123 lines
6.5 KiB
Markdown
123 lines
6.5 KiB
Markdown
---
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date: 2014-05-21T00:00:00-05:00
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title: "Being Permissive, the new Popular"
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tags: [en_us, english, free-software, rant, thoughts, philosophy, open-source]
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---
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This post is massively inspired by a post in the `gnu-prog-discuss`
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mailing list. This is a closed list of the [GNU
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Project](http://gnu.org), and only GNU maintainers and contributors can
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join, so I cannot put a link to the original message (by [Mike
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Gerwitz](http://mikegerwitz.com)), but this topic is being discussed
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over and over again at many places, so you will not have trouble finding
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similar opinions. I am also “responding” to a recent discussion that I
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had with [Luiz Izidoro](http://social.libreplanetbr.org/lvispy), which
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is a “friend” (as he himself likes to say) of the LibrePlanet São Paulo
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group.
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Mike's point is simple: we, Free Software activists, are the geeks (or
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nerds) at school, surrounded by the “popular guys” all over again. In
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case it is not clear, the “popular guys” are the people who do not care
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about the Free Software ideology; the programmers who license their
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softwares using permissive licenses using the excuse of “more freedom”,
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but give away their work to increase the proprietary world.
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It is undeniable that the Free Software, as a technical movement, has
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won. Anywhere you look, you see Free Software being developed and used.
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It is important to say that by “Free Software” I mean not only copyleft
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programs, but also permissive ones. However, it is also undeniable that
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several proprietary programs and solutions are being developed with the
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help of those permissive Free Softwares, without giving anything back to
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the community, as usual.
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Numbers speak for themselves, so I am posting here the example that Mike
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used in his message, about [Trello](https://trello.com/), a “web-based
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project management application”, according to
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[Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trello). It is quite popular
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among project managers, and I know about two or three companies that use
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it, though I have never used it myself (luckily). Being web-based, it is
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full of Javascript code, and I appreciated the work Mike had to
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determine which pieces of Free Software Trello uses. The result is:
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> jQuery, Sizzle, jQuery UI, jQuery Widget, jQuery UI Mouse, jQuery UI
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> Position, jQuery UI Draggable, jQuery UI Droppable, jQuery UI
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> Sortable, jQuery UI Datepicker, Hogan, Backbone, JSON2 (Crockford),
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> Markdown.js, Socket.io, Underscore.js, Bootstrap, Backbone, and
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> Mustache
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You can see the license headers of all those projects here:
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This is only on the client-side, i.e., the Javascript portion. I will
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not post the link to the full Javascript code (condensed in one single
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file) because I do not have permission to do so, but it should not be
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hard to take a look yourself if you are curious.
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On the server side, Mike came up with this list of Free Softwares being
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used by Trello:
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> MongoDB, Redis, Node.js, HAProxy, Express, Connect, Cluster,
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> node_redis, Mongoose, node-mogodb-native, async, CofeeScript, and
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> probably more
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Quite a lot of Free Software, right? And Trello advertises itself as
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being “free”, which might confuse the inexperient reader because they
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are talking about price, not about freedom.
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The lesson we learn is obvious but no less painful. He who contributes
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to Free Software using permissive licenses is directly contributing to
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the dissemination of proprietary software. And the corolary should be
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obvious as well: you are being exploited. Another nice addition made by
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Mike is a [quote by Larry
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Ellison](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Larry_Ellison), CEO and founder
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of Oracle Corporation, about Free Software (and Open Source):
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> “If an open source product gets good enough, we'll simply take it....
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> So the great thing about open source is nobody owns it – a company
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> like Oracle is free to take it for nothing, include it in our products
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> and charge for support, and that's what we'll do. So it is not
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> disruptive at all – you have to find places to add value. Once open
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> source gets good enough, competing with it would be insane. ... We
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> don't have to fight open source, we have to exploit open source.”
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So, do you really think you have more freedom because you can choose
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BSD/MIT over GPL? Do you really think you it doesn't matter what other
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people do to your code, which you released as a Free Software? What are
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your goal with this movement, contribute to a better Free Software
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ecosystem (which will lead to a society which is more fair), or just
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getting your name in the hall of (f|sh)ame?
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Back to the initial point, about not being “popular” among your friends
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(or be the “radical”, “extremist”, and other adjectives), I believe Mike
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hit the nail when he said that, because that is exactly how I am feeling
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currently, and I know other Free Softwares activists feel exactly the
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same. To defend a copyleft license is to defend something that is wrong,
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because, in the “popular kids' view”, copyleft is about anything but
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freedom! The cool thing now is to be indifferent, or even to think that
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it is nice that proprietary software can coexist with Free Software, so
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let's give it a help and release everything we can under permissive
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licenses. I could mention lots of very nice Free Softwares that chose to
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be permissive because their maintainers thought (and still think) GPL is
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evil.
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I contributed and still contribute to some Free Softwares that are
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permissive licensed. And despite trying to use only copyleft software,
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sometimes I replace some of them by permissive ones, and do not feel
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guilty about it. I do that because I believe in Free Software, and I
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believe we should support it in every way we can. But doing so is also
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nocive to our cause. We are supporting softwares that are contributing
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to the proprietary world, even if that is not what their developers
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want. We are making it very easy for people like Larry Ellison to win
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and think they can exploit what other people are doing for free(dom). We
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are feeding our own enemy in their mouths. And we should be very careful
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about that.
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This post is a request. I am asking you a favor. Please, consider
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(re)licensing your project using a copyleft license. If you do value
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what Free Software is about (or even what Open Source is about!), then
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help spread it by **not** helping the proprietary side. I am not asking
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you to join our ideological cause (or maybe I am?); feel free to stay
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out of this if you want. But please, at least consider helping the Free
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Software community by avoiding making your code permissive, which will
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give too much power to the unethical side.
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Thank you!
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