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A Year of GPLv3
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Tue Jul 01, 2008 04:02 PM
from the that's-one-better-than-two-right dept.
from the that's-one-better-than-two-right dept.
javipas writes "GPLv3 and LGPLv3 were released one year ago, on 29 June 2007. Palamida, who tracks Open Source projects, has made a study of the current situation of these licenses along with AGPLv3, which was released later, in November. The number of projects that have made the transition to these licenses has grown over the last months, and it seems than AGPLv3 has captured a great interest lately. Black Duck Software, a company that tracks Open Source projects too, has made its own study with similar results, and although GPLv3 and its variants have a good adoption rate, the interviews published on the Palamida site (Stallman, Chris Di Bona) show that the acceptance of GPLv3 has still a long way to walk."
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Anyone see much of a difference? (Score:4, Insightful)
There's two big news - the anti-tivoization and anti-patent clause. The rest are niceties like better internationalization, compatibility with other licenses etc.
Now, the anti-tivoization clause is rather weak as long as the kernel doesn't go GPLv3. It protects your work from being used in a tivo, but not creating a tivo. If the kernel went GPLv3 on the other hand, you'd have a big problem making any kind of tivo as any code running on top could be modified using a modified kernel. The scares of the "appliance PC-lookalike" seem quite overrated at this point, there's a few special appliance boxes but no big whoop. The anti-patent clause... well, I'm still waiting for anyone with serious patent claims to actually claim them. Didn't Microsoft have 200 or so? Or was that just a bunch of hot air. As long as it's nothing but hot air and FUD, it doesn't seem to change much at all.
Maybe RMS still is a visionary but I think in this case he's seen further ahead in the crystal ball than where we are. I still haven't seen any compelling cases where the GPLv3 is needed.
Re: (Score:2)
I see one big difference: the GPL is a distribution license, but the AGPL is a EULA. The best I can say for it is that it may not be enforceable [honeypot.net].
Re: (Score:2)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I see one big difference: the GPL is a distribution license, but the AGPL is a EULA.
No, AGPL is still purely a grant of rights that are normally reserved to the copyright holder.
The best I can say for it is that it may not be enforceable [honeypot.net].
Very funny. Even if you somehow could get a judge to agree with that, you still haven't managed to keep your modifications to yourself.
If you really wanted to keep the source away from the users, I'd think you'd want to look into mechanisms that don't rely on making changes to the software. Something like putting it behind an apache instance with mod_rewrite to redirect the download URL to an error page, or an inte
Re:Anyone see much of a difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, yeah. He always does. That's why he's a visionary.
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I believe you mean freedom # -1 (Score:5, Insightful)
...the tivo makers would switch to using BSD, or something else with a license that doesn't infringe freedom 2 (freedom to redistribute).
The GPL doesn't inhibit freedom 2 at all, unless you wish to use it to remove freedoms 0-n from everyone else.
What you're thinking about is freedom -1: The freedom to take someone else's work for free, modify it, and put onerous restrictions on everyone further along the distribution change. Or more succinctly put: the freedom to fuck your neighbour. Which yes, the GPL v2 tries to prevent, and the GPL v3 prevents more successfully.
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Re: (Score:2)
What you're thinking about is freedom -1: The freedom to take someone else's work for free, modify it, and put onerous restrictions on everyone further along the distribution change.
But see, that not what that section does. It restricts what hardware you may distribute the software on. The particular (mis)features of the hardware do not put "onerous restrictions" on the people buying it, they just make it somewhat less useful than it could be (but clearly still more useful than not having it at all, since people are willing to actually buy it).
Re:I believe you mean freedom # -1 (Score:4, Informative)
No it doesn't, it prevents you from creating hardware which will only run approved binaries and distributing approved free software binaries for it.
Being able to improve the software doesn't mean shit if you can't run your improved version in a useful way.
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Re:I believe you mean freedom # -1 (Score:5, Insightful)
Not quite. You can even do that, if you also give the user the ability to "approve" binaries himself.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a lie.
The truth is that you can distribute GPL 3 code on any hardware you want, even hardware that refuses to run unsigned binaries, and including the fucking TiVo! All you have to do is give the user the key so that he can sign modified binaries himself and run them.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Putting it in bold doesn't make it so.
There is no practical difference between "you may not distribute this on hardware with misfeature X" and "you may only distribute this on hardware with misfeature X if you make make misfeature X completely ineffective".
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How does a derivative work hurt me? (Score:2, Insightful)
...freedom -1: The freedom to take someone else's work for free, modify it, and put onerous restrictions on everyone further along the distribution change. Or more succinctly put: the freedom to fuck your neighbour. Which yes, the GPL v2 tries to prevent, and the GPL v3 prevents more successfully.
How is this "fucking your neighbor"? So we write some code, and now a cool new consumer product appears somewhere that I can buy (or not) if I want. I have one more option in my life, which means I am slightly better off than I was before and it COST ME NOTHING.
This is what free software is all about. It's not about trying to stop people from making money, it's about making cool stuff available so that people can have better lives.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Because by locking down the device, Tivo/Motorola/Nokia/whoever, keeps me from having a *better* device that I, or more likely, someone else, creates based on the Tivo starting point. It should also be kep in mind that the GPL was never, in its creators' minds, about sharing code, or giving things away, it was about making sure that everybody can do as the please* with the software, the rest of this, is just incidental.
*Pre counter rebuttal, locking down software so that it is unmodifiable and then giving
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What you're thinking about is freedom -1: The freedom to take someone else's work for free, modify it, and put onerous restrictions on everyone further along the distribution change.
They have not put any restrictions on the code or the software. Tivo puts a restriction on the hardware. The hardware is beyond the scope of a software license agreement. You can download the code off their website.
I've seen an effect (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I want to share the code, not enforce political views I disagree with.
No matter how good you think the intentions you have are. If *insert corporation here* wants your code they can take it and use it to create restrictions for the user. The GPLv3 allows the user to take away those and use it on the product. Hardly enforcing political views. Basically, the GPL is to allow the most freedom for end users and make sure that the end users can trust you. If say Linus was hired by MS and decided to close down all of Linux sites, you could still get the kernel. If MS wanted to m
GPL sharing vs. BSD sharing (Score:2, Insightful)
I want to share the code, not enforce political views I disagree with.
OK, I can understand wanting to share code but with a BSD style license the people you're sharing your code with are under no obligation to keep sharing it. Some people think that code that is shared should stay shared otherwise the point of sharing is largely defeated. If you feel that way then a GPL license is what you need. It's not about politics - it's just about choosing a license that fits your view of what 'shared code' should mean.
Re:GPL sharing vs. BSD sharing (Score:5, Interesting)
OK, I can understand wanting to share code but with a BSD style license the people you're sharing your code with are under no obligation to keep sharing it.
And what exactly is wrong with that? Some people want to share software with everyone, even if they are douchebags. So some company doesn't share it, but the original code is still out there. If people prefer the rebranded version and the original dies a slow death, then so what? It's not like people are writing open source for their own ego are they?
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Political Views (Score:3, Insightful)
If the GPLv3 prevents products like Tivo from appearing, then it's a Bad Thing.
People really need to realize that someone else making money doesn't harm them. This "I want everyone else to suffer" pseudo-socialism is NOT making the world a better place, just a slightly
Re:Political Views (Score:5, Insightful)
giving all of us the free choice to buy one or not.
And when I donate source code I donate it with the intention that any end user be allowed to modify and run it, wherever or on whatever they recieved that code from. If Tivo wants to prevent the end user from doing that they have the free choice to not use my code.
If the GPLv3 prevents products like Tivo from appearing, then it's a Bad Thing.
If Tivo's abuse of the intent of GPL prevents products _better_ than Tivo from appearing, I'd say that's a Bad Thing. And finding examples where customers would have a better product if they could load modified software on their Tivo ain't exactly hard.
People really need to realize that someone else making money doesn't harm them.
Most Free software proponents have no problem with someone else making money. They do, however, have a problem with someone else harming others.
pseudo-socialism is NOT making the world a better place, just a slightly more egalitarian one
Free software is the epitome of free market economics; it's the enforcement of absolute competition.
Considering that proprietary software builds upon state protected monopoly rights and, as is becoming quite obvious, has more in common with former soviet style state factories (you _will_ use Vista and you _will_ like it; no alternate providers here), I'd say comments about socialism are weak.
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Re:Political Views (Score:5, Interesting)
Free software is the epitome of free market economics; it's the enforcement of absolute competition ... proprietary software builds upon state protected monopoly rights and, as is becoming quite obvious, has more in common with former soviet style state factories (you _will_ use Vista and you _will_ like it; no alternate providers here), I'd say comments about socialism are weak.
Er, no. The GPL builds upon state protected monopoly rights as well. Otherwise, how could it be enforced?
If your license is anything other than "public domain" then you are, indeed, forcing your wishes upon others backed by the power of the State.
Source is not truly "free" unless everyone is FREE to disregard your wishes completely. Setting rules they must abide by, which the GPL does, makes it NOT free.
An accurate name for source licensed under GPL and similar licenses would be "Communal" -- or "Community" -- or perhaps "Cooperative" if you want to avoid the philosophically accurate association with "Communism". "Free", however, is not. Only public domain source does not rely on the coercive power of the State, and therefore only public domain source can be claimed with intellectual honesty to truly be "free".
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Er, no. The GPL builds upon state protected monopoly rights as well. Otherwise, how could it be enforced?
By market forces. The goal is that the market moves to the point where it will not accept a closed-source product, just as today the automobile market will not accept cars with their hoods welded shut. At that point there is no need for the GPL.
An accurate name for source licensed under GPL and similar licenses would be "Communal" -- or "Community" -- or perhaps "Cooperative" if you want to avoid the philosophically accurate association with "Communism". "Free", however, is not.
It all depends on your definition of "Free." RMS's "Free" applies to the liberty of the source code, not the liberty of the developer. RMS's "Free" means that the source can never be locked up in a proprietary prison. Your version of free seems to allow that. Y
Re:I've seen an effect (Score:5, Insightful)
Good for you. I personally have written a lot of little utilities (web-applications and other bullshit) which I released in public domain.
I never understood the whole point of BSD, ever. If you want to share the code, so much so that whether I am not using it at all or using it to earn millions is something you don't care, then why are you licensing it?
Not trolling... seriously I am asking.
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Re:I've seen an effect (Score:5, Interesting)
> If you want to share the code, then why are you licensing it?
Because of the liability disclaimer. Public domain does not provide you with any liability protection in the US, and while I have not heard of anyone being sued for his public domain programs, it could happen, and I certainly don't want to be the first.
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Re:I've seen an effect (Score:4, Informative)
I'd guess that the primary effect is notification of whose code it is, since the copyright notice has to be included in the code or documentation. It probably also provides better protection against someone else claiming copyright on it, since in the public domain case there is no real copyright holder to sue them and make them stop.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I've seen an effect (Score:4, Informative)
Wow, two misconceptions packed into one sentence! Impressive!
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That's why it's often considered a legacy thing these days. But keeping in mind that licenses can be enforced in many more courts than just the USA, having more explicit protection is good even if it happens to be redundant in the USA, or even some specific states.
GPLv3 goes to the extreme of explicit protections, and I'm attracted to that concept, but it's easy to see how an excessively draconian license can be thrown out of court as unenforceable.
The fact is that GPLv2 cases have been won and the GPLv2 is
Re:I've seen an effect (Score:5, Informative)
You might want to look at what happened to the Java Model Railroad Interface project [sourceforge.net]. They used a permissive licence, only to find that someone else got a patent (of dubious validity, but nonetheless good enough to shake people down for money) which is claimed to cover their code, and then sued the original developers to stop distribution of the free version, while taking the code (as permitted by the licence) to sell a proprietary version themselves. You might want to choose a licence which gives you some defence against patent aggression, and GPLv3 is the latest and greatest in this respect.
But from other people's point of view, BSD licence (without the obnoxious advertising clause) is fine. They can still incorporate the code into GPLed programs if they wish, so there is no real licence fragmentation. Much better than one of the Yet Another Licences which end up fragmenting code into immiscible globs.
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GPLv2 and GPLv3 have the same spirit (Score:4, Insightful)
If you disagree with GPLv3, you also should disagree with GPLv2. The spirit is the same "dont let anyone take a free-software piece of code, modified it and ban you from modify his modification".
But GPLv2 had a bug. TIVO has found a way to do that. You can modify the code, but the hardware will reject your modification. Your right to "hack" with the source code has been abolished.
I dont see any reason why you should like GPLv2 and not GPLv3.
If you think there is nothing wrong with people taking your code and not letting you play with his code, you should have gone with a BSD-style license. Otherwise GPLv3 is an improvement of GPLv2.
I know that some people think that GPLv3 is bad (most notably Linux Torvalds) but after reading their objections I really dont understand their logic. It seems to me more of an ego fight against RMS than sensible disagreement.
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Palamida's numbers are meaningless (Score:5, Interesting)
Most GNU projects are hosted on Savannah, many are hosted on GNA!, and many are self-hosted. It would be more accurate to use a service such as Ohloh [ohloh.net] to track license adoption.
I believe you'd find, when these other data sources are included, the numbers are very different.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Always depends on what you are measuring. Just sticking with Sourceforge you would get reasonable numbers for tracking the shift of old projects between GPL2 and GPL3, as well as the percentage of new projects using each. If you are trying to track all OSS licences you would need a bigger sample size.
or later (Score:3, Insightful)
The actual number of projects using GPLv3 seems quite small, about 3000, and of course the most important GPL project, the Linux kernel, will never change for both legal reasons (not all committers are available), and Linus' ideological reasons.
Is the GPLv3 even meaningful if the kernel does not change licenses? My understanding is that it was primarily designed to undermine Tivo and DRM, which cannot be done in a meaningful if the kernel isn't part of the deal.
The article tries to conflate licenses issued with the "or later" clause as GPLv3; however, I think they misunderstand the legal implications of that clause. It means that the *user* may follow the terms and conditions of later licenses; however, the user does not gain any further rights in GPLv3 as I understand it, the author merely loses rights (to use the resulting binaries under locked down hardware). Since the *author* can still use the code under the GPLv2 and so can tivo, there is effectively no change until the license itself is changed, so GPLv2 with "or later" clauses don't matter.
GPLv3 seems dead on arrival. A number of FSF projects will use it, but I don't know of any FSF projects where the anti tivoization stuff would even have any effect, unless I don't understand the new restrictions properly.
Re:or later (Score:4, Interesting)
Is the GPLv3 even meaningful if the kernel does not change licenses?
The incompatibility of GPLv2 and GPLv3 makes it a little viral. I have a fairly small open source project, but we depend on three libraries that have gone with GPL3. I didn't really want to switch, but if I want to use the latest versions of those libraries, I have no choice.
I suspect that the number of projects going with GPLv3 would be greater if people met their legal obligations.
dan
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Re:promotional "studies" (Score:5, Funny)
(This post contains absolutely no sarcasm at all. Not even a very small amount. Nada. Zero. Look! Shiny!)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And profit is the only reason for a person to try and bolster their image? Ideologists never do?
Palamida has nothing to do with the FSF/GPL. (Score:5, Funny)
And they feel they have to do these "studies" for marketing reasons.
Palamida is a security company [palamida.com]. They're not the FSF, who, unlike MS do not have reams of cash to promote the GPL.
GPLv3 = IPv6 = Vista = "wfc";
Uh-huh. Uptake of the GPLv3 (as a percentage of GPLv2 instances) is far higher than Vista (compared to Windows installs) or IPV6 vs IPV4
Iditot.
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Re:Palamida has nothing to do with the FSF/GPL. (Score:5, Funny)
Iditot.
Well, you sure showed him.
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Re:Palamida has nothing to do with the FSF/GPL. (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe he's calling him a baby idiot.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
From the article you linked to, the reason that IPv6 had problems on Vista is because of issues with tunnelling over IPv4 and a lack of diagnostic tools and responses - if the entire world switched to IPv6 tomorrow, Vista would be fine.
That's not to mention that the article you cite is nearly a year old - and in my office and here at home we have Vista machines running IPv4 and IPv6 with no problems at all, which would suggest that it's no longer an issue.
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Re:Didn't even know it was "done"... (Score:5, Informative)
Uh, how about GCC and just about everything else maintained by GNU [fsf.org]? If you're using Linux, chances are you're using a lot of GPL 3 stuff without even knowing it. Stallman isn't entirely crazy for wanting it called GNU/Linux
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If I'm wrong about this--please correct me; I'd love to know that the GPLv3 doesn't prevent us from doing this! Our company uses x264 in commercial products and abides by the GPL. One thing we are considering is creating an FPGA-based addon card using a low-cost FPGA to accelerate the motion search. The code for this FPGA would be released as GPL also. However, there is no open source driver to load code onto the card--in fact, one requires the developer kit in order to modify the code on the FPGA. We would be selling these boards individually, without the developer kit (an extra $1000 purchase or similar). Therefore, its a closed platform... but we can't do anything about it. GPLv3 would, in my understanding, prevent us from distributing such boards. So we're sticking to GPLv2.
"...this requirement does not apply if neither you nor any third party retains the ability to install modified object code..."
Ask your legal department about whether that line might help, and also about whether "buy a dev kit" is valid as part of the installation information. And find out whether a dev kit is really required, or just a JTAG cable and appropriate compiler.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
"that means if you don't give the source code to all the people using the app you are infringing the license"
WHAT !!!
The GPL requires me to do something in order to benefit from the software... teh fascists !
But seriously, i think you will find you only have to offer the source code to people using the app, you dont have to force it on them.
All you need to do is put a notice about how to obtain the source code on the internet amongst all the other legal fine print the user has to agree to when signing up.
It
Re:Summary of Stallman Interview (Score:4, Informative)
Well, considering that Larry Lessig (EFF/Creative Commons/Change Congress) and the FSF have been advising Sen. Obama, I'd be willing to put money on the proposition that he's at least heard of "free software."
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I'm saying that Lessig and Obama are friends who used to teach together at the University of Chicago law school. I'm saying that Obama called Lessig up when he was going to run for president in order to discuss his internet/technology policy. I don't have the source for this, but I'm not making it up--hopefully my credibility on Slashdot is sufficient.
There has even been speculation by people outside the tech industry that Lessig may be tapped for the Supreme Court in an Obama administration. I've even come
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Whoops, I forgot to mention this, too.
That doesn't really change the fact that Obama has even extended the term "open source" to refer to a way he wants to implement democracy in the US. sources list, quick and dirty [google.com]
This implies that he (or an advisor) at least knows what open source is enough to extend the term's meaning in an analogous way.
Re:Stallman hasn't gone to hell yet? (Score:4, Insightful)
How about "free as in free to use something else that has another license, reimplement the functionality yourself or pay someone to reimplement it"? It's not like you are forced to use GPLed software. If you want to just benefit from free code without giving anything back to the community then you are a leech and get treated as such.
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