Comment by bad_user | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bad_user | Hacker News Reader

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I don't think so. As much as free-software advocates like to pat themselves on the back, there are many projects out there that succeeded gaining popularity without a restrictive license like the GPL, and I also think that the GPL is so popular purely by fashion and because its restrictions are irrelevant for web-based applications.

A project's success can only be attributed to the people working on it, and to sheer luck.

Of course, it is kind of an incentive for companies to contribute back and for the community to have some legal protection, that's why I understand the need for LGPL or MPL. But GPL itself should not be considered open-source ... all the software you or I wrote is and will always be a derivate of public domain, and the usage of a library should not dictate the distribution rights of the final product, but only the distribution rights of the library in question. It's kind of ironic that proprietary platforms like dotNET are more open in this regard.

Also, I don't think Apple did more harm to open-source than Red Hat did. At least they don't pretend to be some kind of saviors of humanity.

> But GPL itself should not be considered open-source

The term "open source" has a clear, accepted, and well-understood definition -- http://opensource.org/docs/osd -- and the GPL clearly meets this definition. If you don't like the GPL, fine. But don't say that it isn't open source, because that's just not true.

If you choose to give your own private meanings to words, you risk being misunderstood. You also risk being seen as dishonest.

cf. how the words "queer" and "gay" are being reclaimed by the LGBTQ community.

I know the term has rules for being used, but those rules are too permissive if GPL is accepted (not to mention GPL 3 which now includes hardware restrictions).

If I want to run away with a library and do my own thing, I don't see a problem with that if I'm giving back the changes to the library itself. Otherwise it cannot be viewed as a public good, as some might suggest. You can't compare a public good, such as a road to GPL software, because you aren't required to transport your merchandise for free on that road ... I know, stupid analogy, but you get my point.

Proprietary software shouldn't be considered a virus that we should get rid of, that's not an open mindset in my book.

"GPL 3 which now includes hardware restrictions"?!

WTF?! GPL3 _FORBIDS_ hardware restrictions! It protects _YOUR_ right to use _YOUR STUFF_ the way _YOU_ want.

How that could possibly be construed as a restriction?

And what is the harm Red Hat did? Because I don't see any.

The problem with Red Hat is that they sell a brand, not a product, and while many Red Hat employees are allowed to work on open-source stuff, there's no competition, no room for second place, no market. Unless you have a community of enthusiasts, like Debian of course, which is also technically superior in some ways, but those people don't see any direct earnings for their contribution.

Sorry, I have no clue what are you talking about. Can you elaborate? What /is/ the problem with RH?

You know that RH employees actually work on OSS, right? They're a major contributor to the open-source world, they have a community of enthusiasts (Fedora) and everything goes to upstream.

You mean they work on Free Software and are a major contributor to the Free Software world.

I say that since we're discussing the GPL above.

Look, I'm not questioning their contributions, just the current state of affairs.

If Red Hat vanished tomorrow, Linux would still be developed and maintained, even though it would suffer a setback. That's because there are many other companies and communities that help with that.

The problem is that only Red Hat earns serious money directly from selling Linux licenses, although it relies on contributions of many other companies and individuals to do so. The other companies only earn money from complementary products and consulting services ... services which don't scale unless you're a superstar developer charging $500 / hour or you have lots of resources to hire lots of people to answer support calls.

Although they shouldn't care since they are a company, and I do appreciate their contributions, the culprit is from my pov the GPL license ... and the perfect open-source license is LGPL-like ... that's all I tried to say.

The various flavors of Enterprise Linux are products. Since Red Hat provides paid support for Enterprise Linux, they have every incentive to make sure core Linux functionality is as stable and efficient to manage as possible.

You might say they don't want to streamline themselves out of a job, but there will always be demand for supported versions of Linux, no matter how easy it is to administer.

Another reason for RH to make sure Linux rocks is off course increasing the total mind share for Linux, for the more installations and applications there are, the better the prospectives.

I wouldn't call the GPL restrictive at all. It's restrictive in the sense that "you are forbidden to be a bad person". I can live with that.

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