Picking a license

[Patrick Maupin]

On May 9, 4:21 pm, Paul Boddie <p... at boddie.org.uk> wrote:

(Lots of good and balanced commentary snipped...)

> I didn't say that you personally argued that way, but people do argue
> that way. In fact, it's understandable that this is how some people
> attempt to understand the GPL - the software maintains a particular
> state of openness - but they miss the final step in the reasoning
> which leads them to see that the licence preserves a set of privileges
> for recipients as well.

Obviously, that's a bit subtle and certainly some people might miss
the step that says "the final user can always use *my* software, and
by choice of license I could decide to insure that if anybody else
fixes bugs in my software or combines it with other software they
write, then my end users will always be able to use that as well."
But others might notice that and still decide that it isn't the right
license for their software.

> Thus, remarks about Cisco and Linksys - that they were somehow "caught
> out" - are disingenuous: if you're in the business of distributing
> software, particularly if that software itself has a restrictive
> licence, you cannot claim ignorance about licensing or that you just
> "found some good code".

Any remarks I made about this were only in the debate about "moral
hazard" by which I meant something different than Steven did.  I'm not
at all attempting to condone what Cisco did, just pointing out that if
I license code under the MIT license and Cisco uses it, I certainly
have no reason to complain about it, and wouldn't dream of doing so in
any case, but if I license code under the GPL, then yes, my intentions
are clear, and Cisco is complicit in either deliberately turning a
blind eye, or inadvertently not watching employees closely enough.  I
thought I made it clear that I believe that at some level, some human
being had to do something that was wrong in order to get Cisco into
that position.  My sole argument was that in general, I don't want to
be the one to put Cisco in that position, and conversely, I don't want
anybody else putting me in that position (I want to do the right
thing) so I usually don't license stuff under the GPL, or incorporate
stuff licensed under the GPL into anything I do.

> Why is it pathetic that someone gets to choose the terms under which
> their work is made available? By default, if I release something
> without any licence, the recipient has very few privileges with
> respect to that work: it's literally a case of "all rights reserved"
> for the creator. And if it's such a trivial library then why not
> reimplement the solution yourself?

You just answered your own question.  It's pathetic to try to change
people's behavior by offering them something worthless if they change
their license to match yours.  (I'm not at all saying that all GPL
code is worthless, but I have seen things like under 30 line snippets
that weren't even very well written that were "licensed" under the
GPL.)

> I dislike the way that when someone releases something under the GPL,
> it is claimed that they are coercing or attempting to "leverage"
> something. They have merely shared something on their terms. If you
> don't like the terms, don't use their software.

Well, I don't always make that claim, but I do make it when I see a
little "recipe" under the GPL.  Often these recipes require so much
customization for any particular task that they are really just
pedagogical, and some of them aren't even very good.  Color me a
cynic, but when I see something so short and generic that any sort of
judicial test would declare that there was no copyrightable "there"
there, that has an arguably politicized license slapped on it, I smell
an agenda.

> But it is not universally true that GPL-licensed software cannot be
> linked to proprietary software: there are a number of caveats in the
> GPL covering cases where existing proprietary systems are in use.
> Otherwise, you'd never have GPL-licensed software running on
> proprietary systems at all.

Agreed, but most of those are at very clearly delineated boundaries,
like the OS.

> > But the tone of your last statement and some of your statements below
> > make it abundantly clear that you've made up your mind about my morals
> > and aren't at all interested in my reasoning.
>
> Not at all. Recently, I've had the misfortune to hear lots of
> arguments about how the GPL supposedly restricts stuff like
> "collaboration" and "growth" despite copious evidence to the contrary,
> usually from people who seem to be making a career of shouting down
> the GPL or the FSF at every available occasion. Now I'm not saying
> that you have the same apparent motivations as these people, but I
> maintain that when someone claims that people are "forced" to share
> their work when they voluntarily make use of someone else's work, or
> that they are at the peril of some "moral hazard", it does have a lot
> to say about their perspective. (Not least because people are only
> obliged to make their work available under a GPL-compatible licence so
> that people who are using the combined work may redistribute it under
> the GPL. You yourself have mentioned elsewhere in this discussion one
> well-known software project that is not GPL-licensed but was
> effectively distributed under the GPL to most of its users for a
> considerable period of time.)

Sorry, guess I misunderstood where you are coming from.

> It is hardly a rare occurrence now that I come across someone who has
> written in some corner of the Internet, "It's a shame project XYZ is
> GPL-licensed because I can't use it for commercial software
> development. Can the project maintainers not choose another licence?"
> Sometimes, someone who is seeking licensing advice might not want to
> be unpopular and might choose a permissive licence because people
> reassure them that their project will only be widely used if the
> licence lets people use it "commercially" (or, in other words, in
> proprietary software). My impression is that many in the core
> community around Python seem to emphasise such popularity over all
> other concerns.

Yes, but I see the same sort of popularity effects tilt towards the
GPL sometimes, too.

> What I want to point out, and some have done so much more directly
> than I have in other forums and in other discussions, is that some
> advice about licensing often stems from a direct motivation amongst
> those giving the advice to secure preferential terms for themselves,
> and that although such advice may be dressed up as doing the "right"
> or "best" thing, those giving the advice stand to gain directly and
> even selfishly from having their advice followed. I'm not saying you
> have done this, but this is frequently seen in the core Python
> community, such that anyone suggesting a copyleft licence is seen as
> obstructing or undermining some community dynamic or other, while
> those suggesting a permissive licence are somehow doing so "in the
> spirit of Python" (to the point where the inappropriate PSF licence
> for Python is used for independent projects).

Agreed that every project is different, and lots of considerations
should be taken into account.

>
> I tend not to use the terms "freedom" or "right" except when
> mentioning things like the "four freedoms": the word "privilege" is
> adequate in communicating what actually is conferred when combining
> copyright and software licences. Nevertheless, the "four freedoms" and
> "freedom of your users" are still useful notions: if a proprietary
> variant of Python became widespread and dominant, although various
> parts of the software might be freely available in their original
> forms, the ability to reconstruct or change the software would be
> impaired and provide fewer opportunities for user involvement than the
> primary implementations of Python available today. And should such
> proprietary software become mandated by government agencies or become
> a de-facto standard, that really does have an effect on the freedom of
> users.

I don't worry too much about that happening.  I think that ESR is
right that the powerful network effects of free development would
overwhelm any attempt to take something like Python private.

Regards,
Pat