Comment by vsw02 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vsw02 | Hacker News Reader

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You kind of gave up the game by pointing out that GPL-folk distinguish between developers and users. It’s the key flaw in the GPL approach and all you need do is scroll a little bit to find a developer being told to fuck off for merely questioning the source disclosure requirement of GPL. Why do the authors of software command less respect than users thereof from those ostensibly working to elevate software?

Developers are users too. They use code. The GPL community’s insistence on segmenting those two groups and valuing the needs of one over the other for the last thirty years has led to way more angry threads than the world has ever needed. A community built upon unassailable rights granted to one class whilst mandating behaviors in another is somewhat incongruent at its base because it doesn’t track with unconscious notions of fairness and equality that most people carry. It also explains why developers are usually the one chirping about it, because they’re the second class in this picture. How that remains elusive after all the bloodsport and drama over this license is something I’m not sure I’ll ever understand.

I say that understanding the entire rationale, by the way. I absolutely get why both sides say what they say and I’m not disputing what you’re fighting for. Negotiation at gunpoint is what it is (again, scroll), and despite fighting what is otherwise a good fight worth believing in, expecting those at gunpoint to go along with no complaints is a bit naive in itself and a shocking lack of communal social understanding among the free software community. “Why won’t they work with us? We are telling them exactly what to do” is a self-evident position.

So instead we do this thread on HN and Slashdot and whatever every few weeks and get it out of our systems, then go back to status quo of not understanding each other nor why either side is much interested in engaging the other. It’s honestly puzzling that people still try.

> Developers are users too. They use code.

The whole point of the GPL is that the reverse is true as well. If I - the user of the software - wants to become a developer of this software I can only do so if I have access to the source code.

That is not "mandating behaviour", if you are the original developer of a piece of software, you are free to take it closed source any time you wish.

If you benefitted from having the code of your software available to you, why would you want the right to prevent someone else to benefit in the same way ?

I am genuinely curious why that makes you feel so attacked.

You have not understood my point at all. If you think I feel attacked in response to a comment laboriously explaining why two sides have been locked in pointless battle for decades, you’ve taken a point of view from me that simply doesn’t exist. The conclusion you’re drawing, particularly that I have any interest in denying someone rights or that my criticism of GPL implies a wish to harm others’ freedoms, is interesting in itself and speaks to what I’m saying (and some I’m not).

I prefer offering more rights to all my users, including those GPL advocates tend to perceive as exploitative, which is why I use more permissive licenses than GPL in my software. I don’t lose sleep over Boeing patching a random library I wrote and not sharing the patch. It’s genuinely that simple. We have different priorities and shit we care about, and I can have mine without excluding yours or entering a confrontation where someone feels “attacked” over IP law (of all the things).

And no, what you’re saying isn’t the whole point of the GPL. I’ll give you a point but there are plenty of other rationales behind it, many spoken in this thread.

I apologize for misunderstanding you. I read you writing of commanding less respect as a developer and being "the second class in this picture" as feeling attacked.

If I am honest, I did not understand your point, then. Your start-off was that the GPL segments between users and developers and disagreeing with that.

What I tried to offer as a counterpoint, is that the GPL does not actually segment between the two, it just mandates that this non-segmentation be conferred at every new iteration of distribution.

What you call "permissive" then is only permissive in the short term, because it precisely introduces this segmentation between users and developers in the long term. If you look at this as a tree structure, it's permissive only to your immediate children, because you are granting them the right to take away this precise freedom from your grandchildren, thus introducing the separation between users and developers.

Or in GNU speak: you are allowing your user/developes to take away their users's freedom 1 and 3, so since there are four freedoms, I will claim that this is at least half the point of the GPL.

Right, understood. You can’t have your beliefs without excluding mine. Totally understand where you’re coming from. I refer you back to the pointless battle to understand why this is the last time we will speak. I gave you room to do your thing, pointed out people could have different priorities, and you still spent half your comment telling me how my behavior is wrong.

What are you expecting? My gosh, you’re right, the freedoms I’m depriving of my users not subscribing to your orthodoxy? Show me the light? Not happening, sorry. The free software community has had decades to win me over and every time it ends in this. You’re not the first. Won’t be the last.

If your community spent more time listening rather than wagging fingers and tutting at the choices of others you’d get somewhere among the (most) people who don’t respond well to that. This thread is a pretty good microcosm of that because you’ve heard precisely none of what I’ve said; if you had, you’d have known the shaming sermon with a lot of “you” thrown in probably wasn’t the way to go.

Perhaps the GPL itself is incompatible with not explaining someone else’s business to them because that’s its whole trick to achieve the outcome desired. This thread kind of helped me realize that. You don’t even know you’re doing it because unconsciously you’ve accepted that telling others what they can and cannot do is a workable approach as it’s codified into the whole methodology of your movement.

> you’d have known the shaming sermon with a lot of “you” thrown in

Hmm, I am not trying to shame you into anything. I was using "you" in the generic sense. Like this here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_you I can understand, though, how you might have misunderstood me here. Even though I am just a stranger . That was not the clearest of way to speak, even though I have spoken it for a long time, English is not my first language. Then again, it is usually best to try and assume good intent.

I do have a feeling (possibly incorrectly) that your (vsw02´s) usage of "you" is directed at me (yosamino) directly, though. And since you have clearly deduced that I do not even know what I am doing, and I am clearly too stupid to understand the point that you are making, while you already know all of mine, I would like to agree: it's best this ends here.

>> I don’t lose sleep over Boeing patching a random library I wrote and not sharing the patch

> What you call "permissive" then is only permissive in the short term, because it precisely introduces this segmentation between users and developers in the long term. If you look at this as a tree structure, it's permissive only to your immediate children, because you are granting them the right to take away this precise freedom from your grandchildren, thus introducing the separation between users and developers.

It sounds like vsw02 understands your argument, and has already showed that they don't consider the scenario you describe to bothersome. One might say vsw02 predicted your argument, but I'd say you didn't fully consider vsw02's argument.

Your example sounds like the paradox of tolerance, but there is a critical difference: consequences. If you are tolerant of intolerance, then the repercussion is that intolerance continues, and even increases, which can also increase physical violence, and various human rights violations. If you give code freely to those who will not provide the modifications to that code freely, there won't be an increase in violence, or what most people would consider human rights violations.

Could we have a bit more FOSS code if all OSS was libre? Maybe. Carmack disagrees though in TFA, stating "I'm pretty sure there would have been more total users of the code, likely making the amount shared in the open still greater." Explaining libre isn't helping, you need to provide an argument that vsw02 hasn't already shown to be irrelevant to them, and ideally, one that also addresses Carmack's argument (saying "that's just speculation" is true, but it seems Carmack's speculation is speculation that a lot of us subjectively already agree with)

Of course I predicted it. It’s like talking to Jehovah’s Witnesses at the door. The idea that you fully understand their entire belief structure, have done your homework on it out of respect (seriously, I have), and ultimately reject it anyway is puzzling to adherents of most belief systems, so they tend to revert to explaining it a different way out of a suspicion that you don’t get it. I’ve probably heard over a hundred different metaphors for why I should care about what my users do with my software at this point and it’s still a level of arrogance I’m not willing to introduce to my engineering.

All I can say is oh well, I guess.

> they tend to revert to explaining it a different way out of a suspicion that you don’t get it.

I think that's because, in my experience (outside of HN), many people really don't get it. They say something like "this proprietary software did something nasty again" without knowing that the GPL exists or that it's effectively impossible for GPL'ed software to do nasty things. Hence, it is always worth explaining the GPL and its values to them.

It's not always easy to see when someone already understands the values and just disagrees with them.

You misunderstand what the GPL requires, then. The GPL does not require this. The GPL only requires that the source code be shared with those to whom the software has been distributed.

Which in your example would be the airlines, not the upstream.

This might be better understood as a social concept rather than a legal one. Suppose you have a social group, and the way people are admitted into it is by invitations.

The GPL is someone who will invite anyone who asks, as long as they themselves will also commit to inviting anyone who asks. That is, anyone who is invited by the GPL person cannot discriminate about who else they admit to the group.

The BSD is someone who will invite anyone who asks, and they can be as cliquey as they like. They can discriminate on any basis, or form in-groups among themselves where other people are not permitted.

Does the first or the second social group seem better to you? This might be a good predictor of whether the GPL or BSD model is more intuitive.

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