this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2024
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Free and Open Source Software
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I catch a lot of shit for my distaste of GPL. I don’t think I should be able to tell you what you can and can’t do with my source code. I’ve released it into the wild. If I put caveats on it it’s not really free.
While I understand where you're coming from, I believe that it distracts from a massive positive effect that the GPL has: the way it ensures collaboration. Lots of contributors to GPL software do so in the knowledge that they are working on something great together. I myself have felt discouraged to contribute to MIT licensed software, because I know that others might just take all the hard work, make something proprietary of it and give nothing back.
I see GPL as some sort of public transaction, it is indeed more limiting than MIT and offers less pure freedom in that sense. But I just love how it uses copyright not for enforcing licensing payment for some private entity, but enforces a contribution to the community as a whole. I find this quite beautiful.
I agree with you 100%, no exceptions. Strongly agree. I say the GPL is socialist. What those people don't consider is that there are many countries in the world where no court will take a case over a software license.
The ISC license is a libertarian license.
Tell me your opinion on one thing. I've considered that if Torvalds changes the license to AGPLv3, meaning servers have to publish their source code, it would an extremely quick collapse and abandonment of Linux. The GPLv2 Linux kernel can have binary code in it, but a AGPLv3 must be 100% open source, and Google would ban Linux on all corporate systems, Microsoft would ban it, CISCO would ban it, IBM would ban it, a complete implosion. What do you say?
But if all those corporations adopt one of the BSD's operating systems, due to the BSD and ISC license, the corporations can ignore those licenses and develop on more complete, stable, secure, long term reliable system. Linux is a collection of various parts forced together. BSD is a complete operating system from a single couple of developers who all have commit access to every part of the system.
AGPL evolved out of people saying, "my SaaS application isn't being distributed at all, it's just living on my server, so I can use your copy-left software without releasing my source alterations, and not violate the (GPLv2) license, because the license is based on distribution". If the Linux kernel itself went AGPL (which isn't what AGPL is even for), it would mean that modifications of the kernel would have to be published by whoever is doing the modifications, even if that kernel was only being used in a SaaS capacity, but most companies aren't modifying the kernel and then offering that modified software over the network, they're just running software on top of the upstream kernel, and AGPL higher up in the chain doesn't touch that software, just like the current Linux kernel GPL doesn't automatically apply to some python code you run on your Linux server.
Android, Amazon Linux, and IOS (the Cisco one) would just not move to the AGPL kernel (since you can't retroactively apply it to already-released kernels), and probably continue their own forks as totally separate as they already do.
But the 99% of companies who are just using stock Linux distros e.g. stock Ubuntu to run their SaaS applications wouldn't be affected. It definitely would not see the use collapse overnight.
But if each corporation forked their own kernel, after a few years of customizing the code to their needs, they would each be developing their own operaging system so all software would only run on company systems and would not be compatible with customer's systems.
No, their derivatives are not running on top of another person's OS, they are themselves the OS. Hardware doesn't make itself compatible with Linux, Linux makes itself compatible with hardware (by using or creating drivers). Those other companies do as well (or own the hardware stack as well, like Cisco).
My argument is if Linux goes AGPL3 which causes each company to fork the last GPL2 release, than after a few years of each company maintaining their own forked version, they will each evolve into their own operating system designed for their corporate software rather than all coporations using a single operating system that each develop their software to run on that OS.
But if they choose to develop on top of BSD then they will never be constricted by meaningless pointless software license.
I am an ISC supremaist for the sake of individual liberty.
This doesn't reflect how that works right now, though, nor how AGPL would affect most corporations.
You listed 2 companies (Cisco and Google) that maintain their own forked Linux versions (IOS and Android). Neither of those OSes are server OSes already. They're router and mobile phone OSes.
The other hundreds of thousands of companies don't even touch the kernel, and would not be affected. It would not change the landscape at all to move it to AGPL.
I can speak on Cisco's system or software, because I have always been suspicious of Cisco due to how massive they are, no company gets like that without dirty dealing underneath.
I don't think Google forks Linux, they use parts of the kernel, and there's also OpenBSD security code in Android as well.
While Google is evil and I will rejoice at the death of Google, I hope they are successful in their new OS to fully replace Android. I think it's called Fusia. Software development is always better then GPL code is stripped out and replaced.
What is socialist about GPL?
Being forced to open source seems like a pyramid scheme. Better examples of socialist and libertarian politics are licenses like MIT or BSD. They embody use without damage.
Stallman seems to have a flawed understanding of hierarchy and power. He exhibits such in the infectious GPL and pedophillic political takes. I purposely avoid GPL or derivatives when considering libraries.
I say socialist because of forced redistribution of any code changes, nobody is allowed to keep any new development for themself to use.
The argument that GPL helps everybody to benefit equally and nobody can keep the code for themself, that's what a socialist says for they government must take everybody's money to help those in need, except now the ones who had the money previously have become needy themselves and the government has all f the money and it's not helping anybody.
It safer for software developers to bad GPL to protect themselves from any troubles and develop on any other operating system where they can choose what code to share and what to keep secret.
Look at how well Sony has done with FreeBSD on Playatation 4 and 5 with the BSD license. The Playstation system stays proprietary but they send code to FreeBSD for any network and server issues. Maybe Sony refused Linux for PS4 due to GPL to protect company secrets.
You have a flawed understanding of socialism