Merging bcachefs

Posted Jun 19, 2023 14:55 UTC (Mon) by paulj (subscriber, #341)
In reply to: Merging bcachefs by Wol
Parent article: Merging bcachefs

My own view, based on my /feelings/ of having been in Sun and - as a GPL guy (was hired for my work on GPL software) - trying to understand why much of Sun engineering had a _deep_ *hatred* of the GPL, and a favourable view of the BSD licence, is that they view it as a freedom thing.

I could never get a cogent argument as to how the BSD licence protected software freedom better than the GPL. So ultimately, the only cogent argument that *I* can construct (as said GPL guy), in the context of the engineers I knew, is that they want the code they write for an employer to be BSDed so that - if they ever leave, or the company goes under or gets bought - these engineers have the 'freedom' to continue to use the code they are familiar with at their next employer, regardless of their next employers' attitude to open-sourcing their software.

My main evidence for this is that the push to open-source Solaris (which needed a) engineering approval, and b) significant engineering led due diligence, and a little bit of code cleanup) only really came about when Sun had sunk into deep trouble, and the future didn't look great.

As you say, to protect the engineers. Specifically, ability to keep using code they've written for one employer at the next.

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Merging bcachefs

Posted Jun 19, 2023 16:44 UTC (Mon) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (12 responses)

> As you say, to protect the engineers. Specifically, ability to keep using code they've written for one employer at the next.

Worth noting other projects like Samba have managed to solve this problem by having contributors negotiate an agreement to retain the copyrights as described in

https://www.samba.org/samba/devel/copyright-policy.html

Distributing the copyright like this prevents a single entity from unilaterally changing the license and contributors can carry on their work regardless of their commercial employment.

Merging bcachefs

Posted Jun 19, 2023 17:20 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (11 responses)

> Worth noting other projects like Samba have managed to solve this problem by having contributors negotiate an agreement to retain the copyrights

This haven't solved the problem at all. Samba is not in the Android phones because of GPLv3 and it's very inconvenient to transfer files from/to Android phone because of that. BSD license would have solved that problem.

And yes, it explains why people who work for some company which is just about ready to “go under” may prefer BSD. But it doesn't explain why they would go as far as to demand that someone else have to go from GPL to BSD for their sake.

It's not their code, what right have they to demand that someone else have to provide it for them even if they want to go work for someone who would close it up and do that classic “embrace, extends, extinguish” trick?

It's one thing to fight for your own code, it's entirely other to demand that someone else have to give their code for your to misappropriate.

Merging bcachefs

Posted Jun 19, 2023 19:32 UTC (Mon) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (10 responses)

>This haven't solved the problem at all. Samba is not in the Android phones because of GPLv3 and it's very inconvenient to transfer files from/to Android phone because of that. BSD license would have solved that problem.

This is a different issue. The problem I was responding to, was specifically about engineers ability to continue working on the code regardless of their employer. Samba developers demonstrably have that in practice.

Merging bcachefs

Posted Jun 19, 2023 20:46 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (8 responses)

> Samba developers demonstrably have that in practice.

How can they do that?

> The problem I was responding to, was specifically about engineers ability to continue working on the code regardless of their employer.

Obviously they want to use it for their work, not just as a hobby. For hobby you don't need much thought about licensing. But for work… you need to clear licensing issues.

And GPL, very often, is rejected by employers thus engineers lose the ability to use their own code if it's released under GPL.

You may argue it's not rational and they should have thought about that when they wrote code for their current employer… but I can understand their reasoning: they have already sunk tons of effort into that code, they want to continue to use it with a new employer when they change workplace… GPL doesn't give that to them.

But that's for their own code. Which they wrote. And want to use in a new place.

GPL gives you the different way of using your own code: not for the new employer, but for yourself, personally — when someone else improves it.

That's also valuable ability and one which some people prefer.

That's why I say that I can understand people who release code under BSD or Apache license (heck, I did that for that exact same reason). But demanding that someone else have to give up their own wishes and put their desires ahed of their own… sorry, guys, that goes beyond what I'm ready to accept.

Merging bcachefs

Posted Jun 19, 2023 21:18 UTC (Mon) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (7 responses)

> How can they do that?

I already explained this. They do that by retaining copyrights. Affiliations are listed in https://www.samba.org/samba/team/. All these organizations are fine with GPLv3 obviously.

Merging bcachefs

Posted Jun 20, 2023 10:01 UTC (Tue) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

They /prefer/ contributing developers to retain copyright personally. However that is simply not an option for the vast majority of salaried engineers. Hence why the Samba contribution processes you've pointed to also have a path for corporate owned contributions.

Merging bcachefs

Posted Jun 20, 2023 13:38 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (5 responses)

> All these organizations are fine with GPLv3 obviously.

Let me see. Facebook. No. Apple. Never. Amazon. Not there. Netflix. Of course not. Google. Obviously no.

Sorry, but that's failure in my book. It puts you into a stark bind: either you avoid most desirable (and most lucrative!) employers or you can use the code you wrote. Otherwise someone else would be able to use and not you.

I can see why these people would hate GPL: it's, quite literally, forces them to choose between their own code and “dream job”.

Not good, not good at all.

Now, for other people who already made that decision and are not interested in joining FAANG-style companies… for these GPL is desirable and trade-offs are fine.

Merging bcachefs

Posted Jun 20, 2023 14:17 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (2 responses)

> Sorry, but that's failure in my book.

That's fine, do you have any evidence that it is failure in the book of Samba developers? Because that's the only part that matters to this discussion.

Merging bcachefs

Posted Jun 20, 2023 18:38 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

> That's fine, do you have any evidence that it is failure in the book of Samba developers?

There's a presentation from one of the Samba developers about how GPLv3 failed to bring better compliance and is not helping at all.

Merging bcachefs

Posted Jun 20, 2023 20:50 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

> Because that's the only part that matters to this discussion.

Wow. Just… wow. have you already forgotten that it was you who joined discussion about Sun engineers and promised some mythical solution to their worries.

And now you turn around and say that what they think is irrelevant and only ones who support FSFs jihad matter?

I'm starting to understand why people may dislike GPL. Once upon time FSF did a lot help people dealing with their practical issues: GNU software for Solaris and, later, Linux, then CygWin and many such things helped to solve many practical problems.

But with friends like these… who proclaim opinions of other people just don't matter if they refuse to join their holy jihad… who needs enemies?

And not everyone is wise enough, like Linus, and can separate GPLv2 (really superb hack on top of copyright system) from people who invented that hack (and then eventually ruined GPL with introduction of GPLv3) and who are, today, more of bane then an asset.

Merging bcachefs

Posted Jun 22, 2023 8:04 UTC (Thu) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] (1 responses)

> Sorry, but that's failure in my book. It puts you into a stark bind: either you avoid most desirable (and most lucrative!) employers or you can use the code you wrote.

Once upon a time listing all the companies that made and sold BSD-based appliances was a who’s who of the industry.

Once upon a time Java was the future and the whole big data stack was built on Open Source (*not* Free Software) Java bits (Hadoop, etc). Now Python (definitely not Free-Software hostile) stole the big data show.

All those ecosystems have dramatically shrunk, the companies that remain mostly release Linux and Free-Software based products.

Open Source (as opposed to Free software) is a dead end that gets repeatedly estinguished by the greed of companies that insist on it. So maybe it pays more short term. Long term it condemns its participants to the anguish of being replaced by something else whose proponents share more with one another.

The corporations themselves do not care overmuch one way or another. Change of tech, change of techies. The only ones fooling themselves OSS vs Free Software matters for business are those techies. In the end money talks (Google’s awowed distaste for the GPL won’t make it dump Linux in GCP or Android as long as it makes them money; Microsoft has seen the *lucrative* side of cancerous GPLed Linux a long time ago).

Merging bcachefs

Posted Jun 22, 2023 20:05 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

> Now Python (definitely not Free-Software hostile) stole the big data show.

Uh... Whut? Python is quite explicitly OpenSource, not Free Software. It has a permissive license, and there's nary a GPL-ed package in sight. All the recent AI work is built on permissively licensed packages.

> Open Source (as opposed to Free software) is a dead end that gets repeatedly estinguished by the greed of companies that insist on it. So maybe it pays more short term.

What you're saying is completely false. It's Open Source that wins long-term because it's a superior development model. Proprietary forks (and models like "open core") can exist for a while, but they eventually either become obsolete and die off, or get integrated into the open code.

This is doubly so when the software gets complicated. You can't really develop a meaningful proprietary fork of Kubernetes, simply because your "secret sauce" changes will likely be insignificant compared to the overall functionality. And if they are significant, you'll have to keep up with the firehose of new functionality that is released for each new official version.

And finally, Open Source allows companies to collaborate on non-core functionality. My previous company worked in the solar industry, and we as hell wouldn't release our proprietary simulation algorithms, but we contributed quite a few patches to miscellaneous projects (because why not?).

To paraphrase an old Soviet joke, the goal of FSF is to make sure that there's no proprietary software, the goal of Open Source is to make all software open sourced.

Merging bcachefs

Posted Jun 20, 2023 9:56 UTC (Tue) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

Their new employer might not want to allow GPL code in their products - or at least, strongly discourage incorporating any /further/ GPL code into their products. You can see this with Google and Android, and others.