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0 pointsBorealid9y ago0 comments

There's a dichotomy here. What you term "protective" here (GPL-style copyleft licenses) actually impose a greater number of restrictions on the person who obtains code under them: specifically, they lose the ability to distribute modified versions under a different license.

So while one could argue that they are "protective" because they protect the rights of future users, one could also argue they are "restrictive" because they remove the right to add restrictions - which is, itself, a right!

BSD-style licenses give a greater number of freedoms to the user who initially receives the software than GPL-style licenses. This has been used to argue that they are overly free, and used to argue that they are insufficiently free. But I think it's important to point out that there's a valid point of view in which "the ability to prevent someone else from doing something with my work as I choose" is considered a freedom that some licenses take away.

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TuringTest9y ago· 2 in thread

> So while one could argue that they are "protective" because they protect the rights of future users, one could also argue they are "restrictive" because they remove the right to add restrictions - which is, itself, a right!

While true from a local perspective (how many actions can you perform over this snapshot of the code), you're missing the systemic point of view.

Every time someone adds an additional constraint over their released copy of the project, they're killing off every possible action that downstream users would have made starting from it.

Imagine for a minute that Webkit had been licensed as BSD or MIT rather than with the protective LGPL, and Apple had released Safari with a fully proprietary relicense. In that case, neither Chrome would exist nor any of the other modern non-Firefox, non-Trident browsers (which depend on the cleanup performed by Apple over KHTML). The share-alike clauses of the LGPL guaranteed that Apple didn't have the option to restrict use of the software, creating a whole world of possibilities for anyone starting from their improved version, that wouldn't exist otherwise.

I'm not saying that a project under a share-alike license will always have more actions available overall; it depends on how the project is adopted by their community of users. But counting only the restrictions imposed on any particular snapshot of the software misses the forest for the trees.

BorealidOP9y ago

> While true from a local perspective (how many actions can you perform over this snapshot of the code), you're missing the systemic point of view. > Every time someone adds an additional constraint over their released copy of the project, they're killing off every possible action that downstream users would have made starting from it.

Preventing someone downstream from adding constraints is, in itself, adding a constraint. The argument you make about other possible actions also applies to the-action-of-closing-the-thing-off; the butterfly flaps its wings just as hard for commercial software.

I'm not "missing the systemic point of view", I'm just pointing out that what we've got here is a group that is arguing in favor of restrictions of a certain type because they say that restrictions are, in themselves, wrong. That would be more palatable if it were framed as a "lesser of two evils" situation, but instead it's presented as being 100% undiluted moral right.

I wish that people who zealously supported BSD-style licenses would take a moment to understand why it's important to others that software remain free-in-whichever-sense. I wish that people who zealously supported GPL-style licenses would acknowledge that they are taking away a certain set of otherwise-available rights concerning what others are allowed to do with their software - NOT maximizing possibilities, but instead restricting them to a certain set they find agreeable.

TuringTest9y ago

> Preventing someone downstream from adding constraints is, in itself, adding a constraint.

Yes, it is. As in one (1).

> The argument you make about other possible actions also applies to the-action-of-closing-the-thing-off

Uh? How many actions are made possible by a company closing access to a version of a free project? Even if this closing-the-thing-off creates some possibilities, those will be limited to the company that keeps the version to themselves. How can the amount of these actions be larger than those actions available to all the other people, who are now unable to use that version?

> I'm just pointing out that what we've got here is a group that is arguing in favor of restrictions of a certain type because they say that restrictions are, in themselves, wrong.

This is not how I see it, and I'm an advocate of Free Software (including and preferring the GPL share-alike version), so you may be attacking a straw man there. In fact, I'd say that the people defending BSD-like licenses are more prone to making the "restrictions are wrong" argument.

> I wish that people who zealously supported GPL-style licenses would acknowledge that they are taking away a certain set of otherwise-available rights concerning what others are allowed to do with their software - NOT maximizing possibilities, but instead restricting them to a certain set they find agreeable.

I do acknowledge that share-alike is restricting some actions that are possible with BSD-like, but overall I believe that this constraint DOES maximize possibilities when seeing the big picture.

As I've argued above, the idea of those constraints is that the constrained environment should have more total possible actions in the aggregate, even if every individual player has one less action available on paper. If you don't acknowledge this possibility, you are not getting the point why the constraint was added to this kind of license.

xorblurb9y ago

Using ""restrictive" because they remove the right to add restrictions" is like thinking the law is restrictive when it removes my freedom to kill people.

You can use that word with that meaning, but then I won't see any negative connotation with it, and will be happy we are restrained!

wiz21c9y ago

The thing is how does one end the dichotomy ? Basically : "you can use my code for whatever reason, but don't harm me in any way"...

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