FSF Wastes Away Another "High Priority" Project

[RealNC]

This is a shame. Open Source licences should support free software

It's a Free Software License, not an "Open Source" License.

[pholklore]

> This is a shame. Open Source licences should support free software, not restrict it(s developers).

Yes, but _Free_ software licenses, like the GPL, support free software.

I do not mean to sound impolite, but please educate yourself a bit on the topic before commenting:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-s...the-point.html

[ворот93]

> This is a shame. Open Source licences should support free software, not restrict it(s developers).

Yes, but _Free_ software licenses, like the GPL, support free software.

I do not mean to sound impolite, but please educate yourself a bit on the topic before commenting:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-s...the-point.html

Only religious wackos are concerned by this stuff. For Stallman and the like arguing is more important than getting things done. That's why GNU Hurd is dead in the water and GNU product = slow as shit.

[pholklore]

Only religious wackos are concerned by this stuff. For Stallman and the like arguing is more important than getting things done.

Thank you, but I'm not a wacko, and I am concerned by this stuff. Of course I am. If getting things done would be more important, I'd consider proprietary software just as good an option. That argument just smells like double-standard. No, keeping software free is the most important.
If you don't agree, feel free to reimplement whatever FSF code you dislike in whatever license you prefer. Nobody's forcing you to use the FSF code.
Pretend it doesn't exist, and be happy.

GNU Hurd is dead in the water and GNU product = slow as shit.

FUD, plain and simple.

[berarma]

The FSF wants to enforce the use of GPL licenses by saying that anything using GPL licensed software is a derived work, but that's not true. I'm a proponent of the FSF and GPL licenses but I don't like the way this is handled. LibreCAD should simply use that library, both software projects can use their own licenses since one isn't a derived work of the other.

I recommend reading http://www.law.washington.edu/lta/sw...erivative.html for a better understanding of what a derived work is for law. The derived work concept isn't new to computers, and it isn't being redefined by the FSF, it's an old law concept. Linus Torvalds already expressed those ideas some time ago, even proposing the LGPL wasn't necessary at all since the GPL already allowed the same uses.

I think the FSF is promoting some FUD around it to try to force anyone to use the newest GPL license, but I think they're sometimes getting the opposite effect. The FSF claim that any use case is a derived work has never been proved in court and it seems it will never be.

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm proposing these facts should be checked and stop blindly trusting anything the FSF says, even if they say it for our own good.

[prokoudine]

Any developer that prefers "GPL2" over "GPL3" essentially needs that exploit and wants to produce closed source product.

Alas, Michael oversimplified the original text and made several important mistakes at that.

1) LibreCAD is only partially GPLv2-only, and that part is what's inherited from QCad Community Edition. It's also the part which Ribbonsoft, the original developer of QCad, refused to relicense. As far as I can tell, all new code is GPLv2+.

2) Coin3D was relicensed to GPL-compatible BSD 3-clause in December 2011.

3) OpenCASCADE was never GPLv2 and most likely never will be. It could be LGPL, but that decision was put on hold.

4) "Both LibreCAD and FreeCAD both want to use LibreDWG and have patches available for supporting the DWG file format library" — this is simply incorrect. LibreCAD team did experiment a little with LibreDWG support, but AFAIK never completed the patch. FreeCAD team never had any such patches.

5) "Again, Git master on the LibreDWG code hasn't even been touched in two years." — again, incorrect. Latest changes are from early 2012.

[smitty3268]

I don't mind the FSF insisting on the v3 license, but shouldn't a library like this be using the LGPL?

[Vax456]

Wow, it is retarded that LibreDWG is licensed under the GPLv3.

It ought to be licensed under the LGPL or BSD license.

This reminds me of the GNU Readline library which is also licensed under the GPL instead of the LGPL which causes pain to free software developers because now it cant be used in projects such as PHP.

Some of these silly decisions (by RMS, FSF and the GNU project) really harm free software.

Providing a piece of software under a certain license is harming no one; everyone's free to choose whatever software they want. However, a lot of software would flourish a lot better under open source rather than free software. If you're licensing your software under the GPL, you're flat-out alienating your software from closed source developers, which is a lot of programmers.

The way I see it, API'S and LIBRARIES that are licensed under the GPL will just turn a lot of developers away, so they'll just write their own library that does what they need. Permissively licensed API's on the other hand opens itself up to every software developer on the fucking planet, increasing it's chances of having more people to contribute back. The world is not full of leeching bastards that will fuck everyone in the ass every chance they get. Some people will actually contribute back even though they don't have to. I think it's way better to open up your license to everyone in the world and let people voluntarily contribute back, rather than alienating yourself to only a certain portion of the world of software developers.

With that said, I think the GPL is extremely useful for standalone applications and utilities, software that nobody is going to directly make money off of, but they really need. Coreutils, Blender, LibreOffice, Linux, etc. are good examples for licenses that I think do great under the GPL.

[XorEaxEax]

Another phoronix article full of credibility...

Well what did you expect, this whole 'article' exists only because Michael saw some opportunity to further his crusade against the FSF. And as such it's filled with misinformation in order to further that agenda.

[XorEaxEax]

Alas, Michael oversimplified the original text and made several important mistakes at that.

You think that these were 'mistakes'? Sorry to burst your bubble but they were obviously intended.