Rants against GPL

[Alex Libman]

From Slashdot -- SFLC Sues 14 Companies For BusyBox GPL Violations (http://linux.slashdot.org/story/09/12/14/210207/SFLC-Sues-14-Companies-For-BusyBox-GPL-Violations) --


The Software Freedom Law Center (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Freedom_Law_Center) has filed a lawsuit accusing fourteen companies, including Best Buy, Samsung and Westinghouse, of violating the GPL in nearly 20 separate products (http://www.softwarefreedom.org/news/2009/dec/14/busybox-gpl-lawsuit/). This is similar to earlier BusyBox GPL suits (http://yro.slashdot.org/story/08/03/17/1854252/Settlement-Reached-in-Verizon-GPL-Violation-Suit). The commercial uses of BusyBox must be much more prolific than anyone could have imagined. Having dealt with hundreds of compliance problems and finding an average of one violation per day (http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/11/10/1540242/SFLC-Finds-One-New-GPL-Violation-Per-Day), the SFLC recommends one thing: be responsive to their requests (they try to settle things in private first) lest you find one of these (http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2009/busybox-complaint-2009-12-14.pdf) (PDF) in your inbox.


My daily rant: Restrictive licenses like (L)GPL rely on government force, which makes it no different ethically than proprietary software, and its viral and economically unsustainable nature makes it even worse! Only permissively-licensed software like BSD and Apache is truly "free", and there's nothing wrong with using proprietary software if it makes economic sense to do so. Software freedom should be driven by free market competition, not government force!

[wmcbrine]

Screw the so-called free market. Who cares what you think software freedom should be driven by? When you write software, you can choose the license. For my own code, more often than not, I've chosen the GPL, and I'll continue to.

P.S.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d3/Anarchist_flag.svg/200px-Anarchist_flag.svg.png

[nrs]

From Slashdot -- SFLC Sues 14 Companies For BusyBox GPL Violations (http://linux.slashdot.org/story/09/12/14/210207/SFLC-Sues-14-Companies-For-BusyBox-GPL-Violations) --




My daily rant: Restrictive licenses like (L)GPL rely on government force, which makes it no different ethically than proprietary software, and its viral and economically unsustainable nature makes it even worse! Only permissively-licensed software like BSD and Apache is truly "free", and there's nothing wrong with using proprietary software if it makes economic sense to do so. Software freedom should be driven by free market competition, not government force!

That's absolutely insane. It would be like me saying homeowners rely on government force to protect themselves from thieves and rapists, government force is illegitimate so the ethical thing for them to do is make their stuff, and themselves freely available, otherwise they're no better than the people trying to rob and rape them.

[23meg]

Restrictive licenses like (L)GPL rely on government force

Lawsuits are rarely resorted to in GPL violations. Most cases are settled out of court.

[Exodist]

From Slashdot -- SFLC Sues 14 Companies For BusyBox GPL Violations (http://linux.slashdot.org/story/09/12/14/210207/SFLC-Sues-14-Companies-For-BusyBox-GPL-Violations) --




My daily rant: Restrictive licenses like (L)GPL rely on government force, which makes it no different ethically than proprietary software, and its viral and economically unsustainable nature makes it even worse! Only permissively-licensed software like BSD and Apache is truly "free", and there's nothing wrong with using proprietary software if it makes economic sense to do so. Software freedom should be driven by free market competition, not government force!


Either I dont understand you, or you dont understand you. :-k

Regardless if someone one is violating a license that I choose for my products. Do you expect the average Joe to have the cash to go to court with them over it or wouldnt it be helpfull to have someone like the SFLC to back you. Because fair is fair and its the law.

[Alex Libman]

Screw the so-called free market. Who cares what you think software freedom should be driven by? When you write software, you can choose the license. For my own code, more often than not, I've chosen the GPL, and I'll continue to.

You have your right to write all restrictively-licensed software you want, but when you try to call it "free" then you'll get an ear-full from me on why that is illogical, and if you try to enforce it through government force then we have a serious problem... A real contract is a meeting of minds, in written form, insured as enforceable by an arbitration agency (not necessarily a government monopoly) - not a text file in the tar file you've downloaded!



That's absolutely insane. It would be like me saying homeowners rely on government force to protect themselves from thieves and rapists, government force is illegitimate so the ethical thing for them to do is make their stuff, and themselves freely available, otherwise they're no better than the people trying to rob and rape them.

Not all ideas that contradict your government-controlled education and culture are "insane". For a solid introduction to Anarcho-Capitalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism), a philosophy I represent, you can read Murray Rothbard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Rothbard), David Friedman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_D._Friedman), Lysander Spooner (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysander_Spooner), and others (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalist_literature) - or at least view this flash video (http://www.isil.org/resources/introduction.swf) and download this free audio-book (http://freekeene.com/free-audiobook/) to get you started.

Individuals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-ownership) can have many options in defending their Natural Rights (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_and_legal_rights) to life, liberty, and property from aggression (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-aggression_principle), including self-defence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_self-defense), neighbourhood associations (which are the building blocks of a free society), private defence agencies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_defense_agency), and so forth. Your claim that the only way to defend those rights is a government monopoly is illogical, because the government monopoly itself exists through violation of the rights of its subjects!


Now, this thread isn't meant to be about libertarianism / Anarcho-Capitalism in general, but about the use of government force against people who "violate" restrictive licenses like GPL.



Lawsuits are rarely resorted to in GPL violations. Most cases are settled out of court.

In many cases that still constitutes government force.



Regardless if someone one is violating a license that I choose for my products. Do you expect the average Joe to have the cash to go to court with them over it or wouldnt it be helpfull to have someone like the SFLC to back you. Because fair is fair and its the law.

No, it isn't "fair", because "intellectual property" is an irrational and economically harmful construct backed by nothing except the guns of the state. If some fat-cat bureaucrat wrote a "law" requiring for you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?

Restrictive licenses like GPL depend on government force (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pirate-party.html) as much as companies like Microsoft, perhaps even more-so because Microsoft could adapt its business model to a free society through actual explicitly-enforcible contract law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_contract) (which does not require a government monopoly on jurisprudence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycentric_law)). Furthermore, companies like Microsoft exist in a sustainable economic environment, where their ability to charge money and/or withhold the source code is a consequence of their perceived merit with their customers. Free market competition would eventually have led to prices for most software reaching 0, which includes releasing the source with no restrictions, like with the BSD license. The unfortunate popularization of GPL has done nothing but harm to the software industry as well as its users, which is what this thread eventually intends to demonstrate.

[23meg]

In many cases that still constitutes government force.

How?

[Exodist]

No, it isn't "fair", because "intellectual property" is an irrational and economically harmful construct backed by nothing except the guns of the state. If some fat-cat bureaucrat wrote a "law" requiring for you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?

Your confusing a LICENSE with a PATENT.. Dang your one confused puppy!

[KiwiNZ]

Politics are not permitted even those vaguely worded to be related to open source.

Thread closed