Comments on: GPL 3.0: A bonfire of the vanities?

Jonathan Zuck says GPL advocates are adopting a religious stance on software development, rather than a practical one.

[glynmoody]

Savonarola - or St. Francis?

Great post, with lots of compelling historical detail. Unfortunately, it suffers from the problem of all such parallels: it's essentially arbitrary.

You could just as easily make a comparison between Stallman and St. Francis of Assisi, as here:

http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2006/03/savonarola-st-francis-or-st-ignucius.html

[sreynard]

Poor Corporations

It is funny that the historical references could have been applied more effectively in the opposite point of view. Here comes big bad Stallman to take away little Microsoft's freedoms. Corporations unite! Fight off this terrible subjugation! Burn him at the stake!

We?re the Mega-Corps. We?re here to help you. Look at our track record, er ah, never mind. . . . .

GPL2 will not be thrown into a bonfire...

"GPL 3.0 is his call to dump all such transgressions in the town square and set them on fire."

This is where the metaphor gets stretched way too thin. Does the author think the GPL2 will be "repealed" or somehow go away? It won't.

[ryanpj]

Risk between pragmatists and ideologues

Quite a bit of press coverage has already referred to a growing rift between the pragmatists and the ideologues in the open source community. The GPL 3.0 may finally force the corporate giants supporting OSS to make some difficult choices and decide which side they are on.

[Slylencer]

Ignorant Fool

This idiot completely ignores and misleads (lies) about the reason why Stallman created the GPL. He would have you believe that it is some kind of altruism which is simply not the case. Stallman's view is actually more practical than his is. How can allowing end users be able to look at and fix the code for their software be impractical. The GPL was not intended for authors, it was for the users. DRM directly conflicts with that, hence the creation of GPL 3.

[sreynard]

Facts Please

Notice that the author did not give any facts? He says Stallman is a religious crusader, but gives no information about what Stallman is trying to do or what he finds so objectionable about GPL 3. It is easy to see that GPL 3 may be threatening to the corporations that Mr. Zuck represents, but he could at least try to be convincing. Dropping Linus' name is hardly an argument.

An analogy isn't an argument.

Jonathan Zuck, you should be ashamed of yourself. Making an analogy between the GPL3 and religious extremism is nothing more than a personal attack. I've never been a big fan of Stallman, but there's no argument here and only name calling. I find this unprofessional, and irresponsible.

If you have an argument about GPL3,(which has yet to be finalized) then you should make it. Otherwise I think you owe Mr. Stallman an apology.

[Thad Boyd]

The ability to control what I do with my property is essential.

"For leading Linux users like TiVo and Adaptec, the ability to protect key intellectual property is essential."

Way to frame the debate, Jon.

The trouble is, TiVo DOESN'T have the right to tell me what shows I can and can't record, how long I can keep them, and whether or not I can transfer them to DVD. It's not essential, and it shouldn't even be legal. It's a flagrant violation of my rights as a consumer.

DRM inherently puts the rights of corporations ahead of the rights of individuals. And I'm sorry, but I think human beings' rights take precedence.

I don't always agree with Stallman, but the comparison you base this article on is spurious and your defense of DRM as "essential" is absurd.

[Thad Boyd]

Anybody else see...

...an ad for Microsoft's "Get the Facts" study on the right side of the page?

Yeah, that's a sure sign of unbiased reporting.

[cnetpoptones]

There is no "them"

This is what the dogmatists refuse to recognize: there is no "them." We are all now publishers and the ability to trade data has become trivial throughout the developed world. It is in everyone's best interests to protect our own works and to construct a robust technical means of securing rights to our works.

The editor may have corporate connections that some may question, but I very much do not and I agree wholeheartedly with the spirit of this article. Linus also would seem to be a cooler head on this matter - furthermore, I have seen myself a large percentage of open source advocates who do not cater to the fundamentalist dogma of RMS.

DRM presently sucks, but it need not ALWAYS suck. We in the open source community need to contribute to this end - to work toward incorporating into the free formats like ogg and png standards for embedded ownership information which others may then build upon. For example, encrypted wrappers that themselves may also contain the key to decoding the media need not be a hindrance to anyone's fair use, yet such could also provide a means of incorporating watermarks of encoded ownership information which would NOT be removable from the stored content.

DRM presently sucks to the degree that even the unsophisticated rebuke it because most of it truly does act as a barrier to even common use of the works it protects. Technology providers in both the corporate and "free" realm seem only grudgingly willing to develop solutions to digital rights issues. In fact, approaching this from the other end of the open/free spectrum one could easily make the argument DRM technologies presently suck simply because most technology provides WANT them to suck - to be proprietary, lacking even the most basic standards of interoperability, and difficult to maintain and transport media across platforms or even machine to machine when no change of platform is involved.

I, for one, am totally excited about the possibilities presented by a world where specific embodiments of data might be more directly equated to "things" and traded as a limited resource. The potential this carries to the proletariat is enormous in the positive sense, yet this leap forward remains stalwarted by a fundamentalist doctrine of "data must always be free any time it can be accessed by more than one person." It's ridiculous, as if it were a sin to actually demand payment for the product of an individual's time and effort.

Hmmm.. stalwart... stallman... how poetic!

[jesdog]

There is no "them"...

In the United Kingdom, the House of Lords (the equivalent of the United States Supreme Court) sitting as a review Court of Appeal seems to think it's absurd that language can be patented. They may have a point. When you think of the machine called the computer itself, it is after all nothing more than a bunch of electronic switches that somehow need to be communicated with (whether by the means of a dedicated permanent program, such as a BIOS, or by a non-permanent all troubled program language such as PASCAL, FORTRAN, C++, BASIC, VISUAL BASIC, etc.) by some mechanism of "language" between the human and machine.it is language in turn, they communicates directly with the computer mechanism, turning the switches on and off, which instructs a machine as to what to do.
In a sense, a rough analogy would be writing an essay that instructs others how to do finish carpentry on a cabinet or a boxwith detailed instructions.
It is the language that provides the guide that instructs othersas to what to do, just as the programming language instructs the computer.
Of course this is an oversimplification, but it does illustrate an important point about the GPL license.The concept expressedin the philosophy that is more important for the program language to be free rather than better, advocates a position by which improvement is inevitable. Rarely do we see a license commercial program that works very well in the modern technology environment. What I mean by that is when you purchase a license to use a commercial program, such as a productivity program in business (the biggest market) virtually every time after loading and using the program difficulties occur, patches and upgrades need to be downloaded, or the program will work properly. This is for the functioning of the program as it was supposedly intended, not to mention the security issues that arise.
From experience I can tell you this, the business community is rapidly getting fed up with a protection racket of commercial programming companies putting less than optimal products on the market, is claiming liability for their exposing their customers to losses in downtime and productivity totally at odds with the representation of the quality of their product, paying to have that same producer of the product corrected so works as intended-a continuous effort-and being exposed to loss of data, invasion of privilege of private information, and exposure to public liability as a result.
A cohesive patent law(not a copyright for a language?) would extend liability to the makerand producer of the program which should be unlimited. Two things would happen, open source for suddenly become more popular, and in any event quality-control (which simply means the customer gets in fact what he pays four) would improve greatly. If medical research operated the way programmers did in developing the products, we'd still be using witch doctors, chants and incantations to cure the ill.
Thus, the idea of accessibility as a better alternative than to developing program competence is a superior idea. It is by the open and free use of language that efficiency in communication and intellectual development can proceed (along with the garbage that inevitably accompanies language development).In the same way, the development of a program by the free exchange of ideas and input subject to intelligent standardsand guidelines, can a program proceed to its Zenith in its competence for its intended task.
We can, of course, subordinate intellectual integrity and narrowminded thinking to unenlightened greed, at the cost of enlightened self-interest. This has happened before, And It Was Called the Dark Ages. No idea out there was ever created in a vacuum, and without the profound thought and intellectual discourse in the public market where good ideas shine. The danger is the lack of this open discourse, and the self-centered egos, that have a legal monopoly on essentially ideas they have stolen to establish their monopoly. This will shutdown development and advancement in the discipline. Other civilizations who take a different tack, and aggressively pursue open ideas in language, any kind of language, will surely take the lead and make the monopoly irrelevant.

[rbanffy]

This guy is more or less paid by Microsoft

This guy is with the ACT, which was founded as a response to the Microsoft antitrust case.

Please, C|NET, try to give voice to less biased perspectives. Next time we may very well have a creationist voicing concerns on how the Internet is dangerous to our beliefs.

[crazyboutit]

Big Companies Fund Open Source

Speaking of big companies funding things. To Zucks point:

"There's a lot of romantic notions about open source," [Oracle?s Larry] Ellison said. "That just from the air these developers contribute and don't charge. Let me tell you the names of the companies that developed Linux: IBM, Intel, Oracle -- not a community of people who think everything should be free. Open source is not a communist movement." (Martyn Williams, IDG News Service, 3/3/06)
What does the Stallman crowd think of Linux?

[tomseven]

sign me up

You might be right that a rift is coming, but there are many of us who are on Stallman's side. DRM and software patents are a real problem, and the GPL has worked before.

[Drainthetub]

Zuck raises some interesting points.

Zuck raises some interesting points. Some of the changes in the GPL
3.0 and the rhetoric by Stallman about it are going to put the
pressure on commercial companies like IBM, Sun and others who have
supported OSS. The new version may finally force them to choose
between the true believers and their commercial vision of OSS

[mcaction]

not exactly

1) The process and principles in the GPL are what makes 'open source' useful to these companies in the first place. Commercial interests and the GPL are not incompatible in terms of companies harnessing the power of community development and creating excitement about their product. You and the author are missing the point and inventing problems that don't exist.

2) The author did NOT make any useful statements about what GPLv3 entails. None.

[Urban Terrorist]

V3

After reading V3 I disagree with you. It won't have much if any effect on IBM for example, though TIVO may not like it.

But this is true of any license! Remember the upset over the License for XP? A lot of people thought that the new license might kill XP, and they were wrong.

The main problem is that software licenses are the new religon, and religous wars are always messy.

[Bill Dautrive]

Not really

V2 is not going anywhere and moving to V3 will not be required obviously.

If people do not like the new license they will simply not use it.

[hdante]

One size fits all

Hello. I think your argument is misleading. That's because you make an analogy without considering the the meaning of the words that you are comparing. "Bonfire of the Vanities" can be stated as:

1. There is thought A, considered commonsense
2. There is thought B, which is then considered commonsense
3. There is someone that tries to rescue thought A
4. People from thought B says that thought A is extremist.

To see that one size fits all, consider the counter example that begins with though A = "people should be allowed to mix open source with closed source. Freedom == commercial freedom."

1. There is thought A
2. There is an explosion of free software (not open source) ideology (say, from 1985 to 1995). The intensely ideological efforts of free software have made, for all that matters, a whole operating system possible, and created artistical and cultural explosions.
3. This, however is an assault to commercial freedom. The open source guys come into play and say that this "free as in freedom" is vanity because it's not practical. They take severe stand against GPL'd code, because information freedom is less than commercial freedom, which is and will always be their "freedom". They try to burn free software. "Creative Commons/OSS/Shared source" becomes a platform to rail against information freedom. The geeky hackers with GPL 3 have turned away from the old testament of selling or renting information. Creative Commons, or Shared Source, or whatever is a call to the faithful to reject these vanities.
4. According to Wikipedia, "Florence soon tired of Savonarola's hectoring," and and so too are many turning their backs on Lawrence Lessig, Microsoft, etc. etc. and "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

This seems a logical fallacy to me. We are making an analogy, but are not taking into account the content of the objects. Not to mention that the content, in this case, is quite a thing: freedom.


After reading my own text, I've realised that this is exactly the same king of marketing Microsoft has been doing for the last 10(?) years. They usually criticize on their competitors exactly about something they are doing. I thought you have fallen on a logical fallacy, but, I would question: were you instructed by Microsoft to say those things ?

[jrasamba.org]

Perspecitve from a paid Microsoft supporter.

I met Jonathan at the Microsoft Anti-trust case in Europe, where his organization ACT was presenting evidence on behalf of Microsoft. I was presenting in opposition to Microsoft on behalf of the FSF Europe.

I like Jonathan, he's a nice guy and we get on famously personally but you have to read his stuff in the full knowledge that he's paid to put Microsoft's point of view on things. This is a warning from someone who makes his living saying the opposite of course :-).

Jeremy Allison,
Samba Team.

[jzuck]

Disappointed

Jeremy,
The personal admiration is mutual, which is why I was a little disappointed in your post. I hoped you would have engaged on the substance my comments, rather than the messenger.

Sure we disagree on the Microsoft antitrust case in Europe, but you know that I'm paid to speak on behalf of all of ACT's members, not solely Microsoft. They include Microsoft, but also Oracle, eBay, Verisign and 3000 SMEs around the world. There are a lot of SMEs that are concerned about the fate of Windows, not Microsoft. We've always been able to engage in substantive debate, however.

It's clear there is a growing divide between the Free Software idealists and the Open Source pragmatists in the industry. It is also pretty clear that GPL 3 is likely to further widen it.

The only real question is whether leading open source projects like Samba and Linux will accept this new license. Given that Samba is used in a wide spectrum of hybrid software and devices, including Mac OS X, SuSE, and embedded devices, would you move the project to GPL 3, under its current terms? Does the boot loader problem prevent Samba from moving to GPL 3 for devices that must restrict access, such as medical devices, cellphones and DVRs? If so, would you be willing to walk away from those users?

Don't forget, Jeremy, we have ACT members that work on top of Linux. Questions about how to combine commercial and open source software are top-of-mind for companies like these.

Look forward to hearing your thoughts on this and seeing you soon.

Jonathan

Lobbyists, Evil Lobbyists, and Microsoft Lobbyists

from http://www.actonline.org/staff.htm

>Prior to joining ACT, Morgan served as a
>Legislative Advisor with Venable, Baetjier,
>Howard & Civiletti, a major D.C. law firm.
>. . . Additionally, Morgan . . . assisted the
>Indian Software Association (NASSCOM) in its
>attempt to raise the H1-B Visa limit.

So, not only are these people in favor of making
DVD burners illegal, they're also in favor of
replacing you with an H1-B.

Interestingly, this is the first place where I have
seen the Indian government explicitly admit to paying
for lobbyists to raise the H1-B cap. Do you
suppose that Mr. Morgan W. Reed bothered to register
as a foreign lobbyist? It IS required by law. . .

[mwreed3]

Wow...

FYI - This is space is designed for responding to the content of CNET articles, not making baseless accusations against people completely unrelated to the article, regarding felony crimes no less.

In fact I was a registered foreign agent, and even the quickest Google search would have turned that up. You should do a little more research before throwing around such serious accusations.

In addition, you were quoting from my job history; not the current list of ACT priorities.

What is most disappointing about your comment, however, is your quite obviously racist attack on Indians. You should really be ashamed of yourself.

[mcaction]

Reply from Stallman?

Will News.com let Stallman reply? And if they do, will they let him pretend he isn't directly involved with a group that has a stake in the debate?

Really, this article was unbelievably useless.

[jduser]

OS Community Position?

So what is the position of the open source community?

[a_quietamerican]

Failed Reading Comprehension, didn't you?

As always, CNET, Slashdot and the rest of the media will give Stallman a chance to get on his soapbox.

However, I really must ask you how you know this article was "unbelievably useless" since you obviously never even read it.

If you had read the article, you would have noted that CNET very clearly identified the author as "president of the Association for Competitive Technology, a Washington, D.C.-based trade group specializing in technology issues. ACT's membership roster has some 3,000 companies including Microsoft." So even if you didn't know that Microsoft was a member of ACT, they helpfully ID'd them for you.

Next time read the actual article before attacking News.com for pretending an author "isn't directly involved with a group that has a stake in the debate."

[broodlinger]

Slashdot has you by the balls

Zuck, you're a skilled author of opinion. But your SAT Verbal score must be very low. Plenty of people have pointed out that your analogy is exactly backwards. Stallman is a religious nutcase? And greedy execs are modern-day Renaissance men? I'd like to see Stallman at a book burning to back up your analogy.

[cenglish]

The analogy is good

Mike S., you apparently never studied reasoning and analogy rules and methods. While your point makes sense on face value -- "greedy" execs as Renaissance men just doesn't fit -- but it inherently requires that the current business establishment is the analog to the old religious establishment. In fact, the analogy here is the "religion" of free software. In such a case, there is nobody more appropriate to represent the "religious establishment" (or fanatic, or power head) than Stallman, and the IBM's are the ones who are finding a compromise between the strict "religious" beliefs and the practicalities of everyday life. You have artificially changed the analogy and attacked it on your altered interpretation, making it a straw man argument (a logical fallacy). The original analogy is a good and valid one.

[cenglish]

Valid analogy

Mike S., you apparently never studied reasoning and analogy rules and methods. While your point makes sense on face value -- "greedy" execs as Renaissance men just doesn't fit -- it inherently requires that the current business establishment is the analog to the old religious establishment.

In fact, the analogy here is the "religion" of free software. In such a case, there is nobody more appropriate to represent the "religious establishment" (or fanatic, or power head) than Stallman, and the IBM's are the ones who are finding a compromise between the strict "religious" beliefs and the practicalities of everyday life.

You have artificially changed the analogy and attacked it on your altered implication, making it a straw man argument (a logical fallacy). The original analogy is a good and valid one. That the "religion" of free software does not hold the power in modern society as the religious establishment did at the time of the Rennaissance is irrelevant to the analogy. A valid analogy does not require that all features outside of the specific point have direct correspondences.

[mcaction]

Good comments

This story really upset me, but the majority of comments called this guy out. That's very encouraging!

[elil13]

*

Even Linus Torvalds has expressed reservations about the GPL 3.0 and
has no plans to use it in Linux. If adopted as is, the GPL 3.0 may
force all the companies that have supported OSS to choose sides
between a commercial vision of OSS or a religious and purist vision.

[stevey_d]

Even who?

Linus Torvalds has no track record of doing anything for the environment of the free software community. No one would work on his project until he used GPL2. Since then he has become a millionaire.
So you'd think he'd be appreciative of the leg-up the GPL, GCC and Minix gave him. Nope not this SOB.

He dissed minix (minx is an amazing peice of work, and would easily have eclipsed Linux but for the author's dislike of the GPL), and now, having had nothing to do with the writing of GPL2, is presuming to have something to do with the writing of GPL3.

Oh well, I'll just tell him how to write Linux now will I? No I wouldn't be so big-headed.

[elil13]

*

Even Linus Torvalds has expressed reservations about the GPL 3.0 and
has no plans to use it in Linux. If adopted as is, the GPL 3.0 may
force all the companies that have supported OSS to choose sides
between a commercial vision of OSS or a religious and purist vision.

[Urban Terrorist]

Because it all comes down to choice

Quote
"For leading Linux users like TiVo and Adaptec, the ability to protect key intellectual property is essential. But this protection is a direct assault on Stallman's version of freedom and the need to share software with the community. How do you balance the promotional value of high-profile Linux implementations against the philosophical compromise?"
End Quote

Easy - if I make the decision that I want to license my work in a certain way, that's my choice. Bill Gates had that choice. Linus Torvalds had that choice. They choose totally different ways to license their code. So what - it was their choice.

You could argue that Bill Gates should have licensed DOS under the GPL, or you could argue that Linus Torvalds should have used a Microsoft license. But you arguement doesn't matter, what matters is the choice of the creator.

And that's how it should be. If Bill Gates had have found that TIVO was using his software in violation of the license he choose, he would have been within his rights to take action.

Remember - it's all about the rights of the creator.

[a_quietamerican]

The Author Would Probably Agree

Mr. Zuck is not arguing that the author of the software shouldn't have the choice of using GPL3. In fact he explicitly states the Stallman and the FSF have every right to pursue this, the only question is whether the rest of the open source community will "choose" to follow.

You seem to be missing the bigger point here. Stallman can and will pursue his vision for software and the GPL 3 is a way to further cement a vision that doesn't allow mixing between proprietary or possibly even some less restrictive OSI licenses (most lawyers are stil arguing over those terms). The issue is whether the billions from IBM, RedHat, Oracle, Sun, etc will follow him. If the new license doesn't provide them flexibility to work with code under various licenses, my guess is they won't.

You're right, this is all about choice. The problem is that many from the open source community will likely choose not to use GPL 3 and further sideline Richard Stallman. Which, if you actually read the piece, is exactly what Mr. Zuck said.