Good ol' BSD vs. GPL

Cathal Garvey cathalgarvey at cathalgarvey.me
Sun Jan 4 13:11:06 PST 2015


 > The problem with this simplified view is that there are a number of
 > good reasons for copyleft clauses, and many of them were verified
 > during Heartbleed, for instance.

Earlier, in fact. The phrase "tragedy of the commons" derives from 
nobel-prize-winning research that found that unregulated commons more 
often than not are abused to the point of collapse. It's hard to see how 
this can happen to a source-code commons, but only as far as you see the 
"commons" in source code being the code itself, rather than the free 
labour it represents on the part of well-meaning programmers.

By propping up proprietary shitware with your lovingly crafted code, you 
are undermining not only yourself, but the others out there lovingly 
crafting and then freeing their code. Of course, the shitware doesn't 
develop as quickly as the "real" curated stuff, so we see Linux thriving 
in so many ways technically versus Windows and Mac..but then, the lack 
of protections against theft of the commons is the reason Mac is doing 
so well in the first place. Where'd they get that Kernel again? Hmm.

On 04/01/15 12:00, rysiek wrote:
> Dnia sobota, 3 stycznia 2015 20:37:35 grarpamp pisze:
>>> On 03/01/15 10:18, Shawn K. Quinn wrote:
>>>> To me, any true successor to TrueCrypt will be available under GPLv3
>>>> (not sure I like the idea of someone forking a BSD/MIT licensed clone
>>>> and then not sharing the source, aka the "BSD/MIT Tuck And Run")
>>
>> This is a bogus argument. If you don't like that someone has copied it,
>> closed it, and gone off and done their own thing with it... make your
>> own copy and continue open development. BSD is about honoring
>> freedom, not about ramming freedom down your throat under threat
>> of suit. World of difference there. Make no mistake, the more freedom
>> a license gives YOU, the more free it is. What you do with the freedoms
>> you are given is up to you... if you choose to jerk people around, no one
>> will care, they'll just ignore and route around you.
>
> The good old BSD vs. GPL, eh?
>
> The problem with this simplified view is that there are a number of good
> reasons for copyleft clauses, and many of them were verified during
> Heartbleed, for instance.
>
> Apparently Facebook used a modified OpenSSL version that was accidentally not
> vulnerable. Had OpenSSL been licensed under a copyleft license, maybe we
> wouldn't have Heartbleed at all.
>
> Another reason is a bit broader. In the digital world selling *products*
> (think: Windows licenses) simply does not work -- the basic operation here is
> *copying*, trying to make copying hard is not really that smart, is it. We all
> know how well DRM schemes work, right?
>
> The answer here is to move towards selling *services* -- something that is not
> easily copy-able. Services like support, deployment, etc. But I guess we all
> know that already, don't we?
>
> So why exactly does anybody here feel the need to retain the right to close
> their (or anybody else's, for that matter) software? That doesn't seem like
> it's required for selling services based on a given software, moreover --
> getting it out on a strong copyleft license (like GPLv3 or AGPL) makes it
> *harder* for large corporations to close that work and out-sell it, and at the
> same time makes it easier to get all the patches/fixes/etc other people made
> in particular software.
>
> I see huge practical and economical benefits from using copyleft licenses, and
> the only argument *against* them is -- as far as I can see -- the "MUH
> FREEDUMS" aka "I might want to close-off some of my (or somebody else's)
> work".
>
> I actually feel copyleft licenses give me *more* freedom: I am at least sure
> nobody can close-off any version of a given (including: mine) program from me.
>
>
>
> I have no problem with people advocating BSD/MIT-style licenses as long as we
> can have a civil discussion about it.
>
> This:
>> BSD is about honoring freedom, not about ramming freedom down your throat
>> under threat of suit.
>
> ...is not exactly what I am talking about here.
>



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