the GNU GPL is a Communist ideal!!! (LOL)

[legacy]

googling, I have come across a crazy blog's post by a dude named kazuo, who tries to give points on why the GNU GPL is a Communist ideal

He really thinks the GPL is communist, although it eventually begrudgingly allow him to use it though for his released projects,  so According to him, you can go forward with development under the AGPL, but first, you must love his logic "Stallman and Marx look similar!!!!!"

OH NO THEY BOTH HAVE BEARDS. 100% COMMUNIST BEARD CONFIRMED
BE CAREFUL EVERYBODY HIS BEARD IS GOING TO SIEZE THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION

wow did you know if you change words things mean different things 



wow, and now I am really confused on which license I should use for projects/documentation/whatever I might want to release to the internet 

[Karel]

I don't want to debate whether or not the GPL is a "commies" thing.

But from the viewpoint of the enduser (who is usually not the writer or author of the software),
the GPL is the best licence. It forces people or companies who distribute or sell modified/improved versions
to also include the sourcecode to the product they distribute or sell.

Ofcourse, many companies hate the GPL because they can not take without giving back their sourcecode.
They hate the tit-for-tat approach. Companies will always say that BSD style licences are the best because with
that license they can take whatever they want and give back only the parts that don't harm their business which
is usually the most interesting part for the enduser.

So, in the end, it depends on who you ask. The good thing is that, when you start writing software, you are free to use
whatever license you want. And if you don't like the GPL license, simply don't use it and and refrain from using GPL'ed sourcecode
in your software and refrain from bashing the GPL in general.
It's a free world in the end.

[legacy]

therefore can I use GPL for my projects? Or ... do I have to move to a different license?
And in case, which one?

[SiliconWizard]

Ahah.
It's not completely stupid though. Pondering whether the GPL is essentially communist is an interesting question. Obviously reducing the debate to a beard similarity is funnily inept.

There isn't really just one form of communism, so we'd have to define which form we consider first.
If we consider the basic "means of production" question, I don't think it can really apply to any intellectual work, and that's where this parallel would end.

Copyright questions are not about means of production but about property. I'm no specialist of communism whatsoever, but what I've noticed while talking with a few people considering themselves communists or marxists is that even that property thing is unclear for them - most of them are not completely against the principle of private property. They are against it when it comes to the means of production - which is not the same thing. So I'm not sure that communism in itself would necessary be against copyright, or at least that it cared to consider it truely when most communist principles were defined.

Just a thought.

[djacobow]

The GPL is obviously and intentionally communitarian. Is that controversial?

Nobody is making anybody GPL their code. What's the problem? If you don't want people to get your hard work for free, don't GPL it.

[newbrain]

It's not completely stupid though. Pondering whether the GPL is essentially communist is an interesting question. Obviously reducing the debate to a beard similarity is funnily inept.

I suspect that was written tongue in cheek, (or is that Poe?).
To their credit, they correctly caught the copyright pedestal on which the GPL and other copyleft licenses are based.

You would not imagine how many (even very smart) people have a complete soup in their head about the concept.

The GPL can be dangerous in a corporate environment, but many large corporation have processes in place to correctly handle it.
I have been the "Product Owner" for a large and complex piece of SW licensed with LGPL, and yes, core IP had to be treated with care and kept at a safe distance, but we did make very large contributions (and the other contributors are no small fish either!).

As for Legacy's choice (nice band name  ), it boils down very much on what he values and how much, here below a summary of options (short and with holes you could drive a cruise ship sideways through).

If he cannot care less, the WTFPL or marking the code as Public Domain are good choices.

If he cares somewhat, a step up are MIT and BSD: more or less same level of freedom, but a copyright notice must be included.

Apache is still very free (and the one FSF recommends as non-copyleft license), but with more elaborate clauses.

Then we go into the copyleft licenses.
LGPL is good if he wants the code to stay free, but still allow proprietary code to be linked.
AGPL (for server side SW) and GPL: the definitive choice for SW that shall not be exploited without giving back to the community.

Lastly, there's the worse choice possible: no explicit license.
If no license is provided, copyright laws (practically all over the world) imply that the code can be looked at...just barely.

[cdev]

What did people expect? The fall of the former Soviet Union was the beginning of the end of all of the things that the West bent the rules on, in order to compete with Communism.

So enjoy them all while you can, without some wisdom on the part of people and recognition of this fact and a public outcry, and the creation somehow of non-captured institutions to protect people, meaning natural people, not corporations, AT THE INTERNATIONAL LEVEL, they wont last much longer, no matter how good or helpful they are. The good they provide people is exactly why they are under attack. Its likely being framed behind closed doors as a theft from businesses of business.

 Sure, free software is freely given to the world by people who write it but it still runs into this greater problem of vendors of like products claiming it prevents their businesses from making profits they claim to be entitled to.

This is being done in hundreds of different ways. Its not happening by accident either.

[hermit]

Communism is an economic system that has been clouded by the fact that it seems to get instituted by totalitarian regimes.  At least by name anyhow.  Nice cover for them I guess.

[NorthGuy]

Communism is an entitlement system. People are believed to be entitled to something which the society MUST provide. Since resources are limited, there must be some sort of organisation which decides who's entitled to what. Hence the totalitarian regimes, which are necessary to re-distribute the wealth in the entitlement society.

GPL, without a doubt, creates an entitlement system where everyone who uses GPLed products is entitled to the results of any work produced by others. Since software usage is unlimited and participation in GPL is voluntary, it doesn't create any horrors as the communism would. Although, many people do experience a communistish feeling of entitlement towards the GPLed software even though they didn't contribute anything to its creation.

[legacy]

well, the author is also believing that using the browser Firefox means contributing to obscure  "nazi conspiracies" 

[legacy]

I think I will use a BSD license, anyway.

I am reading the agreement, and it seems ok for me.

[ataradov]

Use BSD. Free should be free. GPL limits your freedom on ways to distribute the software. BSD limits blatant ripping off, and I don't see how anyone can have problems with that.

[helius]

Obviously reducing the debate to a beard similarity is funnily inept.

That's not the only thing they have in common. Neither is going to know who won the F.A. Cup in 1949:

[SiliconWizard]

Use BSD. Free should be free. GPL limits your freedom on ways to distribute the software. BSD limits blatant ripping off, and I don't see how anyone can have problems with that.

Agree.

[newbrain]

GPL limits your freedom on ways to distribute the software.

How?
You have to make the source available for three years if some user asks for it, but if you did not intend to distribute the source, why choose an open source license?
The copyright is still yours, so you remain the owner of the SW and can still decide distribute it with another license of your choosing, even a proprietary one.

That said, I'm perfectly fine with BSD/MIT. Have a look also at Apache.

[ataradov]

but if you did not intend to distribute the source, why choose an open source license?

It is about code reuse. My project may be closed, but I still want to use other components. Linking with GPL code in this case is a pure nightmare.

Of course you may be against people freely using your code, in which case pick GPL. I publish my code in hopes it is useful to others regardless of their intent.

[newbrain]

but if you did not intend to distribute the source, why choose an open source license?

It is about code reuse. My project may be closed, but I still want to use other components. Linking with GPL code in this case is a pure nightmare.

Of course you may be against people freely using your code, in which case pick GPL. I publish my code in hopes it is useful to others regardless of their intent.

Sorry, but I still don't get it.
If you use (L)GPL code, you have to abide by the license - no doubt about it: that's banally true for any license.
If you distribute your code under the GPL, you are still free to use it as you like, after complying with the distribution clauses*.

This include using and distributing it under some other proprietary or a more liberal license, once again: you retain your copyright.
There are many commercial examples of this, MySQL being a notable one (GPL + proprietary), and even more [u=http://chibios.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=chibios:licensing:start]ChibiOS[/u] which is distributed under a number of different licenses (look at the nice licensing matrix for what you can and cannot do).

Only if you transfer your copyright, you are at the mercy of the new copyright owner.

*Note: you don't even need to make it accessible on some kind of public repository, as long as it is available to your customers (but then they are free to publish it).

[ataradov]

If you use (L)GPL code, you have to abide by the license - no doubt about it: that's banally true for any license.

If you statically link any GPL component in your project, then essentially you have to make the whole project GPL. LGPL is different here, of course.

Yes, you have to follow the rules. My assertion is that GPL rules are stupid, and GPL should not be used for libraries. For complete standalone projects it may be fine.  Others may have different opinions, of course.

And that's why I'm suggesting to use BSD.

[Karel]

Use BSD. Free should be free. GPL limits your freedom on ways to distribute the software. BSD limits blatant ripping off, and I don't see how anyone can have problems with that.

There are lots of programmers who are willing to share their code & effort with other people who are willing to do the same.
For these people the GPL is the perfect license. It prohibits that greedy companies take but don't give back.
I complete understands this and even encourage it. Companies are commercial entities. If they need software or libraries,
they should hire and pay a programmer to write it, as this is the commercial way to do things.

The BSD license is only usefull for pushing a product and supporting it with free drivers or libraries in order to push the sales of some hardware.
Apart from that, the BSD is a stupid licence. Practically, you are working without any payment, not in money, not in software.

[glarsson]

No, the GPL is not the perfect license. We could have used some open source and contributed back bug fixes and improvements, but we can't due to the license. Releasing our source code containing both company and military classified information is simply not possible.

We have used BSD licensed software and contributed bug fixes and improvements.

The fact that GPL software taints everything it links to is a killer. A clear loss for the GPL license imo.

[cdev]

The answer for you, is simple then, use another license, or even write your own. Or keep your software completely closed.

If you don't want GPL's restrictions, don't embed the software that uses it. There are at least a dozen different software licenses to choose from. BSD or other licenses allow a much different business model. GPL has been successful however because of its unambiguity.

Its quite striking though how many successful companies literally would not exist were it not for the free GPLd software out there, surprisingly or not, some of them now seem to quietly want to pull this specific ladder to success up behind themselves.

Is it so that others don't get the same advantages they had from it? It may well be.

People should be aware of this shift, which may impact free and open source software among other things.

[cdev]

Isn't static 'linking' really more like embedding the free library in the newly compiled software physically? So that it then doesn't require the shared and free library to be previously installed on the machine that runs the software, basically enclosing a copy of it inside itself?

If you statically link any GPL component in your project, then essentially you have to make the whole project GPL. LGPL is different here, of course.

Yes, you have to follow the rules. My assertion is that GPL rules are stupid, and GPL should not be used for libraries. For complete standalone projects it may be fine.  Others may have different opinions, of course.

And that's why I'm suggesting to use BSD.

[Karel]

No, the GPL is not the perfect license. We could have used some open source and contributed back bug fixes and improvements, but we can't due to the license. Releasing our source code containing both company and military classified information is simply not possible.

This problem is obviously caused by military regulations, you should blame them, not the programmers that select the GPL for their projects
because they don't want to work for nothing which is, imho, completely understandable.
I understand that the military can't share their sourcecode and I have no problems with that, as long as they don't link with GPL'ed software.

The fact that GPL software taints everything it links to is a killer. A clear loss for the GPL license imo.

I don't see why that is a loss. You seem to believe that with BSD style licenses, projects will receive more contributions.
I believe it's the opposite. There are many examples of companies who used and modified GPL'ed software and didn't wanto give back their sourcecode.

[glarsson]

The answer for you, is simple then, use another license, or even write your own. Or keep your software completely closed.

That us, as I wrote, exactly what we do. My point us that the GPL licensed code lost an opportunity as it never received any bug fixes from us (as we didn't use the code at all).

[brucehoult]

The GPL relies on freedom of association and voluntary exchange, so of course it is not communist.

Communism does not accept any alternative, it does not (and can not) allow people to opt-out. From *EVERYONE* according to their ability (slavery), to everyone according to their needs (decided by the central committee).

Whenever I have a choice, I contribute to BSD/MIT/Apache licensed projects, not GPL. I have personal projects that I don't mind open-sourcing (in fact want to), but I also work on commercial projects that will never be open-sourced. I don't want to have to divide my life into two parts that use different tools, different libraries. I want the things that I have put time and effort into improving to be usable in both halves of my life.

GPL is acceptable for clearly delineated tools that I use and maybe even enhance but are not core to my own product. For example, the Linux kernel or gcc. I can write programs in C on Linux and compile then with gcc and link them with glibc without those programs having to be GPL.