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- title: Why I Am Pro-GPL
- date: 2015-07-21 07:29
- author: Christine Lemmer-Webber
- tags: gpl, copyleft, apache, permissive, licensing, foss
- slug: why-i-am-pro-gpl
- ---
- <p>
- Last night at OSCON I attended the lightning talks (here called
- "Ignite Talks"). Most of them were pretty good (I especially loved
- Emily Dunham's "First Impressions (the value of the 'noob')" talk),
- but the last talk of the night was titled "Why I don’t use the GPL" by
- Shane Curcuru, "VP of Brand Management at the Apache Software
- Foundation" (the association of which he invoked during his talk last
- night, which made me wonder if he was speaking on behalf of the ASF,
- which seemed surprising). <i>(<b>Edit:</b> this was confirmed to not
- have been intended to be speaking on behalf of the ASF, which is good
- to hear. I don't have a recording so I'm not sure if Shane invoked
- his association or if the person doing the introducing did.)</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- It was a harsh talk. It was also the last talk of the night, and
- there was really no venue to respond to it (I looked to see if there
- would be future lightning talk slots at this conference, but there
- aren't). Though the only noise from the audience was applause, I know
- that doesn't mean everyone was happy, just polite... a number of my
- friends got up and left in the middle of the talk. But it needs a
- response... even if the only venue I have at the moment is my blog.
- That'll do.
- </p>
- <p>
- So let me say it up front: my name is Chris Lemmer-Webber, and I
- am pro-GPL and pro-copyleft. Furthermore, I'm even pro-permissive (or
- "lax") licensing; I see no reason our sides should be fighting, and I
- think we can work together. This is one reason why this talk was so
- disappointing to me.
- </p>
- <p>
- There's one particular part of the talk that really got to me though:
- at one point Shane said something along the lines of "I don't use
- copyleft because I don't care about the source code, I care about the
- users." My jaw dropped open at that point... wait a minute... that's
- <i>our</i> narrative. I've <a href="http://dustycloud.org/blog/field-guide-to-copyleft/">written on this before</a> (indeed, at the time I
- thought that was all I had to say on this subject, but it turns out
- that's not true), but the <i>most common</i> version of anti-copyleft
- arguments are a "freedom to lock down" position (see how this is a
- freedom to remove freedoms position?), and the most common form of
- pro-copyleft arguments are a "freedom for the end-user" position.
- </p>
- <p>
- Now there <i>is</i> an anti-copyleft position which does take a stance
- that copyleft buys into a nonfree system -- you might see this from
- the old school BSD camps especially -- a position that copyright
- itself is an unjust system, and to use copyright at all, even to turn
- the mechanisms of an evil machine against itself as copyleft does, is
- to support this unjust system. I can respect this position, though I
- don't agree with it (I think copyleft is a convenient tactical move to
- keep software and other works free). One difficulty with this
- position though is to really stay true to it, you logically are
- against proprietary software <i>far more</i> than you are
- against copyleft, and so you had better be against all those companies
- who are taking permissively licensed software and locking it down.
- This is decidedly <i>not</i> the position that Shane took last night: he
- explicitly referenced that the main reason you want to use lax
- licensing and avoid copyleft is it means that businesses are more
- willing to participate. Now, there are a good number of businesses
- which do work with copyleft, but I agree that anti-copyleft sentiments
- are being pushed from the business world. So let me parse that
- phrasing for you: copyleft means that everyone has to give back the
- changes that build upon your work, and not all businesses want to do
- this. The "businesses are more willing to participate" means that
- businesses can use your project as a stepping stone for something they
- can lock down. Some businesses are looking for a "proprietary
- differentiation point" to lock down software and distinguish
- themselves from their competitors.
- </p>
- <p>
- As I said, I am not only pro-copyleft, I am also pro-permissive
- licensing. The difference between these is tactics: the first tactic
- is towards guaranteeing user freedom, the second tactic is toward
- pushing adoption. I am generally pro-freedom, but sometimes pushing
- adoption is important, especially if you're pushing standards and the
- like.
- </p>
- <p>
- But let's step back for a moment. One thing that's true is that over
- the last many years we've seen an explosion of free and open source
- software... at the same time that computers have become more locked
- down than ever before! How can this be? It seems like a paradox; we
- know that free and open source software is supposed to free users,
- right? So why do users have less freedoms than ever? Mobile
- computing, the rise of the executable web, all of this has FOSS at its
- core, and developers seem to enjoy a lot of maneuverability, but
- computers seem to be telling us more what we can and can't do these
- days than we tell them. And notice... the rise of the arguments for
- permissive/lax licensing have grown simultaneously with this trend.
- </p>
- <p class="centered">
- <a href="">
- <img src="/etc/images/blog/free_speech_zone_by_mustafa_and_aziza.jpg" alt="Free Speech Zone by Mustafa and Aziza" />
- </a>
- <br />
- <i><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mus/3457967/">Free Speech Zone</a> by <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mus/">Mustafa and Aziza</a>, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/">CC BY-SA 2.0</a></i>
- </p>
- <p>
- This is no coincidence. The fastest way to develop software which
- locks down users for maximum monetary extraction is to use free
- software as a base. And this is where the anti-copyleft argument
- comes in, because copyleft may effectively force an entity to give
- back at this stage... and they might not want to.
- </p>
- <p>
- In Shane's talk last night, he argued against copyleft because
- software licenses should have "no strings attached". But the very
- strategy that is advocated above is all about attaching strings!
- Copyleft's strings say "you can use my stuff, as long as you give back
- what you make from it". But the proprietary differentiation
- strategy's strings say "I will use your stuff, and then add terms
- which forbid you to ever share or modify the things I build on top of
- it." Don't be fooled: both attach strings. But which strings are
- worse?
- </p>
- <p>
- To return to the arguments made last night, though copyleft defends
- source, in my view this is merely a strategy towards defending users.
- And indeed, as in terms of where freedoms lie between those who make
- use of the source and code side of things vs the end-user-application
- side of things, one might notice a trend: there are very few
- permissively licensed projects which aim at end users. Most of them
- are stepping stones towards further software development. And this is
- great! I am glad that we have so many development tools available,
- and it seems that permissive/lax licensing is an excellent strategy
- here. But when I think of projects I use every day which are programs
- I actually run (for example, as an artist I use Blender, Gimp and
- Inkscape regularly), most of these are under the GPL. How many truly
- major end-user-facing software applications can you think of that are
- under permissive licenses? I can think of many under copyleft, and
- very few under permissive licenses. This is no coincidence. Assuming
- you wish to fight for freedom of the end user, and ensure that your
- software remains free for that end user, copyleft is an excellent
- strategy.
- </p>
- <p>
- I have heard a mantra many times over the last number of years to
- "give away everything but your secret sauce" when it comes to software
- development. But I say to you, if you really care about user freedom:
- give away your secret sauce. And the very same secret sauce that
- others wish to lock down, that's the kind of software I tend to
- release under a copyleft license.
- </p>
- <p>
- There is no reason to pit permissive and copyleft licensing against
- each other. Anyone doing so is doing a great disservice to user
- freedom.
- </p>
- <p>
- My name is Chris Lemmer-Webber. I fight for the users, and I'm
- standing up for the GPL.
- </p>
- <p>
- <i><b>Addendum:</b>
- <a href="https://twitter.com/webmink/status/623540836328812544">Simon Phipps points out</a>
- that all free licenses are "permissive" in a sense. I agree that
- "permissive" is a problematic term, though it is the most popular term
- of the field (hence my inclusion also of the term "lax" for
- non-copyleft licenses). If you are writing about non-copyleft
- licenses, it is probably best to use the term "lax" licenses rather
- than "permissive".
- </i>
- </p>
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