Re: Economics and the GPL

On Wed, 19 Jun 2002, Greg Alexander wrote:

> But this is irrelevent to its coercive qualities, only the terms of the
> contract.  As a side note, either way the contract is not perpetual, but
> is only for the term of the copyright of the work in question.  (of
> course, in today's legal climate...)

Okay, "nearly perpetual" then. :-)

The point is that the coercive qualities may seem more benign when you 
first get "hooked" on the GPL code, and become more onerous later...

> The BSDL has just as much force behind its restrictions as the GPL has, 
> it's just that those restrictions are different.

Ultimately, this is true.  In practice, the BSD license is less coercive 
because there's fewer means by which that ultimate force may be triggered.

> I thought I remembered this discussion initially being between two
> non-native English speakers who explicitly identified themselves as
> such.

Maybe, but that wasn't me. :-)

[re: connotations of "coerce"]
> Mentioning this contrast intention would have helped a lot to clear up
> exactly what you meant for a lot of us who simply misunderstood the
> significance of using a word with such strong meaning.

Perhaps, but wouldn't that mitigate the impact of the usage?

> I've said it myself: "people are stupid."  In this case I was being
> stupid and your intellectual use just went right over my head.

Maybe I was being too subtle? :-)

> I was quantifying coerciveness in the nature of the force used in the 
> coercing.  You are measuring it in the nature of the act which one is 
> being coerced to perform.

There's a valid viewpoint for each interpretation.  Mine was more directly 
applicable to the situation of a programmer wishing to use the code...

> So, I will clarify myself:  The nature of the force used in the coercion
> inherent in both the BSD and the GPL licenses is the same.  However, the
> GPL coerces the licensee into more acts than does the BSDL.

This pretty much sums it up.

> > It's true that most people have grown to view "coercion" as a dirty word,
> > much as Stallman encourages people to think of "proprietary" as one (using
> > his defition, of course).  However, I only used that word in response to
> > the claims about the "freedom" of the GPL which didn't acknowledge the
> > tradeoff between the freedoms granted by the GPL versus those denied by it.
> 
> "My child has detention after school," and "My child is being detained by 
> a government institution" are both essentially the same statement, but 
> they conjure up significantly different images.

Good example.  Of course, this is why politicians do spin control! :-)

> Unfortunately, the meaning you were attempting to convey was lost in the 
> artistic powerfulness of the words conveying it.

Sorry 'bout that.  Maybe it was inevitable, in trying to challenge some 
deep-seated beliefs...

> As far as proprietary, I agree, the meaning of proprietary is distorted
> in the IT industry, and it has become part of our jargon.  I doubt
> Stallman alone is responsible for this trend, but he certainly does
> nothing to correct the distortion.  The GPL is an excellent example of
> where the distorted IT jargon definition for the word and the general
> populace's definition diverge.  The problem in such situations is that
> everyone's right and everyone's wrong at the same time, and thus meaning
> is lost.  At any rate, use of "proprietary" is another discussion
> altogether, which is why I put it in a different post.

Stallman and those who've accepted his terminology seem to be the only ones 
out there pushing the distorted interpretation of "proprietary".  Who else 
is advocating that interpretation?

I don't think "proprietary" is inherently bad.  The GPL is proprietary, but 
well-intentioned.  Stallman demonizes "proprietary" when his real beef is 
obstensibly with closed software that's not available to its users to be 
studied and modified.  The true demon is closed software, not proprietary 
software, wouldn't you agree?

Of course, I suspect Stallman has an ulterior motive -- to destroy vendors 
of (other) proprietary software.  Bill Gates has a similar meglomania that 
drives Microsoft to try to destroy ITS proprietary competitors.  Microsoft 
and the GPL have two important things in common -- both are proprietary and 
both have monopolistic aspirations.  I'd rather not see either of them (or 
anyone else) in a monopoly position.

Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely...

Deven