GPL software clearly improving over years on Github

[Jean Louis]

* Marinus Savoritias <marinus.savoritias@disroot.org> [2020-10-01 17:10]:
>
>
> On 10/1/20 2:21 PM, Jean Louis wrote:
> > * Marinus Savoritias <marinus.savoritias@disroot.org> [2020-10-01 12:06]:
> > > > GPL program may be used for crime, smuggling, nuclear missiles, drug
> > > > sales, and other destructive actions. But that is still a feature of
> > > > free software, and not disadvantage. You may use it for whatever
> > > > purpose you wish, that includes invoking it by proprietary
> > > > software.
> > >
> > > Depends how you look at it. Being able to use GPL for purposes of war 
> > > gives
> > > freedom to the privileged people who do the war. But what about the people
> > > who are actually being attacked? Do they have Freedom with your license?
> > > Shouldn't we at least try to protect these people from being
> > > attacked?
> >
> > It is not up to us to decide who is just or unjust. Think about that.
>
> Why do you decide if proprietary software is unjust then? Deciding what is
> just and unjust selectively is hypocritical.

Free software movement is political, so it decides of what is just or
unjust, but its scope is software.

Its scope is not war, porn, crime, or drugs, or other social issues,
so it is free for everybody to use it as they wish.

> Plus if you think that war or nukes or the other things you
> mentioned are not necessarily bad then it makes me question whether
> you care about people at all outside of your bubble.

For me, war is type of communication by primitive people. I am
civilized, so I am against any type of aggression or war, I am
pacifist and I do not recognize any countries or political entities or
political borders on this planet.

Nevertheless I am here together with others on this planet, we have to
live together.

Subject is free software, not war.

We are not selective how free software can be used related to using it
how one wants context, thus we are not selective if criminals or
corrupted war mongers are using it and for which reasons.

> > When you give money or receive money, that money was maybe used for
> > illegal activities, like it was most probably in hands of dirty
> > people, or criminals, drug dealers or child traffickers.
> >
> > It is not up to us to judge who uses the software and for which
> > purpose, including to limit usage of software for any purpose.
> >
> > When you sell water, you don't limit who is to drink the water based
> > on their character, same with money, food, and also same with free
> > software.
>
> If you are privileged enough to not care sure. But if somebody has created a
> program that can be used to hurt people and they do nothing to stop it then
> I will do everything in my power to speak against it.

That is certainly your right, which you may excercise in civilized
countries without fear.

Yet it doesn not tackle the fact that free software may be used as you
wish for whatever purposes.

In a civilized country, like Norway, even heavy criminals have rights
to their education, they attend university from prison. You cannot
deny certain rights to people.

In free software movement, we do not wish to deny rights to people to
use the software how they wish.

In the university you may learn many things, and use them badly, that
does not imply that universities shall be forbidden to be used by
people who may use the education they got to make pervert or criminal
acts. Things are separate.

> If you created a program that you know may be used then you are complicit
> too. You knew what you were doing but you didn't stop it.

That is not relevant to GPL license. Criminal matters are handled by
criminal law and governmental procedures.

> > Let us say emergency department in hospital, do they care if bad
> > person like criminal was shut and hurt? They do care, they don't look
> > into whys and justice.
>
> This is such a weak argument. So you are comparing something you created, a
> program, to water?
>
> 1. Water is neccessere for everybody. There are no alternatives. You can't
> own it. Your Software is your creation though.

Somebody does need to supply water, so there is effort
involved. Software as well.

> 2. As I have said above. Software is your creation you decide what happens
> to it the minute you give a license. If you know it can be used to hurt
> people and you do nothing you are complicit.

That is incorrect.

Any programming language can be, and many have been used to hurt
people. That is fact. CPU and chips are created and could be used in
missiles and in computers.

Knives are created for food, but manufacturer of knife is not a
complice to crime if somebody used it for crime.

Separate things like act of crime and software.

Even malicious software can be and have been published under GPL. That
is fine, as long as it is free software. If software have been made
for malicious intents, that does not mean there is no good use of such
software.

> Are you basically denying that you have any responsibility in what
> happens with the software you created?

You have personal responsibilities always. Each person has
responsibilities and groups such as teams, cities, they all have
responsibilities and question is how much of it they are willing to
implement.

Your personal responsibilities do not mean you accept responsibilities
for other people, right?

  16. Limitation of Liability.

  IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING
WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MODIFIES AND/OR CONVEYS
THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY
GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE
USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF
DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD
PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS),
EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
SUCH DAMAGES.

It is part of the license.

If somebody implements software that kills people, like car driving,
or drone that is going around and shooting people, that is not your
responsibility.

> > > You didn't protect the user in that case. You protect your own self
> > > interests like corporations do. We shouldn't require from the user
> > > to check the hundreds of packages they have installed just in case
> > > something became closed source.
> >
> > I don't get this.
>
> I meant that something can become closed source without warning when
> you use permissive licenses. The user has to check every single
> package if it becomes closed source actively.

No, that is not so.

Users of OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, do not need to check if their free
software becomes somewhere else closed source, they still have the
free software copy and binary and sources, so they have freedom.

If somebody takes a package from OpenBSD and make binary package, that
is then up to those other or same users to decide, if they wish to use
such package for which there is no source.

I do not believe that majority of users of BSD-derivative systems
would trust such binaries.

You need not check nothing, you can just keep using your free
software.

And by the way, GPL software can be also made binary or proprietary by
abusing the licenses, and you will not know it. You cannot even know
it, unless made public.

> > License cannot help you to enforce proprietary software or binaries
> > being made out of GPL software, made by bad boys. I see you cannot
> > understand this statement, even I gave you example with guns. Guns are
> > regulated in many countries, but that implies that only people abiding
> > by the law are going to abide the regulation to get a license for the
> > gun. Bad boy does not abide by the law, and need not look into any
> > license, when bad boy wants it, bad boy will use the gun. You cannot
> > do anything about it.
>
> Have you heard about a small thing called police and justice system?

Police does not handle the cause or begin of the crime, it handles the
end of the crime. Justice system as well.

If shooter shoots, police normally cannot do nothing practically as
they are normally not on the place of shooting, they come always too
late. There is no law that can prevent criminals in doing crimes
practically.

> > Is there any country in the world where criminals were really
> > forbidden to do any crime? No. Crimes are committed anywhere.
>
> What do you think the laws and the police and the Justice system are for
> then? They seem to be doing a good job in a lot of places.

See above. And I believe you are in some good country if you think
police is good, I don't think so, in many Eastern European, South
American, African and Asian countries, police is part in drug dealings
and kidnappings, terrorism and whatever crimes.

Don't let you the label "police" mislead you. In fact, probability
that you will be wronged by police is so large, that you better not
deal with police at all.

> > > The whole Linux
> >
> > I do not know what you mean with Linux, that is kernel.
> >
> > > and Browser and Phone situation proves it.
> >
> > I do not know, explain me what you mean with browsers or phones?
>
> Android and Web Browser

So which situation did you mean? Android has much firmware inside, it
is not really free software alltogether, just as Linux kernel is
not. I am using Linux-libre kernel.

> And how do you have Replicant? Because companies were forced to
> follow GPL.

I don't think so. I do not think that Replicant is a company, it is
community project. But I am not sure.

Replicant is there because of free software movement. It does not work
on many devices because the proprietary firmwares cannot be replaced.

See: https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki#Contact

> The one that you say "bad boys" don't have to follow.
>
> Imagine that was permissive. We wouldn't have Replicant.

Look here, there are mobile OS-es with permissive licenses:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_operating_system#Fully_open-source,_entirely_permissive_licenses

See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_operating_system#Partly_open_source

So Android is not really free software OS, as it is bundled with
non-free software. This is also possible by GPL.

It is not true that GPL only is cause of free software for mobile
phones. But it is by great part so, as Google would not so fast
publish its own proprietary system, they did not have it ready, they
used Linux kernel to make Android. Which is not GNU/Linux system by
the way.

GPL does much of the influence in that area today.

> > My friend, laws help to punish somebody or remedy situations, laws do
> > not help to prevent the shootings!
>
> Why we don't have shooting here then? Why do I feel safe knowing
> that nobody here has a gun?

Because living in a dream makes people happy. That does not change the
fact that people do have guns at their homes. Especially criminals
will not tell you about it.

> > Free software movement appreciates MIT-like licensed software and we
> > are friends, there is no big difference, many GPL programmers will
> > also work on MIT software, and many MIT-license-used programmers will
> > also work and contribute on GPL software. We do not divide people.
>
> Free Software and Closed Source are already division. We divide people there
> already.
>
> I just don't settle for useless licenses like MIT which anybody can close
> source.

It is not good to say "MIT" license, as that is vague, it is better to
say MIT-like license.

Read here:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#Expat

It is not useless, how it can be? Are you not using X Window Server?
How is it then useless?

> > http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhatDoesCompatMean
> >
> > So there is no race condition here, you can get MIT-like-licensed
> > software (be careful with exact terms) and release it under GPL-3
> > licensed terms, as long as they are compatible.
>
> You still don't say anything about the statistics though. You dodge
> realization that GPL is declining.

Because it is not true. It will be true only if you can show that GPL
software have decreased over the months or years, and I have given you
now so many links showing that GPL software did increase over the
recent past time, considering only the bunch of references that one
may get from those links I have placed above, related to mobile OSes.

> Its pretty simple. Numbers. Are they declining in the biggest
> software repository on the planet or not?

I do not see GPL declining in Github, do you see? There is no such
statistics.

The licenses on Github page:
https://github.blog/2015-03-09-open-source-license-usage-on-github-com/

refer to license usage proportions.

Various GPL based licenses are 23.14% there. That MIT style licenses
are greater, that does not mean that GPL is declining.

I am sorry for your misunderstandings of the subject of improvement or
decline.

When there is more and more GPL software, that is not decline, that is
improvement.

Their website does not have the word "decline" anywhere.

Let us say you see on the graph something like this here:


 +-----+
 |     |
 |     |
 |     |+----+
 |     ||    |
 |     ||    |
 |     ||    |+-----+
 |     ||    ||     |
 |     ||    ||     |
 |     ||    ||     |+-----+
 |     ||    ||     ||     |
 |     ||    ||     ||     |
 |     ||    ||     ||     |
 +-----++----++-----++-----+

Then that above would be "decline". And such statistics must be
related to GPL.

But if you see something like this:





               +-----+
               |     |
        +-----+|     |
        |     ||     |
        |     ||     |
 +-----+|     ||     |
 |     ||     ||     |
 |     ||     ||     |
 |     ||     ||     |
 +-----++-----++-----+

Then that is not called "decline" it is called improvement.

So the graph on that referenced website is in fact showing the
IMPROVEMENT OF GPL SOFTWARE BEING PUBLISHED FROM YEAR TO YEAR.

See the graph here:
https://github.blog/2015-03-09-open-source-license-usage-on-github-com/

Direct link to image:
https://github.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/9dc14536-c367-11e4-9a63-b23a3d75af78.png?resize=762,445

Watch for the GPL style licenses, watch their colors, and you will see
that GPL licenses are improving over time.

Thus they are not declining, and whoever made that subject of this
thread is spreading FUD:

>From V.E.R.A. -- Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (September 2014) [vera]:

FUD
       Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt (slang, IBM)


Jean

gpl-increasing-on-github.png
Description: PNG image