Still no new license -- but draft text available

[Gary Momarison]

297 lines?  Wow.  Where will it all end?  Who will be left sitting?
Pardon me if I over-edit quotes.

"John W. Stevens" <jstevens at basho.fc.hp.com> writes:

> Grant Griffin wrote:
> > 

> > I personally dislike the GPL because it has repeatedly left me unable to
> > use technically-meritorious and free (!) software.
> 
> Seems that your dislike is based on a misunderstanding . . . why should
> you get mad because the cost of the ticket is to agree to cooperate?

Why do you think he's mad?  Trying to emotionalize the debate again?
He only said why he dislikes the GPL.  He apparently finds the cost
which you mention too high.

> > So I then have to
> > buy something, or, more often, have to write my own.  That just seems
> > wasteful.
> 
> It is . . . and the same thing is true on the other side of the fence .
> . . instead of being able to use your stuff (because of it's restrictive
> license), people have to use something else or write their own.  Your
> complaint is not specifc to the GPL, it applies to any license that has
> restrictions.

It doesn't apply to the MIT/BSD/X11 licenses (which have restrictions).
Your point should have been that it also applies to shareware licenses.

> > It amazes me that people who want to give away their work would want to
> > place restrictions on its use.
> 
> GPL isn't about a "gift to anyone for any use", it is about "a gift to
> the community", where the community is defined as those people who have
> agreed to work together in cooperation towards the common goal of
> creating the best possible system.
 
Not quite. Your statement would apply also to those who use MIT/BSD/X11
licenses.  You must indicate that your "work together in cooperation"
includes the exclusion of closed-source developers by copyleft.

> > If one has a "gift" mentality, the gift
> > means more if given without strings.
> 
> If you are a member of the community, there are no strings attached.
> 
> If you aren't, then you are complaining about other's life style choices
> . . . aren't we a little bit more civilized than that?

If you aunt had nuts, she'd be your uncle.  IE, there ARE strings attached.
No, we (GNU pro AND con) aren't more civilized than that.  Pay attention.

> > But that being said, the *empirical* evidence seems to indicate that the
> > open/free aspect of software is much more important than whether (or
> > not) it is copylefted.
> 
> Nope.  The copyleft is very, very important, because it defines, and
> helps to make cohesive, the community.

Let me just point out here that you're referring to the GNU community,
not the Open Source community or the mis-named Free Software community 
which both include many non-GPL developers. And GNU is not Unix.
 
> There have been suggestions of "forking" Python (IN THIS GROUP!) to fix
> licensing issues.  In the GPL based world, this is less likely, because
> the copy left defines the basic philosoply of the community:
> cooperation.

Yeah, well the life of people with freedom can be much more complex,
even more uncomfortable at times, than the life of people who have
surrendered their freedoms to a group.  If your philosophy manages to
squeeze out the other, it wouldn't be the first time.

> Comparing Linux to Perl or Python is a mistake.  Apples and Oranges.

Agreed. Same thing for Linux, *BSD, and any other Open Source OSes.
Linux got where it is probably because of lucky timing (mostly having to
do with the late opening of BSD OS code).  Linux has copyleft simply
because Stallman offered gcc and many other tools under the L/GPL and
Linus foolishly chose it for the kernel.  Nobody can show any evidence
of any reasonble merit that growth would have been any different (either
way) had Stallman and Linus choosen a more free license than L/GPL.
Linux had the best featured "OS distributions" and so that's the
bandwagon most people jumped on. Licensing was a concern of almost
nobody and many of those that did choose the GPL didn't understand it.

> A *SIDE* effect of copyleft is that closed/commercial systems become
 
Why "closed/commercial"?  I thought you said we could make profits off
copylefted softare?  Wouldn't that make it commercial too?  It's
unfortunate that we can't always use one word to mean what it takes
two words to say, like "commercially-licensed".  But we can't usually.

I'll have to give you one thing, John Stevens.  You've seldom, if ever,
confused people with the common misuse of "proprietary" for "closed". 
(As anyone who has heard from the FSF's lawyers can attest, open code 
can be proprietary too.)

> > If Open Source has intrinsic economic value, the copyleft concept isn't
> > needed;
> 
> Copy left provides the basis for "economic justice"  (See: the protests
> against the WTO and the World Bank for more about economic justice, but
> please filter out the nonsense).

Using "economic coercion" to enforce that justice, I might add.

> Open Source projects that do not, in some other fashion, engender a
> sense of cooperation, are doomed to fail.

Right. Like X11, Apache, Sendmail, Perl, Python, all BSD OSes, Mac OS X, 
etc., etc.  It's only a matter of time.

> There is no "force" in the acceptance of the GPL.  It, like any other

Force takes many forms.  In our commercial world, physical force is not
the one we deal with most.  I've just snipped your explanation of how
the GPL forces people towards the GNU model.  You just didn't use that
word.

> > Likewise, one can find no obvious correlation between the copyleftness
> > of a license and the amount of contributions a given package receive.
> 
> Sorry, but again, not true.  Compare the percentage basis of
> contributions between Linux . . . and Windows.
 
That'd be a stupid thing to do.  Are you toying with us?  If you had any 
hope of a fair comparison (probably not), you'd use two licenses that 
are the most similar, excepting the viral copyleft clause.  

> > Python is a good example of Open Source software that receives
> > considerable contributions without a copylefted license.  Ditto Perl.
> 
> Yes.  That's because, up to now, a great many contributors believed that
> the Python license gave every advantage that the L\GPL did, with less
> restrictions . . . we may be witnessing proof that this was a mistake.

I don't know why they'd think that, the license could be read in one minute.

> It will be interesting to watch, and see if the license issues get
> resolved without scaring off some conributors.
 
Probably not, but if they switch to even more restrictive licensing,
like that under the GPL, they deserve the results.

> The appeal of copyleft is it's *EFFICIENCY*.  Reducing the amount of
> unneccessary cost is a pure win.  And that is what the copyleft does . .

Copylefting doesn't do that.  People opening their source does that,
regardless of license.  It's debatable whether copyleft's arm-twisting
forces enough extra people to open up that freer licenses don't force
to be worth the fact that the copylefted software is useless to the
98% of the software developer world that writes non-copylefted software.

> The GPL does not discourage commercial use: proof of this lies in the
> steady adoption of Linux by the commercial world.

So why do you write "closed/commercial" and "open/free"?

> Broad usage terms that allow for a product to be fragmented into a
> number of different, incompatible versions, reduces the chance of a
> system thriving.

Among people who write open source code, people can fork GPLware as
easily as X11ware.  People who fork off closed source code haven't
taken anything from the others.  They are just people who choose to 
keep their own work closed.  No skin off my back.  Maybe they'll
even come up with something I want to use.

> As I said, this does not absolutely require the GPL, but without some
> enforcement mechanism, the community is vulnerable to "rogues" and
> "criminals", in exactly the same way as a community that has laws, but
> no law enforcment, can be peaceful and happy . . . for a while.

So give me an example of a "rogue" and "criminal" in the X11 community.
Would that be someone who follows the rules of the community and
forks off a closed version?  People aren't criminals until you take
away their freedom to do things you don't approve of.  You may have
criminals in your world, but please don't imply that people outside
your world are criminals for violating rules that don't apply elsewhere.

> > Put another way,
> > packages which have a copyleft license restriction are at a competitive
> > disadvantage compared to those who don't.
> 
> No they are not.  This is clearly not true, from the simple fact of the
> adoption of so many copylefted systems.

That are many other factors that could lead to that fact than copyleft.
I doubt that the effects of copyleft can be reliably understood.

> > But I think that the success of a re-implemented system like GNU/Linux
> > can be entirely explained by the fact that it is free, open, and very
> > high quality--in other words, by the merits of the product itself.
> 
> It is free, open, and of very high quality partially because of the GPL.

Maybe a litte. Maybe not.  But it would be a lot more useful if so much
of it were not GPLed.  Eg, it would probably be driving Mac OS X.

> > --except that perhaps Richard
> > Stallman would never have applied his considerable drive and technical
> > talents to helping create it if he wasn't able to create a legal
> > mechanism to enforce his strange obsession with making it difficult for
> > people to make money on the work he "gives" away.

This is what prompted that other "obsession" thread.

> Nope.  Please read some of RMS's writings before posting again.

First get a good dictionary to check for important word misusage.

Not bad. Only 220 lines.