Russell McOrmond wrote: > > On Wed, Aug 21, 2019 at 2:16 PM Howard Chu <h...@openldap.org > <mailto:h...@openldap.org>> wrote: > > Fwiw, most of the free software I released in the 1980s, before GPL > existed, had the clause > "You are free to use this software but any modifications/corrections/bug > fixes you make must > be sent back to me so they may be included in future updates." > > > In Canada it was still being debated in the early 1980's whether software was > covered by copyright law at all. Printed source code in a book was covered by > copyright like any other book, but binaries weren't automatically considered > covered. > > Until I discovered gnu.misc.discuss back in 1992 I either didn't put any > license on what I released, or attempted to dedicate to the public domain > (once I had > read about copyright law). > > I am offended by the notion that someone may benefit from code that I > released for free, but > would deny anyone else the benefit of improvements they make (privately > or not) to my code. > > > You would not be alone feeling this way, but until very recently it was > understood that such proprietary interests were contrary to Free Software > (later Open > Source) which was focused on the wider public interests of software users > rather than narrowly on the interests of software proprietors.
Requesting that improvements be made available benefits both the software users and the proprietors, so I don't see this as a particular conflict. Indeed, this serves the greater good, while keeping improvements private undermines the greater good. A standard license clause of this form would also have ended the debate over disclosure of zero-day vulnerabilities and other such nonsense that plagues today's software world. I.e., you would have a clear obligation to inform the software authors of any flaws you discover in their code - first, before doing anything else with that knowledge. > What the FSF calls "freedom 0" was very specifically intended to not put > obligations on pure software use. There is no obligation to contribute, only > a freedom > to contribute (freedoms 2 and 3). I still believe the FSF erred here. Free software only grows if a community contributes back. It may be OK for a large corporation to toss software over a wall, but for individual hobbyist programmers trying to improve their work and support their users, this "pure use" freedom sucks people dry and burns them out. > > There has been an obligation in some licenses for quite some time to make > contibutions (public distribution of code) be accompanied by corresponding > source code > and be licensed under a compatable license, but the idea that private > modifications should be forced to become contributions is very new and quite > controvercial. I strongly believe that these forced contributions are > contrary to the FSF's 4 freedoms and the OSI's OSD, but it is obvious that > this is not > yet a decided discussion. -- -- Howard Chu CTO, Symas Corp. http://www.symas.com Director, Highland Sun http://highlandsun.com/hyc/ Chief Architect, OpenLDAP http://www.openldap.org/project/ _______________________________________________ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@lists.opensource.org http://lists.opensource.org/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org
