[reitanqild]

> The thought that someone might take the code I wrote and make it into a proprietary product, removing the freedoms I had, is horrible.

I feel this argument is weak: even if I license my works under BSD, no one can make my BSD licensed code that has already been distributed into to a proprietary product, even not myself.

To make that software that I licensed under BSD a proprietary product they would need to somehow convince all users of my software to get rid of all copies as well as convincing me to stop distributing it under a free licence.

Building a proprietary product that includes my code does NOT remove anyones freedom to use my code, no?

[Deejahll]

This presumes that any modifications to "your" code that someone else makes should be none of your business. Seems fine on the surface.

But what if your code writes files or communicates over the network? And what if, say, Microsoft takes your permissively-licensed code that is just beginning to gain popularity, changes one piece of it to make it incompatible with yours, and doesn't release their change? They use their massive marketing department or pre-bundling to get lots of Windows users to use it. Everyone is still free to use "your" version of the code, but nobody wants to, since it is incompatible with the more popular Microsoft version, now on its way to becoming "the standard."

If you are okay with that, no rabid copyleft zealot like me has any place to criticize you. Release your code with a permissive license. That's fine. (Permissive licenses are considered "Free Software" by FSF and rms as well, after all.)

But to me, that seems grossly unfair for code I spent my valuable time designing and developing, so I don't release my code under a permissive license. If Microsoft wants to build a product with the work I have done, it needs to convey the same freedoms to its users that I did. That's the cost.

[millstone]

This is hypocritical, because the GPL does exactly what you describe through its "or any later version" clause. Remember when gcc switched to GPLv3? Did you contribute to gcc? If so, your contribution got re-licensed under whatever the FSF decided, and thereby acquired a bunch of new restrictions that you never agreed to.

And sure, everyone is free to use the v2 version of the code (i.e. gcc 4.2), but nobody wants to, since all new development is happening with the v3 version, which is now the standard.

Linux is a famous exception: it omits the "or any later version" clause, and so avoids getting steamrolled in the way you describe.

[click170]

> Remember when gcc switched to GPLv3? Did you contribute to gcc? If so, your contribution got re-licensed under whatever the FSF decided, and thereby acquired a bunch of new restrictions that you never agreed to.

How can they relicense the code unless every contributor signed a Contributor License Agreement granting them that right?

A quick search seems to indicate that GCC has no such CLA.

[elsjaako]

The standard GPL includes a clause that let's you published a modified version of the software under a later version of the GPL.

So if you write something under the GPLv2, and I change it and publish it, then the GPL says I need to release the source under the GPLv2 or later. This means that I can publish it under the GPLv3, and you can't take back my changes unless you upgrade your software to the GPLv3.

Linux removed the "or later" text from their version of the GPLv2, meaning that I can't change the Linux kernel and publish the result under the GPLv3.

[the_why_of_y]

This is incorrect, no version of the GPL has such a clause. The FSF merely recommends that authors give downstreams the option to use GPL version N "or later".

However, you can "upgrade" LGPL code to GPL, see LGPLv3 "2. Conveying Modified Versions".

There is a FLOSS license that has an implicit upgrade to new version clause: the Mozilla Public License, see "6.2. Effect of New Versions" in MPLv1.1.

[elsjaako]

I learned something today.

It looks like the "or later clause" is a built in option, but not a built in default, of the GPLv2. With that I mean that the meaning of that phrase is explained in the 9th clause.

[fsloth]

Can you provide examples of software that were released by their original author using BSD/Mit style licence and got steamrolled by a third party who took their code and mangled it?

At least to my knowledge the opposite seems to be more common. Experts release a library under a very permissive licence, and everybody wins. One such example is libPNG.

http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/src/libpng-LICENSE.txt

[alecco]

I got an example, you are likely using it right now.

KHTML (LGPL, not GPL) taken by Apple to make WebKit (LGPL), later "rewritten" and licensed BSD for 2.0.

Apple did also the dirty trick of giving a single huge patch against the previous release of KHTML making it almost impossible to integrate back to the main codebase. Even LGPL can be abused. Lesson learned the hard way by the community.

And you now have everyone parroting how great WebKit is, nobody remembers the original team at KDE. It was brutal.

[anonbanker]

Microsoft did exactly this in Windows 2000 with the BSD-licenced Kerberos. Embraced and Extended.

[throwawaykf05]

Microsoft used their own implementation of Kerberos. From the Kerberos Wikipedia entry:

> While Microsoft uses the Kerberos protocol, it does not use the MIT software.

The license of the original implementation is thus irrelevant. Pretty much the only thing that would have prevented MS would have been if there were patents on Kerberos.

[dummyfellow]

Did MS use kerberos implementation or the protocol, wiki page isn't very clear on it. If it is 2nd then it would be an entirely different issue, which even GPL/copyleft wouldn't have helped (though oracle java lawsuit may do so).

[anonbanker]

Yes, they used the code itself (which was legal due to the 3-clause license), but didn't credit until publicly shamed. There was a huge stink back in the day because of it.

[throwawaykf05]

MS extended the protocol, not the implementation.

How would the Oracle lawsuit change anything? Protocols are almost explicitly the things that are not protected by copyright. The problem is, people here are confusing interfaces in human-readable code (copyright-eligible) with interfaces for binary interoperability between systems (not eligible).

[anonbanker]

no dude, not only did they take the code and extend the protocol[1], while attempting to relicense it[2], but then they tried to sue /. to remove posts of people that talked about it[3].

1. http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Microsoft-und-Open-So... 2. http://slashdot.org/story/00/05/02/158204/kerberos-pacs-and-... 3. http://features.slashdot.org/story/00/05/18/2015251/our-atto...

[pjmlp]

If Apple hadn't made Swift open source now at WWDC, that would be a fine example.

Or the zillion of extensions being made by companies on top of LLVM.

[geon]

A very contrived example.

[Deejahll]

Oh yeah I just pulled that from a fever dream I had, that sort of thing never happens in real life.

> "Embrace, extend, and extinguish", is a phrase that was used internally by Microsoft to describe its strategy for entering product categories involving widely used standards, extending those standards with proprietary capabilities, and then using those differences to disadvantage its competitors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish

[jahewson]

And what permissively licensed software did Microsoft apply this policy to, exactly? Or is it just an unfounded fear?

[fao_]

Read the link. It has a moderately-sized list of examples from Microsoft. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish...

[throwawaykf05]

I could not find a single example of "permissively licensed software" in there. Nor do in think one exists. Remember, this is the Microsoft that would not touch open source with a 10-foot pole.

MS did embrace and extend standards, but that is a very different thing from code.

[anonbanker]

Kerberos. back in 2000.