Picking a license

[Patrick Maupin]

On May 13, 2:58 am, Steven D'Aprano
<ste... at REMOVE.THIS.cybersource.com.au> wrote:
> On Wed, 12 May 2010 22:16:29 -0700, Patrick Maupin wrote:
> > On May 12, 10:48 pm, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <l... at geek-
> > central.gen.new_zealand> wrote:
> >> In message <mailman.121.1273693278.32709.python-l... at python.org>, Ed
> >> Keith wrote:
>
> >> > ... but to claim that putting more restrictions on someone give them
> >> > more freedom is pure Orwellian double speak.
>
> >> What about the freedom to take away other people’s freedom?
>
> > The freedom to take away other people's freedom is a very serious power
> > that should only be used sparingly.
>
> >> What tuple of speak would that be?
>
> > Well, if my friend has a slow internet connection, so I give him a Linux
> > CD which lets him get out of Windows hell (me taking advantage of RMS's
> > "freedom 2", and my friend taking advantage of RMS's "freedom 0"), and I
> > don't give my friend all the source code (or a written offer) because,
> > frankly, he wouldn't know what to do with the source anyway, and it
> > doesn't fit on the CD, and I didn't even bother downloading the source,
> > at that point I would apparently be in violation of the GPL license on
> > hundreds of programs, because I would be violating what the FSF calls
> > "freedom 1".
>
> If you used an existing Linux distribution, then the offer to provide
> source code will already be there.

No, there is no written offer, e.g. with Ubuntu, simply because they
take advantage of the ability to provide a download of the source from
the same place as a download of the object.  If I download an Ubuntu
ISO, burn it and give it away (let's say I give away 100 copies, just
to remove the fair use defense), then I have violated the GPL.  I
provided chapter and verse on this; go look it up.

> If you compiled the CD yourself, and failed to provide a written offer on
> the CD, then yes absolutely you would be in violation of the licence
> terms, and shame on you.

Not relevant.

> The GPL doesn't require you to force source code on those who don't want
> it, but it does require you to make it available if they ask, and for you
> to notify them appropriately of this fact. You don't even have to
> explicitly tell your friend he can have the source code. You just have to
> make sure that the written offer is available on the disk you give him.

There is no written offer on the disk, because I burned it from
Ubuntu's repository.  It really is that simple -- if I give away
copies I've made of Ubuntu, I've violated the GPL.  Unless you can
cite some authority that tells me I'm wrong and gives real reasons.  I
actually quoted chapter and verse from the license, but you chose to
ignore that and make unsubstantiated claims.

> > Now I know none of us would ever violate the license like this, but if,
> > hypothetically speaking, I had made such a CD for my friend, and then
> > someone came along and explained to me that, by helping wean my friend
> > from MS Windows in this fashion, I had taken away his freedom
> > (specifically RMS's "freedom 1"), I would probably conclude that the
> > person making this accusation was a moron
>
> Well, yes, you probably would draw that conclusion. Doesn't mean that you
> are right to do so, because quite frankly you would have taken away your
> friend's freedom (albeit in a very small fashion). Access to the source
> code is a freedom that the GPLed software on the disk *explicitly* grants
> to your friend, and by failing to pass the offer on, you have taken away
> that freedom in a very real sense.

I was going to say "moron" but you're obviously not, so I'll change my
opinion to "brainwashed." :-)

> We are talking about a small technical violation of the licence terms
> here.

No.  It's fundamental.  The license deliberately makes not sharing the
source *the* principal way to violate it.

> but imagine if everyone did it, if Red Hat and Debian and Ubuntu
> etc didn't bother passing on the source code (or a written offer).

Then somebody else would.  How does Apache work?

> Only a
> tiny proportion of people would discover by their own efforts that the
> source code was available

No, I tell my friends that source is available, and they can come and
see me if they want to know more.  This may have been a viable
argument in 1989 (doubtful) but it's extremely silly today.

>, and only a proportion of them would learn
> where it was available from. The result in practical terms would be a
> major decrease in the number of people granted the freedom to modify the
> source code, and a correspondingly larger decrease in the number of
> people both free and able to modify the source code.

I sincerely doubt your dystopian vision, which, like the GPL and many
laws, is predicated on some outmoded views about how humans interact.

The reason some people say that the GPL protects the "freedom of the
code" is because the GPL assumes that code needs to be nurtured,
instead of taking the viewpoint that, while there may be some
freeloaders, sharing code is obviously so valuable to most of humanity
that it will just happen.  We don't live in medieval Europe any more
where the rules of glassmaking are so secret that you'll be hunted
down like a dog if you try to leave.  We live in a world where "co-
opetition" has been shown to be so valuable we had to make up a word
for it, and even for those secrets that people are willing to kill to
keep, we have wikileaks.

Let's face it -- a software freeloader is not the most evil thing in
the world.  But whenever people assume that stopping bad behavior 'x'
is paramount, they have to make so many rules that everybody is in
violation of them all the time.  People love to share, but in general
people don't share things that others aren't interested in.  People
with source code will share with people who care about it.  Perhaps
making a special case for modified source code would be sufficient, if
you really care about what Linus calls "tit-for-tat."

> It's not enough to be granted freedom to modify source code in theory, if
> you know about it, if you can find some hard-to-locate website which may
> or may not be running. The practicalities are equally important.

That's another thing.  Even if I downloaded all the source from
Ubuntu, what assurances do I really have that I have all the source?
I could be in technical violation of the GPL without even knowing it,
even after wasting an extra two days grabbing the source.  Best to use
Gentoo to be sure, and even then, I need to build it twice running
strace just to make sure that I really built everything.

> In
> theoretical terms, everyone has the freedom to legally modify and
> distribute the source code to Microsoft Windows. All you have to do is
> buy 51% of the stock so as to become majority shareholder, then make
> sufficient changes to the board of directors so that the new board grants
> you a licence to do so, then fight off the lawsuits from the rest of the
> shareholders. Anyone could do it! Not.

So "everyone" could own 51% of Microsoft?  That means 100% of the
shares would be around 350,000,000,000%.  Wait, that can't be right,
what? :-)  Can you come up with a sillier analogy?

> Another, more practical example: here in Australia our government is hell-
> bent on introducing an ineffective and expensive Internet censorship
> scheme. It seems that under Australian law, it will be completely legal
> to circumvent the filter, but our government is investigating ways to
> make it illegal to tell anyone how to circumvent it. In other words,
> Australians will have permission to circumvent the nanny filter, but
> since few people will know this, or know how to do so, it will be a
> meaningless freedom.

Yes, that's basically how the DMCA works, and that's evil, and that's
one of the reasons I sometimes give money to the EFF.  But, you can't
seriously be comparing making speech a crime and making not speaking a
crime (or a copyright violation), can you?  Maybe you *did* manage to
come up with a sillier analogy...

> The GPL concerns itself with the *practical* freedom to gain access to
> source code, not merely the theoretical freedom represented by permission
> without opportunity.

No, the GPL is ideologically opposed to anything related to
practicality (although in practice, its adherents have to bend a bit
to avoid being made irrelevant, and Linux, the shining success, is led
by someone who arguably cares not one whit for GPL ideological
purity).

> Failure to pass on the offer to provide source code
> impacts that freedom in a very real sense.

The thing is, there is an offer.  It's just not written, and it may
not be that I will later be able to download the exact same source.
It doesn't meet the letter of the license.  Nonetheless, the offer is
*even better* than the one mandated by the GPL, because it comes with
an offer to teach.

But the GPL wording required to enforce what you call a practical
freedom imposes so many impractical costs that there are probably
millions of people in the world who have violated this license, in the
good-faith attempt to spread free software around.  As I mentioned to
Mr. Boddie, IMHO, the failure to bring any of these to justice is
deliberate, because suing someone who installed Ubuntu on his
grandmother's computer would give Free Software a huge public black
eye.

So the practicality is not in the *license*, but in the *selective
enforcement* of the license.  I view this sort of nod to practicality
to be exactly the same as Microsoft's implicit encouragement of piracy
in third-world countries.

Well, maybe not *exactly* the same, but to conclude that they are at
all different is to admit that *eventual* access to the source code is
moral enough and that enforced distribution of source code to
*everybody* is not really the best way to make the world a better
place.

> If you can't understand this, you have the freedom to think I'm a moron,
> and I have the freedom to be sure you are one too *wink*

Well, I don't think you are a moron, but I find some of your beliefs
not only ill-founded, but very negative -- based on the belief that so
few people will do the right thing absent onerous controls that the
only way to proceed is to impose those onerous controls and then look
the other way when the violation is not *too* egregious.

Also, it is obvious that you did not adequately research the legal
obligations of someone who downloads an Ubuntu ISO and make a few
copies to hand out, because you made completely unsupported statements
about how that works.

Regards,
Pat