The things people do for money...



  • Take a look at this plugin sales page. http://seamlessseo.com

    Now take a look at the plugin itself. http://seamlessseo.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/seamless-seo1.01-dev.zip

    Notice anything... weird?

    Like.. the plugin is a crappily renamed copy of yoast's (free, gpl'd) WordPress SEO plugin, with a crappily renamed copy of another free gpl'd plugin, and another feature that's a 100% wtf?

    Inb4 TRWTF is WordPress plugins.

    And yeah, I've contacted yoast and jvzoo (the 'payment processor' used), with no replies from either. So what next but to humiliate the devs on thedailywtf? :)



  • You can sell GPLed stuff.

    However, they have one of those "are you sure you want to leave this page?" pop-ups so let's KILL THEM.


  • Considered Harmful

    @blakeyrat said:

    You can sell GPLed stuff.

    I have my new get-rich-quick scheme.



  • Just be careful, some of those GPL projects (like Firefox) use trademarks to protect their IP, so if you plan to resell those you have to be careful to remove all the trademarked words.

    Other than that, AFAIK, there's nothing wrong with taking some GPL code and selling it, as long as you include the source or easy access to the source. Maybe GPLv3 changes this, I dunno.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    some of those GPL projects (like Firefox)

    Not GPL, MPL. But your point still stands.

    @blakeyrat said:

    Other than that, AFAIK, there's nothing wrong with taking some GPL code and selling it, as long as you include the source or easy access to the source.

    Yeah, lots of companies do this. If you've bought a home wifi router in the last decade, it probably runs Linux and if you dig around you'll probably find a way to get the source code from the company.

    @blakeyrat said:

    Maybe GPLv3 changes this, I dunno.

    I don't think GPLv3 changes it. Then again, nobody uses GPLv3, so it doesn't really matter.



  • @joe.edwards said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    You can sell GPLed stuff.

    I have my new get-rich-quick scheme.

    If only there were some GPL'd software worth paying for..


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @morbiuswilters said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    Maybe GPLv3 changes this, I dunno.
    I don't think GPLv3 changes it. Then again, nobody uses GPLv3, so it doesn't really matter.
    It could be worse; it could be AGPL. It's quite the most noxious infectious license out there; “kill it, kill it with fire” is a reasonable response. Thankfully it's rare.

    In fact, maybe we can just skip the ranting about it and go straight to declaring that everyone who doesn't hate it is either blissfully ignorant or a complete idiot.



  • As someone who is blissfully unaware of what the AGPL is exactly, can I get a quick rundown on how the AGPL is worse that the GPLv3. I need to know how fast I need to run away from any project using it.



  • Well so the normal GPL has a "loophole": if you take a GPL'd piece of software that does task A, then turn it into a web service that does task A, you can charge people for going to your server and performing task A without distributing the code to the modifications you made - you're not distributing the software itself, you're just distributing the results of the software's computation.

    The AGPL and in a lot of ways the GPLv3 try to close that loophole by saying, effectively, "if any GPL code touches your webservice, your entire webservice must be GPL".

    This can be considered a huge overreach for a variety of reasons; basically, even though the computation is run purely on your host, you still have to give the client access to your source code simply because they saw the results of the computation. 

    For example, consider a PDF rasterizing library. This library takes PDFs and turns them into PNGs. With this library, you make a pretty little webapp that lets people send you PDFs, and you send them back PNGs.

    Under GPLv2 and a lot of other licenses, that's where it ends. Under AGPL and GPLv3, because you're showing clients the results of this library - even though your server is doing all the thinking - you're required to give the client access to your source code.

    How much of your source code? That's a good question, and not one any company that's not fully committed to "open source everything" cares to find out in practice. 

    This basically why a lot of companies who are otherwise okay with using and contributing to open source communities won't touch AGPL or GPLv3 with a ten foot pole.



  • @Tacroy said:

    The AGPL and in a lot of ways the GPLv3 try to close that loophole by saying, effectively, "if any GPL code touches your webservice, your entire webservice must be GPL".

    [...]

    Under GPLv2 and a lot of other licenses, that's where it ends. Under AGPL and GPLv3, because you're showing clients the results of this library - even though your server is doing all the thinking - you're required to give the client access to your source code.

    You're missing one huge point about AGPL: It is meant for "web software" such as PHPBB and Community Server and that sort of thing. You're not going to see a C compiler licensed under AGPL.



  • @hhaamu said:

    Community Server

    I want to see a license on Community Server that forbids them from showing me the source.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @hhaamu said:
    Community Server

    I want to see a license on Community Server that forbids them from showing me the source.

    It's like that one movie with Harrison Ford. They open the top on the thing, and it melts all the Nazis who stare at it.



  • @drurowin said:

    It's like that one movie with Harrison Ford. They open the top on the thing, and it melts all the Nazis who stare at it.

    Ah, yes, Working Girl.

    Although, I don't think Melanie Griffith's [NSFW] topless vacuuming scene [/NSFW] was face-meltingly bad. Still, not her best work.



  • @Tacroy said:

    Well so the normal GPL has a "loophole": if you take a GPL'd piece of software that does task A, then turn it into a web service that does task A, you can charge people for going to your server and performing task A without distributing the code to the modifications you made - you're not distributing the software itself, you're just distributing the results of the software's computation.

    The AGPL and in a lot of ways the GPLv3 try to close that loophole by saying, effectively, "if any GPL code touches your webservice, your entire webservice must be GPL".

    This can be considered a huge overreach for a variety of reasons; basically, even though the computation is run purely on your host, you still have to give the client access to your source code simply because they saw the results of the computation. 

    For example, consider a PDF rasterizing library. This library takes PDFs and turns them into PNGs. With this library, you make a pretty little webapp that lets people send you PDFs, and you send them back PNGs.

    Under GPLv2 and a lot of other licenses, that's where it ends. Under AGPL and GPLv3, because you're showing clients the results of this library - even though your server is doing all the thinking - you're required to give the client access to your source code.

    How much of your source code? That's a good question, and not one any company that's not fully committed to "open source everything" cares to find out in practice. 

    This basically why a lot of companies who are otherwise okay with using and contributing to open source communities won't touch AGPL or GPLv3 with a ten foot pole.

    There's still a loophole: Only things that use GPL'd things are required to be licensed under the GPL. And you only need to give people access to the source code if they have access to the object code. So if your program is a web service that runs on your own servers or you can somehow prove that the GPL'd code is using your code as opposed to your code using the GPL'd code, you're not restricted in any way by the GPL.

    So with the PDF rasterizer example, you could make a small open source project that takes a callback and then feeds the output of that callback to the GPL'd PDF rasterizer and feeds the output of that to a second callback. Now your code is called BY the open source code and all you have to release is the tiny one-function project. Disclaimer: IANAL.



  • @Ben L. said:

    There's still a loophole: Only things that use GPL'd things are required to be licensed under the GPL. And you only need to give people access to the source code if they have access to the object code. So if your program is a web service that runs on your own servers or you can somehow prove that the GPL'd code is using your code as opposed to your code using the GPL'd code, you're not restricted in any way by the GPL.

    So with the PDF rasterizer example, you could make a small open source project that takes a callback and then feeds the output of that callback to the GPL'd PDF rasterizer and feeds the output of that to a second callback. Now your code is called BY the open source code and all you have to release is the tiny one-function project. Disclaimer: IANAL.

    Disclaimer: IAANAL.

    It's my opinion that the GPL will one day be invalidated by U.S. courts. (Has there even been a real test case yet? AFAIK, it's just been a bunch of bullshit where the FOSS community whines, somebody files suit, the defendant says "Well, all we did was use some free libraries so our cheapest option is to send people an email letting them know they can download the source for this piece of shit from some FTP site", they sweeten the pot by throwing a couple of shekels at some FOSS project and the thing is settled.)

    But one day a suit will bubble up to the appellate courts or the Supremes and they'll be like "Yeah, no, you can't do that." So not thinking the GPL is valid, and seeing that the AGPL is way more burdensome, I kind of doubt it will be enforced.

    That said, if the GPL/AGPL/GPL3 was valid, your little scam probably wouldn't help. I've said this about a million times before, but: the law is far less mechanical than tech people seem to think. A "technicality" in law means something different than what you think it does. Real courts are not like on the teevee. Believe it or not, courts frown on people trying to weasel out of their obligations with silly bullshit like that.

    Could it work? Sure, anything might work. But the judge probably isn't going to say "Oh, you clever little boy, you found a trick to avoid your legal obligations!" while he shoots you a wink and bangs his gavel. He's more likely to ask you to explain why you think you can use his courtroom to defraud people.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Ben L. said:

    There's still a loophole: Only things that use GPL'd things are required to be licensed under the GPL. And you only need to give people access to the source code if they have access to the object code. So if your program is a web service that runs on your own servers or you can somehow prove that the GPL'd code is using your code as opposed to your code using the GPL'd code, you're not restricted in any way by the GPL.

    So with the PDF rasterizer example, you could make a small open source project that takes a callback and then feeds the output of that callback to the GPL'd PDF rasterizer and feeds the output of that to a second callback. Now your code is called BY the open source code and all you have to release is the tiny one-function project. Disclaimer: IANAL.

    More to the point, if you're distributing your code without the GPL parts and it is genuinely useful without those parts (in b4 blakerant on “no OSS is ever useful”) you're in the clear as you can demonstrate that you're not a derived product; while the acolytes of the Great Unclean One won't like it, they won't have a legal leg to stand on. Then the only thing that can be subject to the GPL restrictions is the aggregation of your product and the GPL software, and that's much less noxious.

    The AGPL is more noxious though, as it says that if you have access to the service where part of the implementation is licensed under the AGPL, you must have access to the source code of the entire implementation of the service. It leaves no wriggle room at all for “secret sauce”. Very few people use it, as nobody is doing corporate-funded work using it. (No surprise there!) However I don't think it says anything about what license clients have to be; there's quite clear case law (on licensing of APIs) that indicates that that would be considered a complete overreach of what the terms any license could impose.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @morbiuswilters said:

    Could it work? Sure, anything might work. But the judge probably isn't going to say "Oh, you clever little boy, you found a trick to avoid your legal obligations!" while he shoots you a wink and bangs his gavel. He's more likely to ask you to explain why you think you can use his courtroom to defraud people.

    The highfalutin' legal term for this is penumbras and emanations. And yes, it's at least as dirty as it sounds. But Ben's scam might work if he argued that the GPL is a living license.



  • In even murkier waters, have you seen the GLPv2ish licence for OCS Inventory NG?

    It says that you can never charge for this FOSS software, even if you include it in your (possibly much larger) application.

    They then play fast and loose (as, to be fair, do many other people) with their own modified view of what GPL v2 means. I particularly like the statement "Are there any restrictions to your use of OCS Inventory? The GNU GPL grants you the freedom to use the software for whatever purpose you see fit.", followed by a list of restrictions on what you can do with it.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    It's my opinion that the GPL will one day be invalidated by U.S. courts.
    I'm not pro-GPL, but I don't think that you will see a court invalidate the GPL unless they someday decide to invalidate all software licensing.

    (Standard Disclaimer:  I Am Not A Llama)

    The GPL relies on copyright law to enforce it's warped view of how software should work. Whether they are right or wrong, is an entirely different argument, but their line of reasoning is:

    The essence of copyright law is the power to exclude. The copyright holder is legally empowered to exclude all others from copying, distributing, and making derivative works.

    This right to exclude implies an equally large power to license—that is, to grant permission to do what would otherwise be forbidden. Licenses are not contracts: the work's user is obliged to remain within the bounds of the license not because she voluntarily promised, but because she doesn't have any right to act at all except as the license permits.




  • @skotl said:

    I particularly like the statement "Are there any restrictions to your use of OCS Inventory? The GNU GPL grants you the freedom to use the software for whatever purpose you see fit.", followed by a list of restrictions on what you can do with it.
    That's the problem with Stallman and his followers.  They talk a lot about "freedom" but their definition of freedom is very Orwellian.  You are free to do whatever you want, as long as you only do those things we approve of.



  • @El_Heffe said:

    @skotl said:

    I particularly like the statement "Are there any restrictions to your use of OCS Inventory? The GNU GPL grants you the freedom to use the software for whatever purpose you see fit.", followed by a list of restrictions on what you can do with it.
    That's the problem with Stallman and his followers.  They talk a lot about "freedom" but their definition of freedom is very Orwellian.  You are free to do whatever you want, as long as you only do those things we approve of.

    I remember reading something recently about some piece of software that was supposedly GPL'd but also had a line about "this software may not be used for evil" and The Great Unclean One (thanks for that, dkf) and his Ilk threw a fit. IIRC they actually had to release a second version that would align with their rules about Free Software.



  • @El_Heffe said:

    @skotl said:

    I particularly like the statement "Are there any restrictions to your use of OCS Inventory? The GNU GPL grants you the freedom to use the software for whatever purpose you see fit.", followed by a list of restrictions on what you can do with it.
    That's the problem with Stallman and his followers.  They talk a lot about "freedom" but their definition of freedom is very Orwellian.  You are free to do whatever you want, as long as you only do those things we approve of.

    Agenda much? It takes a pretty special kind of chip on your shoulder to describe fundamental concepts of fairness and reciprocity as 'Orwellian'. The only thing you can't do with GPL'd software is deny anyone else the same freedom you had with it. It's not your private property, so don't try and act like it is.



  • @DaveK said:

    Agenda much?

    No thanks, I just ate.

    @DaveK said:

    It takes a pretty special kind of chip on your shoulder to describe fundamental concepts of fairness and reciprocity as 'Orwellian'.

    It may not be Orwellian, but it's certainly not "freedom". The complaint is he took a word that means X, redefined it to mean Y, and that's confusing as shit because nobody else in the universe defines it that way.

    Freedom means "fewer restrictions". Always. To redefine it as, "more restrictions", regardless of the intent of those restrictions is a bullshit move.

    And you know what? Maybe if Stallman spent a tenth the effort he did finding toe-jam to eat on making his software actually bug-free and usable, maybe I could respect the guy and his beliefs. But all that's left is the empty husk of a burnt-out hippie whose ideas are 30 years out-of-date. Sorry buddy. Microsoft changed everything. And guess what? Everybody at Microsoft back then owns at least one skyscraper and two sports teams, while you squat in a filthy dorm. Gee, which team do I want to be on?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    It may not be Orwellian, but it's certainly not "freedom". The complaint is he took a word that means X, redefined it to mean Y, and that's confusing as shit because nobody else in the universe defines it that way.

    Freedom means "fewer restrictions". Always. To redefine it as, "more restrictions", regardless of the intent of those restrictions is a bullshit move.

    As always, Who, Whom? He's pretty explicit that he's all about the freedom of the user of the software. It's funny, because blakeyrants are about as absolutist about making things easy for the user (as opposed to developer), but here you're taking the other side. It's funny, because you have the same blind spot in this case as the typical blakeyrant target. Personally, I'm not as absolutist, and see good and bad things about both sides of the Free Software flamewar.

    But that's modern politics for you. You can't figure out the terms of the debate just by looking at the words themselves without context.



  • @Tacroy said:

    Well so the normal GPL has a "loophole": if you take a GPL'd piece of software that does task A, then turn it into a web service that does task A, you can charge people for going to your server and performing task A without distributing the code to the modifications you made - you're not distributing the software itself, you're just distributing the results of the software's computation.

    The AGPL and in a lot of ways the GPLv3 try to close that loophole by saying, effectively, "if any GPL code touches your webservice, your entire webservice must be GPL".

    This can be considered a huge overreach for a variety of reasons; basically, even though the computation is run purely on your host, you still have to give the client access to your source code simply because they saw the results of the computation.

    For example, consider a PDF rasterizing library. This library takes PDFs and turns them into PNGs. With this library, you make a pretty little webapp that lets people send you PDFs, and you send them back PNGs.

    Under GPLv2 and a lot of other licenses, that's where it ends. Under AGPL and GPLv3, because you're showing clients the results of this library - even though your server is doing all the thinking - you're required to give the client access to your source code.

    How much of your source code? That's a good question, and not one any company that's not fully committed to "open source everything" cares to find out in practice. 

    This basically why a lot of companies who are otherwise okay with using and contributing to open source communities won't touch AGPL or GPLv3 with a ten foot pole.

    Disclaimer: IANALE

    This is why I try to avoid GPL in general. I much prefer to use software that is available under the MIT License. In short, the MIT License let's you use the OSS however you want, as long as you provide a copy of the original license and copyright. From what I could find online, you can have your own license terms for your derivative work, as long as you note that you used such-and-such OSS and these separate terms apply to that OSS (again, IANAL).

    For those who care, here's the complete text of the most common form of the MIT License:

    Copyright (C) {year} {copyright holders}

    Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

    The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

    THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Freedom means "fewer restrictions". Always. To redefine it as, "more restrictions", regardless of the intent of those restrictions is a bullshit move.


    So, tell me, is a country where a landholder has an unrestricted right to kill, beat or torture his tenants more or less "free" than a country where serfdom is banned by law?



  • @abarker said:

    @Tacroy said:

    Well so the normal GPL has a "loophole": if you take a GPL'd piece of software that does task A, then turn it into a web service that does task A, you can charge people for going to your server and performing task A without distributing the code to the modifications you made - you're not distributing the software itself, you're just distributing the results of the software's computation.

    The AGPL and in a lot of ways the GPLv3 try to close that loophole by saying, effectively, "if any GPL code touches your webservice, your entire webservice must be GPL".

    This can be considered a huge overreach for a variety of reasons; basically, even though the computation is run purely on your host, you still have to give the client access to your source code simply because they saw the results of the computation.

    For example, consider a PDF rasterizing library. This library takes PDFs and turns them into PNGs. With this library, you make a pretty little webapp that lets people send you PDFs, and you send them back PNGs.

    Under GPLv2 and a lot of other licenses, that's where it ends. Under AGPL and GPLv3, because you're showing clients the results of this library - even though your server is doing all the thinking - you're required to give the client access to your source code.

    How much of your source code? That's a good question, and not one any company that's not fully committed to "open source everything" cares to find out in practice. 

    This basically why a lot of companies who are otherwise okay with using and contributing to open source communities won't touch AGPL or GPLv3 with a ten foot pole.

    Disclaimer: IANALE

    This is why I try to avoid GPL in general. I much prefer to use software that is available under the MIT License. In short, the MIT License let's you use the OSS however you want, as long as you provide a copy of the original license and copyright. From what I could find online, you can have your own license terms for your derivative work, as long as you note that you used such-and-such OSS and these separate terms apply to that OSS (again, IANAL).

    For those who care, here's the complete text of the most common form of the MIT License:

    Copyright (C) {year} {copyright holders}

    Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

    The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

    THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

            DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE 
                        Version 2, December 2004 
    

    Copyright (C) 2004 Sam Hocevar sam@hocevar.net

    Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim or modified
    copies of this license document, and changing it is allowed as long
    as the name is changed.

            DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE 
    

    TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION

    1. You just DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO.


  • GPL is cancer and I will fight to the death anyone who disagrees with me. Many cool features in commercial software I've worked on were canned due to only being possible (quickly) by relying on some obscure poorly-implemented third-party library licensed with cancer GPL, the bosses being unwilling to commit months to implement an in-house version of the library, and everyone involved rightly refusing to re-license and distribute our source.

    LGPL is fairly okay, but it's technically guilty by association. Kind of like it's the only clean prostitute in a brothel where all the others are practically swimming neck-deep in STDs. You still don't really want to go there.



  • @Snooder said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    Freedom means "fewer restrictions". Always. To redefine it as, "more restrictions", regardless of the intent of those restrictions is a bullshit move.


    So, tell me, is a country where a landholder has an unrestricted right to kill, beat or torture his tenants more or less "free" than a country where serfdom is banned by law?

     

    It is a more free, but not better country :} - Only the most out of touch anarchist would ever argue that more freedom is always better. We need laws to describe and control the interaction between humans, and that does make the country better but less free. (How many laws, and how free is best, is open for debate, but offtopic here :}

    But to get back to the issue of gpl. When he defined it as a more free license, I think he compared it to the normal license for commercial software. And compared to that gpl is much more free.

    I would argue that MIT/BSD are more free then GPL, but the question of "are they better" depend on how the author want the software to be used and extended.

     



  • @mott555 said:

    GPL is cancer and I will fight to the death anyone who disagrees with me. Many cool features in commercial software I've worked on were canned due to only being possible (quickly) by relying on some obscure poorly-implemented third-party library licensed with cancer GPL, the bosses being unwilling to commit months to implement an in-house version of the library, and everyone involved rightly refusing to re-license and distribute our source.
     

    Now I don't especially like GPL, but that is a terrible argument. You are basicly complaining that you can't use the work of others for free, without giving anything back. 

     

  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @Ben L. said:

    DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE

    Version 2, December 2004

    Copyright (C) 2004 Sam Hocevar

    Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim or modified copies of this license document, and changing it is allowed as long as the name is changed.

            </p><p>DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE 
    

    TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION

    1. You just DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO.

     

    There. Made it better.



  • @mt@ilovefactory.com said:

    @mott555 said:

    GPL is cancer and I will fight to the death anyone who disagrees with me. Many cool features in commercial software I've worked on were canned due to only being possible (quickly) by relying on some obscure poorly-implemented third-party library licensed with cancer GPL, the bosses being unwilling to commit months to implement an in-house version of the library, and everyone involved rightly refusing to re-license and distribute our source.
     

    Now I don't especially like GPL, but that is a terrible argument. You are basicly complaining that you can't use the work of others for free, without giving anything back. 

    If the same library (or a similar/competing one) was available commercially and non-GPL, we'd have bought it. It's not the free part that's bad, it's the part about re-licensing and then distributing the source code for our for-profit commercial software.

     



  • @Snooder said:

    So, tell me, is a country where a landholder has an unrestricted right to kill, beat or torture his tenants more or less "free" than a country where serfdom is banned by law?

    Less.

    Because if 1% of the population has more freedom, that doesn't outweigh 99% of the population having less.

    Also: duh. If you're going to pull stupid hypotheticals out of your ass in a futile attempt to expose me as a hypocrite, please at least find ones I can't tear down in approximately 36 milliseconds.


  • Considered Harmful

    @blakeyrat said:

    @Snooder said:
    So, tell me, is a country where a landholder has an unrestricted right to kill, beat or torture his tenants more or less "free" than a country where serfdom is banned by law?

    Less.

    Because if 1% of the population has more freedom, that doesn't outweigh 99% of the population having less.

    Also: duh. If you're going to pull stupid hypotheticals out of your ass in a futile attempt to expose me as a hypocrite, please at least find ones I can't tear down in approximately 36 milliseconds.

    So if 1% of the developers have less freedom to not distribute their source code, but 99% of the users have additional freedom to access source code, is that more or less free?


  • @blakeyrat said:

    @Snooder said:
    So, tell me, is a country where a landholder has an unrestricted right to kill, beat or torture his tenants more or less "free" than a country where serfdom is banned by law?

    Less.

    Because if 1% of the population has more freedom, that doesn't outweigh 99% of the population having less.

    How does that 99% have less freedom? Their choices on what to do aren't legally restricted.

  • ♿ (Parody)

    @locallunatic said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    @Snooder said:
    So, tell me, is a country where a landholder has an unrestricted right to kill, beat or torture his tenants more or less "free" than a country where serfdom is banned by law?

    Less.

    Because if 1% of the population has more freedom, that doesn't outweigh 99% of the population having less.

    How does that 99% have less freedom? Their choices on what to do aren't legally restricted.

    Sophistry...How does it work?!



  • @joe.edwards said:

    So if 1% of the developers have less freedom to not distribute their source code, but 99% of the users have additional freedom to access source code, is that more or less free?

    Access to the source code is entirely useless to the vast majority of people.

    If you want to empower people, we already know how to do that: create usable, flexible, software and/or better teaching tools. That solution has nothing to do with open source. Apple was doing that for 20 years without ever touching open source anything.

    And let me be clear: I have nothing against open source. If you want to write a program, then release its source code to the world, fine! Knock yourself out! I don't care. I do object to the restrictions in the GPL, however, because they are far more likely to get in the way of the solution than to help it along. Also the open source community is likely to actively interfere with the process, for example, by not accepting contributions from people who don't write source code (designers, for example), or by steering all of their designs back to the 1974 standard because they're all geezer luddites.



  • @locallunatic said:

    How does that 99% have less freedom? Their choices on what to do aren't legally restricted.

    Protip: read the United States Declaration of Independence sometime. The answer is in the first paragraph. The UN Declaration of Human Rights isn't bad, either.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @locallunatic said:
    How does that 99% have less freedom? Their choices on what to do aren't legally restricted.

    Protip: read the United States Declaration of Independence sometime. The answer is in the first paragraph. The UN Declaration of Human Rights isn't bad, either.


    A right not to be murdered or have other things done to you is not the same as a restriction to your choices (unless your choices are to do said forbidden things to another similarly protected individual). I was attempting to point out that your earlier definition of freedom was lacking. Here it is:
    @blakeyrat said:
    Freedom means "fewer restrictions". Always.



  • @mott555 said:

    GPL is cancer and I will fight to the death anyone who disagrees with me. Many cool features in commercial software I've worked on were canned due to only being possible (quickly) by relying on some obscure poorly-implemented third-party library licensed with cancer GPL, the bosses being unwilling to commit months to implement an in-house version of the library, and everyone involved rightly refusing to re-license and distribute our source.

    LGPL is fairly okay, but it's technically guilty by association. Kind of like it's the only clean prostitute in a brothel where all the others are practically swimming neck-deep in STDs. You still don't really want to go there.

    A project I'm on had a junior dev find some nifty GPL code on the Internet, and decide to build on that for a fairly critical portion of the product - without telling anyone. 6 months later, after a code audit, and we're now looking at one of three options: Relicense the whole module under GPL, hope no one notices and just keep pressing on, or having another dev rewrite the module from scratch. Unfortunately, our lead is trying to get higher-ups to go for a comedy fourth option: buying the rights to the original GPL code and relicensing it as BSD.

    I'm keeping my CV up to date.



  • @locallunatic said:

    A right not to be murdered or have other things done to you is not the same as a restriction to your choices (unless your choices are to do said forbidden things to another similarly protected individual).

    ... huh?

    Right: the right to life is the most fundamental of all rights, which is why bringing it up in a discussion about fucking SOFTWARE LICENSES is fucking stupid as shit.

    @locallunatic said:

    I was attempting to point out that your earlier definition of freedom was lacking. Here it is:
    @blakeyrat said:
    Freedom means "fewer restrictions". Always.

    Ok so this whole aside was so you could be a pedantic dickweed and point out that maybe, just maybe, a couple words I typed aren't strictly 100% absolutely true all the time, even though you FUCKING KNEW WHAT I MEANT YOU PIECE OF EXCREMENT jesus christ why the fuck do I post here



  • @boomzilla said:

    As always, Who, Whom? He's pretty explicit that he's all about the freedom of the user of the software.
    That's simply not true.  The GPL is based on Stallman's "GNU Manefesto":

    "Study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs"  (the typical user has no need or use for this)

    "Improve the program, and release your improvements to the public"   (the typical user has no need or use for this)

    While it may contain provisions beneficial to users, the GPL was created by developers, for developers.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Ok so this whole aside was so you could be a pedantic dickweed and point out that maybe, just maybe, a couple words I typed aren't strictly 100% absolutely true all the time, even though you FUCKING KNEW WHAT I MEANT YOU PIECE OF EXCREMENT jesus christ why the fuck do I post here

    You are always yelling at people who make assumptions about what you left unstated (as you claim to never imply things and only state them openly) so I was pointing out that the definition you were using wasn't helping your argument as you had left things unstated. The fact that I knew you would blow up over it is just an added plus.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @locallunatic said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    @locallunatic said:
    How does that 99% have less freedom? Their choices on what to do aren't legally restricted.

    Protip: read the United States Declaration of Independence sometime. The answer is in the first paragraph. The UN Declaration of Human Rights isn't bad, either.


    A right not to be murdered or have other things done to you is not the same as a restriction to your choices (unless your choices are to do said forbidden things to another similarly protected individual). I was attempting to point out that your earlier definition of freedom was lacking. Here it is:
    @blakeyrat said:
    Freedom means "fewer restrictions". Always.

    Except the people who are strong enough (or rich enough to hire the strong) to restrict the actions of others have reduced the freedom of those others. So, do you really think removing the restriction to all that violence is still a net reduction in restrictions? I think his definition of freedom will hold up under this hypothetical. Why do you think it wouldn't? Are you only concerned about the restrictions if imposed by some form of law?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @El_Heffe said:

    @boomzilla said:
    As always, Who, Whom? He's pretty explicit that he's all about the freedom of the user of the software.

    That's simply not true.  The GPL is based on Stallman's "GNU Manefesto":<

    "Study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs"  (the typical user has no need or use for this)

    "Improve the program, and release your improvements to the public"   (the typical user has no need or use for this)

    While it may contain provisions beneficial to users, the GPL was created by developers, for developers.

    You're missing the point. It's still about users. Developers don't need programs. Users do (whether they are developers or not). The typical user cannot type a complete grammatically correct sentence. That doesn't mean that a word processor is only for professors of literature. The whole point is that users aren't held captive by the original developer.

    Whether it all works as well as anyone might like is a different topic, and there are always trade offs.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @locallunatic said:

    The fact that I knew you would blow up over it is just an added plus.

    This is the only part of your critique of blakeyrat's definition that makes sense.



  • @boomzilla said:

    Are you only concerned about the restrictions if imposed by some form of law?

    Personally, no I don't. I was mostly trolling due "shoulder aliens" being his reaction to whenever someone reads something that he didn't mean to imply (most of the time justifiably but not always). Basically, I'm bored at work and so decided to call out one of his absolutes to see if he would take your style of pointing out the flaws in the argument I made or just yell.



  • @El_Heffe said:

    @skotl said:

    I particularly like the statement "Are there any restrictions to your use of OCS Inventory? The GNU GPL grants you the freedom to use the software for whatever purpose you see fit.", followed by a list of restrictions on what you can do with it.
    That's the problem with Stallman and his followers.  They talk a lot about "freedom" but their definition of freedom is very Orwellian.  You are free to do whatever you want, as long as you only do those things we approve of.

     

    I once saw a video of Stallman eating some shit off his god damn foot.  What the fuck is that about? Also, why do so many fosstards want net neutraility, but feel that infected Windows machines should be disconnected from the internet by their ISP?  Seems the same basic concept as Foot Fungus Eater's view on freedom in software.

     


  • Considered Harmful

    @pauly said:

    @El_Heffe said:

    @skotl said:

    I particularly like the statement "Are there any restrictions to your use of OCS Inventory? The GNU GPL grants you the freedom to use the software for whatever purpose you see fit.", followed by a list of restrictions on what you can do with it.
    That's the problem with Stallman and his followers.  They talk a lot about "freedom" but their definition of freedom is very Orwellian.  You are free to do whatever you want, as long as you only do those things we approve of.

     

    I once saw a video of Stallman eating some shit off his god damn foot.  What the fuck is that about? Also, why do so many fosstards want net neutraility, but feel that infected Windows machines should be disconnected from the internet by their ISP?  Seems the same basic concept as Foot Fungus Eater's view on freedom in software.

     


    The freedom to unwittingly take part in a malicious botnet? I haven't heard anyone fighting for that particular right.



  • @pauly said:

    @El_Heffe said:

    @skotl said:

    I particularly like the statement "Are there any restrictions to your use of OCS Inventory? The GNU GPL grants you the freedom to use the software for whatever purpose you see fit.", followed by a list of restrictions on what you can do with it.
    That's the problem with Stallman and his followers.  They talk a lot about "freedom" but their definition of freedom is very Orwellian.  You are free to do whatever you want, as long as you only do those things we approve of.

     

    I once saw a video of Stallman eating some shit off his god damn foot.  What the fuck is that about? Also, why do so many fosstards want net neutraility, but feel that infected Windows machines should be disconnected from the internet by their ISP?  Seems the same basic concept as Foot Fungus Eater's view on freedom in software.

     


    You're welcome.


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