Licensing rant / debate thread

[PMc]

It's debatable. Even though Linux and BSD's make their sources available to the public, there's not that many people willing or even able to read through the code and understand it well enough to even know what it takes (try to open up a text editor, make a change, and recompile the whole kernel with that change).

But what's the problem with that? I'm doing it all the time.
Somehow, the bugs seem to follow me like mosquitos do. This was the one from yesterday: https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/ZlHCxjfpxXyqS_wz@disp.intra.daemon.contact
I'm not really eager to start fixing that one, I hope the guys there will look into it. But I had some patches in the postgres at times when the query-optimizer did not produce the expected results.

I think this all is actually a matter of fear, and overcoming fear. Back when I, perchance, got a job as a business consultant, the other guys termed me "guru" - because I was not afraid of the technology. See, if you grab a personal-computer, install a unix onto it and then understand and configure it properly, then you can handle the compute-center environment of maybe a big bank as well, because it's all the same technology, only scaled up. You don't need to be afraid of it, you just need to read about the special features that are used in a corporate environment, and understand them. And obviousely you need to be careful.
But these guys tend to think, uuh this is big, so it goes over our understanding. And then they grab the manuals and try to enter these commands literally, without trying to understand what they do. Which doesn't always work.

It's probably the same now with the source base: uuh, this is so big and multi-leveled, it must go over our understanding. Which is not true, it's still simply make; make install.

Back in time, it was mandatory to compile your kernel first, before you could run a suitable system. And people didn't complain they would have a problem with that. So what has happened?

And the hardware that FreeBSD runs on is definitely NOT free. Somebody, somewhere, paid to produce it and sell it

That's true, I had to steal my first hardware (and often had to decide if I want something to eat or some hardware).

Maybe (some) people have just become too rich. And so they expect that everything has to be paid for, ignorantly assuming that everybody can pay (but how should the money magically appear?) - and decently ignoring that by tradition, over a million years, we always had built our necessities by ourselves (and not doing it yourself was only an option for the gentry).

Sure, you can normally not build computer hardware by yourself - but then, Seymour Cray could do it, so it is not impossible either.

 

[astyle]

Sure, you can normally not build computer hardware by yourself - but then, Seymour Cray could do it, so it is not impossible either.

You can trust a physics PhD to run a nuclear reactor AND to be able to learn to run a vacuum cleaner. But you can't trust a random janitor to run a vacuum cleaner AND be able to learn how to safely run a nuclear reactor. There's kind of a reason one has a physics PhD and the other does not...

Even if the janitor has no fear of flipping a switch on a nuclear reactor, you probably don't want a janitor anywhere near the switch panel for the facility. This is why appropriate expertise is such a difference maker - this is why huge nuclear facilities have tight security that only allow trained and credentialed staff in to work. If you have no idea why you absolutely cannot drop the uranium cartridge - you have no business being anywhere near it.

But even a rank-and-file physics PhD is not a sure bet for being capable of running a nuclear reactor - lecturing at a university and understanding the theoretical math is very different from realizing that if you don't build a huge fence around the facility, you'll end up with practically a 'death zone' around it.

But back to the thread:

See, if you grab a personal-computer, install a unix onto it and then understand and configure it properly, then you can handle the compute-center environment of maybe a big bank as well, because it's all the same technology, only scaled up. You don't need to be afraid of it, you just need to read about the special features that are used in a corporate environment, and understand them. And obviousely you need to be careful.

If that were the case, then anyone who wants a job at Intel or Oracle or Microsoft - they would have hand one by now. Yeah, info is out there - if you're not too lazy to dig it up, huh? Yeah, find me a random Joe who can learn Matlab in a day or so, documentation is out there, it must me so easy to learn, right? Yeah, how would you know you have your expert?

by tradition, over a million years, we always had built our necessities by ourselves (and not doing it yourself was only an option for the gentry).

Yeah, try writing your own OS - the TempleOS guy did that, y'know.

 

[PMc]

You can trust a physics PhD to run a nuclear reactor AND to be able to learn to run a vacuum cleaner. But you can't trust a random janitor to run a vacuum cleaner AND be able to learn how to safely run a nuclear reactor. There's kind of a reason one has a physics PhD and the other does not...

Yes, and that's exactly the cool thing with computers.
You cannot just build an aircraft DIY and fly around - or, few people can do that, and with a lot of people, I would just *not want* them to do it.
But you can always install something on a personal computer, and try things out - and either you're able to learn or not. There is very limited danger along.

But back to the thread:

If that were the case, then anyone who wants a job at Intel or Oracle or Microsoft - they would have hand one by now. Yeah, info is out there - if you're not too lazy to dig it up, huh?

Mayby that's indeed the point - lazyness. But also, rules have changed nowadays. Getting a job seems no longer a matter of technical skill, but rather of buerocratic compliance.

Yeah, find me a random Joe who can learn Matlab in a day or so, documentation is out there, it must me so easy to learn, right? Yeah, how would you know you have your expert?

I have no idea what Matlab can do. I'm already too lazy to configure my office suite appropriately. But I love this OS. When I got my first CDrom with Rel. 2.1.6., I was thinking how many thousands of hours of effort were condensed in that little shiny thing, already back then in 1995. And that's a gift, and one appreciates such a gift by playing with it, looking into it, understanding how it works, and utilizing the fact that it is all open software, can all be changed and adapted.

That's what it is about. At least I think so.

 

[astyle]

There is very limited danger along.

Until you ask that machine to control a nuclear reactor and collect all kinds of logs. If you have the brains, you can adapt Open Source components to do the job - or closed-source stuff that just might be a specially built tool for that job.

Getting a job seems no longer a matter of technical skill, but rather of buerocratic compliance.

My impression is that it used to be 80% technical skill and 20% industry skill. Like a database admin in a lawyer's office, who can query a database for a given case, but have no idea if the query returned any useful results. Seems like (in a law firm setting) these days, it's better to have a lawyer who's at least a little bit technically literate than a skilled sysadmin who can fix a booting problem - but has no idea how a law office functions. Certain data needs to be protected from unauthorized access for a variety of reasons. And yes, you gotta have such reasons in mind when setting up the authentication scheme or design storage for that data. Preferences are changing towards 80% industry skill and 20% technical skill. If you're wondering where I get my numbers from - google the term Pareto Principle.

 

[PMc]

My impression is that it used to be 80% technical skill and 20% industry skill. [...] Preferences are changing towards 80% industry skill and 20% technical skill.

Thats similar to what I observed. The technical gurus got fired and preference moved to the business consultants, i.e. those who can throw around three-letter-acronyms without having a clue what they mean.
I preferred to term the outcome "skillfree delivery".

 

[Crivens]

"skillfree delivery"

I am so gonna steal this...

 

[wb7odyfred]

Thank you for sharing your idea/concept of "Skill Free Delivery".

How do you market an object like FreeBSD, that takes a fair amount of effort to read and study and try things out? I have used the Clang LLVM compiler and the work other Developers completed in porting FreeBSD software to Raspberry Pi 4B , 400 SBCs. to port https://github.com/ghostbsd source code (https://ghostbsd.org which is a copy of FreeBSD source code , with modifications) to run on a Raspberry Pi 4B hardware. Like you did with CD rom containing that gift of software operating system, I , too, enjoy FreeBSD or GhostBSD running on a Raspberry Pi computer connected to my HDMI Television. Yet, I must not be saying the 3 letter buzz words to attract attention to my free offering, Like Robonuggie YouTube channel can.
https://ghostbsd-arm64.blogspot.com/2024/01/january-19-2024-howto-download.html

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJtLJGujjhM
Yellow USB flash drive, UGreen USB SSD Flash drive, Raspberry Pi 4B sbc.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqPuSd1DnZc
Items necessary to create a Raspberry Pi 4B or 400 Keyboard GhostBSD-Arm64 workstation


https://ghostbsd-arm64.blogspot.com/2024/05/netbsd-aarch64-100-install-on-raspberry.html NetBSD 10.0 Install to Raspberry Pi 4B Aarch64 hardware.

 

[PMc]

I am so gonna steal this...

You're very welcome

Thank you for sharing your idea/concept of "Skill Free Delivery".

How do you market an object like FreeBSD, that takes a fair amount of effort to read and study and try things out?

A good question, but sadly I'm the wrong guy to ask that. I've given up on that matter.
Nowadays everything has to be "marketed" in order to grab some attention in a world that is already overcrowded with attention-grabbers. And I don't really know how to cope with that.

 

[astyle]

The 'ideal' mix of technical literacy vs 'industry-related competence'... An admin is supposed to be able to respect and support the workflow of the office. If info is meant to be shared, where's the competence of Apache and IPv6? If info is meant to be protected, where's the ability to set up MFA correctly? Who can you trust with that kind of judgement, to be able to tell which is which without getting the rest of the office into trouble?

This is partly why licenses exist, why there's a bewildering mix of them, and they tell you different things. Yeah, you want an expert, you want some kind of limits to avoid getting into trouble.

 

[unitrunker]

At the risk of going on a tangent ...

Well thought-out and well-written software that just-works doesn't stir up much noise in public forums while quirky, hard-to-use, and buggy software gets lots of attention - creating the false impression that it is more popular.

 

[tingo]

How do you market an object like FreeBSD, that takes a fair amount of effort to read and study and try things out?

1) why do you want to market it? Marketing can mean many things, but often it is trying to create a demand where none exists.
2) If you want to tell a person about FreeBSD, you can try the competence / skill approach: "FreeBSD requires learning the skill of how to use it and become familiar with it. When you have done that, you have at your disposal a tool for very many computing tasks".

 

[Crivens]

'industry-related competence'

Does that skill come with kneepads? Inquireing minds dont't want to know...

I have realized that most companies have an age limit of maybe 60 years, after which they can only implode under their own incompetence, nepotism, greed and bureaucracy. There is no good in fighting that. When you have companies that are around for longer they are either still in the hands of the founders, small enough not to have the critical mass for the collapse or they are kept alive from the outside. Well, more like "kept around" than "kept alive". Skilled people start jumping ship long before, or go start-up and make the old company obsolete. We already have a good licence for that, you can take any work under that with you when you leave. GPL3 tries that with the anti-patent part. Patents are doing severe harm these days.

 

[astyle]

When I was in college (just after y2k), selection of software to perform particular tasks was kind of limited, so people talked about 'software patents', rather than 'software licenses'. There were Patent Offices in many countries, and they were well suited to using the legal system to fight against copycats and make money for the inventors/programmers. Patents as such made sense back then.

By contrast, the very concept of 'software licenses' started making sense because of proliferation of software. 'Prior art' is a term you often see when doing research on how to file a patent. In case of software, there's just too much of that 'Prior art' out there to be able to make a case that a patent should be granted for your efforts. The earliest known software patent was granted in 1950s to General Motors (to cover an OS they wrote for IBM's 701 computer)... precisely because nothing like that ever existed before. Even Microsoft Windows could not get an OS patent, they ended up with a 'GUI patent' in 1985. Licenses started making sense on many accounts when patenting stopped making sense for software.

Skilled people start jumping ship long before, or go start-up and make the old company obsolete. We already have a good licence for that, you can take any work under that with you when you leave. GPL3 tries that with the anti-patent part.

When I was in college, one of my Computer Science professors remarked that according to university policy, rights to software (written by a professor) belong to the university. But by contrast, the same policy document also specified that if a student wrote some decent software, the student retains the rights to that software, not the university. That basically means that if a professor leaves the university, it's the university calling the shots on what to do with the software the professor wrote - patent it, publish/distribute the source, and more. By contrast, if a student wrote some software and then leaves the university - it's the student calling the shots on what happens to the software they wrote (patent/publish/distribute). (yeah, provided the student did not graduate with a crushing debt, as is common within US )

My point is, software licenses are easier to deal with than software patents. There's been quite a bit of criticism of the whole 'patent system', btw, coming to light at a time when the software licenses have been a huge point of contention around 2010 (plus-minus a few years). Who can forget the rampage that SCO went on? or Sony/MPAA?

 

[6502]

To me what Perens' idea is all about are people like Werner Koch, the developer of GNU Privacy Guard, the nowaday standard PGP program.

Koch might be a good developer, but he sucks at money. So Koch always failed to ensure that he can make a living by e.g. getting hired by a big company, even for some time was short in the verge of bankruptcy. The is why he considered quitting the project at that point. His project also seems to be more or less a one man show.

What if he had offered $1-2 license for GPG? Probably good income and motivation for improvements. There will be disgruntled people arguing that software should be free. Even just $2 would be considered cheeky. In the same time same people will pay $10 for phone glass protector or colored case.

 

[astyle]

What if he had offered $1-2 license for GPG? Probably good income and motivation for improvements. There will be disgruntled people arguing that software should be free. Even just $2 would be considered cheeky. In the same time same people will pay $10 for phone glass protector or colored case.

That's the playbook that Apple uses for the iPhone app developers already. And there are glass protectors that cost $30-40 on Amazon easy - already.

 

[kpedersen]

What if he had offered $1-2 license for GPG? Probably good income and motivation for improvements.

It would then have failed within the industry since no-one would want to pay a license for something so trivial.

However, it would have meant that there was now a gap in the market for an open-source/non-license encumbered one to be developed. And hopefully by a developer who is a bit more financially stable.

If developers can't afford to work for free on something they enjoy, that is absolutely fine, they should focus on stability first. What they can't assume is that they will make money on working on something for free. That is a gamble. I believe there is a massive push for monetizing free software in the last 5 years (including new licenses such as Post Open and Business Source license).