GPL v. BSD [was: Linux and Free BSD CDs ...]

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <nospam [at] sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>]

Subject line surgery per Baz's request.

>>>>> "Jim" == Jim Jackson <jj [at] scs.leeds.ac.uk> writes:

    Jim> On Mon, 28 Feb 2000, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

    >> No comparison, on freedom BSD wins hands down.  GPL's whole
    >> philosophy depends on maintaining monopoly rights, enforcing
    >> them strictly, and attempting to use any leverage possible to
    >> extend them.  For the public benefit, of course, but in
    >> practice the legal _behaviors_ of Bill Gates and rms are
    >> impossible to distinguish, except that Gates has more money to
    >> buy more lawyers with.

    Jim> It also depends on what YOU the author of the software feel
    Jim> about the issue. Many people spend a large amount of creative
    Jim> time on their software and want to share it, source and all,
    Jim> with the world, but not have any one else rip it off and use
    Jim> it in proprietary non-open source software for profit. The
    Jim> GPL neatly prevents that - it is a good thing. The BSD
    Jim> licence does not prevent this.

I disagree on two points.  First, the software does not get "ripped
off", it is still available in its contributed form.  All that happens
under BSD is that more avenues are available for financing further
development.  Probably the two single most successful open source
products are Perl and TeX, both of which have BSD-like licenses that
do not prohibit commercial implementation, and both of which remain
hard-core open source despite that.  This is a tradeoff with the GNU
model, which guarantees that all products using that source remain
open---if they ever get written.

Which results in more benefits to users is a hard question; there is
no doubt empirically as of Jan 1, 2000 that Microsoft brings more net
benefit to more users in a year than the entire GNU project has in its
whole history.  In the long run, I hope that open source can outdo
Microsoft in that regard.  I don't have much hope that it can outdo
the whole proprietary sector, although it's possible and much of my
current research in economics is directed at examining and enhancing
that possibility.[1]

Second, the LGPL is plenty to prevent the use of your code in non-open
source software.  The GPL is imperialistic, and attempts to force
other code out into the open, restricting the choice of developers.
rms is explicit about this, although he would object strongly to my
choice of words.[2]

I don't have a problem with using the value of your software as a
bargaining chip to attempt to enforce a social policy.  I myself
prefer pure persuasion and giving a good example, but that's a matter
of taste.  But the extension of the LGPL to the GPL is not directly
about extending the choice of others, it's about restricting it.
Again, rms explicitly acknowledges this.  Of course he immediately
adds that the purpose is to ensure that third parties get more choice.
But they only get more choice if the derived software is written in
the first place.


Footnotes: 
[1]  rms has directly asked me _not_ to do such research because he
feels efforts to establish an economic case for open source undermine
his social agenda.

[2]  I don't use the standard term "viral" because of a promise I made
to rms.  It's not very accurate.  The accurate analogy is to "sexually
transmitted disease", but he likes that even less ;-)


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