OT: evil gpl , was Re: [opensuse] ZFS on SuSE-anyone, Distributed File System...

12 Jun 2008

      ----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Druid" 
To: 
Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2008 7:10 AM
Subject: Re: [opensuse] ZFS on SuSE-anyone, Distributed File System...
...
On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 2:15 AM, John Andersen  wrote:
...
(bla bla bla)
Just saying NO isn't going to work for ever.  5 more years of Leopard
development and enhancement might squeeze Linux out, not because
its better, but just because Leopard does not refuse to grow and play
well with others.
Don't like the license? Don't use gpl software, then. It's that simple.
"But gee, practically everything our very standard of living depends on is gpl! I can't give up all that! Wahhhh!"

It always amazes me how people who complain about the requirements of gpl seem to miss the fact that if it weren't for that the standard of living would still be somewhere in the mid 80's today. Progress would creep compared to the rate things advance the last several years and most of the coolest stuff would happen in proprietary products and dead-end code that was used for a little while by a few customers and then disappeared altogether when the producing company closed.
They probably used a ton of gpl software and even hardware and services that either would have existed or wouldn't have been nearly as good or cheap if it weren't for the awful gpl they are complaining about. Who actually misses the days when there was one phone company and they actually owned every phone and wire that led to it? That is the world before gpl and other gpl-like values.

The proof of the rightness of the idea behind the gpl and the cathedral vs bazzar theory has already come to pass and we live in a world that is greater and better directly because of it. The proof is exactly the existence of so many people trying to get around the gpl, by loopholes like tivo or by plain theft like linksys/dlink/others (you know for every one we uncover there are several that go undetected too). How much worse would it be if it wasn't even illegal?

I like to be as free as possible and allow anyone to do anything, but I do dislike the fact that the bsd license allows a company to take advantage of a tremendous amount of work someone else did for free, (say, the tcp stack) and then build their closed source commercial product on top of that, and only take money from everyone else without contributing anything back for the code they took and benefitted from. 

It's a classic and textbook example of how those who do well under a given system generally can not do well under a different system, and so naturally fight against it when a new system starts to evolve. But if the new system is better for more people than it is worse for, then tough tooties, the new system should eventually prevail, and generally does. If some company can't do well because they can't steal code to re-sell it, that doesn't mean we miss out on any progress that company would have made. Those programmers who never got hired by that company because it didn't grow, most will program somewhere else somehow, and equivalent progress will happen, only most likely a higher portion of it will happen within the body of gpl'd works and so we actually come out ahead. Progress that happens only within some proprietary product generally is either a dead end (company eventually closes and all code just gets buried or lost with other assets) or it takes a ridiculous number of years until some patent or copyright expires before that code can do anyone any good.

Some rules limit freedom, but some rules _provide_ it. The ways in which the gpl are more limiting than bsd are ridiculously outweighed by the body of public works they produce. It merely requires being able to see beyond the end of your nose to see it. I would say that anyone who doesn't see that is someone who never learned that valuing instant gratification above all else is stupid, and so their opinion is of no concern.

-- 
Brian K. White    brian@aljex.com    http://www.myspace.com/KEYofR
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filePro  BBx    Linux  SCO  FreeBSD    #callahans  Satriani  Filk!

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Brian K. White

Francis Earl

Druid

John Andersen

Francis Earl

John Andersen

Evens Garde

John Andersen

Evens Garde

John Andersen

Randall R Schulz

Brian K. White

Randall R Schulz

Evens Garde

Randall R Schulz

Evens Garde

Randall R Schulz

Larry Stotler

Francis Earl

Evens Garde

Francis Earl

Evens Garde

Francis Earl

John Andersen

Francis Earl

Evens Garde

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