SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow4408
In May this year, users of popular open source project FUSE for macOS noticed the source code for the latest update was missing. The project had become closed source and was no longer free for commercial use. But as The Reg discovered when we had a talk with its maintainer, there was a very good reason for that – and it's not a good look for the many companies that used it.
[...]FUSE for macOS 3.9 can still be freely bundled with commercial software. Then in July of 2019, I released FUSE for macOS 3.10 with support for macOS Catalina under the new, less permissive licence, that requires specific written permission to bundle FUSE with commercial software," he told The Reg.
[...] How is this possible? "Most of the FUSE for macOS source code is released under the BSD licence. However, libfuse, for example, is released under the LGPL. I did what other developers of closed source FUSE forks have been doing for some time. The BSD licence has no copyleft, which means that no one is required to push changes upstream or make them available. As libfuse is covered under the LGPL, changes to it need to be made available, while changes to the kernel code can be kept closed," Fleischer explains.
The outcome? "After the licence change I have been contacted by several companies and negotiated some licence agreements. In this very regard closing the source code of FUSE was a success. In the very least it helped to raise awareness to the difficulties of sustainable open source software development," he said.
Fleischer added that: "I do not like continuing working on FUSE as a closed source project. It has been a hard decision and I have been thinking about it for a very long time, but I stand by it and it seemed to be the only option left to raise awareness and ensure the project's future."
He acknowledges though that: "I have not been very transparent about the licence change."
Source: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/12/16/fuse_macos_closed_source/
(Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday December 18 2019, @06:11AM (6 children)
If one of the two licenses is viral like the GPL there's a strong incentive for companies to pay. This is how the Sleepycat license works, you either use it fairly under the GPL or you pay the necessary sin tax to avoid the GPL. It's quite a nice business model, everyone who wants to play fair gets it under the GPL, anyone who doesn't agree with the GPL can still use it, but they have to pay for that right.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday December 19 2019, @12:40AM (5 children)
Dual licensing means that companies that don't change the code won't have to pay to use it. What good is that to a developer who can't afford to work for free any more?
The guy sold some licenses - good for him. The buyers didn't need to make any changes to the source, so they would have been free to use it if it had been gpl. Now, they have to pay and it's obviously worth it to them or they wouldn't have bothered.
The gpl gives businesses a free ride. I would like to see more developers take a stand on the value of their work. It's not like a car company will let you use their car for free and "make it up in support" when other garages can compete with them without the overhead of actually making cars.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Thursday December 19 2019, @02:25AM (4 children)
Uh, no it doesn't, that's why I mentioned viral licenses, if you use any of the code you either have to GPL your own code (which commercial companies won't do) or pay for it. It works quite well, thus the Sleepycat license, which I also mentioned in my post.
No it doesn't. You either don't understand how the GPL works or you're thinking of some different license.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday December 19 2019, @02:37AM
Read the LGPL. It doesn't have the effect you think it does for libraries. Also, even GPL code, you don't have to release your code if you don't link to GPL code.
There's no reason you can't have proprietary code shell out to GPL code and use the return values. No linkage required, no need to release the proprietary source.
Also, there's absolutely no need to distribute the code if you don't redistribute. Or distribute your binary separately and either provide a link to download gpl code or whatever that is used but not linked to. No license violation.
Same as if you use it to run software as a service. No distribution == no gpl violation.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday December 19 2019, @06:47PM (1 child)
The GPL is only triggered when you redistribute code. Any business is free to use GPL code for whatever reason they want as long as they don't redistribute the resulting program.
That's one reason why you can use GPL code in software-as-a-service without triggering the GPL.
And if you don't modify the code, who cares? It's not like you're depriving anyone of any changes.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Friday December 20 2019, @01:35AM
That's not how corporate lawyers interpret it. What's made the news is the small number of companies who have flouted the GPL, not the large number of companies who have looked at the GPL and paid for the alternative because the GPL adds too much uncertainty. In rare cases where they've dug in their heels, having a lawyer point out that one interpretation of the GPL is that if the company gives the software to their employees, which they must in order to have them work on it, then the employees have the right to redistribute it to anyone else because providing it to their employees triggers the redistribution clause. The company decided to pay rather than have that tested in court.
Companies pay to get legal certainty, not because of a particular interpretation of the Gnu ideology.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday December 19 2019, @06:49PM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.