I was on a call the other day, and we were discussing whether it was appropriate to look into the intent underlying an open source license, or whether one should accept it "as is," on its face. I'm in the latter camp, believing the Open Source Definition applies to the words of a license, and not to any inferred intent behind those words.
The point was made, however, that it's impossible to read the GPL without seeing Richard Stallman's intentions/philosophy all over the license. Intentions certainly matter to Richard. However, as can be seen with GPLv3, it's very difficult to bound one's intentions once efforts kick in to impose a political view on the world through software.
It is this very grasping nature of Richard's, however, that makes the GPL the software capitalist's best friend. Richard never intended this. His purpose is freedom. But the problem with trying to control outcomes is that one can't help but control the means to those ends, as well. (I wrote about Machiavelli during my Masters program along this very same vein - to control the ends we must control the means to those ends. There is no other way to do it.)
So, Richard, by trying to guarantee freedom has instead created a license that mostly constrains it. Though people debate this point, the BSD actually offers more freedom. Last time I checked, freedom meant:
By this metric, then, the GPL is hardly a free software license. Forcing people to share's one's version of freedom is not...free. In fact, I'd argue that it's the closest thing to traditional copyright that the open source world has ever devised.
- the condition of being free; the power to act or speak or think without externally imposed restraints
- exemption: immunity from an obligation or duty
Don't get me wrong: I'm a capitalist. Therefore, I love the GPL. The GPL offers vendors a way to freely (as in cost and "freedom") distribute their software without any fear that a competitor will use it. Why? Because to do so would be like dropping a neutron bomb on their own software. It's just not going to happen. (I wrote a long paper on this back when I was still Larry Lessig's student at Stanford Law School - you might enjoy it. He gave me a good grade. :-)
In the ongoing debates about whether attribution licenses are open source, whether GPLv3 is open source, etc., please keep in mind that the supposed paragon of software freedom is also the license that most tightly imposes a distinct lack of freedom on downstream users. If you're a capitalist like me, you probably like this fact. But if you're a software developer...?
Posted by Matt Asay on October 24, 2006 07:26 AM
