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By coryking (Sun Dec 10, 2006 at 05:13:05 PM EST) Sun, FreeBSD (all tags)
Last week I acquired a Sun Sunfire V100.  It was to be used as a radius server, but the company that owned it never panned out.  It is several years old, but the machine was powered on for a few hours during its life.

Aside from that, life has been too busy with contract work to improve my own product - which needs some capital to properly market it and pay my friend for a logo and website graphics.

Inside, a boring unstructured, unedited computer-nerd diatribe....


Had to make a choice between keeping the native Solaris operating system, or blowing it away and installing some other operating system.

All the servers under my wing are due for an OS upgrade.  Right now they are a hodgepodge of SuSE versions.  The oldest versions are 9.1, which are only two years old, but are now unsupported and cannot be automatically patched.  According to SuSE, upgrading to a new version is not supported - only a clean install is. 

I've played with gentoo and I really like how their ebuild system lets me filter out bullshit like X11 libraries.  It also seems the easiest linux solution for automated releases. However, twice now emerge has fux0red my system after an update.  Plus, the changelog on the builds usually suck - "bumped to 103AFxz..." for a CVS entry is useless.  The whole thing is rather scary so no dice for a production system.

Basically, I've grown very tired of Linux.  Too much politics, too many distros, too many loud-mouth fan boys, shitty half-baked man pages ('info' can kiss my ass, RMS), to unstable, highly undisciplined, fragmented, and mainly developed under license I'm philosophically and morally at odds with. 

I'm too old for that bullshit.  I want boredom.  I want an appliance that I can just plug in, turn on, and have it just exist.  Give me predictability and security, not a bunch of software equivalents to yellow stickers and oversized exhaust tips.

On Wednesday, after a failed attempted to install Solaris 9.  Their package system, at least on that version, SUCKS!!!!!! 500 packages, all installed by default and dependency tracking that consists of "hey, these other packages depend on this - you better write it down to remove them....".  Since the only way to talk to the server at this stage was good-old RS232 (no keyboard, mouse or monitor ports...), this process was tedious over a 9600 baud connection.

It doesn't help that sun's website is shrouded in mystery.  "Call us!"  "Talk to your local sales rep about a support package"...  Weird.  Guess I'm too small for them; not enterprisy enough.

I only made it to removing packages on page-2 (which is still in the A's) before I decided to screw that.  What a mistake it would be to have learn yet another OS when it wouldn't be running on my i386 servers.  I've already decided FreeBSD is going to be the gold standard for all the other servers.

So I downloaded the ISO's FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE ala sparc64.  What a breath of fresh air!  I've already submitted a patch to fix a broken mod_gzip port and I cannot wait to contribute a few ports of my own for missing CPAN modules.

Now to tinker around with portupgrade and see about creating a standardized build & release process for my own product...

Honestly?  As corny as it sounds, the most refreshing part is the switch in licensing.  I believe open source software is a strong force that can enrich the lives of not only users, but developers and businesses off all kinds - even those who sell proprietary software.  However, those developers & businesses need to feel secure in making contributions to such projects while keeping food on the table selling their warez.  It is no surprise that the majority of successful flagship open source packages do not use the so-called "flagship" license the brainwashed cult-members like to push on us.

Interestingly, I am thinking I might give any hypothetical programmers I hire the ability to somehow develop for me while letting them keep the copyright under a BSD'ish license...  I mean, if a programmer were to write some fancy log parser or build system for the company, the IP itself doesn't add to the corporate bottom line.  In theory, it is no loss to me if they recycle it in future projects of theirs.  In return they could incorporate their own private toolbox into the system without fear of loosing their rights.  Code like that is kind of like the toolbox a mechanic brings into their shop every day - the shop doesn't own their tools, they do. The idea smells like 1099 contract work though, where the contractor by default maintains the copyright.  I'm sure my lawyer will have some interesting things to say about a scheme like that.

Good times... good times.

< E. Jandl: "Die Rache / der Sprache / ist das Gedicht" | BBC White season: 'Rivers of Blood' >

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FreeBSD & Me | 53 comments (53 topical, 0 hidden) | Trackback
emerge fuxxoring by ShadowNode (4.00 / 1) #1 Sun Dec 10, 2006 at 05:59:04 PM EST
Usually that's caused by not running etc-update, which forces new packages to use old configuration, which does not always work.



always etc-update by coryking (2.00 / 0) #2 Sun Dec 10, 2006 at 06:06:49 PM EST
always have, always will.  Still keeps me on my toes when one ebuild blocks another (coldplug vs udev comes to mind). 

Sure wish I didn't have to go to the forums to find out why though... I'm not one to just blindly hit okay - especially for critical things like coldplug or udev.  Neither portage changelog mentioned anything more than "bumped to x0593...." - nary a single line about "warning... we are now blocking udev, use this one instead.  here is link for more info".  The bug database didn't say anything.  The forums users just say "You should unemerge udev and use coldplug now on for some obscure reason that you should already know becaues you need to be on this weird-ass mailing list (you jackass)".

So yeah.  Gentoo has potential; emerge and friends are pretty damn slick, but it ain't for production servers.
We are Siamese if you please. We are Siamese if you don't please.
[ Parent ]

Gentoo is fine for production servers... by ShadowNode (4.00 / 1) #4 Sun Dec 10, 2006 at 07:02:09 PM EST
But not as is. It's great for building something specific to a purpose, but not so much for installing and expecting to be able to just run an update script periodically. It's more of a meta-distribution than a stand alone distribution.

You shouldn't be updating packages on a production server without testing them first, anyway.

Emerge's alert system does need an overhaul. Most of the time, that sort of information gets punted to the console by emerge before or after the package is installed. Which is of course completely useless if you're updating any number of packages. Why it doesn't also get put in the Changelog is beyond me.

[ Parent ]

True.dat by coryking (2.00 / 0) #7 Sun Dec 10, 2006 at 08:12:03 PM EST
Too bad Gentoo is a proprietary operating system.  Might as well be using Windows, which has a pretty nice stack for building stuff too...
We are Siamese if you please. We are Siamese if you don't please.
[ Parent ]

ps by coryking (2.00 / 0) #8 Sun Dec 10, 2006 at 08:15:09 PM EST
that was rude and uncalled for...  but it sure was fun to type.

I agree with you, gentoo is a wonderful system to build stuff with.  Meta-distribution is right.  But my comment does have merit - for a business like mine, portage and the ebuild system might as well be proprietary.  Shame, it is, as I'd love to work on it.
We are Siamese if you please. We are Siamese if you don't please.
[ Parent ]

I don't follow by ShadowNode (4.00 / 1) #15 Sun Dec 10, 2006 at 11:07:37 PM EST
What sort of business?

[ Parent ]

A business who by coryking (2.00 / 0) #21 Mon Dec 11, 2006 at 12:56:26 PM EST
  1. Values the time and intellectual of software developers
  2. Values the ability to protect his intellectual property.
  3. Thinks the cost of isolating modified GPL code from his mainline codebase is not worth the cost.
It doesn't matter what my business is.  I could be a contractor, an ISV, a warehouse company, a maker of toys.  As long as I've got custom software that my company owns, the GPL'd software is too risky to modify or incorporate into my code.
We are Siamese if you please. We are Siamese if you don't please.
[ Parent ]

hmm by ShadowNode (4.00 / 1) #29 Mon Dec 11, 2006 at 06:24:02 PM EST
I can certainly see why you would prefer other people release their source under a BSDish license. It's certainly better for the user, if you ignore network effects.

It's not very wise from a developer's standpoint, though. Releasing under a BSDish license effectively puts whatever you've developed into the public domain, and you can't make anything off of it directly. You might be able to sell support services or contract for extensions, but you could do that under the GPL, too.

Further, you can't then turn around and sell what you've made under a different license. Everyone can just take the BSD code and privatize it, without paying you. Under the GPL, you can open your code and sell under a proprietary license. Trolltech does this with QT, and I think the MySQL guys do the same.

None of this stops you from using GPL'ed products like portage alongside your other stuff, however it's licensed, and you can link with LGPL libraries however you want. If you're using GCC, all your code is linked with LGPL stuff.

[ Parent ]

reply by coryking (2.00 / 0) #36 Mon Dec 11, 2006 at 09:09:39 PM EST
"Releasing under a BSDish license effectively puts whatever you've developed into the public domain, and you can't make anything off of it directly"

Huh?  Why can't you do this?  All BSD says is "keep the copyright and don't sue me".  I can give away my slick database library that I use, but incorporate it, perhaps tossing in some special sauce, into my own for-profit applications.  IANIAL, but this is a tricky proposition with GPL codelines.

You are much the fool if you release code into the wild only to realize that you should have sold it.  No license will save your ass from that mistake.

"Everyone can just take the BSD code and privatize it, without paying you"

So what?  The only thing they are selling is their improvements.  My code is still there, happy as a clam, waiting for the world to play with it.  If those dudes made a fortune using my ghetto ass libraries, good for them!  More power to them!

Just having code doesn't make a profitable business you know.  Perhaps 20% of a successful product is the actual code.  You know that right?

You don't give away lottery tickets and bitch when the person you gave it to wins, do you?

"Under the GPL, you can open your code and sell under a proprietary license."

And if you contribute to these projects, you sir are a fool.  Only suckers freely contribute code for MySQL, Trolltech, Sun, IBM, etc.  In fact, the whole "dual license" scheme is perhaps one of the biggest shams there is - talk about exploitation!  The people working at those companies should be ashamed of themselves... 

"None of this stops you from using GPL'ed products..."

But since I cannot modify the code, I might as well go buy Windows.  It is far more refined, much better documented, and I can call somebody when it screws up...
We are Siamese if you please. We are Siamese if you don't please.
[ Parent ]

response by ShadowNode (2.00 / 0) #53 Sun Dec 17, 2006 at 03:34:55 AM EST
Huh?  Why can't you do this?  All BSD says is "keep the copyright and don't sue me".  I can give away my slick database library that I use, but incorporate it, perhaps tossing in some special sauce, into my own for-profit applications.  IANIAL, but this is a tricky proposition with GPL codelines.

No, it isn't. The restrictions in the GPL apply to the people you license stuff under it to, not yourself. You still have full control over it, and can relicense it however you like.

So what?  The only thing they are selling is their improvements.  My code is still there, happy as a clam, waiting for the world to play with it.  If those dudes made a fortune using my ghetto ass libraries, good for them!  More power to them!

Unless their version becomes the de facto standard.

And if you contribute to these projects, you sir are a fool.  Only suckers freely contribute code for MySQL, Trolltech, Sun, IBM, etc.  In fact, the whole "dual license" scheme is perhaps one of the biggest shams there is - talk about exploitation!  The people working at those companies should be ashamed of themselves...

I fail to see the difference between this and contributing to BSD codebases. I'm not particularly interested in contributing to proprietary software without someone writing me a cheque.

Qt and MySQL, afaik, have essentially all of their development done by their sponsor companies. Outside contributions are mostly small bugfixes, I believe. So long as those companies continue to fund development, there's not much need for major contributions from outside, but if it ever stops (or they start being assholes, a la the X86 group), the project can be forked and continue on.

But since I cannot modify the code, I might as well go buy Windows.  It is far more refined, much better documented, and I can call somebody when it screws up...

You can modify the code. If you want to release it, you have to release the source along with it. That's all. You can't modify windows at all, and is wholly unsuitable for many tasks. If it is suitable for a task in mind, sure use it. Is that supposed to annoy me?

Given that the original topic was portage, I'm especially confused. I don't know of any way of releasing python scripts in binary form.

[ Parent ]

the best was by dev trash (4.00 / 1) #13 Sun Dec 10, 2006 at 10:39:54 PM EST
when xmms was removed.  Oh boy.  That was fun.  All the shit I had compiled against xmms.

--
Blizzard of Death '06
[ Parent ]

Ha! by coryking (2.00 / 0) #23 Mon Dec 11, 2006 at 01:03:15 PM EST
Missed that, but xmms isn't on my server.  I bet the changelog was just "bumped to 953829...."

Still though, I really like gentoo.  I really do.
We are Siamese if you please. We are Siamese if you don't please.
[ Parent ]

nono by dev trash (4.00 / 1) #30 Mon Dec 11, 2006 at 06:56:50 PM EST
It was a little more in depth, since complete removal from the tree fucks so many over.  We got a month warning.  Apparently xmms is no longer maintained upstream and it was taking the xmms Gentoo maintainer like 20 patches to get it to work and secure.  Now I use audacious.

--
Blizzard of Death '06
[ Parent ]

egads by dev trash (4.00 / 1) #12 Sun Dec 10, 2006 at 10:36:53 PM EST
etc-update??? dispatch-conf is much much better.

--
Blizzard of Death '06
[ Parent ]

sweet by coryking (2.00 / 0) #25 Mon Dec 11, 2006 at 01:11:39 PM EST
If it has a better thingy that merges diff's, I'll give it a shot.  Whatever the hell etc-update uses when you pick ye 'old "merge changes" looks like line noise.  `diff` I can do, but crazy wacko merge tools aren't kosher :-)

FreeBSD has mergemaster, which etc-update looks to have acquired its core from.  Hooks into some kind of RCS or something.  Still learnin' 'bout it...
We are Siamese if you please. We are Siamese if you don't please.
[ Parent ]

dispatch by dev trash (4.00 / 2) #31 Mon Dec 11, 2006 at 06:56:56 PM EST
It can use rcs to store changes that have been made.  It's quoted as a 'sane way to manage config file updates'  At least according to the man page.  Info can die in a fire.

--
Blizzard of Death '06
[ Parent ]

Death to info by coryking (4.00 / 1) #41 Mon Dec 11, 2006 at 09:51:47 PM EST
Seriously.  Info was another strike for me.  What the fuck where those crackheads smoking when they dreamed that up?

"Hey, we just spent 20 years yelling at people to 'man <whatever>'.  Now that we have 'em hooked, lets shake things up and retrain them to 'info <whatever>'.  And then we can force them into using EMACS.  Two birds with one stone!  Woot!"
We are Siamese if you please. We are Siamese if you don't please.
[ Parent ]

gentoo at least by dev trash (2.00 / 0) #48 Tue Dec 12, 2006 at 12:39:10 PM EST
keeps man pages fairly well up to date.  I have yet, to find an info page that had more information than the man page.

--
Blizzard of Death '06
[ Parent ]

Likewise by coryking (2.00 / 0) #51 Tue Dec 12, 2006 at 02:35:54 PM EST
For the few SuSE 10.x boxes...

Me thinks that quite a few people backported the info docs to man pages.
We are Siamese if you please. We are Siamese if you don't please.
[ Parent ]

I tried an early incarnation of that by ShadowNode (4.00 / 1) #33 Mon Dec 11, 2006 at 07:02:30 PM EST
And it shat all over the system I was using to try it.

[ Parent ]

Interesting view on the toolbox thing by creo (4.00 / 4) #3 Sun Dec 10, 2006 at 06:58:30 PM EST
My view is that any general purpose code I write to make my life easier belongs to me. Whilst this may not be strictly the legal view - given I write most of it at home, it's mine.

Naturally this only applies to general toolbox type stuff, the code that I am paid to write stays with the company. However I do not bill the company for thinking of the design in the shower, or swimming in the pool, or going for a head clearing ride, and that slack works both ways.

For me at the moment it is moot - I am working on a hand shake deal, and as such technically all the code belongs to me anyway. I don't think they realise that yet, but it's a handy ace in the hole if they ever shaft me with payment....

Alos, re OS. Ubuntu do a nice server version w/o X and all the crud. They also chuck in 5 (?) year support with the LTS releases. Gentoo is way too unstable for a server as you found. FBSD is a neat choice, especially if you do not need something "special". I would have gone FBSD on my server, but I can never work vinum out for LVM (or does something else do LVM?) and Fogbugz did not want to work on it.

The licence thing I am not too sure about. I don't have a problem with the GPL in the sense that if I (being a business) benefit from 10 years of software development potentially for gratis, then if I make changes I should give it back. If I don't want to give back, then I should either write my own damn code, or use code from someone who does not mind if I use it without giving back.

It really depends on the original developer of the code. For example, I have written a bunch of Ruby libs to deal with ISO 8583 (Bank transmission syntax) bitmapping, key and PIN block decryption and EMV message construction and key routines. I use these in a transaction simulator, and am half way to writing a pretty decent golden database transaction test simulator for EMV POS and ATM. If I was to release these as open source, it would most likely be GPL, as I do not want some scumbag to package my work and pass it off as his own. TO give you an idea, I believe similar (more polished mainly) commercial products sell for around the 50k ILF plus MLF and per user fees. If I did not care about this aspect of it (code wants to be truly free), then I would BSD license it.

It's all about respecting the license the developer chooses.

Cheers
Creo.

"I shall do what I believe to be right and honourable" - Guderian


(Comment Deleted) by coryking (2.00 / 0) #5 Sun Dec 10, 2006 at 07:55:55 PM EST

This comment has been deleted by coryking



[ Parent ]

by the way... by coryking (2.00 / 0) #6 Sun Dec 10, 2006 at 08:01:32 PM EST
Are PHP or Apache GPL'd?  Do you think FogBugz would be available on that web-stack if they were licensed under GPL?  Further, do you think either PHP or Apache would be as widely used and successful had they been licensed under the GPL?

Is Fog Creek a scumbag for "profiting" off the hard work of the PHP and Apache people?
We are Siamese if you please. We are Siamese if you don't please.
[ Parent ]

Yes by lb008d (4.00 / 1) #10 Sun Dec 10, 2006 at 09:43:48 PM EST
Do you think FogBugz would be available on that web-stack if they were licensed under GPL?

Yes, for the same reason the BSD distributions use GCC.

I'm getting ready to put OpenBSD 4.0 on a Sun Ultra 5 I got last week on eBay. I'm going to use it for my home firewall since it'll use far less power than the PC I'm currently using.

[ Parent ]

Yes but by coryking (2.00 / 0) #20 Mon Dec 11, 2006 at 12:53:50 PM EST
Even so, could PHP or Apache have gain enough success to make it a product worth porting to?
We are Siamese if you please. We are Siamese if you don't please.
[ Parent ]

Let me spell out my analogy more clearly. by lb008d (2.00 / 0) #47 Tue Dec 12, 2006 at 10:04:24 AM EST
GCC, Apache and PHP are all software that is used to build other systems, all are very successful, and one of the three is GPL licensed. I don't really think the license matters much in this particular case since GPL licensing does not affect systems built with these particular software programs. You can write all the proprietary/BSD-licensed code you want using GCC as the compiler.

A better question for you to ask is what effect the GPL would have had on the original 4.4 BSD TCP/IP stack.

[ Parent ]

I'll see your TCP/IP and raise you by coryking (4.00 / 1) #49 Tue Dec 12, 2006 at 02:18:27 PM EST
OpenSSH...

I've shut my piehole for now as our ajf friend got me thinking a bit.  Besides, you can only argue about boring-ass licensing for so long :-)
We are Siamese if you please. We are Siamese if you don't please.
[ Parent ]

I addressed this in a later comment by creo (4.00 / 1) #17 Mon Dec 11, 2006 at 05:25:05 AM EST
but noticed the comment about FB and scumbag just now.

If you carefully reread my comment, I say that it is all about respecting the desires of the developer. As Apache and PHP are non GPL (and I do not know much about the PHP license) it is clear their developers intended the usage of their work as Fog Creek have done. Also in this case, Apache and PHP are merely the stack the the product is running on, very much like GCC is the compiler that Apache is usually built with, so the analogy is not quite correct.

Therefore Fog Creek are not scumbags in the context I used.

Now if Fogbugz was actually a ripoff of a hypothetical GPL product called "mistyBugz", with just the variable names changed and a little bit of code obfuscation, then by the argument presented they would be scumbags - and hopefully the developer of the hypothetical "MistyBugz" would take them to the cleaners.

Cheers
Creo.

"I shall do what I believe to be right and honourable" - Guderian
[ Parent ]

by the way by coryking (4.00 / 1) #27 Mon Dec 11, 2006 at 01:54:44 PM EST
I'll let you know if I can get fogbugz to run on one of these freebsd boxen. 

They use that weirdo php extension of theirs, dont they...  I didn't even think about that being something to think about before you brought it up. 
We are Siamese if you please. We are Siamese if you don't please.
[ Parent ]

Good sir by coryking (4.00 / 2) #9 Sun Dec 10, 2006 at 08:27:52 PM EST
If it is worth that much, sell it than!  If you are going to (sadly) go the GPL route, I'd check with your lawyer to see if you don't infect the rest of your code.

"If I don't want to give back, then I should either write my own damn code, or use code from someone who does not mind if I use it without giving back."

I'd love to give back to you, but your GPL prohibits me from even getting started.  Your libraries "customers" are probably giant inhouse applications.  Is it fair that they should have to GPL their millions of lines of code just to use your library?

Besides, why would they not want to give back changes?  As I'm sure you know, it costs a lot of money to merge code changes.  There is a strong financial reason for users of your library to ensure their changes go back into your mainline codebase.  The further they deviate, the more costly it will be for them to incorporate your changes back into their codeline.

Also, it would be impossible to profit off your hard work anyway.  Your work is always free.  The only profit to be had is the difference between your code and theirs; which is their work, right?
We are Siamese if you please. We are Siamese if you don't please.
[ Parent ]

Do you understand the GPL? by lb008d (4.00 / 1) #11 Sun Dec 10, 2006 at 09:50:18 PM EST
Listen, I'm not a GPL fan by any means, but statements like Your libraries "customers" are probably giant inhouse applications.  Is it fair that they should have to GPL their millions of lines of code just to use your library? show that you don't understand the license.

Companies are allowed to use GPL code however they like for internally developed and distributed applications. They just can't release the application "into the wild".

[ Parent ]

Bingo by coryking (2.00 / 0) #22 Mon Dec 11, 2006 at 01:02:21 PM EST
Thus making it too risky.

Who knows if my meta-inhouse app is going to go "into the wild" sometime down the road.  What will my investors think about the decision to limit their exit strategies?  None of us have a crystal ball, many we want to take a hunk of our mega-inhouse app and sell it as consulting ware or at walmart or something.

Too risky man.  Why would I want to limit myself that way?
We are Siamese if you please. We are Siamese if you don't please.
[ Parent ]

Fairness? by ajf (4.00 / 2) #14 Sun Dec 10, 2006 at 11:05:27 PM EST
If you are going to (sadly) go the GPL route, I'd check with your lawyer to see if you don't infect the rest of your code.

LOL. He owns his own work; there's no way he can accidentally limit his own rights so long as the  copyright in that work remains his own. That particular bit of FUD is only on point when he creates a derived work of someone else's work licensed to him using the GPL. (Of course, it's still FUD even when it is applied appropriately.)

I'd love to give back to you, but your GPL prohibits me from even getting started.

Well, no. Your fear of the GPL is doing that. It's not about the GPL, it's about your choice to avoid it.

Is it fair that they should have to GPL their millions of lines of code just to use your library?

"Is it fair"? The recipient of the library has a choice: use the library and accept the terms under which it is offered, or find an alternative. What's unfair about that?

For that matter, what has "fairness" got to do with it at all? I presume it has something to do with the "philosophical and moral" objections you alluded to but didn't spell out. I can understand why someone would avoid the GPL for practical reasons (because it doesn't suit their business model, or because they depend on code that can't be combined with GPL-licensed code, or whatever), but I do not understand why you think it's "unfair" to offer something for free but only to those who are willing to extend the same offer.

Your position seems to presuppose some entitlement to free software, an entitlement that is cruelly denied when that software is licensed under the GPL.

Besides, why would they not want to give back changes?

You answered that yourself in the next paragraph:

The only profit to be had is the difference between your code and theirs



"I am not buying this jam, it's full of conservatives"
[ Parent ]

Fear is right by coryking (4.00 / 1) #26 Mon Dec 11, 2006 at 01:35:48 PM EST
The GPL is a HUGE constraint placed on a bit of code.  Nobody really knows what the GPL does - there isn't a large body of case law around it.  Of course I'm afraid to use it!  I can't even tell you in plain English what it does.  A BSD licence is so simple a kid could understand it:  "Dont remove my copyright, and it ain't my fault when the server catches fire".  That is it, no hidden meaning, no orwellian language manipulation, no FAQ.  KISS baby.

"I do not understand why you think it's "unfair" to offer something for free but only to those who are willing to extend the same offer."

It is unfair.  It isn't a balanced transaction.  You are asking me to trade my 20 million line application for your dinky 10k line library.  How is that fair?

"Your position seems to presuppose some entitlement to free software, an entitlement that is cruelly denied when that software is licensed under the GPL."

First: Please don't twist the word free, m'kay?  Please.  Just don't, it makes us technical communication majors cry.  It is manipulative and unethical; only fucked up governments, weird labor unions, and cults do that shit, m'kay?  Free = no cost.  End of story.

There is no entitlement, I cannot own your code.  Your code is always out there, flapping in the proverbial wind.  All I can do is incorporate it and profit off the difference.  Hopefully if I'm a decent human being, I'll give back and not horde.  But you can't force that kind of stuff? 

The GPL tries to force everybody to give back.  Such a license is based on the idea that people are inherently untrustworthy - I don't buy that idea I trust my fellow man.

I accept the idea that somebody might "take" my code and say, embed it into their popular operating system's network stack and sell a bazillion copies.  But so what?  At least my code was used, and at least that popular operating system will be doing the said network transactions properly instead of rolling their own.  I gave a gift.  They took me up on the offer.  If they took my code and sold it with zero modification, many I'm an idiot for not doing that myself.  Either way, karma will settle the score sometime; bad people get  what is coming to them, usually though their own destruction.

When you give a gift, you shouldn't attach strings; I don't think that is right.  People give back and help because they decent human beings, not because some jackass told them to.
We are Siamese if you please. We are Siamese if you don't please.
[ Parent ]

More on fairness by ajf (4.00 / 1) #34 Mon Dec 11, 2006 at 08:42:45 PM EST
The GPL is a HUGE constraint placed on a bit of code.  Nobody really knows what the GPL does - there isn't a large body of case law around it.  Of course I'm afraid to use it!  I can't even tell you in plain English what it does.  A BSD licence is so simple a kid could understand it:  "Dont remove my copyright, and it ain't my fault when the server catches fire".

Do you know why there's no case law? Because just about everybody who has been caught violating the GPL backs down rather than taking it to court. I guess that means their lawyers didn't think they had a chance of winning.

It is unfair.  It isn't a balanced transaction.  You are asking me to trade my 20 million line application for your dinky 10k line library.  How is that fair?

Damn, I don't know how to response to this without adopting arguments used by libertarians, and then there's no way anyone can take me seriously. Oh well.

In what way is it unbalanced? You are free to choose whether or not to accept my terms. Hell, you've written a twenty million line application. Maybe you could clone my library in a month. So why are you considering using my library instead? Well if somebody's forcing you to use my library, sure, you've got an unbalanced transaction. But if that's not happening...

Or, to look at it another way: suppose instead of offering it under the GPL, I made it a commercial product, and I say "contact me for a quote". You ring me up, I find out you're a big evil bank, and I tell you I want $1 million per month. You think that's outrageous for a "dinky 10k line library". I say that if you don't agree to the deal, you can't use my library.

Is that unfair? If not, why is it any different? If you do think it's unfair, again I disagree strongly with the assumption that you are somehow entitled to, and that I for some reason should be expected to offer, a deal you consider fair.

First: Please don't twist the word free, m'kay?  Please.  Just don't, it makes us technical communication majors cry.  It is manipulative and unethical; only fucked up governments, weird labor unions, and cults do that shit, m'kay?  Free = no cost.  End of story.

Heh — I most definitely did mean "free = no cost". I rewrote that sentence half a dozen times trying to avoid putting "free" next to "software", but couldn't get it to come out right. In fact the argument doesn't make any sense if I meant "free software" in the FSF sense. What I'm trying to express is that you seem to be saying that if I want to give my software away without demanding money for it, I'm somehow cheating or tricking people or being unfair if I do so conditional on some other non-monetary demands.

I accept the idea that somebody might "take" my code and say, embed it into their popular operating system's network stack and sell a bazillion copies.  But so what?

That's great — for you. I totally accept that you're not interested in what the GPL offers. What I'm trying to understand is why you think other people shouldn't want it.

When you give a gift, you shouldn't attach strings; I don't think that is right.  People give back and help because they decent human beings, not because some jackass told them to.

And there's the crux of our disagreement: it's not a gift. Neither is BSD licence, more permissive though it is. I'm not "giving" the software away when I use either of those licences; I'm specifying the terms under which I allow its use. It's exactly the same as a proprietary software licence, in the sense that I tell you what I expect of you in exchange for permission to do certain things with my software.

"I am not buying this jam, it's full of conservatives"
[ Parent ]

Alirght by coryking (2.00 / 0) #37 Mon Dec 11, 2006 at 09:21:38 PM EST
But dont bitch about it on slashdot when "Microsoft Wins," "My company doesn't want to use GPL," or "<insert valid concerns about GPL>; <cover ears and call it FUD>".  GPL is probably the biggest gift ever for "Evil Microsoft".  What a way to distract a bunch of naive people from actually competing with them!  There is a reason you see MSDN ads on that site...

I'm curious though, why are you releasing code into the wild unless it is a gift?  The GPL isn't much of a gift... well.. unless you are part of the GPL club, which is what the GPL is really all about: propagating the GPL.
We are Siamese if you please. We are Siamese if you don't please.
[ Parent ]

I don't *read* Slashdot, let alone comment there by ajf (4.00 / 2) #42 Mon Dec 11, 2006 at 09:57:07 PM EST
I do recall reading a few years ago that most Slashdot readers are running Windows, so I'm not at all surprised that Microsoft would advertise there. It doesn't require a conspiracy theory to explain that. (Microsoft's strategy against Linux, incidentally, revolves around trying to find a way to attach a per-copy licensing fee to Linux. They say the GPL is a Bad Thing, but what they really don't like is the TCO.)

I'm not the GPL zealot you seem to have decided I must be. Apart from trivial patches sent to other people's projects, I don't think I've ever released anything under the GPL. (I did have a contract working on a fairly large project which is available under a BSD-ish licence once.) Almost all my work for the last few years has been in Java, where the GPL never took hold (for well thought out practical reasons, not paranoia or politics). I just want to see an anti-GPL argument that makes sense.

I'm curious though, why are you releasing code into the wild unless it is a gift?

Because you want to give other people the opportunity and the incentive to contribute to its development, rather than shouldering the burden alone?


"I am not buying this jam, it's full of conservatives"
[ Parent ]

Interesting by coryking (4.00 / 1) #43 Mon Dec 11, 2006 at 10:01:32 PM EST
"Because you want to give other people the opportunity and the incentive to contribute to its development, rather than shouldering the burden alone?"

Wow.  Nice point.  Now you've got me thinking...
We are Siamese if you please. We are Siamese if you don't please.
[ Parent ]

(Comment Deleted) by coryking (2.00 / 0) #38 Mon Dec 11, 2006 at 09:32:16 PM EST

This comment has been deleted by coryking



[ Parent ]

Try again.. by coryking (4.00 / 1) #39 Mon Dec 11, 2006 at 09:39:30 PM EST
Feel free to toss in libertarian arguments and even drill into economics should you dare.  Should you dare to make "pro GPL" arguments, I'd be curious as to how it is done considering the GPL gets its roots from communism.  Regardless, I check whoever has an L by their name when I vote so you wont have me thinking you as a kook.

I guess in summation:  Presuming the GPL was designed as force for good, it is very misguided.  If it was designed or is being used as a force for evil, which I'm frankly undecided about, than it is clearly something to worry about.

Dunno about you, but I really don't want to be doing tech support.  As a programmer, that is about the only future you'd have post-GPL-world-domination.
We are Siamese if you please. We are Siamese if you don't please.
[ Parent ]

The communism canard by ajf (4.00 / 1) #44 Mon Dec 11, 2006 at 10:04:16 PM EST
considering the GPL gets its roots from communism

IHBT.

Oh, and I don't think "GPL world domination" is possible, nor do I particularly want it to be.


"I am not buying this jam, it's full of conservatives"
[ Parent ]

See above by coryking (2.00 / 0) #45 Mon Dec 11, 2006 at 10:09:47 PM EST
You have shut my pie hole for the time being.  I've got to digest the whole "community-based development" thing for bit.  I never added that whole notion into the equation before.

I will argue that the GPL is a derivative of communist/marxist philosophy.  Regardless of the very interesting twist you added, I'll stand by that.

Now to just solve for x....
We are Siamese if you please. We are Siamese if you don't please.
[ Parent ]

I think you missed the thrust of my argument by creo (4.00 / 2) #16 Mon Dec 11, 2006 at 05:15:40 AM EST
Maybe I should not have used emotive language. Let me try again.

My first point is respect the license of the developer. Actually, that's pretty much my only point.

I do not think any less of the BSD guys, or people who use the BSD license, than people who use the GPL or people who use closed source.

My point with my own code, is that I have written a specialist suite, in which if I was to release the code under an open source variety of license, I would most likely use the GPL. That is because I want the sort of behaviour with that code that is required by the GPL license.

Now if I did not particularly care about who used it, or for what ever reason was happy for anyone, including corporates, to use that code without any form of compensation (not necessarily financial), then I would use the BSD license.

That's it! I'm not a license warrior, I don't think  that closed source companies kill puppies, I don't think the BSD guys are drug addled hippies and I don't kiss the FSFs arse. I just use the license that will suit what I, as the developer want to use for that particular purpose.

No more, no less.

Cheers
Creo.

PS: As far as selling it goes, I have thought about it, unfortunately I'm already overworked and under family timed. Maybe once this contract is over....

"I shall do what I believe to be right and honourable" - Guderian
[ Parent ]

Cool.dat by coryking (4.00 / 2) #24 Mon Dec 11, 2006 at 01:08:50 PM EST
And I respect your decision.

It just pisses me off when people use GPL because slashdot told them too and all the cool kids are.  Then those people whine about how companies are adopting open source (clearly it is because of microsoft) or cover their ears and scream "FUD".  Those people dont understand that the GPL severely limits the usefullness of this software package.  For many, their software might as well be proprietary.

As for you, good sir, I'd still consult a lawyer if I was you.  I don't know enough about copyright law, and I'm sure you dont either.  I'd want their seal of approval that my GPL code can still be "compatible" should I use it in clients code or other products.  I'm pretty sure since you hold the copyright, you can license it multiple ways, but who knows.  There is probably some magic rain dance to do first...
We are Siamese if you please. We are Siamese if you don't please.
[ Parent ]

Copyright Law by creo (4.00 / 2) #32 Mon Dec 11, 2006 at 06:58:12 PM EST
Heh - you are right there, that's a real can of worms. In fact the legal side is one of the main things that stops me from doing software for sale. I have sold one package to a corp, and that was a pretty simple sale with trust on both sides, and it still took stacks of legal meetings and other bollocks (if you are curious, that was a closed source sale where the customer bought a source license, but was not allowed to onsell).

Actually these days the software patent thing scares me more. Copyright protects me against being ripped off (as a developer), but if I release (actually probably only if I successfully market) a package that potentially violates someones bullshit patent, I could lose my shirt.

I basically make enough as a hired gun, enough to make me not worry about the hassle of selling stuff anyway.

Also re: slashdot crowd. It took me a while to learn that that lot are all noise. These days I only read the comments for the occaisional nugget (there are some good ones)and to laugh at all the clueless n00bs.

Cheers
Creo.

"I shall do what I believe to be right and honourable" - Guderian
[ Parent ]

Loose your shirt by coryking (4.00 / 1) #35 Mon Dec 11, 2006 at 08:48:11 PM EST
You can't squeeze blood from a turnip.  Nobody is gonna sue you if they can't collect any cash.  In the game of business, it is just another risk.  Personally, I'd peg "risk of going under from patent violation" right around "risk of going under because downtown Seattle sinks in an earthquake".  You've got bigger risks to manage than patents...

As for slashdot - the cynical side of me wonders if "Ev1l M$" bankrolls the whole damn thing just to keep the kids distracted :-)
We are Siamese if you please. We are Siamese if you don't please.
[ Parent ]

PPS by coryking (4.00 / 1) #40 Mon Dec 11, 2006 at 09:41:30 PM EST
I'd say this might be of use:
http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.390535.51
We are Siamese if you please. We are Siamese if you don't please.
[ Parent ]

er by theantix (2.00 / 0) #46 Tue Dec 12, 2006 at 12:10:39 AM EST
"I'd love to give back to you, but your GPL prohibits me from even getting started.  Your libraries "customers" are probably giant inhouse applications.  Is it fair that they should have to GPL their millions of lines of code just to use your library?"

That's why libraries or anything else you want to allow people to link to could|should be set to the LGPL, and only applications intended for aggregate consumption could|should be GPL.

The thing that the GPL and LGPL licenses have over BSD is enforced co-operation.  The BSD license relies on a trust metric that essentially comes down to faith, and the BSD OSes have suffered relative to the Linux ones because of that.  IBM, Red Hat, Novell all contribute to the kernel and their changes have to be brought into the tree when distributed... whereas developments to Darwin, AIX, etc can be withheld forcing duplication of effort.

Your arguments against the GPL are not without merit, I feel the same way about libraries or components being licensed with the GPL instead of the LGPL.  But for me, it seems pretty clear that enforced co-operation such as the GPL and LGPL will continue to defeat "faith-based" co-operation licenses such as BSD.

As for choosing a license for small library project unlikely to see much collaboration either way, the LGPL and BSD-alike licenses are pragmatically equivalent.  I just took odds with your "ethical and moral" opposition statement.
____________________________________
I'm sorry, but your facts disagree with my opinion.
[ Parent ]

Ethics and Morals by coryking (2.00 / 0) #50 Tue Dec 12, 2006 at 02:34:36 PM EST
"I just took odds with your "ethical and moral" opposition statement."

In terms of ethics, I believe any philosophical/political moment that relies on the deliberate manipulation of language to seek its goals is an unethical movement.  If they came out and said "GPL software is free of charge as long as the code you incorporate it with is GPL'd in its entirety", they would be okay.  But redefining using twisted language like "it's free, but not that kind of free..." puts them, ethically, at the same level as "freedom fries", "operation iraqi freedom".

In terms of morality, I believe some companies (Sun, IBM, MySQL, etc) are more interested in exploting naive programmers into giving them free work than they are promoting "Open Source".

I'd complete that statement above, but I'm now all worn out.  You guys really did a good job beating me up and getting this out of my system :-)
We are Siamese if you please. We are Siamese if you don't please.
[ Parent ]

it's true by theantix (2.00 / 0) #52 Tue Dec 12, 2006 at 03:24:34 PM EST
But redefining using twisted language like "it's free, but not that kind of free..." puts them, ethically, at the same level as "freedom fries", "operation iraqi freedom".

The GPL and LGPL licenses are indeed less free than something like MIT or BSD.  But while these licenses do not permit the maximum freedom available, their benefit is that it enforces co-operation in a way that the more free licenses do not.

In terms of morality, I believe some companies (Sun, IBM, MySQL, etc) are more interested in exploting naive programmers into giving them free work than they are promoting "Open Source".

The whole idea of naive programmers committing code in their basements is so antiquated that I wonder if you are even serious in suggesting it.  Regardless, the majority of code committed for these large projects are not by individuals offering code in their spare time, but  instead by partisans with an interest in generating revenue off the code. 

Especially with the largest projects like OOo, the Linux Kernel, and Mozilla... it is paid employees of IBM, Red Hat, Novell, Sun, etc who all contribute code back for their own needs.  And because of the enforced co-operation they benefit from each others actions producing a mutually beneficial outcome.  Individual contributions are usually either trivial or can lead to lucrative job opportunities from companies looking to expand on that code.
____________________________________
I'm sorry, but your facts disagree with my opinion.
[ Parent ]

Tired of linux by ObviousTroll (4.00 / 1) #18 Mon Dec 11, 2006 at 11:46:38 AM EST
That sort of attitude leads to owning a Mac - but certainly not for a web server.

None of the Linux distros seem really sane for production use anymore - it's not so bad from an admin point of view, but they change kernel internals and apis with every freaking patch release, which means our drivers are in a constant state of flux and have as many #ifdefs as they do if statements...

--
It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.


Oooo by coryking (2.00 / 0) #19 Mon Dec 11, 2006 at 12:50:36 PM EST
That also sealed the deal.

I LOVE critical security fixes coupled with radical API changes.  Good times!

I mean, the kernel guys should always get to party and never clean up the mess, right?  The distro guys can sort it out, right?
We are Siamese if you please. We are Siamese if you don't please.
[ Parent ]

I have just spent the past 6 hours by ObviousTroll (4.00 / 1) #28 Mon Dec 11, 2006 at 02:21:44 PM EST
validating PCI code changes I made to support PPC servers - they work on PPC, but I wanted to make sure they don't break on X86.

The verdict - despite replacing low-level code with "official" PCI access code, it does not work on some x86 kernels, but does on others.

Yippie Kai Oh Tai Yay.

--
It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
[ Parent ]

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