Good ol' BSD vs. GPL (was: Re: TrueCrypt, GostCrypt, *Crypt - status?)

rysiek rysiek at hackerspace.pl
Sun Jan 4 04:00:37 PST 2015


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.

-- 
Pozdrawiam,
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak

Zmieniam klucz GPG :: http://rys.io/pl/147
GPG Key Transition :: http://rys.io/en/147
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