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

On Sun, 12 Mar 2006, Omer Zak wrote:

> 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.

I agree, certainly legitimate, but also silly, considering how well known 
the text of the GPL is (or should have been in this case).

  - yba

>
> 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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