[slownews45]

Anyone feel like FSF moved from maybe engineering idealists to a very lawyer driven type org?

The big GPLv3 push and development - plenty of attacks on folks actually shipping product on GPLv2 and building communities around that model (which keeps software free but allows users of the software to do what they want with it pretty much including putting in devices that are locked down - cars / tivo's etc).

Here's an opportunity to really advance in an interesting area with ML -> something that may open up programming to more people -> may advance computers ability to program and modify their own programs in the long run.

And regardless of the FSF attorney stuff, places like china, tiny little LLC's with no assets will very likely use the wonderful amount of code on the web to develop solutions in this space, even if FSF claims everything is a violation. Where is the vision anymore from FSF.

One thing that's been sad about the FSF -> it's gone from what I would consider a forward looking idealism sort of thing -> here's how we could do / make cool stuff that let communities work together -> to now sort of a legal compliance type org that really is focused on "actionable claims" " protected against violations" etc.

Question - does the Linux community and other successful larger open source communities welcome the FSF and their attorney's into the discussion? I can hardly imagine the BSD's, the Linux folks really connecting anymore with them.

Is there space for a different group, maybe a collection of actual develops shipping code in larger communities to get together, no FSF / SFC lawyers present, to think creatively about the future? What should we be working for, what is fair to everyone, what helps society, what works around pro-social community building?

A tool that helps with cross language building blocks for common functions etc (stackoverflow on steroids) - just how bad is this?

[danhor]

This is more of a tangent, but I found this framing very interesting: > which keeps software free but allows users of the software to do what they want with it pretty much including putting in devices that are locked down - cars / tivo's etc

The FSF considers the user to be the one using cars/tivo's/other devices. In their view, this was a design flaw of gplv2 that it allowed locking out end-users of their devices.

For Linux this was not the case. The important part that modifications/extensions were shared (and maybe even upstreamed), while the end user access wasn't important.

The case of tivoization fractured the interest between the mostly moral "I want freedom for the end user" and the more immediately benefical "If you use my code, I want reciprocity for modifications".

I personally believe that today the latter case won, even for a lot of non-gpl software that gets lots of contributions e.g. via github for lots of different reasons, but the moral case gets more dire.

Looking at security for older (or shockingly often even current) devices, right to repair and lots of other issues concerning the effective loss of rights with more modern devices, the concerns of the FSF were often accurate, but with the increasingly hostile approach to "proprietary" IP and thus the exclusion of GPLv3 and similar licenses not palatable to the larger open source community.

The approach to IP in china is also sometimes a lot different, see https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297.

[pabs3]

Some interesting links about the TiVo stuff:

https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/jul/23/tivoization-and-t... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27937877 https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017...

Apparently what TiVo did (breaking proprietary software if you modify GPLed software) is even allowed by GPLv3.

[slownews45]

Right - FSF ended up with a user view. Problem was the developers are the one actually writing the code and picking licenses, and the FSF moved away from really talking with them. I think this was a big shift.

[laumars]

I’m all for advancing machine learning but given how much big corporations aggressively defend their IP, it’s a hard pill to swallow if someone shrugs off a potential misuse of open source code. The law is the law and if it’s ok for Microsoft to defend their copyrights then it’s ok for the FSF to defend my copyrighted code too. The fact that I licensed it GPL was intentional — if I didn’t give a crap what happened to the code then I’d have used BSD or similar. But I chose to place restrictions and I’m very much interested to see if training proprietary AI models are legally covered under those restrictions.

[e40]

No. The FSF had lawyers from the beginning and always thought (I talked with RMS in the early 80's some) that enforcement was part of the plan.

[slownews45]

Sure, but the GPLv2 was very freedom oriented. Enforcement practically was relatively sparse and more educational I thought. Ie, release the TiVo source code, but we don't care that Tivo's are locked down.

Is anyone building strong communities on AGPLv3 / GPLv3? I feel the momentum shifted towards Apache / MIT style licenses unfortunately.

[blendergeek]

> Is anyone building strong communities on AGPLv3 / GPLv3? I feel the momentum shifted towards Apache / MIT style licenses unfortunately.

While the corporate momentum switched to Apache/MIT licenses, there are strong communities built on AGPLv3/GPLv3.

* Nextcloud - file hosting (AGPLv3)

* Source Hut - git hosting (AGPLv3)

* StreetComplete - OpenStreetMap editing (GPLv3)

* F-Droid - Free Software "app store" for android (GPLv3)

* NewPipe - alternative Youtube frontend (GPLv3)

While these aren't necessarily used by large corporations, their individual communities are thriving and strong.

The shift toward SSPL and Commons Clause licensing is another argument in favor of AGPLv3 licensing. Amazon/Google often won't touch your AGPLv3 code (and you can still sell proprietary licenses to other companies that can't/won't use AGPLv3).

[slownews45]

(A)GPLv3 actually has seen some real growth corporate side -> it's used commonly by proprietary tech companies as sort of a poison license (Microsoft had some of these like SSPL).

The way this works is all contributors are required to sign a CLA -> the corporate developer can then use their code under ANY license, and most importantly can integrate into propriatery products or sell to others.

The code is then released as an AGPLv3 to be "open source" - but literally the only company with the "super" rights to license / make money off it is the corp dev.

It's kind of genius -> so I think we may see more (A)GPLv3 stuff coming this way. The corp developer can then offer for example a hosted version of the software WITHOUT releasing all the related code! But anyone else would have to release their code.

You an see how this is done here:

https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/developers/cla/

[blendergeek]

> The way this works is all contributors are required to sign a CLA -> the corporate developer can then use their code under ANY license, and most importantly can integrate into propriatery products or sell to others.

If a third party is contributing a lot of code that is highly relevant, the third party is under no obligation to sign the CLA. The third party is entirely within her rights to refuse to sign the CLA and distribute an AGPLv3-only fork of the software.

If this fork is significantly better than the original, the original authors are out of luck when it comes to proprieatary relicensing.

This is what happened with OwnCloud/Nextcloud. OwnCloud was AGPLv3 but required a CLA. OwnCloud became OpenCore and started distributing "enterprise" features as proprietary upgrades. Some developers were unhappy with this and forked OwnCloud and started developing Nextcloud. All contributions to Nextcloud are AGPLv3 only and cannot be re-licensed by Owncloud. Interestingly enough, any new code released under AGPLv3 by Owncloud can still be used by Nextcloud.

[necovek]

> But anyone else would have to release their code.

Which I think is perfectly fair: you are getting a full product, and you can do with it as you please (including profit off of it), as long as you publish your changes too!

The fact that the original copyright holder has the rights to close it off for future developments is completely natural, and if you do not want to allow them to do that, don't sign a CLA and fork. Oh, there's a cost in maintaining a fork? Pick your poison then :)

To me what matters is that once you get the software, you have freedom to use and modify it. I am ok if you do not have the "freedom" to close it off. If you start being a bigger contributor than the original company, you avoid all of the problems with a fork, but you can't say you did not benefit from the original AGPL release.

[gkbrk]

> The code is then released as an AGPLv3 [...] but the only company with the rights to make money off it is the corp dev.

Actually anyone that has the AGPL code can sell and/or make money from it. People regularly buy GPL software and pay monthly subscriptions to hosted AGPL software.

If you can't compete without having some code as "trade secrets"; that's your failed business model, not a fault of the license.

[detaro]

> but we don't care that Tivo's are locked down.

They literally made the GPLv3 because they cared about that very much.

[vhold]

In case anybody is wondering about this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#Tivoization

[pabs3]

Here are some links about the history around Tivo & GPLv3:

https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/jul/23/tivoization-and-t... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27937877 https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017...

[slownews45]

The FSF did GPLv3. The folks doing Linux etc did not.

[pseudalopex]

You asked if the FSF changed.

[goodpoint]

Don't forget the threat of patents.

[jcelerier]

Qt has switched to GPLv3 and is going pretty strong as a community. Can't find the figures for the official forum, but an unofficial one has 75k members.

[blendergeek]

> The big GPLv3 push and development - plenty of attacks on folks actually shipping product on GPLv2 and building communities around that model (which keeps software free but allows users of the software to do what they want with it pretty much including putting in devices that are locked down - cars / tivo's etc).

The users of the software are the owners of the devices. The distributors are the ones locking down the devices to prevent the users from modifying the software (often so that the distributors can control something else the users are doing).

GPL is about end-user freedom (as opposed to software distributor freedom). This is why GPLv3 exists.

[slownews45]

GPL used to be targeted at DEVELOPERS of software - the share and share alike model. These developers would in some cases use the GPL'ed software in locked down devices (many / most android devices are pretty locked down - but developers contribute to a GPL kernel).

So yes, FSF created GPLv3 to focus on USERS freedoms, but the users are not writing the software - so it remains the devs who pick licenses.

[pseudalopex]

The Free Software definition always put users first.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition#T...

[goodpoint]

I've never met a developer who is not a user.

[simion314]

>And regardless of the FSF attorney stuff, places like china, ....

So your argument is if China does not care about license neither should we, the thing is I am fine with that, I know Windows source code is leaked so let's train an AI on it too

I think is a clear sign that MS did not trained on proprietary code , it means that is not legal or not safe, so the question is why GPL or other licenses are safe, I think you need the authors or the licenses to give you the permission to use the code as training data in black box, locked, proprietary algorithms.