
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to explain this to you - mqt
http://diveintomark.org/archives/2009/10/19/the-point
======
timf
I was curious if the printed book included mention of the GNU license so I
"searched inside" on Amazon.

These two paragraphs are pretty odd sitting next to each other:
<http://timfreeman.org/copyright_dip.png>

~~~
MarkPilgrim
I complained about that, but it was too late to do anything about it. (You
don't usually even see those frontmatter pages during the book-
writing/editing/proofing process.)

~~~
andreyf
Why complain? It's a little funny: the latter paragraph ends "... without the
prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher", which,
apparently, the former paragraph grants. No?

------
patio11
_I don’t know where that leaves you as a business._

I suspect this leaves Apress at the "Require all further authors to
contractually promise us, in writing, that they are assigning Apress the
_exclusive_ right to publish/distribute the content and have not written any
legal landmines which contradict this clause into the sections we routinely
don't read".

~~~
petercooper
That _is_ the standard Apress contract now. Mark made his initial contract
with Apress quite a long time ago when it was a far smaller company where
special deals could be made.

~~~
spolsky
wrong, i still make special deals with apress all the time :D

~~~
petercooper
Haha, I'm sure! I suspect knowing the head honchos helps, though I miss Gary.

------
robin_reala
So do Apress pay royalties to Mark currently, on a per unit sold basis? If
these new people can publish under the GFDL then presumably Apress can (are?)
as well.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
I assume Apress is constrained by their contract with Mark.

~~~
ErrantX
It's an interesting question though; such a contract must specifically
_remove_ any rights the GPLD gives Apress.

Otherwise it's hard to see how they couldn't wiggle out of paying royalties?

~~~
RyanMcGreal
>such a contract must specifically remove any rights the GPLD gives Apress

I assume the contract commits Apress to pay royalties to Mark based on their
sales of the book's print edition. If they contractually agreed to pay
royalties, they would be in breach of contract regardless of the licence under
which Mark released his copyrighted content.

Notwithstanding the licence, Apress must have decided that they could make
enough money on sales to justify the money they're paying to Mark.

Look at it this way: he might have _released_ the book under a free document
licence that another party could exploit, but he arguably wouldn't have
_written_ the book if not for his contract with Apress. So if they didn't
agree to pay royalties, there would be no book to sell.

------
buro9
You know, I love this.

Simply because I like when I purchase classics (not covered by copyright any
longer) that I have the ability to choose the book based on criteria I cannot
usually factor in.

I can opt for quality paper, for a nice and well-spaced font, for good-
binding, for a nicer jacket, for a specific translation.

I like that there is the potential that I could purchase this book and be able
to choose such things, that I could say "I'll pay this guy over here a little
more as he's invested in the quality of the medium.".

I was very happy with the contents of Coders at Work for example, but
disappointed with the paper selection and choice of font. I would have happily
paid more to have a nicer package, so I love authors who would permit multiple
companies to do this.

~~~
cobralibre
Just to be clear, translations are themselves protected by copyright. So, for
example, if you want to read the Edith Grossman translation of Don Quixote,
first published in 2003, you do not have the freedom to select from a wide
variety of editions, as described in the parent comment.

------
buugs
This is what free software / free licenses needs, people who parade and
exemplify it rather than compare it to non-free licenses or even hate on and
fight against non-free software, by force.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
I don't entirely understand his explanation though. All I understand is that
Mark approves of what happened. I do not understand why it is a good thing and
why he wants the world to work like this. He didn't explain that.

The whole logic of what and how you are allowed to charge for in the free
software/content world seems completely arbitrary to me, even though I have
read so much about it.

~~~
thristian
I'm not a lawyer, but my layman's understanding is something like this:

* If you wrote/created/designed it, you get to pick the license. You can give it to some people under the GPL, you can give it to other people under the BSD license, you can negotiate all kinds of crazy licenses for arbitrary recompense you dream up - it's up to you. * If you received a copy of some GPL'd code, freely or in exchange for money, you have the right to give copies to other people - freely, or in exchange for money. If you paid $1000 for some GPL'd code, you're allowed to burn it to a stack of CD-Rs and hand them out on the street corner. If you got it for free off the Internet, you can copy it to your own website and charge people $29.95 per download (whether these actions are _moral_ is another question, but they're legal). * If you give somebody some binary executables whose source was under the GPL, whether you gave them in exchange for money or for free, you must give them the source too, or give them the right to ask for the source later. If they ask for a copy of the source later on, you're only allowed to charge the cost of blank media - regardless of what you charged for the binary executables in the first place.

I think that about covers it. How's that?

~~~
fauigerzigerk
_If you wrote/created/designed it, you get to pick the license_

I do get that part. But it doesn't help me understand the merits of any
particular license.

Thanks for your attempt to explain the GPL to me. I already knew what the GPL
says, I just don't see how it achieves its goals of increasing my freedoms.

For instance, I'm not allowed to use the source code of some of the software
google has linked to GPL code. Even when I pay for using it (like when I run
my code on google's servers), I lose all freedoms related to some of the code
covered by the GPL.

If they let me download their code, they would have to let me use the source
and sell it as well. But they can simply not let me download it and force me
to run the code on their servers exclusively.

So, in this scenario using the GPL means that I can not view or modify the
source code of the software I build on. I have to pay for using it, and I have
to abide by further arbitrary rules included in their terms of service, taking
away even more fundamental freedoms.

~~~
henrikschroder
The GPL increases your freedoms by forcing people to give back, for free, the
work they've done on top of GPL'd work they in turn received for free. With
software as a service, this breaks down completely, because the derived work
is never actually distributed.

The GPLv3 explicitly tries to deal with software as a service, but it's
definitely more problematic since it's not as solidly grounded in copyright
law as v2 is, it's harder to detect breaches of it, harder to prove breaches,
and harder for the people in the justice system to understand it.

~~~
bad_user
> _The GPL increases your freedoms by forcing people to give back, for free,
> the work they've done on top of GPL'd work they in turn received for free_

No, the GPL forces people to distribute the source code of their own
modifications, but that's only on redistribution. That's why with software as
a service this doesn't work.

This has to be emphasized, because that's its central strenght.

The _majority_ of all software is made and run in-house, without ever being
distributed. And open-source would not be what it is today without
contributors that have SaaS as a business model.

> _The GPLv3 explicitly tries to deal with software as a service_

No it doesn't. The GPLv3 is still only a copyright license which only covers
redistribution (as GPLv2). It is more problematic because it tries to define
what distribution means (to prevent tivoization), and copyright laws have
their own definitions, but it still is within normal bounds ... so it remains
to be seen if it works, but FSF has got some pretty smart lawyers over there,
and they did their homework.

The license that tries to deal with SaaS is AGPL. But that's not a copyright
license anymore, and while it is considered to be "open-source", some people
think that it shouldn't be, since it places restrictions on the actual usage
of the software (like an EULA).

And you'll have a hard time convincing companies that have contributed to
open-source to switch to AGPL. Hell will freeze over or a new gap in AGPL will
be discovered before that happens. One way AGPL can be "monetized" is with
dual-licensing. But that's just dishonest and definitely not free.

------
kqr2
I did a search on Amazon, but couldn't find the non Apress version of the book
in question.

I wonder if Apress forced the book to get delisted.

~~~
RK
[http://www.amazon.com/Dive-Into-Python-Mark-
Pilgrim/dp/14414...](http://www.amazon.com/Dive-Into-Python-Mark-
Pilgrim/dp/1441413022)

~~~
drubio
Was anyone curious as to who this 'brazen' publisher was ?

Publisher: CreateSpace <https://www.createspace.com/AboutUs.jsp> "CreateSpace
is a DBA of On-Demand Publishing LLC, a subsidiary of Amazon.com Inc."

Seems there are still priorities at Amazon if they suddenly stopped selling
it.

------
diptanu
Kudos to Mark Pilgrim for believing in GPL's philosophy! Love DIP.

~~~
kingkilr
I sort of read this as more BSDish philosophy. One of the fundamental things
he cites is the freedom for others to do something you might not like, which,
IMO, is more of a BSD notion.

------
mark_l_watson
Very cool explanation :-)

I have several little writing projects that I distribute, but I chose the
Creative Commons 'no commercial use, no derivatives' license because that was
what I felt good with.

People who create stuff have the right to choose the license.

------
mark_l_watson
I just had an Apress book published, and the contract gives APress the
distribution rights - fine with me since they effectively paid me to write the
book: their advances allowed me to have a really good time and spend most of
my time writing for 4 months. (I enjoy consulting, but writing is even more
fun.)

------
JoeAltmaier
Im confused too; in my basic Contract Law class, there's something called
Value Received. If I don't pay for something, there is by definition NO
CONTRACT. So any words (gpl etc) printed on the thing are just decoration.

~~~
afiske
You're describing the concept of "consideration" in contract law -- i.e., that
each party to an agreement needs to exchange something of value in order for a
valid contract to be formed. However, one doesn't need to pay _money_ for
something in order for there to be an exchange of value.

Here, the copyright holder (Mark) has clearly given you something of value --
a copy of the text of his book. In exchange, you give the him something of
value, as well - your a promise to abide by the terms of the GNU FDL (as
referenced on the book's copyright page). Your promise has value to Mark -- if
it didn't, he (presumably) would have simply released his work into the public
domain, rather than under a GNU license.

The enforceability of open source licenses turns on this issue. The
implication of your statement is that an open source license is unenforceable
whenever a work is distributed for free (and obviously, this kind of
distribution happens all the time). While there were some in the legal
community who took this view in the past, the courts have rejected it. Check
out the 2008 Federal Circuit decision in Jacobsen v. Katzer
(<http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions/08-1001.pdf>), which turned on the
enforceability of the open source Artistic License. Some of the more salient
quotes:

\- "Traditionally, copyright owners sold their copyrighted material in
exchange for money. The lack of money changing hands in open source licensing
should not be presumed to mean that there is no economic consideration,
however. There are substantial benefits, including economic benefits, to the
creation and distribution of copyrighted works under public licenses that
range far beyond traditional license royalties."

\- "The choice to exact consideration in the form of compliance with the open
source requirements of disclosure and explanation of changes, rather than as a
dollar-denominated fee, is entitled to no less legal recognition."

------
dulbelajardul
"My Zen teacher once told me that, when people try to do you harm, you should
thank them for giving you the opportunity to forgive them."

Awesome

