gpl backlash?

[Matthew C. Weigel]

On Mon, 26 Jul 1999, Wilfredo Sanchez wrote:

>   That's a fairly narrow view, Bruce.

It can be, but since I disagree with both of you... :)

>   NeXT used GPL'ed code for years without adding much value to the  
> GNU Project because they made lots of NeXT-specific changes and  
> didn't care at all whether they got folded into the FSF source base.   
> Sure the software remaind "free", but none of it ever made it into  
> the FSF sources and was therefore generally useless to the Community.  

Except the *NeXT* community.

>  Had it not been GPL'ed and had they made it "proprietary," there  
> would have been little difference to anyone.  What did this  
> "protection" buy you?

My understanding is that because the old versions were free software, it has
been relatively easy to duplicate their changes in newer versions -- check
ftp.peak.org/next/apps/devtools and you'll find egcs 1.1.2 for NeXTstep. 
NeXT did *not* do that.  If the changes had not been available, then the
updates would probably have never happened.

>   On the other hand, Apple has contributed a fair bit (not a  
> terrifically great bit, but certainly something) to NetBSD and Apache  
> despite the lack of any requirements to do so.  And we're finally  
> getting our act together and submitting a large body of work to gdb.

Kudos to ya'll, then.

> that it's been available for years never helped anyone.  The fact  
> that we are now actively trying to merge it in upstream is what  
> counts, and the GPL isn't going to get you that.

Well, no license is a magic bullet.

>   Which isn't to say that "the GPL is evil";  that's yet another  
> narrow view.  I'm just saying that you're not looking at the bigger  
> picture.  I would say that the GPL isn't necessary, but I just want  
> better software, not some notion of code virtue.

I say that the GPL *is* necessary, for some things, detrimental for others,
and ambivelant for everything left over.  For reasons and by criteria I'll
discuss below.

[snip a good essay to make room for mine]

Well, different people have different objectives for opening systems up (or
making open systems in the first place), of course.  My objective is to
benefit the user, and make the user's life nice.  

For some things, that means simply ensuring that no one can do anything to
the code without letting other people see those changes; the GPL is nice
here.  From past experience this seems to include compilers, since few
people can expend the resources to a) write a whole compiler to introduce a
new feature or b) write that feature to be portable across every platform
the original compiler works for.  So the GPL helps to keep people from
wimping out, and writing in new features for just one platform.  However, it
also provides the incentive that you don't have to write the rest of the
compiler.

For other things, the most important thing for the end user is
compatibility; internet servers, for instance.  In those cases, it's more
important that *absolutely everything* come from a commnon code base,
period.  For these situations, something like the X or BSD licenses are
ideal.  It doesn't matter that extra stuff has been added, or (in the case
of some NeXT stuff) if code was added to integrate it to other proprietary
products.

Again, this is from my viewpoint of helping the person using the software. 
It would be best for people using the software if it were all free, but then
using the XL, BSDL, and GPL for different software is compatible both with
the goal of getting all software closer to free software, *and* helping the
end user during the interim while non-free software exists.

>    1 Infinite Loop, 302-4K, Cupertino, CA

This has got to be a joke...?

 Matthew Weigel                                       Programmer/Sysadmin
  weigel+ at pitt.edu                             Operating Systems Advocate
                         http://www.pitt.edu/~weigel