Re: Economics and the GPL

On Fri, 7 Jun 2002, Deven T. Corzine wrote:
[...]
> The only problem with this idea is that the GPL isn't really "free market"
> because it coerces the programmer into applying the GPL to other code that
> might not have been licensed that way given a choice.  If the programmer
> loses to right to choose the license on their own code, the market can
> hardly be said to be "free".

I really resent this abuse of 'coerce' by *GPL opponents. It's akin to
libel. I apologize to Deven because the following email is not
specifically about things he said (hence the reply to just the list).
It's just that this 'coerce' is sort of the last straw that broke the
camel's back.

In the US you can receive hundreds of 'free' credit card offers per year
(I kid you not). You may even receive checks of up to $50 in the mail.
All you have to do is sign a piece of paper and return it in a postage
paid envolppe, or cash the check at your local bank. Isn't it great?

Well, if you do either then don't come whining after that you are locked
into outrageous interest rates or that you have to pay $100 per month
for a minimum of one year for a service you don't care about. You agreed
to a contract when you returned the signed piece of paper or cashed the
check at your local bank. It is not because the offer was 'free' that
you are exempt from reading the contract you are getting into or that
you don't have to fulfill your part of the contract.

Exactly same is true of software source.

Before you start using (as in modifying it and incorporating it in your
development) or distributing software, *read* the license agreement
carefully.

It's the same thing for all contracts: If you don't agree to the terms
of the contract / license beforehand then *do not* use the service /
product / software. *Never* start using the service / product / software
first and refuse or complain about the contract terms you did not read
after!

Nobody coerces you to apply the *GPL to your code. If you made the
*choice* to use some piece of software that is under the *GPL then it
was with the understanding and agreement to the consequences. It means
you considered the temrs fair or at least still to your benefit.

If not then you should have used some other piece of software under a
different license or you should have redevelopped it yourself.

And don't complain either that you don't have the resources to redevelop
that peiece of software. What would you have done if it had not existed
in the first place? If your whole project relied on the existance of
this piece of *GPL code then you should have read the *GPL first anyway.



Now, some people have complained that the change of the license from X11
to LGPL has somehow 'stolen' their code. This is simply not true!

First, your code is still available under the X11 license, just get the
CVS of the 2002/02/28.

Second, before contributing to an X11 Wine you should have read the
license! By contributing to the X11 Wine you gave your permission for
your code to be used in any LGPL project. Guess what! That's by design.
Anyone could have forked Wine and started an LGPL branch at any time. So
if you contributed with the expectation that the license of the 'main'
branch would never/could not be changed you were wrong. Neither the X11
or the 2-clause BSD license offers any such garantee.

Third, nobody is 'forced' to contribute to the LGPL branch. Proof:
people who did not want to do so started ReWind. So you are extremely
lucky, the X11 branch is still 'alive':  it's just called ReWind. If you
absolutely want to work on an X11 project then work directly on ReWind.
And if Wine has more activity than ReWind, though luck. Each volunteer
is free to choose which branch they want to contribute to.


The same goes for people who developped software for Windows and now
want to port them to Unix. They should have used portable APIs from the
start. If they did not then it means that:
 * they did not intend to ever port to Unix. Thus they had no
expectations about Wine and no right to complain.
 * they expected to port it using a proprietary product and thus again
have no right to complain. (would they complain if one of these
companies went out of business?)
 * they expected Wine to remain X11 and use it once mature a couple
years down the road. Again they should have read the license first and
realized that nothing garanteed that the Wine development would continue
under the X11 license. that was a gamble and they lost so the only ones
they can blame for this is (as for all gambles) themselves. If they find
the new license inacceptable they can still pick Wine from the
2002/02/28 or ReWind so they are not 'coerced' into anything.

So generally, anyone who is contributing or depending on software which
is under the X11 or 2-clause BSD license is at the risk of seeing the
main branch of development move to another license LGPL, GPL, or
proprietary.

If you don't like that then create a fork to the 3-clause BSD license or
some other suitable license and either try to convince the majority of
contributors to move to your fork, or contribute so much to that branch
that it become ipso-facto the branch where stuff happens.


On a quite different subject, Deven is also concerned that *GPL software
is going to put him out of a job because 'it's the "free beer"  aspect
that keeps people coming back for more'.

Well, guess what, X11 and *BSD software too is free as in 'free beer'.

Following the usual 'economic' reasoning, if proprietary versions of an
X11 and *BSD project thrive, it's because they offer many compelling
proprietary features that are missing in the open-source project.
Another way to say this is that the open-source version is so behind the
times that nobody wants to use it. Is that a win for the X11 and *BSD
licenses? I would rather call it a farce.

And if proprietary versions prosper while having no big advantage over
the X11/*BSD version, then it means that these companies must be relying
on something else to live... like better packaging, better marketing or
services. All of which work just as well with *GPL projects.

So this is not going to calm Deven's fears but, in my view, if *GPL
software kills the industry, then so will X11 and *BSD software.


> Sure, the programmer can avoid using any GPL code at all, but that puts him
> at a disadvantage against a competitor who can draw on that code.

If your competitor can take advantage of that GPL code then why can't
you?
 * because of the way your software is architectured? Would you complain
that your competitor's architecture makes it easy for them to handle
double-byte characters but yours does not? Of course not. Then you have
only yourself to blame if you cannot use the GPL code.
 * because your product is targetted to a platform that requires you to
both sign NDAs and make modifications to the GPL code (the mythical
PS2)? Well, then so is your competitor and thus they cannot use the GPL
code either. Or it means they are not targetting that platform and thus
are not your competitor, at least for this platform!
 * because of philosophical reasons? Well, you are not going to complain
about that, are you?

So if you *cannot* use GPL code while your competitors can it's only
because of self imposed restrictions not by the GPL's fault.



--
Francois Gouget         [email protected]        http://fgouget.free.fr/
The nice thing about meditation is that it makes doing nothing quite respectable
                                  -- Paul Dean