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Open Source Software Shows Its Muscle
Law.com ^ | June 3, 2008 | Edmund J. Walsh

Posted on 06/03/2008 12:15:33 PM PDT by antiRepublicrat

Two recent events should give for-profit companies new reasons to re-evaluate the ways in which they use open source software as well as the extent to which they use it. These events are: (1) the release of a new version of the widely used license that covers such software, i.e., the General Public License version 3, and (2) a round of lawsuits filed by the Software Freedom Law Center against for-profit companies using the software for commercial gain. Four companies to date, the largest of which is Verizon Communications Inc., have been sued for violation of the GPL.

Although the lawsuits are not about changed provisions in the GPL, both events are muscle-flexing by the free software community and, taken together, may foreshadow new risks in the irreconcilable conflict between open source software and its widespread use by for-profit companies. With the filing of court documents, a philosophical debate about the proper place for software in society has become a business dispute with the risk of substantial consequences. For-profit companies using open source software should take notice and understand the risks.

(Excerpt) Read more at law.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy
KEYWORDS: business; gpl; law; opensource
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To: antiRepublicrat
BSD is far less capitalistic than the GPL

So why doesn't Apple switch their code to a GPL license? You really think it would help their business if perfect duplicates of their operating system were released every time Apple released a new version of their O/S? LOL, you probably do.

21 posted on 06/03/2008 5:26:23 PM PDT by Golden Eagle
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To: bornred
The licenses are easy to read and easy to understand.

It does get a bit complex on the nuances of what "derivative" is. Different authors see things differently, so if you're linking libraries or writing drivers you have to know the intent of the author before doing something.

22 posted on 06/03/2008 5:32:51 PM PDT by antiRepublicrat
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To: bornred
Originally that was done by simply requiring people to release their changes to the source code. But now that tamper-resistant hardware is common, the license was changed to make it clear that this is not consistent with the authors’ wishes.

You can still tinker with TiVO's Linux and run it on your home-built DVR. The software is still free. You just can't run your tinkered version on a TiVO. The anti-TiVO clause is trying to tell TiVO how they can design their hardware, and I think that's wrong. I'm sure Stallman complains about over-reaching terms of proprietary licenses, and here he did it himself.

23 posted on 06/03/2008 5:36:37 PM PDT by antiRepublicrat
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To: Golden Eagle
Your continued support of leftists and their agenda

And yet right in this very thread I am attacking Stallman over his GPL3 terms and the ambiguity of the GPL2. Yeah, I'm supporting leftists.

Oops, probably shouldn't have written that last sentence. You'll take "I'm supporting leftists" and post it without the surrounding text that shows it is absolute sarcasm as "evidence" that I support leftists.

Oops, shouldn't have written "I support leftists" above because you'll likely use that out of context too.

Oops. .... this is just getting recursive.

LOL is all I can say to that. BSD is very well known to be a much more capitilistic-friendly license

The license is more friendly to capitalist companies that want to use it. But the license itself is closer to communism than the GPL. From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs, no capitalistic payback required as with the GPL.

including his call for replacing proprietary software with a software tax

I wouldn't agree with a specific software tax. However, if the government is going to commission software to be written, and it is not sensitive, that software should be released as open source or put in the public domain since we the taxpayers paid for it.

24 posted on 06/03/2008 5:48:02 PM PDT by antiRepublicrat
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To: antiRepublicrat
As a free market capitalist and former coder, I have always been a bit addled by open source software. The economics of it haven't made a lot of sense to me, especially for the programmers who maintain the big open source projects like OpenOffice, operating systems, etc.

Until recently, entities could just take open source software and use it in a proprietary manner as they wished. It was “free stuff”. Now it seems that if you want to use GPL protected code for profit, you have to release your source code. So there comes a business trade off. Use free code and release your value-added source, or pay for code and keep your value-added source.

Stallman is clearly a socialist, and therefore he is not to be trusted. The whole thing seems like a plot on his part - let everyone use open source software as they see fit. When corporate products are dependent upon it, start the legal action. Sort of like a drug dealer giving free samples until you're hooked.

Does anyone have a link which outlines the economics of open source software?

25 posted on 06/03/2008 5:52:48 PM PDT by Toskrin (Bringing you global cooling since 1999)
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To: antiRepublicrat
(BSD) is more friendly to capitalist companies that want to use it.

LOL here you are talking in circles again. You just said GPL was more capitalistic, but now you say BSD is more friendly to capitalist companies.

But the license itself is closer to communism than the GPL. From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs, no capitalistic payback required as with the GPL.

Your confusion knows no bounds, so I'm not planning on responding to your nonsense again after this. "From each according to his ability" is clearly a closer reference to GPL. With BSD, you only have to give back if you want. Funniest of all, you refer to the forced handover of unique features a company would like to keep private, that GPL requires, as "capitalistic". Good luck getting Apple to switch from BSD to GPL based on your laughable advice, but be sure and let us know how it goes LOL.

26 posted on 06/03/2008 6:04:42 PM PDT by Golden Eagle
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To: Toskrin
As a free market capitalist and former coder, I have always been a bit addled by open source software. The economics of it haven't made a lot of sense to me

It doesn't make much sense in comparison, as the "open source software business model" says you should throw out the traditional "sales + service" business model, and replace it with "service only". Of course this assumes your product is so unstable people will have to pay you yearly subscription fees for their "free" software! There's a good article out there somewhere that asks "Where are the open source billionaires?" They don't exist, and there are no prospects for one anytime soon.

Stallman is clearly a socialist, and therefore he is not to be trusted. The whole thing seems like a plot on his part

Ditto.

27 posted on 06/03/2008 6:13:45 PM PDT by Golden Eagle
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To: Golden Eagle; antiRepublicrat; bornred; Nervous Tick; DaGman; Defiant

This thread, along with some research, sure has crystallized my views on open source - it is a loose Marxist plot. Look up Stallman’s beliefs - the man is clearly a Marxist. Look at the key tenants of Marxism - the destruction of private property and the class struggle of the laborers. Open source embodies both of these concepts.

In reply to the idea of “if you don’t like the GPL, don’t use it”, look beyond the law. The trick here is not a legal trick, it is a behavioral trick. Even though the GPL has been in place, the encourageed behavior has been to use what you want and leave what you want. And after everyone feels comfortable with the behavior, the lawyers swoop down. Lenin had a term for the folks who look at the law and ignore human behavior - “useful idiots”.


28 posted on 06/03/2008 7:00:36 PM PDT by Toskrin (Bringing you global cooling since 1999)
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To: Toskrin
The trick here is not a legal trick, it is a behavioral trick. Even though the GPL has been in place, the encourageed behavior has been to use what you want and leave what you want. And after everyone feels comfortable with the behavior, the lawyers swoop down.

No, this is not the case at all. The FSF has been aggressively enforcing their IP rights for years.

The recent cases have mostly involved busybox, whose authors have nothing to do with Stallman or the other Marxists at the FSF. Note that these individuals are still using GPLv2 for their product, and have no apparent intentions of switching to GPLv3. This is not an ideological struggle for them.

Few if any authors are openly encouraging anybody to violate their licenses. It's just not happening. This isn't a trap; it is a case of a few individuals getting fed up when they see rampant violations of their copyright in more and more consumer devices. The lawsuits send a much-deserved message to the more prominent offenders.

29 posted on 06/03/2008 7:53:19 PM PDT by bornred
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To: antiRepublicrat

The anti-TIVO clause does not affect any software or hardware that they are currently using. It doesn’t mean they have to change their hardware design.

All it’s saying is: “you can’t use the new (GPLv3) versions of my software if your hardware is designed to lock me out from making changes.”

Some people are just control freaks that way. Doesn’t hurt anyone.


30 posted on 06/03/2008 7:53:21 PM PDT by bornred
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To: Toskrin; Golden Eagle; antiRepublicrat; bornred; Nervous Tick; DaGman; Defiant
This whole discussion reeks of nonsense. GPL is basically intended to use the copyright law to preserve the system and intellectual capital which make possible the advancement of the software arts. BSD is intended to permit anyone to use government funded software in proprietary solutions with a simple attribution. As far as history to date has shown, both ideas have contributed to amazing advances.

The fact that Richard Stallman is just plain weird and the probably correct allegation he is Marxist with a capital M does not change history. Nor does it diminish his contribution.

Considering that the system of intellectual property the world is trying to impose upon us requires a police state to effectively enforce, and then examine article 1, section 8 of the Constitution:

The Congress shall have power [...] To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

What happens when there are no realistic limitations and the Gov't enforces rights indefinitely through criminal law? That is the situation developing today. Stallman correctly saw this would lead to a state of affairs in which no progress would be made and a programmer would have no right to work, or think, or speak. All rights would eventually be owned by some oligarchy. Everyone would have to pay some rent-seeking S.O.B just to write their own name, as even the alphabet would be someone's property.

Stallman envisioned the GPL as an intellectual trick which would leverage ever greater infringements upon rights to preserve rights. So in a sense, it is poisonous and viral, but only for vermin who can't stand the light. Said vermin promote the ridiculous nonsense I've read in this thread, hoping the ignorant and gullible will be swayed. Too bad ignorant and gullible folks usually don't make it in business.

31 posted on 06/03/2008 8:25:28 PM PDT by no-s
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To: Golden Eagle
You just said GPL was more capitalistic, but now you say BSD is more friendly to capitalist companies.

You've been able to repeat it, but do you understand it? Capitalism doesn't give a free lunch, and neither does the GPL. BSD does though.

"From each according to his ability" is clearly a closer reference to GPL.

There's a second half to that communist quote that you neatly omit. BSD fulfills the second half, the GPL doesn't because it adds effective strings.

Funniest of all, you refer to the forced handover of unique features a company would like to keep private, that GPL requires, as "capitalistic"

In capitalism if the other side doesn't uphold its part of the transaction, you expect compensation to be forced by the courts. Again you show your ignorance by saying that giving up code can be forced, even after you showed a semblance of understanding in your previous post.

Good luck getting Apple to switch from BSD to GPL

Hate to break it to you, but there's already a ton of GPL code in OS X. I just played chess: GPL. I'm getting into XCode, GPL for the compiler. When I drop to shell grep and other utilities are GPL. As far as the MIT and BSD licenses making up the core of the OS, Apple can choose whatever license works best for them.

You keep forgetting that unlike you and Richard Stallman I do not ideologically choose software and don't criticize others for their choices along ideological lines like you both do.

32 posted on 06/03/2008 8:38:02 PM PDT by antiRepublicrat
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To: Toskrin
The economics of it haven't made a lot of sense to me

The economics can go a few ways. One is selling support and services surrounding the software. Another is selling hardware but getting the software to run it for free -- your small amount of programming time costs less than licensing proprietary software or developing your own from scratch would. Another isn't cash economics, but still a benefit -- if you give away your code under the GPL you get back the improvements that you may not have had time or talent to do, you traded code for code. BSD can't give you that last return on investment.

But as a current programmer it's still not my cup of soup, as I didn't release my software under the GPL.

33 posted on 06/03/2008 8:43:59 PM PDT by antiRepublicrat
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To: Golden Eagle
Of course this assumes your product is so unstable people will have to pay you yearly subscription fees for their "free" software!

Back to basics: Free means free as in speech, not as in beer.

But given your logic, why would people pay money for software and then pay even more for yearly subscription or maintenance fees as is common with proprietary enterprise software? If you go open source you only have to pay the maintenance.

34 posted on 06/03/2008 8:46:42 PM PDT by antiRepublicrat
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To: bornred
It doesn’t mean they have to change their hardware design.

It means they have to change their hardware to allow untrusted code. It's a software license controlling hardware design, simply unacceptable. And if the hardware isn't changed then you cannot ship that software on it. That doesn't seem to be very free to me.

Some people are just control freaks that way. Doesn’t hurt anyone.

There are terms in proprietary licenses made by control freaks who will sue you if you don't get approval from them before publishing benchmarks or reviews of their products (of course negative ones will be rejected). They abused their grant of copyright, and IMHO Stallman any anyone who signs on to GPL3 are abusing theirs.

35 posted on 06/03/2008 8:52:28 PM PDT by antiRepublicrat
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To: no-s
Stallman envisioned the GPL as an intellectual trick

I thought he did it because long ago all software shipped with source so you could tinker with it, until he got an HP printer with no source. He couldn't stand not being able to fix their drivers, so he came up with a license that reflected the general state of software that was in academia at the time.

36 posted on 06/03/2008 8:56:17 PM PDT by antiRepublicrat
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To: antiRepublicrat
It means they have to change their hardware to allow untrusted code.

They don't have to change a single thing unless they want to use the new GPLv3 version of the software package. The old GPLv2 versions are perfectly legal to run on secure hardware.

They abused their grant of copyright, and IMHO Stallman any anyone who signs on to GPL3 are abusing theirs.

Most likely, the people who signed onto GPLv3 felt that their rights were being abused by manufacturers who put their work on evil locked-down hardware.

It's all a matter of perspective...

(Side note: if you think GPLv3 is bad, check out these moonbats.)

37 posted on 06/03/2008 9:32:08 PM PDT by bornred
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To: antiRepublicrat; Golden Eagle; bornred; Toskrin; no-s; All

This thread has been educational and useful. Many thanks to everyone for their thoughtful posts.


38 posted on 06/04/2008 3:35:15 AM PDT by Nervous Tick (I've left Cynical City... bound for Jaded.)
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To: Golden Eagle
Stallman's theory's are well known to be anti-capitalistic including his call for replacing proprietary software with a software tax,

Glad to see that a few people see through this dangerous man's charade. The temptation of free stuff is just too hard to overcome for most folks. Some of the stuff posted on this thread sounds like it came straight from The Communist Manifesto. Just substitute "bourgeoisie" for "companies", "proletariat" for "programmers", and "capital" for "copyright".

Although I imagine most open FSF and GNU programmers have seen it, here is his website:

Richard Stallman's Website

He considers "intellectual property" to be a propaganda term.

39 posted on 06/04/2008 4:34:49 AM PDT by Toskrin (Bringing you global cooling since 1999)
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To: bornred
The old GPLv2 versions are perfectly legal to run on secure hardware.

Unless that software has a subsequent license provision.

Most likely, the people who signed onto GPLv3 felt that their rights were being abused by manufacturers who put their work on evil locked-down hardware.

This is like an old leftist problem, where they think their "rights" extend over other people. Sort of like the right not to be offended or a right to not even be exposed to religion. Too many people fail to realize that their rights don't stretch that far, especially in a limited granted right such as copyright.

I've heard about those anti-military people. It's funny that they infringed on Stallman's copyright just in performing that stunt.

40 posted on 06/04/2008 6:09:37 AM PDT by antiRepublicrat
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