Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[Steven Champeon <schampeo AT hesketh.com>]

on Wed, Apr 25, 2001 at 09:20:35PM -0400, Paula Paul wrote:
> I'm not really outraged - I've been through this discussion in detail
> because of work I'm currently doing, and it has been a learning
> experience (so I do know a little about the GPL and LGPL, I just enjoy
> the debate).

You'll forgive me if I wonder just how much you knew before the debate,
since you had some pretty serious misperceptions about the fundamentals.

> Two things happened to me relatively recently that made me start to
> wonder if the existence of the GPL and LGPL has really done the software
> industry any good.  I don't have the answer, but I do run into many
> people who think the GPL and LGPL are boons to software developers, and
> I have my doubts-

Hm. Well, I don't know about on the macro scale, but I got my start in
this business using Perl (covered by the GPL or the Artistic License,
at the discretion of the programmer) on SGML (an open ISO standard) on
SunOS (proprietary OS founded on open source foundations). I went on
to use gcc to compile Mosaic and NCSA httpd so that I could play with
CGI scripts, written in Perl and C (compiled with gcc) and then Apache
(under a GPL-like license). If I'd had to pay for all of that software
I'd never have been able to gather the experience necessary to pitch
the creation of a Web services department at my company, which
employed twelve people; I never would have been able to get into the
Web itself if HTML had been closed source; Heather and I would not be
able to employ the eight other people at hesketh.com. I do not believe
any of this would have been possible if it were not for FSF and the
GPL and the concepts inherent to the movement.

And we're doing okay, but we don't have a $361B market cap, like
Microsoft does. We don't have 316,000 employees, like IBM does. We
don't have $5B in cash, like Oracle.

Surely you don't think that the existence of a good, free, volunteer
maintained compiler like gcc or a high-performance OS like Linux is
going to threaten the very existence of the software industry.

> 1) I'm a contractor (software for hire) - and had a potential client ask
> me to what degree I had worked on source code covered by the GPL.  I
> don't have much if any exposure to source code covered by the GPL, but I
> wondered if it would have impacted my ability to get that job!  The
> potential client was trying to make sure their product source code could
> remain proprietary and did not want to 'pollute' it.  Maybe they didn't
> fully understand the GPL and/or LGPL, but it made me think.

Yes, but what did it make you think about? That your potential client
doesn't have the faintest idea of how the GPL works? Or that you'd better
not look at any GPL'd code because you might have the urge to copy it?
The GPL only covers code - not algorithms (which its creators consider
immoral to restrict). Of course, you could make an argument that if you
worked on proprietary code and then later worked on a project covered
by the GPL, you might be a liability - to both projects - if it could
be proven that your exposure to the closed source project contributed 
to the implementation of the open source project, if they shared some
functionality. But I'm not sure why you seem concerned that the GPL
might threaten your livelihood.

> 2) I was invited to a Microsoft .NET lab recently, and our team needed
> to explain our technical issues to the Microsoft development team.
> Before we got started, the developer from Microsoft said "I have to ask
> you not to show us any code that is covered under GPL or LGPL".  It
> seems that the legalities of the GPL and LGPL are sufficiently murky
> such that the Microsoft guys don't want to risk that someone (jack
> booted or no ;-)) will come after them to publish their source code.

That's ridiculous. That's the worst, most idiotic kind of FUD. So what
you're saying is that Microsoft is scared of the GPL because they are
afraid they will not be able to prove that they didn't incorporate code
from existing GPL'd projects into their own software? Or are they simply
afraid of publicly available code, period, because they're afraid any
exposure to someone else's code would open them up to a lawsuit to
prove that their code is entirely unique?

I know the converse is true - that developers working on open source
versions of closed-source software try to keep from accepting work and
code from people who have seen the closed source implementation, but
it seems strange that MS would be scared as well.

How does this explain projects like ActiveState Perl? Where Microsoft
paid to have Perl ported to Win32?

> As a developer, these two incidents made my life more complicated, not
> better.  It's not what people typically think of when you ask them their
> opinion of 'free software', so I just wanted to offer a different point
> of view as food for thought.

So, you'd rather all source code was closed, so your life would be
simpler?

> I do think the spirit of the GPL is good - I don't think someone should
> take the emacs code and build a "proprietary" emacs. 

Funny. Lucid did. And it's still around, though the code was always
open.  Lucid isn't still around, but that probably has much to do with
the tiny market for X-windows-based programming editors in the
eighties, and little to do with the source being available.

> But it's hard to come up with good rules for protecting source code
> that you essentially put in the public domain.

No, no, no. The code is *copyrighted*, not placed into the public
domain.  That's the whole freaking point. Before the GPL, you had two
choices. You either placed the code in the public domain, or you kept
it to yourself. The GPL allows the author full copyrights to her work,
no matter how many people contribute, they all retain their rights,
but without having to restrict access to improvements, thereby making
the whole end product better.

Please, if you're going to state your opinion on the GPL and related

matters, I beg you to take the time to understand the fundamentals.

> The existence of the LGPL is proof that something's not quite right
> in the system.

No, the existence of the LGPL proves that the FSF is willing to
compromise even in the face of efforts to thwart their goals, by
allowing open source libraries to be used by closed source software
as long as it means that the source to the libs stays open. That's
all. Of course, if you mean that the LGPL proves that the world is
still far away from recognizing the value of open source as a core
principle of software, then I'd agree with you. But I suspect you
mean something quite different.

Steve

-- 
"Euphoria is not a business strategy" -- Louis Rossetto