Re: Copyright assignment requirement

[David Chisnall]

On 3 Jun 2014, at 09:10, Richard Frith-Macdonald 
<richardfrithmacdonald@gmail.com> wrote:

> I don't agree with this for the simple reason that I have seen no evidence of 
> many companies being unable to use GNUstep due to licensing.
> On the contrary, I work for companies that sell to major international 
> telecoms operators ... big, conservative companies ... who don't have a 
> problem with the license.
> 
> What I have come across personally though, is a small number of companies who 
> were initially against including/using free software, but changed their 
> position when the actual license was shown to them (ie they had an initial 
> uneducated reaction influenced by FUD).

Not specifically related to GNUstep, but I have personally come across several 
companies who refuse to allow GPLv3 code in the door and a smaller number that 
won't allow GPLv2 code in.  Most of these are large companies that do employ 
lawyers.  Have you ever tried to get a definitive answer from a lawyer?  I can 
guarantee that no lawyer will look at the GPL and say definitively that it's 
safe, because lawyers simply do not do that with legal documents that complex 
(the FreeBSD Foundation's lawyer has difficulty making definitive statements 
about the 2-clause BSD license, and that's an order of magnitude simpler).  

Now, obviously there's some selection bias there, because I've come across most 
of these companies in my role as a member of the FreeBSD Core Team, so they're 
already companies that have some commitment to using BSD-licensed software.  
Between them, however, they contribute about half a million dollars a year to 
the development of FreeBSD (measured as donations to the Foundation, on top of 
the code contributions from their employees).  How much does GNUstep get from 
[L]GPL-friendly companies?  

I can also give you an anecdote from ARM, which explains why they are dialling 
back their efforts on GCC and switching to using LLVM as the basis for both 
their proprietary and open source toolchains.  After surveying their customers, 
they found that there was roughly a split between 'don't care, we'll use 
whatever you recommend' and 'we won't touch GPL'd code'.  Note that this is for 
a compiler, which is not code that their customers will actually ship, only 
code that they'll use in-house.  

I can point to one company that has chosen to avoid GNUstep precisely because 
of the license.  A little search engine / advertising company based in Mountain 
View California.  Nicolas can perhaps tell you a bit more about that case...

I've also come across a couple of companies that are almost certainly using 
GNUstep code, but don't want to admit it publicly (which means that they won't 
contribute changes back) because they think they can get away with violating 
the [L]GPL and no one will find out.  And they're right: when was the last time 
the FSF's lawyers went after anyone for shipping derived works of GNUstep code 
in proprietary products?  And would it even be a net gain for the project if 
they did?  When Busybox went after router makers, the main outcome we saw was 
that a lot of them started shipping parts of the FreeBSD userland on their 
Linux-based routers instead of Busybox.   I won't mention names on the list, 
but Gregory can give you some more details in private if you don't want to take 
my word for it.

> My impression is that the people who say the license is a problem are mostly 
> those who are already advocates of BSD and/or negative about the FSF, and 
> while I don't doubt that their beliefs are honestly held, I question the 
> degree to which such a person would have argued in favour of using GNU 
> software in a company.

When the alternative is licensing a proprietary product or using something like 
Qt?  It's not a choice of using GNUstep or using a BSD licensed alternative 
(and I admit, in this case I'd be quite likely to argue for the BSDL option), 
it's a case of using GNUstep or using something in C++.  There is no BSDL 
alternative when it comes to GUI toolkits, although at least with Qt you can 
use the LGPL parts without needing to ship GPL'd bits (gdnc, gdomap), which 
likely does factor a bit.  Most of the time, however, the no-GPLv3 policy is in 
place long before I get to the company and comes from legal so I'm not 
qualified to dispute it.

David




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