMS would be on firmer > ground, and the license would probably have to be changed. This is > *exactly* the situation I was describing with svglib -- can you still > not see that it is a problem to just toss unsupported free software > out there with a GPL license? Unsupported Apache or MIT is fine -- > fix it or ignore. Unsupported GPL is an attractive nuisance. Well, if you're planning to release code and just walk away from it, then choosing a permissive licence might be acceptable, but not all code "found" by people on the Internet is abandoned, even if it is apparently mere fodder for their super-important project. > > Is readline trivial? Was readline trivial in 1992? > > Again, you could have neural net prediction and other fancy > technologies, but in general, yes, the concept is pretty trivial and > there were many systems that already had such things back then. Well, that may not be a judgement shared by the authors. There are numerous tools and components which do dull jobs and whose maintenance is tedious and generally unrewarding, but that doesn't mean that such investment is worth nothing in the face of someone else's so-very- topical high-profile project. > > Does it even > > matter, because the author is more or less saying that they don't want > > their code incorporated in a proprietary system? > > Yes it matters because as others have pointed out, sometimes people > use stuff which is purported to be "free" without a full understanding > of all the implications. But this gets back to my general complaint > about co-opting the word "free" which you don't think is a problem > because you have chosen to use other words. Well, if people are making use of "some good code found for free on the Internet", particularly if they are corporations like Cisco, and they choose not to understand things like copyright and licensing, or they think "all rights reserved" is just a catchy slogan, then they probably shouldn't be building larger works and redistributing them. This may seem unfair to you, but there are plenty of other organisations who are much less charitable about copyright infringement than the FSF or the average Free Software developer. But if you're more or less saying that the intentions of an author can (or should) be disregarded if the desire to use that author's work is great enough, well, that's certainly interesting to learn. Paul
From: Paul Boddie on 12 May 2010 08:26 On 11 Mai, 23:02, Patrick Maupin <pmau...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > Huh? Permissive licenses offer much better certainty for someone > attempting a creative mash-up. Different versions of the Apache > license don't conflict with each other. If I use an MIT-licensed > component, it doesn't attempt to make me offer my whole work under > MIT. What certainty does the MIT licence give contributors to a project against patent infringement claims initiated by another contributor? [...] > Oh, I get it. You were discussing the certainty that an author can > control what downstream users do with the software to some extent. > Yes, I fully agree. The GPL is for angry idealists who have an easily > outraged sense of justice, who don't have enough real problems to work > on. Again, the author does not exercise control when people must voluntarily choose to use that author's work and thereby agree to adhere to that author's set of terms. Paul
From: Paul Boddie on 12 May 2010 08:43 On 11 Mai, 22:50, Patrick Maupin <pmau...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On May 11, 5:34 am, Paul Boddie <p...(a)boddie.org.uk> wrote: > > > Yes, *if* you took it. He isn't forcing you to take it, though, is he? > > No, but he said a lot of words that I didn't immediately understand > about what it meant to be free and that it was free, and then after I > bit into it he told me he owned my soul now. Thus, "owned my soul" joins "holy war" and "Bin Laden" on the list. That rhetorical toolbox is looking pretty empty at this point. [...] > > It is whining if someone says, "I really want that chocolate, but that > > nasty man is going to make me pay for it!" > > But that's not what happened. I mean, he just told me that I might > have to give some of it to others later. He didn't mention that if I > spread peanut butter on mine before I ate it that I'd have to give > people Reese's Peanut Butter cups. He isn't, though. He's telling you that you can't force other people to lick the chocolate off whatever "Reese's Peanut Butter cups" are, rather than actually eating the combination of the two, when you offer such a combination to someone else. Is the Creative Commons share- alike clause just as objectionable to you, because it's that principle we're talking about here? [...] > > If the man said, "please take the chocolate, but I want you to share > > it with your friends", and you refused to do so because you couldn't > > accept that condition, would it be right to say, "that man is forcing > > me to share chocolate with my friends"? > > But the thing is, he's *not* making me share the chocolate with any of > my friends. He's not even making me share my special peanut butter > and chocolate. What he's making me do is, if I give my peanut butter > and chocolate to one of my friends, he's making me make *that* friend > promise to share. I try not to impose obligations like that on my > friends, so obviously the "nice" man with the chocolate isn't my > friend! Yes, he's making everyone commit to sharing, and yes, it's like a snowball effect once people agree to join in. But unless you hide that commitment, no-one imposes anything on anyone. They can get their chocolate elsewhere. They join in; they are not conscripted. [...] > I explained this very carefully before multiple times. Let me give > concrete examples -- (1) I have told my children before "if we take > that candy, then they will make us pay for it" and (2) if we included > (GPLed software) in this (MIT-licensed software) then we will have to > change the license. In both these cases, once the decision has been > made, then yes, force enters into it. And no, I don't think the > average shop keeper is nearly as evil as Darth, or even RMS. Entering an agreement voluntarily does not mean that you are forced to enter that agreement, even if the agreement then involves obligations (as agreements inevitably do). Paul
From: Patrick Maupin on 12 May 2010 10:10
On May 12, 7:10 am, Paul Boddie <p...(a)boddie.org.uk> wrote: > On 11 Mai, 22:39, Patrick Maupin <pmau...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > > > > OK. Now I'm REALLY confused. I said "Certainly RMS > > carefully lays out that the LGPL should be used sparingly in his "Why > > you shouldn't use the Lesser GPL for your next library" post. (Hint: > > he's not suggesting a permissive license instead.)" > > > to which you replied: > > > "Sure, but all he's asking you to do is to make the software available > > under a GPL-compatible licence." > > Alright, then, all he's asking you to do is to make *your* software > available under a GPL-compatible licence. That's what I meant in the > context of the discussion. Usually, people complain about how the GPL > dictates a single licence, forbidding all others, that is then > inseparable from their work ("It's my work but they make me GPL it! I > can't even control my own work any more! The FSF owns it!" and such > nonsense), but I've already given examples of this not being the case > at all. In that post, specifically, RMS says to use the GPL in some cases, rather than the LGPL, for libraries. Any other interpretation of *that post* is disingenuous. > > and then I tried to politely show that you were wrong about RMS's > > intentions, but now, but you're saying "oh, of course, he'd say that > > -- he wrote the license" which is basically what I've been saying all > > along. But if you have read it like you say, then it appears you were > > being very disingenuous in your original reply! > > What the licence asks you to do and what the author of the licence > wants you to do are two separate things. But the whole context was about what RMS wanted me to do and you disagreed! > > > NO. If you are building an application, and distributing GPLed stuff > > as part of it, the FSF still maintains that the license is such that > > the entire application must be GPLed. You keep acting like this isn't > > true, but it absolutely is if you're distributing the entire > > application. > > I wrote "the software" above when I meant "your software", but I have > not pretended that the whole system need not be available under the > GPL. You say you "have not pretended" but you've never mentioned that it would or even acknowledged the correctness of my assertions about this until now, just claiming that what I said was false. > > On May 11, 5:24 am, Paul Boddie <p...(a)boddie.org.uk> wrote: > > > Again, you have to consider the intent of the licensing: that some > > > software which links to readline results in a software system that > > > should offer the "four freedoms", because that's the price of linking > > > to readline whose licence has promised that any system which builds > > > upon it shall offer those privileges. > > > But I did consider the intent, and as I have made clear, I think > > that's a bullying tactic that fragments the software world > > unnecessarily. Obviously YMMV. > > More loaded terms to replace the last set, I see. IMO "Bullying" is the correct term for some of Stallman's actions, including in the clisp debacle. I knew you wouldn't agree -- that's why YMMV. And I'm not "replacing" any set of terms -- part of the "bullying" is the "forcing." > > > > > As for rst2pdf, what your modifications would mean is that the > > > > > software would need to be redistributed under a GPL-compatible > > > > > licence. > > > NO. You're still not paying attention. The FSF's clear position is > > that if you actually *redistribute* software under the GPL as *part of > > a system* then the full package must be licensed *under the GPL*. > > Again, what I meant was "your software", not the whole software > system. As I more or less state below... BUT THAT DOESN'T MATTER. Once the whole package is licensed under the GPL, for someone downstream to try to scrape the GPL off and get to just the underlying non-GPL parts is harder than scraping bubblegum off your shoe on a hot Texas day. > > > Once again, I refer you to the intent of the licensing: if someone has > > > the software in front of them which uses svglib, then they need to > > > have the privileges granted to them by the GPL. Yes, if the software > > > also uses some component with a GPL-incompatible licence, then this > > > causes a problem. > > > It appears that the FSF's position is the ability to link to svglib > > would require software to be licensed under the GPL. > > It would require the resulting system to be licensed under the GPL. As > it stands by itself, rst2pdf would need to be licensed compatibly with > the GPL. They've softened their stance considerably over the last few years, and don't overreach nearly as much as they used to, I agree. [...] > You mentioned WebKit as a non-GPL-licensed project which attracted > contributions from hard-nosed business. WebKit started life as KHTML > and was (and still is) LGPL-licensed, but for all practical purposes, > KHTML was only ever experienced by KDE users whilst linked to the Qt > framework, then available under the GPL. Now, given that WebKit now > works with other GUI frameworks, yet is still LGPL-licensed (and this > has nothing to do with recent Qt licensing developments, since this > applies to the period before those changes), it is clear that any > assertion that WebKit "was made GPL-only", which is what a lot of > people claim, is incorrect. I didn't make that claim and have never heard of that claim, and I'm not at all sure of the relevance of whatever you're trying to explain to the licensing of an overall program, rather than a library. > > > but that provides a specific case of a project which is LGPL- > > > licensed despite being based on (in GPLv3 terminology) libraries which > > > were distributed under the GPL and combined with that software. > > > What other libraries? I don't know it's history. I give you specific > > examples at problems; you hint around at things you claim are not > > problems and then still don't give specifics. > > I've now given you the specifics. And now that I know the specifics, I think they are completely irrelevant to any points I was trying to make in this discussion. > > > Similarly, the effort to ensure that CPython's licence was GPL- > > > compatible had a lot to do with the right to redistribute with GPL- > > > licensed code (actually readline, if I remember correctly). > > > Yes, but the Python project doesn't actually distribute readline, and > > (as I mentioned) people are more informed now, and it would be > > difficult for RMS to bully Python into relicensing. > > All RMS and the FSF's lawyers wanted was that the CNRI licences be GPL- > compatible. There are actually various aspects of GPL-compatibility > that are beneficial, even if you don't like the copyleft-style > clauses, so I don't think it was to the detriment of the Python > project. And I don't have a problem with that. Honestly I don't. But as far as I'm concerned, although you finally admitted it, a lot of the dancing around appeared to be an attempt to disprove my valid assertion that a combined work would have to be distributed under the GPL, and that no other free software license claims sovereignty over the entire work. > > But if the Python > > distribution *included* GNU Readline, then RMS would be on firmer > > ground, and the license would probably have to be changed. This is > > *exactly* the situation I was describing with svglib -- can you still > > not see that it is a problem to just toss unsupported free software > > out there with a GPL license? Unsupported Apache or MIT is fine -- > > fix it or ignore. Unsupported GPL is an attractive nuisance. > > Well, if you're planning to release code and just walk away from it, > then choosing a permissive licence might be acceptable, but not all > code "found" by people on the Internet is abandoned, even if it is > apparently mere fodder for their super-important project. Code doesn't have to be abandoned to be an attractive nuisance. > > > Is readline trivial? Was readline trivial in 1992? > > > Again, you could have neural net prediction and other fancy > > technologies, but in general, yes, the concept is pretty trivial and > > there were many systems that already had such things back then. > > Well, that may not be a judgement shared by the authors. There are > numerous tools and components which do dull jobs and whose maintenance > is tedious and generally unrewarding, but that doesn't mean that such > investment is worth nothing in the face of someone else's so-very- > topical high-profile project. OK, so what you're saying is that readline is so dull and unrewarding that the only reason to bother writing it is to reel people in to the GPL? > > > Does it even > > > matter, because the author is more or less saying that they don't want > > > their code incorporated in a proprietary system? > > > Yes it matters because as others have pointed out, sometimes people > > use stuff which is purported to be "free" without a full understanding > > of all the implications. But this gets back to my general complaint > > about co-opting the word "free" which you don't think is a problem > > because you have chosen to use other words. > > Well, if people are making use of "some good code found for free on > the Internet", particularly if they are corporations like Cisco, and I'm not talking about Cisco. I'm talking about people like the author of clisp, and you well know it. > they choose not to understand things like copyright and licensing, or > they think "all rights reserved" is just a catchy slogan, then they > probably shouldn't be building larger works and redistributing them. Well, the FSF seems to have softened its stance, but at the time, clisp wasn't even distributing readline. That's why I use terms like "bullying". The bully now knows it's harder to get away with that particular lie, but he's still scheming about how to reel more people in. > This may seem unfair to you, but there are plenty of other > organisations who are much less charitable about copyright > infringement than the FSF or the average Free Software developer. None of those claim that their software is "Free Software" (all caps). You apparently think it's fine that that's just a catchy slogan. > But if you're more or less saying that the intentions of an author can > (or should) be disregarded if the desire to use that author's work is > great enough, well, that's certainly interesting to learn. I never said that and you know it. I have explicitly gone out of my way to indicate that I won't use GPLed software in cases where my doing so might violate the author's wishes, even if it would be legal to do so, and I have always said people should be able to use whatever license they want. But the intentions of an author, as viewed through, e.g., the MIT license, are much easier to discern and much more liberal for downstream users than the GPL, which is exceedingly long and requires a huge FAQ to even begin to fathom. Regards, Pat |