Busy busy busybox [LWN.net]

Busy busy busybox

Posted Oct 2, 2006 19:04 UTC (Mon) by Sombrio (guest, #26942)
In reply to: Busy busy busybox by nix
Parent article: Busy busy busybox

I certainly could be wrong, when I think about it I have to admit I am wrong quite a bit. I try to be right 10% of the time.

However, my gut feeling is that the GPLv3 is dangerous. Society has a way of weeding out fanatics. It is feasible that what we are actually witnessing right now is the end of the Open Source movement. In actual fact, you could be the one who is wrong. Some of the things RMS and Eben Moglen say these days make me cringe, and I am pretty mainstream, so I have to imagine that many are cringing with me.

I agree that history shows that the GPLv2 was brilliant and worked wonders. This fact has no bearing on the future. The acceptance of the GPL did have some chance to it. What if Linus had decided on some other license? The world today would be a different place.

It isn't infeasible that businesses return to proprietary closed source solutions in order to retain stability. Commercial interests are currently responsible for the majority of open source development today. If business loses interest in Open Source, then it will become irrelevant.

Trying to bring about social change with software is an interesting experiment. Nonetheless, it is an experiment, which means the outcome is unknown. We may not like what we learn from this experiment.

(Log in to post comments)

Busy busy busybox

Posted Oct 2, 2006 21:13 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

You seem to believe that Linus wrote the entirety of what you see on a
Linux desktop.

Not only isn't that true, but the kernel is comparatively `sterile'; it
has odd requirements because it runs in kernel space and must be
self-contained, so its code isn't particularly reusable in other projects.

If you want the kings of reuse, look at BSD stuff: if you want the
projects and organizations that have spawned most other projects, look to
the FSF and the GNU Project.

If Linus had decided to use some other license, we'd be using a different
kernel. Big deal. The GPL would *still* be massively widely used.

If business loses interest in Open Source, then, well, we go back to the
status quo pre-1999: development slows to some extent, but certainly
doesn't stop, and the concatenation of work on earlier work continues.

I think your choice of terminology is instructive. Business is not
important to free software. It may be important to the vaguely-defined
pragmatic `Open Source', but it is not to free software. The business
world largely ignored free software while its toolchain climbed to
pre-eminence in portability, and while its Ada tools (in particular)
annihilated most competitors without even trying especially hard (and yes,
I know that ACT is a business, but once upon a time they were just some
hackers at NYU, and if need be they could go back to that, although it
would be annoying). The business world largely ignored free software until
the userspaces of most Unixes looked so outdated in comparison that they
were laughable. Even now, KDE (for instance) gets comparatively little
commercial backing (SuSE and Trolltech are the only major commercial
backers), yet it's powering ahead.

Take your business-world goggles off. They're blinding you.

Busy busy busybox

Posted Oct 2, 2006 23:39 UTC (Mon) by Sombrio (guest, #26942) [Link]

Take your desktop goggles off, they are blinding you. Linux is irrelevant on the desktop where Windows is king and will be for quite some time yet.

Linux is king in embedded. That is where commercial interests are making big contributions and investments. Interestingly, that is also the domain RMS and the FSF are trying to tie down. Tivo is an embedded application. Embedded is also the domain that will abandon Linux if the fanatics have their way.

You are quite right that Linux will live on. It will just be a curiosity as opposed to a revolution.

I seem to have offended you and I apologize for that. This is not a religious issue for me. I am just an embedded developer who writes code to support my family. I have adjusted to Linux, and will adjust to whatever else comes along if Linux becomes unfriendly to the embedded device manufacturers. I am just standing on the sidelines, trying to keep up with the latest fads in embedded so that I can keep my job. Like 99% of the world, I don't give a damn what Tivo does as long as their box records Monday Night Football for me. I also don't believe in any DRM conspiracy theories. Having a great day with my kids, that is what is important. DRM concerns are just fluff.

Busy busy busybox

Posted Oct 2, 2006 23:59 UTC (Mon) by Sombrio (guest, #26942) [Link]

I am quite aware that Linux is just the kernel and that 90% of the code on a desktop is GNU. This is just another thing that bothers me about the fanatics. We have to call it GNU/Linux. Well, excuse me, but typing all of this on my phone is hard enough without having to call it GNU/Linux. I am sure you know how hard capital letters are on phone keyboards. Anyway, if you could do me the favor of assuming I mean GNU/Linux when I say Linux that would be a great help.

Busy busy busybox

Posted Oct 3, 2006 9:17 UTC (Tue) by ayeomans (subscriber, #1848) [Link]

I doubt 90% of any desktop code is GNU. David Wheeler's counts for Red Hat 7 showed around 65% as having GPL or LGPL licences. Not that this is all GNU code either - since the kernel, web browser, X, KDE are not GNU. For embedded systems using BusyBox, even binutils may not be present - I would expect glibc to be the only significant sized GNU code, and that's 1/4 the size of the kernel.

Busy busy busybox

Posted Oct 5, 2006 9:36 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

I'd expect embedded systems to be using uClibc, actually.

There's not much FSF-owned code on such systems (which makes the screaming from embedded devs even more peculiar).

Busy busy busybox

Posted Oct 2, 2006 21:31 UTC (Mon) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

You are assuming that the GPLv3 is more 'business unfriendly' then GPLv2.

I don't think that it is.
For instance the GPLv3:

* Patent liability protection. As a business you know you can use GPLv3 code and not risk being sued by people that contributed to that code. With the GPLv2 a corporation such as (evil, boo!) SCO could of snuck patent encrusted code into a GPL'd project. IBM won't hate it because it will help reasure their customers and it won't affect their ability to go after propriatory software vendors for patent infringment. Oracle and Microsoft will still have to be scared from IBM's patents.

* Increased compatability with licenses. You will have more opportunity to benifit from the diversity offered by the world of 'open source' by having a wider selection of software code to choose from then what is possible with the GPLv2.

As for the DRM provisions that is largly irrelevent to the vast majority of software and hardware vendors that support Linux systems. It is only going to affect people that want to use Linux systems and DRM encrusted hardware to make 'user proof' devices. And this is not going to realy affect them much anyways as the Linux kernel will almost never likely be ever to be GPLv3. For userland stuff it will still be legal to link DRM encrusted propriatory software with LGPL'd libs. And the Linux kernel be used to ensure that their 'protections' on these propriatory programs remain in place.