| |||||||||||||
GPL -> LGPL is almost always a bad moveGPL -> LGPL is almost always a bad movePosted Feb 20, 2012 19:39 UTC (Mon) by coriordan (guest, #7544)In reply to: GPL -> LGPL is a logical move here, regardless of what rabid Stallmanites say by jensend Parent article: VLC 2.0 released
I pointed out that third-party frontends were already possible. The only difference is that, by moving away from GPL, they won't all be free software now.
For example, proprietary packages that contain a video library can now stop working on their own library and rely on handouts from the VLC project.
Development of proprietary software gets more efficient, and VLC gets no code contributions. Why is that good for readers of LWN?
(But please only reply if you're going to stick to the standard of comment quality that makes LWN a good forum.)
(Log in to post comments)
GPL -> LGPL is almost always a bad move Posted Feb 20, 2012 19:55 UTC (Mon) by endecotp (guest, #36428) [Link]
I've seen at least one Mac application that uses VLC without any attempt at GPL compliance. The change only means that they can now do this legally. Do we know the authors' reasoning for the change? Perhaps they are just adapting to the reality of how their code was being used anyway.
In some sense, the worst situation to be in is where the "good guys" would like to use your code but can't because of your license, and the "bad guys" just use your code illegally. Think about it this way: are you likely to get more contributions back [e.g. bug-fixes] from someone who uses your GPL code illegally, or from someone who uses your LGPL code legally?
GPL -> LGPL is almost always a bad move Posted Feb 20, 2012 21:24 UTC (Mon) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]
There are indeed some circumstances where LGPL is better, but they're rare. It'd be overly optimistic to presume that each case is one of the rare cases, and there's nothing on the announcement page to support the idea that this change is for the benefit of free software users.
In general, a change from GPL to LGPL is a loss, not something to celebrate.
The license is strictly the author's business Posted Feb 20, 2012 20:14 UTC (Mon) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link]
It doesn't matter whether it's good for LWN readers. It's the author's code, the author took the time to develop it and deal with feedback, and the author gets to choose the license.
Any comments which pretend otherwise are arrogance and elitism personified. NO ONE knows better than the author what the author wants, and NO ONE else gets a say in it.
The license is strictly the author's business Posted Feb 20, 2012 21:28 UTC (Mon) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]
I didn't say that I know what the authors want.
I said this is probably bad for free software users.
You're right that the author can do what he likes with his code, but some choices are unfortunate for free software users. I care about free software users, thus my comment.
The license is strictly the author's business Posted Feb 20, 2012 23:13 UTC (Mon) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link]
It's true that the change to LGPL will enable proprietary frontends to be developed. But it will also enable GPLv3 or BSD-licensed frontends to be developed, something that was formerly impossible because of the GPLv2-only license.
Overall, this will reduce the amount of wheel reinvention and fragmentation, so I can't help but think of it as a positive step.
It was already compatible with GPLv3 and BSD licences Posted Feb 21, 2012 11:32 UTC (Tue) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]
It's was previously GPLv2+, so it was already compatible with GPLv3 and BSD.
It was already compatible with GPLv3 and BSD licences Posted Feb 21, 2012 15:52 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
"Compatible with BSD" is a stretch. "Requiring BSD projects to release their software under the GPL" would be a more accurate way of putting that.
It was already compatible with GPLv3 and BSD licences Posted Feb 21, 2012 16:42 UTC (Tue) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]
Anyone can combine BSD and GPL code (v2 or v3), and distribute the result. That's compatible.
The GPL parts say GPL, and the BSD parts stay BSD. Distributors have to comply with both sets of requirements.
10 more paragraphs could be added about the details, but the licences are 100% compatible.
(This will probably be my last post in this thread. I should get back to working on http://en.swpat.org )
It was already compatible with GPLv3 and BSD licences Posted Feb 21, 2012 20:26 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
And anyone who wants to build on top of the combination must use the GPL. Your careful language implies that it's a reciprocal relationship. It's not.
It was already compatible with GPLv3 and BSD licences Posted Feb 22, 2012 12:44 UTC (Wed) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
I don't think anything was implied about reciprocity. If you're building on a work, you have to go along with the conditions applied to that work. People sometimes make a big deal about how "generous" they are ("I attached as few conditions to my work as possible!"), but that simply isn't the aim of the GPL.
Technically, anyone who wants to build on top of the combination can use whichever GPL-compatible licence they like and wait for someone else to replace the GPL-licensed part under a licence they prefer. Usage of the GPL merely invites people to undertake a common activity within a framework that seeks to uphold specific properties of the resulting work.
There are all sorts of reasons why a project might switch to using more or less permissive licences - they may indicate a change in the way the interests of different groups of people are prioritised by the developers - but given the potential effects of such changes on end-users, I don't see anything wrong in voicing end-user concerns about it.
good heavens, not this drivel again please Posted Feb 21, 2012 1:10 UTC (Tue) by jensend (guest, #1385) [Link]
The "standard of comment quality that makes LWN a good forum" excludes repetitive mindless drivel. We come here not only because it's less of a flamefest than other sites but because it usually has more intelligent discussion rather than wasting everybody's time by rehashing the same brainless argument fodder that people have been spewing for decades.
Everybody here has heard the merits of the Stallman kool-aid preached plenty of times, and either they drank it or they deliberately decided not to. By rehashing all the same old "GPL is the Only True License, LGPL is only a stepping stone in the Seven-Year Plan and anyone who advocates its use outside of that role is an enemy of the Party" propaganda you aren't going to convince anyone around here.
There are zero frontend projects that would have been open-source if libVLC had kept its old license but will now be closed. That argument is a total red herring. Further, since there are plenty of other video libraries out there, no other apps would have been enticed to use a GPL-compatible license just to be able to use libVLC either.
Contrary to your claim, anybody who uses libVLC will still have to release any modifications, and libVLC will have more users, so code contributions are a reason in the LGPL's favor. (Even MIT/BSD licensed libraries see most users contribute back their changes though in such a case it's not required.)
The only thing you said that has any semblance of truth about it is that being able to choose libVLC over other already-available video libraries might conceivably make life easier for some proprietary software developer out there. The horrors!
Choosing an unsuitable license and shooting yourself in the foot just to spite some hypothetical proprietary developer is not going to do anything to advance users' or developers' freedom.
good heavens, not this drivel again please Posted Feb 21, 2012 3:15 UTC (Tue) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link]
Whether it's the government deciding saccharin is bad for everybody or Bill Gates or Steve Jobs deciding what software I can use on my computer or coriordan deciding what license is best for someone else's software, the common thread is to unilaterally decide for other people, based on "I am ideologically pure".
I personally like GPLv2 and release what little software I do using it. But like every human endeavor, browbeating is more likely to put people off than get the desired results. Were I to make my licensing decisions today, I do not know if I would choose any version of the GPL, simply because of the increasingly shrill "I know what's good for you" attitude of the Stallman true believers. I tried, once, talking with Stallman about something very general, and was astonished at how rigid his thinking was and how rapidly the diatribes began -- GPL or be damned.
I believe most patches and fixes are submitted to projects because the patch author wants to help the main project and not maintain a private fork of the sources. The license has little to do with it. Even if someone does start by maintaining their own set of patches, at some point it gets to be too much hassle, and they merge at least most of their patches back in to the mainline. I myself have some patches for projects I use but the author doesn't want or because I simply can't contact them, and it's no picnic.
I believe that Google would be just as likely to submit fixes to Linux without the GPL as they do now, because they don't want to maintain a sea of patches for the rest of Android's life. Ideology and "do no evil" be damned -- it's easier and in their own best interests.
Harping upon what license authors choose for their software is beyond elite and arrogant. It is counter productive. Stallman is a genius in many ways, but his acolytes do no good for either him or the FSF by turning every discussion into an argy bargy on how holy the GPL is. Sneers at these choices or other licenses in general turns people off and leaves enough bad taste behind to deter ever using the one true license.
good heavens, not this drivel again please Posted Feb 21, 2012 5:11 UTC (Tue) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
> I believe that Google would be just as likely to submit fixes to Linux without the GPL as they do now, because they don't want to maintain a sea of patches for the rest of Android's life. Ideology and "do no evil" be damned -- it's easier and in their own best interests.
I can't argue with the rest of your statement but I'm not really sure this is true, maybe they would try but the Android team seems somewhat GPL averse. I think they picked the kernel for its technical superiority and are forced to comply with the license to get it.
That's different than IBM which is willing to put resources into projects because of the GPL. It protects them from competition with proprietary forks of their own labor. They can compete, successfully, on other areas than exclusive access to critical source code
I don't know the android developers though so I may be way off base.
good heavens, not this drivel again please Posted Feb 21, 2012 7:08 UTC (Tue) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link]
The amount of work Google have done to get code back into the kernel mainline shows how little they like having a fork.
My own experience maintaining just a few small patches for a few small packages encourages me to believe it doesn't get any easier with thousands of patches.
Google are just people. Thinking of them as evil personified with greed on top, the kind of people who laugh in the developers' faces about all the extra work they create for them ... well, it's just silly. If nothing else, think about it from the greedy point of view that it's better to get patches back into mainline and lower dev costs and increase product stability.
good heavens, not this drivel again please Posted Feb 21, 2012 11:46 UTC (Tue) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]
> Whether it's ... or ... or [someone] deciding what license is best for someone else's software
I'm commenting on the future of the software *I* use and recommend.
When I see an event that will probably have a negative impact on the future quality or quantity of the software I use and recommend (free software), I say "Oh, pity".
Some posts here seem to treat copyright holders as holy, and comments on their decisions as blasphemy.
good heavens, not this drivel again please Posted Feb 21, 2012 12:21 UTC (Tue) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link] Whether it's the government deciding saccharin is bad for everybody or Bill Gates or Steve Jobs deciding what software I can use on my computer or coriordan deciding what license is best for someone else's software, the common thread is to unilaterally decide for other people, based on "I am ideologically pure". I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to name the rhetorical trick being used here. Last time I checked, Windows was still being bundled on most computers sold at retail, people were still having to take vendors to court to get Windows "unbundled", and Apple were still insisting that you can only use their "App Store" to get software and that they were the ones who decided what should and shouldn't be available. Meanwhile, Ciarán O'Riordan still doesn't seem to have the power to decide which licence people get to use. And I see that the challenge to raise the standard of discussion was met with pop-culture religion and communism references. It's clearly not so much a matter of putting words into other people's mouths as stuffing a whole dictionary in there.
good heavens, not this drivel again please Posted Feb 21, 2012 15:50 UTC (Tue) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link]
Go ahead and read "communism" and "religion" pop culture references into my comment, or fail to see any valid comparison. That's what the FSF does too, cover its ears and pretend its opinions are still relevant. They used to matter a lot more, before they became so shrill and isolated. That's the real message. The FSF and Richard Stallman come across as a wannabe Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, wanting the whole world to do as they dictate merely because they say so. Just because they don't have that power doesn't make their message any less obnoxious.
Sometimes leaders need to look behind them to make sure someone is still following.
good heavens, not this drivel again please Posted Feb 21, 2012 16:03 UTC (Tue) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
Actually, you weren't the source of most of the blatant references to religious and political clichés, but terms like "true believers" certainly help to keep the discussion civilised, I always find.
And my point that people project undue influence onto the FSF (or other organisations, along with anyone who happens to agree with them in any way) is illustrated very well by your response. I sometimes wonder, in an era when anyone and everyone has an opinion and where filtering out those opinions is a part of everyday life, what motivation anyone would have to complain about the influence of an organisation by comparing it to a selection of large corporations who have far more influence over policy, commerce and the lifestyle of individuals than the FSF with its comparatively modest campaigning.
good heavens, not this drivel again please Posted Feb 21, 2012 20:31 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
So we don't need to worry about the FSF going off the deep end until they're big enough that it actually matters?
Not sure I agree with that.
good heavens, not this drivel again please Posted Feb 22, 2012 12:57 UTC (Wed) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
Well, if enough people object to the FSF's views, the growth of the organisation and its influence will be self-limiting, although the campaigns that seem to annoy some people seem fairly innocuous: spelling out the disadvantages to society and the end-user about things like DRM and various control features in, say, Windows is really only about telling people things that they may (or may not) want to hear.
Of course you will always get people who will claim "brainwashing" and that people are somehow tricked into supporting such organisations. Again, this is a laughable assertion when hundreds of millions of people probably have to listen to the Windows jingle every day using products (and being shown advertisements) made by an industry that has systematically reduced choice over the last two decades, with most of these people living in societies where brand loyalty is regarded more highly than objective consideration of any particular set of issues.
|
|||||||||||||