Which is it? If I develop a standalone app that doesn’t in any way modify any gpl-licensed code, but USES gpl-licensed code to allow, say, network traffic, then which is it? Are all my bits belong to you or not? Maybe if this was clear, people wouldn’t be confused.

No.

To clarify, I don’t think usage of your application would be legal (as proprietary code cannot be linked with GPLed code, that’s a job for the LGPL) but your application will not become GPLed because of this. You alone have copyright over code you write (unless you specifically renounce such rights or assign them someone else), and it cannot be licensed under terms that you do not consent to.

The situation you state is the whole reason the LGPL was written. Proprietary code and GPLed code cannot be legally linked, but proprietary code and LGPLed code can be linked. Code that is dual-licensed under the LGPL and other licensed (Mozilla Firefox being a prime example of this) can also be linked with proprietary code as you’re free to use any of the licences it comes under.

And as always, you could still write your own proprietary code and make whatever money people cared to pay you for it. If it’s not better than what they can get for free, well, then, I don’t know what to tell you. You’re not going to find a lot of support for suppressing better software and a better system in favor of maintaining the old ways. I’m sure the buggy and buggy whip manufacturers had their concerns about new ways also.

I have no problem with this, but what YOU have not addressed is my scenario of if/when GPL becomes so dominant that there is no opt out possible. I and others content that in the resulting situation the FSF and GPL become a monopoly that is in its own way just as bad if not worse than any commercially based one.

“If you’d rather accept M$’s hand-in-your-wallet licenses, go right ahead.”

This statement is baloney.

The real issue here is that to some (myself included) GPL at its core ultimately stifles individual enterprise by taking the ability to make “Real” money off of ones coding off the table. Once can argue that the number of people who are ultimately going to be really effected by GPL’s social contract are so small that the greater good outweighs their loss. I and others are not so sure – hence my quoting of the old
eastern european adage

“They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work….”

If your code is ultimately going into the communal pot for all to benefit from, You the creator are ultimately in no different a situation from the workers in the former communist “utopias” who were paid substandard wages for their physical labor. The difference is that you the program creater/writer will never be allowed to benefit directly from “selling” your work – You will have to contribute it for all to use. IF you find yourself having to work in a GPL’d world, unless you are into giving away your ideas, you will soon find yourself in the place that the socialist work who coined the phrase I quoted above were.

The GPL prevents their work and ideas from being stolen by large, greedy, powerful corporations run by unscrupulous a**holes like Ba11mer and protected by lawyers, lobbyists and bought-and-paid-for politicians. As such it’s going to be attacked by smart, motivated and obscenely over-paid people, so it has to be defensible. Not being written to make everyone happy comes with the territory.

As others have said: if you don’t like the GPL or won’t take the time to understand it and work within its strictures, don’t use GPL’ed software. If you’d rather accept M$’s hand-in-your-wallet licenses, go right ahead.

How free are you if the Free software movement becomes so dominant that your options are to accept the GPL or look for another line of work?
If FSF becomes as big and as dominant as microsoft, it is no different than microsoft – a monopoly is a monopoly.

I doubt the founding fathers are doing much spinning over the GPL. Copyright was a much less respected thing in their day than in ours. The Copyright Act of 1790 included only maps, charts and books, only for U.S. citizens, and had much shorter terms of protection (only 14 years).

It was also only about a half a newspaper page long. I’d imagine they would do pirouettes, over the hundreds of pages of current law.

You also err in conflating the open (or free) software movements with socialism. In Socialism is imposed from without; if you live in a socialist society, you don’t get a choice. Anyone who wants to can accept or reject GPL, or whatever agreement they choose. That is, they are free to do so. No one, to my knowledge, is suggesting that Microsoft has no right to keep its code closed and proprietary, just that it’s not the best thing.

Microsoft may not be the be all end all for software, but I wonder shat it would be like if they were not around? I would guess there would be a few less apps on the shelf…

And who in the world would be so stupid as to think Inalienable rights pertains to software, it pertains to people. If someone in 1776 demanded free books, or services, they would be thrown out in the street.

(Sound of our founding father spinning in there graves…)

Bryan
Denver

My point was that people aren’t pretending with free software. They’re doing it.

Ideas are not property.

I’ll go with Thomas Jefferson on the subject of owning ideas:

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.

The fact that people are passionate about free software is frankly, irrelevant to the point that I was making, which was the ability to directly make money off an idea that is my property. In the world of free software that idea has to be shared back into the pot for all to use. If I am lucky, I will get the credit and make money on the side. What I will NOT do is be able to directly reap the economic benefits of what is MY PROPERTY, because the game is cooked against that.

As far as free software making money for people is concerned, What I see in the way of commercial activities Free software is being treated for the most part as the enabling platform (or plumbing) that companies give away to sell their proprietary value added applications on. It would be interesting to see how long GPL/Free software last if a single major company loses a valuable piece of intellectial property to the community because they were forced to give it up by an entity enforcing the terms of the GPL.

Ah, but I think that reflects the apathy and indifference of people who don’t get to choose what they do and aren’t able to compete effectively.

Many people love to work on free software, are very passionate about it, and produce great work. Free software is enabling all kinds of competitive activities and is making money for people. I think it’s inaccurate to try associating it with a system of communism that inefficiently allocates resources.

There are many who think that GPL and free software are the future. I on the other hand, cant help but think of a phrase that I was told was an adage out of the former communist block that reflected the general attitude of that world.

“They pretend to pay us… and we pretend to work!”

Maybe those who don’t have such options do a little side consulting or such for a fee, perhaps (if there’s any leftover energy). One wonders that if they don’t do something like that, then they must be pursuing a rather ascetic lifestyle. Not everybody is cut out to buck the Greed Engine in that way, you know. After all we do live in a commercial society, like it or not.

That said, though, I do agree that the quasi-predatory suits and salesmen mentality/way is a fairly clunky one, and I certainly don’t blame anybody for yearning to not have to participate in it, if they can somehow manage otherwise.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights

And as far as I can tell, those have nothing to do with copyright or private property rights.

An example of this at: http://preview.tinyurl.com/yxshjf

Slavery is immoral because it deprives its victims of their right to property. Contracts are moral because they define the terms under which we voluntarily exchange something we own for something we want. The GPL is moral because it is a contract that defines the terms under which one person’s intellectual property is offered to others: “You can have this only if you agree to redistribute it freely.”

The right to property is the essential American ideal. Both the GPL and the Microsoft Software License Terms for Windows Vista are an expression of this ideal. We may debate which one is more attractive to customers or more effective at encouraging further development, but nobody can fairly argue that either agreement is somehow immoral.

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