Re: Does the LGPL encourage sharing of code?

More of my verbosity.  Lots of good stuff from Roger taken out; this is 
the Reader's Digest Condensed version.


Roger Fujii wrote:

>Boris Buegling <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>GCC is not such a bad compiler and it is crucial for the Open Source community
>>that there is a free (both as in beer and as in speech)
>>
>
>well, only if you think GPL is 'free' speech.  Personally, anything that tries to
>exclude
>other valid speech is hardly 'free' IMHO. 
>

It doesn't try to exclude other free speech; it tries to prevent 
commercial plagiarism.  This is no different from me writing a dandy 
story and publishing it on the web and saying, "You can use this, and 
add to it and extend it, but you can never include my parts in anything 
you sell; and you must also allow any derivitives to be distributed 
under the same terms."

If I were to contribute to a GPLd product, I could not distribute the 
resulting binary without also allowing access to the source code under 
the GPL.  I can *still* use my own code in a proprietary product, even 
though I also licensed it under the GPL.  *NOTHING* is stopping me from 
using my own source code however I see fit; the GPL merely states, "You 
may never, ever, ever distribute GPLd code in a proprietary product."

To say the GPL steals is ignoring the fact that you *still* maintain 
copyright over your own code.  (This offer null and void if you assign 
your rights to the FSF.  But using the GPL does not automatically do 
that.  You have to fill out forms and everything.  Not that *I'd* do that.)

The GPL does one simple thing: It keeps GPLd code out of proprietary 
products.

>
>Anthony Taylor <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>!!!! WARNING !!!!
>>Long, boring message follows.
>>
>
>wan't THAT long :)
> 
>
Ahh.... but *BORING!*  And I don't get any better.

>
>>!!!! Warning !!!!
>>Roger Fujii wrote:
>>
>
>HEY! :)
>

Oops!  Sorry.  Now I'm a bit shame-faced.  Didn't mean it like that..... 
The warning was for the stuff *I* wrote.  Really.  I mean it.  :)
 

>>>I have yet to see an _economic_ arguement in favor of *GPL that has anything
>>>other than wishful thinking behind it.
>>>
>>My "rationale" is nothing more than this: The worth of a product *to an
>>economy* is not the price for which it can be sold, but the amount of
>>value it contributes.  Nothing more, nothing less.
>>
>
>Actually, you can't look at it like this.  A simple example (in real life)
>would be teachers (at least in the US).  Their value as a whole is high,
>but their "price" is low.  Or even more simply, air is important to all of
>us, but it has no (commerical) value.  While there is usually a relationship
>between import and value, there doesn't have to be.
>

Yes.  That's my point.  The economic arguments against the GPL have all 
been, "It doesn't let you make money off the code, because you can't use 
the code as a basis for a proprietary product."  This is invariably 
followed with, "Ergo, GPL will destroy the software economy."  This is a 
poor basis for an economic analysis, and ties economic contribution with 
selling price.

>>Consider: before Henry Ford inroduced assembly line manufacturing to the
>>auto industry, very few people could afford a car.  After, a very large
>>portion of the population could afford one.  Would you claim the
>>economic impact of the auto went down, or up?  After all, the profit
>>margin went down on the vehicle, and very few people could get rich off
>>of it.  But it *did* supply work for more people, though the pay wasn't
>>great.  And it created a support industry that is valued greater than
>>the auto industry itself.
>>
>
>Actually, this is a bad example for the following reasons:
>  GPL hampers economy of scale from working (you can charge less, if you sell more).
>  Software doesn't 'wear out'.  So the service required for software once it works is
>    not significant.
>  Using Ford's weren't exclusinary.  If you use a model T to haul goods, you don't
>have
>    to give it up.
>

And if I use a GPLd word processor, I still own the document.  Using 
GPLd software is not exclusionary.  You can use GPLd software on 
proprietary systems, and proprietary software on GPLd systems.  You just 
can't co-mingle the source code.

Secondly, the economies of scale talk about production efficiency.  It 
is cheaper per-unit to produce 1000 of a particular unit than to produce 
a single unit.  In the software world, it is exactly the same price to 
produce a single unit as it is a billion units.  So I don't see how the 
GPL affects the economy of scale.

As far as software services go: there is always work maintaining and 
extending systems, in systems integration, custom programming 
(especially for web services and databases), and systems support.  These 
industries are not tied to particular software; in fact, the more stable 
the software, the better it is.  And these industries are growing quickly.

What you are talking about is re-use of code in proprietary products. 
 (And in BSD/X11 code, too, which I admit is a major problem.  Perhaps a 
fatal one, for me.)  Since this is all covered by copyright law, let me 
put it in terms of copyright:

Using GPLd code in proprietary products is stealing, just like using 
copyrighted fiction in your own novels is stealing.  This is called 
"plagiarism."  It doesn't matter if the fiction is available on the web 
for free, or sold in the most exclusive quarterly, this is still 
plagiarism, and it is wrong.  

Anyway, the limited use rights given by the GPL are far more liberal 
than the use rights given by proprietary software vendors (that is, none 
at all).  Since we're talking about code freedom, defending the biggest 
offenders of code freedom while damning the second biggest offender 
seems skewed, somehow.

>>Supply and demand, and the law of diminishing returns, has nothing to do
>>with the ultimate value of an item. They only have to do with the amount
>>of money you can charge for an item, and that isn't what I'm talking about.
>>
>
>but unless you can make the mapping between your 'worth' and value, you are
>not talking anything concrete - you might as well talk about religion.
>

Just because you can't quantize a value doesn't mean it has no value.  And finding out how much people will pay is hardly adding to the value.  And you *can* quantize value; there are always people willing to say that the industry has lost billions due to the Melissa virus, or some twaddle such as that.

Can you map the value of cheap transportation to a direct monetary contribution to the economy?  No.  It's too complex.  Economics is not a well-developed science; it's more in the "fire/air/water/earth chemistry" stage.  There are a few obtuse cause-and-effects figured out, but there is no way to map true economic contributions of a product to the economy as a whole.

Basically, if software contributes to the economy in general, it will do 
so whether someone charges for it or not.  And if it adds average value 
V to the economy for one person, it makes sense that it will add 
approximately value N*V to the economy for N people using it (assuming 
those people all receive more-or-less the same value).  So the greater 
number of people using it, the greater value it will add to the economy.

The mapping is already done.  We have determined that software 
contributes to the economy, though  think we may overestimate that 
contribution.  We have further determined that having a store of 
available source code adds value to the economy.  (This was established 
when you said some companies would need the source code as a basis for 
their product.)  Does it not make sense that the more code that is 
available, and the more software that is available, the greater the 
contribution to the economy?  Or is there some limit of which I'm not aware?

>>And: economics isn't the only reason to do something.  Why should there
>>be an economic argument for the GPL, when the GPL isn't about economics?
>>
>
>It *IS* about economics, as it takes a stance on intellectual property.  
>The whole notion of property is a pretty fundamental economic principle.
>

And the core philosophy of the GPL is that ideas and knowledge are not 
property, and the greater the distribution of knowledge and ideas, the 
better off the world is.  The GPL attempts to remove GPLd code from the 
world of economics.

It is an imperfect solution to a very large problem: the ownership of 
thought, knowledge, and ideas.  The only reason to espouse the GPL is if 
you feel the hiding of knowledge for profit is a bad thing.  I 
personally believe the hiding of knowledge for profit is unethical for 
the same reasons Brett has said the GPL is unethical: because it hurts 
*way* more people than it helps.

Now: I know that copyright covers works, not ideas.  But most of the 
reasons to hide code are to hide the knowledge contained within. 
 Imagine if we'd had view-only access to all the code for all the 
software in the world; it would have made Microsoft's current position 
impossible, and would have removed the very core reason why RMS started 
the FSF and GNU project in the first place.

Science and technology have advanced so quickly because of the free flow 
of thoughts and ideas.  If we expect to advance in the software field, 
we must follow those ideals; otherwise, we are dooming ourselves to 
MS-Windows-level quality for the rest of our lives.  And as both NeXT 
and BSD have proved, we should be far beyond that already.

>>And how many other companies are out there doing the same thing?  Enron
>>just happened to get caught.  How many people try to get rich "playing
>>the stock market," instead of investing in companies?
>>
>
>It's an imperfect world.  There will always be people who break the rules.
>The point is to make it such that the rules are good for the majority that
>follows them.
>
Exactly!  I think we just disagree on which rules those are.... :)

>>As far as the GPL not honoring intellectual property... whose
>>intellectual property does it not honor?  Seems to me the people who
>>wish to take GPLd code and turn it into a proprietary product are not
>>honoring intellectual property.  The GPL does *not* steal code.  It
>>merely requires reciprocation.  If you don't want your code to be
>>available to everyone, don't use GPLd code.  There's no big stick here.
>>
>
>You don't seem to understand how viral it is.  Let's take the simple
>example where I call a LGPLed library, which, in turn (without my knowledge)
>calls another LGPLed FSF library.  All is hunky-dory for me, *UNTIL* FSF
>decides for it's political reasons to GPL the library.  That doesn't effect
>the LGPLed library too much, as it will cause an automatic change to GPL.
>But for me, I would face either having to GPL the program, or stop selling it.
>If you want reciprocation, look at MPL, which does it correctly, AFAIK.
>If I change what YOU wrote, I see no problem in giving you changes.  However,
>if I just USE (by calling) what you wrote, without using what you wrote, I
>have great problems with you making claims on something that you didn't write.
>

There is still the LGPLd version, which you originally compiled against 
(once removed).  You couldn't use the newer, GPLd version, but you could 
still use the older version.  You would still have every right to sell 
your software, distributed with the old LGPL library (and make the LGPL 
source code available, of course).

I haven't investigated the MPL beyond a cursory reading.  I will have to 
do a compare/contrast with the LGPL.
 

>>Isn't that what "intellectual property" is all about?  Isn't it about respecting the
>>wishes of the author?  So what's wrong with expecting people to respect
>>the GPL licensing agreement: Never include my code in a closed product?
>>
>
>This is *NOT* correct.  It is "Never USE this with any NON-GPLed product".  BSD
>people are affect too (if they don't want to change their license)
>

And I state this is a problem further down in my message.  I see this as 
the only real flaw in the GPL.  And it's a serious flaw.  A necessary 
flaw, of course; otherwise, someone would simply "wrap" the code in an 
X11 license, and then use *that* product as a basis for a commercial 
product.

But it is a serious flaw, nonetheless.  One which I think I cannot live 
with, for my own projects, if I start another new one.  (It won't stop 
me from contributing to GPLd projects, though.)

>>Why is it all right for a company to do this, but not an individual?
>>
>
>I don't know of any modern license that makes the intellectual claim that the GPL
>does.
>Besides, I never claimed it was all right for them to do it either.
>

If you contribute to GPLd code, and you distrubute that finished 
product, the only way you can avoid including the GPL in a proprietary 
product is by also licensing your code under the GPL.  This does *not* 
remove your ownership of the code you wrote; you may use that code in 
any way you see fit.  But to distribute it co-mingled with GPLd code, 
you must also license it under the GPL.  Let me restate: The GPL does 
*not* exert ownership of your code.  The GPL dictates the terms under 
which GPLd code may be distributed, and that is: without proprietary code.

This seems perfectly equitable to me.

Now, in the case of the BSD/X11 licenses, this is *not* symmetric. 
 There is a logical reason for the asymmetry, as stated above.  But it 
is definitely not equitable.

>>I merely pointed out that GCC intends primarily to
>>be portable.  Since that is also an important aspect of a compiler, I
>>argued that effiency isn't everything.
>>
>
>of course, if you want portability, use java :-)
>

Damned straight.  :)

>>There was a time when Linus said it would never run on anything
>>but x86.  No, NetBSD's superiority comes from better, more-modular code.
>>
>
>and maybe its license? :)
> 
>

Okay, okay!  Its license, too.  :)

Honestly, I do think the BSD is a more-honorable license.  The GPL is 
rather cynical at its core.  Granted, I too am cynical, but I appreciate 
the purer nature of the BSD/X11 licenses.

>>I don't claim the GPL is better than the X11 or BSD license; it has
>>different goals.  Brett claims those goals are to destroy the software
>>industry;
>>
>
>But this is a TRUE statement.  It is/was a stated goal of the GPL to
>eliminate propriatary software. 
>

We are saying two different things.  I say "software industry;" you say 
"proprietary software."   GPL was written to keep code out of 
proprietary products because the author of the GPL believes proprietary 
software ("keeping secrets") is morally wrong.  He also doesn't believe 
the end of proprietary software will be the end of the software industry.

Me, I think there's no way we can tell.  I do think keeping knowledge 
and ideas secret for a profit motive is wrong.  But I also think it's 
wrong to take without giving (this works against proprietary software 
using free code in all cases, and GPL using free X11/BSD code).

>
>Public domain has several problems.  One, you lose credit.  The second
>(and more importantly), it doesn't remove liability.
>
Ah!  I had not considered that.  So all code would have to be released 
anonymously.  Personally, I think that sucks; I think public domain 
works should be free of liability.  But that's just me.

>>The original claim was that it displaced better compilers because of its
>>license.  I claim it displaced more efficient compilers because it is
>>portable.  Really, that's all I was driving at.
>>
> 
>Not sure if I would give you that one, as most software companies don't do
>multi-architecture projects.   That fact GCC runs on an ARM chip wouldn't cause
>most people to use GCC.  Now, COST, on the other hand.....
>
>-r
>

Where is GCC used, mostly?  How many proprietary products are 
GCC-compiled?  I'd have to see more analysis before I'd commit one way 
or the other.  My *impression* is that most proprietary software is 
based either on MS products (for the Wintel world) or on the compilers 
of the manufacturers (from the Big Iron and Small Iron worlds).  But, I 
could be completely wrong on that.

Anyway, this is *so* way OT.  Not that I mind; I am invigorated by these 
sorts of discussions.  Not that I think we will change each other's 
minds, but we will at least come away with a better understanding of the 
other's side.  And that is an important goal.

                    - Tony the long-winded