waffle

Why the only thing I’d ever use SOAP for is cleaning.

So let me get this straight.

It stores as many songs as its corresponding iPod model, it weighs more and is thicker and taller than the corresponding iPod model, it has a larger screen with the same exact resolution as the corresponding iPod model, it has a wireless sharing function that only scales if enough people in general or friends in specific get one and that attaches DRM to the shared songs, making it occupy your HD space but not letting you keep it, it has something that looks like a scroll wheel but really is just an arrangement of buttons, its installer is long, instable, quasi-self-mocking and contains pictures of girls in poorly thought-out photos, not to mention bars directly adjacent to the progress that look like progress bars but aren’t, it doesn’t play music bought at any PlaysForSure music store, Rhapsody or iTunes Store, it comes in a color perceptably very nice but named just plain “brown” with all its connotations, has a slogan that, in the UK (and Sweden), reads “Welcome to the welfare line“, and to top it off, one dollar for every purchased Zune goes to Universal Music?

The only way a Zune is ever going to kill an iPod is if it’s dropped on one from a sufficient altitude.

(Disclaimer: This is going to be about licenses and the word “freedom”. Don appropriate asbestos gowning, and realize that I’m not trying to talk you out of your position or force my position on you, just explain mine. Discussion is welcome.)

I’m a user of the BSD license. The BSD license says, in essence, this: You can share this, and any derivation you make of it, in any way imaginable as long as you reproduce, somewhere accessible, this long disclaimer meaning that you can’t sue us if this doesn’t work the way you planned, and as long as you don’t use my name in ways that could make it look like I’m endorsing it without actually clearing it with me first. (Much earlier, in one particular case (BSD Unix), it used to contain a claim that you have to mention that your product contained software produced by the University of California. The version now used everywhere that does not have this clause is for clarity sometimes called the ‘revised’ BSD license - I’ll be skipping the ‘revised’ for the rest of this article to mean the same, revised, license.)

That was a long sentence. Here’s the GNU General Public License, the “GNU GPL”. I’d like to summarize that, but I can’t without a longer, much longer sentence. This is not me poking fun, by the way; I’m just not a lawyer, and I just can’t write sentences that long.

The thing with the GNU GPL is that it’s aimed to reinforce a software philosophy of Free Software. Free Software was a precursor to Open Source, and the two co-exist and play different roles today, even though Free Software implies Open Source. Free Software philosophy is summed up in four points: “The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0)”; “The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1).”; “The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).” and “The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3).”

The GNU GPL thoroughly enforces these four freedoms. Various Open Source licenses, of which the BSD license is one, do not, but they also do not block or run contrary to the four freedoms. You can still run the program (for any purpose), study and adapt it, redistribute copies, improve the program and release the improvements. If this is the basic test of Free Software, any software distributed under the BSD license fits the bill.

Herein lies the rub.

The GNU GPL requires you to - if you release derivates of the software - also release the source code. The GNU GPL also requires you to put any program incorporating any other technology licensed as the GNU GPL under the GNU GPL. All of it. For this, it’s called by some a “viral” license - a license spreading like a virus to everything it touches.

I approve of the end results. If we’re to pose binary questions, I do think we’re better off with a world where everything is Free Software than where nothing is Free Software. What I don’t approve of is the means, where specifically, freedom 3 - to be able to redistribute the program - has turned into an obligation.

The GNU GPL forces your hand very much by design. It’s like the superintendent who retires two days after you move into that new building, and now you’ve gotta fund his going-away gift with $100, only you’ve never met the guy before. It’s not wrong of you to not feel obligated to chip in. However, it’s decent of you to recognize that he’s probably been a good guy, and keep it in mind, and contribute with a few bucks.

The BSD license, and others in the same vein, make no assumption about how you’re going to handle this. I, for one, would much sooner help out with a project where people contribute because they see it as the right thing to do, not because their hands are forced. For this reason, I’m wary of code under the GNU GPL. It is freedom under militia, not under mutual agreement. And what’s more, it’s not your freedom (as the creator of a derivate work or as the creator of a work that simply includes it) that’s being protected or cared for in any way, it’s the user’s four freedoms that are being enforced.

I understand full well that the GNU GPL is highly political and orchestrated to acheive a very specific effect - underlined by the fact that the watered-down version is known as the Lesser GPL. This doesn’t mean that I have to say “oh, well, that’s okay then, because people should be allowed to be political, and therefore I should have qualms about commenting on it”.

And what’s more, I don’t mind being “taken advantage of”, akin to the “a conservative is just a liberal who’s been mugged” theory. I do not demand a continuous stake or sunshine or glory in whatever project may reuse my code. By following the BSD license, adopters of my code are obligated to acknowledge, somewhere, in 6-point type, no doubt, that somewhere in there is code that I wrote that was helpful, and that’s all I ask.

And as for the code… if they weren’t going to help out and share the code anyway, are you sure you’d want to spend your time working with them?