Pharo 7 license question

We will have to agree to disagree.

I have been a passionate user of open source software for over 20 years. Are you really saying that proponents of permissive licenses don't understand why people write free software and give it away for free? Really!

I passionately disagree with the statement of "All software should be GPLd in the first place". This is one of the biggest reasons I passionately dislike the GPL. GPL is goodness and light. All else is evil incarnate. Ugh!

I am not going to defend unethical business practices. But that is not a defense of the GPL or an argument against permissive licenses. I am not a fan Microsoft or Apple, et al. I am a fan FreeBSD and Linux. However I do not believe all closed source or proprietary software is wrong or evil.

I am working my way through the book you suggested. But so far I fail to see where it makes the argument for the GPL and against permissive licenses.

For the record. I am not a professional programmer. All software I am working on if I were to release it (or when) will be under a permissive license, unless it is a port of GPLd software. I am not in the business of software. I am an empowered user. Open source software empowers me more the proprietary software. Permissively licensed software empowers me more than GPLd software**. That is not currently the case for everyone and every situation. One day it we may come closer to that being true. But it takes time. And it takes proper motivation and resources.

**There are many situations that I cannot use GPLd source, but can use permissively licensed source. MIT/BSD empowers where, GPL does not. Here in this community, with this software. GPL is a no go. It is a show stopper. MIT/BSD is welcomed and wanted. Many other communities are likewise.

As I said, we will have to agree to disagree. I doubt that anything above persuades you in any way.

Regardless, I wish you well and have a great day!

Jimmie

I personally don't care about the interests of big corporations cheating with end-users' rights. If they were my potential customers, or any intermediary which is afraid of not being able to do business with them due to their obsession with restricting end-users' rights, then I'd probably have a conflict of interest. In that case, I could think of sacrificing ethics for food temporarily. But I'm not in that business, and I don't want to.

I won't blame the GPL instead of the "old culture" of doing business by forcing customers to do only what you want them to do, and make them pay for any upgrade some of them could do themselves otherwise.

Distributing works with GPL restricts the options to other developers using your product or library. No doubt about that. But ethically, that "freedom" only helps the old model of doing software. All software should be GPLd in the first place.

There's a book that indirectly illustrates my point, and one I enthusiastically recommend: Badass users [1].

Anyway, we could go on and on. It's a matter of pragmatism vs ethics of software.

Usually, people sharing your "classic" point of view of the business of software don't understand why people write free software and give it for free.

Is that your case?

[1] http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920036593.do

2017-09-21 17:16 GMT+02:00 Jimmie Houchin <[hidden email]>:

On 09/21/2017 09:47 AM, Ben Coman wrote:

[SNIP]

Its horses for courses.  No one viewpoint fits all circumstances. Another way to look at it is that permissive licenses give a developer more freedom to combine libraries with different licenses.  

I do like this radical simplification I bumped into... 

"Another way of looking at it is that you’re picking a license based on what you are afraid of. 

* The MIT license is if you’re afraid no one will use your code; you’re making the licensing as short and non-intimidating as possible. 

* The Apache License you are somewhat afraid of no one using your code, but you are also afraid of legal ambiguity and patent trolls. 

* With the GPL licenses, you are afraid of someone else profiting from your work [or profiting off end-users] (and ambiguity, and patent trolls)." [https://exygy.com/which-license-should-i-use-mit-vs-apache-vs-gpl]

...which aligns squarely with Pharo - our greater fear is people not using it.

I think the GPL one looks right. Fear, anger, offense if someone has the possibility of using their software and not contributing back. To me I think it doesn't work as much as they think. It doesn't take into account the free will of people to walk away and completely not use their software. I personally don't even look at GPL licensed sources unless there are none other available which is very rare. I don't want the knowledge or understanding of that code tainting other code I write.

MIT often means, we don't care, do what you want, just don't blame us.
We don't care if you take it and use it in closed source proprietary money making big corp software.
We don't care if you take it and use it and keep it to yourself.
We don't care ... Just don't blame us for any problems.

However, we would love your buy in on open source philosophy and contribute back where you are able. We understand you have software which is business critical, proprietary and can not be open sourced. We also know that you probably have software which has no business specific (your business) code which is releasable. And we see many, many, big and small businesses doing so today. Close off what you must, open what you can.

I don't think most of us are afraid of no one using our code. PostgreSQL has no such fear. SQLite which is public domain has no such fear. And we could go on and on. Python, etc...

I personally am very much in the camp of I want people to contribute because they want to contribute. Not because I have a stick called the GPL. But rather because I have the carrot of all of the benefits derived from open source software. I am carrot oriented, not stick oriented.

Jimmie

Hi,

I think that licensing is an important issue and despite of being a pretty political one (a way to express power and empowerment from/to users) is not discussed deeply, so I welcome a lot a friendly thread like this one. I share the views of the free software (which is not the same as open source), but I think that not all software can be released as such. Even the people at FSF provided exceptions like the LGPL as a way to balance practical concerns and liberties. In the case of Pharo, subclassing is the most common way of reusing (instead of linking), the LGPL doesn't work (a long rationality about when/where to use it is on [1] and a interesting analysis is [1a]).

[1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html
[1a] http://giovanni.bajo.it/post/56510184181/is-gpl-still-relevant

There are long discussions about how to create cultural (and other) commons and how licensing plays a role on it. The P2P license[2], for example, favors cooperatives instead of private corps (I think that a modification to include small and medium business should be provided). The idea is that license express a world view (about liberty, sharing, reciprocity, diversity, fears, etc.) and we should not overseen that. In my case, what I try to do is to see how a particular license plays a role in creating a commons and making me part of a community that build such commons goods. If I chose a different license for Grafoscopio, instead of MIT, the tool have less probability to be part of the Pharo commons and community (and is not properly a rising star in popularity right now!), but I can express my concerns about diversity in licensing and commons building in other places, like in the Grafoscopio Manual [3].

[2] https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Peer_Production_License
[3] http://mutabit.com/repos.fossil/grafoscopio/doc/tip/Docs/En/Books/Manual/manual.pdf

So I think that we should look at how the licenses have enabled or not the building of a common world and who is empowered by such licenses as a complex issue, to balance practical and idealist choices, trying to make them converge. In my case, having Grafoscopio and its documentation and related artifacts licensed as Free Cultural Works [4], has given to me leverage even in negotiations with big entities and they keep such works and derived ones with the same licenses. So, from my personal point of view and practices having such mixtures of licenses have not diminished in any way my own practices in building commons. I would like to explore (networks of) cooperatives and small/medium business as an alternative economical practice to enlarge and protect the commons, but as said, this is a complex issue that requires a lot of field work.

Cheers,

Offray

[4] http://freedomdefined.org/

I personally don't care about the interests of big corporations cheating with end-users' rights. If they were my potential customers, or any intermediary which is afraid of not being able to do business with them due to their obsession with restricting end-users' rights, then I'd probably have a conflict of interest. In that case, I could think of sacrificing ethics for food temporarily. But I'm not in that business, and I don't want to.

I won't blame the GPL instead of the "old culture" of doing business by forcing customers to do only what you want them to do, and make them pay for any upgrade some of them could do themselves otherwise.

Distributing works with GPL restricts the options to other developers using your product or library. No doubt about that. But ethically, that "freedom" only helps the old model of doing software. All software should be GPLd in the first place.

There's a book that indirectly illustrates my point, and one I enthusiastically recommend: Badass users [1].

Anyway, we could go on and on. It's a matter of pragmatism vs ethics of software.

Usually, people sharing your "classic" point of view of the business of software don't understand why people write free software and give it for free.

Is that your case?

[1] http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920036593.do

2017-09-21 17:16 GMT+02:00 Jimmie Houchin <[hidden email]>:

On 09/21/2017 09:47 AM, Ben Coman wrote:

[SNIP]

Its horses for courses.  No one viewpoint fits all circumstances. Another way to look at it is that permissive licenses give a developer more freedom to combine libraries with different licenses.  

I do like this radical simplification I bumped into... 

"Another way of looking at it is that you’re picking a license based on what you are afraid of. 

* The MIT license is if you’re afraid no one will use your code; you’re making the licensing as short and non-intimidating as possible. 

* The Apache License you are somewhat afraid of no one using your code, but you are also afraid of legal ambiguity and patent trolls. 

* With the GPL licenses, you are afraid of someone else profiting from your work [or profiting off end-users] (and ambiguity, and patent trolls)." [https://exygy.com/which-license-should-i-use-mit-vs-apache-vs-gpl]

...which aligns squarely with Pharo - our greater fear is people not using it.

I think the GPL one looks right. Fear, anger, offense if someone has the possibility of using their software and not contributing back. To me I think it doesn't work as much as they think. It doesn't take into account the free will of people to walk away and completely not use their software. I personally don't even look at GPL licensed sources unless there are none other available which is very rare. I don't want the knowledge or understanding of that code tainting other code I write.

MIT often means, we don't care, do what you want, just don't blame us.
We don't care if you take it and use it in closed source proprietary money making big corp software.
We don't care if you take it and use it and keep it to yourself.
We don't care ... Just don't blame us for any problems.

However, we would love your buy in on open source philosophy and contribute back where you are able. We understand you have software which is business critical, proprietary and can not be open sourced. We also know that you probably have software which has no business specific (your business) code which is releasable. And we see many, many, big and small businesses doing so today. Close off what you must, open what you can.

I don't think most of us are afraid of no one using our code. PostgreSQL has no such fear. SQLite which is public domain has no such fear. And we could go on and on. Python, etc...

I personally am very much in the camp of I want people to contribute because they want to contribute. Not because I have a stick called the GPL. But rather because I have the carrot of all of the benefits derived from open source software. I am carrot oriented, not stick oriented.

Jimmie

The appropriate and neutral term to describe GPL licence is "recursive".

GPL licence was designed to build a better computing community, where
freedom is 1st consideration, even at the expense of a lower acceptance.

Hilaire


Le 20/09/2017 à 21:30, Jimmie Houchin a écrit :
> So my question to you. What words would you use instead of viral and
> infection that equally describe that characteristic of the GPL and
> variants?

--
Dr. Geo
http://drgeo.eu

 From my understanding, GPL is not about "someone else profiting from
your work", but to enforce freedom and to accumulate contribution on GPL
licensed code.

Regarding profit you are free to sell GPL licensed code, publicly or
privately to one person or company, your only restriction is to provide
the source code too to the recipient.

To protect from someone else profiting from your work there are
effective variant from the creative commons licenses.

Hilaire


Le 21/09/2017 à 16:47, Ben Coman a écrit :
> * With the GPL licenses, you are afraid of someone else profiting from
> your work [or profiting off end-users] (and ambiguity, and patent
> trolls)."
> [https://exygy.com/which-license-should-i-use-mit-vs-apache-vs-gpl]
>

--
Dr. Geo
http://drgeo.eu

I am just stating the neutral term to describe GPL license nature is
"recursive", and why it was designed as this. The "viral" term is
unnecessary emotionally charged.

I don't fell the discussion turned about MIT vs GPL, Pharo been MIT is
just fine.

Hilaire

Le 22/09/2017 à 10:40, Thierry Goubier a écrit :
--
Dr. Geo
http://drgeo.eu

Hello, thanks for the reply.

I have thought about recursive and unfortunately it is not in my opinion
an adequate or equivalent substitute. It may be inoffensive, but it is
not accurate in conveying those properties or characteristics of the
GPL. Something that is recursive generally makes repeated calls to
itself. It is neatly contained and does not propagate outside of itself.
Calling a recursive method does not make the call chain all the way up
to main recursive. The recursive method does its recursion and generally
returns its result back to the caller, ending the recursion. The only
thing the caller receives is the results, not the recursion.

There are many positive cultural references to something viral or
infect(ious). For something to go viral, depends on what that something
is. She has an infectious smile, or laugh. Even in biology where we get
the term viral. It is not absolutely or always negative. There are
things that scientist attempt to use viral characteristics to do good
things. Context is everything.

There are no words a GPL proponent could provide which adequately or
otherwise describe the viral characteristic of the GPL that would be
considered positive by a GPL opponent.

Back to context.

To a GPL proponent, the viral nature of the GPL is considered a positive
and good thing. It is the primary reason to choose and use the GPL.

To the GPL opponent, the viral nature of the GPL is considered a
negative and bad thing. It is the primary reason to oppose and to avoid
using the GPL.

Two side both viewing the same exact thing and understanding it very
differently. One positive, one negative. There is no positive spin for
this aspect of the GPL for someone wishing to avoid that aspect. No
matter what words are chosen.

For the MIT/BSD person we don't necessarily care if you wish to license
your software under the GPL. What we care is that your software is
expressly and explicitly trying to override our choices and compel us to
become GPL. That is what we don't like. The fact that GPL software is
GPL software in perpetuity is okay. Just leave us alone. But we know
that is not how the GPL works.


A perspective occurred to me this morning. The original author of GPL
software is not bound by the GPL. They have freedoms the GPL takes away.
They have the freedom to turn their software into closed source,
proprietary software. They have the freedom to not release all of their
modifications. They have the freedom to not infect all their other
software which may use this otherwise GPLd code. They have freedom to
relicense their software. They have many, many freedoms which the GPL
removes from everyone who receives the GPLd software. The original
author of GPL software has for himself MIT like freedoms.

What we on the MIT/BSD side of things want is for everybody to have all
of the freedoms the original author of the software has. People who
receive our software maintain all freedoms.

I have seen over the years many GPL licensed projects change to some
more permissive license. Once they did so, the success of the project
improved. They had greater buy in, and an increase in use. It increased
the size of the open source community and an increase in the code base
of an open source project. These are good things.

Here I will let it rest. I don't know what else can be expressed to help
clarify both sides.

Jimmie






On 09/22/2017 03:27 AM, Hilaire wrote:

On Mon, Sep 25, 2017 at 9:43 PM, Jimmie Houchin <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hello, thanks for the reply.

I have thought about recursive and unfortunately it is not in my opinion an adequate or equivalent substitute. It may be inoffensive, but it is not accurate in conveying those properties or characteristics of the GPL. Something that is recursive generally makes repeated calls to itself. It is neatly contained and does not propagate outside of itself. Calling a recursive method does not make the call chain all the way up to main recursive. The recursive method does its recursion and generally returns its result back to the caller, ending the recursion. The only thing the caller receives is the results, not the recursion.

There are many positive cultural references to something viral or infect(ious). For something to go viral, depends on what that something is. She has an infectious smile, or laugh. Even in biology where we get the term viral. It is not absolutely or always negative. There are things that scientist attempt to use viral characteristics to do good things. Context is everything.

There are no words a GPL proponent could provide which adequately or otherwise describe the viral characteristic of the GPL that would be considered positive by a GPL opponent.

Back to context.

To a GPL proponent, the viral nature of the GPL is considered a positive and good thing. It is the primary reason to choose and use the GPL.

To the GPL opponent, the viral nature of the GPL is considered a negative and bad thing. It is the primary reason to oppose and to avoid using the GPL.

Two side both viewing the same exact thing and understanding it very differently. One positive, one negative. There is no positive spin for this aspect of the GPL for someone wishing to avoid that aspect. No matter what words are chosen.

For the MIT/BSD person we don't necessarily care if you wish to license your software under the GPL. What we care is that your software is expressly and explicitly trying to override our choices and compel us to become GPL. That is what we don't like. The fact that GPL software is GPL software in perpetuity is okay. Just leave us alone. But we know that is not how the GPL works.


A perspective occurred to me this morning. The original author of GPL software is not bound by the GPL.

I think this thread has run its course for now, but just a quick clarification here.  The above is only true up until they accept the first contribution from another party - so its not a good argument.

cheers -ben   .

I agree that it has run its course. However, the original author still can do whatever they want with the code they wrote. They have copyright. But they can not undo what has been released. They cannot use any other contributors code without that code also affecting any of the other code they may have added to or modifications of the original. But the initial offering and any additions and modifications they do which does not other contributors GPLd code is still under their complete control to do as they wish. This is the only way anybody would be able to do dual licensing. As is the case in something like QT or other such projects. But anything they write which is without contributions is still totally within their control to do so as they please. And as I said, there are many projects who started out as GPL and switched to MIT. Yes, someone could still take what was released as GPL and keep it going. But it would then be competing with the MIT version. Nim and PicoLisp are two such projects that started as GPL and moved to MIT.

They could even do so with contributed code if the contributors signed agreements assigning copyrights to the original author.


Jimmie

Back on topic.

To my understanding, if I should port anything GPL licensed that I
needed from some language to a C library and licensed it GPL. Then I
called my new GPL C library via UFFI. I should have no problems at all.
Is that a correct understanding by all?

Does this look like a good approach for most anyone in the Pharo
community if they desire to port and use GPL software?

Thanks.

Jimmie


On 09/15/2017 03:49 PM, Jimmie Houchin wrote:

> On 2 Oct 2017, at 19:45, Jimmie Houchin <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> Back on topic.
>
> To my understanding, if I should port anything GPL licensed that I needed from some language to a C library and licensed it GPL. Then I called my new GPL C library via UFFI. I should have no problems at all. Is that a correct understanding by all?
>
> Does this look like a good approach for most anyone in the Pharo community if they desire to port and use GPL software?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Libraries

There are different opinions, but I seem to clearly remember the GNU ReadLine case: even though it is a library that you can link to, using it is only allowed by other GPL programs.

Thanks for the reply and the link. Reasonably informative, but
unfortunately not as definitive as one would like. What a mess. Makes me
really appreciate the permissive licenses. No headaches. :)

I was just curious if that was an option. Fortunately I believe I have
alternatives to what I was looking to do. So I can avoid it all together.

Someone posted a view by the Racket developers on their understanding of
their choice of the LGPL for Racket. It seems that they are switching to
MIT/Apache for Racket 7, the next version. They had all contributors
sign agreements to the relicensing.

https://github.com/racket/racket/issues/1570

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/racket-dev/FiBLEZ-fmn8/8uLTbNamEwAJ

Again thanks for the lesson and help.


Jimmie


On 10/02/2017 01:47 PM, Sven Van Caekenberghe wrote:

No I have not. I don't tend to go their direction very often. I am an
advocate of open source software but am not a fan of FSF's ethics or
political opinions. And as you say, that want all software to be GPL.
Also, I do prefer to hear third party opinions especially those who have
potentially court tested ones. That is ultimately where we find the true
definition and understanding.

Thanks.

Jimmie



On 10/02/2017 02:48 PM, Peter Uhnák wrote:
>
> But of course this is written by FSF, and for them GPL is not just a
> legal matter, but an ethical one (and from their perspective GPL being
> a virus infecting other code is a good comparison, because they really
> want to take over).

Jimmie,

Since you started this thread, I have to ask.

You say you are an advocate of open source software. OK. But are you just on the consumer side or also on the producer side ? In other words, have you written/published/supported any non-trivial open source software ?

Are you an academic or are you involved in commercial software (i.e. have you written closed software that you sell or otherwise make money off) ?

Sven

Good and valid questions.

Primarily consumer side. I am a longtime user of Linux, 20+ years. I
prefer and advocate for open source software even when required to use
Windows/Mac. So in general in personal life with friends, family,
acquaintances if the subject is computers or software and the
opportunity is reasonable I will advocate for open source software. Many
times simply as an opportunity to educate people who may not know or be
misinformed.

I am a business man, an employee of a company. My employer is purely a
Windows shop. No development is a part of my day job.

All of my use of development software is personal projects. I have not
released any software. Nothing has reached a point to release. I am
however wanting to release a couple of projects this next year. One I
hope to make money off of the use of and not the sale of. The other is
personal, not business software. I hope to have both in a releasable
state sometime in the next 6 months.

My problem has always been indecision on what I thought would be the
best language for the project. I have always loved Pharo/Smalltalk. But
sometimes I explore other languages. Sometimes because they already have
libraries and bindings that would make the project easier. This is still
a very reasonable possibility. I am not a professional. I only program
in my spare time. Due to my job, sometimes that is very little.

Regardless, the software I hope to get to a releasable stage I do plan
on releasing as MIT. It is the license I prefer and believe in. One need
not program or release software in order to be an advocate.

I have no problem with someone writing closed source software. That is
their personal or business choice. Myself, I have spent way to much
money on software which was closed source and the company disappeared or
changed directions. Then I am stuck with software that has no future.

Jimmie


On 10/02/2017 03:36 PM, Sven Van Caekenberghe wrote:

This is a bit my point: if you respect closed-source software and commercial restrictive licenses, you should also respect GPL and friends as valid choices and not describe them with negative adjectives.

On ethical grounds, I like GPL a lot. It is also very successful (Linux, GNU). It is a valid choice. And yes, in certain license constructions that could mean you cannot use certain software.

On a more positive note: I personally think that a system like Pharo is the ultimate open source incarnation as you can literally read and change each and every part in the same language (modulo the VM and plugins, but I am on the as-much-in-image as-possible side). I guess very, very few people actually looked inside the Linux kernel, C library or C compiler, let alone a driver, as these are much too complex and too far removed from your own program. In Pharo you can stumble into code in very deep areas such as graphics, the compiler, the debugger, etc ...