We will have to agree to disagree.
I have been a passionate user of open source software for over 20 years.
Are you really saying that proponents of permissive licenses don't
understand why people write free software and give it away for free? Really!
I passionately disagree with the statement of "All software should be
GPLd in the first place". This is one of the biggest reasons I
passionately dislike the GPL. GPL is goodness and light. All else is
evil incarnate. Ugh!
I am not going to defend unethical business practices. But that is not a
defense of the GPL or an argument against permissive licenses. I am not
a fan Microsoft or Apple, et al. I am a fan FreeBSD and Linux. However I
do not believe all closed source or proprietary software is wrong or evil.
I am working my way through the book you suggested. But so far I fail to
see where it makes the argument for the GPL and against permissive licenses.
For the record. I am not a professional programmer. All software I am
working on if I were to release it (or when) will be under a permissive
license, unless it is a port of GPLd software. I am not in the business
of software. I am an empowered user. Open source software empowers me
more the proprietary software. Permissively licensed software empowers
me more than GPLd software**. That is not currently the case for
everyone and every situation. One day it we may come closer to that
being true. But it takes time. And it takes proper motivation and
resources.
**There are many situations that I cannot use GPLd source, but can use
permissively licensed source. MIT/BSD empowers where, GPL does not. Here
in this community, with this software. GPL is a no go. It is a show
stopper. MIT/BSD is welcomed and wanted. Many other communities are
likewise.
As I said, we will have to agree to disagree. I doubt that anything
above persuades you in any way.
Regardless, I wish you well and have a great day!
Jimmie
On 09/21/2017 10:39 AM, Jose San Leandro wrote:
I personally don't care about the interests of big corporations
cheating with end-users' rights. If they were my potential customers,
or any intermediary which is afraid of not being able to do business
with them due to their obsession with restricting end-users' rights,
then I'd probably have a conflict of interest. In that case, I could
think of sacrificing ethics for food temporarily. But I'm not in that
business, and I don't want to.
I won't blame the GPL instead of the "old culture" of doing business
by forcing customers to do only what you want them to do, and make
them pay for any upgrade some of them could do themselves otherwise.
Distributing works with GPL restricts the options to other developers
using your product or library. No doubt about that. But ethically,
that "freedom" only helps the old model of doing software. All
software should be GPLd in the first place.
There's a book that indirectly illustrates my point, and one I
enthusiastically recommend: Badass users [1].
Anyway, we could go on and on. It's a matter of pragmatism vs ethics
of software.
Usually, people sharing your "classic" point of view of the business
of software don't understand why people write free software and give
it for free.
Is that your case?
[1] http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920036593.do
2017-09-21 17:16 GMT+02:00 Jimmie Houchin <jlhouc...@gmail.com
<mailto:jlhouc...@gmail.com>>:
On 09/21/2017 09:47 AM, Ben Coman wrote:
[SNIP]
Its horses for courses. No one viewpoint fits all circumstances.
Another way to look at it is that permissive licenses give a
developer more freedom to combine libraries with different licenses.
I do like this radical simplification I bumped into...
"Another way of looking at it is that you’re picking a license
based on what you are afraid of.
* The MIT license is if you’re afraid no one will use your code;
you’re making the licensing as short and non-intimidating as
possible.
* The Apache License you are somewhat afraid of no one using your
code, but you are also afraid of legal ambiguity and patent trolls.
* With the GPL licenses, you are afraid of someone else profiting
from your work [or profiting off end-users] (and ambiguity, and
patent trolls)."
[https://exygy.com/which-license-should-i-use-mit-vs-apache-vs-gpl
<https://exygy.com/which-license-should-i-use-mit-vs-apache-vs-gpl>]
...which aligns squarely with Pharo - our greater fear is people
not using it.
I think the GPL one looks right. Fear, anger, offense if someone
has the possibility of using their software and not contributing
back. To me I think it doesn't work as much as they think. It
doesn't take into account the free will of people to walk away and
completely not use their software. I personally don't even look at
GPL licensed sources unless there are none other available which
is very rare. I don't want the knowledge or understanding of that
code tainting other code I write.
MIT often means, we don't care, do what you want, just don't blame us.
We don't care if you take it and use it in closed source
proprietary money making big corp software.
We don't care if you take it and use it and keep it to yourself.
We don't care ... Just don't blame us for any problems.
However, we would love your buy in on open source philosophy and
contribute back where you are able. We understand you have
software which is business critical, proprietary and can not be
open sourced. We also know that you probably have software which
has no business specific (your business) code which is releasable.
And we see many, many, big and small businesses doing so today.
Close off what you must, open what you can.
I don't think most of us are afraid of no one using our code.
PostgreSQL has no such fear. SQLite which is public domain has no
such fear. And we could go on and on. Python, etc...
I personally am very much in the camp of I want people to
contribute because they want to contribute. Not because I have a
stick called the GPL. But rather because I have the carrot of all
of the benefits derived from open source software. I am carrot
oriented, not stick oriented.
Jimmie
