
FSF Wastes Away Another "High Priority" Project - protomyth
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTI4Mjc
======
anonymouz
Anyone surprised by the fact that the FSF puts its principles about the purity
of free software licenses before pragmatism hasn't been paying much attention.
The GPLv3 is the flagship license of the FSF and they think it fixes some
issues with the GPLv2, so it's hardly surprising that they will refuse to
relicense their high priority projects under the older license. "But you'll
gain more users" has never been a reason for the FSF to compromise on their
principles.

One may equally well ask why LibreCAD insists on GPLv2 (without upgrade
clause), and does not switch to GPLv3 if they want to use GPLv3 libraries.

~~~
glesica
LibreCAD doesn't hold the copyright, so they can't change the license. The
copyright is held by a private company with no particular incentive to make
the Free product better, especially since the paid product wouldn't be able to
use the LibreDWG code.

~~~
millerc
You seem to forget the primary reason why the GPL came to be, the principle
that caused RMS to rewrite EMACS as an open source product in the first place:
if a piece of software is closed, or in this case "not open enough", they want
it rewritten under a new license.

This story only seems to be a case of political pressure to do so, regardless
of the effort a rewrite may cause. In this regards, FSF is clearly putting the
value of the license above the value of the software itself.

This is why I can't endorse the GPL: it is mainly motivated and designed to
deny authority over software ownership, not for actual openness. If somebody
really want to open up a piece of software, Public Domain is the way to go.

~~~
Flimm
In a lot of countries, it's impossible to put something in the public domain
immediately.

~~~
millerc
That's an excellent point. Would you have any advice/thoughts on how to
license software in those countries with the same effect as public domain, and
also how to plan ahead so that it eventually becomes public domain?

------
rosser
This surprises anyone? As far as the FSF (or at least Stallman, which for all
practical purposes is the same thing) is concerned, LibreCAD and FreeCAD are
in the wrong here — _for using one of the FSF's own licenses_.

Stallman is a zealot, and this is what zealots do.

~~~
benatkin
Well the FSF purports to be an organization that advances the cause of free
software, so it's worth calling them on their bullshit. Not everyone thinks of
them as a zealot organization even though it's headed by a zealot. Perhaps
they should.

Also I think this issue might be fixable if there's enough outcry about it.
And they really are in a tough situation because of this.

~~~
jlarocco
It's been well known for a long time that the FSF is only interested in
advancing their own idea of "free software." At this time it's the GPLv3
flavor of free software.

For people who don't agree with the FSF's idea of "free software" or don't
want the politics that goes along with the GPL and FSF, there's always the BSD
license. Though it really wouldn't help in this case, since the library in
question belongs to the FSF.

~~~
benatkin
The need for open source tools that interact with dwg resonates strongly with
me. I hope they can rewrite it, and I hope they choose BSD (or MIT) rather
than GPLv2.

~~~
gknoy
Exactly: The solution seems to be (unfortunately) to let LibreDWG languish,
and write a new library which is GPL2, or some other license. Sounds painful,
since the people who want to use it are those who until now have not been (I
assume) the ones writing the library.

~~~
cube13
To be fair, it looks like the FSF is letting LibreDWG languish anyway. There
hasn't been a master commit in 2 years, and the last activity in the
repository was in February 2012.

I'd assume that a "high priority" project would have a lot more activity than
that, especially because there hasn't been a binary release yet(
<http://www.gnu.org/software/libredwg/> ).

~~~
tedks
The FSF hasn't had developers for GNU projects on staff in decades, if I
remember correctly. They aren't letting it languish, they're actively trying
to give it exposure and find new hackers for it -- that's the point of it
being a high priority project as far as I can tell.

------
doctorpangloss
Why not provide a way for users to download the library separately and execute
it as a binary blob? That way, if there's a license violation, it is the
responsibility of the user. Kind of like libdvdcss and Handbrake?

On the other hand, it seems odd to me that the kind of person who would be
hung up by licenses is interested in using free software. Why not just buy
AutoCad at this point?

I guess that's sort of the FSF's biggest mistake. They act like there are no
alternatives. Though they seem to understand that with LGPL:

 _This is why we used the Lesser GPL for the GNU C library. After all, there
are plenty of other C libraries; using the GPL for ours would have driven
proprietary software developers to use another—no problem for them, only for
us._

~~~
fluidcruft
Your answers are found in the saga of the readline wars (where every
imaginable method to run around the GPL and make it meaningless has been
tried).

Broadly speaking the rule of thumb is that if something makes use of internal
knowledge of GPL code implementation or function (i.e. unique data
structures/objects/functions that are not considered "standard"), it's
considered a derivative work (this is also how the Linux kernel approaches GPL
vs non-GPL drivers, too). If all it were to take was to adapt and repackage a
GPL project as a dynamically loaded library, the GPL would be meaningless.

In my mind, the really hairy area is where certain projects seem to be allowed
to define "public" APIs that surrender GPL protection and allow use of closed
binary libraries (i.e. the Linux kernel's public driver interface or Octave's
MEX interface). Or what happens when the BSD folks just copy your API and re-
implement everything (undermining the uniqueness of the GPL software's
internals)? Don't bring this up to the FSF though, they suddenly switch from
being eloquent to pretending to be dense.

~~~
tomjen3
What I never really understood was why nobody ever cloned readline? Clisp was
open sourced because they used readline, but they already had a completely
working common lisp system with everything -- how hard can it be to write a
readline library?

~~~
fluidcruft
NetBSD created a readline compatible library called editline.

[http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/lib/libedit/?sortby=...](http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/lib/libedit/?sortby=date#dirlist)

The BSD crowd has been slowly chipping away at replacing all the GNU stuff
they expediently adopted following the AT&T lawsuit.

------
chebucto
RMS's comments in a recent Slashdot interview are worth noting:

[http://features.slashdot.org/story/13/01/06/163248/richard-s...](http://features.slashdot.org/story/13/01/06/163248/richard-
stallman-answers-your-questions?sdsrc=popbyskid)

"What project is using the wrong license? by gQuigs

...

RMS: If I could magically change one program to GPLv3, it would be Linux. ...
Another program that is important to convert is LibreCAD. This is more than a
fantasy: the developers of LibreCAD are working on replacing the old
GPLv2-only code that they included, so as to switch to GPLv3-or-later. Would
you like to help?"

------
meaty
At the risk of starting a flame war, this is why all my shit is BSD licensed.

Like the software, the license isn't a pain in the arse either.

~~~
_ak
Same here. I only use software licenses where I can understand every single
word. My personal preference is MIT, but 2-clause BSD or ISC would be equally
fine.

~~~
verand
But not 3-clause BSD? I figure the reasoning behind the third clause is to
cover the situation where you write FooLib and someone uses it, advertising,
"The Crazy Super Cool App is the craziest and supercoolest app of them all
because FooLib makes it so crazy and supercool!" If the CSCA turns out to be a
stinking pile, you don't get the stigma.

------
liljimmytables
> LibreCAD is GPLv2 licensed since it came out of code from the QCad Community
> Edition product from Ribbonsoft. It's bound to GPLv2.

The GPL has an upgrade clause.

> This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
> under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
> Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option)
> any later version.

Why doesn't this apply?

~~~
TylerE
Because that's not what's used. GPLv2 has an _optional_ update clause that
Ribbonsoft/QCad did not elect to use.

 __This file may be distributed and/or modified under the terms of the __GNU
General Public License version 2 as published by the Free Software
__Foundation and appearing in the file gpl-2.0.txt included in the __packaging
of this file. __

~~~
muuh-gnu
> GPLv2 has an _optional_ update clause that Ribbonsoft/QCad did not elect to
> use.

Actually, the clause is recommended by the FSF. Projects that remove the
clause do that fully intentionally.

Considering how long copyright lasts (70 after the death of the author), it is
IMHO pretty short sighted to make the licence of a project stuck in time and
unable to react to any future legal challenges.

~~~
tzs
Omitting the "or later" option does NOT make the license of the project stuck
in time and unable to react to future legal challenges.

It just means that the owners of the project copyright are the ones who decide
how the licensing of the project will change over time. This is not short
sighted. It is the best way to ensure that they can keep their code free. If
you adopt the "or later" option, you are letting your code be forked under the
terms of whatever license the FSF decides to attach the name "GPL" to. The FSF
has already shown that they are willing to back away from free software by
adopting the non-free AGPL (it does not satisfy freedom 0). Why believe that
they won't compromise future versions of regular GPL, too?

By omitting the "or later" option, the project owners can take a look at each
future version of GPL, and decide if it is still free and meeting their
concerns and requirements, and then update their license if appropriate.

------
nicholassmith
Open source software is fantastic, I've made code public and free to use, I
build on open source, I've committed to open source and done crazy bug hunts.
I love open source.

I cannot stand the GPL, it's an absolute unworkable nightmare. It's set out to
achieve something fantastic and it's been ruined, it's so heavy handed that in
the real world it's now meaning developers will avoid it rather than deal with
it as there's so many gotchas like this.

------
gwern
> The Free Software Foundation was contacted about making LibreDWG GPLv2+
> instead (since the FSF is the copyright holder), but the FSF/Richard
> Stallman doesn't the DWG library on the earlier version of their own open-
> source license.

Doesn't the what?

------
benatkin
When did the FSF change it from GPLv2 to GPLv3? It should be possible to go
back to that version and fork it. Or is it applied retroactively?

~~~
jamesjporter
I believe license changes can be applied retroactively to all versions with
the permission of all the copyright holders; I would assume this is what was
done.

~~~
muuh-gnu
Only if you still get it directly from the copyright holder.

If you get it from someone else, and that someone got their copy under the
terms of GPLv2, they still can distribute it under v2.

~~~
tzs
That is an unsettled question. According to the license itself, you cannot
sublicense GPLv2 code. When you distribute a copy of third party GPLv2 code to
someone, their license is coming from the copyright owner directly, not via
sublicensing through you.

If the copyright holder is no longer issuing licenses, it is not at all clear
what would happen. The analysis gets complicated and speculative at this
point. There are quite a few plausible theories, but it is going to take a few
actual cases followed by appeals for any clarity to start developing in this
area.

------
darkarmani
It looks like this was brought up on the mail-list Feb. 2012:
[http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libredwg/2012-02/msg00000....](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libredwg/2012-02/msg00000.html)

------
jstalin
Helpful comparison of open source licenses, for those interested:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_and_open-
so...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_and_open-
source_software_licenses)

I personally prefer the UNLICENSE: <http://unlicense.org/>

------
matt2000
I have a hard time describing any license that limits your rights as one
promoting freedom. I never understood why the FSF wasn't more behind the BSD
style licenses.

~~~
tspiteri
The FSF is more about giving users rights to change the code than about giving
developers rights to use libraries. With BSD-style licenses, developers can
limit the users' rights to change the code, which is not in line with the
FSF's line.

------
lifeguard
That phoronix missive was the stupidest post I have read in a long time.

~~~
snogglethorpe
Phoronix is like that....

------
mikegerwitz
<http://www.gnu.org/licenses/rms-why-gplv3.html>

~~~
mikegerwitz
I ended up preparing a more extensive commentary, which may be found here:
[http://mikegerwitz.com/thoughts/2013/01/Re-FSF-Wastes-
Away-A...](http://mikegerwitz.com/thoughts/2013/01/Re-FSF-Wastes-Away-Another-
High-Priority-Project.html)

------
akoumjian
Why are they bound to GPLv2? It was my understanding that original authors had
the ability to relicense as GPLv3.

~~~
rosser
Not if other dependencies are GPLv2 only, which is what TFA suggests.

------
lucian1900
Why the fuck would a library not use the _Library_ GPL? It's the same
stupidity as readline.

~~~
_delirium
Readline being GPL was actually a pretty good idea imo– it's gotten some
pieces of software to open-source themselves solely because they wanted to use
readline (the clisp implementation of Lisp is the most famous example). Seems
like a reasonable quid pro quo: you want to use my nice open-source library,
then you need to open-source also.

~~~
dragonwriter
<blockquote>Readline being GPL was actually a pretty good idea imo– it's
gotten some pieces of software to open-source themselves solely because they
wanted to use readline</blockquote>

That's pretty much the entire value proposition of the GPL, and it was pretty
important in the early days of F/OSS when the value propositions of F/OSS was
less clear -- "you have to open your stuff if you want to use my stuff".

But very early on in F/OSS, the argument was made that F/OSS was actually good
for the people releasing their software as F/OSS -- not just good for the
downstream recipients. And to the extent that that value proposition has been
accepted, GPL-style licensing is less beneficial. If you believe that F/OSS is
good for the licensor as well as the licensee, there is no reason, as a
licensor, to use the license on your software as a bribe to get other people
to open their software.

While initially -- before lots of big players clearly saw the value of F/OSS
and adopted it for things they released even outside of GPL-style license-
based compulsion -- the GPL was useful both for those who believed in the
value proposition of F/OSS and those who were ideologically attached to F/OSS
independent of the value proposition, its now useful mostly to the latter
group and a negative to the former.

------
st3fan
It is open source. If a project does not move forward then commit code to it.

------
mbetter
> but the FSF/Richard Stallman doesn't the DWG library on the earlier version
> of their own open-source license.

I think they an important word.

------
abraininavat
Could someone tell me, is the FSF actually relevant anymore? If so, how?

~~~
h2s
There is always the need for somebody to stand up as the opposing side to
those who seek to build their business on abusive practices such as vendor
lock-in or DRM. The FSF is that voice, and it's a more important role than
ever.

For example, the FSF has long warned of the dangers of DRM, and in recent
years these warnings have proved themselves prescient now that we have things
like Amazon remotely wiping Kindles on a whim and deleting objectionable
books. More recently, the FSF has begun making a lot of noise about the
dangers of SecureBoot. Will the wider developer community disregard these
warnings as the ravings of irrelevant zealots? Based on past observations, I
certainly hope not.

~~~
snambi
Cannot imagine the world without FSF. Thank god for FSF and RMS.

~~~
lifeguard
Kids today have no idea what the web and Internet were like in the 90s. The
GPL is vital to our freedoms.

