Re: Fuzzy machine learning framework v1.2

["Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)" <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr>]

Le Sat, 02 Jun 2012 15:59:43 +0200, darkestkhan <darkestkhan@gmail.com> a  
écrit:

> On Saturday, June 2, 2012 10:25:56 AM UTC, Hibou57 (Yannick Duchêne)  
> wrote:
>> Le Sat, 02 Jun 2012 10:06:23 +0200, Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org> a
>> écrit:
>> > Is there evidence for "the doubt about the GPL is increasing"?
>>
>> Well, “increasing” may be misleading as it does not explicitly express  
>> an
>> amount by which. I should have said “visibly increasing” (enough to be
>> visible). I have a web connection at home since about 2005, and at that
>> time, there was near to no visible opposition to the GPL which was
>> glorified every where. Questioning seems more frequent to me since some
>> time (two or three years?). Some big enough examples I have in mind, is  
>> an
>> affair with WordPress themes designers [?], who suddenly was [?] forced  
>> to release
>> their works under the GPL, after multiple years selling their works  
>> under
>> another license (someone lately noticed a trick implying they now had to
>> release their work under GPL). This case made some noise, as this themes
>> author made a living from it.
>
> So? He broke license in the first place so he should be publishing his  
> work under GPL.

Designing themes, is graphic designer work. Prior to that case, I've heard  
of skinning or theming contaminated by the license of the application it  
applies to. That an example of how tricky the GPL is. If my mind is right,  
because the themes was attached via PHP hook, then this was considered to  
be linking, and thus considered to be GPLed. There were not programmer,  
but graphic designer, their did not released programs, but styles,  
nevertheless, the GPL applied, late, as a bad surprise (and that's not the  
only bad trick of the GPL contaminating effect, will give another  
potential issue later in this post). You can release a picture created  
with GIMP with under license you want, but you cannot release a WordPress  
theme, under any license you want.

> On the other hand I don't see how he can't make living selling GPL'd  
> themes - after all he isn't required to give them for free nor is he  
> required to give sources to everyone [in fact he has to give them only  
> to buyers]. And don't say that people would be sharing his work with  
> everyone -

What happens as soon after, is that themes were made available in multiple  
place for free download. They were no more sells for many of theme, for  
whom the story ended here. A few other could go one, because they had  
clients who were unlikely to give away their graphic identity to every  
one. No the case of most theme users though.

> after all GNAT Pro also is under GPL and we don't see many people  
> sharing it.

The kind of customers is not the same. Comparison is irrelevant.

>> Another one, is Aqsis (a RenderMan
>> processor), which migrated its license from GPL to BSD (the author said  
>> if
>> contributors don't agree, then their contributions will simply be  
>> removed
>>  from Aqsis).
>
> So? There is also Apache and OpenOffice...  I don't see how is it  
> relevant.
> [on the other hand you have Altran Praxis and Spark]
>
>> There was a story about Perle and a dual licensing said to be
>> “the Perle way to undermine the GPL virus”.
>> If you search the web for “GPL
>> is not free”, you will get a reasonable amount of results for that exact
>> sentence. From time to time, I see some other kinds of questioning,
>> sometime dealing with commercial activities (in fact impossible, and the
>> contradiction with what the FSF says leave people with a bad feeling),
>> sometime about whither or not the GPL really protects authors theft
>> (project hijacking and the like), and others. Either this was not their  
>> 5
>> to 6 years ago, or else I've missed it at that time, just to say I feel  
>> to
>> see more now than before.
>>

Apache migrated from GPL to Apache License? I though it was Apache License  
since the beginning. Anyway, if that still additional example of case  
where at least GPL seems to cause some troubles, enough to switch to  
something else.

> Oh, it was - after searching for "gpl is not free" what I get in most  
> search results is mostly from 2003 - 2008 : with many of it from Skype  
> [they breached OpenMoko's license] and SCO [which was saying that GPL is  
> unconstitutional].
> It is comming back now because Apple is [and Microsoft is trying to]  
> prohibiting sales of GPL licensed software in Apple Store.
>
>> To not talk also about miss-interpretations, when some people choose to
>> release under the GPL because they believe the GPL is “this and that”,  
>> and
>> is not, which is source of confusion, and confusion leads to
>> recriminations too.
>>
>
> If they release something about license they misinterpreted it is their  
> sole responsibility. But if they are the sole proprietors of work then  
> they can relicense.

Not that simple; misinterpretation and undecidable interpretations, are  
easily there.

(and here is the opportunity for some of the questions I mentioned in  
reply to George)

When a license is that much misunderstood, I believe the license must be  
fixed, and the communication about it, too. One of them, while not the  
most common one, is the belief that GPL is simple and that the “P” of  
“Public” implies “Public Domain”. This one is not due to the license terms  
(otherwise if you read its text, you easily see the contrary of both  
point), but due to quick assertions made to promote it. Still an issue  
around it.

Another one, is an example I encountered with an application named K3D.  
That's a GPLed 3D modeler. It has a core application, which can load  
plugins. As a 3D modeler, it lacks animation capabilities, which make it  
useless to many artist. As their seemed to be a demand for that, I though  
“why not make a plugin for standard shape‑key animation?” (not for free as  
in beer). I tell about this to the author to inquire about his/her  
opinion, and was surprisingly tell if the application is GPL, then plugins  
must be GPL too. How strange, in the same vein, you have VST plugins in  
MIDI sequencers. GPL fan surprisingly don't hesitate to use proprietary  
VST (but still free as in beer, you guess) in GPLed MIDI sequencers. So,  
seems the interpretation depends on the actual interest (guess the mess if  
such a fuzzy interpretation ever happens in a court or dispute). This one  
is probably due to the phantasm to force every one to the GPL by any mean  
(or else people using non‑GPL VST in a GPL MIDI sequencer are wrong), and  
make me think about two others issue in the same area (which follows).

A funny one. Say a library L1 is GPLed. You link an application  
dynamically to L1, so this application must be GPL. Now say you have  
another library L2, providing the same interface and service, which is not  
GPL (example: one you created yourself). Now what about the application  
which dynamically link to either L1 or L2? Is will be GPL or not depending  
on runtime circumstance? So it may be GPL or not, in an undetermined state  
à‑la quantum mechanic, which will be know only at runtime? Or else, does  
it depends on the interface declaration used to compile the application?  
It this was compiled with interface specification from the GPLed library  
then it is GPL and if it was compiled with th interface specification or  
the non‑GPL one, then it is not GPL? Obviously GPL goes too far and cause  
potential paradoxes, when it requires contamination to be applicable via  
dynamic linking.

The above one in turn makes me think about another one. Is the interface  
specification, part of the source which force an application to be GPL? I  
guess GPL fan will promptly say “obviously”, but so, is the GPL a kind of  
software patent? Could surely not be defended in any court.

Still in the area of linking, not an interpretation issue, but something  
which shows how much GPL can lead to stupid things, still due to its  
attempt to force contamination via dynamic linking. If a library L is GPL  
and an application A dynamically links to L, it must be GPL. Now imagine  
two intermediate layer LI1 and LI2. Imagine there is between LI1 and LI2,  
a communication via a pipe, and LI1 and LI2 are both  
serializer/unserializer, to that A makes a request via LI1, which  
serialize the request into a textual representation, send it to LI2 via a  
pipe like stdout/stdin, which in turn unserialize it to finally call L,  
and the same for the return path. Imagine LI2 is GPLed, but not A and LI1.  
You achieve the same as a dynamic linking, just less efficiently. To say a  
thing is a derivative work of another thing, depending on the kind of API  
is uses to use it, seems stupid to me.

The above trick leads to Affero GPL: would the interpretation of the above  
case be different with Affero GPL? This one would be a lot challenging to  
me.

Notice all of these are all due to the phantasm to be able to force every  
one to GPL by any mean (the viral effect, a virus you could caught even in  
a sterile room, or the deny of others already mentioned); this lead to  
wobbly issues. Compared to that, most proprietary license are a piece of  
cake to figure out. There is a lack of precision for all of this things in  
the GPL, and trying to make the GPL answer some of these cases, would  
probably make it even more complicated, leading to new issues, probably.

Yes, BSD and some others are much simpler and less playing tricky things.

-- 
“Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.” [1]
“Structured Programming supports the law of the excluded muddle.” [1]
[1]: Epigrams on Programming — Alan J. — P. Yale University