Re: Unbundling the GPL

Greg bond schrieb:
> On 4/25/07, Joachim Durchholz <jodurchholz.org> wrote:
> 
> 
>> You *can* release NC and ND licensed stuff and to
the public a service.
>> It's just less of a service than releasing it
without the NC and ND
>> burdening.
> 
> 
> Oh come on.
> Anyone releasing someing under NC and/or ND is doing
so
> more for their personal benefit than for the benefit of
the
> community.

And releasing under GPL is not for personal benefit?
Go tell MySQL AB. Or Red Hat.

Besides, if there's a choice between "release with some
rights reserved" 
and "do not release at all", I'd like to see the
former happen. Even if 
other programmers cannot copy and adapt the code, it can
give them ideas 
- numerous algorithms have been reimplemented using the
GPL.

Finally, there's nothing wrong in releasing stuff for
personal benefit 
(as long as I'm not trying to take away more rights in the
long run, but 
I don't see that happen with freeware).

> copyleft et al are barn raising licenses.

Dunno what "barn raising" is.

> NC and ND are types of commercial advertising,
> guerrilla marketing, free samples, hype generators,
etc.

That's not illegitimate, I'd say.
Besides, if software is given away in this way, it's usually
more useful 
than the other marketing material that I keep getting. And
if it isn't, 
I can throw it away in an ecologically harmless fashion,
that's better 
than the umpteenth cheap pen that will end up in the
wastebin more often 
than not.

>> You say as if "proprietary" were a
four-letter word.
> 
> No. That's what you and others keep misunderstanding.
> I don't have a problem with proprietary works and
licenses.
> I have a problem with proprietary works and licenses
being
> described using the word "freedom".

Ah, then it's just definition problems.
Feel free to ignore that.

> But I don't slap CC-NC-ND-BY on it and try to tell
people
> I'm doing them some big favor. I don't do that and say
> I'm giving them some "freedom".

Granting rights is giving freedoms. Nothing wrong with that
terminology.
Not freedom as such. Freedom per se cannot be granted via a
license, 
it's a condition established by society.

> OTOH I think that the outcome was a muddied
terminology.
>> Even today, the FSF finds it necessary to repeat
that it is "free as in
>> free speech, not free as in free beer"
> 
> If it is muddied, my objection is attempting to clear
it up.

No, you're muddying it by trying to establish your personal
definition 
of freedom.
Actually there is no such thing as "free software"
in the sense of "free 
speech". Software is a thing, not a person, so it
cannot have rights. 
The FSF is going *way* beyond the normal sense of the word
here.

>> But NC and ND are proprietary licenses. They are
for the
>> primary benefit of the creator. And when people
talk about
>> GNU-GPL and NC-ND as if they were all part of the
same
>> thing, when people say they want to use NC because
it is
>> "half-open" then people who've been
around and know the difference
>> are going to be telling you just how wrong you
are.
> 
> I have yet to hear how wrong that would be.
 >
>> I have read a lot of advocacy (and, of course,
flamage by the usual
>> bunch of half-knowledgeable converts), but nothing
substantial that I
>> could repeat to explain the issue to outsiders.
> 
> License break down into two simple categories.
> The creator either licenses the work in such a way
> that the community benefits as much as the creator.
> OR the creator licenses the work in such a way
> that the creator maintains an advantage over teh
> community.

You're constructing polarity where a wide spektrum exists.

I'm not sure that we even have a common base to base a
discussion on.

> The first is about "Freedom", copyleft,
public domain, etc.
> The second is proprietary, all rights reserved, NC, ND,
etc.
> 
> And proprietary isn't a four letter word.
> But proprietary isn't "Free" either.
> NC has nothing to do with Freedoms.
> 
>> See above. the floss software folks had spent years
fighting
>> over and eventually sorting out what
"Free" meant.
> 
> No. They simply established a definition of
"Free" that met their
> intentions, so that they could use an extremely
positive terminology to
> describe their goals. It's just PR.
> 
> That's just dismissing their definition so you can
ignore it and insert 
> your own.

No.
I'm simply sticking with the dictionary definition of
freedoms; see 
http://w
ww.askoxford.com/concise_oed/freedom .

The FSF made up their own definition of freedom as a
technical term for 
a specific set of rights for software. You're following
their 
definition, but that doesn't make their definition more
correct (where 
"correctness" is simply common everyday use).

> Which is a fancy way of saying you reserve the right to
make a word mean
> whatever YOU want it to mean, and to hell with all the
work anyone has done
> before you.

That's exactly what I think the FSF has done.

>> I see three important points in the spectrum here:
>> * Closed, i.e. "all rights reserved".
>> * Free use ("free beer",
"freeware"). As in CC's ND clause.
>> * Modification allowed and possible. As in the GPL,
or a CC without ND.
> 
> Absolutely not.
> THere is closed and open. Free and Proprietary. that's
it.

You're contradicting yourself, because

> The creator retains the majority rights to the work.

"majority" is a shade-of-grey measure.
What's a "majority" of rights? Rights aren't
equals (or even 
equivalents) that you can count to determine a majority.

> And in a world where transmission of the work is a sunk
cost
> over the internet, giving people the right to transmit
the work
> for free isn't giving them much at all.You're just
giving them the
> right because of the potential benefit it may bring to
you.
> 
> Advertising.

You're ignoring facts.

First, redistribution isn't the only relevant right; even
the most 
restrictive license gives the right to use the work for
personal 
purposes. And don't tell me that using software for free
isn't a 
substantial right!

Second, you're alleging that every release that isn't full
GPL is "just 
for advertising". This is a remarkable ignorance of the
reasons why one 
might want to distribute software. I have seen more than one
person 
distributing software under the rough equivalent of BY-ND,
and not for 
any personal advantage (beyond, maybe, a Donate! button on
their 
webpage, something that GPL projects can have, too, so
there).

>> Freedoms start exactly at the points where the
others' rights end. So
>> anything that's about managing rights is also about
managing freedoms.
>>
>> IOW "rights, not freedoms" is just a
slogan, not an argument.
> 
> Sure. If it's just a slogan and the words are equal,
> then it shouldn't harm you to change the words.
> 
> But that argument is a smoke screen.
> The words aren't equal to you.
> One has more emotional pull to it than the other.
> one implies more than the other.

That's exactly why the above is a slogan.
It has strongly emotional overtones, but not factual
content.
In fact, taken at face value, the entire thing is a
contradiction in 
terms, since freedoms (as a plural) are just rights.

> one makes it sound like you're doing more for the
users
> than the other.

Actually I prefer the term "rights".
"Freedoms" is simply misleading (though I have
been misled into using 
the word "freedom" occasionally, particularly when
adapting to the 
terminology of other people in the discussion).

> And you want that, even though the word has a very
> specific and entirely different meaning in the history
> of the entire FLOSS commnity.

Well, yes, that's exactly the thing that I don't like about
the FSF: 
that they abuse a very emotional word for something that's
not too 
emotional after all (except for those who are into
programming).

That's an effective PR strategy initially, but I think they
should drop 
it when dealing with people who are not programmers or
otherwise 
emotionally attached to the way programs are written. It's
effective at 
raising eyebrows, not at convincing people.

Regards,
Jo
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Joachim Durchholz wrote:
> Greg bond schrieb:

> And releasing under GPL is not for personal benefit?
> Go tell MySQL AB. Or Red Hat.

I think Greg's on the wrong foot here. The point isn't
whether you
receive benefit, but whether the community does, and whether
that
benefit is sufficient to be regarded as a significant
"freedom" beyond
what is expected.

The curiosity of NC-ND, IMHO, is that it actually encodes
what for many
years most people regarded as "fair use". The
NC-ND terms require the
two things that most people figure are (or should be) true
for ALL
copyrighted works:

1) If I don't make any money from the copies or compete
commercially
with the original, they should have no complaint.

2) If I don't rip-off the work by making derivative versions
that I then
try to sell, they should have no complaint.

However, minor derivations and changes are permitted by fair
use (such
as quoting), and the *ideas* of a work are not
copyrightable, so you
can't restrict work that is merely "inspired by"
some other work.

There are hordes of websites which operate on precisely
these
assumptions about copyright. They are technically wrong, but
because of
lax enforcement (and the fact that most rights-holders are
too smart to
make enemies of their loyal fans), they are pragmatically
correct. By
and large, they do not get sued.

Because of this, it is extremely disingenuous to argue that
NC-ND
"provides freedom", since it does not do so
relative to the average
reader's impression of what ARR means. Indeed, doing so
plays into the
hand of the Enemy: that is to say, the people who are trying
to change
the public perception of ARR to be as restrictive as they
want it to be,
so that they will accept legal changes to make it more
restrictive (to
the extreme detriment of the public interest).

> Besides, if there's a choice between "release with
some rights reserved" 
> and "do not release at all", I'd like to see
the former happen. Even if 
> other programmers cannot copy and adapt the code, it
can give them ideas 
> - numerous algorithms have been reimplemented using the
GPL.

Now you are discussing the merits of NC/ND release models.
They are the
same as for proprietary works, except that they legally
permit what most
fans already expect to be true. By doing this, you are
acknowledging
that the existing copyright law is too harsh, but you aren't
embracing a
new model.

But Greg isn't arguing that NC/ND are *wrong*, he's arguing
that they
are not "Free", and he's on target with that,
IMHO.

> Finally, there's nothing wrong in releasing stuff for
personal benefit 
> (as long as I'm not trying to take away more rights in
the long run, but 
> I don't see that happen with freeware).

The problem here is that you want to add a source code
requirement.

Why?

The only conceiveable reason is that you expect the source
to be
improved. If you didn't, then why would you care if you
release the
source code, and no one includes them when they pass the
work on?

Otherwise, the license needn't mention it. You're free to
include source
or not, as you please. The NC/ND licenses don't stop you
from doing
that. They just don't stop people from dropping them if they
re-distribute.

With ND they can't legally make improvements.

With NC they won't make improvements, because you'll be in a
position to
charge them for their own work, or sue them for *using*
their own work.

Anyone who understands those terms would rather write their
own work
than contribute to yours (You *might* be able to come up
with an
exception to this, but certainly not one worth the time and
trouble to
compose a new license for).

>>copyleft et al are barn raising licenses.
> 
> Dunno what "barn raising" is.

"Barn raising" is an American tradition of
collecting a large number of
people together (like a big party) to do large scale tasks
(such as
raising the walls of beam-built barn, which are very heavy
and
unmanagable for one or two people). Regrettably, large
mechanized
equipment and commercial contractors to operate them have
largely
displaced this heritage in the US, so the metaphor is
becoming more
unfamiliar.

Figuratively, it means any collective process by which a
large number of
people collaborate to produce a product too large for any
one of them to
start. Wikipedia, Linux, and GNU are all "barn
raising" projects because
they produced large projects, whose development cost
would've been
prohibitive if developed in a proprietary model, e.g.:

Project         Estimated proprietary replacement cost
(Y2K$)
------------------------------------------------------------
---
Debian GNU/Linux     US$   9.05 billion
Linux                US$ 570.   million
GNU project          US$ 823.   million
------------------------------------------------------------
---

(These are COCOMO estimates derived by me from data taken
from a study
by Libre Software Engineering http://libresoft.urj
c.es/Results )

Consider what it would take in terms of capitalization to
create a
company to produce these products! For comparison (also in
Y2K$, order
of magnitude estimates):

NASA Development to 1st Space Shuttle   US$  20 billion
Voyager Program                         US$   1 billion

(BTW, I lack comparable data for Wikipedia. I'd want to
develop a cost
estimator based on the costs of writing large
encyclopedias)

>>NC and ND are types of commercial advertising,
>>guerrilla marketing, free samples, hype generators,
etc.
> 
> That's not illegitimate, I'd say.

Again with the moral judgements. There are a few people who
would
disagree with you, but the point here isn't the ethics of
the business
model, but the ethics of passing it off as a "community
project" or as
something which "grants freedom".

> Actually there is no such thing as "free
software" in the sense of "free 
> speech". Software is a thing, not a person, so it
cannot have rights. 
> The FSF is going *way* beyond the normal sense of the
word here.

Um. Speech isn't a person either, so clearly the use of
"free" to modify
"something people have rights relating to" is
perfectly sensible and
established in the language.

>>>But NC and ND are proprietary licenses. They are
for the
>>>primary benefit of the creator.

Greg's off balance here, too, though. One has to make
certain not
universal assumptions here to reach this conclusion. It
requires that
people are good game-theoretic automatons, instead of
complex, often
irrational creatures. There are a number of non-economic
reasons why
people choose NC-ND licenses.

Greg rightly questions their rationality in making that
choice, but it
remains true that people pick NC-ND license for reasons
other than
protecting proprietary economic benefit.

Of course, the 2nd most common reason is that the author
simply wants
power over other people's use of his work, and that is
clearly contrary
to a principle of "freedom".

>>> And when people talk about
>>>GNU-GPL and NC-ND as if they were all part of
the same
>>>thing, when people say they want to use NC
because it is
>>>"half-open" then people who've been
around and know the difference
>>>are going to be telling you just how wrong you
are.
>>
>>I have yet to hear how wrong that would be.

About as wrong as "half frozen": technically there
is a transition
between liquid and solid water, but in practice you can
ignore that in
almost all meaningful cases.

In practical terms, NC licensed material does not enable a
successful
sharing community to develop. It's use is more properly
understood as an
extension of a proprietary "free-sample" strategy,
in which something is
given away for free in the hopes of attracting more
business.

Some people have observed that there are exception w.r.t.
NC: there are
some religiously-motivated NC communities, for example,
where commercial
is indeed regarded as "evil", so they community is
actually motivated by
the NC term. Very niche, though.

So there may be some sense in which NC is merely "half
frozen" (imagine
water molecules whose hydrogen bonds are vibrating
vigourously), but it
still acts like ice (only when the bonds actually break can
the water
flow as a liquid).

>>License break down into two simple categories.
>>The creator either licenses the work in such a way
>>that the community benefits as much as the creator.
>>OR the creator licenses the work in such a way
>>that the creator maintains an advantage over teh
>>community.
> 
> You're constructing polarity where a wide spektrum
exists.

Both positions are over-simplifications, but the
"spectrum" is a bigger
lie than the "polarity": the input function is
continuous, but the
output function is highly discontinuous. In fact, a state
change is a
very good analogy (I'm going to have to use this!  ).

The FSF's "four freedoms" are justified in ethical
terms, but underlying
that is the fact that they represent the "necessary and
sufficient"
conditions for establishing a sharing community around an
intellectual
work in the absence of a coordinating authority (like a
company or a
religious organization). It is, IMHO, the unconscious
acknowledgement of
this reality that informs programmers' "ethical"
opinions about the FSD.

It may be that the terms are not quite the same for
aesthetic works, but
it's questionable, and in any case, I think NC and ND are
generally the
wrong solution. Of course, we're talking about software
here, so that's
a side point.

Cheers,
Terry


-- 
Terry Hancock (hancockAnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpac
eworks.com

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