Merging bcachefs

Posted Jun 19, 2023 17:10 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: Merging bcachefs by Wol
Parent article: Merging bcachefs

> The BSD licence protects the SOFTWARE ENGINEER guys, the GPL protects the END USER guys.

Isn't it the other way around? GPL ensures that software engineer may tinker with the code, BSD doesn't have such guarantees. GPL ensures that if someone would use your code they couldn't take it and kick out the actual author using patents, BSD doesn't have such guarantees.

On the other hand GPL makes it inconvenient to use your code which means it may not be available as widely which makes it less convenient for non-developers… and non-developers wouldn't care about source code availability since end users wouldn't know what to do with it, anyway.

I can easily understand people who are using BSD or Apache license to ensure that more people would benefit from their code even if they may lose the ability to use it freely… but to demand that someone else have to do that… that goes beyond hubris.

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Merging bcachefs

Posted Jun 19, 2023 17:18 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (4 responses)

I look at it as the Software Engineer can take any BSD code, and doesn't have to worry about pretty much anything.

It is possible to be in breach of the licence, but it's rather hard ... although AT&T did manage it.

The GPL on the other hand - if I as an end user decide to use a GPL program, I am entitled to the source code and have the right to maintain it myself. I may not be able to, for all sorts of reasons, but nobody can come up to me and say "you can't do that".

So software engineers are free to do what matters to them with BSD code (modify it, sell product), end users are free to do what matters to them with GPL code (run it, fix problems).

(And if, as an END USER, you only use Open Source code, then you don't notice any practical difference between the two.)

Cheers,
Wol

Merging bcachefs

Posted Jun 19, 2023 17:31 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (3 responses)

I think we have wildly different ideas about who “end users” are.

In today's world if you can fix your program you are an engineer, not end user.

The majority of end users don't have skills needed to fix anything.

So you are talking about engineers in both cases. Just BSD protects engineer from their own management and GPL protects engineer from management of other companies.

Frankly, I'm not sure I like BSD at all after that explanation.

Sometimes engineers are forced to work for companies known by their toxic culture, but the proper solution in that case is to leave them when possible, not trick them into adopting BSD to salvage that piece of code you worked on.

And while the desire to use BSD to salvage your own code may be justified, but to demand that others would give up their code for you to misappropriate just because you dislike that GPL puts you in the conflict with managers just makes no sense at all.

It's their code, what right do you have to demand that they would surrender it to your managers (and unreasonable, FOSS-hostile managers at that) just to make your life a tiny bit easier?

Merging bcachefs

Posted Jun 19, 2023 22:08 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (2 responses)

> In today's world if you can fix your program you are an engineer, not end user.

They're not exclusive. True, PEOPLE end users are rarely engineers, but company end users can employ engineers. And it's difficult to be an engineer without being an end user too. You personally, do you work on all the software you use? I doubt it. For MOST of the software you use, you are an END USER. How many people USE gcc? How many people HACK on gcc? If you use but don't hack, you are an END USER.

> The majority of end users don't have skills needed to fix anything.

But that's not what the GPL is about. They have the RIGHT to fix it, they have the SOURCE to fix it, and they have the TOOLS to fix it. The fact that they don't personally have a clue HOW to fix it is their problem, and it is IN THEIR POWER to solve.

Whereas the thing with BSD is that, if you spot a nifty hack in someone else's code, you can just lift and use it without worrying. Both licences have their place. They target different problems, and provide different solutions. BSD is especially good for sample code or code in standards documents.

The problem with the FSF and the GPL is that some software costs a lot of money to maintain, with legal issues etc etc. If you insist on GPL, this sort of software will never get written. That's why I have a problem with the FSF - they think I should not have the freedom to buy a commercial product!

Personally, I'd like to see a license that's a sort of half-way house along the lines of "if you use my code in your product, you have to provide your customer with your source and build system". Give customers the GPL freedoms to study the source and fix their own problems, but still protect the supplier's source code as trade secret or whatever. The freedom to share may be nice, but freedoms often conflict. And if you IMPOSE YOUR CHOICE of freedoms on me, you are making me your slave! Americans seem to have difficulty grasping the fact that other people value different freedoms than they do. Even Sun engineers prefering BSD! and refusing to allow other people to choose GPL!

Cheers,
Wol

Merging bcachefs

Posted Jun 20, 2023 22:34 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (1 responses)

> If you use but don't hack, you are an END USER.

Yes, and I'm acting like end user, too.

> You personally, do you work on all the software you use?

No, but all the software that I'm just using is a black box to me. Modern software is just too complex to try to change it.

In theory I can get source for gcc or rust compiler or rust analyzer and change something there. In practice it's just too time consuming to contemplate.

In an era where most software was simple and had lots of bugs changing something into it made sense.

But then… “Worse Is Better” won.

As Tony Hoare once wrote: There are two ways to write code: write code so simple there are obviously no bugs in it, or write code so complex that there are no obvious bugs in it.

And today's software have no obvious bugs in it and as a result it's so incredibly complex that fixing remaining non-obvious bugs quickly becomes full-time job.

> They have the RIGHT to fix it, they have the SOURCE to fix it, and they have the TOOLS to fix it.

And all that doesn't matter because they don't want to fix it. Including me, for aforementioned reasons. That's why GPL is much less valuable for me today… even if I can understand people who are using it.

> Americans seem to have difficulty grasping the fact that other people value different freedoms than they do. Even Sun engineers prefering BSD! and refusing to allow other people to choose GPL!

Yup. That's the country where congressman say, literally, the following: If China behaves as aggressively as Russia, then we will deprive them of their main trading partner in the face of the EU. Europe will impose crushing sanctions. Note that no one plans to deprive US of anything and they plan to make someone else to do the work for them.

How is that any different from Sun engineer's position?

Merging bcachefs

Posted Jun 28, 2023 6:16 UTC (Wed) by timofonic (guest, #165836) [Link]

Why so much offtopic? Sincerely. I would prefer more direct discussion about Bcachefs. Despite the nice threading, it's noisy and a wasted effort.