“The 42 Flame”
by Solar on Jun.23, 2009, under Uncategorized
I originally intended to build this up slowly, over many posts. I should have known I wouldn’t find the time and patience to do this, either…
And when there was a thread at OSDev: What’s free? BSD vs. GPL, I found I had summarized many of my feelings in one single, if not that eloquent, post. The flame to answer the question of life, the universe, and everything. To bring it to a larger audience (and to get a new blog entry online), I copied it here.
I’ll probably extend some of what I say here in later posts, but for now, consider me on summer vacation. 
Paxcoder wrote:
You say GPL wants us to “share-the-way-we-tell-you-to-or-don’t-distribute”, but I’m asking: what’s the problem in that kind of sharing?
I’ve got a problem with how the GPL folks took the software market, which had commercial software, shareware, freeware, public domain, and half a dozen other licensing shemes, and effectively turned it into a duopol: Either you are GPL, or you are evil - or at the very least a misled unbeliever that has to be evangelized.
I come from the Amiga community. During its heyday, some of the best software utilities I’ve ever used were shareware. Some crippled with a key to unlock the licensed-only functions, some uncrippled and relying on the honesty of the user to earn the programmer’s living. No-one had any problem with that. Some re-wrote the functionality and released it for free, and people could decide if the shareware was that much better that it was worth paying for.
Today, “not free” has become a stigma, and quite a large portion of the computer folks shun such software on principles. Now to each his own, but I really despise the mud-throwing going on when someone exercises his freedom and choses not to apply the GPL to his work.
“Make your software free and live off the support”, they say. BS, says I. I’m a software engineer, not a consultant, not technical help-desk staff. I don’t write my tools in a way that needs much support, and I write my documentation to be part of the product because that’s the way it should be done. Hey, the car is free, but I charge you 10k bucks for the key, he he. NOT.
Either your product is a basic building block of software. In that case, any legalese, no matter how well-intended, is a PITA. Or your product is a shining application that’s 80% there - do you want to get some money so you can spend your time improving it? Or do you like having to go to your 9-to-5 job paying the rent and having to improve it in your spare time better spent with your family and friends?
It doesn’t matter if that 9-to-5 job is related to your project (e.g., supporting MySQL installs for clients if you’re on the MySQL team), or completely unrelated: You spend that time working for a client, and not on your project. There might be synergies, there might be not, but in the end it’s not up to you. You’re still payed for labor, not for your creation.
In the beginning, people putting their code under some kind of free license - usually PD, or something akin to the BSD - wanted others to use their code, so that software would become better, and cheaper. Today, there’s a feeling that everybody not-GPL’ed is out to rip you off. And that’s coming from the country claiming that free markets are the solution to everything, because they enforce competition.
Well, the Linux camp is happily living in the GPL ecosphere. Microsoft has everything they want, and if not, they get it written by their code monkey hordes. The ones that get hurt, because they cannot use GPL’ed stuff without losing their business case and cannot buy all the commercial licenses and patents without going broke outright, are the small players, those who might have the great ideas but can’t get to the market because the GPL / commercial duopol has killed competition real well.
And it’s not only the GPL, there’s a number of other moves made into a similar direction that give the “big picture”. Do you think it’s by accident that the man-hours being poured into Linux hardware drivers don’t benefit any other operating system, because they play smoke and mirrors with the kernel ABI and keep drivers tightly integrated with the kernel proper? I remember the early 90’s, when talk about Linux made it through the Usenet like fire, and everyone - the Amiga users, the Apple users, the Acorn users - was so happy that there finally was someone making open hardware drivers for everyone, to level the playing field and let OS’s be judged by merits, and not by driver support?
Boy, but we were so screwed. Being from the Amiga camp, I can remember feeling worse disappointments, but not often…
Don’t tell me there wouldn’t be a need for the next Amiga, Apple, or Be. Don’t tell me software has much evolved in the last few years, once the plethora of competitors was boiled down to Windows and Linux, with MacOS sitting by the side not being able to make up its mind whether to continue being the alibi for Microsoft to point to in antitrust suits while boosting MS Office sales, or being the geek machine.
Then there’s the never-ending propaganda from the Church Of R.M.S., and the aggro you get whenever you dare to disagree with them.
All of that made it clear to me that I’d never release my software to the GPL. For me, it’s either free (as in, do what thou wilst, a.k.a. public domain), or mine (proprietary license), but none of this “it’s free, but only as we say” crap.
I once considered a “free, but not for inclusion in GPL’ed software” license, but then decided that would do the GPL too much of an honor. Scorn and contempt is best shown by disregard.
June 24th, 2009 on 05:50
Good Read Solar
June 27th, 2009 on 05:39
*clap clap clap*
Wonderful “rant” that I hope will inspire more GPLites to convert to the world of BSDism.
June 27th, 2009 on 16:51
Solar… the answer of all and everthing is…
42 !
You are completly right… as allways… hmm… most of the time
June 28th, 2009 on 03:08
I hate everything RMS stands for. Good post. I’m glad there are some software engineers out there that aren’t FSF sheep.
June 28th, 2009 on 07:57
@ Troy:
Actually I prefer PD. BSD is a good deal more free than the GPL, but if I take a snippet of BSD source, I still have to drag the whole BSD license statement around together with the snippet, which can be awkward compared to giving due credit in an appropriate place (e.g., the README.txt).
But if I don’t make people consider PD but “only” BSD, that’s certainly a step ahead.
June 28th, 2009 on 15:46
Hi Solar ,
I have a doubt , if i release my code under PD . How do i make sure that i myself do not get screwed . Some unscrupulous people might patent my code and wage a case against me . How do i prevent that ? . I therefore give my PD source code only to my friends currently or people whom i know personally . Say ,someone copies your C library and creates some sort of license and then fires a case against you ?
Regards
Shrek
June 29th, 2009 on 05:51
There is no difference between PD code and GPL code in that regard - both could be sued, and both would point out prior art, i.e. the fact that their code has been online for a while already.
As for the “rip-off” aspect (”they took my code and made a commercial product of it”), do you really believe the GPL would keep a company from doing that? If they remove the license notice, perhaps rearrange the code somewhat, and don’t show the code to anyone, would anyone notice that there is actually GPL code in there somewhere?
June 29th, 2009 on 10:17
Hi ,
This was the counter question RMS asked me when I said “Public Domain” is superior than “GPL”. 
I will send you the communication between RMS and myself in this regard through private message 
.
Yes , I agree than even GPL can be sued . I was asking this beacuse “Linux” beacame trademarked under Linux Trowalds because of a similar reason.
From Wikipedia :
In the United States, the name Linux is a trademark registered to Linus Torvalds.[76] Initially, nobody registered it, but on 15 August 1994, William R. Della Croce, Jr. filed for the trademark Linux, and then demanded royalties from Linux distributors. In 1996, Torvalds and some affected organizations sued him to have the trademark assigned to Torvalds, and in 1997 the case was settled.[77] The licensing of the trademark has since been handled by the Linux Mark Institute. Torvalds has stated that he trademarked the name only to prevent someone else from using it, but was bound in 2005 by United States trademark law to take active measures to enforce the trademark. As a result, the LMI sent letters to distribution vendors requesting that a fee be paid for the use of the name, and a number of companies have complied.[78]
June 29th, 2009 on 10:31
Trademark law is a completely different ballgame than copyright, which in turn differs from patents. Additionally, trademark law is a highly nationalized subject.
But either you violate the respective law (copyright if you didn’t write the code yourself, trademark if you didn’t at least google your nifty product name beforehand, and patents if you are found guilty by the criminals that call themselves “patent lawyers”), or you don’t. GPL vs. PD doesn’t make a difference there.
June 29th, 2009 on 10:47
Hi,
. Bows down and goes back to work …
I am not really fully aware of these things
Regards
Shrek
July 5th, 2009 on 01:10
I myself like the MIT license, because it fits in one paragraph.
I think the original question was, could someone assert copyright/patent rights in your code and then sue you? And I don’t think GPL offers any special protection against that.
July 23rd, 2009 on 19:37
One problem about PD is that you cannot move the copyright in some countries (for example in Germany, so be careful with your PDCLib)
July 23rd, 2009 on 22:51
I know you cannot transfer copyright in Germany. That’s why the PDCLib doesn’t come with a “this is PD” statement (which would be void, as much as I would wish to do so), but an equally all-permissive license as best as I could come up with without actually paying a lawyer. And boy, did I get an earful for not “just making it PD”…
July 15th, 2010 on 18:45
If you can’t transfer copyright in Germany, does that mean you still own every line you wrote for any given company?
July 16th, 2010 on 12:56
IANAL. But as far as I understand the legalese, work done while under contract is exclusively, irrevocally licensed to your employer, i.e. the company holds all rights on your work.
You can transfer copyright to a different legal person, but you cannot cede it (as would be necessary for Public Domain).