938 lines
87 KiB
HTML
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87 KiB
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<label>Items containing: </label>
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<label class="option" for="edit-operator-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-operator-1" name="operator" value="1" class="form-radio"> <strong>any</strong> terms</label>
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(sub-terms), do you want those child terms automatically included in the
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<label for="edit-taxonomy-3">Events: </label>
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<select name="taxonomy[3][]" multiple="multiple" class="form-select" id="edit-taxonomy-3"><option value="208">All Girl Hack Night</option><option value="224">ArmadilloCon 2014</option><option value="193">barcamp</option><option value="259">book club</option><option value="126">book reading</option><option value="200">conference</option><option value="28">conventions</option><option value="174">-Apollocon</option><option value="175">--ApolloCon 2007</option><option value="150">--ApolloCon 2009</option><option value="29">-ArmadilloCon</option><option value="31">--ArmadilloCon 2003</option><option value="80">--ArmadilloCon 2004</option><option value="42">--ArmadilloCon 2006</option><option value="50">--ArmadilloCon 2007</option><option value="30">--ArmadilloCon 2008</option><option value="128">--ArmadilloCon 2009</option><option value="143">-Fencon 2008</option><option value="173">-Linucon</option><option value="153">--Linucon 2004</option><option value="160">--Linucon 2005</option><option value="198">discussion</option><option value="134">editing</option><option value="289">fandom</option><option value="189">Flipside</option><option value="290">humor</option><option value="205">lecture</option><option value="215">Lone Star Ruby Conf</option><option value="182">Nebula Awards</option><option value="291">parody</option><option value="216">RailsBridge</option><option value="135">science fiction</option><option value="201">technology conference</option><option value="302">Texas Book Festival</option><option value="288">Women Who Code</option><option value="309">World Fantasy Convention</option><option value="310">World Fantasy Convention 2006</option><option value="136">writing</option><option value="56">writing workshop</option></select>
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<div class="description"><p>Everything in the Events vocabulary</p>
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"<strong>Events</strong>" is used for: Convention Post, Page, Story.</div>
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</div>
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<label for="edit-taxonomy-1">People: </label>
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<select name="taxonomy[1][]" multiple="multiple" class="form-select" id="edit-taxonomy-1"><option value="274">Aron Ra</option><option value="272">AronRa</option><option value="51">artists</option><option value="96">-John Picacio</option><option value="54">-R. Cat Conrad</option><option value="266">atheists</option><option value="27">authors</option><option value="256">-Ada Palmer</option><option value="3">-Alexis Glynn Latner</option><option value="300">-Anne McCaffrey</option><option value="292">-Barbara Hambly</option><option value="140">-Barbara Winter</option><option value="103">-Bill Crider</option><option value="236">-Bob Mahoney</option><option value="66">-Brad Denton</option><option value="4">-Bruce Sterling</option><option value="18">-C. J. Cherryh</option><option value="87">-C. J. Mills</option><option value="17">-Carol Berg</option><option value="76">-Caroline Spector</option><option value="104">-Charles Stross</option><option value="121">-Chris Nakashima-Brown</option><option value="129">-Chris Roberson</option><option value="105">-Christopher Moore</option><option value="81">-Christopher Vogler</option><option value="183">-Connie Willis</option><option value="12">-Daniel Abraham</option><option value="106">-Dave Duncan</option><option value="19">-Deborah Chester</option><option value="13">-Don Webb</option><option value="94">-Dotti Enderle</option><option value="21">-Elizabeth Moon</option><option value="77">-Gloria Oliver</option><option value="144">-Gregory Benford</option><option value="95">-J. K. Rowling</option><option value="108">-James Morrow</option><option value="43">-James P. Hogan</option><option value="52">-James Stoddard</option><option value="20">-Jane Lindskold</option><option value="251">-Janet Kathleen Cheney</option><option value="82">-Jayme Lynn Blaschke</option><option value="14">-Jess Nevins</option><option value="73">-Jessica Reisman</option><option value="34">-John Scalzi</option><option value="138">-Julia Mandala</option><option value="44">-Julie Czerneda</option><option value="83">-Kay Kenyon</option><option value="35">-Kimberly Frost</option><option value="122">-Lawrence Person</option><option value="90">-Lou Antonelli</option><option value="84">-Louise Marley</option><option value="98">-Lyall Watson</option><option value="78">-Mark Finn</option><option value="99">-Mary Rosenblum</option><option value="36">-Matthew Bey</option><option value="137">-Melanie Miller Fletcher</option><option value="37">-Michael Trice</option><option value="45">-Mikal Trimm</option><option value="109">-Naomi Novik</option><option value="57">-Neal Stephenson</option><option value="133">-Neil Gaiman</option><option value="110">-Patricia McKillip</option><option value="46">-Paul Benjamin</option><option value="116">-Paul Park</option><option value="38">-Phoebe Kitanidis</option><option value="53">-Rachel Caine</option><option value="91">-Rhonda Eudaly</option><option value="79">-Rie Sheridan</option><option value="58">-Robert Heinlein</option><option value="117">-Robin Hobb</option><option value="139">-Rosemary Clement-Moore</option><option value="92">-S. Andrew Swann</option><option value="15">-Sage Walker</option><option value="55">-Samantha Henderson</option><option value="22">-Sarah Zettel</option><option value="100">-Steven Gould</option><option value="59">-Steven Pinker</option><option value="39">-Stina Leicht</option><option value="111">-Terry Pratchett</option><option value="112">-Tim Powers</option><option value="5">-Vernor Vinge</option><option value="88">-Wendy Wheeler</option><option value="151">-Wil McCarthy</option><option value="125">-William Gibson</option><option value="277">Beth Presswood</option><option value="239">Bob Mahoney</option><option value="320">Brian Greene</option><option value="154">costumers</option><option value="155">-Cathy Raymond</option><option value="156">-Jay Maynard</option><option value="168">-The Tron Guy</option><option value="286">Dave Silverman</option><option value="273">Denis Loubet</option><option value="275">Don Baker</option><option value="270">Don Rhoades</option><option value="32">editors</option><option value="107">-Diana Gill</option><option value="97">-Lou Anders</option><option value="33">-Sheila Williams</option><option value="303">Evan Smith</option><option value="278">family</option><option value="247">Jacob Weisman</option><option value="217">James Gray</option><option value="67">Janice Gelb</option><option value="311">Janine Ellen Young</option><option value="285">Jeff Dee</option><option value="271">Jen Peeples</option><option value="184">Joe Lansdale</option><option value="252">John Gibbons</option><option value="185">John Moore</option><option value="223">John Quarterman</option><option value="301">Joy Chant</option><option value="293">K. D. Wentworth</option><option value="253">K. G. Jewell</option><option value="307">Kage Baker</option><option value="227">Kassandra Perch</option><option value="157">Kim Kofmel</option><option value="1">Kurt Baty</option><option value="177">Lee Martindale</option><option value="248">Martin Wagner</option><option value="268">Matt Dillahunty</option><option value="243">Mel White</option><option value="178">Mel. White</option><option value="312">Michael A. Stackpole</option><option value="186">Michael Moorcock</option><option value="284">P. Z. Myers</option><option value="244">Paige Roberts</option><option value="237">Patrice Sarath</option><option value="68">Patty Wells</option><option value="194">Pete Cashmore</option><option value="162">programmers</option><option value="161">-Eric Raymond</option><option value="163">-Rob Landley</option><option value="245">Rachael Acks</option><option value="209">Richard Dawkins</option><option value="298">Rick Klaw</option><option value="276">Russell Glasser</option><option value="304">Salman Rushdie</option><option value="218">Sarah Mei</option><option value="145">scientists</option><option value="74">Scott Bobo</option><option value="179">Selina Rosen</option><option value="294">Sharon Shinn</option><option value="238">Sigrid Close</option><option value="249">Stephanie Pui-Mun Law</option><option value="69">Stephen Boucher</option><option value="260">Steve Bratteng</option><option value="130">Steve Wilson</option><option value="225">Ted Chiang</option><option value="2">Tom Becker</option><option value="269">Tracie Harris</option><option value="313">W. J. Williams</option><option value="195">whurley</option><option value="240">William Ledbetter</option><option value="113">Willie Siros</option><option value="226">writers</option><option value="114">Zane Melder</option></select>
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<div class="description"><p>People mentioned in the articles</p>
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"<strong>People</strong>" is used for: Page, Convention Post, Story.</div>
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<label for="edit-taxonomy-2">Themes: </label>
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<select name="taxonomy[2][]" multiple="multiple" class="form-select" id="edit-taxonomy-2"><option value="287">.net</option><option value="23">alien culture</option><option value="24">aliens</option><option value="323">Angular</option><option value="324">Apache</option><option value="295">ArmadilloCon</option><option value="296">ArmadilloCon 2004</option><option value="190">art</option><option value="206">astrophysics</option><option value="210">atheism</option><option value="101">biology</option><option value="280">bird</option><option value="254">books</option><option value="305">brain</option><option value="75">brainstorming</option><option value="191">camping</option><option value="199">Center For Inquiry</option><option value="261">Center For Inquiry Austin</option><option value="146">climate</option><option value="8">computers</option><option value="219">conferences</option><option value="70">conventions</option><option value="207">cosmology</option><option value="158">costumes</option><option value="159">costuming</option><option value="279">crafts</option><option value="283">cruise</option><option value="25">culture</option><option value="127">cyberpunk</option><option value="281">dance</option><option value="317">data</option><option value="170">dating</option><option value="202">Drupal</option><option value="47">Dyson sphere</option><option value="176">editing</option><option value="316">Evernote</option><option value="211">evolution</option><option value="60">fandom</option><option value="61">-fandom lore</option><option value="180">fanfiction</option><option value="40">fantasy</option><option value="325">Flask</option><option value="171">flirting</option><option value="62">folklore</option><option value="262">freethought</option><option value="9">future</option><option value="131">gadgets</option><option value="250">game</option><option value="246">gender</option><option value="147">geoengineering</option><option value="148">global warming</option><option value="308">history</option><option value="132">humor</option><option value="306">intelligence</option><option value="263">introvert</option><option value="228">Javascript</option><option value="164">legal</option><option value="318">lifelogging</option><option value="165">Linux</option><option value="181">Lord of the Rings</option><option value="314">magic</option><option value="242">Mars</option><option value="255">mathematics</option><option value="319">memory</option><option value="192">music</option><option value="85">myth</option><option value="86">mythology</option><option value="166">operating systems</option><option value="297">parody</option><option value="149">physics</option><option value="48">planets</option><option value="152">programmable matter</option><option value="169">programming</option><option value="315">Python</option><option value="172">relationships</option><option value="89">religion</option><option value="322">robots</option><option value="222">Ruby</option><option value="220">Ruby on Rails</option><option value="49">science</option><option value="10">science fiction</option><option value="203">security</option><option value="16">singularity</option><option value="299">slipstream</option><option value="196">social media</option><option value="167">software</option><option value="241">space travel</option><option value="197">startups</option><option value="321">string theory</option><option value="93">Stump The Panel</option><option value="118">technology</option><option value="11">-nanotechnology</option><option value="120">--bucky tubes</option><option value="187">Texas</option><option value="257">time</option><option value="258">time travel</option><option value="212">transhumanism</option><option value="7">ubiquitous computation</option><option value="102">vampires</option><option value="213">web services</option><option value="326">webserver</option><option value="204">website design</option><option value="267">wedding</option><option value="188">weird</option><option value="115">What You Should Have Read</option><option value="214">Windows programming</option><option value="221">workshops</option><option value="26">worldbuilding</option><option value="41">writing</option></select>
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<div class="description"><p>Themes mentioned in the article</p>
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"<strong>Themes</strong>" is used for: Page, Convention Post, Story.</div>
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</div>
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</div></div></fieldset>
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<div id="title" class=""><div class="b0"><div class="b1"><div class="b2"><div class="b3"><div class="b4"><div class="b5"><div class="b6"><div class="b7"><div class="b8"><div class="b9"> <h2>Pros and cons of the GNU General Public License: Linucon 2005</h2>
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<div class="submitted">
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Submitted by elze on Sun, 12/19/2010 - 13:58 </div>
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<div class="taxonomy"> in <ul class="links inline"><li class="taxonomy_term_155 first"><a href="http://sf.geekitude.com/category/people/cathy-raymond" rel="tag" title="">Cathy Raymond</a></li>
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<li class="taxonomy_term_8"><a href="http://sf.geekitude.com/taxonomy/term/8" rel="tag" title="">computers</a></li>
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<li class="taxonomy_term_28"><a href="http://sf.geekitude.com/taxonomy/term/28" rel="tag" title="">conventions</a></li>
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<li class="taxonomy_term_154"><a href="http://sf.geekitude.com/category/people/costumers" rel="tag" title="">costumers</a></li>
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<li class="taxonomy_term_161"><a href="http://sf.geekitude.com/category/people/eric-raymond" rel="tag" title="">Eric Raymond</a></li>
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<li class="taxonomy_term_156"><a href="http://sf.geekitude.com/category/people/jay-maynard" rel="tag" title="">Jay Maynard</a></li>
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<li class="taxonomy_term_164"><a href="http://sf.geekitude.com/category/themes/legal" rel="tag" title="">legal</a></li>
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<li class="taxonomy_term_160"><a href="http://sf.geekitude.com/category/events/linucon-2005" rel="tag" title="">Linucon 2005</a></li>
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<li class="taxonomy_term_165"><a href="http://sf.geekitude.com/category/themes/linux" rel="tag" title="">Linux</a></li>
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<li class="taxonomy_term_166"><a href="http://sf.geekitude.com/category/themes/operating-systems" rel="tag" title="">operating systems</a></li>
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<li class="taxonomy_term_162"><a href="http://sf.geekitude.com/category/people/programmers" rel="tag" title="">programmers</a></li>
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<li class="taxonomy_term_163"><a href="http://sf.geekitude.com/category/people/rob-landley" rel="tag" title="">Rob Landley</a></li>
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<li class="taxonomy_term_167"><a href="http://sf.geekitude.com/category/themes/software" rel="tag" title="">software</a></li>
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<li class="taxonomy_term_118"><a href="http://sf.geekitude.com/category/themes/technology" rel="tag" title="">technology</a></li>
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<li class="taxonomy_term_168 last"><a href="http://sf.geekitude.com/category/people/tron-guy" rel="tag" title="">The Tron Guy</a></li>
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</ul></div>
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<div class="content">
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<div class="all-attached-images"><div style="width: 150px" class="image-attach-body"><a href="http://sf.geekitude.com/content/cimg0927-jay-maynard-his-alternative-tron-costume"><img src="maynard2010a%20Archivos/CIMG0927MaynardCostumeSm.jpg" alt="CIMG0927 Jay Maynard in his alternative Tron costume" title="CIMG0927 Jay Maynard in his alternative Tron costume" class="image image-thumbnail " width="150" height="200"></a></div>
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</div><p><b>Synopsis from Linucon program book:</b> "The most popular
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open source license, the GPL, inspires controversy to this day. Eric
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Raymond recently expressed some ambivalence about it, so he and his
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lawyer wife Cathy are moderating this panel, with Jay Maynard, a.k.a. <a href="http://www.tronguy.net/">The Tron Guy</a> speaking out against the GPL and Rob Landley defending it."</p>
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<p>One of Rob Landley's <i>pro</i>-GPL arguments is that it can <a href="http://sf.geekitude.com/content/pros-and-cons-gnu-general-public-license-linucon-2005#fork">prevent a project from forking</a>. Jay Maynard claims credit for coining the term <a href="http://sf.geekitude.com/content/pros-and-cons-gnu-general-public-license-linucon-2005#virus">General Public Virus</a>. His <a href="http://sf.geekitude.com/content/pros-and-cons-gnu-general-public-license-linucon-2005#jmaynard">objection to GPL</a>
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lies in its ideological agenda. Rob says GPL keeps companies from
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taking open source code, incorporating it into their products and making
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money off of someone else's work without giving back to the community.
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Jay objects that even if companies did that, the <a href="http://sf.geekitude.com/content/pros-and-cons-gnu-general-public-license-linucon-2005#tcp_stack">good consequences of this action would outweigh the bad</a>. Eric Raymond then <a href="http://sf.geekitude.com/content/pros-and-cons-gnu-general-public-license-linucon-2005#eric_raymond">inserts himself physically and ideologically</a> between these two "nutcase friends" of his. His position is that <a href="http://sf.geekitude.com/content/pros-and-cons-gnu-general-public-license-linucon-2005#GPLhindrance">GPL is slowing down the adoption of open source</a>,
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because it is often incorrectly perceived that a company that uses open
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source software would be obligated to blow open their entire
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intellectual property. Furthermore, he says, GPL is based on the
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assumption that defecting from the open source community is attractive,
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whereas in reality it is <a href="http://sf.geekitude.com/content/pros-and-cons-gnu-general-public-license-linucon-2005#punishment">its own punishment</a>. Both sides use <a href="http://sf.geekitude.com/content/pros-and-cons-gnu-general-public-license-linucon-2005#linksys">Linksys as an example</a> to support their arguments. :-) They briefly debate whether the <a href="http://sf.geekitude.com/content/pros-and-cons-gnu-general-public-license-linucon-2005#bsd">reason BSD did not become as popular as Linux</a> was due to its license, or, as Eric Raymond argues, because they got their social machinery wrong.</p>
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<p>Some pictures from this panel can be found in my <a href="http://gallery.geekitude.com/v/sf/linucon2005/panelsAndSpeakers/?g2_page=2">Linucon 2005 photo gallery</a>.</p>
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<p><a href="http://sfragments.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Tron%20Guy">Read more about The Tron Guy</a> in my blog.</p>
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<blockquote><p><b>Note</b>: All the factual errors in this post -- and
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there may be a few -- are mine, and not the panelists'. I may have
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misunderstood something they've said.</p>
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<p>(Parts of conversation where people were talking over one another, or
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digressed too much, were paraphrased and put in parentheses, or
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condensed to convey the gist, or simply cut out and marked by (...).
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Names I didn't catch were paraphrased as "person X" or So-and-so. While
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this may deprive potential readers of juicy bits of gossip, it may work
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in favor of the panelists, as they won't go on record as having said
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certain things about those people. :-)) </p>
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<p>However, they said <a href="http://sf.geekitude.com/content/pros-and-cons-gnu-general-public-license-linucon-2005#stallman">Stallman looks more sane with distance!</a></p>
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</blockquote>
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<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. Introductions, starting with Cathy!
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</p><p><b>Cathy Raymond</b>. Introductions. Hi, I'm Cathy Raymond. I'm
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an attorney who once thought that the open source movement might be a
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good excuse for me to move my law practice into licensing. That didn't
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work out but it still provided me with some interesting experiences. If
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you ask my husband, and please, don't, he will probably tell you that I
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am partly to blame for the GPL, because I reviewed and critiqued an
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earlier draft of it. I don't remember much about it, but I'll take his
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word for it.</p>
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<p>I'm also married to this guy. This is Eric S. Raymond of open source
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fame, who can probably introduce himself much better than I could.</p>
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<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. Hi, I'm Eric Raymond, I run around making
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trouble. One of the pieces of trouble that I have helped create is the
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open source initiative, which is a community certification authority for
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licenses. Big sites like (something-something) and SourceForge require
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an LST-conformant license (?) before they will allow new projects on
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their site. We have spent a lot of time thinking about licensing, we are
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now engaged in a project to actually crack the number of open source
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licenses in use, because there are too many of them, and collisions on
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the edges are causing problems. I recently caused a stir by arguing that
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we need to reexamine the question of whether the GPL is useful or not,
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but we'll talk about it when we get into the panel itself.</p>
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<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. I'm Rob Landley. I'm the pro side of the GPL
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here. I'm for it. I'm here 'cause we needed someone to give a token
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conventional view. I am a programmer, I've done a bunch of other things.
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I got familiar with intellectual property issues years ago. I wrote a
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week worth (?) of columns for the Motley Fool on intellectual property,
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for example. And I've been interested in licensing the GPL. I was
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interested in the GPL and in LGPL before I was actually interested in
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Linux, because I was following it on gcc, and glibc for OS/2. So, I've
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been following it for years and years.</p>
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<p><b>Jay Maynard</b>. <a name="virus">And I'm Jay Maynard</a>. One of
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my lesser-known projects, I talked about it yesterday morning, is called
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Hercules. It's an emulator for IBM mainframes. And it's licensed under
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the least PPL-ish <i>(did he mean GPL-ish?)</i> of the open source
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licenses: the QPL. That's my most recent involvement in this respect.
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But I've been arguing against the GPL and its philosophy for 15 years
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now. In a post on Usenet in 1989 I coined the term "General Public
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Virus". </p>
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<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. Did you? I didn't know that! </p>
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<p><b>Jay Maynard</b>. Yes. That was my invention.</p>
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<p><b>Cathy Raymond</b> (apparently addresses Eric): Go update the jargon file.</p>
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<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. I have to put a comment in the jargon file.</p>
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<p><b>Jay Maynard</b>. And catch me later, and I will point you to the
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Google News copy of that posting. So I have long believed that GPL is
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evil incarnate, or next best thing to.</p>
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<p><b>Cathy</b>. So, we have the good, the bad and the ugly, or however
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you wanna characterize them. Let's have Rob start out with the pro-GPL
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arguments.</p>
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<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. OK. The GPL is cool. From a purely pragmatic
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perspective, Richard Stallman annoys the hell out of me. But! The GPL is
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really cool. To a programmer, having your work co-opted by someone who
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won't give you the modifications back really deeply sucks. <a name="fork">Having your project fragment</a>
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because people with not social skills can't distinguish between
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technical arguments and when people don't actually like them, or can't
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forward their technical arguments properly and just don't wanna go
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through the whole rigmarole, and decide to fork off a copy, which has
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some improvements, and which also has a bunch of things that don't go
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back in the mainstream, and after they... They release a few binary
|
|
versions, and they don't release the source code for a long time. That's
|
|
really annoying.</p>
|
|
<p>Projects forking is really annoying. The GPL cannot prevent projects
|
|
from forking, but it can seriously discourage it, i you cannot release
|
|
even a beta version without a source code. One of the reasons there are
|
|
so many BSD forks is that they have about as much friction as Debian
|
|
has, and people occasionally go completely nuts like (person X) and
|
|
wander off into a cave somewhere, and...</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. When (person X) goes nuts, how can you tell? <i>(Laughter)</i></p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. It's a matter of momentum, really. There's (person X) <i>being</i> nuts and there's (person X) <i>going</i> nuts. When he's going nuts, he's moving. And... I've never met the man. I don't know, maybe he's really nice in person.</p>
|
|
<p><code>They exchange a few more opinions about X and another person,
|
|
Y, comparing their levels of craziness. I didn't catch the names of
|
|
those people. Both of them are apparently open source developers.
|
|
Eventually Eric Raymond declares this to be a sidetrack.</code></p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. This is a sidetrack.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. This is a sidetrack, but what I wanted to point
|
|
out is, (person Y) works on the Linux kernel, and the Linux kernel has
|
|
not forked. (Person Y) has no intention of forking the Linux kernel. It
|
|
wouldn't come up. (Person X) had the very clear option of just going off
|
|
and forking. He never needed to... he could keep it to himself for two
|
|
years until he decided that other people were ready to share in the
|
|
completed glory of his master vision.</p>
|
|
<p>Rather a lot of forks start when somebody decides "I need to go off
|
|
into a hermitage for a couple of years and nobody will share in the
|
|
completed glory of my master vision. No one will see my source code
|
|
until I am ready for them to see it."</p>
|
|
<p>And the longer a fork stays separate, the harder it is to integrate.
|
|
The classic one of these, that is the reason the GPL evolved, was the <i>emacs</i> / <i>xemacs</i> split, which Eric knows way more about than I do.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. I tried to prevent it. Unsuccessfully.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. And basically what happened is both <i>emacs</i> and <i>xemacs</i> are open-sourced now, but during their development they weren't.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. That's not true. <i>emacs</i> was always open-sourced in the modern sense.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Somebody else</b>. But <i>xemacs</i> wasn't.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. The fork. <i>xemacs</i> was the fork. Might have been Lucent <i>emacs</i> or something like that?</p>
|
|
<p><b>Somebody else</b>. Lucid.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. Lucid, that's it.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. Yeah. But it was a fork for a while, that was
|
|
basically open-sourced upon its death as a closed-source project, which
|
|
is fairly common. A lot of things get open-sourced rather than being
|
|
abandoned. And we have had so much independent development by that time
|
|
so that even though it's open-sourced <i>now</i>, integrating it into <i>emacs</i>
|
|
just can't be done. They've tried. It hurts. Their design has just
|
|
diverged too much, that their central design philosophy has just skewed
|
|
way too much, even though back in the mists of time I'm under the
|
|
impression they forked off the same version.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. The GPL wouldn't have done anything about this, though.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. The GPL would have prevent Lucid emacs from being
|
|
an independent development project for many years without releasing
|
|
source code, so that they could have started the integration work of
|
|
porting over features much earlier.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. The fork didn't happen until after Lucid (...).
|
|
GPL is orthogonal to the causes of this fork. It wasn't the cause, and
|
|
it wouldn't have been the cure.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. I'll have to look at it.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. I was there.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. I'll have to look into that. I read Jamie
|
|
(...)-inski's account, I've read a lot of this. But when this happened I
|
|
was... what? Fourteen? </p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. I think I was the last person present at the conversation that both Jamie (...)-inski and Richard Stallman were in.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Cathy Raymond</b>. Was there blood on the floor afterward? </p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. No, but it took a lot of work on my part to prevent it. And nobody did successfully afterwards.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. I know from reading the history of the GPL that the <i>emacs</i> license happened because Stallman wanted something to prevent what had been going on at the time.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. The problem is that GPL 1.0 predates the <i>emacs</i> / <i>xemacs</i> fork.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. All I really remember about GPL 1.0 is that it was buggy.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. Yeah, it was.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Cathy Raymond</b>. So it was.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. It was, but I've got a copy, and you can see the
|
|
preoccupations and the basics of the logic that went into 2.0.
|
|
Remember, Cathy and I reviewed 2.0. We were there when that transition
|
|
was made.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. I think I still have your little yellow book that has the early <i>emacs</i> license in it.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Cathy Raymond</b>. But in any event, it gives us at least a snapshot of the pro position. Let's give Jay a few minutes on the cons.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Jay Maynard</b>. Fundamentally, <a name="jmaynard">the biggest problem with the GPL</a>
|
|
is that it is a license designed to advance one political philosophy.
|
|
At its root it's not about programming, it's not about sharing per se,
|
|
it's not about all things people like to think it's about. It's
|
|
political. And to understand it, you need to read the GNU Manifesto.
|
|
Hold your nose and read it. It reads very Marxian. It could be boiled
|
|
best down to "from each programmer, according to his abilities, to each
|
|
user, according to his needs". It advances the proposition that while
|
|
programmers should be able to make money for their services, the fruits
|
|
of their labor themselves are not what money should be made from. </p>
|
|
<p>And the GPL was written and designed explicitly to advance that
|
|
philosophy. The idea being that the GNU project would create so much
|
|
good software under this license, that people would be drawn to the
|
|
software and would be drawn to the license to take advantage of it,
|
|
thereby advancing Stallman's political vision, the end goal of which is
|
|
nothing less than the destruction of the software industry as we know it
|
|
today.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. You say that like it's a bad thing! </p>
|
|
<p><b>Jay Maynard</b>. I'm certainly not going to defend Microsoft. I'm
|
|
not sure they are defensible. I'm not gonna say I'm here to defend SCO.
|
|
However, there are a lot of other software companies out there that do
|
|
well and do good. And those too would go straight down the same toilet.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. Can I interject a point? When I was learning
|
|
about business while writing about it -- which is a really weird way to
|
|
go about it -- it does mean that an awful lot of people point out to you
|
|
when you're wrong. I had a column read by... I'm told that it's 15
|
|
million people through the Yahoo syndication, and I had no idea what I
|
|
was doing. And I was very upfront about this. Apparently they just
|
|
thought I asked good stupid questions. </p>
|
|
<p>But one thing I did learn was: commoditization. Mature markets commoditize. </p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. What does this have to do with the GPL, though?</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. What does this have to do with it is: open source
|
|
is commoditization of software. And with the GPL is the forced by
|
|
license commoditization. This product cannot be made proprietary again
|
|
without violating the license terms. </p>
|
|
<p><b>Jay Maynard</b>. Unfortunately though, the argument there, you're
|
|
trying to make fungible something that is not. You cannot make operating
|
|
systems fungible, fundamentally. And I'm not talking about one Linux
|
|
versus another. I'm talking about...</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. What does fungible mean? </p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. Interchangeable.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Jay Maynard</b>. Take bushels of corn in a silo. So you can't
|
|
replace Linux with OS/2, for example. Fundamentally that does not work.
|
|
So the commoditization argument falls because it's trying to attack the
|
|
wrong problem.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. Well, no, what they did is they moved
|
|
commoditization to a slightly different level. If the implementation is
|
|
complex enough that you have to have a common implementation, then you
|
|
have to make implementation a commodity.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. This doesn't take us anywhere on the GPL versus non-GPL.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Jay Maynard</b>. <a name="tcp_stack">And in fact it raises another issue</a>. And that is, when GPL is applied to things that <i>are</i> standards, it hinders the adoption of those standards.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. Ah! Which is a perfect segue to the position I want to state.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Jay Maynard</b>. Let me finish a statement and (...) seamless transition.</p>
|
|
<p>The canonical example of this that GPL advocates come up with is the
|
|
BSD TCP/IP stack. And they argue that the TCP/IP stack was hijacked by
|
|
Microsoft and taken private and Microsoft didn't contribute anything
|
|
back to it, and this is a bad thing. I argue that this is a very good
|
|
thing. Because when Microsoft did it -- there is reasonably (...) it's
|
|
no longer there. But when they did it, they did it mainly to get rid of
|
|
their own buggy code. GPL licensing, the TCP/IP stack would not have
|
|
resulted in the infection of the single line of Microsoft code with the
|
|
GPL. Microsoft would have simply ignored it. And we would today be
|
|
condemned to working around Microsoft bugs all over the internet.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. Like we're not.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. As opposed to?</p>
|
|
<p><b>Jay Maynard</b>. But not at the TCP/IP layer.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b> <i>says something about winsocket</i></p>
|
|
<div style="float:left;padding:10px;width:400px"><a href="http://pic.geekitude.com/v/sf/linucon2005/tronguy/"><img src="maynard2010a%20Archivos/CIMG0928CathEricRobMaynSm.jpg" alt="Cathy Raymond, Eric Raymond, Rob Landley and Jay Maynard"></a>
|
|
<p><code>Left to right: Cathy Raymond, Eric Raymond, Rob Landley and Jay Maynard. More pictures from this panel can be found in my <a href="http://gallery.geekitude.com/v/sf/linucon2005/panelsAndSpeakers/?g2_page=2">Linucon photo gallery</a></code></p>
|
|
</div>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. <a name="eric_raymond">This is the point at which I insert myself between those two zealots.</a></p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. Right! Let us swap the chairs.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Cathy Raymond</b>. Right. Go insert, Eric, and in fact I was going to ask for your position.</p>
|
|
<p><code>They swap chairs so that Eric Raymond is now sitting between Rob Landley and Jay Maynard.</code></p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. I sit somewhere physically and ideologically between these two nutcase friends of mine.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Jay Maynard</b>. Which means, both of us attack him! I've known him 15 years, I don't know how long Rob's (known him).</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. Not that long. Seven? Six?</p>
|
|
<p><b>Cathy Raymond</b>. Stop stroking your grey beard (...)</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. <a name="GPLhindrance">I question the utility of the GPL</a>,
|
|
but not for ideological reasons. Jay is right: it was written to
|
|
advance a political agenda. I don't care. And I don't particularly think
|
|
anyone else should care.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. Yeah, I don't care.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. I don't care (that GPL is quasi-Marxist). What I
|
|
care about is the effects of the GPL. And what I think I'm seeing
|
|
increasingly is that the GPL is a hindrance rather than a help. And the
|
|
reason is that it is slowing down the adoption of open source. There are
|
|
too many corporations out there that have no open source policies
|
|
because they're afraid that they'll get infected with the copyleft
|
|
license and have to suddenly blow open all of their business knowledge,
|
|
all of their intellectual property, everything that they think is
|
|
fundamental to their business model. </p>
|
|
<p>Now, hackers can say: "well, you're wrong about that. It's not as
|
|
fundamental to your business model as you think." I make that argument
|
|
all the time. Sometimes I even succeed with it.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley. We also say it doesn't get infected.</b></p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. I also make that argument too, and sometimes I
|
|
succeed. It doesn't matter. The point is that the perception is out
|
|
there, it's not going to go away, it's easily exploited by our enemies,
|
|
and I think GPL has become a net (?) drag. </p>
|
|
<p>Furthermore, <a name="punishment">I don't think it's necessary</a>,
|
|
because the GPL was erected on the assumption that open source
|
|
cooperation is so fragile, such a sacrifice, such a difficult, painful,
|
|
negative thing to do, that you have to protect it with teeth or it will
|
|
fall apart.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. I don't see that.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. You don't punish behavior unless you think that behavior is attractive.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Jay Maynard</b>. And in fact people accuse me when I raise this
|
|
argument all the time of wanting to take PPL (?) code and use it for
|
|
master evil commercial products.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. Furthermore, you don't punish behavior if you
|
|
believe that that behavior is its own punishment. So the GPL was erected
|
|
on the assumption that defecting from the open source community is
|
|
attractive and is not its own punishment. And what I've come to
|
|
understand is that defecting from the open source community is in fact
|
|
its own punishment. Here's why.</p>
|
|
<p>When you do a proprietary fork of an open source project, here's what
|
|
happens. Now you have a small group of programmers who, because of the
|
|
nature of non-disclosure agreements and proprietary lockdown, can't get
|
|
help from anybody else, and they are competing against the large project
|
|
that they defected from. You can't win that game. And in fact,
|
|
intelligent IT managers these days don't even try. They go the opposite
|
|
direction.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. Yes, but there are a lot of unintelligent ones. There will never be a shortage of unintelligent IT managers.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. Aha! But the market will punish that decision.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. And the next generation will make it all over again.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. And the market will punish that decision, and it
|
|
will keep on doing that until the business world learns better. We
|
|
don't need to punish defection, it punishes itself.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. Actually, you're making an assumption. I do a lot
|
|
of stuff in the embedded space. I'm one of the maintainers of the Busy
|
|
Box project. I'm currently in charge of the stable fork. I put out 1.01,
|
|
I'm gonna be putting out 1.02 after Linucon. I'm trying to get 1.1 to a
|
|
release mode. I'm not the project maintainer, but the project
|
|
maintainer doesn't make releases, he just like putting more code in CVS
|
|
forever. <i>(The panelists cackle.)</i> And somebody has to actually
|
|
send him cakes. But that's a long story. I sent him a cake for the one
|
|
year anniversary of the uclibc 0.9.2.6 release, which prompted the
|
|
release of 0.9.2.7.</p>
|
|
<p><a name="linksys">In the embedded space</a> there are all these
|
|
products that exist for 2 years. The Linksys router and all the clones
|
|
of the Linksys router. The only reason we got the Linksys code open,
|
|
which was Linux-based, Busy Box-based, and had uclibc in it, I think,
|
|
and a bunch of embedded stuff -- the only reason we got this opened is
|
|
that the people writing the embedded stuff, who had these things and
|
|
couldn't use them, basically did a polite GPL enforcement thing, saying:
|
|
we're the copyright holders of some of the code that you have, and we
|
|
would rather like to see the source of your modified version as in the
|
|
license terms.</p>
|
|
<p>Because of this, the code of the Linksys router -- yeah, there are
|
|
some proprietary kernel modules and stuff -- but the source of the
|
|
Linksys router is out there, and because of this, there are now
|
|
companies... There is that guy who has a complete replacement for the
|
|
Linksys firmware...</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. Sveasoft.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. Yeah, him. Which it might have happened without
|
|
that, but it would have happened 5 years later, after we've picked apart
|
|
and reverse-engineered it.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. You picked a bad example. There were already open-sourced firmware loads (?) for the Linksys before they threw the code open.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. And, they couldn't use the wireless hardware.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Jay Maynard</b>. And, what's happened now is Linksys has changed
|
|
the hardware and gone to VxWorks-based software load on the thing and
|
|
it's closed up again! So the GPL hasn't done a damn thing for the
|
|
Linksys users if you weren't lucky enough to get one of the older
|
|
versions! </p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. And this is a perfect example of the GPL retarding acceptance.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. Well, I would also like to point out that since
|
|
Cisco bought Linksys, their market share went through the toilet for
|
|
completely unrelated reasons, cause the hardware started to get really
|
|
really crappy and unreliable.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. They fixed that. I actually bought two
|
|
Linksys'es that I had to junk just after the Cisco transition because
|
|
they had Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Then I went out and bought
|
|
several more functionally similar boxes, and they were so crappy that
|
|
with fear and terror in my heart I bought another Linksys, and it's OK.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. So after you bought 3 of them, you finally got
|
|
one that wasn't crap. And you believe that based on this experience this
|
|
means they fixed their production problems due to 30% yield?</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. No, because it wasn't a yield problem. It was
|
|
the software actually being screwed up. The load I got on the last one
|
|
seems to be OK.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Jay Maynard</b>. Don't look at me, I run a DI 624.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. No, there actually were hardware problems with at least one of them. I remember that the wireless thing went away.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. Yeah, that was after it had been in service for a while. It wasn't Cisco's fault. I've been through a bunch of those boxes.</p>
|
|
<p>I didn't know about the VxWorks load, but it's a perfect example of GPL killing off a niche where we were doing OK.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. Oh, we are still doing fine in a bunch of the
|
|
clones of that thing. The thing is, BusyBox and uClibc maintainer is
|
|
Erik Andersen, and his father is a lawyer. And because of that he can
|
|
basically get free legal time from his father to send out various
|
|
messages to people who are using BusyBox and uClibc in the embedded
|
|
space. He has the Hall of Shame, where basically he's got lots and lots
|
|
of devices that you can grab the firmware image, decrypt it sometimes,
|
|
decompress it, seek into the thing and find the root partition that has
|
|
BusyBox in it, or uClibc, and he basically sends out little "cease and
|
|
desist" letters saying "You guys are using our stuff in violation of the
|
|
license terms. We would like the source code."</p>
|
|
<p>He doesn't go after it too hard. He mostly just sends "cease and
|
|
desist" letters unless somebody really pisses him off. Mostly they do
|
|
release.</p>
|
|
<p>There's a guy in Germany who actually got somebody's production
|
|
halted, because he has some of the network code in Linux kernel. He runs
|
|
gpl-violations.org and he goes after German companies, because that's
|
|
where he lives, or companies that do business in Germany. And he's
|
|
actually getting very good precedents that GPL is enforceable. He's
|
|
gotten restraining orders against companies. You have to stop shipping
|
|
until you resolve this issue.</p>
|
|
<p>But basically in the embedded space, it's not like these are
|
|
people... They don't care one way or the other about shipping source
|
|
code. It's that they've outsourced it to cheap Indian or Taiwanese labor
|
|
that had a 6-month contract, shipped them a finished tarball; they no
|
|
longer have a business relationship with these people; they've shipped a
|
|
product that they expect to manufacture for 6-8 months; it will be on
|
|
the shelf for 2 years; and then no one will support it at all, because
|
|
it was a 40 dollar item. It was cheap, plastic hardware and they have
|
|
moved on.</p>
|
|
<p>We would rather like the source code to these so that we could
|
|
support them ourselves. They're not even worried about clones, because <i>they're</i> not making it anymore.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Jay Maynard</b>. And half the time it's not the design so much as implementation of the manufacturer's application note (?)</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. Half the times the companies we were talking to
|
|
are re-shipping a very lightly modified firmware image that they got
|
|
from somewhere else. And basically we go through this company that's in
|
|
the US; they have to talk to their Taiwanese supplier that doesn't even
|
|
speak English. We would never see any of the source that we do get from
|
|
these guys, if it wasn't for the GPL. And we already had several people
|
|
who... Oh, darn, Glen McGrath is an Australian developer...</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. Taking everything you've said as a given, we
|
|
would never see any of the source code without the GPL. What worries me
|
|
is the second order effects of GPL enforcement are worse than the gains
|
|
we're collecting.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Jay Maynard</b>. Yes. And I think I see where you're actually
|
|
going with this position I happen to agree with, and that is that sure,
|
|
these guys are winning access to source code for...</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. I'm afraid it's winning us battles and losing us the war.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Jay Maynard</b>. Yeah, they're winning access and what will happen
|
|
is manufacturers will simply do like Linksys did in the case of RT54G
|
|
(?): they will put out new versions and simply not use open source
|
|
software. So the overall effect will not be a gain in the open source
|
|
access to firmware at all. The net effect will be that people will
|
|
simply stop using the code.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. I actually don't mind this. If these are people
|
|
who don't wanna play by these terms, they shouldn't have been using it
|
|
in the first place. And one of the interesting things about this is that
|
|
(...)</p>
|
|
<p>(...)</p>
|
|
<p>You're acting like forking is a temporary thing that would just go
|
|
away once we have a sufficient market share, and I'm point out that
|
|
there's never gonna be a shortage of stupid people.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Cathy Raymond</b>. I see an audience question.</p>
|
|
<p><b>A guy from the audience (Big O)</b>. Let me point something out.
|
|
The reason why, these manufacturers use these library components was
|
|
that it shortened their development cycle, so it has some value to them.
|
|
If they wanted to not use it, they should have developed their own and
|
|
not (...)</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. You notice that Linksys didn't go to VxWorks,
|
|
Cisco went to VxWorks, which is a much, much larger company with money
|
|
to license anything they darn well please, that it already integrated
|
|
this into a different business unit.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Jay Maynard</b>. You are assuming, though, that that decision was made at the Cisco corporate level and not the Linksys division one.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. The Linksys division had its management swapped
|
|
out with Cisco management, so Linksys isn't making decisions anymore,
|
|
they're drooling.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Jay Maynard</b>. But the same comment applies. You're not going to
|
|
convince Cisco to produce things to which the source can be obtained.
|
|
It's not going to happen. You're not gonna get Microsoft do it, you're
|
|
not gonna get Cisco do it, you're not gonna get IBM to do it, outside of
|
|
very few cases, and IBM is a special case.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. The question is, are the minor battles we're
|
|
winning by forcing this tiny pieces of code open worth the long-term bad
|
|
effects of scaring lots of corporations and technology vendors away
|
|
from open source? And I'm increasingly thinking not.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. 99% of the time nobody actually fights these
|
|
battles, because we either convince people to cleanly use the stuff and
|
|
release the source code, or not use it. We only really go after the
|
|
people who probably would have released the source code if they could
|
|
have been bothered; or like Harald Welte, people who are like, look, you
|
|
really shouldn't be using Linux if you don't want release the source
|
|
code; we'd rather you didn't ship, and then (?) you ship with something
|
|
else. </p>
|
|
<p>The thing is, most of these niches, there's dozens of players in any
|
|
of these niches. I think it's WindRiver systems, the people who bought
|
|
the corpse of cdrom.com, and they sort of had Slackware for a while, and
|
|
spun it off, and had Free BSD for a while and spun it off... Those guys
|
|
were one of the big players in the embedded space. And they still sort
|
|
of are. But they had to switch over to Linux recently just because it
|
|
was undercutting their margins.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. So instead of threatening people with lawsuits,
|
|
we should simply stand back and let the market do its thing. Help
|
|
commodity software win. That way we win, and we don't slow the adoption
|
|
curve by scaring people with GPL! </p>
|
|
<p><b>Jay Maynard</b>. I need to say at this point that I am not at all
|
|
philosophically opposed to the concept of open source software. What I
|
|
am opposed to is the concept that it should be in any manner, in any
|
|
way, by any person, under any circumstances, mandated in any form.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. Because no one wants to be forced to be virtuous.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Jay Maynard</b>. Correct.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. And that seems to be the common objection. I'd like to point out that both of you are fairly radical libertarians, correct? </p>
|
|
<p><b>Jay Maynard</b>. He would argue that...</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. No, I'm a radical libertarian. He (Jay Maynard) is a conservative.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Jay Maynard</b>. I consider myself a conservative with libertarian leanings.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. <a name="bsd">I'd like to point out that Free BSD</a> has been out for, like, six months less than Linux. And it has had basically every opportunity that Linux has.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Jay Maynard</b>. No, it hasn't.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. Their failure was due to two main causes that
|
|
have nothing to do with the GPL/BSD distinction. One was they lost a
|
|
critical window of opportunity in the AT&T vs BSD lawsuit. If it
|
|
haven't been for that, the BSD people are well aware, and in fact Linus
|
|
is well aware -- I had this conversation with him -- that BSD would
|
|
probably rule the world now. I've been on stage with Linus when he
|
|
admitted this publicly.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. Yeah, I've heard he said that. He said that <i>he</i> would have worked on BSD had it been out at the time.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. That was problem number one. Problem number two is: the BSD people got their social organization wrong. </p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. Still is.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. Yea, yea, yea, yea! The fundamental problem with
|
|
BSD is there is a whole unitary distribution. You can't change any
|
|
piece of policy without forking the entire project model. They're very
|
|
proud of their single make system: you type "make" at the top level and
|
|
it builds everything: kernel, utilities, the whole nine yards. They're
|
|
very proud of that. The problem is, it introduces fatal social
|
|
rigidities. It means that any time you disagree with even the smallest
|
|
little piece of the distribution decision, your only option is to do (as
|
|
the person X did). That's the problem with BSD.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Jay Maynard</b>. And in fact, consider a Gentoo BSD, which would
|
|
provide the same thing, except not mandate the distribution decision.
|
|
You think that would have made a significant difference?</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. Oh, yeah! The problem is, the people -- and I
|
|
say this as a person who comes form that world myself -- the people who
|
|
founded the BSD project were excessively old school. They were still
|
|
thinking in terms of the traditional software engineering, and toward
|
|
(?) the critical points of organization, they thought you had to have
|
|
one. And that's what screwed them up. It wasn't GPL versus BSD. They got
|
|
their social machinery wrong.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. So why hasn't it recovered if the GPL is dragging Linux so badly?</p>
|
|
<p><b>Cathy Raymond</b>. Cause they still don't have their social machinery right? </p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. Heh heh heh. Well, for one thing, the relative
|
|
size of their developer communities. Who wants to go play in an
|
|
environment as authoritarian as, say, Free BSD? </p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. One interesting thing about the GPL is that it
|
|
appeals to developers because GPL is designed to protect the interests
|
|
of developers. So people who write open source code have a huge
|
|
incentive...</p>
|
|
<p><b>Cathy Raymond</b>. Slow down. Let's slow down. I see a couple of questions that I'd like to get to. The gentleman way there in the back?</p>
|
|
<p><b>The gentleman in the back</b> <i>says something about how MacOS uses BSD and is now competing with BSD. That causes Rob Landley to segue into this:</i></p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. There would be a Microsoft version of Linux
|
|
today, if there was a BSD license, or at least they would have
|
|
incorporated huge quantities of code, and they would have embraced and
|
|
extended it so that it wouldn't...</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. If that were happening, we would be winning, because they'd have to use our networking stacks, our file protocols...</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. And we'd have to buy it from them if we wanted to (...) We still wouldn't have 3-D drivers.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. No, no, no! We'd still own the basic projects
|
|
they were taking code from. If Microsoft tried to embrace and extend us,
|
|
this would be a good thing.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Jay Maynard</b> <i>apparently addresses the guy in the audience who said Apple was competing with BSD</i>.
|
|
And I have to argue with one fundamental assertion that you made in it.
|
|
Apple did not steal Free BSD! Get that thought out of your mind right
|
|
now!</p>
|
|
<p><b>Somebody</b> (maybe the same guy who mentioned Apple). I'm sorry. You're right.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. They hired several developers.</p>
|
|
<p>(...)</p>
|
|
<p><b>Jay Maynard</b>. One of the fundamental philosophies of BSDs
|
|
plural is that people like Apple should be able to take that code and
|
|
freely use it and freely build on it, and not be beholden to do a damn
|
|
thing because of it. </p>
|
|
<p><b>Cathy Raymond</b>. Why? No, seriously, why? I'm interested in this because... Well, I'll get to my own opinion (in a minute).</p>
|
|
<p><b>Jay Maynard</b>. It comes down to the fundamental definition of
|
|
freedom. And true freedom must absolutely, necessarily include the
|
|
freedom to do something that pisses other people off, as long as you
|
|
don't actually harm them.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Cathy Raymond</b>. Right, like promulgating your software under the GPL.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. Nobody's forcing anybody to use the GPL.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Jay Maynard</b>. Hang on, hang on. The fundamental difference here
|
|
is that the BSD types realize that allowing somebody like Apple to take
|
|
their software and release the modifications without source, or release
|
|
add-ons without source, etc. is going to piss off people. But there is
|
|
no actual harm there. And so in order to maximize freedom for everybody
|
|
you must grant them that freedom. If, as the GPL advocates claim, you
|
|
must restrict freedom in order to maximize freedom...</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. Ignorance is slavery! War is peace! </p>
|
|
<p><b>Jay Maynard</b>. ... that is like the canonical example, fucking for virginity.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. I'd like to point out the that Bill of Rights is a list of things, of restrictions that people should not be doing (...)</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. No, that the government must not do. (...)</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. So, laws against killing people: we'd be better off without them.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. You stepped over a line. There's actual harm involved.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Jay Maynard. So, Cathy, speak up. You...</b></p>
|
|
<p><b>Cathy Raymond</b>. I was first going to find out what Mr. Big O wanted to say, if he still remembers it.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Big O</b>. I don't.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Cathy Raymond</b>. OK. So let me start with my own recap of what I'm hearing here.</p>
|
|
<p>Rob is a programmer and he sees the GPL as important, because it's a way for a programmer...</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. Useful.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Cathy Raymond</b>. Useful. Whatever. It's a way for a programmer,
|
|
as it were, to protect his ability to develop his code. Jay is looking
|
|
at... Jay recognizes that there's also a political agenda which can be
|
|
used in the GPL. And he finds it offensive because he thinks that it
|
|
interferes with commerce, with the ability to freely trade...</p>
|
|
<p><b>Jay Maynard</b>. I'm a naked capitalist.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. If you're gonna talk the freedom talk, walk the freedom walk. He argues that FSF isn't doing that.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Cathy Raymond</b>. Eric is a visionary. Eric has this dream for
|
|
open source, and he has looked at the GPL, and he thinks that at this
|
|
point GPL is doing more harm than good to the vision. </p>
|
|
<p>I'm a lawyer. To me, a license, any kind of license is a tool. The
|
|
purpose of a tool is to help somebody to get something done. When a tool
|
|
is a license, the purpose is to effectuate the goals of whoever owns
|
|
the thing that's being licensed. You write a program, you own it. You
|
|
have a right to set terms under which it can be bought, sold,
|
|
distributed, whatever. That's part of what a license is supposed to do
|
|
for you. If you want to use your distribution of your code as means to
|
|
push a political agenda, you can do that. It's a free country. You will
|
|
piss people off, but you can do that.</p>
|
|
<p>What I'm hearing here is not so much that GPL is ineffective, but
|
|
that the GPL is, in a sense, too effective, notwithstanding that there
|
|
isn't a court in America that has yet said it's an enforceable license.
|
|
What I'm hearing is people saying that they disagree with the different
|
|
agendas that are being discussed. And that's very interesting to me. </p>
|
|
<p>I think that whether those agendas are good, bad or evil, may be a
|
|
slightly different panel, but we can certainly go into that in the
|
|
remaining five minutes.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. Can I clarify one thing?</p>
|
|
<p><b>Cathy Raymond</b>. Please.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. I'd like to clarify one thing. I really don't
|
|
care about the political agenda of the Free Software Foundation. I
|
|
consider them largely to be foaming loonies. They may be right in some
|
|
things but that doesn't stop them from being foaming loonies about an
|
|
awful lot of it.<br>
|
|
Most of the BSD people who object to GPL because it's not "real"
|
|
freedom, it's Nutra-freedom (panelists emit shrieks of laughter) -- I
|
|
consider them to be just as zealous as people who say there should be no
|
|
software that is not GPL'ed. I use BSD-licensed code, I just don't
|
|
write it. As a developer, I use the GPL because it's the license I want
|
|
on the code I write in my spare time that I'm not paid to write. I will
|
|
not release BSD-licensed code without a darn good reason, unless I am
|
|
paid to write it. It's not what I do for fun.</p>
|
|
<p><a name="stallman">The elephant in the room is that Linux is GPL'ed right now</a>,
|
|
and the license is not changing, because there are way too many
|
|
stakeholders. The license on most of the GPL'ed software out there --
|
|
you're not gonna get it re-licensed. You're either arguing that new
|
|
software should not be GPL'ed, which, I admit... I admit that GPL 3.0 is
|
|
somewhat scary, because, well, Stallman is involved in doing it, and to
|
|
me he seems more sane with distance. The longer ago he said stuff, the
|
|
more...</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. The less crazy it seems.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. The less crazy it seems. I don't know if this is
|
|
history proving him right, or the fact that he used to be more sane. I
|
|
don't know.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. I've known him long enough to answer that question. He used to be more sane.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Jay Maynard</b>. I'm going to object to one thing there, and that
|
|
is, that talking about freedom makes me a zealot. What was it
|
|
(So-and-so) said? Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice?
|
|
Freedom is so thoroughly important a concept, it's so central to what we
|
|
are as a society, it's so vital to what we want to become, that
|
|
polluting it by discussing freedom in a manner that FSF is doing, is
|
|
actively harmful to the concept of maximizing freedom in our society.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. And I will say... I will make my closing
|
|
statement. I will start by saying, no, I will not concede that he is a
|
|
zealot about freedom. If he were a zealot about freedom, he wouldn't be a
|
|
conservative, he'd be a libertarian. <i>(Everybody laughs.)</i></p>
|
|
<p>But my closing statement about the GPL is the thought I wanna leave
|
|
you all with, is that I think the GPL was fundamentally a confession of
|
|
(...) weakness. That it was written at a time when we saw open source
|
|
and free software development as a fragile, endangered phenomenon that
|
|
was surrounded by predators much more powerful than us. What I want to
|
|
point out is that it's 2005, we don't live in that world anymore.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. Yes, Microsoft imploded years ago, they (...) They admit they haven't shipped anything (?) <i>(Everybody laughs.)</i></p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. We don't live in that world anymore, and I don't
|
|
think it's possible, I think that open source is a superior development
|
|
method. We will win in the market place. And I don't think it's
|
|
possible to both believe that and believe that the GPL is necessary.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. I'd like to live to see it. DCSS, binary-only
|
|
Nvidia drivers, 802.11g was a huge fight, we still have problems and I
|
|
don't think even if we had a lot of market share, someone who had an
|
|
end-all, be-all graphics card that was still a monopoly piece of
|
|
hardware, you know, because it was just so much cooler that anything
|
|
else out there, they would love to have a binary-only driver, they would
|
|
love to dictate the terms to the rest of the world. That's what
|
|
monopolies do.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. Yeah, well, and you know what markets eventually
|
|
do to monopolies, unless there's a government propping them up. They
|
|
kill them.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. And it can take 60 years.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. No, actually, the half-life of monopolies is about 12 years.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Cathy Raymond</b>. When did Microsoft become a monopoly, again?</p>
|
|
<p><b>Jay Maynard</b>. In 1995.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. More or less since the release of Windows 3.1. It was more like '92.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. The half-life of monopolies is about 12 years.
|
|
This is very hard number, derived from studying monopoly market shares,
|
|
and location on the (...) over the last 150 years.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. That is an interesting argument, and I'd like
|
|
more information on that, because my main objection is, you know, it's
|
|
like, yay BSD, it can be stable once it's dominant and it's not stable
|
|
when it's not dominant.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. There is one exception. If you get government to
|
|
prop you up the way (so-and-so) did with the AT&T monopoly, then
|
|
you get to exceed the 12-year half-life. Unless government a silent
|
|
partner -- 12 year half-life. It's a rule.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. How long did Henry Ford last?</p>
|
|
<p><b>Cathy Raymond</b>. Well, back then it wasn't called a monopoly. It was...</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>, <i>addressing a member of the audience</i>. Back there! We'll finish up with this guy's question.</p>
|
|
<p><b>A guy in the audience</b>. (If a company can run away with
|
|
commercially viable open source software, they will.) And the only thing
|
|
that's stopping them from running away with all the stuff that is
|
|
Linux, and keeping them...</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. And running a small development group competing with the large group?</p>
|
|
<p><b>Jay Maynard</b>. You are making a fundamental assumption that
|
|
makes my blood boil. And that is... The assumption you are making is
|
|
that by doing so, they will make the original code that they are
|
|
starting from unavailable. And that is flat 100% wrong of any OSD
|
|
licence. BSD, QPL, GPL, no matter what, you cannot take existing code
|
|
private.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. You can just render it irrelevant.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. When has that ever...</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. You can also hire the developers away.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Eric Raymond</b>. When has "render it irrelevant" ever been accomplished, even once? Give me even one example.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. I remember a number under OS/2, but (...)</p>
|
|
<p><b>Jay Maynard</b>. If that could be done, we wouldn't have BSD today, cause Sun would have taken it private.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Rob Landley</b>. Yeah. Well, Sun hired away Bill Joy, and then... it didn't stop it, it just cost them five years.</p>
|
|
<p><b>Cathy Raymond</b>. I think we will all have to agree to disagree.
|
|
It's 3 o'clock, I am expected at another panel, if there is no one else
|
|
in the room after this, you're welcome to continue the debate.</p>
|
|
</div>
|
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