“The GPL, GNU General Public License, is a license boilerplate that the FSF, Free Software Foundation, has put forward to be adopted by software developers that are creating software. The GPL has some fundamental flaws that may actually make one wonder if people using the GPL license really understand the license.” Read the editorial here by Chris Davies.
Is the GPL Completely Misunderstood?
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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well he only saying that GPL isn’t suited to protect programmer’s rights and fund a business model around selling your software, as everyone could redistribute freely your soft.
Big deal.
I think it’s pretty obvious : the GPL was created to protect the SOFTWARE, not the programmers.
Well of course if nobody read the GPL, this article has its place…
On the other hand, I don’t really like the way it says that all freesoftware are essentially copycating others proprietary software, that no innovation come from free software, and the rare successful free software are backed by a good old company (obviously the only capable of doing the work).
I really do think people should think more about licencing of community written software. I am currently in the process of writing two documents detailing approaches that try to bridge the concerns of developers and businesses in this context. Maybe when I get these written up, I will post them here for a first round of discussion.
It is a shame really that the author of the article didnt apply himself to come up with a solution to the problem – simply pointing out problems is easy, and many published articles are nothing more.
Jamie Burns.
Although I somewhat agree with some of the words the author has pointed out, he simply seems missleaded. I have read, and understand the GPL. It does protect – hobbiests – from having there work stolen by corporations. Thats who wrote the license, thats who writes GPL programs.. HOBBIESTS. Perhaps some things are somewhat copyed in retrospect, but thats cuz we want those same features, plus a few that we like. So long as the code isn’t the same, you can’t patent a layout of a program. If the code is different, it simply isn’t the same program!
I find it hard to beleive people have nothing better to do then write about why they didn’t choose the GPL. If somethings not for you, its not for you. Big deal, but why is it posted on this site. Most of what I read here doesn’t usually have such petty arguments…
Free software is more like a not-for-profit charity than Marxism. I can’t see any relationship between a centralized government running a command economy and free software. I detect griping from someone who believes he cannot compete with free software. So much for business advocating competition.
I believe the GPL helps the consumer. If consumers can get a cheap or free product, then why should they pay for an expensive product? As for companies funding GPL software, that is good for the company and the consumer. The company gets a fully capable product for less cost because the work is partially done by volunteers or other companies. IBM has surely saved money in operating system development by using Linux. How do you make money off this? Try selling hardware and services like IBM. Maybe the author is in the wrong line of work.
If the GPL didn’t grant the rights of redistribution, then the whole idea of being able to modify the source code and redistribute it would be rendered useless. If I buy a copy of program foo for 500$, and can’t redistribute the source code to others, but I can modify the source, can I redistribute the modified source? How much do I have to change?
The key is that the original author can sell support, documentation, packaging, artwork, and bundle it with their distribution and sell that at competitive pricing. Take RedHat’s commercial packaging versus a cheapbytes.com copy for instance.
This guy must be joking. He blames the GPL for code that’s buggy, incomplete, and poorly written, as if to suggest that such code couldn’t be licensed any other way. I tend to believe that the GPL has popularized the idea of people releasing their code that they otherwise may not have, so there probably is more junk out there as a result. However, it’s not the GPL that creates the junk — it’s the programmers who write it. But at the same time, having all this software out there likely encourages more people to get into programming, and I see that as a good thing.
The author also talks about how GPL’d software can’t realistically be sold for money since your customers can turn around and distribute your program themselves, undercutting your business. He then ends the article by suggesting that people consider using a different open source license. This makes little sense as all open source licenses allow redistribution of your code.
Thanks for the article. It gave me a good laugh.
One aspect of the GPL that I don’t often hear talked about is its ability to capture valuable software development effort that would otherwise be thrown away and reinvented time after time.
I’m talking about the 90% of software development effort that goes to producing customized programs to support and automate the processes of a particular business. This code, in the form that it is usually deployed is worthless to any business other than the one that created it, without additional customization efforts. This customization is both costly enough that the orignal company wouldn’t be able to make money selling it, nor are they set up to run a software business.
However, at least some of this code can be recycled into toolkits and frameworks that could be reused for custom software efforts elsewhere in the same or similar industries. By using the GPL, which makes all contributors equal in terms of their rights to the software, multiple companies can contribute their efforts without the worry that one individual will “make off” with the code that everybody worked on. And in doing so, they can lower their own cost of custom software development, which is always going to be a cost center for their particular business.
If however, you want to write and sell a shrink wrapped product, the author is certainly correct in stating that the GPL or any free software license is not for you. This is no fault of the GPL, that’s not what the license was made to accomplish.
As an end-user, I’m a big fan of the traditional Freeware-type license in which the software is freely distributed, but the author retains all rights to the source code. This may not be the best thing for the future development of the software, say if the original programmer dies or becomes disinterested. But it protects the investment of the author, should the software title progress to a commercial-quality level.
On the other hand, the GPL license encourages Open-Source type projects in which many independant programmers can work together to create high-quality software.
One premise of the article is that those who use the GPL don’t actually read it. I doubt that’s the case. And there’s nothing to prevent a programmer from creating an original license agreement to meet their specific needs.
-Bob
I am not impressed by the points raised in this article. But let’s show a tiny example of its misunderstandings:
“The GPL has created a dearth of poorly conceived, poorly maintained, poorly written software.”
This means that the GPL has created a lack of bad software. Wonderful!
And of course we know that you’ll never find *any* poorly written shareware applications on download.com that all do the same thing …
I agree with his first assertion that it is difficult to setup a business around developing GPL’d software. However, the rest of his article is based on conjecture, speculation and blatant value judgments disguised as fact. There is nothing inherent in a software license, be it open or closed source, that affects the quality of that software. There is excellent closed and open source software; poor closed and open source software. Likewise, there is no simple corollation between the motivation for creating software, and its quality. Someone who creates software as their day job, may do a poor job of it. Someone who develops software in their spare time, may do an excellent job at it. Finally, as was mentioned, the GPL is as much related to Marxism as religious donations are – nobody is asking you to buy into the assertions of the ideology and fork over your money or effort. It is voluntary. Personally, if I were the person who wrote this article – I’d be ashamed of myself. It seems this person does this for a living, and doesn’t do a good job of it.
lets all define ourselves by money. I’ll start by killing my neighbor and subletting his apartment.
in the sense that it doesn’t want any single individual to have a monopoly on capital…in this case intellectual capital.
For example, capitalists today may own land and they can do what they want on it AND exclude others from doing things on that land. This is against Marxism which dictates that all land is the property of all people and therefore some public institution which represents the people should decide how the land can be used.
In the world of licensing, the GPL ensures that no one person (the capitalist) can exclude others from doing what they want with the code.
The BIG POINT is CHOICE. Socialism shouldn’t be forced on people and neither should licenses. Stallman is a communist and therefore has no problem making comments that people should NOT have the right to choose software licenses.
Most people though believe in choice and therefore don’t get hot and bothered by the GPL since it is just one of many licenses that one can use for their software.
The GPL works very well for those involved in selling services and not software. That is a success of the GPL for many profitable businesses like web hosting firms and contract developers.
The GPL doesn’t work for those who want to sell a single piece of software and take the proceeds to fund further research and product development. Ongoing profits from sales are needed for that and the manhours used for R&D cannot be spent on providing services to others. So, closed source works well here.
Mathematica is the classic example of where closed source produces a sustainable business around a single product while employing LOTS of people doing really interesting research and development…rather than doing god-awful boring contract jobs for other corporations.
= CHOICE RULES THE DAY =
Is GPL going to end up killing the software industry in the future?, I mean, EVENTUALLY all this free software thrown on to the market will get to commercial quality that they strive for, it’s pretty obvious, in fact, many are there now.
Now, considering that software isn’t really progressing in any way, shape or form, and what I mean by that is that email clients from 5 years ago still work today, and spreadsheets from 5 years ago still work today (unless they are Y2K bugged of course) etc. will it mean that eventually, there will be no profit for commercial software, which means, that all these guys going through highschool and university now, saying how much they love their FREE software, releasing their own GPL code will actually destroy their very own chances for a job in the industry they love. It’s something to think about imho.
Does a CompSci degree in the near future mean you will be spending your days asking “Would you like fries with that?”
For crying out loud, nobody puts a gun to your head to use it in the first place. If that were the case, GPL would be communist, but as it stands, it is more similar to the pure capitalist notion of private charity. Those that release software under the GPL know exactly what they’re getting into – they aren’t forced to do anything. Those that choose to use GPL software as a user or to develop more software also know what they’re getting into. They can always use another license or piece of software.
I think the people here who believe in the volunteer aspect are correct — you buy into it or you don’t.
However, I would say for those who think they can make cash on it — look at RedHat. Those guys are scratching for the last grains of food every quarter, attempting to stay afloat. Other Linux distros are going out of business perpetually, kept afloat only by volunteers (who is paying the bills is often rephrased as are they paying the bills?).
But even for the volunteers out there, I would ask, what do you think about IBM getting rich and not owing you a dime? Do you endorse that, not have an opinion, or do you grin and bear it simply because you believe in the cause?
That said — I’ll state my opinion. I think its just fine and dandy to GPL stuff like kernels and generic posix tools — these items are a dime a dozen (and less), and they provide a core to develop new ideas on. Really, thin about it, if we only had the Windows kernel it wouldn’t be very popular today as a standalone product from MS. MS instead puts all this value-add into the product (multimedia codec frameworks, driver quality/compliance certification, and a whole heck of a lot of testing (whether you believe that truth or not, is really irrelevant)).
I seriously doubt that I’d ever release the code to a ground breaking app — and I would pay special pains to separate the core from the GPL pieces that require GPL compliance. I may would still give the program away to personal users (as in free beer), but I’d charge like heck for commercial use, and no one would get the source, until the product sank or I died (and then maybe it would go to any possible offspring). Maybe one can make a meager income from scraping the service barrel daily like RedHat, but I am not looking for meager income for a truly ground breaking tool, I am looking for megabux… especially if I have to support the creation when it goes into the world.
Meh, to each is own…
But all the GPL does (to me) is put people out of work, at the financial benefit of no one but companies who use GPLed software.
It may be a good thing (plenty of really awful programmers pretending they are professionals), it may be a bad thing (harder for truly intelligent software architects to get good paying or any jobs).
Your argument misses one crucial point. Very few programmers are employed by companies producing consumer/shrink-wrapped software. By far and away the largest number of programmers (and if I recall correctly, we’re talking in the 90%’s here) are employed by corporations creating custom software for that particular company.
The GPL will not destroy the programming jobs. However, it may destroy companies producing commodity software for over-inflated prices. That is good for consumers, as it will require those companies to compete on price and innovation.
That was one of the most insightful and well written pieces I have read on OSnews in a long time. Thank you for posting it whoever did, it was a good read. I think that most of the commenters who are mocking it didn’t understand what the article was about. It is the opinion of a commercially developing programmer on the GPL. It explains why the GPL is not a good license for commercial development, it doesn’t say that the GPL is bad, just bad for his needs.
Personally, I agree mostly with what the auther said, the GPL is not good for code that you intend to sell. However, I do not agree with his assertation that the GPL inherantly produces shoddy code. I think that shoddy code can and is written regardless of the license used. I can think of plenty of examples of commercial software that is crappy, and uses crappy code. The GPL may not be great for commercial software development but, it is a good thing, because it raises the bar for what a commercial software package must be. Without the GPL, consumers would be forced to pay for even the simpliest software, and could not modify and restribute it, even if they have the knowledge and tools. GPL software only makes commercial software better.
Skipp
There are no over inflated prices on shrink wrapped software unless it has a monopoly on the market.
It is not good for the economy to have a free alternative for commodity software, there needs to be competition and the ability to make profit.
Nothing is truly free, and the long run effects of free software could quite possibly be worse.
I know that you weren’t replying to me, but Matt and I said similar things on this topic. For one thing, Software from a company with a well-known monopoly is not the only software that is overpriced. Any software that is clearly better (at least in perception) than the alternatives is usually prices with a nice premium. Photoshop is a good example. And Photoshop is great if you need its features, but what if you don’t? What if you just want to modify some photos for personal use? Well, since all of photoshops competitors have given up there is no where you can turn for a cheaper alternative, you have to pay the full price even though you need a simpler package. This is where GPL software is handy. You can download The GIMP for free and get exactly what you need. If your needs increase, photoshop is still there. Also, Adobe has no reason to improve Photoshop if their are no competitors, so, The GIMP keeps a flame under their butt to keep producing a better product. Basically, the GPL is anti-monopoly, which is something this industry definately needs.
Microsoft didn’t become a monopoly because they are that smart, they became a monopoly because the industry fosters monopolies. Without free software, monopolies are the natural state of the tech industry.
Skipp
that even if we are willing to lay our own sources open, we cannot safely link against GPLed libraries.
Not as long as we also link against proprietary ones we licensed and don’t have the sources for.
Hi, I appreciate your mature responses, and yes, I grant you that a large part of jobs are still insider jobs, but I am not convinced that that will last forever either, it’s very costly on a companies budget to employ fulltime development staff, and more and more “customized” software is going open market, from areas such as medical and patient record software, to engineering and specializted flight data analyzers.
Skip, there is some other very viable software packages that retail for a very good price in my oppinion that do a great job like Photoshop, an example of this is Paint Shop Pro by JASC Software, and for all the features that that software gives you, I don’t believe $99 is an unrealistic price =)
But I am afraid, your arguments have not changed my view, I still believe that the GPL license could/does very well hurt software jobs in the industry, and since there are now bad examples of overseas job market hunting (i.e one large software company layed off alot of US staff and replaced them with Indian labour)http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/03/19/1534247&mode=thread… I think we are already starting to reap the fruit of a market that is in incredibly bad shape.
I am NOT a US Citizen, but I can feel strongly for the folk in the US that now no longer have jobs or a foreseeable future due to the computer industry being the way that it is, and I think what happens in the GPL arena should be watched and possibly regulated with trade agreements to protect the rights of families and employees who are just trying to pay their homes mortgage and feed themselves.
No, your confusing GPL with Alternative. The GPL does not attack monopolies. Alternative software attacks software monopolies. The Gimp is an Alternative application (Although I’ve heard Paint Shop Pro is better) that consumers can use. Photoshop is for Professionals.
Who do you think is more affected by the Gimp, Adobe or JASC?
A company using GPL can make money by selling support (the programmers are the ones who know the most about the program and thus are uniquely qualified to offer support). Market has shown that many entities are willing to pay. For example, Red Hat Advanced Server is expensive and sells well even though it is “free”.
Moreover, in many cases (such as QT or MySQL) money can be made through dual licensing: Some restrictions in GPL are removed in exchange for license fees.
GPL provides efficiency through code sharing. Without the license, many companies would create incompatible and proprietary extensions to free software that duplicate the same functionality. With the license, the additions are integrated with the main code and thus benefit all without a need for reimplementation.
“The GPL works very well for those involved in selling services and not software. That is a success of the GPL for many profitable businesses like web hosting firms and contract developers.
The GPL doesn’t work for those who want to sell a single piece of software and take the proceeds to fund further research and product development. Ongoing profits from sales are needed for that and the manhours used for R&D cannot be spent on providing services to others. So, closed source works well here.”
The approprate way to fund development of GPL software is the research grant – the same method as is used to fund scientific research.
The same arguments and problems arise when commercial companies such as drug companies engage in “scientific” research but try to restrict publication of the results.
Other software is more like a creative work of art such as a piece of music. In this case there is a defined author and shareware or commercial sales make sense.
Other software is produced under contract for business needs.
There are lots of different software markets.
The GPL is a license that is ideal for community projects. As there is usually no company or single individual working on a project then it seems a fair license to use to protect the community’s work becoming hijacked by big business trying to make a quick buck off something written by people who don’t get any payback.
If you want to run a successful business writing software you I don’t think you should use the GPL, especially if you are a small company where support services are not as easy to implement. You could GPL your software and sell binaries for whatever price you want, but the source is free and therefore anyone can compile your code and distribute binaries for free – undermining your business.
I think a better model for a business would be to have source available for free, but you cannot distribute binaries – protecting the company’s income to some degree as there are some people who would rather install a binary than compile. You could also have a per seat license system that meant a business could compile the code but needed a license to use it. GPL doesn’t suit everyone, so don’t try to make it fit – use a different license.
I think people writing Linux software commercially are generally struggling because there is a large proportion of the community who think that all software for Linux should be free (as in beer) as a result of misunderstanding the GPL.
The point is quite simple:
You can’t make money from developing GPL software – period. You can make money from selling related services to it. That’s the reason why software that doesn’t need support will hardly if ever be GPL’d. Where is the Free competitor to Max Payne? Where is the Free competitor for Flash? Neither RedHat nor IBM will support funding that, because you can’t sell any support on that.
Short summery of the article: I do not understand the GPL, nor do I fully understand the mechanisms by which GPL software works, therefore none of you lot possibly could either.
First of all, the author freely admits that he doesn’t “really understand” the GPL. Fair enough; I do not really understand many EULA’s that I have to click through at work. I don’t intend to write a peice about how crappy the Microsoft Visual SourceSafe EULA is, however.
The author is under the impression that if he provides software under the GPL to a client, then that client will immediatly and automatically redistribute it. What does he base this assumption on? Who knows, he apparently has not used the GPL and has no intentions to do so. Hardly emperical evidence to back up his claims.
One of the funniest (Unintentionally so) ideas behind this article is that GPL authors do not understand the licencse. Heck, as far as the author is concerned, they havn’t even read the thing. The fools! Of course, he has no evidence of this. He could have actually asked some GPL authors, but he didn’t. We know what happens when you assume something, and this guy manages to make himself look like an ass of the highest order. Oh, no doubt there are some authors who do not fully understand the GPL and their rights under the GPL. It would be foolish to think otherwise. They are in the minority though, and on their heads be it.
The only thing the author comes close to getting right is that the majority of OSS (Not just GPL, but I don’t believe the author is in a position to make the correct distinction) is in the business of replicating commercial software. He misses the reasons, but again I doubt he is in a position to fully understand them.
To all those who think that the GPL is about getting your software for no cost, I would strongly suggest that you go read the FSF and GNU websites, and speak to some GPL authors. There are some good reasons for the GPL and why authors use the GPL, and the author of this peice misses every single one of them. To those who think the GPL is a travesty because it “forces” you to use it to; think again. If you don’t like the licence, don’t use it. Find an alternative or write your own, it really is that simple.
Just make sure you understand the licence you do use.
He sounds like some bitter guy who developed ‘cool software xy’, tried to sell it for 100$ when someone came along, thought “hey, this is crap and quite expensive, I guess I can do it better” did so and released the result under the GPL.
These comments sound like a lot of people who espouse marxist ideas: We all throw our efforts in a pool and take what we need from it.
(From each according to his talents, to each according to his needs)
This is the worst possible situation in every case. For a real world example, show me one socialist/marxist state where the standard of living is above the US? or Hong Kong? Or any other capitalist economy.
You wont because capitalism is rooted in freedom. You vote with your wallet. A company misbehaves, don’t pay them. And since all want your ‘vote’ they will do the BEST job they can. Unlike not-for-profit people who do just as much as they can.
The only (apart from crime) entity that can prevent you from achieving what someone else has achieved is Government(laws). This would include ridiculous patents and regulations so expensive only large coorporations can afford them
Perhaps in the next 50 years or so, people around the world will realize what a fool Carl Marx was, then we will be a lot better off.
I really hate it when people having absolutely no idea what Karl Marx have wrote make idiotic statements regarding a (utopian) economic and social system by judging it with countries that claims to pratice it (Cuba, China, Soviet). No where in Karl Marx books said that you cannot compete at all – although it in many ways interferes and give less room to compete. Even though I 100% a laissez-faire capitalist society, I get extremely annoyed when someone uses that generalization along with other stuff like “no political rights for the Average Joe” and “no freedom”.
The very basis of communism (the real one) or Marxism is that capital belongs pretty much to nobody. It is created by somebody, but owned by the society. In the same case, GPL bring interlectual capital out of the hands of the programmer so that anyone can use it as long the interlectual capital remains open. Don’t mention copyright – RMS made it clear that he uses copyright only to enforce this – not to fulfil the intented purpose of copyright in the first place. Which is the reason why it is called copyleft.
Actually, that generalization that GPL doesn’t bring innovation is pretty much accurate. So far, I haven’t come by much GPL software that actually innovates rather than imitate. And most of the GPL software that doesn’t fit in that category normally have a corporate backer (like IBM for many parts of the kernel). And cases that don’t fit either case (no innovation or no corporate backer) are in an extremely small minority (e.g. Python).
But then again, this also holds true for most other licenses, copyleft or non-copyleft (for example, I have yet to come by something innovative created by non-profit individuals under the MIT X license).
Anonymous: This is the worst possible situation in every case. For a real world example, show me one socialist/marxist state where the standard of living is above the US? or Hong Kong? Or any other capitalist economy.
Nobody can. Marxism is utopian. Meaning no such place. It cannot be implemented in large groups of people – though matter how much you try. Israel tried that, it worked in the beginning, but when numbers increase and needs and interest diverge – it falls completely through.
Besides, Hong Kong pre-1997 was socialist, in many ways. post-1997 had the problem of increasing unemployment. Of course the latter can be blamed on the economic crisis in 1998.
Perhaps in the next 50 years or so, people around the world will realize what a fool Carl Marx was, then we will be a lot better off.
Actually, a lot of people realize that. And it makes it even more better that all of the countries claiming to follow his philosophies aren’t all that nice looking to the international audience makes it a whole lot better :-).
Give me a break. Since when is Microsoft the innovation leader? The history of software development is the history of rip-offs. Apple ripped its GUI off from Xerox; Microsoft then ripped its GUI off from Apple. In my opinion, there’s MORE innovation in GPL software. For instance, look at all the variety of window managers that do things you can’t in Windows or on the Mac. Plenty of unique GPL projects are out there. While most are certainly not ubiquitous, they are there.
As an aside, I’m somewhat appalled at the author’s grammar. If the author contends GPL software breeds mediocrity, then the Internet breeds ill-written rants. While good points are made, there is a lack of credibility.
What a load of shite.
GPL is a disaster, and that people don’t know what license itself is about is a greater disaster. Free software ought to be MIT or BSD.
The General Public License is what it is. As so many other commentators have pointed out, read Richard Stallman’s or the Free Software Foundation’s position pieces on the GPL.
Is the GPL innovative? This is a complex question, as we all have our own interpretation of innovative. One could look at Sourceforge and browse through the thousands of packages that are GPL, often filling a niche. Then there is all the software out there that has no commercial equivalent – someone wrote that about 90% of software is not shrink-wrapped, but is written in-house in corporations. Then we have the big name GPL packages such as Gnome, KDE, KOffice, Open Office, GIMP, MySQL, PostGreSQL, Apache. In my experience, they are innovative – they aren’t just replicating commercial software, they are doing things differently. I’m quite impressed with KDE, for example – trying to build a whole desktop environment with most of the tools I’ll ever need. Lastly, let me not forget the old stalwarts such as Emacs, Vi, Linux kernel, GNU tools, LaTeX and so on. Most of these have gone down a route quite different from commercial software and are widely praised with their use in scientific and technical workplaces.
Are there GPL business models? We can see a few different models out there: distributions that give away their packages, others that sell support services, and/or manuals, and others that mix GPL with proprietary software and sell the packages. There are also distributions and other companies that support programmers to work in one area or another. IBM is certainly one of those (who contributes back to the source code like any other contributor.)
One last note: many of you try to pin GPL as Marxist because it appears to rest on the principle of contribute what you are able and take what you need. This is just conjecture. The copyleft principle does NOT appear in any Marxist theory or literature. Also, to then compare from the GPL to Communist countries is ridiculous – Marx and Engels died long before any communist country came into being. I’m not sure that they’d be comfortable with these communist countries.
A better comparison would be Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson had said about knowledge, and I paraphrase, that it was like a light: if someone shared their light with someone else, they did not likewise lose light themselves. So it is with knowledge, one can share their knowledge far and wide and not lose that knowledge themselves. (The only thing they lose is the ability to exploit other people into forking over heaps of money for that knowledge.)
The author misses the key point regarding Stallman’s analysis of intellectual property. Software like most IP has a cost model where:
1) The first copy is very expensive to produce
2) Additional copies cost almost nothing to produce
That is as a society once software is written it makes sense it should be cheaply / freely redistributable so as to take maxiumum advantage of the cost of construction. Per copy charges set to “what the market will bear” inteferes with this. On the other hand once per copy charges are nominal and software is being created for public rather than private benefit then the cost of construction should be borne by the public not by a small number of companies. Thus freely distributable software neccesarily leads to software which allows for cooperative development: open source, freely modifiable, and requirements that this status be presevered by all community authors.
So why pays for GPL software? There are several models:
1) Linux kernel model: People don’t pay for GPL software they pay for particular features they want included; and the sum total of everyone’s contribution is a high quality product.
2) QT model: the people who don’t want to be part of the community and share pay for the software
3) BSD/X model: Government and academia can create without the need for profit. Why not have them fund software?
The point of the GPL is to eliminate the “software industry” as it exists today. However this isn’t neccesarily decrease the demand for software or software customization and integration. Rather if anything it should increase it. A computer with the capacity to run every program ever written is worth more than one with the ability to run a small collection of software you are willing to pay for.
<I<> Actually, that generalization that GPL doesn’t bring innovation is pretty much accurate. So far, I haven’t come by much GPL software that actually innovates rather than imitate. [/i]
First off remember until recently that GPL software came almost exclusively out of the FSF and their purpose wasn’t to innovate but to immitate. However unquestionably GCC is innovative. No one had ever designed a compiler that was archictually independent and could bootstrap itself. Emacs is another example of innovative GPL software.
More recently quite a bit of academic software has been released under the GPL. Academic software is often highly innovative.
The Linux kernel itself is quite innovative in many areas.
Free software ought to be MIT or BSD.
I use the GPL license because i will allow people to use the software, modifiy it if they want to, and redistribute it.
But there is absolutely NO way i will allow anyone to pick it up, close up the source, continue development and eventually sell it as a closed source program. No way.
If you want to make closed source software, then that is fine with me. But if you in doing so are using GPLed parts then i think it is fair that you have to redistribute your changes. If you are unhappy with that, then you are free to find and use non GPL stuff instead.
I still believe that the GPL license could/does very well hurt software jobs in the industry, and since there are now bad examples of overseas job market hunting (i.e one large software company layed off alot of US staff and replaced them with Indian labour.
Oh, you mean the companies are trying to maximise their profits and are trying to do so by using cheap labor. I’m sorry, but this is happening in most industries today already, why should the computer industry be any different?
This is the major problem with capitalism, and considering the USA is probably the most capitalistic country in the world, i would hardly say it is surprising that they are the first to be hurt like this.
No, im not really saying that capitalism is bad, just that it like everything else solves some problems and raises others.
And yes, i will admit that the GPL can hurt the industry, and personally being part of the software industry i could long term be out of a job because of it too.
But i still think the benefit for the consumer by far outweighs the drawbacks. And really, if the industry is hurt that badly by GPL software, then maybe it says more about the industry than it does about the GPL? Just maybe the industry should do something to adapt?
And if it can’t adapt? Well, i’m not capitalistic enough to really cry a river over it, but would have to adapt myself and find a different kind of job.
But i really don’t think it will come to this. Sure boxed products might be hurt, excluding games. And some jobs might be moved to india or other countries. But i bet this would happen no matter if there existed any open source software or not. But a lot of inhouse development would still need to be done, and i also doubt the highly educated CS people will have problems finding a job. (no, i dont consider a BA in CS highly educated)
> big name GPL packages such as […] PostGreSQL
AFAIK PostGreSQL is published under BSD license.
Who cares about the cloners credo anyway. This silly paper says in simple terms: I clone your code and you clone my code. Therefore there is no inovation in the GPL area, since it’s a low-lite cloners show only. This boy scout paper has nothing to do with Marxism. That would be to much credit. Read Karl Marx Capital and you understand that this is a totally diffrent intelectual league.
This guy seems to be lacking in imagination somewhat.
You know what? I am currently getting paid to write free software, to be more accurate, I’m being paid (by my company) to hack on Wine. They want something, I can give it to them, so we do a trade. The fact is that the thing I’m giving to them (a working piece of software on Linux) is far more interesting to them than what I’m giving to the community (a series of patches to wine). They couldn’t really care less what license it’s under.
He doesn’t seem able to conceive of a model by which people do work that customers want, as opposed to trying to guess what customers might want, building it, then selling it after the fact.
As has already been pointed out, most programming follows this model already – people use their programming skills to solve problems for other people. The number of coders employed in writing off the shelf products is statistically minimal. There’s no real reason why that 90% shouldn’t become 100%.
Hmm. OK, rant over. A few other points:
@rajanr – I’ve long been of the opinion that innovation is a function of the individual, not a group, so it’s not possible for “open source” to be innovative or not innovative, ditto for Microsoft, or western civilisation, or any other group in fact. I’d also take issue with your choice of projects, IBMs work on the kernel and Python aren’t projects I’d consider to be innovative – stuff like Slicker and ReiserFS however are doing things that literally have not been done before (or i’ve never heard of them if they have).
I completely agree with the writer. GPL protects the right of the hobbyists by preventing anybody from making money out of it. I think the use of GPL is suitable for very few software like the OSkernel, and a compiler. For other stuff I will use Open source none GPL license. Even as a hobbyist if you want to contribute something useful for everybody you can use the BSD license.
For crying out loud, nobody puts a gun to your head to use it in the first place. If that were the case, GPL would be communist, but as it stands, it is more similar to the pure capitalist notion of private charity.
Anonymous, you have absolutely no concept of Marxism at all. None. You’re thinking of Soviet-era Communism (ala Stalin and crew). Marxism is a political and socioeconomic ideal in which a society is centralized and all work (and the fruits thereof) are shared equally (something like a kibutz, only on a larger and more permanent scale). Do your reading.
I’ve long been of the opinion that innovation is a function of the individual, not a group, so it’s not possible for “open source” to be innovative or not innovative, ditto for Microsoft, or western civilisation, or any other group in fact.
Innovation can spring from an individual OR from a group sharing ideas. The ideas get bounced around and improved (hopefully). To my knowledge, no one came up with that writers’ Godsend Reveal Codes as featured in Corel WordPerfect before the WordPerfect Corporation did–and I’m hard-pressed to believe this was the development project of just one person.
And while the GPL itself might not create/stifle innovation, it certainly does breed an atmosphere of limited innovation. Many individuals and businesses would rather protect their investments of time and innovation by making them closed source, unless they can make a profit from related services to cheap/free software. (Naturally, this excludes the hobbyist hacker or someone who developed something just for themselves, who then decide not to bother trying to sell the app and just release it for free.) Many other previous commenters here are absolutely correct: most (though not all) GPL’ed software consists of tweaked copies of others’ products, whether those products were GPL or closed.
Lastly, let me not forget the old stalwarts such as Emacs, Vi, Linux kernel, GNU tools, LaTeX and so on. Most of these have gone down a route quite different from commercial software and are widely praised with their use in scientific and technical workplaces.
Vi was a commercial product, and LaTeX is definitely not GPL. In fact, the LaTeX license is specifically listed on the FSF site as being incompatible with the GPL.
I personally shun the GPL specifically for this reason.
That article hits the spot on everything! No sensible corporation wanting to earn a profit and protect intellectual property would release software under the GPL. WHAT ABOUT IBM! IBM isn’t the one to develop and release Linux. They just use it and modify it for their own usage. They’re not putting their (valuable) proprietary technology in there under GPL! Why do you suppose Apple chose to take the BSD Darwin code for their OS? Because they can use the code and not have to open up their proprietary technology! GPL is not a moneymaker. For all intents and purposes, its great for the hobbyist or for consumers, but not for a business! You as a consumer would love GPL because its free, but then you’d all be hippies out of work because there will be no businesses for you to work in that makes good money.
I admit I havent read and understood the GPL license. I also havent read everyone’s comments on this thread. What can say though, is that I believe a man should be paid for his work and if I’m presented with a resulting software/OS that is better than its competitor at least in some ways, I would agree to paying a decent price for it. EG. If a certain distro of Linux caught my eye, I would pay an equal (or more) amount as I would for WinXP(mainly cause of my frustrations with MS in the past). But on a whole, I believe in paying the price when it has been evaluated at that amount.
Apache isn’t GPL software either.
http://www.apache.org/LICENSE.txt
many have intimated that gpl software has the potential
to put programmers on the unemployement line.
Most software is customized for in house consumption that
is _never_ redistributed,ie most software is written to
be used and not resold.
So the largetst category of software that is written
has no problems with the gpl. What was the author going
on about? Is he seperated at birth from Brett Glass noted
BSD lover and gpl slayer?
I stand corrected on a number of packages: Apache, Vi, LaTeX, PostGreSQL aren’t GPL.
Still… the proof is in the pudding. GPL is working for what it was intended: to undermine the proprietary software industry. I commend the GPL for being innovative in turning the anti-sharing, money-hording industry on its head. People will and are getting paid to do GPL software, monopolies will be hard to form around closed standards and closed software. The creativity of the community won’t be hijacked by divisive software companies.
As jbolden points out this model is completely different where the community bears the cost of software creation and shares the fruits, instead of monopolies reaping the potentially huge profits.
The GPL is indeed working for us all. But not in a “modern” capitalist, “I must get paid money for my work sense.” The GPL is one of those key parts of an open and free utopian society… unless you imagine utopia still involving money. GPL says develop for the common good! Add to the infosphere! Fight entropy!
You may argue “hah, utopia is a long way away, and *you* (i.e. me, the author, nick) need money to eat today. Maybe, but does that mean we should not be working towards the betterment of all mankind? Why is mankind bettered by GPL software? Because no original idea released under GPL will be lost. Sure, there are lots of unoriginal ideas, and they won’t be lost either. But that is why the FSF encourages GPL/FSF developers to work together, as a community, and stop reinventing the wheel – or writing another image viewer (for example). If one image viewer is good, but not perfect, why write a new one that neglects the features of the first that you did not use, only to add a few features that you do? Instead, grab the source code for the first one, and add to it. If we all keep adding to each others software, we are sure to eventually come up with some great stuff. It may not happen today, or tomorrow, but eventually.
If this eventually kills the software industry, good! All the programmers can apply their technical minds to other challenging problems facing mankind – and not writing another spreadsheet. You say, “hah, that means college was a waste!” I say, “you went to college, ONLY so you could get a job? Who’s laughing now? I expanded my mind. Screw the job.” Just so you know, I am currently a broke student.
End Rant… must be close to 8,000 characters.
Nah, because if software that already exists is a commodity then people will make money being hired to produce new and interesting things…
And who wants to write Yet Another Mail Client anyway?
“The proof of the pudding is in the eating”. Come on, everyone knows how to use Google. If you are going to insist on correctness, you better be correct. “The proof is in the pudding” doesn’t even make sense, if you think about it for a couple of seconds. What, is it hidden in there? Are the GPL/Marxism/Thomas Jefferson in the pudding?
The GPL is a stroke of genius, for many reasons already stated. It does not permit code hoarding or stealing. Whether it is the right license for a particular project is another issue entirely. I don’t like the author’s whining that it is too hard to understand- if you don’t understand something this important to your business, hire a lawyer! It is a thought-provoking rant, I wish it were less whiny, and less full of half-baked philosophy.
If you are a programmer then the single most important concept of GPL is reuse. GPL is the ultimate form of software reuse, something that Object-Oriented programming strieves to achieve.
Do we really want to build from scratch?
Isn’t reuse and building upon pervious knowledge what engineering is all about? Or is software engineering different from all other engineering discipline?
Are you afraid that personal computers will end the stranglehold you have with mainframes?
Are you afraid that Object Oriented technologies will make you redundant?
Are you afraid that the Internet will destroy your proprietary network?
Are you afraid of the future of change?
Are you a dinosaur that is not willing to change in the new environment?
You cannot stop progress by saying you don’t like it, especially in the computer industry. Adapt or die, you had to to survive previous changes. Why is the GPL such a hard concept?
No one’s forcing you to release under the GPL. In fact, if I was going to be selling software, I certainly would not be distributing the entire source for free. Id is a good example: they let loose their engines, but not the artwork.
Licensing is important. It’s what aborted KDE’s early domination of the desktop – if QT had been released under GPL from the start, we’d all be running KDE right now, most likely. But Trolltech screwed up, released it under a proprietary license, and got GNOME/GTK+ in return. Whether we’re all the better for it is up for debate, but there’s a case where licensing caused quite a problem. Think twice before you automatically use GPL – it is quite possible LGPL or BSD might be a better license.
-Erwos
I thought this article was well written, well proofread, well conceived, well executed and used great language in general. I also agreed with just about everything he had to say. His observations match my own.
Please note that he did mention that there are exceptions to the “stereotypes” he used. However, the stereotype of the mimicry and lack of creativity in the GPL world isn’t without merit. He also did not suggest that people “have a gun to their heads” to use GPL. He indicated that there is a lot of emotional and psychological “push” (and endless rhetoric) out there trying to make the assumption that the only “good” license is GPL. This is what he’s concerned about (at least that’s what I felt).
I have been quite pleased with the open source license that the OpenBeOS team has decided on because it protects a business’ interests should they decide that OpenBeOS meets their needs or that they wish to generate a product via the OpenBeOS material. This was smart and realistic. (is this the BSD license?)
I think Open Source developers should read the licenses carefully before choosing one, and make their choices carefully. Software development need not be all about corporate greed; at the same time, there should be nothing wrong with wanting to make a living off of it. Why choose a license that makes that difficult? Why encourage people to think that GPL is the only “good” or only “real” choice?
The author misses a single vital point about the GPL, selling GPL’ed software for profit, common business sense and simple human nature.
Company X can buy a $40,000 product from a coder. This product is licensed under the GPL which means that X has the right to redistribute the product (for free if it wants to), among other things such as full access to the source. This is beneficial to X because it’s not locked into a single vendor.
The free redistribution clause in the GPL probably will never be used on such a product. Why? Well, would you as the CEO of company X allow corporation Y free access to the competitive edge you paid hard earned cash for? I wouldn’t, and the developer (who has the same rights to the apps as his employer) wouldn’t offer the app for free to corp. Y either if he knows what’s good for him. X would never hire him again if he would, that’s just an unwritten rule and common sense.
Company X will only redistribute their $40,000 app after it made them the purchase price plus some nominal profit. In that case the company suffers no loss upon distribution. It may even gain from it’s first sale by actually selling the app for say $10,000 to corp Y and Z.
The competitive edge that corp Y and Z have will be much less than X had initially. This is reflected in the cheaper purchase price, which makes it easier for Y and Z to break even and redistribute for $2500. The price point of the app will spiral down incredibly fast until it falls through and the app essentially becomes free as in beer.
Most apps that become obsolete like this (competitive edge is gone) just wither and die because they’re closed source. In the GPL-case it remains alive inside the community. Ideas are gleaned from it, and new ones are added to it so that some years later some tiny business struggling to survive will make it through because the app is free instead of needing to do a $40,000 investment to reinvent the wheel and subsequently go bankrupt. This small business actually adds to the economy by keeping let’s say five people employed. They could be producing/providing anything, just not software.
That’s how the GPL kills the proprietary software market but keeps people employed on other sides of the economy. Essentially nobody loses in this scenario. Big companies X Y and Z made their profits relative to their investments so they don’t lose out, and small businesses continue survive because they are kept adrift by the community.