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from the the-solution-has-always-been-copyleft dept.
Educator Lionel Dricot explores the historical prescience of Richard Stallman's (RMS) warnings and prophecies which have been spot on since the beginning, including his proposed solutions. Dricot points out that the problem with acceptance of the solutions is not with RMS or the Free Software Foundation (FSF), instead the problem is us and that we didn't listen. In addition to the Four Freedoms, he points out one obligation which has been taken for granted and left unspoken until now: the obligation to prevent privatization of the Commons.
There was one weakness in RMS theory: copyleft was not part of the four freedoms he theorised. Business-compatible licenses like BSD/MIT or even public domain are "Free Software" because they respect the four freedoms.
But they can be privatised.
And that's the whole point. For the last 30 years, businesses and proponents of Open Source, including Linus Torvalds, have been decrying the GPL because of the essential right of "doing business" aka "privatising the common".
They succeeded so much that the essential mission of the FSF to guarantee the common was seen as "useless" or, worse, "reactionary". What was the work of the FSF? The most important thing is that they proof-bombed the GPL against weaknesses found later. They literally patched vulnerabilities. First the GPLv3, to fight "Tivoisation" and then AGPL, to counteract proprietary online services running on free software but taking away freedom of users.
But all this work was ridiculed. Microsoft, through Github, Google and Apple pushed for MIT/BSD licensed software as the open source standard. This allowed them to use open source components within their proprietary closed products. They managed to make thousands of free software developers work freely for them. And they even received praise because, sometimes, they would hire one of those developers (like it was a "favour" to the community while it is simply business-wise to hire smart people working on critical components of your infrastructure instead of letting them work for free). The whole Google Summer of Code, for which I was a mentor multiple years, is just a cheap way to get unpaid volunteers mentor their future free or cheap workforce.
Our freedoms were taken away by proprietary software which is mostly coded by ourselves. For free. We spent our free time developing, debugging, testing software before handing them to corporations that we rever, hoping to maybe get a job offer or a small sponsorship from them. Without Non-copyleft Open Source, there would be no proprietary MacOS, OSX nor Android. There would be no Facebook, no Amazon. We created all the components of Frankenstein's creature and handed them to the evil professor.
Previously:
(2018) Happy 35th Birthday GNU!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by choose another one on Wednesday June 21 2023, @06:53PM
Linus can defend himself, but in my opinion (and I recall reading his thoughts on this right back early .99 days) that is verging on slanderous.
Linus _always_ took the tack (I think even before he selected GPL) that there was a social contract inherent to Linux (and expressed in GPLv2) that you can use the source for whatever. modify it however, BUT you MUST give your changes/improvements/modifications back (that means back to the commons). That is, he inherently opposed privatisation of the commons, from day 1 to this day.
Linus has never decried the GPL, he chose it, promoted it, supported it. He didn't like GPLv3, he didn't think it refelected the goals and social contract of v2. He wasn't alone in that, I don't like it either (not that I matter) and nor did (at least several of) the other kernel developers. I'm not sure if he liked the FSF before, but he certainly didn't after the GPLv3 process started. Nor did I. I would (and have) use GPLv2, by choice, but I won't use GPLv3 unless it's forced.
If you want just one example of where the FSF lost the plot with v3 take a look at all the stuff (about 500 words, equivalent to a quarter of the entire v2 licence) about "user product". Ask yourself why is that there? Oh, yes, Tivoisation, BUT why is there all the stuff about "user product", ask yourself what happens to NOT "user products"?
The answer is that there a fields of endeavour (large, commercial, big money, fields) in which "Tivoisation" is not a "bug in the licence", it's a feature, in fact often a legally required feature. So, the FSF decided that if you were in one of those big money big business fields, you can Tivoize the heck out any GPLv3 code. Tivo itself just wasn't big enough business to get the FSF to listen to it. Now ask yourself who is protecting the essential right of "doing business" aka "privatising the common". I can no longer find the reference but I recall it was alleged at the time that a whole bunch of large commercial interests looked at one of the early v3 drafts and threatened to fork essentially everything under GPLv2 to keep it under GPLv2, so the FSF changed stuff (that essential right of "doing business" again...). Apple still left the party over v3, which gives you an idea of the size of the interests we are talking about.
Linus talks about GPLv3 here: https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxmasterrace/comments/9m4n2g/linus_torvalds_says_gpl_v3_violates_everything/ [reddit.com]
Kernel devs here: https://lwn.net/Articles/200422/ [lwn.net]