Bruce Perens wrote:
> My opinion has been that gift-style licensing makes you an unpaid, and
> unappreciated, employee of big companies.... Having had my software installed
> in literally all lines of network-connected consumer devices, I feel that
> compliance with those [GPL] terms is a fair exchange. It goes in
> Billion-dollar television lines, etc.
I agree with Bruce that Busybox is a valuable "Swiss Army knife" software tool,
and that he and his colleagues have earned compensation through "copyleft" for
its use. However, I personally can appreciate both copyleft and "gift-style"
licensing alternatives, depending upon licensor preference, as my own licenses
implement.
Bruce also wrote:
> Being able to use the GPL and AGPL provisions has a lot of advantages.
But I don't agree with Bruce's statement about those "strong copyleft"
licenses. The licenses that are needed for copyleft are the LGPL and a new
ALGPL. In that, I agree with Russell McOrmand that "we should internationally
be pushing copyright forward from what was articulated in the 1991 EU directive
on software which suggested interfaces are not restricted subject matter."
I can report on the fears of some of my clients, who believed that they would
be sued by SFLC if their independent software merely touched Busybox. It would
be much safer for all users – and equally profitable for Bruce – if Busybox
modifications themselves had to be disclosed by copyleft upon their physical
distribution (or, with an ALGPL alternative, upon network distribution),
without the fear of infection based on the "strong copyleft" theories about
linking promoted by the GPL and AGPL.
Best, /Larry
From: License-discuss <license-discuss-boun...@lists.opensource.org> On Behalf
Of Bruce Perens via License-discuss
Sent: Sunday, July 7, 2019 3:44 PM
To: license-discuss@lists.opensource.org
Cc: Bruce Perens <br...@perens.com>
Subject: Re: [License-discuss] Copyright on APIs
My opinion has been that gift-style licensing makes you an unpaid, and
unappreciated, employee of big companies. The GPL and AGPL terms are hardly an
unfair expectation of those folks. Having had my software installed in
literally all lines of network-connected consumer devices, I feel that
compliance with those terms is a fair exchange. It goes in Billion-dollar
television lines, etc.
Being able to use the GPL and AGPL provisions has a lot of advantages. Just a
few days ago, I purchased an outdoor 4G modem for my remote ham site, which
will allow me to operate the radio by remote control. It's 5 hours drive away,
so the software has to work reliably. Unfortunately, the modem manufacturer had
done an imperfect implementation of OpenWRT. Because I was copyright holder of
some of the software, I really just had to drop a note to convince them to put
all of their source online, and that it was desirable to have this modem
supported in the OpenWRT mainline. LGPL terms alone would not have provided the
same incentive.
Similarly, in creating Busybox I used GPL, which was the right decision, except
today I would use AGPL. Many companies adopted the software in order to save
themselves time-to-market, and the requirement to publish source code meant
they each did not have to duplicate effort, and we all got the work of multiple
person-years by various embedded companies. Busybox has also been very
important in getting companies everywhere to understand their obligations to
share source code. It also helped me to establish and continue my license
compliance business, which was worth about a Million dollars and allowed me to
continue to devote most of my time to Open Source.
Thanks
Bruce
On Sun, Jul 7, 2019 at 3:29 PM Russell McOrmond <russellmcorm...@gmail.com>
wrote:
On Sun, Jun 30, 2019 at 6:44 PM Lawrence Rosen <lro...@rosenlaw.com
<mailto:lro...@rosenlaw.com> > wrote:
Thank you again Patrice-Emanuel, and thanks also to the EU for a much clearer
explanation of functional software interfaces ("APIs") than the brief but
equally relevant provision in 17 USC 102(b). I hope the US Supreme Court is as
clear in its decision in the Oracle v. Google case.
OSI should let "strong copyleft" die peacefully among the mistaken theories of
open source in any future licenses it approves. It is not a positive feature of
"software freedom."
I've been reading this thread with interest, and want to add in my own
thoughts as a participant in the movement since the early 1990's. The FSF has
made several mistakes in this time when it comes to protecting software
freedom.
I strongly believe we should internationally be pushing copyright forward
from what was articulated in the 1991 EU directive on software which suggested
interfaces are not restricted subject matter.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:31991L0250:EN:HTML
The 1991 directive was a good start, but we should be going further to not
allow contracts or technical measures which seek to circumvent these limits on
exclusive rights. Unfortunately as a community we have been embracing opposing
concepts.
Far worse than the concept of "strong copyleft" is the concept of the Affero
clauses which trigger on private modification of software. The Free/Libee and
Open Source Software movements should be strongly rejecting these concepts in
order to protect software freedom, not providing examples of allegedly positive
"uses" of these harmful concepts.
Those who are trying to protect software freedom should be trying to turn the
GPL and AGPL into only being able to be the equivalent of LGPL, as the clauses
which differentiate the GPL and AGPL from the LGPL should not be enforceable
under any law in any country.
--
Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>
Please help us tell the Canadian Parliament to protect our property rights as
owners of Information Technology. Sign the petition! http://l.c11.ca/ict/
"The government, lobbied by legacy copyright holders and hardware
manufacturers, can pry my camcorder, computer, home theatre, or portable media
player from my cold dead hands!" http://c11.ca/own
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