What Comes After Open Source? Bruce Perens Is Working On It (theregister.com) 89
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Bruce Perens, one of the founders of the Open Source movement, is ready for what comes next: the Post-Open Source movement. "I've written papers about it, and I've tried to put together a prototype license," Perens explains in an interview with The Register. "Obviously, I need help from a lawyer. And then the next step is to go for grant money." Perens says there are several pressing problems that the open source community needs to address. "First of all, our licenses aren't working anymore," he said. "We've had enough time that businesses have found all of the loopholes and thus we need to do something new. The GPL is not acting the way the GPL should have done when one-third of all paid-for Linux systems are sold with a GPL circumvention. That's RHEL." RHEL stands for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which in June, under IBM's ownership, stopped making its source code available as required under the GPL. Perens recently returned from a trip to China, where he was the keynote speaker at the Bench 2023 conference. In anticipation of his conversation with El Reg, he wrote up some thoughts on his visit and on the state of the open source software community. One of the matters that came to mind was Red Hat.
"They aren't really Red Hat any longer, they're IBM," Perens writes in the note he shared with The Register. "And of course they stopped distributing CentOS, and for a long time they've done something that I feel violates the GPL, and my defamation case was about another company doing the exact same thing: They tell you that if you are a RHEL customer, you can't disclose the GPL source for security patches that RHEL makes, because they won't allow you to be a customer any longer. IBM employees assert that they are still feeding patches to the upstream open source project, but of course they aren't required to do so. This has gone on for a long time, and only the fact that Red Hat made a public distribution of CentOS (essentially an unbranded version of RHEL) made it tolerable. Now IBM isn't doing that any longer. So I feel that IBM has gotten everything it wants from the open source developer community now, and we've received something of a middle finger from them. Obviously CentOS was important to companies as well, and they are running for the wings in adopting Rocky Linux. I could wish they went to a Debian derivative, but OK. But we have a number of straws on the Open Source camel's back. Will one break it?"
Another straw burdening the Open Source camel, Perens writes, "is that Open Source has completely failed to serve the common person. For the most part, if they use us at all they do so through a proprietary software company's systems, like Apple iOS or Google Android, both of which use Open Source for infrastructure but the apps are mostly proprietary. The common person doesn't know about Open Source, they don't know about the freedoms we promote which are increasingly in their interest. Indeed, Open Source is used today to surveil and even oppress them." Free Software, Perens explains, is now 50 years old and the first announcement of Open Source occurred 30 years ago. "Isn't it time for us to take a look at what we've been doing, and see if we can do better? Well, yes, but we need to preserve Open Source at the same time. Open Source will continue to exist and provide the same rules and paradigm, and the thing that comes after Open Source should be called something else and should never try to pass itself off as Open Source. So far, I call it Post-Open." Post-Open, as he describes it, is a bit more involved than Open Source. It would define the corporate relationship with developers to ensure companies paid a fair amount for the benefits they receive. It would remain free for individuals and non-profit, and would entail just one license. He imagines a simple yearly compliance process that gets companies all the rights they need to use Post-Open software. And they'd fund developers who would be encouraged to write software that's usable by the common person, as opposed to technical experts.
Pointing to popular applications from Apple, Google, and Microsoft, Perens says: "A lot of the software is oriented toward the customer being the product -- they're certainly surveilled a great deal, and in some cases are actually abused. So it's a good time for open source to actually do stuff for normal people." The reason that doesn't often happen today, says Perens, is that open source developers tend to write code for themselves and those who are similarly adept with technology. The way to avoid that, he argues, is to pay developers, so they have support to take the time to make user-friendly applications. Companies, he suggests, would foot the bill, which could be apportioned to contributing developers using the sort of software that instruments GitHub and shows who contributes what to which products. Merico, he says, is a company that provides such software. Perens acknowledges that a lot of stumbling blocks need to be overcome, like finding an acceptable entity to handle the measurements and distribution of funds. What's more, the financial arrangements have to appeal to enough developers. "And all of this has to be transparent and adjustable enough that it doesn't fork 100 different ways," he muses. "So, you know, that's one of my big questions. Can this really happen?" Perens believes that the General Public License (GPL) is insufficient for today's needs and advocates for enforceable contract terms. He also criticizes non-Open Source licenses, particularly the Commons Clause, for misrepresenting and abusing the open-source brand.
As for AI, Perens views it as inherently plagiaristic and raises ethical concerns about compensating original content creators. He also weighs in on U.S.-China relations, calling for a more civil and cooperative approach to sharing technology.
You can read the full, wide-ranging interview here.
"They aren't really Red Hat any longer, they're IBM," Perens writes in the note he shared with The Register. "And of course they stopped distributing CentOS, and for a long time they've done something that I feel violates the GPL, and my defamation case was about another company doing the exact same thing: They tell you that if you are a RHEL customer, you can't disclose the GPL source for security patches that RHEL makes, because they won't allow you to be a customer any longer. IBM employees assert that they are still feeding patches to the upstream open source project, but of course they aren't required to do so. This has gone on for a long time, and only the fact that Red Hat made a public distribution of CentOS (essentially an unbranded version of RHEL) made it tolerable. Now IBM isn't doing that any longer. So I feel that IBM has gotten everything it wants from the open source developer community now, and we've received something of a middle finger from them. Obviously CentOS was important to companies as well, and they are running for the wings in adopting Rocky Linux. I could wish they went to a Debian derivative, but OK. But we have a number of straws on the Open Source camel's back. Will one break it?"
Another straw burdening the Open Source camel, Perens writes, "is that Open Source has completely failed to serve the common person. For the most part, if they use us at all they do so through a proprietary software company's systems, like Apple iOS or Google Android, both of which use Open Source for infrastructure but the apps are mostly proprietary. The common person doesn't know about Open Source, they don't know about the freedoms we promote which are increasingly in their interest. Indeed, Open Source is used today to surveil and even oppress them." Free Software, Perens explains, is now 50 years old and the first announcement of Open Source occurred 30 years ago. "Isn't it time for us to take a look at what we've been doing, and see if we can do better? Well, yes, but we need to preserve Open Source at the same time. Open Source will continue to exist and provide the same rules and paradigm, and the thing that comes after Open Source should be called something else and should never try to pass itself off as Open Source. So far, I call it Post-Open." Post-Open, as he describes it, is a bit more involved than Open Source. It would define the corporate relationship with developers to ensure companies paid a fair amount for the benefits they receive. It would remain free for individuals and non-profit, and would entail just one license. He imagines a simple yearly compliance process that gets companies all the rights they need to use Post-Open software. And they'd fund developers who would be encouraged to write software that's usable by the common person, as opposed to technical experts.
Pointing to popular applications from Apple, Google, and Microsoft, Perens says: "A lot of the software is oriented toward the customer being the product -- they're certainly surveilled a great deal, and in some cases are actually abused. So it's a good time for open source to actually do stuff for normal people." The reason that doesn't often happen today, says Perens, is that open source developers tend to write code for themselves and those who are similarly adept with technology. The way to avoid that, he argues, is to pay developers, so they have support to take the time to make user-friendly applications. Companies, he suggests, would foot the bill, which could be apportioned to contributing developers using the sort of software that instruments GitHub and shows who contributes what to which products. Merico, he says, is a company that provides such software. Perens acknowledges that a lot of stumbling blocks need to be overcome, like finding an acceptable entity to handle the measurements and distribution of funds. What's more, the financial arrangements have to appeal to enough developers. "And all of this has to be transparent and adjustable enough that it doesn't fork 100 different ways," he muses. "So, you know, that's one of my big questions. Can this really happen?" Perens believes that the General Public License (GPL) is insufficient for today's needs and advocates for enforceable contract terms. He also criticizes non-Open Source licenses, particularly the Commons Clause, for misrepresenting and abusing the open-source brand.
As for AI, Perens views it as inherently plagiaristic and raises ethical concerns about compensating original content creators. He also weighs in on U.S.-China relations, calling for a more civil and cooperative approach to sharing technology.
You can read the full, wide-ranging interview here.
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El Reg can spew, but what's wrong with this story?
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> I had my 8th COVID vaccine today, along with an influenza vaccine. Small ache in my shoulder where both went.
Ah, the Lesser Red-billed Anti-vaxxer. Very common around these here parts in the season.
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The story is an exclusive interview with a significant player in the OSS community, and it addresses an important and pressing matter. That is entirely aligned with Slashdot's mission, no matter who's publishing it.
I don't really like El Reg either; its general style can only really be described as a self-parody of whiny bitterness, and I've always found it rather dated, like something that should've been left for dead between the stickiest pages of a White Dwarf magazine in the late eighties. However, this
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El Reg has moved away from the old, snarky style significantly in recent years, as the Powers That Be increasingly seek to court the U.S. audience. For example, you'll notice there's no more "Biting the Hand that Feeds IT" at the top of the homepage. The old style was meant to be a parody of a British "Red Top" tabloid, which doesn't really translate.
Post OSS is "PD with a slice of reality check" (Score:5, Interesting)
The Post OSS world is going to be Public Domain with a slice of Reality Check.
Hear me out.
Instead of trying to twist the arms of companies to release things as open source. Start releasing everything as Public Domain if it's valuable. Because that keeps companies from taking it private because those public domain parts can't be disguised. Zlib has become so entrenched in software because it's not a a GPL product. All the successful OSS projects are BSD-style license which are basically "Public Domain, but we do not release the copyright, we own this product, but you can use and change it, and are not obligated to do anything to contribute."
The GPL is a failure because it's trying to be a non-free license. People see it, and basically go "welp, can't use it" if they need it as part of a larger project. Where as all the BSD-MIT-Apache-Zlib type of licences don't have this limitation. The software still exists, some products are just "done" and rarely change, such as zlib, libpng, etc nobody can seize the LZ compression code because zlib exists, and nobody can seize or propietarize PNG because libPNG exists.
What happened with RedHat and CentOS, is not because the Linux kernel is GPL, but because "the Linux OS" doesn't exist. "Redhat" exists, "Debian" exists. "Linux" does not. What needs to happen, and likely won't, is a "One Linux" OS that kills all these Not-Invented-Here forks. You can make everything in the OS be GPL, but nobody using it is compelled to use "only GPL" software. And that's the problem
Some core software, like OpenSSH, is BSD, and Linux can not operate without it. Good luck ever replacing it with a "Libre" GPL SSH.
There needs to be some convergence and merging of projects so that there aren't 200+ versions of Linux, rather there needs to be less than 6 if Linux isn't going to just be dominated by IBM's RHEL. Then one of these distros has to be the one that becomes "THE" upstream linux. Not RHEL.
Re:Post OSS is "PD with a slice of reality check" (Score:4, Informative)
Some core software, like OpenSSH, is BSD, and Linux can not operate without it. Good luck ever replacing it with a "Libre" GPL SSH.
OpenSSH is far from the only SSH client or server implementation. Dropbear (MIT license) is widely used in embedded systems. libssh (LGPL v2.1+) and libssh2 (BSD 3-clause) also implement the protocol and are used by a number of software projects for SSH client access (although I don't think there's currently a straight terminal client, or a server, based on either, but the hard part is there should someone want it).
And funny you mention zlib as a project that is "done"... there's a fork of zlib to roll up a bunch of updates and optimizations that the original author hasn't accepted. Fedora for example is in the process of switching over to zlib-ng.
Re:Post OSS is "PD with a slice of reality check" (Score:5, Interesting)
IMHO, RHEL seems to be becoming less relevant as time goes on. Many businesses are moving to Debian or Ubuntu, especially because Ubuntu has commercial support now, and supports a lot of stuff that would be extra charges with RHEL/IBM, like Ceph.
Even Oracle has stepped up to the plate and offered to replace them as the main upstream. If Oracle could do a RHEL compatible distribution with an officially blessed instance of ZFS, that would definitely encourage businesses to switch to their operating system. Oracle could also make a mint if they supported IdM, RHEV/oVirt (even though Oracle does have their own hypervisor), Ceph, and other enterprise technologies. If Oracle could make something equivalent to RHEV and well support it, the world would beat a path to their door, because there is a vacuum right now in the enterprise hypervisor market due to Broadcom buying out VMWare, and right now, while Proxmox is a strong contender, it doesn't have the 24/7/365 support, nor the app support (and having Veeam support will make or break things) that enterprises require. Oracle could easily step into this market.
(Wow... said good about Oracle... never though I'd have that happen.)
License-wise, I'd like to see more software that is dual-licensed with GPL 2.0 and BSD. This way, an OS maker like Apple could use the latest version of bash without worry.
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Funny you should say this. I am employed by the gov't, and we were heavily invested in Ubuntu. After the RedHat kerfuffle, our Agency wisely decided to dump everything we had created under Ubuntu, and switch at RedHat.
You tax dollars at work....
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(Wow... said good about Oracle... never though I'd have that happen.)
Oracle is like a vulture... it senses a potential corpse and makes its move. Oracle, if put in the IBM/Redhat shoes, will be even worse. Say what you want about Redhat, but at least, it was a Linux champion for decades. While Oracle just waits to consume the fruits for free.
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I think everyone can agree that FOSS has been a net benefit to the world &
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I don't think this is a licensing problem per se. It appears to be an enforcement & political problem. The FSF or whoever can't go up against IBM in a civil suit & win. IBM will just bankrupt them & that's why they know they can get away with what they're doing. They'd change their tune if they had to go up against a govt regulatory agency with teeth, hence why this is a political problem more than about licensing.
This whole concept is blowing my mind. What makes Perens, or ANYONE think that coming up with a new license wouldn't just lead right back to the same issue some years down the road. Companies are going to steamroll open source for money any chance they get. Enforcement is the issue, and there's zero chance any government agency spun up to protect open source software wouldn't immediately be filled by people sitting on IBM's board, so as to "have the experts on the team" and that'd be the end of that.
This is
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What I can't do under any circumstances is make the whole project GPL just because I used a small GPL lib where that lib is only a small part of the whole that was built, and it's because of requirement
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What happened with RedHat and CentOS, is not because the Linux kernel is GPL
Of course it's not because of the GPL. GPL was meant to prevent such situations, and tried, but failed, due to its loopholes, which IBM cleverly exploited. Mr. Perens explains that.
, but because "the Linux OS" doesn't exist. "Redhat" exists, "Debian" exists. "Linux" does not. What needs to happen, and likely won't, is a "One Linux" OS that kills all these Not-Invented-Here forks.
Please explain HOW the "Linux OS" will kill its competition: weaponizing the license or by other means? Also, why should anyone run such an assertive OS instead of sticking to Windows? Will the "Linux OS" also kill other open-source OSes, like the BSDs?
You can make everything in the OS be GPL,
What problem does this solve?
but nobody using it is compelled to use "only GPL" software.
Compelled? Oh boy... You want GNU Hurd... althoug
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GPL attempted to be far to clever, that is why people moved to MIT license and others
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Start releasing everything as Public Domain if it's valuable. Because that keeps companies from taking it private because those public domain parts can't be disguised.
The reason open source licenses were originally developed was partially because the concept of public domain is so poorly defined in law as to have almost no weight.
CentOS (Score:4, Informative)
It's inaccurate to say that Redhat *made* CentOS.
Yes, eventually CentOS joined RH and RH eventually killed it off; however it was originally a community project based on just compiling RHEL from source.
CentOS was a minimal derivative of RHEL (Score:4, Informative)
It's inaccurate to say that Redhat *made* CentOS.
It is entirely accurate in the context that CentOS was a minimal derivative of RHEL. RHEL without the Red Hat branding, but the same code and functionality. For all practical purposes, a RHEL without the Red Hat support.
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TFA says "This has gone on for a long time, and only the fact that Red Hat made a public distribution of CentOS (essentially an unbranded version of RHEL) made it tolerable. "
Your description of CentOS is correct, but my complaint is with making it sound like RH did this out of the bottom of their hearts out of some loyalty to the OSS community which they did not.
They were not the original creators of the distribution.
Nuance (Score:5, Interesting)
stopped making its source code available as required under the GPL.
I think this lacks nuance, the source is still available upstream in CentOS Stream. It's the sorting through finding which sources and bundling it all up as an exact collection. This paired with the you can get the SRPMs and share them, but if you do we'll terminate your subscription. Put them in legally following the terms of the GPL, but against the spirit.
pay developers, so they have support to take the time to make user-friendly applications.
This is the clear problem for years. Copyleft licensing has a big problem that there's only so much goodwill development time and available goodwill donations. Add to this maintaining a project is work that requires sustaining. As projects become bigger, that work becomes harder. So that leaves figuring out how to interact with commercial entities currently in a few patterns:
Selling support only goes so far, because a few engineers leaving can mean new competition. Losing the NASA support contract to CIQ is an example kick in the pants.
Open Core only goes so far, take something like GitLab for example. The first taste is free, but eventually you'll need the non-free parts. And since they control the project, either have to go through forking, debranding, and defend against patents claims (which is too big of a project.)
The SaaS piece becomes difficult when there is are other companies willing to eat your lunch. Take Mongo, Elastic, and Hashicorp as examples. Eventually duty to make VCs or shareholders money is going to overtake the goodwill.
Honestly that leaves neutral foundations. Sounds like Bruce is trying to force create another Linux Foundation/CNCF/Apache/Eclipse along with OpenCollective, locked down with a license. That license needs to be unrestricted enough that companies can used and make money off of it, but "libre" enough to keep everyone working for the "greater good". A lot of attempts have been made to try to split the balance/ I hope that there's some new idea that no one has thought of that somehow fixes the forces of self interest or capitalism, but somehow I am not going to hold my breath.
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As if any of this were new or that open source should be immune to the financial forces of the markets it was born in.
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There are still a lot of basics to get right. Being an open source developer can be off putting due to unreasonable demands and hostile community members. We need to find a way to save Firefox too, because it's clear that Mozilla doesn't have the resources, and the source is one if the worst examples of a huge barrier to participation.
BSD shows us the solution (Score:2)
Copyleft licensing has a big problem that there's only so much goodwill development time and available goodwill donations. Add to this maintaining a project is work that requires sustaining. As projects become bigger, that work becomes harder.
BSD shows us the solution. It was essentially a "public works" project of the University of California. No restrictions in its license, as a taxpayer funded project should be..
In a modernized model Grad students and Professors can work on interesting new features. Add volunteers (individual or corporate) as well. Student jobs can be created for the boring bits. Like Linux perhaps have embedded, mobile, desktop and server variations.
Maybe do this at a national scale, let any accredited university parti
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It would be nice is more government entities would step in to keep things going. This is where government's economies of scale come in, where they are an entity not motivated by how much cash can be gotten this quarter. IMHO, having grants to F/OSS projects, in not just money, but expertise (for example a government auditing systemd's code can put a lot of worries and flamewars to rest for good). This could be a multinational effort, as it benefits everyone involved.
How should open source serve the common person? (Score:4, Interesting)
Serving the common person means...what...Linux on the desktop? Or smartphones running Android without all the spying but with a rich app library available?
As much as I would like to see both happen, I just can't get optimistic about the idea. In every conversation I have had with non-technicians about Linux on the desktop, assuming they even knew what it was (which most didn't), they thought it really strange that I would choose to use an OS that is "so limited." It seems limited to them because most of the software they want and use won't run on it. And even if there are open source equivalents, they all suffer from file format compatibility problems. And then there is also the matter of unsupported hardware too.
I can't blame them. A philosophical speech about freedom and privacy just can't hold a candle to "I can't get my app working on it."
I remember RMS writing about why we should not release under commercial-compatible licenses, because we need to have something competitive that "they" can't use as part of their controlling profit model, to incite/force them to play ball by our rules. Well that hard-line attitude doesn't work. They just don't use your GPL only stuff, or they find workarounds as Bruce mentioned. What kind of magical licence will change their incentives? Most for-profit businesses have zero interest in protecting consumer privacy, or freedom. The love spying, they love lock-in, and they have nothing but disincentive to invest in a software ecosystem that denies them the option to do these things.
I play games on my Linux desktop thanks to Valve, but I am limited to a subset of games, and quirkiness and bugs that don't happen on windows. My gamer buddies all think I am nuts. They see me as a crazy idealist and outright weirdo for hating Microsoft so much. And, honestly, I think they are right.
I really do hate Microsoft for their mandatory spying and advertising baked in to the OS. I refuse to use it. But I suffer and sacrifice for that refusal. I would love to force them to play ball on our terms. But, I have a really hard time seeing how a new license is going to fix that.
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> What kind of magical licence will change their incentives?
Which is Peren's point: licensing took OSS only so far aloing the path toward financial stability and recognition by those who control capital formation. It't now time for contract law and all the rich, chocalatey goodness it provides
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They have to use GPLed Linux kernel. Except Apple did not but then they have a ton of problems from it.
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afaik Apple used BSD and is far better off for it
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To be fair, I was talking about the BSD license, as compared to the GNU license applied to linux:
The BSD license is intended to encourage product commercialization. BSD-licensed code can be sold or included in proprietary products without restriction on future behavior. It is possible to use BSD-licensed code in GPL-licensed code, but the reverse is not the case. [timreview.ca]
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BSD derivatives are some of the most secure operating systems [wikipedia.org] while linux, as a whole, is less secure [ycombinator.com]
IBM has shown GPL is broken (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:IBM has shown GPL is broken (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed. Lets hope this can be fixed generally. IBM is just the "asshole of the month" here.
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RH was borderline "douchey" since early 2000's (IPO) and a few years before IBM bought them they took a nose dive down and haven't recovered since.
IBM/Redhat influence began long before the merger.
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Affero GPL3, and GPL3 libs (Score:5, Informative)
I'd love to see more projects use Affero GPL (which solves the service-as-a-software substitute) issue, and to have a better migration path from GPLv3+ to AfferoGPLv3+.
It would also really help if there were more GPLv3 libraries in JS and PHP - many developers have a (technical) choice as to which libraries to build from which would allow them to make their code GPL-dependent, but at the same time, the company lawyers prevent developers from making a "license choice" for GPL, unless they can say "but I used a GPL library".
Finally, it's insufficiently clear what exactly you have to do to make a web (or python) application into a fully covered work - because there is no "compile" step.
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With AGPL you get two flavors, either companies who are using it to force the purchase of a commercial license like iText [wikipedia.org]. Or the extremely limited amount of true believers, because there's unlikely to be anything with money touching it. So all the work for support has to come from that limited pool of people, with a limited range of interests, who then have a limited amount of attention span.
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Except that AGPL is the GPL we wish we'd all used if we had forseen that we would be delivering software that would be used on the web.
Nextcloud (who use AGPLv3+) got it right.
Imagine how much better Android would have been if the core libraries had been GPL not LGPL.
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Imagine how much better Android would have been if the core libraries had been GPL not LGPL.
I feel like that's a great example, because if it was more restrictive it's pretty clear that it wouldn't have gotten used and popular. And Google [wikipedia.org] and Samsung [wikipedia.org] both were trying to go even less restrictive or more proprietary already. But those few true believers have made plenty of off-shoots that are unlikely to work with most all phones, are unlikely to support most of the features of the hardware, and unlikely to run most any of the useful apps.
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Well, inherently replicating (Score:1)
He worked as a lead coder at Pixar for years. I bet he'd code circles around you, if you even code at all. What did he "grift" you fucking liar?
I think you are missing the context here, that FOSS is overwhelmingly replication not innovation. Ie a FOSS replacement for a commercial product. Admittedly "plagiarism" is a poor choice as the underlying source code would be different. Plagiarism only covering the "words" not the "ideas". However FOSS is overwhelming copying the deas.
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Plagiarism only covering the "words" not the "ideas". However FOSS is overwhelming copying the deas.
Clear as mud, but it sounds like you are saying that open source rips off their corporate betters who come up with all the good ideas. Ie.. Postgresql is just a "copying" Oracle? Gimp is just a "copy" of Photoshop and so forth? That sounds like total horseshit and is just about the dumbest thing I've read all day. Hopefully, I misunderstood you.
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Plagiarism only covering the "words" not the "ideas". However FOSS is overwhelming copying the deas.
Clear as mud, but it sounds like you are saying that open source rips off their corporate betters who come up with all the good ideas.
No, I am saying FOSS overwhelming replicates non-FOSS. Ex: LibreOffice, Gimp, Firefox, etc.
Hell, even within FOSS there are license wars where a FOSS project must be replicated because it doesn't use "my" preferred license. Ex: Linux.
Postgresql is just a "copying" Oracle? Gimp is just a "copy" of Photoshop and so forth?
Replicating. No one is saying it's easy to do so. As I said, the copying is ideas not code.
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Humans copy ideas. Great. So, what's your conclusion then?
Reading comprehension isn't one of your strengths is it? Perhaps you should pay attention to what I actually write rather than what you imagine between the lines. My conclusion was expressed in my first post. That "inherently plagiaristic" is erroneous and FOSS could be better characterized by "inherently replicating". That the copying is not code, its ideas.
Again, read my actual words, ignore your erroneous imagination.
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You write like a six year old. It's no small wonder nobody knows what in the actual fuck you are saying. In either case, you're still wrong, moron.
No, it's just you. Again, erroneous reading between the lines leading to reading comprehension failure.
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Yes, of course, anyone who says you're wrong must be experiencing a comprehension failure.
No, it's people who say things they imagined rather than things that had actually been written.
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No, it's people who say things they imagined rather than things that had actually been written.
You are such an inarticulate boob that imagination is all you leave your reader left holding onto.
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No, it's people who say things they imagined rather than things that had actually been written.
You are such an inarticulate boob that imagination is all you leave your reader left holding onto.
Nope. You had a political rant you were dying to get out and jumped to erroneous conclusions. Now you are just dissembling.
Re:inherently plagiaristic (Score:4, Interesting)
What did he "grift" you fucking liar?
He's part of the OSI, which has pushed the lie that Christine Petersen invented the phrase "Open Source" which some of us were using for years before she ever heard of it, repeated it, and took credit for it. And he's been personally involved in promoting that lie.
The OSI was trying to sneak up on trademarking the phrase "Open Source" with misleading logos that made it look like they had already trademarked it when their actual trademark was on "Open Source Initiative", but they put the TM after Open Source instead of after Initiative. Their counsel instructed them not to try to trademark "Open Source" because he didn't believe they had a valid argument to try to claim it but a number of people at OSI felt this was a mistake, including Bruce. We argued about it a whole bunch here.
The phrase "Open Source Code" goes back at least to the 80s, when Bill Joy used it in a TV interview about UNIX.
The OSI's mission was to increase adoption of OSS by making it more corporate-friendly. It is a frankly misguided response to Free Software, which tries to give rights to users, where typical OSS licenses give the freedom to developers. Open Source licenses don't give you rights to actually use the software, like the GPLv3 does.
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Oh, great (Score:3)
He needs to talk to Travis Oliphant (Score:2)
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An anonymous reader (Score:2)
Let's see... who could that be... maybe https://slashdot.org/~Bruce+Pe... [slashdot.org] ?
(Absolutely nothing wrong with that at all, I just find it funny when things get submitted anonymously but the submitter seems obvious)
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Freedom's paradise turned into a strip mall (Score:2)
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If it wasn't open source, it would of still be developed as closed source by those who wanted to do the same thing.
At least this way developers can still use these tools without having to accept corporate nonsense.
I don't know about you, but I love that I can run Linux without having to hand money to Microsoft or Apple or Samsung or Google or anyone else.
I love that I can use open source tools to cobble together various solutions to my problems. Problems such as nifty backup solutions or self hosting storag
I feel like I deserve an "I told you so" (Score:4, Interesting)
Way, way back in the day on this site I was against GPL/copyleft and may have even partially called the muck we're in. Quips of note: "think free as in working for IBM without getting paid" and "If I wanted to be in the T-shirt selling business I'd have bought a screen printer not a computer and a STEM degree".
Anybody not drinking the Kool-aid could have seen this all coming, although not the exact form it would take. Copyleft is an "intellectual property trap" by design. Instead of methods moving back and forth between proprietary and public domain, the GPL seeks to keep them in the commons. There actually is a word for this kind of "free" and it's "public" as in "public school" with all the benefits and failures that come with that. The elites who can afford to pay for customization of software and prep schools get what they want. What they want is dopamine stimulation programs to addict the masses, subscription based SaaS, and games full of paid power-ups and loot boxes. Gone is the honest fee-for-product model where you owned a game and it worked single-player without Internet when you were in that mood, or the boxed software that didn't crap out until your hardware died.
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Anybody know the first game that needed a security patch?
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I recall an interview on EGM with a developer of Unreal Championship for the Xbox -- and it mentions its first update patch as if it's a new, strange thing.
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Copyleft is an "intellectual property trap" by design.
In particular the GPL was essentially a benevolent dictatorship. Do as I say. I have your best interests at heart. Trust me.
Who did not read “version N or any later version.” as a blank check?
End Users Do Benefit (Score:3)
stop beating the horse, it's alive and kickin' (Score:3)
foss is a good thing in itself ... and trying to make it work with market competition is just trying to square the circle. leave gpl alone, it's totally ok if for profit companies don't use/promote it because it will still be available for everybody else. forever. that's the whole point of gpl. don't like that, don't use it, simple!
anyhow, this:
"Companies, he suggests, would foot the bill, which could be apportioned to contributing developers using the sort of software that instruments GitHub and shows who contributes what to which products."
is just a terrible idea. like narcissism alone weren't already a thing! go ahead, try it and marvel at the a shitstorm of spurious commit activity just to gain visibility or reward, at the expense of the quality of the code you just wanted to protect.
it's his fault (Score:3)
Perens was one of those who "invented" Open Source because they thought Free Software was not friendly enough for business adoption. Then business embraced Open Source and subverted it... It is the fault of Perens and his friends, if Free Software remained Free Software and wasn't diluted into Open Source by those corporate shills, we wouldn't get in this issue in the first place. Free Software/GPL was friendly to end users, Open Source was designed to be friendly to corporations.
greytree: “The Register is a joke site&rdquo (Score:2)
Do you mean like Reddit
A lawyer and some grants (Score:2)
Instead of using a lawyer and some grant money to write yet another open source license, how about he bring a lawsuit against IBM for all the violations he claims against the GPL. You can write the most free-loving and iron-clad license in the world, but if no one is willing to enforce it, then it's not worth the photons emanating from the screen.
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No worries for IBM, they can blacken the sky with lawyer Nazgul to use expression I learned on groklaw long ago. Their use is legal but it makes Bruce (and many others) mad, is all.
Not seeing a solution here (Score:1)
Any monetized system for "contributions" would be quickly subverted by fraud and spamish contributions. And using github as the metered thing for developer compensation, that's owned by microsoft you know, hahaha what would go wrong?
Can't we be thankful we can use compilers and script engines on OS not under corporate controls and with innards we can see and modify, to make wares we want?
Being angry open source is used by corporations for bad things is just is forgetting closed source also is.
Speaking of IP and China, huge GPL infringement (Score:2)
The affected software is called cgminer [github.com]. The infringers, multi million dollar Chinese asic miner companies called Bitmain, MicroBT and others. They ship their asic miners with it bundled, it cannot work with their hardware without modifying it, and it cannot be shipped to customers without releasing their modifications in source code which they never do, thus the clause 8 (Termination) applies. This has been going for years now, but nobody does nothing. There are even American public traded companies openly
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here's the source code? can you go into detail what the problem is
https://github.com/ckolivas/cg... [github.com]