Darren New escreveu:
> clipka wrote:
>> Nay. It may have started that way,
> 
> It didn't. Read RMS's description of how it started. No need to speculate.

Like, the anecdote in which he was very angry at the new closed source 
printer driver by a vendor?  It was indeed a response to an advancing 
trend by big corps:  to close programs' sources.

Post a reply to this message

"Thomas de Groot" <tDOTdegroot@interDOTnlANOTHERDOTnet> wrote:
> Interesting to see how this whole discussion derives from a simple query
> about the Buddha....
>
> [wow, man! I mean, Peace!]   :-)

Yeah - I said it might get off-topic ;)

And anyway... Buddha... that's religion, so we're still not far from it =B)

Post a reply to this message

"Chris B" <nom### [at] nomailcom> wrote:
> The aggressiveness of those advocating GPL is to try and protect you. Not to
> try and swindle you out of your own code (that role was already taken).
> Remember, you are not bound by the terms of use in the license that you
> issue. You have obligations as the license issuer, not as the recipient of
> the license.

Whe I develop software that makes use of other software, I *am* also the
recipient of a license.

Maybe I'd be much more benevolent towards the GPL if it wasn't for the ghastly
aggressive undertone of the FSF, and that they don't seem to put much effort
into showing how to circumvent certain "collateral damage" the paragraphs of
the GPL do.

As for example how to use a GPL'ed library in a basically commercial software
project.

It dawns to me now that it can be done by writing a GPL'ed wrapper around the
library that provides some socket- or pipe-based access to the library,
distributing it as a project of its own, and writing that commercial piece of
software, which will require the user to install that wrapped library - which
I'd provide a link to - and drive it via that socket or pipe (or
what-have-you).

I can't see, however, what the legal advantage for the author of the library,
the free software community as a whole or even the FSF would be to allow such a
thing, but disallow straightforward dynamic linkage of a separately available
library.

With the described concept, could I not actually even write a wrapper for the
socket interface, to give me again an interface much alike the original
libray's?

All it does, as it seems to me, is unnecessarily consume computing power and
development time.

> Imagine you spend years on an ingenious open source project that develops
> some clever and complex algorithms and you don't give it the protection that
> the GPL affords. You're about to add a cool front-end when someone else
> embeds your code, adds their own commercial front-end and patents the notion
> of using your code through a GUI front-end. Your years of altruistic
> development have now been effectively blocked by someone who knocked up a
> quick and dirty 'wrapper' to your code and you can't even develop your own
> front-end without paying them royalties for their genious idea of using your
> software through a front-end. Their patent lasts for the rest of your life.

What prevents someone to do the same with the described socket- or pipe-based
wrapper interface?

They might not be able to patent this particular way of using exactly your code,
but with a somewhat more general patent claim it would do the same harm.

The real fight in this scenario is against software patents, which has not much
to do with the GPL as it seems to me.


> Imagine you write an application to manipulate a mesh that you found with an
> open license which is not GPL or some other comparable license that has some
> tested legal foundation. You sell it at $5 a shot for a couple of years
> before a lawyer buys the company that released the mesh. He challenges and
> overturns the license and then sues you for loss of earnings claiming the
> mesh alone to be worth $500 a copy. You now have the choice of  A)
> negotiating to see if he'd be kind enough to take the $20K you'd earned and
> the rights to the software you wrote to get off your back or  B) hoping that
> someone who likes you dies leaving you $2M plus legal expenses in the next
> few days.

You mean a non-GPL license covering the mesh? Or my application? (I don't
release that, do I?)

Here, we're not talking about a benefit of the GPL as such, but of proven,
tested licenses. They do not need to be as virulent as the GPL to be as
effective, I guess.


> > Or, alternatively, it should suffice
> > to disallow distribution of the library along with the product - but even
> > dynamic linkage with a library that needs to be obtained separately is an
> > option ruled out by the GPL.
>
> I've watched the different clauses in the GPL build up over the years and
> the FSF has been careful to explain why each clause has had to be introduced
> to counter a new attack. I believe the clause you refer to was in response
> to organisations that burned two CD's and said that the library and code
> were therefore distributed 'separately', but you'd have to check back on the
> FSF site to be sure.

See my elaboration above: The problems you describe here do not only apply to
dynamically linked libraries, but also to socket- or otherwise-based "plug-ins"
or however you'd call them. So the scenario you describe needs to be tackled in
a different manner than by forbidding dynamic linkage while still allowing
socket-/pipe-based dynamic "quasi-linkage".


> I suspect it's also
> true that the less obsessive personalities on both sides of the argument
> tend to drop out as the bitterness deepens.

Which makes my point, that the FSF is (maybe has become) too radical.

> I don't believe that the FSF is just another evil empire waiting in the
> wings.

I don't believe in evil empires anyway. But I believe in the potential in man to
overdo things because they think the direction to go that was right in the past
will always be the right direction to go.

If you are in the wild woods west of the path you should be on, go east - but
only until you're back on the path. Then check your position again and decide
whether you need to follow the path north or south.

Post a reply to this message

Stephen <mcavoysAT@aolDOTcom> wrote:
> On Tue, 20 Jan 2009 07:15:48 EST, "Woody" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
>
> >
> >Forgive my ignorance, what program did you use to convert from 3ds. Is it
> >free/open source I currently only know of one shareware program, and I am not
> >particularly keen on using it since it goes against my hippie philosophy of
> >promoting open source.
>
> That is three of us voting for PoseRay, which can be run under Wine, if you are
> using Linux. There is no mention of a licence that I can find.
>
> http://mysite.verizon.net/sfg0000/
>
> And this old hippy wants to know what's wrong with "open source"?
> --
>
> Regards
>      Stephen

Nothing is wrong with open source. I am a big believer in open source. I get a
lot of slack from my friends for using say gimp versus photo shop.

Anybody who's taken an economic course probably knows of Adam Smith who said
that economic market effiency is determined by everyone acting in their own
self interest, Way back in the 1700s. I however don't like this dog eat dog
perspecitive on life.

Not alot of people agree with Adam Smith's way of thinking. The fact that the
communist model failed, the strongest evidence to date that what he said is
true. I believe that open source is the most successful model that condradicts
Adam Smith.
Mainly I believe open source is proof that his views are not universal, and it
is possible for market effiency to happend with people working as a group
rather than against each other. I.e the more successful open source projects
(such as povray and openoffice) are successful because there are multiple
people involved in them, as oppose to projects that last about 6 months an only
has a single person.

Please, I did not mean any offense. I consider myself a hippie of "the next
generation"

Post a reply to this message

"Woody" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> Anybody who's taken an economic course probably knows of Adam Smith who said
> that economic market effiency is determined by everyone acting in their own
> self interest, Way back in the 1700s. I however don't like this dog eat dog
> perspecitive on life.

I don't like this perspective either, but transitioning from it to a dog help
dog mentality is far from trivial. Too many aspects of life involved -
performing this transition only in a single area alone will create problems at
the interfaces.

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 23 Jan 2009 07:30:31 EST, "Woody" <nomail@nomail> wrote:

>
>Nothing is wrong with open source. I am a big believer in open source. I get a
>lot of slack from my friends for using say gimp versus photo shop.
>

I misunderstood what you meant, then. Phew!

>Anybody who's taken an economic course probably knows of Adam Smith who said
>that economic market effiency is determined by everyone acting in their own
>self interest, Way back in the 1700s. I however don't like this dog eat dog
>perspecitive on life.
>

Adam Smith, he was from Kirkcaldy. A Fifer, they are all strange there.

>Please, I did not mean any offense. 
>

I don't think that anyone thought that you meant offence and it opened up an
interesting discussion.

>I consider myself a hippie of "the next generation"

A New Age Traveler? :P
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

nemesis wrote:
> If I were you, though, I'd instead simply not link with libpng (is it
> really GPL rather than LGPL?).

I think libpng is essentially BSD-licensed.

Post a reply to this message

clipka wrote:
> But that's exactly the problem: With LGPL it wouldn't be that much of a
> hassle. But GPL says: If your product has *any* GPLed code in it, *all*
> the product software must be GPLed - every single byte of it. If you sell
> the thing, that is.

Incorrect. If your program links to GPL code, all of it has to be GPL or
compatible (you can make your program BSD-licensed and link it to GPL
libraries, for example).

Ubuntu has lots of GPL code. And also distributes stuff like unrar (source
available but you can't write the compression algorithm based on it),
povray (you know its terms; source avilable but definitely not
GPL-compatible), nvidia driver (binary only), etc.

Just because you distribute GPL software doesn't mean all the software in
your "product" has to be GPL.

If you use a Linux kernel and run your own proprietary car-controlling
application on it, you're fine. If you *modify* the kernel to... do
something to the car, you have to release those modifications. I'm not sure
where proprietary device drivers fall (I think Linux has a special
licensing exception for that).

If you compile your application with gcc, it doesn't have to be GPL, even
though gcc is GPL. gcc even necessarily links your application with some
GPL code (the standard C library!), but there is also a special exception
for that.

If your application links with a GPL library, your code has to be GPL or
compatible. If your application links with a LGPL library, your code can be
under any license, but you have to allow your users to modify that LGPL
library and relink your app with it. This can be done in three ways:
release your app's code, release your app's object files (compiled but not
linked yet), or link to the library dynamically.

Post a reply to this message

Nicolas Alvarez <nic### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Incorrect. If your program links to GPL code, all of it has to be GPL or
> compatible (you can make your program BSD-licensed and link it to GPL
> libraries, for example).

.... which, AIUI, means that I can combine code covered by any of the two
licenses - as long as I release the result under the GPL...

> Ubuntu has lots of GPL code. And also distributes stuff like unrar (source
> available but you can't write the compression algorithm based on it),
> povray (you know its terms; source avilable but definitely not
> GPL-compatible), nvidia driver (binary only), etc.

I bet the Ubuntu distribution qualifies as an "aggregate" in this respect, so
that's a whole different story.

Post a reply to this message

clipka wrote:
>> Ubuntu has lots of GPL code. And also distributes stuff like unrar
>> (source available but you can't write the compression algorithm based on
>> it), povray (you know its terms; source avilable but definitely not
>> GPL-compatible), nvidia driver (binary only), etc.
> 
> I bet the Ubuntu distribution qualifies as an "aggregate" in this respect,
> so that's a whole different story.

My point was that running a proprietary app on a GPL kernel can't possibly
be a violation.

Post a reply to this message