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Comment by spacelizard | Hacker News Reader

Yes, I agree, it is ridiculous. That's what happens when you have to deal with software licensing. The whole point of licenses is to be incompatible, if all licenses were compatible then we would only have one license.

I didn't come up with this system, if you must blame something, blame copyright. If you think it's bad this way, it's even worse when the two licenses in question are proprietary; often times in that situation you won't even have the option of a rewrite or a workaround. The nature of copyright is that not even free software licenses can give you the legal ability to do everything you could possibly think of doing, but they give you enough to ensure that every user is granted the four freedoms as long as the copyright holds. The FSF's position is that it would be more meaningful for the community to convince RibbonSoft to re-license as GPLv3 than it would be to have the short term gain of having DWG support available sooner.

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I should lay out the options for you, so you can understand them. LibreCAD is GPLv2 only, it has code from Ribbonsoft and also from independent contributors. In order for them to transition to GPLv3, the following must occur: - Ribbonsoft has to clear the code release with their legal department again to see if any contracts prevented parts of the code being released with such a license, then to approach the contractors who contributed to the program and get their input, then they have to go through and see if any patent licenses they have for their code would prevent such a transition. This equates to a lot of money that Ribbonsoft may not want to dish out again.

- Any contributors to LibreCAD who used GPLv2 only licenses or didn't assign copyright to the team would have to be contacted and their permission would have to be obtained for a change.

- Any other GPLv2 only code would have to be stripped out in order to obtain compatibility with GPLv3

On the other hand, the FSF holds all the copyrights to the LibreDWG codebase. It would cost them nothing to change the license to GPLv2, nor would it waste any time with reimplementation of code already out there.

The answer is so simple that I'm finding it difficult to believe that you still can't see it.

>The answer is so simple that I'm finding it difficult to believe that you still can't see it.

That the FSF should compromise its entire purpose so Ribbonsoft can save money and avoid duplicating code? I don't think anybody donates to the FSF in order that Ribbonsoft can maintain their business model.

It's not its entire purpose, the GPLv2 is still a valid GNU license, it's still copyleft and this sort of behaviour from them isn't helping the community at all, nor is it helping free software. It's pragmatic and idiotic.

Why shouldn't I blame the GPL? If they'd used a liberal OSS license, the code would be open source, unencumbered, and this problem wouldn't exist.

The GPL introduces license incompatibilities; no GPL, no problem.

A lax permissive license could potentially lead to a whole host of other problems including licensing problems. These licenses are not free from incompatibilities either, see the infamous BSD advertising clause for an example of that. And a permissive license certainly would not guarantee the project stay "unencumbered" either. The most adequate solution to this would be to either work on persuading RibbonSoft to relicense under GPLv3, or to just do a workaround. Attacking the GPL serves no purpose, even if you disputed the choice of license it would make more sense to criticize RibbonSoft than it would to criticize the FSF just for writing the GPL.

The BSD advertising clause has been dead for years, and it was primarily incompatible with ... the GPL.

The GPL is incompatible with licenses that impose more restrictions than it does, even if those restrictions are fairly limited, like the advertising clause.

I can't say I've ever heard of license incompatibility stupidity outside of the GPL. Lots of GPL problems, though: OpenSSL, dtrace, ZFS. Apple actually dropped GCC and invested in producing the liberally licensed clang BECAUSE of the GPLv3.

It's a bit strange that you blame then GPL when it is just as much the authors of the incompatible licenses' fault, especially when in some cases it's completely their fault because the authors of those licenses deliberately wrote them with the intent of being incompatible with the GPL. Additionally I find it strange that you fault the values of the GPLv3 for Apple ditching gcc, rather than faulting Apple for being an abusive proprietary company that has problems with the values that the GPLv3 imposes. As if the FSF should be working to please Apple?

Everyone else gets along; GPL is the outlier.

No, if you'll re-read my post you'll see how I described that even if you view this issue in a vacuum, the other parties are still at fault as well. Apple especially does not want you to "get along," and especially not if you're releasing something on their app store. Now please stop this blind hatred and FUD spreading, it's not constructive.

Apple implemented a full AOT/JIT/Disassembler (LLVM), debugger (lldb), static code analyzer (clang), C and C compiler (clang), and c++11 stdlib, all under a free MIT-like OSS license.

There all built as libraries, can be linked against to build IDEs, JITs, etc etc etc.

So how is it that they don't get along, exactly?

That instance is fine. It certainly is nice that they released it under a free software license, it would have been better if they used copyleft, but there is nothing wrong with the license they chose. They part where they don't want you to "get along" is the part where they distribute proprietary software, sell devices with proprietary hardware locks, forbid use of the GPL (and other free software licenses) on their app store, etc. See this blog entry for an example of how this has specifically applied in one case to some FSF-copyrighted GNU software: https://www.fsf.org/news/2010-05-app-store-compliance

Why would it be better if LLVM and clang were copyleft? Then it couldn't be used in other products as a library, and the entire industry would be set back to where we were with GCC in the first place -- unable to fully leverage our tools to push the state of the art forward.

It could be used as a library as long as the other projects also made their software copyleft. The goal of copyleft is freedom for the users, not "pushing the state of the art forward." If they reject certain software because of copyleft they aren't being denied freedom, they were offered freedom and they refused.

> It could be used as a library as long as the other projects also made their software copyleft.

That never happened. On the other hand, LLVM has lead to a tool renaissance.

> The goal of copyleft is freedom for the users, not "pushing the state of the art forward."

Users already have that freedom. They can simply refuse to use proprietary software. They don't require a paternalistic GPL license to 'enforce' a freedom they already had.

It has happened in many cases. Many companies have used, modified and contributed to GCC in the path with no complaints. The whole anti-copyleft thing did not start until recently, because of increased resistance from companies like Apple who have an active anti-freedom political agenda.

The simple act of refusing to use proprietary software does not give users freedom in software, it just prevents them from being subjugated by that one particular piece of proprietary software. Copyleft is also not necessary to have freedom, but it is pragmatic in that it leverages copyright in an attempt to further the political goal of freedom. It would be nice if this didn't have to be done, but we cannot ignore the issue of copyright, it will not go away quietly.

> It has happened in many cases. Many companies have used, modified and contributed to GCC in the path with no complaints.

Hardly. Companies have complained plenty, but escaping the network effects of the GPL was expensive enough that they couldn't do much about it.

> The simple act of refusing to use proprietary software does not give users freedom in software, it just prevents them from being subjugated by that one particular piece of proprietary software.

Why not? If they want open-source software, they can use it. There, they're free.

> Copyleft is not necessary to have freedom, but it is pragmatic in that it leverages copyright in an attempt to further the pro-freedom political agenda.

By attempting to enforce a communist ideal of shared ownership of the means of production. Most reasonable people don't consider that to be 'freedom'.

The only groups that wish to "escape the network effects of the GPL" are proprietary companies that wish to attack their own users' freedoms. The fact that you have a choice of being able to reject proprietary software is not the issue at hand, because people always have that choice, and it is good that we do. The issue is why you should make the choice and what ramifications it has.

>shared ownership of the means of production

I mentioned this in a different thread but this has no context in the current discussion, the "means of production" are a complete non-sequitur in relation to software. Free software isn't "communist," it simply rejects authoritarianism.

Actually, as an liberally licensed open-source author, I wish to "escape the network effects of the GPL" because I want proprietary companies to use my software, too.

That means I have to escape the GPL despite your wanting to force me to participate. You can keep claiming this isn't communism, except that it exactly parallels the Marxist notions of shared ownership.

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