

The Failure of the GPL - edw519
http://www.informit.com/articles/printerfriendly.aspx?p=1390172

======
keyist
Trollish article and sensational headline.

Foss code licensed under GPL and variants thereof is more common than _every
other license combined_ : <http://license-info.appspot.com/> . The plural of
anecdote is not data -- N examples of individuals/companies who choose not to
go the GPL route cannot refute the fact that it has spearheaded free software.

His example of Apple's use of LLVM as evidence that "you don't necessarily get
good results from forcing people to do things" is purely confirmation bias. If
he really went looking, he'd realize that Apple also used WebKit/KHTML despite
being 'forced' to release their contributions to that library. It is also
telling that they stop contributing back the moment the LGPL allows them to.

What about his point that the GPL causes harm:

"A few people in different companies have recently told me something that
leads me to believe that the GPL actually does cause harm.. [they use bsd due
to compliance worries]"

Oh noes!!! A few people in different companies told him they use BSD instead
of GPL! This is the real smoking gun against the GPL, folks! How will it ever
survive now?

~~~
antonovka
Like nearly all corporations (who are the primary sponsors of a vast majority
of major project's open source development), Apple's use of GPL/LGPL software
is a pragmatic one based on the value of the software, not the license. If the
license becomes too onerous (which it now has, with the FSF's push for GPLv3
and desire for broad adoption of virally licensed GPL software), Apple has --
and will continue to -- move away from GPL software.

In other words, the GPL is something that is tolerated insofar as it doesn't
conflict with business goals.

~~~
gloob
_In other words, the GPL is something that is tolerated insofar as it doesn't
conflict with existing business goals._

Which, for the vast majority of businesses, it really doesn't. The number of
companies that distribute software, whether compiled or as source, is really
quite tiny when compared to the number of companies that _use_ software. Not
to say that the GPL isn't a problem for some companies, and it's hardly
surprising that said companies would pull out this metaphorical splinter if
that is viable for them, but it seems implausible to me that (e.g.) Nike is
horrified at the thought that their website is completely dependent upon GPL'd
code.

I don't think there are many sane people who expect corporations to stick
their necks out for the GPL as a matter of principle; that said, I don't think
many people really care. Hell, even the FSF will usually leave companies alone
if they just follow the bloody license attached to the software they're using.

~~~
antonovka
Yes, but this doesn't mean that the GPL is a success -- rather, the software
has succeeded on its own merit in spite of the downsides of the GPL. In
contrast, there are numerous examples where potential software success has
been restricted by the limitations of the GPL.

~~~
gloob
I don't really disagree...except that fulfilling "potential software success"
isn't the point of the GPL. The point of the GPL is to propagate Stallman's
"Four Freedoms", and anything/everything else really is tangential to the
issue. Whether or not the license has held back companies, or individual
developers, or the evolution of software development as a whole isn't really
the primary concern of those who use or support the use of the GPL.

From that perspective, what you refer to as "the downsides of the GPL" really
aren't downsides, any more than an apple being green instead of red is a
"downside". The point of the apple is to be eaten; colour is more or less
irrelevant. The point of the GPL is to make certain a specific ethical belief
is followed and transmitted; whether that ideology is convenient or not for
others is secondary at best. Calling the license a "failure" from a viewpoint
completely different than the one it was created by is trivial and
meaningless, in the same way that it is both trivial and meaningless for me to
call someone's apple tree a failure for not growing the colour of apples that
I happen to like.

------
wheels
Bleh. This is like those people who call Yahoo a failure.

The GPL radically changed the IT landscape in the last decade. Whether or not
it achieved all of its initial goals (as interpreted by the author of this
post) doesn't mean that it hasn't been a massive, disruptive force in the IT
world.

~~~
antonovka
Has it really been such a massive disruptive force, or merely an entirely
secondary factor in the open source software world?

I honestly don't mean to troll, but Apple, for example, has built an entire
business on open source (but primarily not GPL) software components. They used
GCC insofar as it met their needs, and then switched to something else when
the GPL became an obstacle. Likewise, most companies use Linux because it's a
pragmatic choice, not because of the license.

I think it's overreaching to claim that the GPL has changed the landscape.
Liberal open source existed before the GPL, and will continue to exist if the
GPL where to somehow disappear.

~~~
wheels
That open source has been disruptive I consider indisputable. The question
then becomes, "Were the BSDs poised to lead the way to the current world of
commoditized software infrastructure?" But that's a different question.

Whether by dogma or community forces, something about the FSF and the GPL
transformed open source from a licensing scheme to a movement that produced
the mass of software that we have today. Whether or not the BSDs _could_ have
done that is a separate question -- they in fact did not, and the massive
disruption that we've seen has been an outgrowth of GPLed projects.

~~~
antonovka
_That open source has been disruptive I consider indisputable. The question
then becomes, "Were the BSDs poised to lead the way to the current world of
commoditized software infrastructure?" But that's a different question._

Speaking only in terms of operating systems, the AT&T lawsuit caused the BSD
derivatives to stumble just as they started, and at the same time Linux was
beginning to enter its stride. The GPL/FSF didn't (through dogma or community
forces) drive this, but rather, circumstances and a general hobbiest interest
in open source operating system development.

 _Whether by dogma or community forces, something about the FSF and the GPL
transformed open source from a licensing scheme to a movement that produced
the mass of software that we have today. Whether or not the BSDs could have
done that is a separate question -- they in fact did not, and the massive
disruption that we've seen has been an outgrowth of GPLed projects._

That's vastly overstating the reach of the GPL projects. Everything from
Apache HTTPD to PHP to Perl was (and is) liberally licensed.

------
Scramblejams
I've seen an effect that is quite the opposite of what the author claimed.

Netatalk (primarily an Apple File Protocol server for Mac clients) didn't get
much love from developers because it was BSD-licensed and companies selling
storage boxes would use it and fix many of its problems, but without
contributing changes back. This was sufficiently demotivating that many good
developers said to me, in so many words, that they didn't want to contribute
if companies were benefiting from the project but not giving back. The license
was changed to the GPL (with the advertising clause retained) and community
participation took off like a shot and its been a healthy project ever since.

Take that, InformIT.

~~~
antonovka
Netatalk was primarily authored, maintained, and ultimately abandoned by the
University of Michigan -- all under a BSD license. During this process, how
many improvements were contributed by corporations/individuals who would not
have done so had it not been BSD licensed, or who simply didn't care what the
license was?

The resurgence in interest coincided with the interest and engagement with
new, GPL-proponent developers. It's hardly a non-biased piece of anecdote.

~~~
Scramblejams
Of course not, because a core of developers who wanted the project to move
forward recognized that multibillion dollar companies were benefiting but not
contributing, and a change to the GPL motivated their involvement and brought
the project back to life.

Did companies contribute under the BSD license? Of course, some did. But not
enough to keep the project from entering a coma. And nobody wanted to fork it
if no one was going to contribute.

It's not a trivial anecdote when you can say that the GPL brought a project
back to life, because that's what it did.

~~~
antonovka
_It's not a trivial anecdote when you can say that the GPL brought a project
back to life, because that's what it did._

New, active, non-umich developers -- who also happened to favor the GPL for
personal/political reasons -- brought the project back to life. Not the GPL.

The project stagnated because AppleTalk ceased to be used, and AFP over TCP
was generally replaced in most corporate installations by Windows Fileshares
or WebDAV, and UMich didn't need it anymore -- not because corporate interests
were stealing contributor's labor.

It's presumptuous to take a product that was entirely and successfully
developed for _years_ under the BSD license and then claim it as a GPL success
story because the new maintainers had a moral imperative to relicense.

You wouldn't claim it a success story for their coding style if they also
decided to switch to 4 character tabs and newlines before braces.

~~~
Scramblejams
By the way, I just have to take issue with this:

"It's presumptuous to take a product that was entirely and successfully
developed for years under the BSD license and then claim it as a GPL success
story because the new maintainers had a moral imperative to relicense."

Something to remember is that the key pain point at this stage of Netatalk's
development was that its CNID scheme -- the method by which the server gives a
unique identifier to each file/directory and refers to it when communicating
with the client -- was broken and frequently led to silent data loss when the
server would mistakenly reuse IDs.

This problem was well-known and well-understood. And nobody -- certainly not
the big companies who'd fixed the problem in their private forks -- would step
up to fix it.

In this context, it's very hard to truthfully characterize Netatalk as
"successfully developed for years under the BSD license."

A file server in widespread production use with a well-known data integrity
problem? That no one will fix? Call it what you like, but that ain't a healthy
project.

~~~
antonovka
You can trump this up however you want to, but how do you weigh your anecdote
of a small, abandoned project that now has three active contributors, compared
with another University Michigan open source project that underwent a similar
transformation -- UMich-LDAP.

UMich LDAP was developed under a BSD-like license. The project stagnated with
serious issues that were not fixed. Maintainership was then acquired, the
project became OpenLDAP, and it remains highly successful to this day under a
liberal BSD-like license, and is even incorporated into commercial products
like Apple's Open Directory?

Same original maintainer (umich), same open source maintenance abandonment,
better outcome (incredibly widespread use and active development), different
license (liberal).

~~~
Scramblejams
Haha, I never said the BSD license couldn't be used successfully. Now I just
think you're trolling.

The project looks like it's in fine health to me...

[http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=6860...](http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=686071&group_id=8642)

~~~
antonovka
Not trolling. The point here is that given two projects in the exact same
circumstance (abandoned), with the exact same absentee maintainers (umich),
and equivalent levels of contributions and code quality (low), both went with
two different licenses -- BSD and GPL.

The BSD project saw significantly higher contributions. However, that doesn't
imply to me that the BSD license usage was a "success story" any more than the
GPL usage was. It merely implies that the specific individuals interested in
maintaing the projects had entirely different licensing predilections, and
there were different levels of community interest in the projects.

In other words, happenstance.

~~~
Scramblejams
Happenstance in the case of OpenLDAP I could accept, though again I'm totally
unfamiliar with the project. For all I know they were big Waldo fans and were
promised signed first editions of the latest book.

It definitely wasn't happenstance with Netatalk though. Why? Because the
community (not just devs) felt some of Netatalk's corporate users had taken
advantage of them, and avoiding a repeat wasn't considered a wishlist feature,
but a must-have. In that light, simply sticking with the BSD license wasn't an
option for them. Switching to the GPL broke the logjam.

You can't just decouple the developer's contributions from the community's
determination to address the behavior of the storage vendors. A fork and a
license change was a foregone conclusion at that point, the only question was
whether it would have bothered the BSD-ites enough for them to keep the UMich
tree alive. And the answer was a resounding "no."

~~~
antonovka
The fact is that the developers had to _write the code themselves_ anyway. The
switch to the GPL didn't cause vendors to contribute CNID fixes, it merely let
_those specific developers_ feel better by sophomorically raising the
proverbial middle finger to "thieving" commercial interests while they did
free work _anyway_.

Clearly the developers were interested enough to write the code themselves, in
which case the fact that they preferred to fork under the GPL license is just
as much happenstance as the interested OpenLDAP developers being happy with
the existing BSD license.

It's not as if Netatalk changed the license to the GPL and _then_ attracted a
large following of GPL-only developers.

~~~
Scramblejams
"it merely let those specific developers feel better by sophomorically raising
the proverbial middle finger to 'thieving' commercial interests"

Oh man. Fine, you don't like the GPL. We get that. But to say the license
change should have been irrelevant is to say that developers should be code-
crapping robots with nary an expectation of a social contract. Some devs dig
BSD. That's great. But some of us actually like Stallman's four freedoms and
in certain situations need to see them guaranteed. Deal with it.

~~~
antonovka
It's not a GPL "success story". You preferred the GPL, you were going to write
the code anyway, and you did. At no point in this process was the GPL somehow
conveying an advantage beyond satiating your desire to lock out external
users/contributors who were potential 'thieves'.

The analogy I gave earlier still fits -- you could have just as easily called
new code style conventions a "success story", despite the fact that they
_aren't_ the primary driver behind getting something done.

The most audacious aspect of the story is that by locking up future work via
the GPL, you've done what you accuse external entities of doing: locking out
previous BSD-licensed contributors from your future improvements to the
project.

~~~
Scramblejams
Haha! "Thieves." "Locking out." You're just an anti-GPL zealot. If using the
GPL makes me audacious, then call me audacious. Now go troll somewhere else.

------
ZeroGravitas
“The food is terrible—and such small portions!”

You can't seriously argue both that the GPL is too onerous _and_ too easy to
circumvent.

The GPL rubs many _developers_ and _proprietary software houses_ up the wrong
way as it takes away their power over their customers. This is illustrated
nicely by this very article with Apple wanting to include compiler stuff in
their software without putting it all under the GPL and how Google had no
issue with the GPL as it didn't interfere with their business model even
though their unique selling point is software based, just server based
software. Similar applies to the 99% of businesses that use software, and even
create it, but don't need to sell it.

------
GeneralMaximus
Whether the GPL is harmful or not is a debatable issue, but it does cause a
lot of problems to other FOSS projects that want to use GPL code.

Lookie here: [http://www.freelists.org/post/haiku-development/INPUT-
VOTE-i...](http://www.freelists.org/post/haiku-development/INPUT-VOTE-
includegpladdons)

For desktop apps and standalone tools, the GPL is fine. But if you're writing
a compiler, interpreter, library or even an operating system, choosing the GPL
will be a bloody stupid decision.

~~~
agazso
Reality seems to contradict your opinion. GCC, Linux and thousands of quality
libraries are written under GPL license.

Releasing software as open source dows not mean giving it away for free. With
GPL it literally means that you give it for freedom.

As a developer of a commercial program, the GPL (with dual licensing) is the
best choice if you want to release your source code and have control over it.
Your users get it for free, but your competitors cannot modify it legally to
take advantage over you. It's a win-win situation.

Furthermore you have always the freedom to not to use GPL libraries if you
think it causes more harm than good.

------
jsz0
I feel like the GPL's overly political nature is basically a type of political
DRM. If you try hard enough you can skirt the restrictions. If you're an end
user you have to deal with the fallout which trickles down in a variety of
ways but can generally be summarized as "making things harder than they really
need to be" The NVIDIA example is a good one. It would be hard to argue that
the GPL has benefited users in this case. It's been an annoyance to NVIDIA and
a huge headache to end users.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Yes, it's like a DRM that ensures that you can always copy, edit, remix, and
share the files that it protects.

So maybe that's not a _great_ analogy.

~~~
jsz0
DRM purely in the sense that political goals supersedes usability.

