Novell and SuSE

On Jan 17, 2004, at 12:55 AM, Trent Shipley wrote:

>> I absolutely agree that the GPL allows you to put the software on the
>> desks of all your employees without granting them these "freedoms."
>> I'm
>> merely pointing out that the GPL is therefor not a free software
>> license by the FSF's own definition. After all they say "Free software
>> is a matter of the *users'* freedom to run, copy, distribute, study,
>> change and improve the software. More precisely, it refers to four
>> kinds of freedom, for the *users* of the software:"(emphasis added).
>> Now we seem to agree that the GPL isn't really about *users'* freedom
>> at all but rather about corporate "freedom." Apparently you are OK
>> with
>> that. I'm not.
>
> I don't think this is entirely fair to the GPL and FSF people. The
> GPL is
> willing to treat a corporation as an artifical person, and therefore a
> "user". In effect the GPL doesn't license software to humans who use
> software, but to software using firms. Employees use the software in
> their
> role as employees not as individuals (that is, one person firms).

I think this is exactly right. It's just that the appeal of the 'Four
Freedoms' comes from our tendency to visualize the term 'user' as
applying to actual organic people. If you read "The Free Software
Definition" mentally substituting the word 'organization' whenever
'user' appears, you are very likely to ask yourself "What is the point
of this? Is this much better than Microsoft's EULA?" And yet it is
clear that in practice the term 'user' does refer to the organization,
not the poor sod stuck in a cubicle.

> Clearly the GPL is a pretty radical license, though it could go
> further. Of
> course, I've worked in software shops that refuse to use GPL stuff
> because
> they are afraid--terrified--it might infect their proprietary
> software, and
> then they'd be royaly screwed.

My point was not to argue that the GPL was totally ineffective. That
would be silly. It was merely to say that there are degrees of
openness. There is a continuum that can't be captured by the
Free/Non-Free dichotomy. The YaST license is clearly more like the GPL
then it is like the MS EULA[1]. Saying that the GPL is 'Free" and both
the YaST license and the MS EULA are non-Free obscures something that I
think is important.
>
> If you create a software license so restrictive that a good ol'
> fashioned
> greedy capitalist can't figure out how to do any development work and
> make a
> buck ... that could be a problem too.

Certainly. Bruce Parens is proposing UserLinux precisely because he
believes that Debian's insistence on excluding closed source drivers is
doing more harm than good. It is an issue that merits serious
discussion.

It's also interesting that he was asked why he calls it UserLinux when
the target market is so obviously corporations. His response was that
corporations, not individuals are the 'users'. I still think he should
call it 'BusinessLinux' if that's what he intends it to be, but maybe
that's just me.