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Being a programmer on top of being a philosopher, I have always taken an interest in software licenses. The philosophical, political and economic ramifications for choosing a certain license have always fascinated me. This is why I initially wrote my rant on copyrights. But after reading an article on Freshmeat on the embroilment of a certain license called the QPL and a distrubition of Linux called Debian. In an effort for me to finally decide my personal viewpoint on all of this, and thus affect what software I feel I can morally use, I have decided to do this ran on software licenses. In this whole issue, there are essentially three players. One license is the GPL as created by Richard Stallman (known as RMS) and his organization the Free Software Foundation. Another is the FreeBSD license. The final license in discussion here is any standard EULA (End-User License Agreement) such as the one used by Microsoft or most commercial software packages. I will discuss them here in order from most open to least opening. The GPL is the most open license available. In a nutshell, the license says that the software under the GPL must have its source code available for free and that any changes made to the source code be available for free. This essentially causes a program under the GPL to be perpetually free for life. You could sell the program in stores, but anyone would be able to go online and get your source code for free and use it. The spirit of the GPL is this free openness that it causes. One of its main attractions is not just the required freeness of the source code, but the ability to change the source code freely. The FreeBSD license is considered by most to not be not as free as the GPL; but that is up for interpretation. The FreeBSD license says you can take the source code, compile it, edit it, what ever; all without making the source code available. Unlike the GPL license, the FreeBSD license does not require that the source code stay available or free. You can take a program under the FreeBSD license and sell it if you wanted to, all without giving out the source code. Now the reason I say that this license could be considered more free than the GPL is that there are less restrictions when the two are compared; the GPL requires the source code be available while the FreeBSD license makes no such requirement. About the only possible restriction that can be made by the FreeBSD license is that it can require that you say that the program contains source code from you, which is not such a horrible thing. The common EULA used today essentially states that the program on the CD that you just bought from Fry's can only be installed on one computer at a time and cannot be given to a friend to install. You can copy the software, but once again it can only be installed on a single computer at any time. There is no requirement for the source code to be available; actually, when software uses the standard EULA it usually means that that source code will not be available. This is the most prohibitive license of the three. So, which license is best license? Obviously each license takes a different stance in view of copyrights. The fundamental issue between all of these licenses is whether software should or can be copyrighted. I have always stipulated that an idea is completely different when compared to physical things. Under copyrights, you can actually "steal" an idea illegally. Some one actually has ownersship over an idea. This seems just plain wrong. An idea is some abstract entity that a person is able to call into their mind but can never physically hold (this is all taking an interactionist viewpoint to keep things simple). It would like saying that someone could own the right to the idea of a book and the physical book. So the person who first came up with the idea of putting a bunch of pages into a binding and calling it a book could possibly copyright that idea and hold a 20 year monopoly on the idea of books. I don't know about you but I find that ludicrous and apalling. This would also mean that I could hear, read, and learn all about the idea of a book, but yet never use that knowledge because someone legally owns that knowledge already. I realize that copyrights are more complicated than that of a book (or at least they should be), but it really points out what seems to be inherent flaws in copyrights and the whole idea of owning ideas. All of this is based on the idea that a program, whether it is source code or a compiled program, are just ideas that happen to be stored on a hard drive; just like how you store ideas in your brain or written down on a piece of paper. Let's just say that I am right and that owning ideas is wrong. Where does this put the licenses in question? The FreeBSD license is perfectly fine. It has no stipulation of ownership or any restrictions of any kind. The GPL seems to be okay on the surface. But there is a problem here. The GPL requires that your ideas be freely available through open source code. So the GPL is not just open, but forcefully open. The GPL license forces you do something with your ideas. That makes it almost as bad as owning ideas. Being told what to do with your ideas should not be right. Your ideas are your ideas and you can do with them as you please. As soon as you learn something you own those ideas and you have the freedom to do what you want with them. A EULA is no better. It says that you can only have one copy of that program at any one time on a computer. So they are restricting how many copies of that "idea" you can have. That is wrong. Once again, your ideas that you have gained are being restricted by some third party. We are now left in an interesting position. Ideas can not be specifically owned by someone. As soon as you gain a new idea, that idea is as much yours as it is the person who gave it to you. You can do what you please with that idea. You have complete discretion. You can keep it to yourself or you can share with others. It is your choice. This leaves the FreeBSD license the only license that does not restrict you in any way and thus the best license philosophically. With the ability to do what you please with the idea is completely yours and is not inhibited in any way. One issue that always comes up with these licenses is how programmers are supposed to make a living. Well, first off you don't have to give your source code away. It is a very nice thing to do, but you don't have to. That can keep your ideas partially safe. But this does not stop the copying of your ideas from occuring. That is where copy-protection comes in. You have the right to do what ever you want to stop people from copying your software; from requiring them to have a unique CD key to requiring the CD be in the drive when the program runs. As long as you do not try to legally prosecute anyone who is able to get around any copy-protection through ideas you can go to any extent that you want. Another way is to only offer technical support for a fee. For instance, you will only give technical support for a program if they buy the CD and register. There is nothing philosophically wrong with that. Does this mean you should stop using all programs that do not conform to a license similar to the FreeBSD license? Not necessarily. The issue with whether you do or not is if you believe that you should follow a law that is immoral. If you believe you should not, then by all means use any software you want, just remember that you are breaking the law of the land and they will prosecute. Whether or not you are morally right will not be the main issue in that court room. So don't go around copying programs and selling them expecting to get away with it for very long. |