The only code that helps us and not our adversaries is copylefted code.
I would have him not view people on the other side as advisaries. Sure FreeBSD and Konquer didn't gain much from Apple deciding to use their code, but they also didn't lose anything either. It isn't a zero sum game.
> Sure FreeBSD and Konquer didn't gain much from Apple deciding to use their code, but they also didn't lose anything either.
I disagree.
In fact, I think the GPL probably saved the World Wide Web.
That Konquerer was GPL was the single advantage it had over anything else. It used to be a buggier, and slower, and generally worse web browser, but every time someone made an improvement, the GPL made those improvements Free; When Apple improved it, it was the GPL forced them to make those changes available to everyone else, and while the code being available is what helped Google start their web browser, it was the GPL that fed those improvements back into the community.
Perhaps Mozilla (open source, but not GPL) would have remained an acceptable way to search wikipedia, but I struggle to believe it would become good enough to be embedded in nearly every operating system and WWW-capable device.
>That Konquerer was GPL was the single advantage it had over anything else.
This is simply not true, and if it were, you'd be implying that Apple chose Konquerer over Mozilla because they preferred GPL to MPL. In reality, Konquerer had a much cleaner architecture that Apple thought they had a better chance of adapting to OS X.
The GPL had nothing to do with any of these events, the key feature was open source, not GPL. And if Apple had not turned Konquerer into a first-class user agent, Mozilla still would have had a first class open source user agent.
I think the web is one place where the GPL has demonstrated that GPL is not a key desirable feature in open platforms. GPL has had remarkably little to do with any of the web, as it is only used in one of three major user agents, and in almost none of the web-specific server stack.
I interpret geocar's point as being that the (L)GPL is the reason that Apple had to contribute the improvements that they made to Konqueror/KHTML back to the community in the form of WebKit: sure, they chose KHTML because of its technical merits but, having done so, they were obliged to make their improvements to the LGPL code available under the same license, thus allowing Google to use it in Chrome.
Actually, in the Debug podcast, it was revealed that they were going to go with Mozilla's effort and all that held them back was that KHTML was so much simpler to explain, though the simplicity was something it lost in rewrites. WebKit, regardless of original License, was likely going to be open source either way just as Darwin was even without the License requirement. The point here is that non-free uses inside OS X helped rather than hindered the development of KHTML software. By non-free I refer less to the availability of source code as to how copyright around branding forces a schism for normal folks between Chrome/Safari and WebKit/Blink projects. Few will download or trust a silver WebKit experimental build or blue Chromium over their official variants, particularly if functionality is crippled because of the lack of proprietary extensions that would normally ship or easily integrate. Sometimes FSF users simply aren't "the rest of us," which is why it's normal to have competing licenses. I hope this encourages both projects to become more active developing end-user appreciable features, though perhaps I'm more pragmatic that way.
> Actually, in the Debug podcast, it was revealed that they were going to go with Mozilla's effort and all that held them back was that KHTML was so much simpler to explain
Actually, that's completely irrelevant.
The GPL ensured that Google could benefit from Apple's decision to use KHTML.
That's exactly relevant! Your premise is that <insert entity> (in this case Apple) objects to releasing things free, and the only thing that made them do it is GPL. GPL is simply not relevant here, no one cared. Apple in turn benefited from Google's improvements of Webkit, etc. People who make decisions in companies, and indeed people in general, are perfectly able to understand the enormous benefits of cooperation. No need for any kind of force or coercion, thank you very much.
Whether there are other benefits to giving away source code is not relevant. What they might have done is not relevant. No one could ever say whether Apple and Google and Samsung would have gotten together and made a web browser in collaboration without the GPL.
The fact is that they did not do it without the GPL.
Your argument, that GPL was KHTML's only advantage, doesn't make any sense because it then follows that Apple chose KHTML because they just love GPL and won't accept anything else despite KHTML's supposed technical inferiority. In other words, you're saying Apple chose KHTML because their only concern was apparently to get to be forced by GPL to release improvements. Because if KHTML was so inferior and forced them to release improvements (let's imply Apple didn't like this), what reason would they possibly have to choose KHTML? "Oh, look, there are these other engines which are better than KHTML but unfortunately their licenses don't force us to release our work, so no, we choose GPL."
In reality KHTML was a much better code base than other options, and Apple didn't really care that much about the license.
Let me tie in this comment with the whole thing about GPL vs. non-copyleft free software drama in general, and why I think GPL has become harmful: what you said I think illustrates a kind of thinking mode that the idea, the practical working principle, behind GPL breeds. The idea is to use force and coercion to make entities do what you want them to do. That road naturally leads to a mindset where every behavior is seen as necessarily motivated by coercion. And that leads one to normalize and accept coercion as an acceptable, even necessary, mode of social relations. I see this mode of thinking a lot with strong advocates of GPL. It's always in terms of someone being forced to do something good, and if they aren't being forced no good shall come out. This is a horrible, horrible way to look at the world. If we take Apple as an example, they open-sourced a lot of stuff they had no legal reason to release, some of those things very non trivial.
I have to point out that I'm writing all of this as someone who respects RMS and FSF's cause a great deal, I even use the term free software rather than open source (in my native language, fortunately, there's no confusion about "free", free as in freedom and free as in bear are not homonyms). However, I do not think GPL and strong copyleft licenses are an acceptable, or even a good way, to accomplish freedom in this domain of life. GPL is maybe a great tool to destroy proprietary software (well, almost, but not quite), but a horrible way to accomplish software freedoms in general.
relying on the goodwill of an entity will almost always get you nowhere. Apple (or any other major corporation) does what they do purely for profit - and of their decision to unilaterally release source code (without coersion from a license) is made based on the positive PR gains, on the fact that releasing software to commoditize the competition will help their own business, or for some other publically unknown reason.
It's always better to encode, into law, ethical behaviour we want, instead of hoping for it from people. Doubly so when the 'person' is a corporation.
People can and did extend Mozilla, and they can and did keep those changes non-free because the MPL allows for non-free linking and binary-only redistribution.
I would have him not view people on the other side as advisaries.
"Competitor that through their marketplace success makes us further from our social goal" doesn't have all the same connotations as "advisory", but given their goals I don't see how it's not an accurate descriptor.
No, the software marketplace isn't a zero sum game. I'm not even a believer in free software, but it still frustrates me to no end when someone says "not a zero sum game" in a conversation that is so obviously about market share.
"Us" is literally the entire world, _including_ the proprietary software companies— up to the point where they start making encumbered versions of the program. So it is far from as simple as straight up competition.
It isn't about market share it is about users getting what they need. Sure you can measure users in terms of market share but that doesn't make it about market share.
People who threatens others with lawsuit for doing modification or sharing are adversaries to RMS. For example, he seems to dislike Apple because they threatens jailbreakers with million dollar lawsuits and jail, and do not want his code to contribute to that misery.
> I would have him not view people on the other side as advisaries.
A big part of the impetus for the FSF was an early instance where they were adversaries, at least in RMS's eyes. The MIT AI lab had an open culture of sharing code, which was "taken proprietary" by several spinoffs in the early 1980s, who hired away some of the AI-lab hackers and stopped sharing improvements with the remaining not-hired-away AI-lab hackers. Stallman saw that as a bit of a betrayal of trust, not to mention damaging to the open development of software, and users' ability to have the source to & freedom to modify their software.
His solution was twofold: 1) start his own competing spinoff (the Free Software Foundation) which would employ its own set of hackers to develop the "public", non-proprietary codebase; and 2) license their contributions under a new license, the GPL, which would ensure that extensions to their code couldn't be taken proprietary.
The only code that helps us and not our adversaries is copylefted code.
I would have him not view people on the other side as advisaries. Sure FreeBSD and Konquer didn't gain much from Apple deciding to use their code, but they also didn't lose anything either. It isn't a zero sum game.