Picking a license
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From: Ben Finney on 6 May 2010 19:56 aahz(a)pythoncraft.com (Aahz) writes: > In article <4BE05D75.7030301(a)msn.com>, > Rouslan Korneychuk <rouslank(a)msn.com> wrote: > > > >The only question I have now is what about licensing? Is that > >something I need to worry about? Should I go with LGPL, MIT, or > >something else? > > Which license you use depends partly on your political philosophy. Yes. Unless you place such a low value the freedom of your users that you'd allow proprietary derivatives of your work to remove the freedoms you've taken care to grant, then you should choose a copyleft license like the GPL. > Unless you have an aggressively Stallmanesque attitude that people > using your code should be forced to contribute back any changes Er, no. Anyone who thinks that a copyleft license “forces” anyone to do anything is mistaken about copyright law, or the GPL, or both. The GPL only grants permissions, like any other free software license. -- \ “If sharing a thing in no way diminishes it, it is not rightly | `\ owned if it is not shared.” —Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE) | _o__) | Ben Finney
From: Patrick Maupin on 7 May 2010 10:45 On May 6, 6:56 pm, Ben Finney <ben+pyt...(a)benfinney.id.au> wrote: > a...(a)pythoncraft.com (Aahz) writes: > > In article <4BE05D75.7030...(a)msn.com>, > > Rouslan Korneychuk <rousl...(a)msn.com> wrote: > > > >The only question I have now is what about licensing? Is that > > >something I need to worry about? Should I go with LGPL, MIT, or > > >something else? > > > Which license you use depends partly on your political philosophy. > > Yes. > > Unless you place such a low value the freedom of your users that you'd > allow proprietary derivatives of your work to remove the freedoms you've > taken care to grant, Oh, you mean like Guido and the PSF, and all the Apache people. Yes, they're an uncaring bunch. I wouldn't trust software written by any of them, or attempt to emulate them in any way. > then you should choose a copyleft license like the > GPL. This is certainly appropriate in some circumstances. The only time I personally would use the GPL is if I thought I wrote something so wonderful and uneasily replicated that I wanted to directly make money off it, and thus wanted to make it harder for others to take it and sell enhanced versions without giving me the code back. For years, I have viewed the GPL as more of a commercial license than the permissive ones, a view that has been validated by several high profile events recently. > > Unless you have an aggressively Stallmanesque attitude that people > > using your code should be forced to contribute back any changes > > Er, no. Anyone who thinks that a copyleft license forces anyone to do > anything is mistaken about copyright law Perhaps you feel "forces" is too loaded of a word. There is no question, however, that a copyright license can require that if you do "X" with some code, you must also do "Y". There is also no question that the GPL uses this capability in copyright law to require anybody who distributes a derivative work to provide the source. Thus, "forced to contribute back any changes" is definitely what happens once the decision is made to distribute said changes in object form. >, or the GPL, or both. The GPL > only grants permissions, like any other free software license. But the conditions attached to those permissions make it not at all "like any other free software license." And that's true whether we use the word "forces" or not. Regards, Pat
From: Ben Finney on 7 May 2010 18:33 Patrick Maupin <pmaupin(a)gmail.com> writes: > On May 6, 6:56 pm, Ben Finney <ben+pyt...(a)benfinney.id.au> wrote: > > Er, no. Anyone who thinks that a copyleft license “forces” anyone to > > do anything is mistaken about copyright law > > Perhaps you feel "forces" is too loaded of a word. There is no > question, however, that a copyright license can require that if you do > "X" with some code, you must also do "Y". No. A free software license doesn't require anything. It permits the recipient to do things otherwise prohibited. Copyright law taketh, and the license giveth as an exception to the law. That is: it is copyright law that forces the recipient to abstain from a broad range of actions. A free software license grants exceptions, explicitly allowing specific actions to be performed. > There is also no question that the GPL uses this capability in > copyright law to require anybody who distributes a derivative work to > provide the source. Thus, "forced to contribute back any changes" is > definitely what happens once the decision is made to distribute said > changes in object form. You might as well say that a restaurant “forces” patrons to pay for their meal. They don't; it's merely a proviso for performing the act of eating the food. Since no-one is forcing anyone to take any of the actions permitted in the license, and since those actions would not otherwise be permitted under copyright law, it's both false and misleading to refer to them as “forced”. -- \ “We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just | `\ stuff that works.” —Douglas Adams | _o__) | Ben Finney
From: Patrick Maupin on 7 May 2010 19:27 On May 7, 5:33 pm, Ben Finney <ben+pyt...(a)benfinney.id.au> wrote: > Patrick Maupin <pmau...(a)gmail.com> writes: > > On May 6, 6:56 pm, Ben Finney <ben+pyt...(a)benfinney.id.au> wrote: > > > Er, no. Anyone who thinks that a copyleft license forces anyone to > > > do anything is mistaken about copyright law > > > Perhaps you feel "forces" is too loaded of a word. There is no > > question, however, that a copyright license can require that if you do > > "X" with some code, you must also do "Y". > > No. A free software license doesn't require anything. It permits the > recipient to do things otherwise prohibited. Copyright law taketh, and > the license giveth as an exception to the law. Finely parsed semantics with a meaningless difference when applied to what I said in the context of comparing GPL vs. permissive licenses. > That is: it is copyright law that forces the recipient to abstain from a > broad range of actions. A free software license grants exceptions, > explicitly allowing specific actions to be performed. Yes, and as I said, the exceptions are not as encompassing, and come with more restrictions, when using the GPL vs. using a permissive license. > > There is also no question that the GPL uses this capability in > > copyright law to require anybody who distributes a derivative work to > > provide the source. Thus, "forced to contribute back any changes" is > > definitely what happens once the decision is made to distribute said > > changes in object form. > > You might as well say that a restaurant forces patrons to pay for > their meal. They don't; it's merely a proviso for performing the act of > eating the food. I certainly *would* say that. Try eating at a restaurant with a halfway watchful staff near a police station and see if you can get away without payment. Same thing with buying groceries or dry goods. The restaurants and the stores, with the full weight of the government, force you to do certain things if you partake of their wares. So do do software authors via their licenses, which, as you correctly point out, derive their power from the fact that your legal rights may be very limited absent a valid license to a piece of software. On the odd occasion that a restaurant or a store offers you something for "free" (with no asterisks or fine print) they really mean it -- you can take it home and do what you want with it, with no force applied. (Don't start on the whole libre vs. gratis thing -- as far as I'm concerned, neither "free as in beer" software nor GPLed software is as free as the occasional free meal or trinket I get, which is much more akin to "public domain" in software.) > Since no-one is forcing anyone to take any of the actions permitted in > the license, and since those actions would not otherwise be permitted > under copyright law, it's both false and misleading to refer to them as > forced. Again, the force is applied once you choose to do a particular thing with the software -- is is really that hard to understand that concept? Even the permissive licenses force you to retain the copyright notice on the source, but other than that, they don't try to exert any kind of control over derivative works. By the way, in selectively quoting from my email, you conveniently neglected to address the significant issue of Guido et al apparently disrespecting their users by "placing a low value on their freedom". You may think that "force" has been misused here; I happen to think that you are (and with a lot of other company, no doubt) misusing the word "freedom" to mean only those *particular* freedoms that *you* deem appropriate, and trying to paint others who disagree with your priorities as somehow immoral. Yet when good examples of these apparently immoral people and their software are given, somehow the conversation is always directed back away from this issue. Personally, I usually like to give my customers (paid or unpaid) the ability to use the software as they see fit. It's basically a gift; although I force them to include my copyright notice on subsequent source copies, I don't expect anything else in return, either directly or indirectly. I certainly don't attempt to control the licensing of any software they write that happens to use my software; I would view that as an attempted abrogation of their freedom. But this just gets back to the ancient philosophical question of whether a man is really free if he is not allowed to sell himself into slavery. I would argue that he is not; obviously you and Stallman believe that the man is not free unless someone forces him to remain free by keeping him from selling himself. Regards, Pat
From: Ben Finney on 7 May 2010 19:44
Patrick Maupin <pmaupin(a)gmail.com> writes: > On May 7, 5:33 pm, Ben Finney <ben+pyt...(a)benfinney.id.au> wrote: > > Since no-one is forcing anyone to take any of the actions permitted > > in the license, and since those actions would not otherwise be > > permitted under copyright law, it's both false and misleading to > > refer to them as “forced”. > > Again, the force is applied once you choose to do a particular thing > with the software And again, that would be the case with or without the specific free software license, so it's false and misleading to say the license forces anything. The actions that are prohibited are prohibited by copyright law, not by the license. I think we're done here. -- \ “Members of the general public commonly find copyright rules | `\ implausible, and simply disbelieve them.” —Jessica Litman, | _o__) _Digital Copyright_ | Ben Finney |