GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing [LWN.net]

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 14, 2016 17:09 UTC (Sun) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
In reply to: GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing by gioele
Parent article: Winning the copyleft fight

> I like how the Qt devs see argue this point (<from http://blog.qt.io/blog/2016/01/13/new-agreement-with-the-...;)
Well, they need money to eat. There's nothing wrong with it.

However, making your license toxic and offering a commercial option (via copyright assignment) is definitely not what I'd call "Free Software". It's at most a form of evaluation or shareware.

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GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 14, 2016 21:09 UTC (Sun) by b7j0c (guest, #27559) [Link] (30 responses)

"shareware" licensing is exactly what it is. all of it enabled by the good name of the FSF and GPLv3/AGPL.

the problem is, if the FSF attempts to "fix" this with an amendment or new version of the GPL, they will eventually just paint themselves into a corner and they will have to admit that it is too late to undo the damage resulting from their bipolar approach that attempts to promote a militant version of "freedom" while also somehow accommodating corporate users

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 14, 2016 22:43 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

>the problem is, if the FSF attempts to "fix" this with an amendment or new version of the GPL

No such "fix" is possible. Copyright holders will always have the legal right to license their code under any number of licenses they see fit.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 15, 2016 16:03 UTC (Mon) by mordocai (guest, #71668) [Link] (28 responses)

I may have missed something, but for the most part the FSF doesn't care about corporate users (for good reasons, corporate interests are generally opposed to FSF interests). The LGPL is the closest thing I've seen the FSF to come out with that seems to cater to corporate use cases.

In any case, many other free sofware supporters and I consider permissive licenses the ones causing the damage.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 15, 2016 18:21 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (27 responses)

> I may have missed something, but for the most part the FSF doesn't care about corporate users
And that's the reason GPL supporters are now begging for developers' time.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 15, 2016 18:48 UTC (Mon) by mordocai (guest, #71668) [Link] (26 responses)

The free software movement as a whole has always begged for developers' time.

I don't see a problem with this. It is the fallout of not being controlled by corporate greed.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 16, 2016 2:28 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (25 responses)

Not really. There was a good period during the early 2000-s when multiple companies (even Apple!) had been contributing to GPL projects like GCC, binutils, Samba and others.

That all has changed after the GPLv3 crusade.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 17, 2016 1:59 UTC (Wed) by rahvin (guest, #16953) [Link] (22 responses)

Though GPLv3 was contentious, IMO it had little to no effect on the issues you claim. LLVM would have developed regardless as Apple and other commercial companies wanted/needed a compiler they could cut commercial versions of because GCC destroyed vast swaths of compiler companies. LLVM has more to do with GCC destroying commercial companies who simply couldn't compete against a free compiler that was often better in every respect. These private companies needed a compiler on an equal footing with GCC technically that they could close source and offer extended features and plugins against. LLVM exists because of GCC's success, not because of a licensing issue. Have you ever thought about all the compiler companies that went under in the late 90's and 00's? The list is quite large. LLVM developed to fill the void created by all those specialty compilers going under.

There has been no effort (that I'm aware of) to replace Samba with a BSD licensed version and their likely never will, it's contribution profile has changed little since the switch. It serves only one purpose and that's inter-operation with Windows, hopefully something that won't be needed forever.

Personally I've seen little impact from GPLv3 beyond all the initial hullabaloo by all the corporate interests that didn't like the explicit patent license which was intended to subvert the main extortion avenue on GPL licensed code. You'd have a hard time listing more than a couple FOSS programs that switched to GPLv3 and were subsequently "replaced" in marketshare by a BSD licensed alternative. I personally can't think of a single example.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 17, 2016 2:34 UTC (Wed) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link] (12 responses)

> LLVM developed to fill the void created by all those specialty compilers going under.

Isn't this the same as saying GCC couldn't (or wouldn't) actually meet the needs that all those specialty compilers were fulfilling? Maybe I'm wrong but I don't think there is a large secondary market selling expensive LLVM plugins, instead LLVM is just being integrated where optimizing JITs are useful, like OpenGL shaders, something the GCC project intentionally made difficult during a critical time. It's a means to an end and a market where GCC is no longer competitive.

> I've seen little impact from GPLv3 beyond all the initial hullabaloo by all the corporate interests

Those corporate interests and the resources and developers they represent moved on to other non-copyleft licenses. If the goal of the GPL license sphere is to have fun, self-sustaining software platform for a few cognoscenti to use and improve then we are achieving it, if the goal is to change the default way that software is developed across the entire industry to copyleft, then we are failing, massively.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 25, 2016 9:34 UTC (Thu) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link] (11 responses)

> Isn't this the same as saying GCC couldn't (or wouldn't) actually meet the needs that all those specialty compilers were fulfilling?

Yes, GCC fails to allow proprietary forks and extensions. Apple seems to have no interest in sharing the source code of xcode. LLVM almost became part of GCC, but Apple at the time felt strong enough to fight the same community that helped them back from the dead.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 25, 2016 10:23 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (10 responses)

> Yes, GCC fails to allow proprietary forks and extensions.
It's also incompatible with pretty much anything but command-line compilers. For example, LLVM is also used to compile shaders in Mesa - and GCC would be useless for this purpose due to its license.

> Apple seems to have no interest in sharing the source code of xcode.
Why should it? XCode is an IDE, after all.

And Apple shares their changes to LLVM, like the new Swift language.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 25, 2016 10:55 UTC (Thu) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link] (9 responses)

> For example, LLVM is also used to compile shaders in Mesa - and GCC would be useless for this purpose due to its license.

Are you referring to Mesa's permissive license or GCCs technical abilities? Both can be changed you know. After all, LLVM was initially slated for inclusion in GCC, nothing prevents GCC from gaining such capabilities. By now, the Mesa developers should realise that they have nothing to gain from permissive licenses. They possibly have quite a bit to gain from copyleft though.

> Why should it? XCode is an IDE, after all.

Are you asking me why Apple should share code? This is indeed an unexpected question. Short answer, to stay ahead. Give me one freaking reason they need to keep xcode closed? Fewer people buying iphones maybe? I believe Apple's hostility to open communities will be their downfall. Both Apple and Microsoft can stay on top due to dominating market positions, but that will not be sufficient forever. It seems Microsoft is slowly learning this, while Apple is too full of themselves. To me, Clang/LLVM looks like a classic embrace, extend, extinguish.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 25, 2016 11:36 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (8 responses)

> Are you referring to Mesa's permissive license or GCCs technical abilities? Both can be changed you know.
Mesa needs to link with other applications directly, including proprietary ones. That means GPL is right out. If gcc wanted to change their license to BSD then yes, it might have been useful.

Meanwhile, GCC has released their JIT library and it's used by.... erm... nobody - exactly because of this.

> They possibly have quite a bit to gain from copyleft though.
No, they don't. They'll become pretty much irrelevant the moment they switch to GPL.

> Are you asking me why Apple should share code? This is indeed an unexpected question.
I'm asking why they should share code for XCode, which is their private IDE.

> To me, Clang/LLVM looks like a classic embrace, extend, extinguish.
Apple has been releasing their LLVM/clang changes for about 10 years by now. Including the changes that they could have kept private.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 25, 2016 15:17 UTC (Thu) by mlopezibanez (guest, #66088) [Link] (1 responses)

Meanwhile, GCC has released their JIT library and it's used by.... erm... nobody - exactly because of this.

I think you are trolling us (why Apple should share code? You know, because that is the whole ****ing point of FOSS? The four freedoms? Ethics? Co-operation? Social responsibility? Ah, you think the point of FOSS is maximising Apple's profits? Then, why should anyone who believes otherwise care about your opinion or advice? RMS is completely right when he says: Why take advice on pursuing your goals from people who are against those goals!?).

But I could not let the above lie stand. The reason nobody uses GCC JIT in production code yet is that:

libgccjit is currently of “Alpha” quality; the APIs are not yet set in stone, and they shouldn’t be used in production yet.

(Second line at https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/jit/)

I would not answer to any of your other comments, but any readers should be aware that you are thoroughly misinformed (or misinforming) on this topic.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 25, 2016 20:08 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

> I think you are trolling us (why Apple should share code?)
Why should Apple share code for Xcode? It won't really add significant benefit for users.

On the other hand, they DO release stuff that benefits other projects (clang support for autocomplete, for example).

Case in point: JetBrains released their community edition source code under GPL and nobody cares.

> But I could not let the above lie stand. The reason nobody uses GCC JIT in production code yet is that:
> libgccjit is currently of “Alpha” quality; the APIs are not yet set in stone, and they shouldn’t be used in production yet.
Well, that's because nobody is really using it. It's been in that form since late 2013. It's been officially released since Sep 2015, and it's still not being used for anything that is more than a code sample.

Want to be that it's not going to change?

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 25, 2016 15:52 UTC (Thu) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link] (5 responses)

> Mesa needs to link with other applications directly, including proprietary ones. That means GPL is right out.

Linking exceptions are common. As for use of GCC, that should be no problem. GCC already compiles and links a plethora of proprietary code, and that is specifically allowed by the license. I see absolutely no advantage of permissive licensing in Mesa, and I have not seen you produce any argument to the contrary.

> Apple has been releasing their LLVM/clang changes for about 10 years by now. Including the changes that they could have kept private.

I believe that is not correct. I believe there were some ios related bits kept away, but I am not inclined to dig that up now. I am also pretty sure that the continued dominance of GCC keeps Apple in check here, so again, you should be grateful for the existence of a copyleft alternative.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 25, 2016 19:40 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (2 responses)

> Linking exceptions are common. As for use of GCC, that should be no problem. GCC already compiles and links a plethora of proprietary code, and that is specifically allowed by the license.
Well, yes. And relicensing GCC under BSD would also have helped.

But that defeats the very copyleft argument.

> I see absolutely no advantage of permissive licensing in Mesa, and I have not seen you produce any argument to the contrary.
Ask Mesa developers. Really, go to mesa-dev and ask them what they are thinking about switching to GPL.

> I believe that is not correct. I believe there were some ios related bits kept away
Nope. You can compile iOS applications with a stock LLVM. However, you're also going to need private headers and libraries that have nothing to do with LLVM itself.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 25, 2016 20:57 UTC (Thu) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link] (1 responses)

> But that defeats the very copyleft argument.

You lost me, are you not aware that GCC is used to compile proprietary code, and that the license specifically allows it?

> Ask Mesa developers. Really, go to mesa-dev and ask them what they are thinking about switching to GPL.

GPL with an exception to allow, e.g., proprietary games to run? Sure, if I was involved in the project I would. Not being involved it is none of my business.

> Nope.

Are you by any chance working at Apple with LLVM? Otherwise I find your statement here provocative, how can you be so sure? In any case, not sharing bits from Clang and its standard libraries suffices for me to conclude.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 25, 2016 22:15 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

> GPL with an exception
You're defeating your own argument. GPL with exceptions is not a GPL. It's even incompatible with other pure GPL projects.

> Are you by any chance working at Apple with LLVM? Otherwise I find your statement here provocative, how can you be so sure? In any case, not sharing bits from Clang and its standard libraries suffices for me to conclude.
No, I don't work at Apple and I don't even use an iPhone. Apple shares all the relevant clang bits, the unshared bits are not related to the compiler or its base language libraries.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 26, 2016 1:54 UTC (Fri) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link] (1 responses)

> Linking exceptions are common. As for use of GCC, that should be no problem. GCC already compiles and links a plethora of proprietary code, and that is specifically allowed by the license.

Are you saying that the GCC JIT engine itself is allowed to be statically linked into proprietary code? I haven't looked, but I doubt the FSF would have done that.

One of the things LLVM is great for is embedding it so that binary code can be produced as needed from a cross-platform compiled intermediate form. And people don't want to GPL their game engines in order to do that.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 26, 2016 9:10 UTC (Fri) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link]

> Are you saying that the GCC JIT engine itself is allowed to be statically linked into proprietary code?

I don't know, I haven't followed that project. From a quick glance I cannot find any linking exceptions, so this may be more involved than I thought.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 17, 2016 4:02 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (8 responses)

> These private companies needed a compiler on an equal footing with GCC technically that they could close source and offer extended features and plugins against. LLVM exists because of GCC's success, not because of a licensing issue
While there are proprietary compilers based on LLVM, they are a small niche. And before LLVM and clang they just used stuff like http://www.edg.com/

Nope, the move to LLVM+clang was very clearly caused by GPLv3. And before that, Apple had no problem with GPLv2 - they had timely support for gcc in their tools, up to the last GPLv2 version.

The same with Samba - Apple has just switched to a homegrown SMB implementation rather than using GPLv3 version of Samba.

> There has been no effort (that I'm aware of) to replace Samba with a BSD licensed version and their likely never will, it's contribution profile has changed little since the switch.
Yep. It's a niche software that becomes less relevant even in the Windows world.

From what I see, there are no interesting GPLv3 applications anymore. And by "interesting" I mean something non-trivial that has no liberally licensed counterpart.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 19, 2016 2:22 UTC (Fri) by rahvin (guest, #16953) [Link] (7 responses)

>Nope, the move to LLVM+clang was very clearly caused by GPLv3.

I won't agree with that. The market was ripe for another OSS compiler, far too many specialty compilers and compiler companies had gone under due to GCC. Though I might agree it was related I won't assign causality as I believe something like it would have developed either way due to the changing market eliminating options.

You simply couldn't write a closed source compiler anymore unless you could spend hundreds of millions on development to stay ahead of GCC. LLVM+clang levels the playing field for a lot of companies and takes the heavy lifting off. Hell in 5 years I wouldn't be surprised to see the Intel compiler or even the Visual studio compiler end up as forked LLVM, that is if they aren't already.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 19, 2016 3:06 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

> I won't agree with that. The market was ripe for another OSS compiler, far too many specialty compilers and compiler companies had gone under due to GCC.
How two of these are related?

There were several backends and frontends for proprietary compilers (Open64, EDG and others).

> You simply couldn't write a closed source compiler anymore unless you could spend hundreds of millions on development to stay ahead of GCC. LLVM+clang levels the playing field for a lot of companies and takes the heavy lifting off.
And why would Apple want to write a closed-source compiler in 2007? They are not in the business of selling compilers. Even their proprietary language (Swift) is open.

The causality is pretty clear on this point - Apple wanted to have a GPLv3-free system due to the anti-TiVo-clause. Just look at the recent Mac OS - there's literally NOTHING under GPLv3 there, even utilities like bash and rsync are pre-GPLv3.

And timing works out perfectly. clang development was started after the final drafts of GPLv3 had been made available.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 19, 2016 9:27 UTC (Fri) by excors (subscriber, #95769) [Link] (5 responses)

> Hell in 5 years I wouldn't be surprised to see the Intel compiler or even the Visual studio compiler end up as forked LLVM, that is if they aren't already.

The Intel C++ Compiler already has a Clang front-end for OS X (http://llvm.org/devmtg/2014-04/PDFs/Posters/ClangIntel.pdf), in addition to its original EDG front-end.

Visual Studio 2015 also has an optional Clang front-end (https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2015/12/04/clang-...), seemingly aimed at iOS and Android projects.

Both claim to have offered their Clang changes upstream, but I don't know what their current status is.

Both are still using their proprietary backends though, not LLVM's, presumably because they're better in some ways (likely performance). For frontends, I think "better" usually means "more compatible with my existing code and libraries", so standardising on Clang seems sensible.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 20, 2016 2:12 UTC (Sat) by rahvin (guest, #16953) [Link] (4 responses)

I was aware of the front end changes from Microsoft but not Intel. As I said I wouldn't be surprised to see them at some point drop their proprietary backends and just drop LLVM in with their own proprietary optimizations because they can't keep up with the OSS community. This is the problem I've been talking about, the OSS compilers, between GCC and LLVM are often way way ahead of all the proprietary compilers to the point of it not even being close.

Does Visual studio's proprietary compiler even support C99 at this point let alone C11? GCC and LLVM had C11 support before it was even official. Even the standards organizations are using them to develop the standards at this point. There reaches a point where you have to spend millions developing a compiler and you can't even keep up with GCC/LLVM on basic stuff let alone your own proprietary optimizations that are your selling point. Its at the point that there is little point trying to compete because you simply can't and your effort is better spent on plugin's, extensions or support on the OSS compiler.

I think it reached that point several years ago and the only real competitors to the OSS compilers at this point are the companies that produce compilers not for revenue but for other reasons, like Microsoft producing a compiler that is targeted specifically at windows or Intel using it to differentiate their processors. But even in those cases there is going to be some point in the future where these companies just decide it's easier to fork LLVM/clang and track their changes on top of the OSS codebase.

At least that's my opinion on the matter.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 20, 2016 14:13 UTC (Sat) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861) [Link] (3 responses)

Visual Studio 14 (2015) supports C99 (finally!) and virtually all of C++11. Visual Studio 13 supported a non-trivial subset of C++11 but still had significant holes, and didn't support C99 completely.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh567368.aspx

FWIW.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 20, 2016 18:31 UTC (Sat) by lsl (subscriber, #86508) [Link] (2 responses)

AFAIU, it doesn't support C99 at all. It only has the parts of C99 that are required for C++11 (the CPP, a long long type and most of the stdlib) and *supports them only in C++ mode*. When compiling C code you still get C89 and nothing else.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 20, 2016 20:17 UTC (Sat) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861) [Link] (1 responses)

You could well be right. I avoid Windows and Visual Studio as much as possible: I only know this much because I just made the effort to update our Windows development prerequisites at work to VS 14 so we could get better C++11 support on all our platforms. In doing so I had to undo some of the "hacks" we needed to get older VS versions to work, for example VS 14 finally supports snprintf() properly.

However our code is C++, not C. I assumed if it was supported in C++ it would be supported in C as well but maybe that was naive.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Mar 9, 2016 16:45 UTC (Wed) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]

Basically MSVC is a C++ compiler that happens to have some support for compiling C in cases where that was something they could easily chuck in as an extra feature by reusing their existing C++ work.

Alright, technically that's not strictly correct, but I think it's a pretty close approximation.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 17, 2016 14:26 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (1 responses)

> That all has changed after the GPLv3 crusade.

If GPLv2 had had GPLv3's patent and tivoization clauses when it was first released, would it have been as unwanted? Or is it more that the delta between GPLv2 and GPLv3 is what deterred these companies?

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 17, 2016 20:29 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

Who knows? Playing "what if" with history is rarely productive. Perhaps tivoization wouldn't have happened at all. Or perhaps TiVo would have used the BSD kernerl as the base catapulting it onto the first place, sidelining Linux.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 17, 2016 19:52 UTC (Wed) by ksandstr (guest, #60862) [Link]

The difference is that shareware is non-free software. It follows that those who'd pay for a non-copyleft license will receive none of the benefits of free software (e.g. third-party contributions that cannot be relicensed), and will likely suffer effects of non-free software in the licensing they receive instead.

That's to say: just as copyleft is copyright turned to serving software freedom, dual licensing is "try before you buy" turned to serving development of free software. Indeed there'll always be companies that won't ever use a piece of free software (generally because of management quirks), so why not make a dime off them instead of driving them to (presumably inferior) born-proprietary software?

On the downside, projects demanding authorization to relicense from contributors, in order to sell exceptional license to those contributors' work, are putting their monetary gain before their own gain from software freedom. Some go so far as to stop offering the GPL'd version after e.g. a change of ownership. This is where the GPL's freedom-to-fork comes in: often such companies won't even dare.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 18, 2016 0:27 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> However, making your license toxic and offering a commercial option (via copyright assignment) is definitely not what I'd call "Free Software". It's at most a form of evaluation or shareware.

You really should clarify "commercial option" a bit -- Commercial licensing runs the gamut from "do whatever" on one end to being quite restricted (physically isolated from other code, dedicated developers who can't even so much as look at anything else that may be related, per-unit royalties, binary obfuscation requirements, DRM, mandatory auditing, etc etc) that the supposedly-toxic GPL would be lept upon in a heartbeat.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 22, 2016 1:06 UTC (Mon) by mlopezibanez (guest, #66088) [Link] (43 responses)

What you call "toxic" are terms to designed to protect the freedom of the users.

The FSF reasoning here is flawless: copyleft+selling-exceptions has the same effect as a non-copy-left license in terms of freedom (in both cases, a company creates non-free software from free software). But copyleft+selling-exceptions means that users can still get (and distribute) a copyleft version of the software if so they desire. Thus, in terms of freedom, it is strictly better than non-copy-left software. It also has the benefit of encouraging the development of copyleft software, since the developers get paid for it. It is still worse than only-copyleft software, since the exceptions still encourage non-free software.

https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling-exceptions

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 22, 2016 2:53 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (42 responses)

> What you call "toxic" are terms to designed to protect the freedom of the users.
And they're just as effective in doing this as these inane "Coexist" bumper stickers in achieving world peace.

> Thus, in terms of freedom, it is strictly better than non-copy-left software. It also has the benefit of encouraging the development of copyleft software, since the developers get paid for it.
And this is a straightforward doublespeak from Orwell. No, GPL doesn't encourage paid work. It discourages it, since in most cases companies can not use the result.

Selling exceptions is absolutely the opposite of what is important in Open Source software - collaborative work.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 23, 2016 0:02 UTC (Tue) by mlopezibanez (guest, #66088) [Link] (41 responses)

No company uses Linux, Qt, glibc, GCC? Nobody is paid to develop them? Companies do use GPL software and do pay for GPL software (for support, features, fixes). In which sense a company that wants to create non-free software from free software (either by means of GPL+exception or non-copyleft) is "collaborating"? Orwellian indeed.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 23, 2016 1:49 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (40 responses)

> No company uses Linux, Qt, glibc, GCC? Nobody is paid to develop them?
Linux is very special (it's firmly in GPLv2-only land). GCC is slowly withering. glibc is fairly minor, _and_ it's being replaced by other libcs like bionic and musl.

And QT, of course, is dual-licensed.

So yes, to a first approximation not many people are paid to work on GPL. Meanwhile, in the BSD/Apache world we're seeing an explosion of new projects, from LLVM+clang to Docker.

Personally, I've recently ditched my zoopark of build containers and instead replaced them with Alpine Linux which allows me to build GPL-free fully static binaries. I can't be happier.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 25, 2016 9:55 UTC (Thu) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link] (39 responses)

> Linux is very special (it's firmly in GPLv2-only land).

I deeply disagree. The distinction between v2 and v3 is minor. Who benefits from exaggerating the differences?

> not many people are paid to work on GPL

By what metric? I believe there has never been more people paid to work on GPL code ever. The fact that software houses are trying to counter with open core models (be it permissive or dual license), and are employing even more developers in the attempt, only proves that GPL is succeeding. You should think long and hard on how the world would look without copyleft.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 25, 2016 10:28 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (38 responses)

> I deeply disagree. The distinction between v2 and v3 is minor.
No, it's not. Just ask Apple why they don't have _ANY_ v3 packages in Mac OS X. They even wrote their own SMB client rather than continue using Samba.

> By what metric? I believe there has never been more people paid to work on GPL code ever.
I highly doubt this. Outside of Linux development, not many GPL-ed projects are seriously active. Can you name a handful of new major GPL-ed projects?

While the rise of liberally-licensed projects is indisputable.

> and are employing even more developers in the attempt, only proves that GPL is succeeding.
"We're not retreating! We're just advancing in a different direction!"

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 25, 2016 11:05 UTC (Thu) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link] (1 responses)

> Just ask Apple why they don't have _ANY_ v3 packages in Mac OS X.

Are you cherry-picking unconsciously? As I am sure you know, Apple do not allow GPLv2 software in their app store, and they have done all they can to remove gpl code from webkit totally independent of the v3 discussion. They did not share the webkit code willingly you know. Apple do not like GPL, they probably never did. It has very little to do with v3. Why do you try to exaggerate the difference between v2 and v3? Your gripe seems to be with both of them anyway.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 25, 2016 11:39 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

> Are you cherry-picking unconsciously? As I am sure you know, Apple do not allow GPLv2 software in their app store
I thought I was quite precise. Apple does not have any GPLv3 packages in _Mac OS X_.

Yet they have plenty of GPLv2 packages there. Some packages like bash and rsync are frozen at their last GPLv2 versions.

So yes, while v2->v3 changes might seem trivial to you, they are definitely NOT trivial for a lot of other people.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 25, 2016 11:36 UTC (Thu) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link] (35 responses)

> Outside of Linux development, not many GPL-ed projects are seriously active.

You mean like git, samba, gcc, mariadb, pulseaudio, systemd, bash, debian, grub, glibc, mediawiki, wordpress, drupal, joomla, kolab, kde, gnome, and almost all user facing code on linux desktops? Have you noticed how core developers on KDE and Gnome are paid these days? How do you think that picture looked ten years ago? I see a lot of smaller companies making a good living out of copyleft these days, at least from my end of the universe it is growing quickly.

BTW, did you see how Suse these days have fantastic growth (around 20% y-o-y I believe), already the master piece for their owner? Seems some people think only Red Hat can earn money from GPL.

> While the rise of liberally-licensed projects is indisputable.

Yes it is, but it grew out of the success of the free software movement. Software companies trying to find their way to harness that success. Moreover, I do not see it as displacing copyleft for the most part. It is the latest attempt from software houses to compete against free software (if you can't beat them join'm or something like that). Yes I see it as a win for free software, at least as long as copyleft is doing well too. After all, as Bradley noted, we can fork it at any time.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 25, 2016 11:50 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (34 responses)

> You mean like git, samba, gcc, mariadb, pulseaudio, systemd, bash, debian, grub, glibc, mediawiki, wordpress, drupal, joomla, kolab, kde, gnome, and almost all user facing code on linux desktops?
Some of these projects you listed are LGPLv2.1 (systemd, wordpress, pulseaudio, drupal, joomla). Others are GPLv2 (like mediawiki and git).

I think only samba, gcc and bash are GPLv3. GCC is being replaced as a result and not many people seriously care about bash or Samba.

> BTW, did you see how Suse these days have fantastic growth (around 20% y-o-y I believe), already the master piece for their owner? Seems some people think only Red Hat can earn money from GPL.
RedHat controls the development of the GPL-ed projects they own. And it uses GPL to lock out other competitors from making it easy to compete. Certainly a viable business model, but there can't be many redhats on the market.

> Yes it is, but it grew out of the success of the free software movement.
And so?

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 25, 2016 16:13 UTC (Thu) by aggelos (subscriber, #41752) [Link] (8 responses)

You mean like git, samba, gcc, mariadb, pulseaudio, systemd, bash, debian, grub, glibc, mediawiki, wordpress, drupal, joomla, kolab, kde, gnome, and almost all user facing code on linux desktops?
Some of these projects you listed are LGPLv2.1 (systemd, wordpress, pulseaudio, drupal, joomla). Others are GPLv2 (like mediawiki and git). I think only samba, gcc and bash are GPLv3. GCC is being replaced as a result and not many people seriously care about bash or Samba.

Come now, this was in response to your

Outside of Linux development, not many GPL-ed projects are seriously active.

This is both shifting of the goal posts ("but they're not gplv3") and no true scotsman ("not many people seriously care about samba"). It pains me to have to point that out, as a reasonable discussion could be had on the issue of license choices the past decade. But no.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 25, 2016 19:48 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (7 responses)

> This is both shifting of the goal posts ("but they're not gplv3") and no true scotsman ("not many people seriously care about samba"). It pains me to have to point that out, as a reasonable discussion could be had on the issue of license choices the past decade. But no.
Ok. A simple challenge - list 10 major GPLv3 projects that:
1) Are non-trivial in size.
2) Are not dual-licensed.
3) Are seeing their development accelerating.

The ones I know of: gcc, Samba, emacs, glibc. That's pretty much it.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 25, 2016 22:41 UTC (Thu) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link] (6 responses)

> list 10 major GPLv3 projects

and you for some reason want to disqualify the GPLv2+ projects, eventhough you know that they specifically provide the GPLv3 (and are FSF future proof with the +) for those of us who wants it? The fact that KDE and Gnome goes with GPLv2+ typically for both desktop and apps of course rules out many projects.

Still in addition to already mentioned grub and kolab, a web-search turned up octave, qcad, deluge, rsyslog, lftp, GNU make, GNU parallel, GNU mailutils, citadel, openmediavault, encfs, pts, hypercube, openshot, lives,openchange, darktable, ipfire and gimp. That's twenty one I believe. They are all doing well, either with stable or accelerated development. They are non-trivial in size, and afaik none of them follow a dual license path.

Why not ask for AGPLv3 while you are at it, then of course owncloud is the new kid on the block (yes, with paid developers), Kolab is also there with a couple of web-interfaces and paid developers. Both doing well, none with dual license model afaik.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 25, 2016 23:53 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (4 responses)

> and you for some reason want to disqualify the GPLv2+ projects, eventhough you know that they specifically provide the GPLv3 (and are FSF future proof with the +) for those of us who wants it?
GPLv2+ are semi-OK. They are protected from "pray-I-don't-alter-it-further" FSF, but extremely weakly. One wrong accepted patch and the project is toast.

> Still in addition to already mentioned grub and kolab, a web-search turned up octave, qcad, deluge, rsyslog, lftp, GNU make, GNU parallel, GNU mailutils, citadel, openmediavault, encfs, pts, hypercube, openshot, lives,openchange, darktable, ipfire and gimp.
Nope. Not good enough.

For example, OpenChange: https://github.com/openchange/openchange/commits/master - last commits are from year ago. It's dead, Jim.

GNU Make is not exactly _dead_, it just looks this way: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/make/ - last release in 2014. Ditto for parallel, mailutils and others.

For comparison, look at Hadoop. It alone has more changesets than your all other projects (-qcad) put together.

> They are non-trivial in size, and afaik none of them follow a dual license path.
At least Qcad does: http://www.qcad.org/en/license

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 26, 2016 9:47 UTC (Fri) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link]

> For example, OpenChange: https://github.com/openchange/openchange/commits/master - last commits are from year ago. It's dead, Jim.

Just because I said I need a break, doesn't mean you can say anything you know. Facts is a difficult thing to dispute, here is a commit from december:
https://github.com/openchange/openchange/commit/03bae8ff2...
If you look through all branches, you will find 58 commits the last thirty days with three new contributors. Define dead please.

> GNU Make is not exactly _dead_, it just looks this way: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/make/ - last release in 2014. Ditto for parallel, mailutils and others.

No, make, mailutils and parallel are not dead, they are well maintained. All three sees activity. However, a program like make is mature, and already does what it is supposed to do, so yes, it is not the accelerated project you were looking for. And it has less frequent commits than mailutils and parallel. You really like cherry-picking, don't you? They are small projects, not dying, but small. If you keep it at that, I am happy. Next time around please be more specific when you state your qualifiers. Some of the others are rather large projects that are also doing well, so no, there is no ditto.

> For comparison, look at Hadoop. It alone has more changesets than your all other projects (-qcad) put together.

In terms of commits and lines of code, Hadoop scores well. Almost double of Octave, about a two thirds of Owncloud. In number of contributers the picture looks very different, here Hadoop has a comparatively low number. Can you please document how you did the additions to reach you conclusion? Yes, I am specifically looking for documented numbers, I am well capable of adding myself.

> At least Qcad does: http://www.qcad.org/en/license

You are right, my apologies, it should not have been on the list.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 26, 2016 16:03 UTC (Fri) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861) [Link] (1 responses)

> GNU Make is not exactly _dead_, it just looks this way: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/make/ - last release in 2014.

GNU make is the Abe Vigoda of software... except that doesn't work so well anymore :-(.

Maybe the classic: "reports of GNU make's death have been greatly exaggerated"... :-)

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 29, 2016 19:25 UTC (Mon) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

I keep wishing it would die. I try out alternatives every few years, waste a bunch of time figuring out workarounds for oddball limitations.... and then keep reaching for gmake whenever spinning up a new C/C++ project. Argh. I'm not sure if the problem is with me or the universe.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 27, 2016 11:58 UTC (Sat) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

Hadoop may score better on your "current rate of change" metric. Just not sure that's a relevant one. On my "stuff I actually use on a daily basis" metric, GNU make, Octave score 100% and Hadoop 0%. There's a whole bunch of GPL software that way outscores the likes of Hadoop for me...

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 26, 2016 8:55 UTC (Fri) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link]

GPLv2+ is fine as long as no one forks it and makes it GPLv3.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 25, 2016 16:14 UTC (Thu) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link] (24 responses)

> Some of these projects you listed are LGPLv2.1 (systemd, wordpress, pulseaudio, drupal, joomla).

Ah, I see. That can explain some of your statements. Actually, none of them are LGPLv2.1. Pulseaudio is a combination of GPL and LGPL, so you actually need to remove some of the functionality to get an LGPL version. Systemd is LGPLv2.1+. As for the other three, they are all released under GPLv2+, that is, both v2 and v3 with FSF given a prerogative to relicense at will. Checking out licensing information from Drupal is quite telling:
https://www.drupal.org/about/licensing#q1
they are quite specific in stating compatibility with AGPLv3.

> I think only samba, gcc and bash are GPLv3

Are you neglecting the GPLv2+ usually kept for historic reasons? Very few have followed Linus example in using GPLv2 only you know. From the corporate side of things my impression is that the corporate world want what ever patent protection available (except for patent trolls like Microsoft and Apple). Even so, both grub and kolab are also strict GPLv3+ in the short list I gave you. Actually, the web-interfaces in Kolab are AGPL licensed quite successfully. Yes they have a number of paid developers. I am on their paying customer list and have also contributed a little there in the past. Yep, there are more companies than Red Hat and Suse making good money on GPL software. I would love to see more pop up.

> RedHat controls the development of the GPL-ed projects they own.

AFAIK, Red Hat follows a "patches are welcome" policy with distributed copyright. Please document your claim or retract it. Maybe you were mistaking them for Canonical?

>> Yes it is, but it grew out of the success of the free software movement.
> And so?

I believe you still need free software to keep the permissive guys from locking things more and more up. While you seem to believe in the ideal that everybody understands the benefits of sharing, I am far less optimistic on behalf of humanity. Accordingly, I believe it is in your best interest to stop attacking copyleft. Please feel free to contribute or use any code you will though.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 25, 2016 19:58 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (23 responses)

> Ah, I see. That can explain some of your statements. Actually, none of them are LGPLv2.1.
Please, do your due diligence.

systemd is LGPL2.1 (no +) with static linking exception - https://github.com/systemd/systemd/blob/master/LICENSE.LG...

> As for the other three, they are all released under GPLv2+, that is, both v2 and v3 with FSF given a prerogative to relicense at will.
That's not true. All the contributions to wordpress are required to have GPLv2+ license, so FSF can't unilaterally change the terms since everybody always have the option to use GPLv2.

> Are you neglecting the GPLv2+ usually kept for historic reasons? Very few have followed Linus example in using GPLv2 only you know.
Actually, quite a lot of them did, even from your own list.

> AFAIK, Red Hat follows a "patches are welcome" policy with distributed copyright. Please document your claim or retract it.
No, they are quite ruthless in rejecting patches that don't square with their control policies and making it harder for downstream projects to use their code: https://lwn.net/Articles/430098/

> Maybe you were mistaking them for Canonical?
Let's talk about Canonical, then. Unity is released under GPL. Why it's not available in all other distributions? Isn't GPL supposed to be a magic pill against BSD-style fork-proliferation?

> I believe you still need free software to keep the permissive guys from locking things more and more up.
Sure. Go on and fork every BSD project on github and slap a GPL license on it. It'll help a lot.

Not.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 25, 2016 23:14 UTC (Thu) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link] (22 responses)

> Please, do your due diligence.

I did, both wikipedia and freedesktop.org disagrees with you:
https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemd
if you even bothered to look at any of the actual systemd files on github, you would be less embarrased, see here, the + is clearly stated:
https://github.com/systemd/systemd/blob/master/src/core/a...
I belive you are confused by the relicensing from GPL to LGPL with you reference to the exception. From what I gather there is no exception to the LGPLv2.1+

> That's not true

Anybody can relicense a GPLv2+ code to GPLv3+, the FSF can relicense it to whatever they see fit. You should get your facts straight. I believe many of us are well aware of the trust we put in FSF when the + is there.

> Actually, quite a lot of them did, even from your own list.

What are you talking about now? Git is the *only* example on my list with only GPLv2, and guess ten times who chose that license. You really need to check your facts better. Yes there are other projects, after all he is quite influential. There are few and far between though. GPLv2+ is abundant on the other hand. Why do you even care, you hate both?

> they are quite ruthless in rejecting patches that don't square with their control policies and making it harder for downstream projects to use their code

Aha, so you are of the opinion that Red Hat is too restrictive in what patches to accept on projects their employees are maintaining. Your goal posts are moving faster than light.

> Sure. Go on and fork every BSD project on github and slap a GPL license on it. It'll help a lot.

I may, if I see it beneficial. Libreoffice and Jenkins are good examples of beneficial forks. Neither of them chose GPL, but they just as well could have.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 26, 2016 0:06 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (1 responses)

> if you even bothered to look at any of the actual systemd files on github, you would be less embarrased, see here, the + is clearly stated
I actually _linked_ the license: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/blob/master/LICENSE.LG...

> Anybody can relicense a GPLv2+ code to GPLv3+, the FSF can relicense it to whatever they see fit. You should get your facts straight. I believe many of us are well aware of the trust we put in FSF when the + is there.
You can't change the license on the existing code.

> Aha, so you are of the opinion that Red Hat is too restrictive in what patches to accept on projects their employees are maintaining. Your goal posts are moving faster than light.
RH does not always behave better than Apple.

> I may, if I see it beneficial. Libreoffice and Jenkins are good examples of beneficial forks. Neither of them chose GPL, but they just as well could have.
They forked dead projects. It's certainly OK to do that.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 27, 2016 13:50 UTC (Sat) by lsl (subscriber, #86508) [Link]

> I actually _linked_ the license

Yes, that's the LGPL v2.1 license text. At your option, you may also pick any later version, though.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 26, 2016 9:05 UTC (Fri) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link] (19 responses)

Sorry, but what are you smoking? The FSF can only relicense projects in two ways -- if the project is a FSF-project (and thus has contributor-licenses set up that reassigns the copyright to the FSF), or by issuing a new version of the GPL that supersedes GPLv3. And they explicitly promise (though didn't really live up to it with the GPLv3, in my opinion) that the new license is similar to the previous. So no, they cannot relicense to "whatever they see fit".

Let's say that the FSF "sees fit" to relicense a GPLv2+ project to "You have to kill small children to use this project". If it's a project with the copyrights assigned to the FSF, then yes, they can of course do whatever they want. But if it's someone else's GPLv2+ project, they cannot, because the new license would definitely not be in the spirit of the old one...

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 26, 2016 15:31 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (18 responses)

> > Anybody can relicense a GPLv2+ code to GPLv3+, the FSF can relicense it to whatever they see fit. You should get your facts straight. I believe many of us are well aware of the trust we put in FSF when the + is there.

Actually, that is called FRAUD - tricking someone else into believing they can do something they aren't allowed to ...

> Sorry, but what are you smoking? The FSF can only relicense projects in two ways -- if the project is a FSF-project (and thus has contributor-licenses set up that reassigns the copyright to the FSF), or by issuing a new version of the GPL that supersedes GPLv3. And they explicitly promise (though didn't really live up to it with the GPLv3, in my opinion) that the new license is similar to the previous. So no, they cannot relicense to "whatever they see fit".

And this is wrong, actually, too. The arrival of GPL 4 *will* *not* change the licence on any existing GPL code, be it v2, v3, v2+, v3+ or whatever.

If you are the copyright holder, the licence(s) on the code is irrelevant, you can do what you like.

If you own the copyright on the licence (eg in this case you are the FSF) it gives you ABSOLUTELY NO RIGHTS WHATSOEVER to any code that may use said licence. So no, the FSF has no power whatsoever to relicence ANY code licenced under ANY version of the GPL.

If you are not the copyright holder, then you cannot change the licence on any code unless you have a licence that gives you permission. I am unaware of any Free or Open Source licence that gives you that permission ...

The reason people keep talking (and getting it horribly legally wrong) about relicensing is that

(1) The GPL gives an explicit guarantee that, if you distribute according to the terms of the GPL, you will also be complying with the terms of any other compatible licence that may be involved, and

(2) the GRANT OF LICENCE that is "v2+" or "v3+" or any other plus, gives the *distributor* the right to choose which version of the GPL they use. If I give you a grant of "LGPL v2.1+", then that gives you the right to use the GPLv2, GPLv3, LGPLv2.1, or LGPLv3 (have I forgotten any?). YOU HAVE TO PICK ONE - but it is your choice as distributor, not mine as licensor.

Which means they think they've relicensed the code, when in fact they haven't. They have only changed either (1) the set of licences that can be used, or (2) the choice of licence that THEY have used.

And as has been mentioned, the FSF is legally constrained that any new GPL must respect the principles of previous GPLs - namely that it has to support and fight for *user* freedom. (The FSF can't renege on this for a host of reasons, not least that all its copyright assignments would become null and void and land it in a huge copyright infringement mess :-)

Cheers,
Wol

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 26, 2016 15:42 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

Let's give a quick example.

User A releases a program under BSD. Anybody can distribute it under BSD.

User B adds some mods and puts them in the public domain. Distribution is still BSD.

User C adds some code and grants an LGPL2.1+ licence. Distribution is now only possible under (L)GPL-style licences, but A's and B's code is still BSD and PD respectively.

User D adds some more code, under a GPL3+ licence grant. The set of licences is now reduced to GPL3 or any replacement.

User E adds some more code, under a GPL2+ licence grant. The set of licenses doesn't change, but if D is reverted the set of licenses would be GPL-style.

User F adds some code under a GPL2 licence grant. The set of licences is now empty so the code can't be distributed.

User G replaces user F's code under a GPL3 licence grant. The set of licences is now GPL3 and that's all.

Note that AT NO POINT WHATSOEVER have any licences been changed. The only thing that's changed is the licence choice available to the distributor.

Cheers,
Wol

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 26, 2016 15:44 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

Whoops - I've been sloppy - I'm assuming when user F adds code, user E's changes have NOT been reverted.

If they have, the set of licences is reduced to GPL2, not null.

Cheers,
Wol

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 27, 2016 9:40 UTC (Sat) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link] (15 responses)

> Actually, that is called FRAUD - tricking someone else into believing they can do something they aren't allowed to ...

My wording was unfortunate. If I had said fork rather than relicense, it would have been precise. My apologies.

> YOU HAVE TO PICK ONE

Hm, I am not sure about this one, so a clarification here is helpful (at least to me). My interpretation of GPLv2+ is that I as a recipient of the code can distribute it only providing the license text of GPLv3+. That is, I opt to have the code under GPLv3, and later, and that grants me the right to distribute it under said license. Of course, only copyright holders can enforce the license, so third parties may choose to ignore the relicensing if they know the history of the code.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 27, 2016 12:28 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (14 responses)

No - this is the classic confusion.

The copyright holder has given you the OPTION of distributing EITHER under GPLv2, OR GPLv3. You have to choose. There is no v2+ or v3+ *licence*. (If GPLv4 comes out, then you can choose that.)

Your recipient then receives a LICENCE GRANT direct from the copyright holder, which means he gets v2+, same as you did. If it's got a + in it, then it's a GRANT not a LICENCE.

Which means you can give the code to him citing v3 as your licence, but he can then pass the code on to someone else citing v2 as the licence.

And if you tell him you have changed the licence grant to v3+ you are actually in breach of the GPL yourself! - you are obliged to pass on all the rights you received, including the right to distribute under v2, but you've just told him you've taken away that right!

There are three concepts you need to get clear in your head - the licence DOCUMENT, ie your copy of v2 or v3 or whatever. The GRANT OF LICENCE - the statement by the copyright holder telling you what licence(s) you can use, and the LICENCE ITSELF, which is the legal permission you use to distribute. This thread is full of confusion about which is what.

Cheers,
Wol

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 27, 2016 12:34 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

NB - If you fork a v2+ project and add v3+ code OF YOUR OWN, of course now you can say that the PROJECT is v3+, because it is.

You can't, however, stop the next forker from reverting your 3+ changes and going back to v2+.

Cheers,
Wol

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 27, 2016 13:38 UTC (Sat) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (12 responses)

Is there a meaningful distinction between "grant" and "licence"?

The way GPLvX+ works is that it is two stage - and there's a level of indirection:

- The source contains a brief licence, stating the licence is as per a published licence document, e.g. GPLvX "or any later version" (which is a term defined by the GPLvX).

- The licence document itself then defines what that "licence" to use "any later version" means exactly.

These are all conditional permissions granted by the copyright holder - and "permission" is the root meaning of "licence". Without following the conditions necessary for such permission, then one risks infringing the copyright held by the author(s), who may then sue you for damages.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 27, 2016 14:42 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (11 responses)

Yes there is a meaningful distinction between "grant" and "licence". We muddy the water horribly when we use the two words interchangeably.

Like in photography, another bugbear of mine. The terms "aperture" and "f-stop" are used interchangeably, but f-stop is a dimensionless ratio, and *everyone* *else* measures apertures in units of distance.

To be pedantic, the "grant" (usually in the COPYING file) tells you which licence(s) you can use, while the "licence" (in the LICENCE or GPL-LICENCE-V2" file) tells you what you can/must do.

And it's actually very important, because if I grant you the right to use "v2 or later", while you are free to use v3 you MUST tell your recipients "v2 or later" because v3 tells you to!

By the way, can you point me to the text of the GPLv2+ licence? Or the GPLv3+ licence? NO YOU CAN'T. Because it only appears as an advisory paragraph (ie it has no legal force whatsoever) at the ?end? of GPLv2 or GPLv3.

At the end of the day, nobody really cares that much about "the v2+ licence" or "the v3+ licence" because, usually, we have no need to care. But if you want to UNDERSTAND what is actually going on, that's when you need to care, and that's when the distinction is important.

And as I said, it's actually legally quite serious - it is a *breach* *of* *the* *GPL* if you change v2+ to v3+ !!! (on someone else's code, that is - not if you add new code that changes the overall licence on the derived work.)

Cheers,
Wol

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 27, 2016 16:31 UTC (Sat) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link] (6 responses)

> And it's actually very important, because if I grant you the right to use "v2 or later", while you are free to use v3 you MUST tell your recipients "v2 or later" because v3 tells you to!

Can you point me to where this is stated. I do believe you, but it would be nice to see the writing.

> And as I said, it's actually legally quite serious - it is a *breach* *of* *the* *GPL* if you change v2+ to v3+ !!! (on someone else's code, that is - not if you add new code that changes the overall licence on the derived work.)

This is a really minor one though. If the recipient is aware of this, then the recipient can easily add a couple of lines to the code base just to do the relicensing. As such, for all practical reasons, my original statement that anybody can relicense actually stands. In other words, bypassing any commitment to keep GPLv2 when you re-distribute is trivial. Enforcing the GPLv3+ license is still left to the copyright holders of course, but that is actually a different matter.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 27, 2016 19:14 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (5 responses)

> > And it's actually very important, because if I grant you the right to use "v2 or later", while you are free to use v3 you MUST tell your recipients "v2 or later" because v3 tells you to!

> Can you point me to where this is stated. I do believe you, but it would be nice to see the writing.

Fifth paragraph of the preamble to GPL version 3 ...

"For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must pass on to the recipients the same freedoms that you received. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights."

To emphasise - "you must pass on to the recipients the same freedoms that you received" - ie the freedom to distribute under v2.

> If the recipient is aware of this, then the recipient can easily add a couple of lines to the code base just to do the relicensing.

Which is likely to fall foul of copyright law and be classed as "too trivial to be copyrightable". It pretty much falls in the same category as a brain-dead update of the licence statement and copyright date in all source files - which is legally almost the same thing AT&T did when they messed about with all the copyright statements in Unix way back when - and which a Judge ended up ruling pretty much that they had abandoned their own copyright interest thanks to their own stupidity.

> Enforcing the GPLv3+ license is still left to the copyright holders of course,

Said copyright holder - singular, only copyright holder - being YOU! And as I said above, the change is probably not copyrightable if it's that trivial...

You are presuming that you have the right to alter someone else's grant of licence on their code, and as I have said elsewhere, I do not know of ANY Free or Open Source licence that gives you that power.

Cheers,
Wol

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 28, 2016 10:09 UTC (Sun) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link] (4 responses)

> To emphasise - "you must pass on to the recipients the same freedoms that you received" - ie the freedom to distribute under v2.

Yes, this was the part I thought, thank you. I don't mean to be difficult, but freedom is open for wide interpretation. Actually, I have seen some argue that permissively licensed code is more free than copyleft. For this reason, the FSF has been very specific in stating a definition of freedom in relation to software, as provided by, e.g., wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition
it does in no way imply GPLv2. GPLv3 preserves the same freedoms found in GPLv2. Hence, I am afraid your argument falls apart.

> Which is likely to fall foul of copyright law and be classed as "too trivial to be copyrightable".

Indeed, again my precision was way off, my apologies. The added code lines should be sufficient addition to warrant copyright, and trivial additions do not apply here. I still stand by my claim though. For any software you yourself want to distribute, it is trivial to add a non-trivial patch (non-trivial enough to warrant copyright), and hence enable relicensing (within the context discussed here, i.e., from GPLv2+ to GPLv3+). However, I still cannot see a clear argument stating that a recipient of GPLv2+ cannot relicense to GPLv3+ upon redistributing, seeing your argument above seems to fail.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 29, 2016 12:17 UTC (Mon) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link] (3 responses)

Sorry, but no, the freedoms granted by the GPLv2 are NOT the same as those granted by the GPLv3.

With GPLv2 someone can "Tivoize" a device. With GPLv3 you cannot. It might not be a freedom that the FSF (or you) likes, but it's a freedom never the less.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 29, 2016 13:50 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (2 responses)

Del- was talking about “freedoms” in terms of the FSF's Four Freedoms. In that context the GPLv2 and GPLv3 are equivalent in that they are both designed to preserve these. Being able to “tivoize” a device is not one of the Four Freedoms.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Mar 1, 2016 1:41 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

Unfortunately, in this case, it's the black letter of the licence that rules, not the intent of the people who wrote it.

In any case, saying "I can distribute under v2, but you can't", is placing restrictions on what your downstream is allowed to do, which is a clear breach of the principles behind the GPL. (And, in telling other people what they can and cannot do with code that is not your own, you're exercising powers that copyright law does NOT give you.)

Cheers,
Wol

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Mar 1, 2016 8:58 UTC (Tue) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link]

> Unfortunately, in this case, it's the black letter of the licence that rules, not the intent of the people who wrote it.

For legal documents like a license, it is very common (I would even say necessary) to supply specific definitions to concepts (like freedom) that are open to interpretation. The GPL does this right above the paragraph you quoted:

"The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed to take away your freedom to share and change the works. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change all versions of a program--to make sure it remains free software for all its users. We, the Free Software Foundation, use the GNU General Public License for most of our software; it applies also to any other work released this way by its authors. You can apply it to your programs, too.

When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for them if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs, and that you know you can do these things."

The black letter does not seem to support your interpretation.

> in telling other people what they can and cannot do with code that is not your own, you're exercising powers that copyright law does NOT give you.

Generally speaking this is clearly not a true statement. GPL is called copyleft exactly because it gives the recipient of the code powers through copyright law.

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 27, 2016 20:09 UTC (Sat) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (3 responses)

I still don't understand the difference. AFAICT you receive the "licence" (i.e. permission) from a copyright holder who "grants" you that licence (the "licence" that is granted, in the same sense as "to grant permission"). For the GPL, the normal process is that the GPL licence is granted by the copyright holder via 2-stages and using an indirection via referral to the FSF to achieve both consistency and (potential) "upgrade" ability.

Stage 1 is that the copyright holder of a work makes it be known that the work is licensed under the terms of the GPLvX, as published by the FSF, and as usually included alongside the work in a file called "COPYING", but otherwise obtainable directly from the FSF.

Stage 2 is the GPLvX licence document, which documents those terms fully.

Here's stage 1, as per the recommended GPLv2 text, to be attached to a work (e.g. included at the top of a file):

"This file is part of $WORK.

$WORK is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any
later version.

$WORK is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with GNU Zebra; see the file COPYING. If not, write to the Free
Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA
02111-1307, USA. "

Then stage 2 is the FSF-published GPLv2 licence.

The initial licence is granted by the copyright holder, and the GPLv2 is part of that licence, by reference and reference to the FSF. Additionally, the licence granted may give the option to use any later version of the GPL than the referenced one, as published by the FSF.

"Licence" - a noun, the set of (conditional) permissions given/granted.

"Grant" - a verb, as in "to grant permission" or "to grant a licence" (licence being an old word for permission, deriving from latin), also as in "to give".

Was my understanding.

The copying file is _NOT_ "the grant", it is a legal document setting out conditions and permissions which may be given/granted as the licence to a work - except as an imprecise short-hand that is nounifying a verb. :)

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 28, 2016 0:02 UTC (Sun) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (2 responses)

> The copying file is _NOT_ "the grant", it is a legal document setting out conditions and permissions which may be given/granted as the licence to a work - except as an imprecise short-hand that is nounifying a verb. :)

"except as an imprecise short-hand that is nounifying a verb"

Or is it a noun that has been verbified? "a grant" to me is perfectly normal (indeed, *ancient*, as in heraldry) usage.

At the end of the day, I think we see it pretty much the same - it's a two-stage thing (and if you don't understand that it is two stages, then you'll misunderstand what's going on - that is the crucial point).

But imho the GPLv2, or v3, which tells you what you can do, and what your obligations are, is the licence; and the COPYING file is what grants you permission to use the licence.

Going back to heraldry, I have in my possession a "grant of arms", which describes my grandfather's arms, and gives him permission to use them. The grant is very much separate from the arms themselves.

Cheers,
Wol

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 28, 2016 0:18 UTC (Sun) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

And just to add, just because I enclose a copy of GPLv2 (or whatever) with my code, doesn't mean you can use the GPLv2 to copy my code.

You need a separate grant of permission to use the GPLv2. Your stage 1 GRANTS the end user permission to use the GPL (version as specified), which is why I call it a grant! :-) Because it is :-)

Cheers,
Wol

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Mar 6, 2016 16:58 UTC (Sun) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

The "grant of arms" thing you're talking about is just showing that using the verb "grant" as a shorthand to refer to the documentation of the action (verb) of a grant of some right goes back a long way. The root meaning though is:

To grant a permission/right.

Each can be documented separately, and one might use "grant" as a shorthand for that documentation, but that remains a convenient, context-specific shorthand for what is the documentation of the act of the grant.

Don't eat money

Posted Feb 23, 2016 21:18 UTC (Tue) by bkuhn (subscriber, #58642) [Link] (1 responses)

> Well, they need money to eat.

I don't recommend eating money. I swallowed a penny once when I was a child. It's definitely a mistake.

Don't eat money

Posted Feb 23, 2016 21:42 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

"I'd like to see some change in you!"

GPLV3 has been a boon for bait-and-switch licensing

Posted Feb 26, 2016 19:45 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> However, making your license toxic and offering a commercial option (via copyright assignment) is definitely not what I'd call "Free Software". It's at most a form of evaluation or shareware.

But, done right, it's perfectly in keeping with the goals of the FSF - ie maintaining the four freedoms. Like Qt code is poison-pilled to go BSD if there's a hostile takeover.

If I wanted to do that (assignments etc) I'd make it a condition of the assignment (that is, other people giving me their code) that ANY product containing their code is ALWAYS available under the GPL. In other words, I can sell closed licences, but I can't close the product because that would void my right to use their code.

Cheers,
Wol