00:00 <isd> :P

00:00 <isd> They typically do both though.

00:00 <ocdtrekkie> One of my best friends is a lawyer (or will be officially shortly), but still.

00:00 <isd> But I actually think the copyleft camp tends to focus too much on licensing in general; there are a lot of practical things that matter that the license doesn't address.

00:01 <ocdtrekkie> As I said, I have yet to have a practical problem due to the GPL, but it leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. Imposition of personal values on others is something I find pretty uncomfortable.

00:01 <isd> access to the source code is a really obvious thing that the GPL tries to ensure.

00:01 <isd> Eh, I think personal values are a better reason to impose restrictions on someone than a corporate bottom line.

00:01 <ocdtrekkie> Like, what is the harm caused by violating the GPL over... just not using the code at all?

00:02 <ocdtrekkie> The source code is already accessible: The person who put their open source code out there is providing the code.

00:02 <ocdtrekkie> Someone else making a modified version doesn't change that or affect that.

00:03 <isd> So, the easiest target is something like what happened with wine: it used to be MIT, cedega basically started ripping off the code wholsale, adding stuff to it and selling it, contributing nothing of value back (they were better about that early on, but things got worse as time passed). The wine project was sick of playing second-fiddle to this other product despite doing the majority of the work, so they relicensed LGPL.

00:04 <isd> It's one thing to just not use the GPL'd code, but it's another thing to mooch off of someone else's work without giving back.

00:04 <ocdtrekkie> Was the other product better?

00:05 <isd> ocdtrekkie: I don't know that I have the knowledge to make a technical assesment -- this was like 10+ years ago, and while I was around I didn't really dig into it very much.

00:05 <isd> They specifically targeted games.

00:06 <mokomull> man, that's a project name I haven't heard in a while.

00:06 <isd> It probably did work a bit better, but would have been completely non-functional if they hadn't built on top of this other codebase.

00:06 <ocdtrekkie> So they were jealous someone else had made other improvements.

00:06 <isd> Again, I think it's incredibly inconsistent to say that they should be able to do that sort of thing, but expect the wine developers to give away their code without asking *anything*

00:07 <ocdtrekkie> Well, I'm not saying the wine developers should be expected to give away anything... they chose to.

00:07 <ocdtrekkie> And then got upset that someone used it.

00:07 <ocdtrekkie> (Based on your example.)

00:07 <mokomull> OTOH what happens with, say, the Linux kernel, is that those developers get hired by the company using it.

00:10 <isd> Again, all I'm saying is I this position is unreasonable: (1) it's okay for people to ship code that gives the recipients essentially no rights, (2) It's okay for people to ship code that let's people do anything they want, including (1), but (3) it's not okay to ship code that only asks that derivitive works be shared-alike.

00:11 <isd> Like, I think we can have a more subjective argument about whether (1) is okay or not, or other things about licensing, but the above just seems incredibly inconsistent.

00:11 <isd> And yes, they got annoyed with the situation and decided to stop giving this company a free lunch.

00:13 <ocdtrekkie> It's not a free lunch though. The company was presumably successful because they were offering something above and beyond what was already out there for free.

00:16 <isd> You still haven't addressed my claim of inconsistency. Like I said, I think there is plenty of other ground for respectful disagreement. But what I described above just seems incoherent. Or is it not a valid description of what you're saying?

00:18 <ocdtrekkie> Again, the difference is very simple: Proprietary code never stakes claim on my work. Yes, that's because I do not get to do that work in the first place.

00:18 <isd> Define "stakes claim"

00:18 <isd> What *exactly* do you mean by that?

00:18 <ocdtrekkie> But I see nothing unethical about someone controlling their work, and do see something unethical about someone trying to control mine.

00:19 <isd> (again, your work is *strictly more* controlled by a proprietary work)

00:19 <ocdtrekkie> Okay, so GPLProject1 is your work. I make MyModifiedFlavor. The delta between those two projects is my work.

00:19 <isd> correct.

00:19 <ocdtrekkie> GPLProject1 has decided how my work must be distributed. Which is unethical.

00:20 <isd> Worth pointing out: to the extent that your delta is coherent by itself, you can distribute it however you like.

00:21 <ocdtrekkie> Well, you pointed that out earlier.

00:21 <isd> Right. so again, what do you mean by "staking a claim"?

00:21 <ocdtrekkie> My work should be distributed under my own intention. Not someone else's.

00:21 <isd> The GPL imposes strictly less than a typical proprietary license in this case.

00:22 <isd> With a proprietary license, if you did something like that you just couldn't distribute it at all.

00:22 <ocdtrekkie> In the case of proprietary code, my work does not exist, it's irrelevant.

00:22 <ocdtrekkie> Nobody is imposing upon my work.

00:22 <isd> No one is forcing you to build something on top of the GPL code.

00:22 <ocdtrekkie> True, and that's why people consider carefully before using GPL content. ;)

00:22 <ocdtrekkie> Which is where we're at.

00:23 <isd> ocdtrekkie: Sure. Again, my gripe is just that I think saying doing the proprietary thing *is* okay makes no sense if you're going to say that the gpl *isn't.*

00:24 <isd> I'm not saying you shouldn't look at the licenses of things you base your work on.

00:24 <ocdtrekkie> If you do not understand my position as of here, you aren't going to understand it after another thirty or forty chat messages. :P

00:24 <ocdtrekkie> I do not think I could explain it more effectively than I have already.

00:26 <isd> Fair enough. It does seem like this is going nowhere.

00:27 <ocdtrekkie> That's where most arguments about software licenses go, FWIW.

00:27 <ocdtrekkie> I have yet to witness someone change someone else's mind about copyleft. I'm sure it happens, but I've never seen it.

00:51 <isd> Okay, back to actually useful things.

00:54 <TimMc> ++