Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: The GPL is not open source.

Author:Brett Glass
Posted:8/23/2000; 2:30:13 PM
Topic:Next survey: Are you an open source developer?
Msg #:19999 (In response to 19987)
Prev/Next:19998 / 20000

You write:

The GPL doesn't tell you what you can do with your software--it tells you what you can do with somebody else's software.

Alas, not true. It forces you to forfeit any hope of making money from your own efforts. To do this, especially to one's colleagues, is coercive, mean-spirited, and unethical.

When deciding between a completely open license and the GPL, I ask myself a question:

Would I feel good if somebody started selling a proprietary version of my application without my permission?

In most cases, I can answer yes to this question.

For example, I released CustomDNS under a completely open license. If you want to make a proprietary version of CustomDNS, all you need to do is give me credit in your copyright notices.

But not everyone is quite so laid back....

The above actually illustrates the points I made earlier.

First, the GPL is a "poison pill." It's designed to prevent specific people -- in this case, commercial developers -- from doing what they want with the code. If I may take the liberty of paraphrasing what you said above, you're saying that if you do not want the code to be used by certain people or in certain ways, you will insert a "poison pill" which will render it unusable in those cases.

The GPL allows anyone to use the code in the way that benefits him or her most -- except the commercial developer. You might say that some people who want to use the code are, er, more equal than others.

This means that the code is not truly open or free.

Of course, releasing your source under the GPL doesn't hurt all commercial developers -- only the small ones. Microsoft, for example, can afford to reimplement large pieces of code from scratch. Thus, the GPL really only hurts the small developer -- Microsoft's potential competitor. This is another problem with the GPL: It's a shotgun that kills the mouse but not the bear.

Finally, by stamping the GPL on the code you are only hurting your ethical colleagues, not the unethical ones. The unethical people will compile it into their products anyway and hope no one notices. Thus, the GPL not only is the GPL unethical itself, but it aids the unethical at the expense of the ethical.

--Brett Glass

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