PointlessOne 
I bloggered a post.
It's about shortcomings of FLOSS and a possible next thing.
My Next Project Won't be FLOSS:
https://pointless.one/my-next-project-wont-be-floss/
#FLOSS #FOSS #FreeSoftware #OpenSource #GNU #GPL #OSI #MIT #BSD #BTPL #PolyForm
restoranteFor sometime I have been thinking that libre software is charity while proprietary software is business.
Business world of course benefits the free labour of those libre software developers (for better or worse).
@restorante I can see how that can be an empirical view from limited exposure. It's not that bad of a take, frankly. However, it suffers from the same implicit moral positioning which might make it hard for many people to move on to a more accurate view.
ben@pointlessone “These people figured that if they used different licenses that were more friendly to businesses it would help adoption.”
This is false. Nothing about the definition of what licences were acceptable differed from the “free software” conception of the same. In fact the Open Source Definition was (and is) the same as the Debian Free Software Guidelines.
It was entirely a difference of marketing: emphasising the business benefits instead of the human rights aspects.
In practice, yes, businesses often have preferred non-copyleft licenses to copyleft ones (though not entirely — e.g., corporations happily use Linux even though the BSDs are available); but this wasn’t because of Open Source claiming that copyleft was bad.
(And, after all, the non-copyleft free software licences — BSD, MIT, X11, etc — had all been around just about as long as the GPL had, if not longer.)
@benjamineskola I am confused.
I know that permissive licenses were around way before OSI came about, I didn't credit OSI for coming up with any of those licenses.
But wasn't the Open Source's approach to appeal to businesses by promoting permissive licenses? Meanwhile Free Software stayed with more hardline licenses.
If we only go off of Freedoms list and Open Source definition then it is hard to find substantial differences. But if we take licenses, the difference is quite big.
RMS distances Free Software from Open Source. His argument is that while practical definitions are nearly identical the underpinnings are completely different. His stance is that it's a moral imperative to make all software Free. It's not in the definition, nor in the Freedoms. And he went about it by introducing virality to GPL. It was intentional. Lack of this aspect in permissive licenses is unaceptable to him.
So unless we completely reject RMS’ views on the subject it's hard to accept that it's only marketing. And it seems really hard to dismiss his views since he put together the whole Free Software thing.
As for Linux, I believe, it’s used because it’s not combined with anything. Hardly anyone a reason to modify the kernel in a way that a module can't do. It’s not the case with libraries. This virality aspect introduces so much confusion that it's no wonder people stayed away from it in environments with even a slight chance of a law suite. FSF did a remarkably poor job making it clear when GPL's virality doesn't apply. I suspect it’s on purpose as well.
@pointlessone No, like I said, the OSI promoted the same licences. And the FSF never advocated *against* non-copyleft licences. (Though it does promote copyleft it also recognises that non-copyleft licences are often appropriate and has never suggested that those are less free — it considers the choice to be a tactical one.)
I agree, actually, that it’s not *only* marketing — it’s about whether to care about an ethical dimension versus a profit dimension. When I said “only marketing” I meant that what they were promoting was the same but the justifications differed.
@benjamineskola Well, as I said, I wasn't there. I know OSI has GPL on the approved license short list. So, like, sure? Open Source technically covers Free Software too. I don't think inclusion of GPL actually appealed to businesses though. After all, if the campaign treated all the licenses equally why permissive licenses are so much more popular?
Another thing, I have a strong feeling that Free Software is not so inclusive towards Open Source as you’re saying. Take this piece, for example: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html
It doesn't strike me as particularly friendly towards Open Source. Yes, it doesn't advocate against per se, but it's not “yeah, it’s fine” either. It's more like “Open Source is the top of the conversion funnel”, “first dose is free" sort of thing. It points out how Open Source is deficient within Free Software's moral framework. It concedes that in practical terms there's nearly full overlap but still insists on imposition of it’s moral values.
I'm under impression that this is what led to Open Source fork in the first place. And this is what scared off businesses: no one wanted their core product “liberated” by accident. And this is what led to widespread adoption of permissive licenses.
And I suspect Free Software didn't openly advocate against permissive licenses because any combination of permissive license and GPL results in a GPL whole, which is tolerable to Free Software.
@pointlessone I didn’t say free software was friendly towards open source. There’s a philosophical difference there that matters to people (on both sides).
And I didn’t say that businesses necessarily like GPL either — it’s true that in many cases they prefer the non-copyleft licences. (Not universally though.) This is not because the OSI treated it differently but arises from the businesses’ own understandings of their own interests.
My sole point is that the Free Software versus Open Source split has never been the same as the copyleft versus non-copyleft split.
(There are plenty of people on the BSD side who’d come down on the philosophical freedom side of the split, for example, but would argue that ‘permissive’ licences are more free.)
And no, that’s not the reason FSF supports non-copyleft licences. That would imply that non-copyleft-licenced projects only have value in terms of being incorporated into copyleft projects. The real (and simpler) reason is that the FSF recognises that non-copyleft licences provide all of its “four freedoms”. In fact, the FSF will advocate for using weaker copyleft or non-copyleft licences in certain circumstances; it’s a tactical matter, like I said. (The idea of the GPL is meant to be to promote the spread of free software; if using the GPL would not achieve that they’ll advocate using some other licence — eg this is why glibc is under the LGPL.)
@benjamineskola Ah, I stand corrected.
Could you please provide an example of FSF advocacy for permissive licenses? For future references.
@pointlessone The title of this article is advocating for more copyleft licences, but it includes the reasoning of when you shouldn’t use copyleft: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html
> Using the ordinary GPL is not advantageous for every library. There are reasons that can make it better to use the Lesser GPL in certain cases. The most common case is when a free library's features are readily available for proprietary software through other libraries. In that case, the library cannot give free software any particular advantage, so it is better to use the Lesser GPL for that library.
I think I may have misremembered them explicitly advocating for licences other than their own — unless they did so elsewhere. But I think the argument is clear here that strong copyleft is not the right choice in all cases.
(The LGPL is copyleft but not viral.)
@benjamineskola Idunno… This strays a bit into the mental gymnastics territory, the way I read it.
To me it looks like they admit that GPL is not universally appealing, that is all.
If anything closer to the end it looks like a veiled jab at permissive licenses:
[…] they may appeal to the ego, promising “more users for this library” if we let them use the code in proprietary software products. Popularity is tempting, and it is easy for a library developer to rationalize the idea that boosting the popularity of that one library is what the community needs above all.
But we should not listen to these temptations, because we can achieve much more if we stand together.
It directly speaks of proprietary software, but it's exactly the argument for choosing a permissive license over GPL.
Maybe there are other examples out there but this is not very convincing.
Anyway, would you want me to change anything in the post to clarify things?
What do you think of the main thesis of the post?
@pointlessone Well, yes, they’re not advocating for using non-copyleft licences in all cases, because they clearly prefer copyleft but recognise that there are limits to that.
But that’s all subjective. Clearly not everyone is going to agree that copyleft is better, even in limited circumstances. And that’s fine. I’m not interested in changing anyone’s mind about that: in fact my position is not the same as the FSF’s; I just dislike seeing them misrepresented.
My only criticism of the post is about the historical fact: that (like I said already) the split between copyleft/non-copyleft has never been the same as the split between free/open.
On the core thesis: well, you do you, obviously. Nobody can force you to use any particular licence. I do have a lot of sympathy for the sort of licence that’s technically not free by FSF/OSI standards but shares most of the principles.
Like, there’s obviously the “open core” and similar approaches where some company wants to be seen as open source but also wants to make money off the product, which usually includes making money off the contributions of volunteers — that, I don’t think is justifiable.
But on the other hand one could make a principled argument that the FSF conception of ‘four freedoms’ is not the only way or best way to think of freedom. In particular, I think ‘freedom zero’ is debatable (and I’ve see other people make that point recently too). Are we really all more free if software can be used for any purpose? What if that purpose is in support of literal fascism, or oppression in general? (Maybe the paradox of tolerance here is relevant.)
Critics of that will defend Freedom Zero by saying it’s difficult or impossible to police ethical behaviour through a copyright licence; but I don’t know if ‘it’s difficult’ is reason not to try.
Jonas Platte> Every major programming language package manager provides some sort of scaffold for a new project. All those scaffolds include a license and it’s some sort of FLOSS license.
I am happy to be able to correct you there. Rust's cargo does not add a `LICENSE` file or set the corresponding package metadata field when creating a new project with `cargo new` / `cargo init`.
@jplatte well, that’s something. People still seem to chose some permissive license for their crates. At least that’s my impression from what I saw so far.
@pointlessone Absolutely, MIT and MIT OR Apache are very popular choices in the Rust community. I've defaulted to MPL-2.0 for a while which is a little less permissive. Have considered https://anticapitalist.software/ for new projects more recently. The Big Time Public License was new to me, but looks pretty decent as well. (you wrote "Bit Time", by the way)
@jplatte thanks. I’ll look into it.
Bo be clear, I’m not against FLOSS licenses. If they suit the goal and chosen consciously it’s all right. Going with what’s generated for you or what’s popular is what I think is a bad default. Choosing a license once and using it for everything is probably not good either. I doubt that every project has the same goals even if they are related. Stay vigilant, as the saying goes.
@jplatte The Anti-Capitalist Software License seem to be similar in spirit to BTPL in some regards. There’s a glaring issue though. An Ivy League uni, for example, is an education institution. Given that most of the elites that create all the shit environment right now come through it, it's probably prudent to not let them off easy. They also probably can afford all the software in the world. But maybe they work with cops so don't qualify, idk? Anyway, I think this is better than any FLOSS. It doesn't resonate with me much. It strikes me as a bit too-on-the-nose political, almost more like a manifesto rather than software license. But if you're perfectly aligned with this political view, go for it.
BTPL seems more boring (in the sense that it doesn't embody any obvious political views), which might help it slip under the radar. But in practical terms I think both would achieve very similar results.