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Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL
Richard Stallman, responding to Oracle's attempted purchase of Sun, has
posted an essay
on selling GPL exceptions. "In other words, selling exceptions
permits some embedding in proprietary software, and the X11 license permits
even more embedding. If this doesn't make the X11 license unacceptable, it
doesn't make selling exceptions unacceptable."
(Log in to post comments)
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 8, 2010 16:22 UTC (Fri) by tao (guest, #17563) [Link]
Very insightful and balanced.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 8, 2010 16:35 UTC (Fri) by spaetz (subscriber, #32870) [Link]
I have to agree. It is very balanced and fair indeed. RMS for all his extreme positions and stubbornness really surprises me from time to time.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 8, 2010 17:29 UTC (Fri) by donbarry (guest, #10485) [Link]
Extreme positions?
How so? Essentially every one of his positions has moved from seemingly extreme
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 12, 2010 14:17 UTC (Tue) by liljencrantz (subscriber, #28458) [Link] GFDL and RMS's refusal to allow the Xemacs people to reuse any emacs documentation when writing the Xemacs documentation on account of the Xemacs people being mean to him. In general, GFDL is a pooly thought out idea.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 8, 2010 19:40 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
I found RMS to be anything but extreme in my interactions with him as well.
He certainly holds strong positions and principles but those are all very well thought out and he is very patient in explaining them if you express your interest in them.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 12, 2010 14:23 UTC (Tue) by liljencrantz (subscriber, #28458) [Link] Not my experience at all. I was at a Stallman lecture about a year ago, and I asked him about why the Bash manual still had (has? haven't checked in the last months) the front and back covers as invariant sections, meaning I can not reuse bash documentation in fish, my own shell without making the entire fish manual have the bash manual front page as its front page. He interrupted my question stating that the problem didn't exist and moved on to the next question without providing any reasoning as to why that would be. I felt he was rather rude and condescending.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 12, 2010 20:53 UTC (Tue) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]
He is rude and condescending.
He's also quite well spoken when on his home turf, as this post demonstrates.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 8, 2010 19:42 UTC (Fri) by BrucePerens (subscriber, #2510) [Link] If you think he's extreme, maybe you really don't understand him.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 9, 2010 22:42 UTC (Sat) by spaetz (subscriber, #32870) [Link]
Extreme positions might have been poor wording on my side. What I mean is "extremely consequent". RMS would never compromise his ideals for convenience or working solutions. Most of us do. I find that pretty extreme, not necessarily a bad thing though.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 10, 2010 4:08 UTC (Sun) by BrucePerens (subscriber, #2510) [Link]
Right. If anything is extreme about him, it is that he is entirely self-consistent and the vast majority of people aren't.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 12, 2010 20:54 UTC (Tue) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]
Okay, so.. there's a lot of positive things you could say about the guy. This one really sticks in my craw though. The GFDL is anything but entirely self consistent.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 12, 2010 21:17 UTC (Tue) by BrucePerens (subscriber, #2510) [Link] Yes, the GFDL was not one of the finer moments of the Free Software movement. IMO it is best scored as a mistake. Note that FSF has assisted Wikipedia in getting away from GFDL.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 12, 2010 20:59 UTC (Tue) by jwarnica (subscriber, #27492) [Link]
That is somewhat simplistic, Bruce.
In this context, I think you are talking about many peoples approaches to "free" or "open source" software. With RMSs goal and actions being identical: "always use free software".
RMS most definitely is consistent on this point, of that there is no argument.
But why would you presume that peoples actions, such as, say, installing NVidia blobs on OpenSUSE, to be contradictory?
Richards political and technical goals are the same: free software.
I just about always have political, personal, or business goals which are not "free software", but can be solved with the technical solution of "free software". When possible, I'll use free software, and "when possible" is becoming increasingly close to 100% of the time, mainly because its actually as good-or-better in many cases, but also because "good enough" is frequently good enough, but I'll admit to just giving up on some things as well.
I am consistent: solve the problem at hand; use free or open source software whenever possible.
Anyway: does RMS drink free-trade coffee as fuel when writing his manifestos? Does he carefully select RoHS compliant hardware? Drive only in hybrids? Is it not contradictory to fuck over coffee growers and the environment, while being the leader of the free software movement?
Finding consistency is easy if you don't look at the system in anything but a single focused view and thus don't understand the whole system.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 12, 2010 21:14 UTC (Tue) by BrucePerens (subscriber, #2510) [Link] I am consistent: solve the problem at hand; use free or open source software whenever possible. I hear this a lot. I also hear from the same people years later that their solution was no longer possible because the vendor went out of business, or because they wanted to use it along with new software, or on a different CPU architecture, etc. and they ended up writing off their hardware investment. Many people who describe themselves as pragmatic are only so over the short term.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 17, 2010 17:19 UTC (Sun) by jwarnica (subscriber, #27492) [Link]
The question at hand is "who is consistent", not "what is the best thing to do".
Picking solving today's problem over ideals isn't contradictory.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 17, 2010 23:37 UTC (Sun) by BrucePerens (subscriber, #2510) [Link] Today I ran in to a comment directed at me from the then-CTO of OLPC, a few years ago, pointing out that their use of Open Source was "pragmatic". I don't know if he's still there or not, but they pretty much ended themselves as an engineering organziation right then.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 18, 2010 0:39 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Um, if this was universally true then organizations like Boeing (which use
OSS internally for pragmatic reasons) would have to be considered 'not engineering organizations'. This strikes me as somewhat unlikely.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 18, 2010 0:49 UTC (Mon) by jwarnica (subscriber, #27492) [Link]
Are you even trying to address my initial point at all?
Its possible to both use FOSS as well as not-FOSS software and not be somehow self-contradictory. Consistently applying my above noted policy is consistent.
It may or may not be a good idea, but it is consistent.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 18, 2010 16:49 UTC (Mon) by BrucePerens (subscriber, #2510) [Link]
No. Boeing owns a lot of its mission-critical code and has a big enough budget that it won't be painted into a corner by its software acquisition decisions (although it might lose money from such decisions). OLPC turned away from its own software environment thinking that they'd be able to sell Windows machines. Even with the low performance of the only hardware they'd been able to make. From then on, they've produced computer graphic renderings of dream machines that they haven't produced, and promises of a hardware revision of their existing machines that haven't yet materialized. No real engineering that has resulted in a product has come out of there since they split with Sugar.
OLPC XO revision Posted Jan 18, 2010 17:22 UTC (Mon) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] FWIW, the XO 1.5 is in a fairly advanced state. I have two of them, and there are some circulating here at LCA as well. I know nothing about the dream machines, but the XO revision will be shipping soon.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 18, 2010 19:48 UTC (Mon) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
are you aware that no customer has ever opted to get windows on an OLPC?
do you have any idea what the actual effort by OLPC for windows was? (it was primarily space for a couple microsoft engineers in their offices so that they would be able to ask questions of the OLPC engineers)
are you aware that most of the (very few) changes that were made to allow windows to run were also needed to let normal linux distros run on the hardware?
while there are a lot of things that I think that OLPC has done wrong, allowing windows to run on the machines is not even in the top 10.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 18, 2010 23:18 UTC (Mon) by BrucePerens (subscriber, #2510) [Link]
I think the main problem was that they drove the Sugar project out for nothing.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 19, 2010 0:08 UTC (Tue) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
I see the main problem as them deciding to do Sugar in the first place ;-)
by doing this they threw away compatibility will all existing Linux distros and software, and they didn't have enough clout to grow a large enough community around the new platform (especially with the limited availability of the hardware)
Google did a similar thing with Android, but the fact that there are far more andoid devices out there makes up for a lot
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 19, 2010 5:43 UTC (Tue) by jordanb (subscriber, #45668) [Link]
I also couldn't figure out the design metaphors at work in SUGAR. They certainly weren't WIMP.
There's nothing wrong with trying new metaphors, of course. WIMP is a local maximum and I'm sure that with some courage, something better could be found.
But trying to come up with a whole new GUI metaphor along with being the first people in the universe to make mesh networks work, on top of a whole new software infrastructure stack, on top of a new hardware platform produced by a company who has never brought a product to market and has never managed a supply chain, founded on an untested educational theory, and sold to third world educational systems who can't even get the basics right, seems to me to be just one bridge too far.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 8, 2010 20:28 UTC (Fri) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link]
On the face of it being balanced and fair, it surprised me to read him defining making of proprietary software as "wrong". That is not very logical.
Abstractly speaking, what the creator does with his own creation, if he is not actively harming others, cannot be "wrong". I can develop a proprietary piece of cr*p and try to sell it for $100K a piece. As long as I am not forcing people to buy it, this is not "wrong", just "stupid".
In other words, even if we agree that developing proprietary software doesn't contribute to the "common good of humanity" (which I do agree with), neither do many other things, and yet nobody would qualify them as wrong.
Is it "wrong", if I sell my old car instead of donating it for cancer research? Obviously it would be better if I did the latter, but nobody would be crazy to call me wrong for not doing it.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 8, 2010 20:46 UTC (Fri) by ewan (subscriber, #5533) [Link] Abstractly speaking, what the creator does with his own creation, if he is not actively harming others, cannot be "wrong"Yes, it can. You may not agree that it is, but it's a moral judgement like any other.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 8, 2010 23:11 UTC (Fri) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link]
"Moral" judgment ???? Yeah, that work with FSF was a religion. I don't think even RMS would agree with you that one ought to take his commandments in "faith".
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 11, 2010 8:32 UTC (Mon) by janpla (guest, #11093) [Link]
Moral has little to do with religion; religion certainly isn't the "cause" of moral thinking. All research into the subject seems to suggest that morality is something inherent in social instinct - ie the instincts you need in order to live successfully as part of a group. "Good morals" means displaying traits like reliability, trustworthyness, faithfulness etc. Nothing strange about it, and nothing that requires the intervention of supernatural beings.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 12, 2010 1:15 UTC (Tue) by rahvin (subscriber, #16953) [Link]
The reality is religion borrows social morals developed by society and claims it's basis to be those morals. One of the reasons some of us don't follow the path of organized religion.
I personally don't agree with using the phrase moral. This is about right and wrong. Stallman considers proprietary software wrong because it denies the user the freedom to use the software in any manner they see fit. RMS considers this right a fundamental right that's been perverted by copyright law (a law considered by many people have been far extended beyond the US founders intent). Without copyright law people could use any software how they see fit, including modifying and redistributing. The problem is we have created an artificial legal structure that removes freedom and ingrained in many people's mind through cultural conditioning that this freedom doesn't exist. The idea that someone can own an idea (or words, or math) is an anathema to the very idea of freedom and that's why RMS considers it wrong. Whatever your view on the matter RMS's position is very consistent. He's stated numerous times that he believes copyright is wrong and the very reason he invented copyleft and the GPL was to use copyright against the copyright system. Hence the use of left in copyleft. If copyleft is said to have an ultimate goal it is to get copyleft software so widely disbursed and widespread that people petition to destroy the copyright system and return everything to the public domain.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 8, 2010 20:52 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
You analogy of selling old car instead of donating to cancel research and
selling proprietary software instead of creating free software is a poor one. RMS has consistently viewed proprietary software as wrong on principle. You might not agree with him and there is certainly for room for debate but it is hardly a surprising position.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 8, 2010 23:19 UTC (Fri) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link]
RMS has always been logical and I have always admired him for that. Spitting out qualifications like "good" and "bad" or "right" or "wrong" seems like the domain of religion, not free software, though. There is nothing logical about the choice of those words.
While I agree with his basic premise, I think he should choose his words better. I believe none of us are looking for him to make our moral choices for us and tell us what is right or wrong. That is a very dangerous territory and my skin crawls just by thinking about it. Definitely not something I expect from the FSF :-) Actually I don't think that even Carl Marx dared to do that...
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 9, 2010 1:54 UTC (Sat) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
I don't see why we should concede right or wrong which are ethical and moral
arguments to religion. I am an atheist but I can understand moral arguments without religion just fine, thank you very much.
RMS arguments about Free software have always been been on ethics.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pragmatic.html
Based on the fundamental premise of his arguments, his choice of words are
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 9, 2010 13:52 UTC (Sat) by zotz (guest, #26117) [Link]
I think he pretty much uses the term "unethical" rather than immoral, but he has been using the term / concept for a long time.
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=fsf+stallman+software+...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#cite_note-O...
[Stallman argues that software users should have the freedom to "share with their neighbor" and to be able to study and make changes to the software that they use. He maintains that attempts by proprietary software vendors to prohibit these acts are "antisocial" and "unethical".]
all the best,
drew
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 8, 2010 21:25 UTC (Fri) by Zack (guest, #37335) [Link]
>Abstractly speaking, what the creator does with his own creation, if he is not actively harming others, cannot be "wrong".
But when you distribute that creation and attachs requirements that would subjugate the recipient, it *would* be wrong.
>Is it "wrong", if I sell my old car instead of donating it for cancer >research? Obviously it would be better if I did the latter, but nobody >would be crazy to call me wrong for not doing it.
Free Software isn't about being charitative. It can be; but it's not a prerequisite. And as attractive as analogies with physical objects (such as old cars) are they break down very quickly. Software and cars are very very different things, don't let the nice cardboard box fool you.
At the beginning you write "That is not very logical.", but it is; it might just not be "very logical at face-value" depending on your point of view regarding certain issues (such as physical property and "intellectual property") at that time.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 8, 2010 23:40 UTC (Fri) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link] But when you distribute that creation and attachs requirements that would subjugate the recipient, it *would* be wrong. LOL, not at all. I am free to choose whatever requirements I want for my proprietary software (hypothetically speaking), even your first born child. You don't have to accept them. Suppose (hypothetically) that I am a great programmer but I don't know how to make a successful open source business. Selling support and programming are two very different skills. So, it is "wrong" to sell my software to feed my family, but it is "right" to go work in Burger King? It might just not be "very logical at face-value" depending on your point of view regarding certain issues (such as physical property and "intellectual property") at that time. Ahem, logic doesn't change depending on your point of view. Don't mix logic with ideology - very different things.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 9, 2010 3:11 UTC (Sat) by dbruce (subscriber, #57948) [Link] "LOL, not at all. I am free to choose whatever requirements I want for my proprietary software (hypothetically speaking), even your first born child. You don't have to accept them."
Whether or not the "customer" has a choice of acceptance has nothing to do
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 9, 2010 13:45 UTC (Sat) by Zack (guest, #37335) [Link]
>>attachs requirements that would subjugate the recipient, it *would* be wrong.
>not at all.
In that case there is nothing left to argue about. Any chain of logical reasoning start with a premise. Fairly high up the chain when it comes to Free Software is "subjugating people is not ethically acceptable". If we can't agree on that as a given, it's no surprise we arrive at different conclusions at a later stage.
>So, it is "wrong" to sell my software to feed my family,
Not in my opinion. It's only software. If there is any real imminent threat of starvation for you or your family, different ethics might apply.
>logic doesn't change depending on your point of view.
No, but the outcome of the process varies widely varies depending on the set of assumptions one is willing to accept as a given.
>Don't mix logic with ideology - very different things.
That's begging the question. You cannot just "will" logic to match your own world-view and dismiss everything that doesn't match it as "ideology" and continue to claim it's a valid match because logic dictates it.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 11, 2010 19:45 UTC (Mon) by txwikinger (subscriber, #57821) [Link]
Well, software is more an idea than a tangible object. Hence, it is not
property in the legal sense. In fact, a licence that restricts the abilities to use a software is only possible by the legislative act to create a time-limited monopoly in marketing such software.
As such, the legislation gives the author of software (and other original
However, in fact, the unalienable right is rather the right to learn. Such
RMS therefore talks about an unalienable right which should be held up to
Private ethics Posted Jan 9, 2010 22:32 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Abstractly speaking, what the creator does with his own creation, if he is not actively harming others, cannot be "wrong".A very narrow definition of "wrong". Picture the following: if I have a bucket of water and refuse to give a drink to someone who is dying of thirst, few people would hesitate to say that I am doing wrong (even if it's my water and my bucket). Imagine that the creator of a vaccine against malaria just dumps it: it may be his creation, but what he did is wrong. The principle would be: if I can benefit others without losing anything, then I should do so. It is a corollary of Kant's categorical imperative: if everyone refused to help when it doesn't cost them anything, the world would be a worse place. Proprietary software is wrong because it does not help others. Now, it can be argued that releasing something as proprietary software yields monetary rewards that Free software does not, and many people do. Stallman's position is that you can sell Free software and still make a fair profit. If you don't agree then go tell Red Hat that their $800M business is an illusion. So the principle here is: losing some profit yourself while letting everyone else benefit is right. As a matter of degree it is open to discussion and not as clear cut as people like their principles to be, but certainly it is compatible with the categorical imperative.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 9, 2010 5:58 UTC (Sat) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]
I think a better description of what you call "extreme positions" would be "logical extremes". The community generally agrees with him on principles, but he's willing to follow the principles to far more inconvenient places than other people. Other people say, "Sure, my alarm clock contains code that I can't modify, and I'd like to modify it, but I'll use it as is." in cases where he'll say, "I'll oversleep until I have an open-source alarm clock." On the one hand, the way he's done things is much more inconvenient than it had to be; on the other hand, he wrote a lot of code that nobody else would have cared to write.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 9, 2010 22:47 UTC (Sat) by spaetz (subscriber, #32870) [Link]
> I think a better description of what you call "extreme positions" would be "logical extremes".
Thank you so much for expressing my opinion so much more eloquent than I have been able to :-). I really like your alarm clock example, and this is what I have meant. Most of us do compromise for convenience, out of laziness, or for whatever reasons. RMS would rather stop using computers than giving up his ideals (which is what I mean by "extreme position"). While dealing with such a person can be really difficult, I agree that it needs some of that kind.
your characterization of Stallman is still a bit off Posted Jan 11, 2010 20:00 UTC (Mon) by stevenj (guest, #421) [Link] Two problems with your alarm-clock analogy. First, Stallman has consistently stated that he has no ethical problems with embedded software that cannot be modified by anyone (such as is likely to appear in an alarm clock): for example writing here that the ethical issues of free software ... don't really apply to hidden embedded computers, or the BIOS burned in a ROM, or the microcode inside a processor chip, or the firmware that is wired into a processor in an I/O device. In aspects that relate to their design, those things are software; but as regards copying and modification, they may as well be hardware. Second, he wouldn't ask for an "open-source" alarm clock, he'd ask for a free-software alarm clock; words matter to him. Ironically, what he sees as the implications of those words get at the heart of the point you are trying to make: he will accept inconvenience in order to wait for free software, writing:
your characterization of Stallman is still a bit off Posted Jan 11, 2010 21:08 UTC (Mon) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]
Trends have moved past where they were in 2005, such that many more systesm are on the line that the BIOS was on then; it has become more cost-effective in many cases for firmware to be in flash and be possible for users who open the case to modify, simply because it means that devices produced before a firmware flaw was discovered can be reprogrammed and sold, and because systems can be built with no custom ICs, not even ROM chips.
The meaningful difference between "open source" and "free software", as he says elsewhere in the essay you cite, is in the ideological positions, not in the implications on the licensing of a particular work. That is, there's no difference between an "open-source" clock and a "free-software" clock; the difference is between an "open-source" clock manufacturer and a "free-software" clock manufacturer.
your characterization of Stallman is still a bit off Posted Jan 11, 2010 21:55 UTC (Mon) by stevenj (guest, #421) [Link] So, you're arguing that terminology and precise word choices aren't "meaningful" to Stallman? Good luck with that one.
your characterization of Stallman is still a bit off Posted Jan 11, 2010 22:29 UTC (Mon) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]
What I'm saying is: "The two terms describe almost the same category of software, but they stand for views based on fundamentally different values." (from your second link).
your characterization of Stallman is still a bit off Posted Jan 12, 2010 0:29 UTC (Tue) by stevenj (guest, #421) [Link] ...and by putting that term in Stallman's mouth, you were obviously mischaracterizing him. (That, and your choice of "alarm clock" example, were obvious signs that you weren't being careful in your description of his position.) And by subsequently implying that the difference in terms would not be "meaningful" to Stallman, you were even more obviously mischaracterizing him.
your characterization of Stallman is still a bit off Posted Jan 12, 2010 12:44 UTC (Tue) by spaetz (subscriber, #32870) [Link]
> Two problems with your alarm-clock analogy. First, Stallman has consistently stated that he has no ethical problems with embedded software that cannot be modified by anyone (such as is likely to appear in an alarm clock):
Like the tivo which allegedly drove GPLv3 development? :-)
your characterization of Stallman is still a bit off Posted Jan 12, 2010 15:52 UTC (Tue) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
Entirely unlike the Tivo, which can be modified by the manufacturer but not by the user.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 9, 2010 11:41 UTC (Sat) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
The problem is that RMS can be socially, uhm, quirky (to be nice).
Some (many?) people will allow their knowledge of his, uhm, quirkiness to
This is a shame, cause when it comes to developing the "jurisprudence" of free
E.g. what extreme position do you think he holds? That software should be free?
These Seem a Bit Extreme to Me Posted Jan 13, 2010 1:30 UTC (Wed) by Lefty (guest, #51528) [Link] E.g. what extreme position do you think he holds? That software should be free?
These Seem a Bit Extreme to Me Posted Jan 13, 2010 14:31 UTC (Wed) by Zack (guest, #37335) [Link]
>to even discuss matters with anyone who doesn't first get in line with his preferred terminology.
You mean for interviews with journalists who somehow think introducing "conflict" is a necessary ingredient for a good story, or who just plain couldn't be bothered to read up about who they're interviewing ?
I mean, someone contacts RMS and asks him to dedicate a portion of *his* time. Why shouldn't he ask for something in return ?
These Seem a Bit Extreme to Me Posted Jan 13, 2010 14:37 UTC (Wed) by Lefty (guest, #51528) [Link]
No, I wasn't referring to journalists of any sort. I was referring more to his
refusing to take questions during a question-and-answer following a keynote unless they conformed to his terminology.
Newspeak Posted Jan 13, 2010 14:47 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] Richard will not speak to people at all unless they agree to adopt his form of language. That's why I never really try to ask him anything anymore; I'm not willing to let anybody dictate what I can or cannot write afterward. It's not a matter of "introducing a conflict," it's a matter of not letting others set the terms of the discussion.
Newspeak Posted Jan 13, 2010 17:13 UTC (Wed) by Lefty (guest, #51528) [Link]
It seems more than "not letting others set the terms of the discussion", Jon: I
get the sense that it's not even being willing to entertain the notion that others are entitled to their own views of matters, and seeing no other possiblity than that, if someone disagrees with what Richard is sayingno matter how reasoned or thoughtful the groundsit can only be because they've "misunderstood" him.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 9, 2010 16:25 UTC (Sat) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link]
If you call RMS extreme, also call Linus extreme. Don't believe it? Just watch their recordings. RMS fights proprietary software like Linus hates SVN. :-)
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 12, 2010 11:19 UTC (Tue) by HenrikH (guest, #31152) [Link]
Linus does not hate SVN, he hates CVS.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 12, 2010 14:57 UTC (Tue) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] Linus may not hate SVN, but he doesn't seem to particularly like it, either. If you like a software package you don't normally go out of your way to develop from scratch and popularise an alternative that does basically the same thing, only according to a completely different paradigm and internal design and with a more versatile set of features. Anyway, considering that SVN is essentially CVS with lipstick on, that doesn't come as a very big surprise.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 12, 2010 15:19 UTC (Tue) by ariveira (guest, #57833) [Link]
I think it does; if anything because SVN claims to be CVS done right ... ;P
See here
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 8, 2010 16:34 UTC (Fri) by mmeeks (subscriber, #56090) [Link]
It seems to me that the comparison between a proprietary license and the X11, is at least possible in some ideal world - yet completely unrealistic. Your average proprietary license is both confidential, and full of horrifying constraints on the licensee's freedom, that can substantially hinder both the licensee and the project - in the financial interest of the copyright holder of course.
I recently wrote about a number of the horrible issues around this here:
http://www.gnome.org/~michael/blog/copyright-assignment.h...
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 8, 2010 17:29 UTC (Fri) by wingo (subscriber, #26929) [Link]
I didn't read the comparison as X11 versus proprietary licenses; I read it as X11 versus GPL.
Stallman would probably agree with your assessment of proprietary licenses.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 8, 2010 17:45 UTC (Fri) by clump (subscriber, #27801) [Link]
I thought Stallman's words were not as eloquent as they could be, but the point is clear. Just because you can make proprietary software with X11-licensed code, doesn't mean the license is wrong.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 8, 2010 19:59 UTC (Fri) by kripkenstein (subscriber, #43281) [Link]
But the assumption is that the code is free and open. *In addition*, the BSD allows proprietary inclusions, and a sold exception to the GPL also allows proprietary exclusions. Both do so while keeping the original code open. This of course assumes *all* the code we are talking about here is FOSS, not an 'open core' (and RMS addresses this carefully).
So, I don't see what you mean by horrifying constraints and so forth. The code is open, you can use it. Or, you can purchases an exemption, as another option. Adding another option can only benefit you. Again, assuming all the code is FOSS, which is the assumption in this particular debate.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 8, 2010 20:41 UTC (Fri) by pebolle (guest, #35204) [Link]
0) You wrote more on this subject here: http://www.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2010-01-08.html:
> Interested by RMS' latest post defending copyright assignment which he
1) There seems to be be some misunderstanding here.
2) As far as I can see his post is about copyright holders to free code selling exceptions to third parties, that is copyright holders granting licenses to some third parties to that code for usage under non-free conditions. (Copyright assignment might be needed to for those copyright holders to be able to do that, but that is not central to his post.)
3) His ethical position could be summarized as follows:
I don't see how that implies equivalence between the X11 license and proprietary licenses.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 9, 2010 14:01 UTC (Sat) by zotz (guest, #26117) [Link]
"It seems to me that the comparison between a proprietary license and the X11"
He is not comparing a proprietary license and the X11, He is comparing the GPL+sold exceptions to the X11.
Say instead of paying me for exceptions, someone offered to pay me to convert my GPL license on a program to the X11 or BSD license and further to pay me a certain amount for every non-Free use of my code by anyone in the world from then on. (Since my opportunity to sell exceptions vanishes when I convert to the non-Copyleft license.)
That might get us a closer idea as to what is going on. (I am uncomfortable with the idea still but trying to get a better understanding.)
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 9, 2010 6:35 UTC (Sat) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]
I don't think the quoted statement is really that great an argument; the justification for using the X11 license in a Free Software context is in cases where users are more able to transition from proprietary software to non-proprietary software. For example, libtheora should use X11 instead of GPL because a developer who uses libtheora increases the range of software with can use and produce Theora files, increasing the range of uses of software which can handle Theora but not proprietary formats.
So it's best for the reaching the end goal to allow embedding in particular cases; but in those cases, whatever embedding occurs is good, and therefore the license should encourage as much as possible. On those principles alone, there's no reason to have a policy that allows embedding without having a policy that makes no restriction at all on it.
Of course, I agree with the reasoning he ends up with: if you can fund work on Free Software by taking money from people who are not participating, this is better than not taking the money and not doing the work as Free Software, from the point of view of reaching the end goal.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 11, 2010 20:11 UTC (Mon) by stevenj (guest, #421) [Link] Strategically, I'm sure Stallman would agree with you: he only argues for the use of a weak copyleft or non-copyleft free license (like LGPL or X11) when he sees the benefits to free software by increased utilization (e.g. replacing proprietary competitors filling the same niche, or promoting a free file format) outweighing the costs of proprietary use. (For example, see what he wrote about the Vorbis license.) However, ethically Stallman has consistently said that he never finds the X11 license morally objectionable (even if he finds it a suboptimal strategic choice in some cases). His point is that if he finds X11 ethically unobjectionable, then he must also find the practice of selling GPL exceptions unobjectionable (regardless of what he thinks of the practice strategically in any particular case). Stallman can be accused of many things, perhaps, but inconsistency is not one of them.
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 9, 2010 21:08 UTC (Sat) by Lefty (guest, #51528) [Link]
> But when you distribute that creation and attachs requirements that would subjugate the recipient, it *would* be wrong.
First, no one is obliged to accept a distribution of software from anyone, to the best of my knowledge. Second, it's unclear to me that it's even _possible_ to "subjugate" someone via software.
> It's when you distribute it and use it and make your users do your bidding that you're actively harming others.
Can you provide an example of a piece of software which is being distributed to people against their will and which forces them to do a third-party's bidding?
Stallman: On selling exceptions to the GPL Posted Jan 10, 2010 13:11 UTC (Sun) by DOT (subscriber, #58786) [Link]
SPSS' weird licensing scheme for example. It's hard to get around some software because it's an industry standard. So, with network effects they force their license terms on unwilling users.
But don't forget the four freedoms that we take for granted with free software. If you're forced to use proprietary software, they usually force you to give up the right to use (for any purpose), study, share and improve it.
But it goes beyond license terms subjugating users. If you need software bad enough, they have the opportunity to make their actual software worse without losing you as a client. Think about the forced nag screens on DVDs for example. No legal software DVD player will allow you to skip them.
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