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Encryption Security

Are Bad Licenses Good For The Community? 107

Posted by emmett from the take-this-app-and-shove-it dept.
mib writes: "ZDNet has an article about the history of OpenSSH that not only says that telnet sucks (duh!) but that that bad licenses are good for the the open source community because they cause some people to develop unrestricted versions of restricted software." This is a theme that develops more and more often when 'work-alike' apps are being created in order to migrate people from one OS to another.
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Are Bad Licenses Good For The Community After All? More

Are Bad Licenses Good For The Community After All?

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  • More than anything, the openSSH vs. SSH situation demonstrates that moving from an open source license to a less-open license is a bad idea, BECAUSE it will lead to a splinter project. The main problems with this instance are:

    A. SSH didn't convince it's v1 users that v2 was worth moving to or paying for (Not that it necessarily is or isn't worth it).
    B. openSSH, while it's progress has been fantastic, still lacks features of the commerical version and GUI versions of v2 are not available
    C. the open and commercial versions are not entirely compatible.

    All of these facts have led to confusion about what version of SSH people should be using. For instance, what's the point in getting my users to use SSH in place of telnet when they make just as many connections with ftp (or dreamweaver or frontpage, etc.). SSH2 provides a graphical sftp client for windows, which makes the users happy and prevents that problem. Of course, I'd prefer the open source version for moral reasoons, but the two aren't compatible, so I can't run them interchangeably.

    All in all it's just led to the better v2 ssh protocol not being widely adopted.

    On another note, this situation is not like GIMP vs. Photoshop, et. al. because Photoshop or AIM or Napster were never open source to begin with, and if Linux user wanted the functionality those programs offered, they had to write it themselves. SSH was already available, but was was "revoked" later.
  • On the one hand, it is somewhat useful to periodically have some "small disasters," as they cause people to be a bit more prepared for "bigger gulps."

    For instance, the East Coast Ice Storm of a couple years ago that destroyed the trees of Vermont, Quebec, Ontario, and probably a couple of other states had the "merit" that people had a nice "dry run" on emergency preparations so that they KNEW that they were ready for whatever hiccups might come out of the "Y2K Disaster."

    On the other hand, the deaths of trees, destruction of property, and such, was NOT a good thing. And few would argue that World War II was a nice thing in having "showed us how bad tyranny can get."

    So while I'll go along with the notion that if bad licenses come along once in a while, it is useful in keeping everyone else "resilient" against it, it's not a particularly Good Thing.

  • You're really saving money if you have more time than money, like a lot of college students do.\

    If you need features that the original doesn't have, developing a clone may be cheaper than getting a source license (assuming that getting a source license is even possible).
  • The point that the article seems to leave out, though, is that mediocre (or almost-free) licenses (like Sun's Community Source License, just to pick on one) are even worse for the community.

    If there is a totally non-free license for something people need, a replacement will often be developed (although I agree with several posters who have pointed out that it would be even better to just fix the license on the existing product). But if there is a somewhat-bad, or mostly-free license for something, people are severly undermotivated to do anything to replace it.

    My interaction with MySQL has been like this for years. They have fixed the license now, but previously, their license didn't make any sense (free ($$) for non-commercial use and some kinds of commercial use, if you could figure it out; open source but not freely redistributable, except older versions which were GPL's). This mess made PostgreSQL appealing for years (not to raise the old flamefest--I do know that MySQL lacks subselects and transactions and I do miss them dearly. I don't trust it for big stuff but it works great for small stuff).

    Anyone else think of additional examples of mediocre licenses killing development?
  • GIMP. Photoshop. Which one has scriptable effects? Which one can run a script to *GENERATE* an image? Which one is expandable enough to run over a web browser?

    On the other hand, which one is used by virtually all graphics professionals? Which one do people pay hundreds of dollars for? Would anyone still use Gimp if they had to cough up $600 for it?
  • This brings up something that I have always thought about. The US economy really took off after WWII because of all the destruction that occurred in Europe making an opportunity for builders and all sorts of things. This example shows that destruction in Miami caused the city to become more modern and swept away some of the old things. Before the great Chicago fire, Chicago was pretty much a slum and the fire cleared away much of the crap and the city flourished after that. It makes one wonder if the best thing that could happen to the world is if something destroys most of the infrastructure. That way things that sucked before but were kept around because it was established would be gone and a decent alternative could be made. Honestly, how many of us hate the road system in our city? In fact with everything wiped away, good public transit systems could be put in place and all sorts of good things. Well this has gone into too many what ifs. Since order creates chaos somewhere, it might stand to reason that chaos creates order somewhere.
    Molog

    So Linus, what are we doing tonight?

  • it was a joke you fucking moron
  • What the hell are you talking about? Not only did that not make any sense, it had less than nothing to do with the post you were replying to!
  • You are incomplete above. Performance / Licsensing dollar is what you actually presented.

    What about CTO of both products? Which is higher? Depending on what you need to do, it's Gimp (if it doesn't do what you need, you need to have it coded, which costs in time and resources)

  • Think about it this way. We're working towards a standard here. And with something that ought to replace telnet we would like it to be as universal and open as possible. That doesn't happen with companies vying for proprietary control. Obviously people exist with the knowledge and motivation to create an open source secure protocol and I think that is what needs to be promoted. I can't speak for any standards committees, but I know what I would do if I were one. I would begin recognizing the non-proprietary version of SSH as soon as possible.
  • Economics is one of those fields where nothing is isolated and everything is interconnected. Why do you thing it has the same prefix as ecology? To take one thing out of context with its environment is to cause a disruption somewhere else.

    There is a reason why there is unemployment. All to often this is because there is no employment "slack" to hire them with. Employing them to correct disasters or fight wars will be economically disruptive. I am not saying unemployment is a good thing, I am just saying that it is there and is a part of economics.

    Economics, like any science, does not make moral judgements. But it does assert that there are consequences to every human action. Getting rid of unemployment is a good thing. But there is a price to be paid. All to often that price looms where you least expect it.

    Again, I'll ask my question. If there were a time of high unemployment, would you advocate the artificial destruction of a major city rather than wait for a convenient hurricane? Wouldn't you get double duty on the unemployment by hiring people to throw rocks through perfectly good windows? After all, you'll be hiring both the rock thrower and the glazer...

    By the way, in reference to unemployment and WW2, why did the economy not fall back into depression when a million servicemen were mustered out? Why would you consider an economy beset with shortages and rationing to be healthy? From my reading of history, the forties were an economic mess while the fifties was the decade of prosperity.
  • Hey!

    SUB JOKE(Microsoft)
    {

    Competition spurs innovation

    Damn! They almost had me believing "Monopolisation, closed source, buy-outs, proprietry technology, trade secrets, poorly documented APIs, limited technical support and strongarming OEMs into not *actually* supplying media spurs innovation!

    Thanks!
    }

    Michael Tandy


    ...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.
  • I look in the FreeBSD /usr/src and see the copywrite it is under has no such clause inforced.
    I apoligize for that. The annoying advetising clause is no longer included in 4.4BSDlite because deriritive works would include similar clauses. This lead to making certain programs virtually unadvertisable because you would need to dedicate half the page to these annoying clauses. Anyway Microsoft and Apple used the code under the new license.
    Feel free to deny that the quality of TCP/IP networking in both M$ and Apple products improved when they started using the BSD code.
    I nevr claimed using the BSD code didn't improve the product
  • i've found the GIMP to be more of a look-alike than a work-alike. it _looks_ like it has a magic wand... but oh-no! how do i set the sensitivity?

    another thing that bothered me in the way it parallels photoshop 3.0. what about 5.0? photoshop has changed alot since 3.

    granted: the gimp's scriptability makes it really awesome in certain contexts. however, if i intend to design a web site, or create any graphics by hand, i use photoshop. why? because it's geared for professionals. because it works. it does everything it purports to.

    there are really only two problems i have with photoshop. it's not free (not at all; but this comes from that "professional" thing). and it's not for linux.

    [disclaimer: i haven't touched the gimp in a year. it may actually kick ass now. but it didn't when i tried it.]


  • No I didn't forgot that SSH is a protocol and IF it is implemented correctly it would be safe. But the people who implement the protocol is after all only humans and they make mistakes. With several diferent versions of ssh some of them could be broken in some way.

    --
    "take the red pill and you stay in wonderland and I'll show you how deep the rabitt hole goes"
  • Ok np. So many trolls around it's hard to be sure.

    What kind of car do you have? To get the error for my Firebird I just short two pins together from a plug below the steering wheel. Then the Check Engine light flashes in a certain pattern, and off I go to fix the problem... which occurs all too often :)

    Alex
  • Sorry for yelling at you. I just kinda glossed over the "might" part and jumped to confusions. I see now your original intent, which was speculation rather than stating a conclusion.

  • >his lead to making certain programs virtually unadvertisable because you would need to dedicate half the page to these annoying clauses. Anyway Microsoft and Apple used the code under the new license.

    Really?

    Directory of C:\WINNT\system32

    04/29/99 01:04p 41,232 FTP.EXE

    BSD code.

    NO "ADVERTISING" DONE WHATSOEVER.

    Yet THIS date

    July 22, 1999

    To All Licensees, Distributors of Any Version of BSD:

    As you know, certain of the Berkeley Software Distribution ("BSD") source
    code files require that further distributions of products containing all or
    portions of the software, acknowledge within their advertising materials
    that such products contain software developed by UC Berkeley and its
    contributors.

    Specifically, the provision reads:

    " * 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software
    * must display the following acknowledgement:
    * This product includes software developed by the University of
    * California, Berkeley and its contributors."

    Effective immediately, licensees and distributors are no longer required to
    include the acknowledgement within advertising materials.

    Is when the "advertising clause" was removed.

    Now, what exactly were you saying about
    >because you would need to dedicate half the page to these annoying clauses.

    Given you now have no advertising objection to the BSD licence, do you not agree that for maximizing code re-use, public domain or a BSD licence does a better job?
  • My original argument was lets say a closed source software company creates a commercial product from bsd licensed software. Lets us ssh as an example even though it was the same developers and merely a license change at a certain point in development. Now as time goes on they improve on the standard and create deritive works ssh2 and sftp. Now the developers at OpenSSH had to rewrite from scratch an SSH2 implementation. In theory eventually sftp will be reverse engineered eventually althought that does not seem to be considered priority at the moment.
    So anyway both licenses have flaws in the area of code reuse. The BSD license may have less assuming commercial software producers play nice, but if properly abused it can cause just as much code rewriting as the GPL.

  • ...and since you dont seem to be from this planet, I guess the SETI project can stop its work now.

    Its the license, stupid.

  • Why is it I keep seeing posts regarding why MS, etc should open up their sources so people can grab the source code and make something better of their own? It seems that a lot of Linux zealots only want MS to open source everything for the benefit of their oh-so-wonderful Linux movement. That's 100 times more selfish than any closed-source software mentality.

    Hey, why doesn't the US just open source our nukes and jet fighters? Then other countries could use them and make better nukes and jet fighters, and the whole world would benefit!
  • What's so 'insightful' about common sense?

    We _all_ agree that it would be better to write software under a 'good' license to begin with. There's no arguement there. But there are 2 points to consider:

    1) People have different opinions on what 'good' is. So perhaps it takes a stricter license to make an individual feel more comfortable about releasing his/her hard work to the masses. Even if you consider it "the man keeping you down"!

    2) We live in a capitalist society. People are out to make money. Money stuffs pockets, but money also staffs buildings. Buildings that house developers and researchers. People that develop products (sometimes stupid) that get bundled with operating systems or pervade the market and make you think about adding a program like that to your operating system under a 'better license'.

    Don't get me wrong. I believe in the GPL and the LGPL and BSD licenses. I also believe there is Linux (redhat, etc.) and then there is GNU/Linux. I believe in writting software that we can _all_ use and understand. But I can't afford the research, the time, the manpower, or the MISTAKES made in developing the next Lotus Notes TM. So I will gladly let those people make those mistakes and learn from them when I make a better version with other like-minded individuals.

  • Re:Sure... (Score:3)

    by um... Lucas ( 13147 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2000 @07:31AM (#940454) Journal
    Would people please stop comparing GIMP to Photoshop? Photoshop beats it in every aspect, hands down, with the exception of running through a web browser. But cooltext.com is far from a web based image editting application.

    Photoshop is scriptable via applescript with the appropriate plug-ins. It has a thorough history tracking which you can save and saveable actions, so you can perform one task once and then apply that same task to 100 different files if you so desire. Saved actions will generate anything that the GIMP can, plus it will output Pantone and other spot colors, CMYK, etc etc etc.

    I really think that GIMP enthusiasts should go to a design studio and watch a photoshop artist in action before trying to compare the two. The difference between the two is immense, and slashdot seems to remember photoshop 2.0 rather than 5.5
  • This is just like another thing that happened a while ago. How many Microserf decided to abandon Windows when their MSCEs were expired by decree of Microsoft Marketing? Bad things provide incentives for people to try to fix them, or create alternative good things. Sure, they're still bad, but good happens that might otherwise not happen, like the release of a cool package or a few thousand converts.

  • Nope. (Score:2)

    by MrEd ( 60684 )
    The Exxon Valdez oil spill raised the GDP, so shouldn't it too be a good thing?

    More oil spills means more work for cleanup people (job "creation"), and more dead wildlife (hooray, most of those birds ate "our" fish).

    More hurricanes for Floridans means more new buildings, more disaster aid, and possibly a dead relative here and there. More housing rubble hauled off to the dump, more trees cut down to make new buildings.

    I guess I should be happy for Miamians who get to live in spiffy new buildings, but I can't help but think the city councillor's analysis is a bit narrow-minded.

  • Do you really think that is why people reimplement closed source software as open source? To avoid paying for it? I think you are suffering from free beer vs. Free Speech confusion.
  • I think what we should be saying here is that bad licenses don't hurt the community as much as you might expect them to do so, because we write around them, and we've proven that we are capable of writing around them. Products with bad licenses eventually lose their share to Open Source.

    I like the hurricane metaphor someone else used. We can survive a hurricane and rebuild afterward, but we'd rather not have the hurricane in the first place.

    Bruce

  • Well, I admit it may not be a fair comparison, so I'll point out that it's never been stated that the two products are in competition with each other. The thing is, however, all that's been said about open vs. closed and how they inspire designers comes down to an argument mentioned above.

    ...plus it will output Pantone and other spot colors, CMYK, etc etc etc.

    Exactly. Now that there's a feature in a closed product, many people will scream "Reinventing the wheel!" when you create a similar feature for an open-sourced product. But, if you think about it, it's not going to stop there. Until the new version of Photoshop comes out, we don't know what it will have that we might like. And unfortunately, with the exception of the coders at Adobe, we don't have any say in the features we want or need. With open source, the entire point is "Is a feature not there? Well then, add it!" Closed source is best thought of as a sort of "test bed" - features you want appear there. If you want them, feel free to adopt them for your own. Make them better. If this is exactly what you need, and it's an immediate thing, however, you can pay for that convenience.

    Now that I'm done claiming advocacy, I'll freely admit I'm running a dual-boot system, and as a graphic designer myself, have found invaluable services in both packages. I throw graphics in a common storage place and twiddle them with both programs. The GIMP does a lot of gruntwork (map generation, maze generation) that I'm too lazy to do myself, and Photoshop has a lot of other features (color separation, catalog generation) that make it *ANOTHER* indispensible tool. Just thought I'd throw in my two pence.

  • But telnet is not secure!

    ssh does all of these things you mention and more. With the added bonus of security.

    While telnet certainly didn't suck back in its day. Compared to the competition (ssh), and in light of the realities of the modern internet (unscrupulous, packet-sniffing script-kiddies, just dying to snag you passwords), the only conclusion a reasonable person can come to is:

    telnet sucks!

  • If the brakes of the car in front of you are suddenly and unexpectedly applied, you will not hit that vehicle, because you were following at a safe distance.
  • Performance/Dollar of Gimp : Infinite.

    Performance/Dollar of Photoshop: Some number greater then 0

     Let's try that again, shall we?

    Performance/Dollar of Gimp : Undefined.

    Performance/Dollar of Photoshop: Some number greater than 0

  • One of the great myths of open source is that it makes bug fixes and enhancements easy.

    It doesnt. It makes them possible.

  • <i>Since order creates chaos somewhere, it might stand to reason that chaos creates order somewhere.</i>

    Then logically, it stands that since criminals all drink water, all water drinkers are criminals!

    One of the most basic tenets of logic is that just because something is true doesn't mean its converse ("opposite") is true. A=>B does not not always imply B=>A.

    Not that I don't agree with your original point...
  • Why wait for the hurricane? If they're so good for the economy, why not just shell the town with mortor fire every two years or so? We could keep the economic benefits without the incidental loss of life by using bulldozers. We could pay otherwise unemployed hoodlums to throw rocks through windows.

    For those who are economically illiterate, I will explain the problem. Disasters employ people that would have otherwise been employed elsewhere. There is no economic gain, only a shift of resources from non-damaged areas to damaged areas. Even with pure economic efficiency, the net gain would be zero.

    There are a myriad valid and moral reasons to help rebuild damaged cities. Citing bogus economic advantages is not one of them.
  • Huh? Just go to your local library and pick up a Haynes auto manual and it will tell you how to do it.

    Anyway, thanks for trolling.
  • This issue revolves around one or more developers trying to be compensated for their efforts.

    ...

    Is it worth saving the money for the license? Are you *really* saving money?

    Is software good because it does not include a price tag? I understand this point and even agree with it to an extent. However, I think it is the incorrect focus of too many people looking at Open Source progects.

    Of course a lack of a price tag alone does not make a software package better than its commercial counterparts. The old standard is that "freeware isn't worth money." The statement is an over-simplification, but it has some truth in it. Its not a matter of price - its a matter of functionality. Price is simply a factor - and of differing weight depending on your available funds and ability to negotiate a license.

    I'm currently working on progect with a major US company in comparing SSH2 to OpenSSH as a company standard. The ability to negotiate a license and the available funds is not a major issue - price is a relatively minor factor. Its become a very heated debate with those involved. OpenSSH is holding its own very well against its commercial counterpart. The only failing so far is less support for Windows environments. Again, its a matter of functionality.

    In the end, if the company ends up with the commercial SSH2 package we'll still see OpenSSH showing up in the environment. There are a lot of technical users who strongly support it. The only difference the lack of a price tag makes in this scenario is that those who support OpenSSH will be able to deploy it without justifying additional cost.

    And there's the subtle point missed by those who fixate on prace tags - Open Source does not live or die by cost.

  • I don't agree that bad licenses are good to Open Source software, but I think that the Open Sources community relies a lot on closed software. We try to copy other programs, like Excel and Gnumeric, etc.

    I really think that we should start to create our own programs from scratch, no trying to copy visually other software, good things will emerge from that.

    --

  • Well considering I can't run Photoshop w/o
    Windows or MacOS, I don't even have the option.
  • And you even forgot that each diferent version could have diferent security problems, and if you count that some security problems only happen when you combine problems (like outlook + word) this could be a nightmare from the security point of view.
    --
    "take the red pill and you stay in wonderland and I'll show you how deep the rabitt hole goes"

  • Of course, having that many different programs to fulfil one need isn't necissarily bad. It means you always have alternatives, if one starts doing something you don't like or gets abandoned. And there's lots of different feature sets, and more different ways of doing things...


    -RickHunter
  • Surf the web, mon.

    OpenSSH runs great on my Red Hat boxen. The source and executable .rpms are downloadable [redhat.com].

    FiSSH [mit.edu] is being turned over to MIT, and as soon as they unscramble their (currently hosed) distribution and apply the known patch for Win98 compatibility (thot Win95/98 ran the same apps? think again) there will be a freely available SSH client for Winblows lamers, um, I meant mainstream users, built from True Free Open Source! Yay!

    TeraTerm SSH [vector.co.jp] is another Win32 client, but not really open source, because Teranishi-san [mailto] has disappeared and the license is oddly written, but it does work for most purposes.

    For file transfer, don't use FTP, use rsync.

    --Charlie
  • There are lots of redundant closed-source apps out there, too. Do a search for shareware windows Tetris clones. Also, there are several examples of free/open source programs that dominate their niche, as well: The Gimp, Emacs, X Window. Each one has competitors, but they have small numbers of users, because they're not as good or for other reasons.
  • I can't see any how SSH's restrictive license helped "improve" OpenSSH more so than it could have had it remained under the GPL or BSD license. If SSH-orignal had stayed open, OpenBSD could have improved it directly and we would all be much better off because not only would there be that much less dispute over which is the de facto standard SSH, but also they would not have had to undergo the whole cloning effort. Granted SSH gives OpenSSH something to compete against (and vice-versa), but given that different people have different needs, SSH's source tree would have forked into N competing branches anyway, just like Linux has.

    --
  • Hrmmmm.

    GPLed code takes time to write. Closed source versions of the SAME code take time to write.

    Public domain/BSD code takes time to write. Closed source can take this code and add features.
    LESS TOTAL time is spent writing code.

    The original claim was:
    If the license was free, then there would be no need to write a clone. Coders could instead work on othe, new projects instead of duplicating effort.

    If the goal is to stop duplication of efforts, the BSD or public domain licence does a better job than a GPL licence.
  • Where would Linux be without GNU?
  • If we are comparing draconian licenses to free licenses, then, no, they aren't better. If they were free to begin with we could spend time writing software that didn't exist at all.

    But if we are comparing draconian licenses to less-evil-but-still-non-Free licenses, then yes, they ARE good because they provide the impetus needed to write a clone.
    --

  • No way. (Score:5)

    by MostlyHarmless ( 75501 ) <artdent@@@freeshell...org> on Wednesday July 12, 2000 @06:56AM (#940478)
    They say that bad licenses are good because they encourage people to write workalikes with good licenses.

    Grade A prime bull.

    If the license was free, then there would be no need to write a clone. Coders could instead work on othe, new projects instead of duplicating effort.
  • Necessity is the mother of invention, and so a bad product of any kind that people find unusable due to poor design, implementation, or a just rotten license will eventually have to be improved on. This works well for something like SSH, which is relatively simple to code (compared to some high-level applications), and is used by a great many people who would be willing to improve on it for free.

    In the case of something like, say, AutoCAD, it works not so well. The license is obstructive, but the code base there is so vast compared to the people willing to work on it for free that the alternatives are just, well, inadequate. In which case you're just stuck with an irritating piece of software.

    Open source only really works when you have a lot of people interested in something, compared to how complicated that something is. Relatively esoteric, complex things (ie, not gcc or kernel, which *everyone* uses, but, say, Adobe Aftereffects) fall by the wayside.

    Not to mention licenses that prohibit reverse-engineering altogether...

  • Restricted software is good because it causes people to write unrestricted software?
    Maybe I missed something, but if it was unrestricted in the first place, people wouldn't have to spend their time writing new versions. They could take the code that was already there and change it however they wanted.

  • Well, yeah (Score:3)

    by Rupert ( 28001 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2000 @07:01AM (#940481) Homepage Journal
    In the same way that really repressive dictatorships are good for democracy.

    While the SSH people are perfectly within their rights to release future versions under a more restrictive licence, one questions the business logic of pissing off your entire user base.

    In part, the article seems to fall into the "OSS can only copy ClosedSS" trap, although he backs away from that in the end without providing an example of OpenSSH's innovation.

    A standard would be good.
  • The only problem with this idea is that every time someone reverse-engineers something because the original is badly licensed (for whatever value of "bad"), you now have an additional version of the product, which may or may not operate identically to the original. Who wants to test all that? At its worst, this leads to several functionally similar, but not identical, products, which not only won't be drop-in replacements for each other, they may not even interoperate. Open is good, but how much more motif/lesstif or Unix/Linux/BSD fragmentation do we need?
  • It seems to me that any release of software, regardless of the license, moves the open source community forward. For example: Company A releases software B as a closed source application under a highly restrictive license. Let's also assume that software B is a useful new technology. It won't take much time until geek C or company D reverse engineers the model of software B and releases software E. Obviously restricted licenses make the dissemination of technology a bit slower, but they can't stop it altogether. L.

  • Re:Sure... (Score:4)

    by Animol ( 120579 ) <jartis@gm a i l . com> on Wednesday July 12, 2000 @07:02AM (#940484) Journal
    Yes, but think about all the subtle improvements inspired by things like this.

    GIMP. Photoshop. Which one has scriptable effects? Which one can run a script to *GENERATE* an image? Which one is expandable enough to run over a web browser [cooltext.com]?

    Or the AOL IM clients. TiK, anyone? Aol *CHAT ROOMS* over the client? I think the biggest advantage is the fact that closed software inspires not only clones, but improved versions.
  • and still securely. So, it does happen to allow you to forward other traffic, however if you have no need for that, you can just use ssh enabled telnet.

    Vermifax

  • Re:No way. (Score:3)

    by Griff ( 17764 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2000 @07:03AM (#940486)
    There is something to what you say. Also, when people write 'workalikes', you can end up in a worse position than simply using a piece of 'restricted' software. Just imagine ending up with 5 different versions of SSH, each just everyso slightly incompatible with all the others. In this situation many people are just not going to bother with it, and continue using the old, insecure telnet. Thankfully the open source community somehow seems to manage to support each other, rather than compete. However, in the life of every piece of software where it makes more sense to redevelop than maintain it. This doesn't just apply to spagetti code - unacceptable licenses can (and in this case, have) cause this to happen.
  • Even Source code. yes. NBC can get the source code to windows if they ask for it. Sure it costs money but not nearly as much as that enterprise wide site license.
    Do you have some sort of proof that this statement is true? What makes you think that it is?
  • Think about it like this though. A lot of software, such as encryption software takes a lot of R&D to develop. Now take encryption for example. Now going back ten years ago, the open source community did not neccessarally have the resources to develop the encryption algorithims neccessary for a product such as ssh. However, commercial software companies could. Now it is feasible that a similar product could be created by an open source effort from scratch without the aid of an existing standard. However, the resulting product would take longer to develop.
  • Discussions about licenses always seem to center around moralism and idealism.

    Here's my definition of good and bad licenses:
    A good license enforces what the maker of it wants and has no unwanted sideeffects.

    A bad license does not enforce what the maker wnated to enforce or has unwanted sideeffects.

    It is that simple, don't confuse 'good' with 'free beer'. Also be aware that good is highly subjective: what is good for you might be bad for someone else. I certainly can't blame somebody else for not delivering free labor.

    Now some people on this site seem to believe that GPL is 'good' and should be enforced/envangelisized/promoted whereever possible. I'm not one of them. I don't think it is bad either, just that sometimes it is appropriate and sometimes not.

    No in the case of SSH we are dealing with a bad license. It doesn't do what the originator intended (keep SSH propietary). Nor does it do what the users want, so they create their own version with a license that suit their needs. Probably, openssh will leapfrog past its original and become the default implementation in use.
  • I'll point out that it's never been stated that the two products are in competition with each other

    Yes, it's never been stated as such, but with the GIMP constantly drawing comparisons to Photoshop around here, I trully feel its' worth it to enlighten this community as how powerful Photoshop really is, as opposed to how powerful they think it is. Yes, the GIMP can be useful at times, but it really feels like an absolute toy compared to Photoshop.

    And unfortunately, with the exception of the coders at Adobe, we don't have any say in the features we want or need.

    Actually, Adobe works very closely with it's largest customers (I work for one of them) to determine the features that their next product should have as well as which features are causing confusing among it's users. And it's not the coders that make the actual decisions, it's the product managers who talk with tech support and sales in order to have a product developed that will spur people to buy it or upgrade their current copies. If you're a customer of theirs, and a feature you want to see included isn't there, AND it's a feature that many other people want as well, you CAN call and try to make a difference.

    Besides that, photoshop is one of the most extensible apps around with fully document API's (hence the HUGE 3rd party plug in market), so if you're a coder, you can just as easily add the features you need to their program.

    That's the KEY difference between closed source and open source that's been said time and time again but overlooked: proprietary software companies develop their software for their customers, whereas open source developers develop the software for themselves. It's a big difference. Necessity is the mother of invention, and closed source companies require money...

  • Wow, way to screw the posting... (Score:3)

    by alexhmit01 ( 104757 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2000 @08:01AM (#940491)
    My take on the article:

    Bait and switch is dumb, and won't work...

    Go over the story.

    Someone wrote a useful program, made it Free, everyone liked it and used it. He tried to make a buck by making it not Free. Users got mad, took the version he provided for free (the bait) and redid his tweaks. Therefore, the switch failed.

    Closed source programs aren't really covered in his article. Free software that pulls a bait and switch will result in the users getting mad and reimplementing the fixes.

    In otherwords, you can sell propriatary software, maybe users will pay, maybe a bunch will reimplement for free. However, don't try to release it for free to get marketshare and then try to pull a fast one with the upgrades.

    If you use Free Software to establish yourself, don't expect to be able to make it proprietary, because someone will keep it Free. Proprietary software can't leverage the community, that was my reading.

    Alex

  • Like you said. The author's whole argument seems to go along the lines of "bad licenses are good because they encourage people to rewrite the software under good licenses."

    Sounds a lot like hitting yourself on the head with a hammer because it feels so good when you stop.

  • Christ; not another moronic Sig11 clone.

    Couldn't you call yourself something original, like "Signal 9"?

    Or just do us all a favor, and go SIGKILL yourself.

    Someone, moderate this guy into oblivion, spam him, and then track him down, and subscribe him to Columbia house and BMG; I'm sick of these poeople stealing user info and thinking they're clever by maligning the reputation of the posters that the trolls still couldn't hate more if they tried.
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • if bad licenses promote rework of products to a less restrictive licenses, why is there only one group working on SSH?
    Never heard of lsh [lut.ac.uk]?
    --
  • I said it might stand to reason. Might was the key word. I was not simply implying that it was more like a general hypothesis with no back up data that people make all the time. I am quite aware of the fallacy you are referring to. It was meant merely as an observation of what seems to happen. Sorry if I offended you.
    Molog

    So Linus, what are we doing tonight?

  • A workalike is sometimes a good thing. The developers aim to emulate the functionality of a mature product. Microsoft spent lots of dollars creating Microsoft Excel. All the guys working on GNumeric do, is trying to copy the functionality. At least that's what they did some time ago. If they had to come up with a totally new concept for a spreadsheet, I'm afraid it would be below par. Unfortunately, there seems to be a shortage of UI specialists among us. Furthermore, the training the users invested in the product on the other platform, will hopefully somewhat transfer across to the workalike clone.

    Let's face it. We owe the closed-license people some thank-yous for the standards they've established, and their investments into user interfaces. Of course, if they opened their source, we would have a heck of a lot easier time. But then again, we're talking of the real world here :(

  • Outside of sloppily worded legalese, there is no such thing as a bad license. (I do not count EULA's as licenses) Certainly most of us would agree that compelling an author to release his private code that he wrote solely for his own use is wrong.

    The controversy comes when software is first given to one other person. A software license is merely a set of permissions and restrictions on what the user can do with the author's work. It shouldn't make any difference whether the software is given to one person or posted on the net for everyone in the world to access. This is not kindergarten where if you give some of your candy with your friend you have to give it to everyone else in class. What harm is there is saying "here friend, have my software, I am not done with it yet so don't let anyone else see it until I tell you otherwise"?

    Ownership of software is not the question. We are talking licenses here. Every license in existance including the GNU GPL asserts ownership rights upon the software. Ownership means the right to control, and by controlling how the software is distributed, the GPL asserts ownership.

    You may not like the terms of a particular license. I may probably agree with you. But that's beside the point. That particular software with that particularly onerous license is not my software. I have no rights to compell its author to do anything. Calling a license bad is just sour grapes. You didn't get your way and now you're pouting.

    If you don't like the terms of the license, don't use the software. Gee, where have I heard that one before?
  • Hey, I'm supposed to be the holistic thinker around here... Oh, wait, you're me anyway. Cool, never mind.
    --Charlie
  • That assumes close to full employment if you have fairly high unemplyment than you have alot of slack to play with and something that creates jobs is a good thing.. If you have high unemplyment than the point that it could be good stands, this is what happened in both WW2 and Vietnam, and is why they where good for the economy. A war today would hurt the economy because we are very close to full emplyment at this time. But not too many years ago it would have been very good for the economy.
  • You're right, closed software is bad, and evil. Nobody should ever get a job that requires them to write closed-source code. After all, I can pay rent by trading 12 hours of consulting time, right? And after I take a date out to a nice meal, well hopefully the restaurant will take 2 hours of consulting as payment rather than requiring me to fork over five hundred bucks of actual currancy.

    I love open source software, use it all the time at work, and I've submitted lots of patches to lots of projects. In my group, between all the employees, we have write access to an inordinate amount of cvs repositories... but well... we don't release our proprietary code.

    Does that make me bad? Does that make me evil?

    If so, please show me how to grow a money tree... I planted a dollar bill when I was six, but it never quite managed to grow.
    ----------------------------

  • bad licenses are good for the the open source community...

    Sorry, but such pronouncements will have everybody arguing all day, for one side or the other, pretty much leading nowhere.

    If you look for the good side, then you will find examples supporting 'good'.

    If you look for the bad side, you will find examples supporting 'bad'.

    'Good'/'Bad' is a judgement call, and judgement is a very limited way of looking. Thinking is pretty much polarised into Either/Or boxes, while reality is fluid and ever-changing.

    Drop the generalisation, and perhaps consider specific examples very carefully. If you study just one licence carefully, with all the factors that led to it and all the effects that it led to, then something can be learned, concluded, agreed upon, regarding that one event. But continue 'debating' sides and you find yourselves with a load of new opinions and conclusions about nothing.

    Do you see how it leads nowhere? You'll either keep your opinion, or drop it for another opinion... 'yes, licences (whatever) are bad etc.'. Just opinions, just garbage that clutters your thinking. Are you interested in opinions? Are you interested in truth?

  • Yes, it makes you a naughty, naughty, bad, boy; no supper for you. Also, I searched on the net for instructions on how to grow a money tree, but they just told me to click on the links, and never showed me how... :)

    But seriously, of course you shouldn't release your proprietary code. Whatever it is that makes your commercial product unique and marketable, keep it under wraps, unless your company can find another business model that works for them, and allows them to release the code. This is difficult, and won't work for many companies; heck, many of them probably can't see why they'd want to think about this in the first place, and sometimes they're right. It certainly isn't easy, and it won't make you instantly wealthy, like the money tree instructions on the internet promise to...

    However, not all code is proprietary. In fact, most of it is downright dull. If you've written any libraries that are particularly good, but at the same time not a 'trade secret', you might want to release them under the LGPL, or under a BSD-style license. Ditto for any helper programs (that's why VNC was developed).

    Therefore, Open Source!=Broke, and even a company that makes its living on proprietary software can still release or contribute to Open Source software as well. Apple, AT&T, Corel, (AOL/)Netscape, Sun, and many other companies have all tried this at varying levels and degrees of success.

    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • Actually, Adobe works very closely with it's largest customers (I work for one of them) to determine the features that their next product should have as well as which features are causing confusing among it's users. And it's not the coders that make the actual decisions, it's the product managers who talk with tech support and sales in order to have a product developed that will spur people to buy it or upgrade their current copies. If you're a customer of theirs, and a feature you want to see included isn't there, AND it's a feature that many other people want as well, you CAN call and try to make a difference.

    But how many people actually would even be SEEN by adobe. Only companys that have several 100+ copies of Photoshop (a single graphic artist who needs ONE feature to make his life easier isn't even going to be listened to by a huge corporation).

  • I haven't released lots of things open source, but I've probably released about... ten thousand lines or so of stuff that I wrote for something at work that's not specific to what I do for a living.

    If I give you the source for our main product, we're out of business. If, however, I give you a C++ class that's capable of doing mundane task X or Y, then we both win, since while you save time by using it, I gain stability by having it get thoroughly debugged by other eyes.
    ----------------------------
  • Quite right, although shareware suffers more from this than actual commercial software.

    I'll agree with you about The Gimp filling a niche, and maybe X-Windows, but...

    What is Emacs' niche? Is it its own niche? If I wanted a real LISP interpreter/compiler, I wouldn't use Emacs; I don't use it for an editor either--it doesn't dominate either of those niches. But perhaps if you want it all together, you want... Emacs? Hmm.

    X-Windows dominates because it is a standard; I think it was made open to ensure this, too. Once a program, file format, whatever--open or closed--becomes standard and widely in use, it dominates. Of course, if it's closed, expect to see some re-implementations. Also, there are many commercial and free X-servers, and now there are alternatives that do the same sort of thing for Windows. So in this case, "X-Windows" isn't really one app, although XFree86 is pretty standard on Linux...

    The Gimp is excellent, and its rival would be PhotoShop. So if you don't have the money to fork over, like The Gimp better, and are running UNIX or Windows, by all means, use The Gimp. PhotoShop is out for Windows and MacOS; the UNIX version was discontinued around 3.x, I believe, but I know that the Windows version (at least 3.0) runs very quickly under Wine. Also, we're starting to see more quality, free photo-manipulation programs for Linux, but I doubt any of them will replace The Gimp anytime soon...

    But yes, my broad generalizations can often be refuted to differing degrees on a case-by-case basis. That doesn't mean there isn't any truth there, though, just that it isn't absolute. :)
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].

  • I posted expecting to get rejected, but instead I got reflected.

    :-)

  • Definitely. I wasn't trying to adopt a complete "All Closed Source Is Bad" argument there, but I was probably overgeneralizing. I guess I should move to a more clear "Open Source Whenever It Makes Sense" argument. :)

    You're doing better than I am, as I haven't released a whole lot of code for anything; but then, I haven't written anything that's absolutely indispensable yet. I'd still like to code more SVGALib and BGI support on top of SDL (at the moment, I've coded some basic BGI support on top of SVGALib, and I'm not too impressed with GGI yet), and I've got a couple of other ideas, but I don't know if they'll ever happen.

    My most ambitious project would be a totally configurable widget set that implements the calls for the widgets it can look like as well; but that would be a mess, and then I'd have to actually *learn* X programming. :)
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • Why should it be a joke? It's totally true! Miami people got the shit knocked out of them by the storm, but thanks to gobs of disaster relief money, they get new buildings to replace the tacky ones that were around before.

    City councillors should be happy about that. Narrowminded fucks.

  • The good licenses flourish in the programmer's community, the bad ones get circumvented -- and eventually, the software that people really need gets made, one way or the other.

    If SSH.com's "bad" license served them well, then it's only "bad" to other developers -- but a better software offering appeared with a better license, and all turned out well in the end.

    I can't see anyone arguing that bad licenses are good for everyone concerned, though, since the only "benefit" it provided was the production of a parallel software development effort that may or may not be compatible in the future.

  • Are hurricanes good for the community? (Score:5)

    by exploder ( 196936 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2000 @07:04AM (#940510) Homepage
    MIAMI, FLORIDA: Almost eight years after Hurricane Andrew swept through the city of Miami, causing billions of dollars of damage, most of those whose homes or businesses were destroyed have completed the rebuilding process. In the vast majority of cases, the rebuilt homes and offices are better-constructed and more modern than the buildings they replaced. "Hurricane Andrew is the best thing that ever happened to this town" said one city council member.
  • So, how off topic could you be? Somebody moderate this asshole down, please...
  • This argument reduces to an "adversity breeds genius" type argument - except for the fact that we would have been perfectly happy if SSH just kept its free license! Can you now defend Windows because of... oh... watiminit...

    Unfortunately, we need some commercial software to exist (like Windows) because they need to compete with free software. Competition spurs innovation (that's a dirty word now, isn't it?), and non-free software is in many instances, better suited to compete then free software. Whether or not you like Windows, it's got a leg up in ease-of-use to KDE 1/GNOME, and KDE2 is the result.

    Competition is good. Changing free software to non-free is bad.

  • Once again, capitalism rears its ugly head. This issue revolves around one or more developers trying to be compensated for their efforts. If that causes others to develop look-alikes to get around paying for a product, so be it. They run the risks of needing the time to develop and test the product. It can become quite a monumental task, all of which has already been done by the developer with the license! Is it worth saving the money for the license? Are you *really* saving money?

  • stupid... (Score:5)

    by pb ( 1020 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2000 @07:07AM (#940514)
    Closed software is good because it gives us an excuse to reinvent the wheel and make better open software?

    No, we do that to ourselves... Closed software is still bad, and if the world was Open Source, we'd *still* have 18 zillion versions of everything. Consider:

    How many open programs are named 'ya*' or '?in?', for "Yet Another ---", or "?-- Is Not ?--"?

    In the meantime, how many closed-source programs dominate the field for their type of application? (MS-Office; Windows; Photoshop; Quicken) Even if there are closed *or* open alternatives, people generally don't use them because of the stifling effects of closed software.

    Even if Outlook and Eudora didn't exist, I guarantee you we'd still have mail, elm, pine, mutt.... etc., etc., ad infinitum. One program *or* one license is never enough for everybody in the Open Source world, and most people are just coding for themselves.

    However, a commercial program like Outlook that is designed for the masses *does* give us something to shoot for; it's an example of "programming for the masses", which is what a program needs for more people to use it. So the Open Source e-mail clients of the future should be better for it.

    BUT--this does not mean that if Microsoft opened the source for Outlook, that this would be worse--it would be better. Then we could examine it, pick it apart, and hack up a new e-mail client faster, fix some bugs, and avoid some mistakes. So open source licenses are still better, and closed programs provide an example, but they certainly don't help us by being closed, AND they aren't the reason why there are so many Open Source app/clones out there--that's just because everyone has their own itch to scratch.
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • Yes, but where do the ideas for these features come from?

    Someone has to think of them, and if the software were open in the first place, the ideas would be easily implemented into the existing software.

    I just can't accept the fact that closed software is helping open-source developers in any way.

  • Cars come with closed source software... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Cars come with closed source software and so far I have not heard of anyone developing an Open Source clone for any motor vehicle.

    As it is, you can't even get a list of the conditions that trigger the "Check Engine Soon" light.

    On the other hand, what if the hacker in the car ahead of you on the expressway was testing his modifications to the Anti-lock Brake System control subroutine?

    Morris
    Slashdot ate my password, again.
  • Sorry, but by that logic, tyranny was good for the cause of freedom by causing the revolutions that ultimately led to the U.S constitution.

    Tyrannies still exist, and regardless of the failure of communism, the transition to a more free world was (and is) by no means certain.

    Similarly, although the Open Source movement seems to have 'the tide of history' on it's side at the moment, all the votes are not in, and advocating complacency is a sure way to get blindsisded by the unexpected.

    Bad licenses are bad. Period.

    How about saying "high crime rates are good, because they convince people to vote for the larger police budgets that are needed to keep them safe". This is the sort of absurdity that this thinking leads to.
    --

  • Re:Sure... (Score:3)

    by QuMa ( 19440 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2000 @07:09AM (#940518)
    And if the licenses had permitted it, we (using the broadest term of 'we' possible here) would have implemented those things in the original programs.
  • Why is it I keep seeing posts regarding why MS, etc should open up their sources so people can grab the source code and make something better of their own?

    And it's not like it's remotely easy to pick up 250,000 lines of source and make something better. I work on huge projects during the day, and it's common for a programmer on the project to misunderstand an interface subtlety and make a mistake that shows up later down the road. And this with experience working on a code base full-time.

    One of the great myths of open source is that it makes bug fixes and enhancements easy.
  • >f the license was free, then there would be no need to write a clone. Coders could instead work on othe, new projects instead of duplicating effort.

    So you then advocate a BSD or a public domain licence, as these would allow the code written to be used EVERYWHERE, thus reducing the efforts of humanity on code.

  • Or at least evidence.

    I have friends who work for
    large corps that have source
    code licenses to diferent MS
    OS products.
  • ... except that that could lead to someone taking the code and placing it under a commercial license again. And oh, we need something like that, so let's duplicate that effort in our own, BSD-licensed software. Repeat until tired.
  • If software distribution licenses are all that we have to worry about, then maybe I should see about patenting SSH.

    "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary..."

    It's necessary.

    USA% init 6
  • How do we know that KDE2 wouldn't have come out even if both MacOS and Windows had collapsed on the day that KDE1 came out?

    After all, emacs hasn't had any real competition in years (well, some would consider vi a competitor, but I don't. Nothing ever causes people to switch from one to the other), yet they still keep improving it.
  • If the goal is to stop duplication of efforts, the BSD or public domain licence does a better job than a GPL licence.
    Your theory is flawed. With BSD license a closed source software company could take software, modify it, release it with a restrictive license plus annoying advertising clause, and the open source developers gotta clone software.
    Microsoft did it with TCP/IP. Now of they did nothing that there is a need to duplicate. They just implemented it in there OS.
    Now IBM released there e-biz software closed source based on apache, BSD licensed software. Assuming it catches on there will be a need to provide the functionality in an open source product. People will have to clone the functionality.
  • Please don't insult my intelligence and betray the obvious lack of it on your part. Like everything BSD has its place, so does GPL. Your single mindness is the obvious reason that people shy away from the Open Source Movement. Pity
  • Is the grain of sand good for the oyster? Probably not, but it certainly causes a beautiful pearl to develop because of it. This is the entire basis of scratching the proverbial itch. People write software because they need it. And in this case, because they need it under a more free licence.

  • Do you remember why RMS started the GNU movement? (Score:3)

    by renoX ( 11677 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2000 @07:13AM (#940535)
    It was because he couldn't access the sources of a printer's driver.

    In a way, you could say that it is because the driver was under a "bad" license (closed source) instead of open source.

    So in a waym "bad" (restrictive) licenses started the whole free software movement!

  • Not necessarily. (Score:4)

    by BigStink ( 99218 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2000 @07:16AM (#940536)
    I don't see how it can be said that poor licenses cause people to develop an equivalent open source version of the software. The majority of open source developers write software in order to scratch an itch - they have a need for a piece of software, so they go and write it. If they decide to make an open source version of some proprietary closed source software, then it is because they need the functionality of this software, not because they are striking to strike a blow against the evils of proprietary software.

    The only way it could be argued that closed source software is good for open source software is when the open source software tries to emulate important aspects of the closed source software (e.g. AbiWord is intended to have a very similar look and feel to the market leader, Microsoft Word, so that AbiWord is intuitive to use for Word users). The larger financial resources of the software companies can be used to conduct research into what users require of the software and to design other aspects such as the user interface, and these fundamental features can be incorporated into the open source software. Therefore, the commercial software companies can lay the foundations for the open source programmers to build upon, therefore saving some development effort for the open source programmers.

    So maybe closed source software can benefit open source software, but not in the way suggested by the article.

  • Bad Licenses are good for free software. This is the #1 reason why Linux and Apache are so relatively unpopular for Fortune 500 web sites compared to the sites of smaller enterprises.

    You see a Huge company with 150,000 employees and a few Billion in annual profits doesn't buy software under the same restrictions as the rest of us. They don't suffer from bad licenses like we do.

    Case in point. Nameless Big Company [NBC] buys a site license for NT. Latter it decides to create a web presence and simply grabs an NT CD and installs. As far as the internal developers are concerned NT Server is free because The site license essentially means paying for an estimated total number of servers with no penalty for adding more in the short term.

    Even the CDs are different. I.e. No serial numbers to enter on the Corporate edition of MSOffice 97 when I had to install that.

    Support is different too. They give the likes of NBC a different tech support number from the regular one. People answer that phone promptly and technicians come on site if needed ( for a pre established fee ).

    Even Source code. yes. NBC can get the source code to windows if they ask for it. Sure it costs money but not nearly as much as that enterprise wide site license.

    In short, bad licenses force ordinary users into open source and would have done the same to NBC. Except they get a not-so-bad license.

    "Life Sucks. Then you die" -: Wolverine must have been talking to the small businesses who mistakenly believe that the fortune 500 became successful by choosing these tools ( which were only invented recently anyway ) and buy accordingly.

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