why-i-am-pro-gpl.html 8.6 KB

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  1. title: Why I Am Pro-GPL
  2. date: 2015-07-21 07:29
  3. author: Christine Lemmer-Webber
  4. tags: gpl, copyleft, apache, permissive, licensing, foss
  5. slug: why-i-am-pro-gpl
  6. ---
  7. <p>
  8. Last night at OSCON I attended the lightning talks (here called
  9. "Ignite Talks"). Most of them were pretty good (I especially loved
  10. Emily Dunham's "First Impressions (the value of the 'noob')" talk),
  11. but the last talk of the night was titled "Why I don’t use the GPL" by
  12. Shane Curcuru, "VP of Brand Management at the Apache Software
  13. Foundation" (the association of which he invoked during his talk last
  14. night, which made me wonder if he was speaking on behalf of the ASF,
  15. which seemed surprising). <i>(<b>Edit:</b> this was confirmed to not
  16. have been intended to be speaking on behalf of the ASF, which is good
  17. to hear. I don't have a recording so I'm not sure if Shane invoked
  18. his association or if the person doing the introducing did.)</i>
  19. </p>
  20. <p>
  21. It was a harsh talk. It was also the last talk of the night, and
  22. there was really no venue to respond to it (I looked to see if there
  23. would be future lightning talk slots at this conference, but there
  24. aren't). Though the only noise from the audience was applause, I know
  25. that doesn't mean everyone was happy, just polite... a number of my
  26. friends got up and left in the middle of the talk. But it needs a
  27. response... even if the only venue I have at the moment is my blog.
  28. That'll do.
  29. </p>
  30. <p>
  31. So let me say it up front: my name is Chris Lemmer-Webber, and I
  32. am pro-GPL and pro-copyleft. Furthermore, I'm even pro-permissive (or
  33. "lax") licensing; I see no reason our sides should be fighting, and I
  34. think we can work together. This is one reason why this talk was so
  35. disappointing to me.
  36. </p>
  37. <p>
  38. There's one particular part of the talk that really got to me though:
  39. at one point Shane said something along the lines of "I don't use
  40. copyleft because I don't care about the source code, I care about the
  41. users." My jaw dropped open at that point... wait a minute... that's
  42. <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
  43. thought that was all I had to say on this subject, but it turns out
  44. that's not true), but the <i>most common</i> version of anti-copyleft
  45. arguments are a "freedom to lock down" position (see how this is a
  46. freedom to remove freedoms position?), and the most common form of
  47. pro-copyleft arguments are a "freedom for the end-user" position.
  48. </p>
  49. <p>
  50. Now there <i>is</i> an anti-copyleft position which does take a stance
  51. that copyleft buys into a nonfree system -- you might see this from
  52. the old school BSD camps especially -- a position that copyright
  53. itself is an unjust system, and to use copyright at all, even to turn
  54. the mechanisms of an evil machine against itself as copyleft does, is
  55. to support this unjust system. I can respect this position, though I
  56. don't agree with it (I think copyleft is a convenient tactical move to
  57. keep software and other works free). One difficulty with this
  58. position though is to really stay true to it, you logically are
  59. against proprietary software <i>far more</i> than you are
  60. against copyleft, and so you had better be against all those companies
  61. who are taking permissively licensed software and locking it down.
  62. This is decidedly <i>not</i> the position that Shane took last night: he
  63. explicitly referenced that the main reason you want to use lax
  64. licensing and avoid copyleft is it means that businesses are more
  65. willing to participate. Now, there are a good number of businesses
  66. which do work with copyleft, but I agree that anti-copyleft sentiments
  67. are being pushed from the business world. So let me parse that
  68. phrasing for you: copyleft means that everyone has to give back the
  69. changes that build upon your work, and not all businesses want to do
  70. this. The "businesses are more willing to participate" means that
  71. businesses can use your project as a stepping stone for something they
  72. can lock down. Some businesses are looking for a "proprietary
  73. differentiation point" to lock down software and distinguish
  74. themselves from their competitors.
  75. </p>
  76. <p>
  77. As I said, I am not only pro-copyleft, I am also pro-permissive
  78. licensing. The difference between these is tactics: the first tactic
  79. is towards guaranteeing user freedom, the second tactic is toward
  80. pushing adoption. I am generally pro-freedom, but sometimes pushing
  81. adoption is important, especially if you're pushing standards and the
  82. like.
  83. </p>
  84. <p>
  85. But let's step back for a moment. One thing that's true is that over
  86. the last many years we've seen an explosion of free and open source
  87. software... at the same time that computers have become more locked
  88. down than ever before! How can this be? It seems like a paradox; we
  89. know that free and open source software is supposed to free users,
  90. right? So why do users have less freedoms than ever? Mobile
  91. computing, the rise of the executable web, all of this has FOSS at its
  92. core, and developers seem to enjoy a lot of maneuverability, but
  93. computers seem to be telling us more what we can and can't do these
  94. days than we tell them. And notice... the rise of the arguments for
  95. permissive/lax licensing have grown simultaneously with this trend.
  96. </p>
  97. <p class="centered">
  98. <a href="">
  99. <img src="/etc/images/blog/free_speech_zone_by_mustafa_and_aziza.jpg" alt="Free Speech Zone by Mustafa and Aziza" />
  100. </a>
  101. <br />
  102. <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>
  103. </p>
  104. <p>
  105. This is no coincidence. The fastest way to develop software which
  106. locks down users for maximum monetary extraction is to use free
  107. software as a base. And this is where the anti-copyleft argument
  108. comes in, because copyleft may effectively force an entity to give
  109. back at this stage... and they might not want to.
  110. </p>
  111. <p>
  112. In Shane's talk last night, he argued against copyleft because
  113. software licenses should have "no strings attached". But the very
  114. strategy that is advocated above is all about attaching strings!
  115. Copyleft's strings say "you can use my stuff, as long as you give back
  116. what you make from it". But the proprietary differentiation
  117. strategy's strings say "I will use your stuff, and then add terms
  118. which forbid you to ever share or modify the things I build on top of
  119. it." Don't be fooled: both attach strings. But which strings are
  120. worse?
  121. </p>
  122. <p>
  123. To return to the arguments made last night, though copyleft defends
  124. source, in my view this is merely a strategy towards defending users.
  125. And indeed, as in terms of where freedoms lie between those who make
  126. use of the source and code side of things vs the end-user-application
  127. side of things, one might notice a trend: there are very few
  128. permissively licensed projects which aim at end users. Most of them
  129. are stepping stones towards further software development. And this is
  130. great! I am glad that we have so many development tools available,
  131. and it seems that permissive/lax licensing is an excellent strategy
  132. here. But when I think of projects I use every day which are programs
  133. I actually run (for example, as an artist I use Blender, Gimp and
  134. Inkscape regularly), most of these are under the GPL. How many truly
  135. major end-user-facing software applications can you think of that are
  136. under permissive licenses? I can think of many under copyleft, and
  137. very few under permissive licenses. This is no coincidence. Assuming
  138. you wish to fight for freedom of the end user, and ensure that your
  139. software remains free for that end user, copyleft is an excellent
  140. strategy.
  141. </p>
  142. <p>
  143. I have heard a mantra many times over the last number of years to
  144. "give away everything but your secret sauce" when it comes to software
  145. development. But I say to you, if you really care about user freedom:
  146. give away your secret sauce. And the very same secret sauce that
  147. others wish to lock down, that's the kind of software I tend to
  148. release under a copyleft license.
  149. </p>
  150. <p>
  151. There is no reason to pit permissive and copyleft licensing against
  152. each other. Anyone doing so is doing a great disservice to user
  153. freedom.
  154. </p>
  155. <p>
  156. My name is Chris Lemmer-Webber. I fight for the users, and I'm
  157. standing up for the GPL.
  158. </p>
  159. <p>
  160. <i><b>Addendum:</b>
  161. <a href="https://twitter.com/webmink/status/623540836328812544">Simon Phipps points out</a>
  162. that all free licenses are "permissive" in a sense. I agree that
  163. "permissive" is a problematic term, though it is the most popular term
  164. of the field (hence my inclusion also of the term "lax" for
  165. non-copyleft licenses). If you are writing about non-copyleft
  166. licenses, it is probably best to use the term "lax" licenses rather
  167. than "permissive".
  168. </i>
  169. </p>