Eric S. Raymond on GPL and BSD licenses. & Microsoft coming to Linux

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Sat, 28 Mar 2009 08:38:45 -0400, Yigal Chripun <yigal100 at gmail.com>  
wrote:

> On 27/03/2009 19:17, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>>
>> Interesting anecdote: Our company developed a Linux driver to one piece
>> of hardware that our largest customer used. We did not release it under
>> GPL terms but this is OK legally since the kernel doesn't require GPL'd
>> drivers.
>>
>> The customer had a problem with one of the stock open source drivers in
>> their OS. However, they couldn't get *any* support from the community
>> because the community wouldn't even bother looking at a kernel that was
>> "tainted" by a proprietary driver. So we were *forced* to relicense our
>> driver under GPL terms (this customer has a lot of clout), just so the
>> free software community would look at a problem completely unrelated to
>> our driver. They probably never even looked at the source in our driver.
>
> How is this different from Walter, Andrei and co. refusing to look at  
> Tango?

It's different because prior to licensing the driver as GPL, they did not  
*have* the source to look at (and therefore could not be tainted by it).   
The annoying part of the story is that our driver had NOTHING TO DO with  
the error in the GPL'd code.  But just because the kernel was touched by  
our code, they refused to fix a bug in their own driver, which would have  
made their driver better.  That is really really stupid IMO.

> Putting aside attitudes and ego, the community refused to look at the  
> tainted kernel out of fear of potentially being sued for copy-right  
> infringement and for the you have the draconian (and unconstitutional)  
> US law to blame, not the FSF and its GPL.

Ah, you're one of those people :)  I can't wait until the U.S. takes over  
your meager country and assimilates you into our capitalist ranks  
mwahahaha!

And as I said, the community refused to look at THEIR source code in THEIR  
driver, not anything in OUR driver.

I think the whole world could do with less people who are petrified of  
being sued, and more people who take responsibility for their own problems.

>>
>> This is the kind of mentality I think that completely goes against
>> progress, and it's fostered by the GPL. I'm not saying the GPL is
>> useless, but I see little to no value in a for-profit company using it
>> unless they are forced to. And there's this holier-than-thou attitude
>> from GPL supporters that completely sucks.
>>
>> Anyway, I agree that the world could do just as good without GPL. Maybe
>> it was necessary in the beginning, but not any more.
>>
>> -Steve
>
> Both proprietary and free software have a place in the world since they  
> serve different purposes.
> for instance, I wouldn't want military software to be available online  
> with the risk of being exploited by terrorists but on the other hand I  
> wouldn't want to use any non reasonably free COTS software. When you buy  
> a car you are free to look under the hood and the same should apply to  
> software. sure, the manufacturer can and probably should void any  
> warranty if you mess with the internals of its product, but they  
> shouldn't prevent you access to those internals.

I never said that open source software isn't important or useful.  I just  
don't think you need the GPL to protect the openness of the software these  
days.  In the beginning, there were very few people working on open source  
software, so GPL protected them, and did a good job of keeping the  
movement alive.  Now there are a ton of people doing open source under a  
ton of licenses (many not GPL-like).  If the GPL all of a sudden went  
away, would open source developers stop developing open source software or  
would they just switch to a different license?  Is it that horrible if a  
company uses your open source software together with closed source  
software but still gives you credit?

> "I see little to no value in a for-profit company using it [the GPL]"
> how do you explain Red-Hat's success? there are many many companies that  
> gain a lot by using GPL and they are certainly not forced to use it.

Red hat has good software, that is why they are successful.  They also  
sell their services for updates, AND I believe they have some non GPL'd  
enterprise software, but I'm not sure, I don't buy their stuff anymore.

But I think you are wrong about the "many many" part.  There are only 2  
companies selling Linux as fully open source software that I know of --  
Red Hat and SuSe.  All the others have gone (and there were a lot of them,  
especially after Red Hat's IPO).  Selling open source, and particularly  
GPL'd software is difficult, I don't think it can sustain many companies.   
I would not be surpised if the number of closed source companies (those  
selling at least SOME closed source software) outnumber the number of open  
source companies by 1000 to 1.

> I agree with you that there are zealots with that holier-than-thou  
> attitude and that this really sucks. by saying - "I agree that the world  
> could do just as good without GPL. Maybe it was necessary in the  
> beginning, but not any more. " you just joined the group of zealots.

I must be a zealot, I disagree with your opinion!

I have no qualms working with GPLd or any other open source software.  I'm  
probably the *least* zealous person when it comes to licensing.  I just  
want to get work done, and stupid shit that gets in the way (such as  
refusing to fix your own bugs because of some political issue) annoys me.

> As I already said, in reality, both proprietary and free software are  
> useful since they fulfill different requirements. saying otherwise is  
> stupid and wrong.

If you mean free as in FSF's meaining of "free" (i.e. copyleft), I think  
you are probably wrong (and heck, I'll throw in stupid too).  But neither  
of us can be proven right because GPLd software isn't going away.

-Steve