Re: [QD-Filosofia] Toward true open source

Outro comentário do mesmo autor.

http://www.newsforge.com/comments.pl?sid=39276&cid=95224

[]s, gandhi

Alexandre Pesserl wrote:

> Mais lenha na fogueira das licenças...
>
> []s
>
> Alexandre
>
> ----
>
> http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/07/15/163208
>
>
> <http://www.newsforge.com/search.pl?topic=150>
>
>
>      *Toward true open source
>      <http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/07/15/163208>*
>
>
>          Friday July 16, 2004 (12:00 PM GMT)
>
> By: Tom Walker <mailto:tomwalker-XZoyATsUNX5Wk0Htik3J/[email protected]>
>
> In the GNU General Public License 
> <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt> (GPL), Richard Stallman was 
> working toward a noble purpose. Software should be free-as-in-freedom, 
> and every user should be able to obtain the source code for the 
> software they use. Unfortunately, that isn't the way things have 
> turned out. The GPL has come to resemble digital rights management 
> (DRM) more than it resembles freedom. Does that sound a little 
> extreme? I'll explain.
>
> When
>
> I buy music protected by DRM, the seller intends is to stop me from 
> making copies of songs. When I use software that is licensed under the 
> GPL, the developer intends to stop me from making the software 
> "closed," or non-free. The intentions obviously aren't even slightly 
> similar, but the consequences are. Both the GPL and DRM want to 
> restrict my use, and re-use, of the music or source code that I 
> obtain. Neither does what it was designed to do. Both have 
> unintentional harmful effects.
>
> *The GPL has unintentional harmful effects*
>
>    I have been discussing the effects of preventing people from
>    copying, changing, and building on a program. I have not specified
>    how this obstruction is carried out, because that doesn't affect the
>    conclusion. Whether it is done by copy protection, or copyright, or
>    licenses, or encryption, or ROM cards, or hardware serial numbers,
>    if it succeeds in preventing use, it does harm. -- Richard Stallman
>    <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html>
>
> In trying to stop you from copying, DRM introduces many unintentional 
> harmful effects <http://ukcdr.org/issues/cd/quick/>. CDs with 
> copy-protection typically won't play on PCs, and may even refuse to 
> play on some modern car stereo systems. Whenever you introduce 
> restrictions, there are side effects -- and so it is with the GPL.
>
> The first side effect of the GPL comes from its legal complexity. The 
> GPL scares business users and their legal departments, to the extent 
> that many have a policy that boils down to "no GPLed software may be 
> used anywhere in this company." They are unsure of the conditions 
> under which they might be obligated to re-license their own 
> proprietary source code under the GPL, and for the sake of competition 
> they want to stay as far away from those conditions as they can.
>
> The main harmful effect of the GPL is the "gated community" it 
> creates. When you release your source code under the GPL, the only 
> people who can re-use it are those who also license their software 
> under the GPL. GPL users are quick to complain when other licenses are 
> "incompatible" with the GPL, but the GPL itself is incompatible with 
> just about everything.
>
> If I'm part of the GPL community, I can re-use code from any other 
> piece of GPLed software, no matter how small and insignificant that 
> piece of code might be. It might not be a large part of my program: I 
> might, for example, be taking a compression routine to add to my new 
> open source Web browser. Then I just add credit to the documentation.
>
>    The Readline library implements input editing and history for
>    interactive programs, and that's a facility not generally available
>    elsewhere. Releasing it under the GPL and limiting its use to free
>    programs gives our community a real boost. At least one application
>    program is free software today specifically because that was
>    necessary for using Readline. -- Richard Stallman
>    <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html>
>
> What if my Web browser is proprietary? I'll have to write my own 
> compression routine (or hack around the restriction in some odd way, 
> like making the compression routine into a stand-alone GPLed program 
> and then calling it from my proprietary program), or make my program 
> free software. "Well, that's good," you say, pointing at the Stallman 
> quote above. Ah, but what if I want to release my program under the 
> BSD license, or some other alternative open source license? Then I'm 
> screwed. I can't use your GPLed compression routine, unless I try 
> behave in the same way as the proprietary software maker might -- but 
> that would be frowned upon.
>
> The rest of the open source community is standing at the gates of free 
> software, denied access to the masses of GPLed source code within. Is 
> this free-as-in-freedom?
>
> *The GPL doesn't do what it was designed to do*
>
>    In the GNU project, our aim is to give all users the freedom to
>    redistribute and change GNU software. If middlemen could strip off
>    the freedom, we might have many users, but those users would not
>    have freedom. So instead of putting GNU software in the public
>    domain, we 'copyleft' it. Copyleft says that anyone who
>    redistributes the software, with or without changes, must pass along
>    the freedom to further copy and change it. Copyleft guarantees that
>    every user has freedom. -- Richard Stallman
>    <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html#WhatIsCopyleft>
>
> DRM doesn't really stop me from making copies of my music: as long as 
> people want to share their music, they will find ways to circumvent 
> DRM measures. Likewise with the GPL. You can't force some people to 
> keep their software free: they want it to be proprietary, and they 
> will circumvent the license.
>
> Earlier, I alluded to "hacking" the GPL's restrictions. Here's an 
> example. Say someone has produced a program under the GPL that takes a 
> document from any version of Microsoft Word as input, formats it as 
> HTML, and spits it out again. I want this functionality in my 
> proprietary word processor, Wordwalker 2004. I have two choices: write 
> my own version, or release Wordwalker as free software under the GPL. 
> Right? Wrong. I can just include the GPLed converter program (with its 
> source code) on the distribution media with my proprietary software 
> (the GPL specifically allows this). I can run it silently as a 
> subprocess (this is a grey area, but is generally believed to be 
> allowed by the language of the GPL), sending it the Word document 
> files and using its output in my proprietary program.
>
> This is not what Stallman intended. I would have made use of advances 
> made by free software, and yet my users would not ever get to see my 
> own source code. If they want support, they've still got to come to me 
> -- I could even stop them from hiring someone else to make changes to 
> the source of the document conversion component, by making my 
> proprietary routines reject any version of it that has the wrong 
> checksum.
>
> Want more? Let's look at the KDE/QT situation. KDE source code is 
> released under the GPL, but it is linked to Trolltech's cross-platform 
> QT library. GPLed versions of QT are available for X11, Macintosh, and 
> embedded platforms -- but if you want a Windows version, that'll be 
> $1,550, please <http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/pricing.html>. 
> It's another GPL exploit: GPLed code links to software that is 
> proprietary on one platform, and suddenly that code isn't looking so 
> free any more.
>
> There is no way the GPL can stop this sort of thing from happening, 
> any more than it can stop me from writing a free software program that 
> relies on the proprietary Windows API. But the worst is yet to come.
>
> More and more often, the applications we use aren't on our desktop -- 
> they're on someone else's server. Say I'm running a Web site called 
> Tell Your Fortune. All my site does when you visit it is run a GPLed 
> version of the fortune 
> <http://www.die.net/doc/linux/man/man6/fortune.6.html> program that I 
> modified to listen on port 80 and respond to HTTP requests. Can you 
> get the source to my modified fortune? No. I haven't redistributed it 
> in binary form, so you have no rights to the source.
>
> This could be happening all over the Web. You could be relying on 
> heavily modified versions of GPLed software every day: at Google, at 
> Amazon, at eBay -- you have no real way of knowing. You are a user of 
> the software, but you have no access to the source code.
>
> *You can't stop undesired usage, so leave it open*
>
> If you can't stop people from sharing your copy-protected CD, then why 
> inconvenience your normal customers? We have seen how crafty 
> proprietary users can make use of GPLed code without distributing 
> their changes, and we've seen how the GPL stops others in the open 
> source community from re-using your code. Why restrict your friends 
> for the sake of non-working measures against your enemies?
>
> This is where BSD and MIT-style licenses come in. These are licenses 
> that, basically, say you are completely free to re-use the source code 
> anywhere you like, even in proprietary software, as long as you give 
> credit to the original authors.
>
> Just imagine not having to worry about licenses any more. If I want to 
> take a compression routine from BSD-licensed code, I can just use it, 
> and add credit to my documentation.
>
> You might notice the parallel with how people in the GPL community can 
> re-use GPLed code: put simply, BSD-style licenses knock down the 
> community's gates and let everyone use open source code for whatever 
> they like. Here's the ultimate test of freedom: can I use GPLed code 
> in my BSD-licensed program? Can I use BSD-licensed code in my GPLed 
> program? (No I can't, and yes I can).
>
> If you really want to share your code instead of jealously guarding 
> it, use BSD-style licensing. If you care about receiving credit in 
> other people's documentation, then you could even put your source code 
> in the public domain! Imagine an open source community where software 
> can be re-used like SQLite's public domain database code:
>
>    Anyone is free to copy, modify, publish, use, compile, sell, or
>    distribute the original... code, either in source code form or as a
>    compiled binary, for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and
>    by any means. -- SQLite copyright 
> <http://www.sqlite.org/copyright.html>
>
> That's true freedom, and that's true open source.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Quilombodigital-filosofia mailing list
> Quilombodigital-filosofia-lWjjnNBg0S7cOli+L/M/[email protected]
> http://listas.quilombodigital.org/mailman/listinfo/quilombodigital-filosofia 
>



-- 
Ricardo Andere de Mello
Presidente do Quilombo Digital
55 11 3271-7928 

_______________________________________________
Quilombodigital-filosofia mailing list
Quilombodigital-filosofia-lWjjnNBg0S7cOli+L/M/[email protected]
http://listas.quilombodigital.org/mailman/listinfo/quilombodigital-filosofia