Re: Stallman's original intentions (was: Re: GMail is using

On Sun, 2006-03-12 at 12:39 +0200, Jonathan Ben Avraham wrote:
> Hi Nadav, Omer,
> To release a piece of software under a well-understood license, and then 
> suggest that there might be some philosophical problem when people in fact 
> make use of the software *exactly* according to the license is well... and 
> that's why I say that there is no philosophical case.

I believe that it is legitimate for a developer to say that he chose a
certain license (such as GPL) for software developed by him, and then to
retroactively wish for a different license, which addresses various
concerns of his.

This can happen due to any of the following excellent reasons:

1. Preference to choose an existing, widely-used and well-understood
license which does not do exacly what one wants - rather than write
one's own license which may contain loopholes, contradictions and
unexpected side-effects.  This is much like using a widely-used and
well-tested software application (which does not exactly fit one's
problem) rather than one's custom solution, which may be bug-ridden.

2. The need for compatibility with licenses of other software modules,
which are used by one's software.  GPLv3 is planned to be more liberal
in this regard than GPLv2.

3. The goal of the discussion is to develop a new license (such as
GPLv3) which does better job addressing one's concerns.

                                                    --- Omer

> If you had intended to restrict the use of the software to non-commercial 
> use, then there are plenty of well-written licenses around that do just 
> that, with no need for philosophical discussion or recollection of 
> Stallman stories. But that's not the GPL that we have today. The problem 
> (IMHO) is that people in our community try to back-read their desire for a 
> creative commons or other such modus into the legal text of the GPL and 
> that doesn't work. You can't make a text say what it doesn't say. You 
> just have to use a different text.
> 
>   - yba
> 
> 
> On Sun, 12 Mar 2006, Omer Zak wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, 2006-03-12 at 11:59 +0200, Nadav Har'El wrote:
> >
> >> At the risk of sounding a communist, I think that Stallman's original
> >> intention, and the intention of many free software authors, might have
> >> been the old adage
> >> 	"Each should give according to his abilities, and receive according
> >>          to his needs".
> >> By this, I mean the following philosophy is behind some people's use of the
> >> GPL: people who need software, should get it as much as they need without
> >> any limitations. But those who can provide software (namely, free software
> >> writers and software writers employed by corporations) are obliged to make
> >> the software they write available to the world.
> >> But as you say, this intention is not actually written in the GPL, whose
> >> rules are much more specific and much less "communist" :-)
> >
> > I think that a better way to gauge Stallman's original intentions is to
> > recall the printer driver story.  Stallman could not use a printer
> > because he needed to have its driver modified to work as he needed, he
> > could not modify the driver because he had no access to its source code,
> > and the printer's manufacturer was not willing to modify the printer
> > driver for him.
> >
> > If nominally Free Software is provided as a service, then in order to
> > preserve freedom in the printer driver sense, the service customers need
> > a way to customize the service according to their needs (for example, in
> > the GMail case, to have the spell checker use a custom dictionary).
> >
> > On the other hand, putting no limits to customizability of public
> > services would be problematic for companies, which use such services to
> > interact with their customers.  They do not want the customers to be
> > able to enter orders with prices modified downwards, or with lengthened
> > payment terms, for example (assuming that Free Software is used for
> > order entry).
> >                                            --- Omer
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