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Comments: 367 +- Developers: 6 Reasons To License Software Under the (A/L)GPL on Tuesday July 14 2009, @09:33AM
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Henry V .009 writes with a link to Zed Shaw's "newest rant," which gives a cogent description of his reasons for choosing the not-always-popular GPL for his own code: "Honestly, how many of you people who use open source tell your boss what you're using? How many of you tell investors that your entire operation is based on something one guy wrote in a few months? How many of you out there go to management and say, 'Hey, you know there's this guy Zed who wrote the software I'm using, why don't we hire him as a consultant?' You don't. None of you. You take the software, and use it like Excalibur to slay your dragon and then take the credit for it. You don't give out any credit, and in fact, I've ran into a vast majority of you who constantly try to say that I can't code as a way of covering your ass."
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Awww, What Happened to Badass Zed? (Score:3, Insightful)
What happened to you, man? You used to be cool! Where's all the in your face swearing and abrasiveness? You used to be hardcore! Your 'music' is so alive with raw power but now your site is somehow more respectable.
And now in your latest rant you're complaining that by writing Mongrel you weren't given a consulting job? You weren't handed a company to destroy? Well, way to stick it to the man, my friend. You seem to enjoy bashing the hell out of developers trying to get a job done for not standing up and screaming "Zed's So Fucking Awesome" but now you are complaining that didn't win you a job.
You, are a great software developer. Much better than I in all probability. You are a complete and utter asshole in nearly every other respect (yes, even in your music) and it should come as no surprise that you cannot land a job on a team. I would not pay money for your projects since I don't use them but I will send you $20 to stay in a hole, write software and restrict yourself from communicating with the outside world. Really, the world would be a better place.
Re:Awww, What Happened to Badass Zed? (Score:5, Funny)
Zed's dead baby, Zed's dead.
Parent
Re:Awww, What Happened to Badass Zed? (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh my god, this is THAT loser?
Zed Shaw convinced me I never wanted anything to do with open source development. That very rant you just linked helped me decide it was better to use what was available then fuck off leaving open source in the dust. I concluded if you don't have complete, absolute control over your project then the Zed Shaws of the world are going to take all of your successes and mar them with whiny drama antics.
Slashdot does itself a great disservice publishing this sort of story. I suppose we shouldn't be surprised. Sometimes, no matter how bad you think a whiner is, he has supporters who want to keep hearing him whine.
Parent
Re:Awww, What Happened to Badass Zed? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me tell you a little secret. Proprietary software developers are just as big assholes.
Sometimes even worse, because sociopathic bosses and the economy make their contribution as well.
In the closed source world you almost never have complete control of your project. What happens if the OS, language, or vital module of your project is dropped by the maker? If you work on .NET for instance, then one day it could be abandoned, to be replaced by something newer and shinier. In comparison, C and Perl are ancient and aren't going anywhere.
Parent
Re:Awww, What Happened to Badass Zed? (Score:4, Informative)
Well, for instance, there's lots and lots of VB6 code out there that became obsolete when MS dropped it. The .NET version is different enough that large apps can't be translated and need to be rewritten.
Actually VB6 code is still getting written even today, but it's a dangerous proposition. There's no guarantee it'll run on future Windows versions. Especially there's no guarantee that the OCX you need will work on future Windows version.
COBOL is an exception because it was used in important systems developed entirely in-house with full source available.
But VB6 isn't like that. A vast majority of programs need some OCX or another that performs a crucial task. And the VB code itself is just glue (something every VB book likes to point out). Many VB apps are completely uninteresting and say, use an OCX to interface with some specialized piece of hardware, another OCX to present data (some fancy grid control for instance), and a database. If any of that stops working, you're screwed. And chances are those companies that made that stuff are now gone or uninterested in maintaining it.
Compare for instance, Perl or C. Perl isn't that popular anymore, but it's still actively worked on. Even if development stopped, the source would still be there.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Uhhhhh....I thought that the whole point of XP Mode [wincert.net] on Win 7 was to fix problems like that? Hell I always thought the whole point of desktop virtualization was to deal with those "mission critical" PITA apps that won't keep running on a newer OS.
Of course if you just really love the BASIC language you could move over to REALBasic [wikipedia.org]. While I haven't tried moving some uber complex piece of code from VB to RB (but then again you were nuts to write something gigantic in VB in the first place) but the languages
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually VB6 code is still getting written even today, but it's a dangerous proposition. There's no guarantee it'll run on future Windows versions. Especially there's no guarantee that the OCX you need will work on future Windows version.
That's okay, VB6 works under WINE, and the number of supported OCX controls increases every version...
Nobody hired you? (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you ever stopped to think that if you have fantastic technical skills and nobody will hire you, perhaps it isn't your technical skills that need work?
Parent
Re:Nobody hired you? (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you ever stopped to think that if you have fantastic technical skills and nobody will hire you, perhaps it isn't your technical skills that need work?
^^^there isn't enough bolt font in the world to give this quote it's due attention
Dear Mr Z,
My boss knows exactly what software we use in our product. So does our legal department. So does IT, because they make all the source code in it available. Investors know what powers the company as well, in fact the CEO probably brags to them about the companies extensive use of open source (like Oracle, IBM, and Google).
Mathematicians are plagiarists. We copy theories and proofs all the time. Welcome to the universe.
And I used to think that all open source developers were selfless. BOY WAS I A MORON.
Parent
Re:Nobody hired you? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know if I'd necessarily call you a moron, but you were definitely mistaken. Open source developers do it because it works for them, not because they want to wear a hair shirt.
I don't have any complaints about the open source software I wrote that you probably use, because I did actually get some recognition for it. But we could never make money at it, because it was licensed under the BSD license. If I had it to do over again, there's no way I'd release it under the BSD license - what that meant was that all the open source people flamed me for not GPLing it, and the corporations took it and submarined it into their products, which they then sold in competition with the company that was paying me to write the software, so that despite having the best DHCP client and server at the time, we never made a penny on it.
Unfortunately my company went to closed-source rather than GPL, but after that experience I can't really blame them. So when I read Zed's rant, I was singing "right on, brother" the whole time.
Parent
we could never make money at it, (Score:3, Interesting)
because it was licensed under the BSD license.
Really? you couldn't make money using the BSD license on your own code but you could using the GPL? How so? I want to start a photography business, which may not be a good idea in this economy, and because I can't afford to buy all the software I'd need to run the business I want to use open source software and modify it so it's better for me. Now I figure that if I am going to tyme a considerable amount of tyme programming then maybe I could try to sell the
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You're mistaken. You own the software. Whether it's BSD or GPL, you can sell it, because you own it (presuming, of course, that you actually wrote it yourself). The difference is that with BSD, if you ever release the source code (and if you didn't, who cares what license you use on it in-house?), anybody else can *also* sell it as a closed-source product.
With the GPL, they have to sell it as open source. It doesn't mean no-one will sell it, but for whatever reason a lot of companies are uncomfortab
You're mistaken. You own the software. (Score:3)
I am? I said you don't own the software?
The difference is that with BSD, if you ever release the source code (and if you didn't, who cares what license you use on it in-house?), anybody else can *also* sell it as a closed-source product.
The difference is that with the BSD you do not have to release your code, even if all you do is modify someone else's BSD code. You modify someone else's GPL code and you have to release your code if you distribute it.
Falcon
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, that's not the answer. The answer is that they were a really big company, and were able to sell it through an existing sales channel alongside products that were already well-established. We do just fine selling our closed-source product - the fact that we weren't competing against a well-funded, established company selling the same thing allowed us to build our own sales channel and establish our own relationships.
It's nice that you have so much faith in the free market, but actually your conclusio
Re:Nobody hired you? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, having met Zed once, I was surprised at how personable the guy was--I'd be surprised if there was a group he couldn't work with. I chalked it up to the Maddox Effect: Maddox [xmission.com] writes as a bombastic douchebag, but is a pretty shy and soft-spoken dude in person.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, having met Zed once, I was surprised at how personable the guy was--I'd be surprised if there was a group he couldn't work with. I chalked it up to the Maddox Effect: Maddox [xmission.com] writes as a bombastic douchebag, but is a pretty shy and soft-spoken dude in person.
Yes, but if a potential employer can google your Maddox Effect rants, they're not going to give you the chance to screw up a team. In other words, if you want to be a professional, be professional. Duh.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Except he crosses a line: his rants are about his work, and about people who are potential or actual business contacts.
Maddox can rant about movies because he's not a movie director. If he ranted the same way about people working in his industry, he might find his rants a bit more career limiting.
(Actually, there are a few careers where you can be a tot
Re:This seems to be a fairly common problem (Score:5, Funny)
>Tech types that think they are god and this means that they shouldn't have to be nice to anyone.
You should interact with doctors for a few years. You won't think tech nerds are socially inept or arrogant ever again.
Parent
Don't bust on my excuse. (Score:5, Funny)
Not really for that (Score:5, Interesting)
If recognition is all you want, by all means, just choose any attribution license. If having your work used by the most people is more important, use a BSD style one. Now, if your goal is to assure that your code will be always free, use GPL, LGPL or AGPL.
Re:Not really for that (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess I have some 30 seconds now before heavy airborne objects thrown by the GPL and BSD advocates bring this thread into a total mayhem, but I'll try to make an unorthodox argument there, anyway.
IMHO, both GPL-like and BSD-like licenses protect the freedom equally. The question is, whose freedom it is. Roughly speaking, GPL protects the freedoms of users by restricting the coders, while BSD protects the freedom of the coders, which might result in restricting the rights of the users. Which is more important, that's a whole new problem, but it's not about one license being "better" than the other.
Another, no less interesting way of looking at the problem is asking who do we exactly mean by the "users" of the code - the people "using" the resulting binary, or the people taking the code and "using" it to create new code? Or maybe both? This question alone puts the issue in a new light, and it's not an obvious one.
Many times I've seen people fighting over the GPL/BSD issue here and not ever once they agreed beforehand what do they mean by "users", "freedom", "better", etc. - heavy object throwing took over.
Parent
Re:Not really for that (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with the freedom for who, coders vs users question is that is draws a line between the two. By being focused on only the current coders and users. Users become coders - if they have the means.
Yes, the BSDL offers one more freedom, for THAT coder, the right the close the source.
The GPL offers that coder one less freedom, but offers all the rest to everyone else in perpetuity. Not only do they have access to the code you originally wrote, but to anything current which is based on it. Not just some neat old code, but code to THE binaries they're currently running.
But frankly, I've never seen a 'GPL is bad/BSD good' post that was anything other than an entitlement whine. "I should be able to close-source your code or I can't really use it, wah."
To anyone who feels this way, good. I mean great. Any license that keeps you from profiting and being stingy is doing its job.
This is a tempest in a tea-pot though. I challenge anyone to point out a real developer (other than Microsoft) with this GPL-bad attitude. The reality is that the GPL is no-more viral than a proprietary license. By mixing your code with someone else's you no-longer have full control over it. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to sell you something.
I've certainly never seen a prominent BSD community member with this attitude. Not that BSDers love the GPL, but that no real open-source BSD dev is whining about their inability to close-source some GPL'd project. Their complaints are that our (GPLers) caring about what they see as a minor issue harms open-source in general by preventing BSD/GPL mixing.
Real coders and users don't fight over the BSD/GPL, because they benefit from both - whiners are never happy and will lie about their reasons (greed).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a rare view, I think - the majority seems to claim that GPL restricts coders by not allowing them to do whatever they want with someone else's code, and this is why I phrased it like that. Indeed, at the same time, this protects the original author.
Actually, yet another important question arises here - does "the coder" here mean "the author who released the code under GPL" or "some other programmer who found the code and wants to use it"? Do you see it now, that even your statement can be dangerously
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The truth is that the GPL simply allows the original author to control the terms under which derivitive works can be distributed. Absent any moral or ethical self-congratulations, I have no problem with that.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Nonsense. The GPL protects the freedom of coders by ensuring that they are free to modify code.
The parent post did point out that this will, unnecessarily, turn into a license war thread. At which point he started that war by throwing the first stone (wrapped in an "IMHO", but we know that doesn't change anything).
Licenses have nothing to do with TFA, as the comments above have well pointed out. There's no need to get sucked (suckered?) into another one of these flame wars just because this guy (who wrote TFA) decided to make licenses the cause of his problems, almost arbitrarily.
Attempting
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not complicated - if you can't agree to the license, don't use it.
Actually (as far as I'm aware), what Tivo did was within the letter of the GPL but so far outside the spirit as to be on another planet.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That is specifically what the GPL disallows. BSD gives you more freedom to close your derivatives of someone else's work.
As a FOSS writer (not that I do much, but hypothetically) I don't see why I would want that.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Otherwise the client can foot the bill and have you write the whole thing from scratch under the license of their choosing.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The original NT stack was BASED ON BSD code, it was not a copy and paste of the BSD code with no modifications.
So ... YES, the original code is still free, in fact parts of it are in use in the OSes my OpenBSD firewalls use as well as my FreeBSD web servers.
And also, NO, you can't get the original NT stack because its not JUST BSD code, its BSD code modified to fit into Windows.
The original code is still just as free as it was from day one, the MS modifications however are not. No freedom to anything that
Money quote (Score:5, Insightful)
But the days of quick-flip corporations and ingrate programmers making money on my software are over. My new motto is:
Open source to open source, corporation to corporation.
If you do open source, youâ(TM)re my hero and I support you. If youâ(TM)re a corporation, letâ(TM)s talk business.
A very sensible position, IMHO. Dual-licensing always seemed like a no-brainer to me.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with dual-licensing is that it practically kills reciprocation: If you use the open license, you can't contribute back, because then the merged code base can no longer be dual-licensed, unless you do what the original author just rejected: Allow someone else to make money on your work while you get nothing. Big projects often require that you sign over your rights to patches or they won't consider them for inclusion. It's a form of "do as I say, not as I do."
OSS 101 (Score:5, Interesting)
Dual-licensing always seemed like a no-brainer to me.
This cannot be emphasized enough.
Businesses have money. Their sole purpose is to make it and not use it. If you give them the option to not use it, they will gladly accept. But if you don't give them that option, they will gladly pay, if what you are offering is worth the price.
Nothing is personal about a business, and it seems many GPL programmers expect some transaction on some personal level, like an IOU or something. But if you take the money element out of a business transaction, there is no human element left. Unless the law requires it, they owe you nothing, and they have better things to do than console you.
If you don't dual license your OSS, then you are not interested in making money. You are making it clear, and you cannot expect anything in return. If you do dual license, then you are asking for money from those who make it. They will review your value proposition, and either accept, or go to a competitor.
Make your intentions clear with the licenses you choose, not with your mouth or your blog.
It is that cut and dry. There really isn't much to rant about.
Parent
Re:OSS 101 (Score:5, Insightful)
A dual-licensed version opens up the possibility of forking and taking business away from me, which I find unacceptable. I can fix bugs just as well as they can, and make money off of it. And because my good name is invested in the product and there is no community for me to foist bugs off onto, I am encouraged to make sure those bugs are addressed myself, to my own standards.
So, in other words--yes, I am better off.
I open-source what I don't intend to use for commercial purposes, or what is based on other open-source components with copyleft licensing terms. What makes me money stays closed.
Parent
I do! (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, we use multi-thousand dollar products for development, but there's always some tool, some image, some utility, some code that is just better and licensed under GPL or CL.
Like I always say, "why improvise when you can plagiarize."
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Reason 7 (Score:3, Insightful)
The way the GPL has turned out is:
You use a product written by people who didn't foresee what you were going to use it for and they end up integrating changes to benefit someone whose use they didn't foresee. By keeping the code free over the long haul you get fascinating cooperation at the code level.
Re:Reason 7 (Score:4, Interesting)
You use a product written by people who didn't foresee what you were going to use it for and they end up integrating changes to benefit someone whose use they didn't foresee. By keeping the code free over the long haul you get fascinating cooperation at the code level.
Yeah, I've told this before, but anyway: my company had an itch that needed to be scratched so I wrote a program to address it. My boss let me release it under the GPL [sourceforge.net] since we had zero interest in profiting from the program. It exists solely to perform one specific task for us, and not so that we can sell or charge support for it.
As it turns out, that seems to be a fairly popular itch, and I've gotten requests from people all over the world to add new features or to handle special circumstances that never would have occurred to me. Everybody came out ahead on this! The world got a handy piece of Free software, and we got some new ideas that made it work better in its original role here in our office. To reword your statement:
Parent
Whining (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Oh God! I hate whining bastards! They just WHINE WHINE WHINE!
STOP WHINING!
Some good advice (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's some good advice for anybody who does anything creative, be it programming,art, writing a story, anything...
Do _not_ create something and then expect the masses upon which you bestow your baby to be happy.
I've seen tons of open source coders quit because their public was only complaining about features and bugs. So don't start out with such expectations. You should create something because _you_ want to make something. If anybody praises you afterward then count your lucky stars. But the only way how you can remain a creative person is by doing it for yourself in the first place.
I'm sure some of my code/programs are being used in the wild. And that makes me happy. I haven't gotten a lot of positive feedback, but that's ok. I'm happy because writing it made me happy.
What probably happened (Score:3, Insightful)
HR Person (to Zed): "We see on your resume that one has paid you to do rails development in the last year and a half, and that you've been writing some "mongrel" thing in your spare time. We're really looking for someone with more relevant and recent Ruby-on-Rails experience."
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Typical Programmer EGO (Score:5, Insightful)
This is nothing more than typical programmer entitlement EGO issues.
I want credit for this, I want credit for that, I want a job at your company, because I made XXX.
But what about the OTHER people who made YYY, so YOU could do XXX?
What about all the other libraries, API's, and documentation YOU used? Did you give credit to them?
Get off the high-horse, and get rid of all this entitlement you THINK you deserve.
Fuck off, Zed (whoever the hell you are) (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't. None of you. You take the software, and use it like Excalibur to slay your dragon and then take the credit for it.
No, asshole, some of us think it's important for our employer to know which third party libraries and tools we're using (whether they are open source or not), so they aren't blindsided with a lawsuit. I conjecture that you're projecting your own need to be the hero onto the rest of us.
Sponsorship decals? (Score:3, Insightful)
So if I build the next great NASCAR engine, I should credit Craftsman(TM) for making the sockets I used to assemble it? Maybe these startups should also credit the RAM, mobo, and PS manufacturers for the parts in the server.
OSD? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think Zed needs to read this as he seems to have lost the spirit of open source entirely:
1. Free Redistribution
The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.
2. Source Code
The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form. Where some form of a product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost preferably, downloading via the Internet without charge. The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed. Intermediate forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed.
3. Derived Works
The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.
4. Integrity of The Author's Source Code
The license may restrict source-code from being distributed in modified form only if the license allows the distribution of "patch files" with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time. The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code. The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software.
5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.
6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.
7. Distribution of License
The rights attached to the program must apply to all to whom the program is redistributed without the need for execution of an additional license by those parties.
8. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product
The rights attached to the program must not depend on the program's being part of a particular software distribution. If the program is extracted from that distribution and used or distributed within the terms of the program's license, all parties to whom the program is redistributed should have the same rights as those that are granted in conjunction with the original software distribution.
9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software
The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open-source software.
10. License Must Be Technology-Neutral
No provision of the license may be predicated on any individual technology or style of interface.
The Open Source Definition [opensource.org]
"I Dont Want To Be Ignored Again" he says. (Score:4, Insightful)
He says: 'I Dont Want To Be Ignored Again'.
Well then maybe you shouldn't release your software with no marketing what-so-ever?
First of all: You wrote a HTTP library for Ruby. Big fat hairy deal. Frankly, I never knew and I couldn't care less. Second of all: The Rails crowd gained traction and scored bizar amounts of hype for one reason - and one reason *only*: They had, by standards of open source - a massive marketing campaign to push Rails into the FOSS webdev field. They have a website that, for *once* in the FOSS field, didn't look like shit (and changed the FOSS-Project-Website & Enduser Awareness Game for ever - God bless them!), they pratically invented the concept of screencasts to showcase their FOSS webkit in short understandable fashion and they abandoned all snotty-nosed elitist crap in favour of building a community for webdevs while at the same time doing huge inroads into the Java & academic community who needed Ruby to boost their ego and to seperate themselves from the PHP crowd. And who, until the rails hype, weren't aware of any FOSS webkits. Of which Rails, btw., isn't a particuarly new, good or innovative one anyway. Other kits from ages ago are still leading the field by far technology wise - with nobody careing. Due to, guess what?, no marketing.
Your conclusions are wrong, Mr. Shaw. People care squat about what you licence your software under. If you want money, you demand money. If you want attention, you demand attention. Rails did it, you didn't. Your Mongrel site isn't bad, by FOSS standards that is, but it doesn't look particuarly interesting either. Learn you lesson, licence with whatever you want - wether it's the GPL or not *nobody* of *any* importance fucking cares - and do a little marketing and reasearch before you push your next FOSS tool. That, and nothing else, will enable a business on top of it.
My 2 Euros.
Because I want to... (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article:
That's my first reason I use the GPL:
Because I want to, and if you disagree with it then don't use my software. It's as simple as that.
You know Zed, that's all you have to say. The rest was at best... silly.
Re:agreed (Score:4, Insightful)
The BSD, MIT licenses (even if more open) are for mugs who end up having their code "stolen" !
You claim this but the BSDs get countless contributions back from people and corporations that use their code. This is just GPL FUD.
Parent
what drugs are you on? (Score:3, Insightful)
You're kidding, right?