Using OSS for In-House Tools, Only? 57
Robert Hart writes "With people such as Microsoft and ADTI suggesting incorrectly that if you use GPL software in house (without distributing it to third parties) you must make your code publicly available, actual examples of people using GPL software internally would seem to be the best response (pragmatic examples to back up the 'theory').
I am interested in hearing about examples of corporations and government agencies, from around the world, using GPL software as part of an inhouse development effort. As there is also a potential for time/money saving by doing this, there is a possibility that this
may lead to some research to put numbers behind this."
You're fighting a losing battle (Score:2, Insightful)
Recently there was a
With regards to OSS tools, there are two choices. Use them or not. Using them entails following the GPL which adds all sorts of weird, non-obvious restrictions. Not using them means they can get on with their normal routine.
Microsoft is pushing this aspect to its limit. To understand Microsoft licenses, it's pretty straightforward. You can't copy the product to another machine. They play this up to its fullest as well.
No matter what you think of the GPL or OSS, it's underlying value system is so contrary to the American psyche that you'd need a true revolution to make any significant inroads. Such a revolution won't happen in the near future because the anger and bile that OSS zealots have for closed source products doesn't resonate with Capitalist Joe.
Re:what percentage understand the MS license? (Score:2)
What percentage of the microsoft license do people understand?
Re:what percentage understand the MS license? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:what percentage understand the MS license? (Score:2)
I took the GPL quiz (I got all but one right, but that was more down to logical deduction than knowledge), and use GPL'd software in a corporate environment daily, so I feel that I should understand the license, but from the quiz I feel that I don't. In comparison with the Microsoft EULA the GPL really is inpenetrable to the layperson, with numerous "ifs" and "ors" , which is maybe not a good thing. The wording of the GPL leaves the door wide open for this kind of FUD which will no doubt be accepted as truth by many who should know better.
Perhaps what the GPL needs is an companion document that answers the FUD in plain language - the explanatory answers from the quiz would be a good place to start. The fact that the proponents of the GPL can dispel the FUD is not the point - the point is that they are being required to do so in the first place.
Re:what percentage understand the MS license? (Score:1)
You mean like this [gnu.org]?
Well, the only way to avoid FUD is to be exactly like everyone else. The GPL proponents are, of course, geeks. Ergo, they don't desire to be like every one else---they'd rather deal with the (inevitable) FUD.
Re:what percentage understand the MS license? (Score:2)
To give a real life example, I did some work at one site recently who wanted some very basic network usage monitoring - the kind of stuff that would be a no brainer for MRTG [ee.ethz.ch]. Because of the KISS argument above they were about to spend the best part of £1000 on an overkill commerical product, with additional outlay as they added additional devices because it was licensed per node. They were happy with this because they understood the license and costs, even when I said I could set up an a Linux box with an MRTG config for then in a morning and have a web configuration front-end tailored for them by the end of the same day.
(For those who want to know - they agreed to give it a shot, and I was in the local pub with it all done by 14:00 the following day. They were so happy and their license concerns sufficiently assuaged that I'm replacing their NT based mail gateway with a Linux box next month...)
OT: Your sig in this context (Score:1)
Am I the only one who finds this sequence ironic?
Re:You're fighting a losing battle (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:You're fighting a losing battle (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You're fighting a losing battle (Score:2)
a) All OSS tools are not licensed under the GPL and b) The GPL places absolutely no restrictions whatsoever on use. You can use GPL software without agreeing to the license at all.
If anything, it is closed-source that is socialist, with its government-enforced monopolies.
gcc... (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh and if you know anyone that is looking for a large scale leasing app that runs on Linux please reply to this post with more info. We are getting ready to release an alpha and I just got eop working today ;-).
Re:gcc... (Score:2)
On my previous assignment, a large embedded project (millions of lines of code, hundreds of developers at its peak) was done with gcc/g++. On my current assignment, I'm developing software for Solaris 8, using Purify to help test it, keeping it under source control with ClearCase (so no fear of commercial software development tools)
Question? (Score:2)
Can some GPL guru do us all a favor and provide an argument for why Microsoft and ADTI are incorrect here? It is my understanding that they're wrong, but I cannot back it up with a reasoned argument. I would think a reasoned argument would as important as examples: Otherwise, the examples would be of people violating the license, right?
Re:Question? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Question? (and the answer questioned) (Score:2)
If my employer makes a change to gcc, and lets me use the binary, then my employer cannot restrict me from grabbing the source and posting it on the Internet. Was my employer to do that, they'd immediately lose the rights (to modify and redistribute the software) they were granted under the GPL.
(The usual way of saying this is, "They'd have to GPL their software"; which is not true, though it's the only way they could keep their redistribution rights.)
Re:Question? (and the answer questioned) (Score:2)
However, the Licence is legal binding, and the FAQ isn't.
Re:Question? (and the answer questioned) (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that is the crux of the issue. Modifying the code doesn't modify the license; and, according to section 2, all you really need to do is copy the modified code to trigger it:
Who doesn't make copies of their code?
So, actually, it looks like Microsoft and ADTI have it right in a sense:
Premise: Original work licensed under the GPL.
Premise: Company obtains a copy through GPL and makes modifications.
Premise: Company makes copies of modified code for internal use.
Premise: GPL, under section 7, doesn't allow additional restrictions on distribution. So, company cannot restrict distribution.
Conclusion: Anyone with access to modified source can distribute under the GPL or company cannot use GPL'd work.
Hmmmm.... Not exactly the mindset I've been working under. How did we start this conversation? Oh yeah, we we're looking for proof Microsoft and ADTI were wrong. Oops.
Re:Question? (and the answer questioned) (Score:5, Informative)
That would imply that an employee could NOT distribute it without the permission of the organization, if the modified product was intended for in-house use only.
Re:Question? (and the answer questioned) (Score:4, Informative)
An organization is considered a single body; therefore, one can "redistribute" a GPL'd work internally ad infinitum without invoking the GPL. ("Redistribute" is in quotes because one can't technically redistribute a program to themselves; that's just copying.)
Posts to this thread are confused. An organization doesn't "give" software to its employees. Rather, the organization acquires software which is then used by employees. There's no redistribution and, therefore, the GPL isn't invoked. As such, the employee has no right to redistribute the software whatsoever. And to do so would, at a minimum, be a violation of company policy. Most likely, it would also (legally) be considered theft.
Re:Question? (and the answer questioned) (Score:2)
This is premised on the legal relationship between an organisation and its members (whether employees, members, volunteers, etc). This legal relationship varies from country to country - in some places it is not valid to assume a contract/license which is binding on the organisation is binding on individuals, unless they explicitly agree to the contract as well.
Re:Question? (and the answer questioned) (Score:2)
1. as an employee using the employer's computers.
2. as an outside individual doing something other than company business.
Seems you would have a right to the source in case 2 but not in case 1.
Re:Question? (Score:3, Insightful)
In this case, "derived from" is not referring to the output of the program, but the actual codebase of the program having been modified in some way.
from the GPL FAQ [fsf.org]
Q: Is there some way that I can GPL the output people get from use of my program? For example, if my program is used to develop hardware designs, can I require that these designs must be free?
A: In general this is legally impossible; copyright law does not give you any say in the use of the output people make from their data using your program. If the user uses your program to enter or convert his own data, the copyright on the output belongs to him, not you. More generally, when a program translates its input into some other form, the copyright status of the output inherits that of the input it was generated from.
So the only way you have a say in the use of the output is if substantial parts of the output are copied (more or less) from text in your program. For instance, part of the output of Bison (see above) would be covered by the GNU GPL, if we had not made an exception in this specific case.
You could artificially make a program copy certain text into its output even if there is no technical reason to do so. But if that copied text serves no practical purpose, the user could simply delete that text from the output and use only the rest. Then he would not have to obey the conditions on redistribution of the copied text.
Re:Question? (Score:4, Informative)
It's not that hard, really:
Say there's a GPL'd package called Foo. You take it, modify it in-house, and compile it to form a modified binary that we'll call Foo2.
If you only use Foo2 in-house, then you need not release the changes. No problem.
Now, let's say you provide the Foo2 binary to someone else outside your organization. (Free of charge, for money, for chocolate, whatever.) Now you must also provide your modifications. It doesn't need to be public, but whoever gets the Foo2 binary must also be able to get the changes to turn Foo into Foo2.
Re:Question? (Score:2)
Re:Question? (Score:2)
This of course ignores the fact that the code for Foo2 that you gave to the person outside your organisation is now GPL'd, and they can release it for free to the whole world.
Which ignores the fact that you got foo with source absolutely free and were able to use for any purpose of your own apart from certain forms of redistribution.
I like to think of the GPL as the share and share alike license.
Cisco uses opensource tools, libs, and so on. (Score:1, Interesting)
Dual-licensing (Score:3, Insightful)
If you released your OSS project with a license that allowed the licensee to apply their choice of the GPL or a standard "You have no rights to redistribute" license, they might actually be more reassured. (as strange/silly as that is)
Re:Dual-licensing (Score:2)
Even M$ internally uses GPL'd code (Score:1, Informative)
http://research.microsoft.com/~dbwilson/
Hrmm let's see...... domain: Microsoft. body: references to GNU and GPL'd applications/code!
mod me down this time. I dare you.
Giving away GPL code? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Giving away GPL code? (Score:3, Insightful)
Threat of termination. Lumpish Scholar [slashdot.org] posted his interpretation of just such a scenario above.
Anyone who is willing to divulge company secrets is not someone who should remain in your employ. Kaner, et al [amazon.com] discuss interviewees divulging private company information, but the same reasoning can be applied to currently employed engineers as well.
Re:Giving away GPL code? (Score:2)
Re:Giving away GPL code? (Score:1)
The right to distribute is given to the company using/licencing the GPL'd software, NOT to the lowly coder who's using the code in whatever product that company is building.
Re:Giving away GPL code? (Score:2)
The computers, software, office furniture, etc. belong to the organization not to the someones who are using them. You don't get to sell off "your" office desk.
What will happen is that for any bug-fixes and generally-usable improvements to the GPL software, it is to the organization's benefit that those changes are either fed back or generally available. Much easier if you don't have to keep redoing the changes if you pick up something newer. This behavior is somewhat expected, but nothing in the GPL requires it.
Your internal app is some mixture of original GPL, desirable bug-fixes and modifications, and some changes that are unique to your own organization. The thing is that even though maybe interesting to some other parties, nobody else wants the stuff that's unique to your organization. Somewhere along the line the stuff that's unique to your organization will be dropped, either by the maintainer of the GPL stuff, or by the organization itself.
Re:Giving away GPL code? (Score:2)
Hmm, very good point indeed, and 100% on topic, I think.
I was going to say that the company (and not the individual developer) owns the copyright on any new code, and that the extra rights of the GPL flow from the protection of copyright, so that the company could prohibit even its own employees from distributing this code.
But then I realised that you're absolutely right, that this is precisely the situation that the GPL is intended to avoid. If you add new source to a GPL utility, it becomes GPL licensed, and that means that anybody who gets their hands on it, however they get their hands on it, has an explicit license to copy and distribute it (if they follow the license terms).
Of course, in practical terms you can get sacked for it, but there's nothing in the GPL that prevents it. You can see why paranoid companies like Microsoft hate and fear the GPL so much.
why bother with the GPL (Score:2, Offtopic)
off-on-a-tangent-time: to me, truly "free" software means adding no stipulations of any kind, unlike the GPL. therefore, short of paying a lawyer lots of $ to write the Naikrovek(tm) license, i use the BSD license for all the software i write. Fortunately for me, my entire company licenses the software they work on under the BSD license, unless its trade-secret.
there's nothing saying that you have to use the GPL for your in-house tools.
Re:why bother with the GPL (Score:2)
I'd just like to chime in with a "hear, hear." I agree completely, and in the face of the vocal proponents of the GPL, it's nice to see that people other than myself hold this opinion.
Thanks.
Misuse of terms (Score:3, Insightful)
These things are very different; there's a tonne of open source software out there that lots of people use that isn't GPL:
To constantly suggest that the GPL is the One True License is not only wrong, but very damaging, since it undermines perceived choice over licensing.
This is supposed to be a site for vaguely intelligent people; can't we at least make some effort to be more precise in our terminology?
Re:Misuse of terms (Score:1)
The argument isn't over which license is best, because that can't ever really be resolved as long as people have different conceptions of their needs. The argument is over taking back the term Free from the FSF whose license is decidedly un-Free. It may be Open Source. It may grant many rights to the user. But it doesn't come close to being public domain, the true home of Freedom.
That's why the BSD zealots are so loud on this issue. The BSD license is about as close as you can come to declaring a work public domain without giving up copyright. The Artistic License was like this too, but sadly it has been rewritten to line up nicely with the GPL and has lost all its attraction.
Re:Misuse of terms (Score:1)
No FSF representative claims that BSD code isn't free. The real issue is whether it is important that code derived from free code remain free. The BSD folks either don't think that's important or find the restrictions required to make that happen unacceptable. For the FSF folks that issue is a priority. But as far as high jacking the word free is concerned, free had a huge number of meanings before it was ever applied to software. I don't find the FSF's usage much of a stretch over some of those original meanings, and the FSF has been diligent to a fault to explain what they mean when they use the word.
Re:Misuse of terms (Score:1)
They can espouse whatever they want, but when they claim the word Freedom for their own purposes which are clearly less free than certain alternatives, they open themselves up for attack.
Re:why bother with the GPL (Score:2)
Why not just state that it's public domain? Isn't that "truly free"?
Or instead of the slightly wordy BSD say "© Naikrovek. You may freely use, copy, modify or distribute this text, as long as this copyright notice is preserved", which is functionally identical, a lot shorter, and shows respect for the intelligence and good faith of the recipient. Bearing in mind that anyone acting in bad faith isn't going to read the BSD anyway, you might as well not piss them off with a long preamble in each source file. ;-)
We use GPL'd software at work (Score:1)
...though I doubt anyone here would be willing to go on the record about it in any official way.
We use Perl quite a lot, mainly in development and QA work. Sometimes we write Perl programs for customers, to extend the functionality of one of our products. (Said products are closed source, licenced in the usual proprietary way.)
One of our products used Apache as glue between two other programs that we wrote, and a couple of Perl scripts that ran as CGI programs. Did using GPL'd software (Perl, not Apache) in this way require us to GPL the source of our programs? Of course not.
Perhaps a better example of our use of GPL'd software is gzip. We use it as part of our (often futile) attempts to keep control of disk usage. Also, we often package software deliveries in .tar.gz form, both for CD-ROM and ftp. The installation script (written by us) has to call gzip as the first stage of unpacking it. To say that using gzip means that we have to GPL our software holds about as much water as saying that Adobe owns all your photos of you and your dog because you used Photoshop to save them as JPEGs.
As tools... (Score:1)
Oh, I know (Score:2)
Well, the NSA seems to be pretty keen on Linux [nsa.gov]. I know they're not that big or important, and they don't know much about technology or the law or anything... ;-)
Example (Score:1)
We are working on improving a few CPAN modules, and I plan to contribute that back. But as long as we stay an ASP, we're not legally required to.