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I'll concede to this, but it reinforces my reasoning for believing that the GPL is too restrictive to fit what I understand its original intent to be.
The problem is once they sell it, no matter what they put in their license, it isn't their property and so their rules don't apply in a traditional sense.
Agreed. Renting would be different than purchasing full rights to something. However, do remember that there has never been a need to purchase this software.
I don't think anyone thought a true end-to end walled garden was a possibility when it was authored - they probably assumed that if the original author could write and run the code, so could everyone else
No. Please go back and read the GNU site. If you make a statement like this, you don't understand even the basic reasoning behind the GPL.
EDIT: And even if what you said were correct, it would be a form of "limiting freedom to ensure 'freedom'", thereby validating my statement.
I phrased it wrong, I meant more along the lines with "while not giving users their own option to edit/run"
Selling GPL'ed code along with other software isn't what I would consider exploitation, but closing up a public work would be. I should have clarified
Only if you use the term freedom in a blanket way and don't assume there is a difference in how we treat personal possessions (like a purchased product/license) and a public good is treated.
Since, in a way, everyone owns GPL code through the GPL, people are aggected by others not adhering to it.
LiteSpeed is not actually affected by someone not following their porn clause
A tl;dr for the people who don't like reading is that the GPL prevents people from being sold something that was theirs in the first place. Making it pervasive just helps clear up the boundaries of 'where does the public's code end and the sellable part begin'
Freedom is the ability to make personal decisions without interference. That is why freedom exists in degrees, and it will be virtually impossible to provide 100% freedom to someone, except for a few specific cases.
Copyleft (GPL, CC-SA, ...) vs Permissive (WTFPL, CC0, MIT, BSD) is primarily a question of where you wish to (potentially) limit the amount of freedom.
With a copyleft license, it is certain that the freedoms of the direct recipient will be limited, as will those of the recipients down the line (they can only use the code under certain circumstances).
With a permissive license, there is the possibility (subject to circumstances) that a recipient further down the line is limited in their freedoms, but there is a guarantee that the initial recipient will have (mostly) freedom in what to do with the code.
I prefer the latter, because I've found that it is quite possible to make people 'pass on freedoms' by encouraging them to do so, rather than trying to enforce it. Neither is an ideal option, and both involve a trade-off. The only question, really, is which of the two trade-offs you consider to contribute to society most.
No. The GPL builds on the existing copyright model, which means one or more owners, and many licensees.
By virtue of the GPL this basically makes everyone a owner and licensee - copyright extended to everyone (individually, but equally)
No, it really doesn't. There are too many fundamental differences between copyright ownership and having a license, to treat the two as identical. A primary difference being that as a copyright owner, you cannot be restricted from redistribution in any form by your own license.
So I could make my code GPL and then re-license that same code to something closed, still retain copyright and claim everyone who grabbed a copy were infringing?
Yes.
Yes, assuming you don't have contributions from others mixed in, or they have somehow given you permission to relicense them (this is not uncommon for commercial open-source projects).
Yes.
No. Relicensing to a different license, doesn't invalidate or revoke the old license. People could still use whatever code you chose to license as GPL, under the terms of the GPL, even if you simultaneously have a closed-license version (even if the code itself is identical).
A common model is to dual-license, in that there is both a GPL version (that anyone can use freely, but is required to publicize source along with the binaries if they modify the code), and a closed version (that has to be paid for, and usually allows modifications, but doesn't require the license holder to redistribute the code). It's essentially a way to let people (or rather, companies) pay for not having to redistribute their modified code.
Exactly, which lines up with what I said about it being a public good at that point. The validity of the old license keeps it perpetually availible
Only the particular version that was licensed under the GPL, and only under the terms of the GPL. Any future versions may not necessarily be licensed under the GPL (in which case a fork typically happens), and it's still not a 'public good', in that the restrictions set by the copyright owner still apply.
Especially in the case of software, it's an interesting thing to consider whether licenses are really irrevocable, because it's often not feasible to use a software version of a few years old on a modern system. While in theory the old code is still available under the GPL, in practice you're shit out of luck when you want to use it and newer versions are proprietary.
Well of course the forks past the point wouldn't be
I've seen people do terrible, unforgivable things to keep old software running in production on modern systems
Yes, there are still programs in use running under dbase III and paradox that I know of, and probably older things as well. My former employer was using something made in 1992 to calculate cold rooms and stuff.
The problem is that for the dbase III and paradox nobody is selling licenses anymore, so they are screwed if the police comes knocking.
I personally think there are enough licensing models out there to cover for every scenario and if they dont, you can use duals...
The GPL is also too restrictive for my taste, but it should fit for anyone who has no intention to ever close the source or sell it while not blocking others from doing so with their code added. Just make a module for extra functionality and it is done.
About iOS and similar things, those were built exactly to circumvent things like GPL in my view and there are constant attempts to block "unsigned" code or making "trusted" platforms and "shove it" (TM) in the face of ppl. Granted, there is a legitimate use for that (tho I am sure if hackers can unlock any platform to date, so malicious code can), the problem comes when you are required to use it otherwise the OS you payed for wont boot, for example.
I cant imagine a world without Open Source, maybe some people are going to extremes, but the work they did is invaluable and they managed to beat companies with hundreds of billions power using their own tools designed initially to block people from using what they bought.
A lot of people definitely feel the same way that you do, and I'm one of them. GPLv3 left a bad taste in my mouth, but I'm definitely with Linus in opting out of the "or any later version" language, but I don't need to release binaries very often. The whole thing felt like some strongarm jerkery to me.
Like I said though, most of the code I write doesn't need compiling, so I mostly use CC-BY-SA, CC-BY-NC-SA, or public domain.
Isn't the summary of GPLv2 and v3: (re)sell as you like, but keep it open source / contribute changes back?
Hmmm, might switch from Nginx, who knows.
Just a few things:
OK. Let's try this again. I'm starting a new thread to answer BronzeByte's questions. Hopefully the site won't get hacked again...
Oh, yeah, the thread is: http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/10625/openlitespeed-questions-now-with-more-answers