[ale] [Rant] Fedora Package Caching

[Solomon Peachy]

On Wed, Oct 04, 2017 at 09:41:56PM -0400, Joey Kelly wrote:
> I don't care/trust google, but there are a few of us little guys that
> think GPL v3 was a mistake. RMS should have stopped while he was ahead.

The GPLv3's language is _vastly_ improved over v2.  If you want to treat 
it as a psuedo-GPLv2.1, you can simply waive the anti-tivoization 
clauses as additional permission grants while still getting the rest of 
the benefits.

> AGPL is even further down the path... why would anyone ever want to use
> further-encumbered (it works both ways, you know...) code in their products?

The folks who want to use it.. are the ones who chose to use it.  As are 
those who chose to use AGPL'd software -- There's a large swath of other 
uses for software than creating one's own products; indeed 
most software is written/used/modified for internal use rather than as 
a commercial product.

(BTW, the 'A' referrs to Affero, the organization who created that 
variation of the GPL)

Meanwhile.  The GPLv3 was a direct response to two demonstrated 
threats/weaknesses in the GPLv2:

 1) TiVo.  I've been _personally_ burned by this.  As in, my GPLv2 code 
    shipped by TiVo.  While compliant with the letter of the GPLv2, what 
    they did was very much against the spirit as it left folks with no 
    ability to actually exercise their rights uder the GPLv2.
 2) JRMI -- a company took GPLv2 code, incorporated it into 
    their own products, patented it, and proceeded to sue 
    the original authors and other users of JRMI for patent 
    infringement.  Consequently, the GPLv3 has explicit patent language 
    to prevent this sort of thing from ocurring.

Aside from that, there were several other tweaks, clarifications, 
and other improvements; stuff like automatically restoring rights if 
infringment is resolved and allowing pass-through source code offers.

I deeply care about the principles of software freedom, and the use of 
copyleft to achieve that goal -- and I put my money where my mouth is.  
Consequently, I personally use GPLv3 on nearly everything I write 
myself, because I consider it to be objectively superior to my other 
options, especially when the two reasons listed above are factored in.

 - Solomon
-- 
Solomon Peachy			       pizza at shaftnet dot org
Coconut Creek, FL                          ^^ (email/xmpp) ^^
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.
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