You seem to be having a problem understanding why people would be motivated to release genuinely free software. Open source can mean complete freedom, including the freedom to take the software, modify it, gain a competitive advantage and generate economic value, according to the license choice of the original author.
Nobody is denying the freedom for commercial use is a core part of open source software. However no developer has to make a certain business model easy for you, and I think it is well within the correct view to discourage such a business practice which restricts the freedom of users by making that impossible but allowing a "competitor" (if we really must think of it this way) to generate "economic value" (i.e selling open source software, which the GPL does allow you to do).
The freedom debate is unending. Personally I am very skeptical of all forms of economic freedom, as frequently they have the result of pidgeonholing people and their freedom is restricted.
Never mind that RMS' intent with GPL is to preserve the initial freedom into the distant future. If you get access to the source, so should everyone that comes after you.
And he formulated this after he had some hard earned experiences with suppliers at MIT.
Indeed, because nothing is ever free. The cost is simply paid by someone else.
Listen, I understand why that ideology is appealing, particularly if you haven't seen it play out before. How many "successful" open source projects have you seen whinge and struggle and eventually be abandoned and collapse, due to their lack of sustainability? All the while scrambling to offer the most permissive license possible? Even projects that shoulder entire ecosystems!
It's better when the costs and assumptions are above board: better for the project, better for the users.
I'm not familiar with the MINIX project, they've clearly found a way to stay sustainable if they've been around for 17 years. Just that paragraph quoted by OP struck me as very odd as well.
Just pay your dues rather than see your favourite project die. Businesses understand this. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" offers some initial thrill but is not long-term sustainable.
> You seem to be having a problem understanding why people would be motivated to release genuinely free software.
Yes, I do have a problem understanding why people work for free.
I don't see cops working for free, or bankers, or chip designers, or the guy who served my dinner working for free. Even Andrew doesn't work for free.
I can understand licensing software that was built or purchased using [socialist] tax dollars under the GPL for moral reasons, but I don't understand why I have to pay Andrew to help Intel maintain their competitive (size) advantage.
Free or open source software doesn't imply working for free. A copy of your software doesn't (necessarily) entail additional work.
I guess whether people in general "work for free" depends on how you define "work" and "free". I work on many different things purely for their utility to my friends and me personally, or just for the fun of creating something. I work and I gain something from it, so the time spent on it is paid for. Call it hobbies or normal social courtesy, it's still work by any reasonable definition. It's also not free; I expect it to benefit me in some way, whether it's by having a great time doing it or the satisfaction of seeing someone else enjoy the product or helping my friends have a good time.
> I guess whether people in general "work for free" depends on how you define "work" and "free".
Then allow me to be clear:
If you want to do something, and you get some kind of psychic reward for it; like volunteering in a soup kitchen, then that's great. But if you're only doing that because you're afraid of going to hell, then someone has convinced you to work for free.
If you make some software, and someone tells you how great it would be if it did different things, and then gets offended when you send them your day-rate, so you do it anyway, then someone has convinced you to work for free.
If you've got a more useful definition of "working for free" then I'm happy to hear it, and entertain it, but understand this kind of anathematic servitude is what I'm pointing to:
I think these guys who go around trying to convince people that releasing "open source" is somehow "more free" and that "freedom is good" is a little bit like we've always been at war with Eastasia. It doesn't make sense to me: In a twisted sort of way, a slaveowner is more free than a non-slaveowner because they don't have obligations (like to work), but it doesn't make this sort of thing right. Being a slaveowner isn't right even if being free is.
> A copy of your software doesn't (necessarily) entail additional work.
The nth copy of my software cost 1/n of my time. One way to consider this is as n gets large, the cost goes to zero, but another way to consider it is as n gets large, the value of my time goes to infinity.
I'm in the latter category, and perhaps this is confusing becauseI contribute to, and release a fair amount of Free Software. However if the only thing that can approach being worth my time is your time, then you'll see why I can't consider any "open source" license for my own software: I don't work for free.
When one contributes to a soup kitchen without getting paid in money, the person still gets a value be it a growing social network, a line in a CV, experience of working and organizing people etc. So it is not a work for free as one does get a value that can be exchanged for other things.
Similarly with open source work. It brings a value in forms of contacts and experience.
> But if you're only doing that because you're afraid of going to hell, then someone has convinced you to work for free.
Then I'd work for the comfort of not believing that I would go to hell. The basis of that belief may be an act of deceit, though, which I am not sure is relevant for open source software. The licenses are clear, and no one is promising anything magically wonderful or terrible to happen depending on my engagement in it. If they do and I bite, maybe I am dumb.
> If you make some software, and someone tells you how great it would be if it did different things, and then gets offended when you send them your day-rate, so you do it anyway, then someone has convinced you to work for free.
No, they have freed themselves from the responsibility of paying me for the work, clearly making it my problem. I then decide myself whether to do it based on what I gain from it. Maybe they convinced me to do it, but whether I'd do it for free is ultimately a matter of how I personally value the work.
> If you've got a more useful definition of "working for free" then I'm happy to hear it, and entertain it
Making an effort to achieve a result without gaining something from it? The only reason I could see myself working for free in this sense is if someone forces me to do it.
> I think these guys who go around trying to convince people that releasing "open source" is somehow "more free" and that "freedom is good" is a little bit like we've always been at war with Eastasia. It doesn't make sense to me: In a twisted sort of way, a slaveowner is more free than a non-slaveowner because they don't have obligations (like to work), but it doesn't make this sort of thing right. Being a slaveowner isn't right even if being free is.
"Open source" is not "more free" in any general sense. It just means that the source is available for free use and distribution. It doesn't necessarily make you more free, nor does it make anyone that is subject to whatever malicious purpose the software might serve more free. It frees the user of the software from a tiny set of specific obligations normally associated with licensing a copyright protected work. Those other things may be important but not at all what the BSD license concerns. Let the Intel-MINIX debacle be a lesson in the total orthogonality of freedom in general and free use of a piece of software.
> The nth copy of my software cost 1/n of my time.
No, it comes at no cost to you if you. Developing the software costs you time. That you reimburse yourself for the time it takes you to develop the software by charging for copies of it is an arbitrary choice, not an inherent relationship between the time spent and the number of copies made. If you were chopping wood, it might be a different matter, but with software, the time is spent on producing it, and selling a copy of piece of software doesn't mean you can't sell it again. The money you receive for a copy of a piece of software is rent.
Tanenbaum makes a great example of this. He is being paid for his work, yet the software is open source. He is not being paid for copies. Another good example is that of a simple employee. I get paid a monthly salary for performing a day job. Like Tanenbaum, I might get much less value out of it than the users of the software (or whoever is selling it) do, but I certainly don't work for free. I get paid for my effort and time, not for copies.
I don't see how that constitutes a disagreement. The user in this case is Intel. The license gave them the freedom to make whatever proprietary changes they may have made to the software and stick it into their CPUs. That's of course not freedom in any general sense, but it's freedom for Intel to do whatever they wanted with it. Does that make my point more clear?
Intel is software vendor. Or a "developer". They also use it, of course, but there are a number of magnitude more other users than Intel. Such as you and me, probably.
But anyway, that BSD is more permissive than GPL is a very obvious point. Why would Mr. Tenenbaum need to write about that? Why would he need some news to "reaffirm" it?
The user, in the only way that is significant to the license, is someone exercising the rights granted to them by it, i.e. whomever entered a license agreement with the copyright owner to put it on their black box. I never did. You can at best call me a user in the sense that I may be using nginx or apache when I access a website. That is not what the license concerns.
That's strictly speaking, but what does being a user entail, by a commonly understood definition? I certainly can't operate the MINIX derivative running on a different CPU than the software I actually do use. I never made a conscious effort to start or stop it, in fact I didn't know about it until the other day. It is unclear what it does, but it's clear to me that I am not personally using it. Maybe its use benefits me somehow, in the same way a break pedal might benefit me while I'm riding the bus. Maybe it's used for surveillance.
> But anyway, that BSD is more permissive than GPL is a very obvious point. Why would Mr. Tenenbaum need to write about that? Why would he need some news to "reaffirm" it?
Not too keen on sitting here guessing what purpose Tanenbaum's letter had, but maybe to provoke a discussion? Maybe he's sincerely proud that his software is now so widely deployed? It seems beside the points I am making.
> The user, in the only way that is significant to the license
But for the GPL, the notion of a user almost always includes you and me. Or at least it would, it this particular case.
So how can one compare the licenses on the amount of "freedom" conveyed to "potential users" if they don't want to use the same meaning of the word "user" as the GPL does? And does purposefully, with the end goal of serving said users.
> You can at best call me a user in the sense that I may be using nginx or apache when I access a website.
Not sure about "at best", but I can. And there are licenses (such as AGPL) that limit what one can do with software accessed over a network as well.
> I certainly can't operate the MINIX derivative running on a different CPU than the software I actually do use. I never made a conscious effort to start or stop it, in fact I didn't know about it until the other day.
You never "start or stop" an operating system, you just push a button. You don't interact with it directly either: you communicate with hardware devices and user-facing software.
Most users don't even know what operating system they are running, they just spend their day in their web browser. And they don't know the difference between the two.
And yet, that doesn't matter to the GPL.
> Maybe he's sincerely proud that his software is now so widely deployed?
Sure, but that was a separate statement. And then: "... this bit of news reaffirms my view...".
> It seems beside the points I am making.
I am discussing the Open Letter, and not your opinion in a vacuum.
> But for the GPL, the notion of a user almost always includes you and me. Or at least it would, it this particular case.
I agree that free software would have been the better option, but the fact remains that MINIX is BSD licensed, not what the FSF considers "free software" and I am merely describing what user freedom could possibly mean in terms of the BSD license. Maybe you feel like discussing the merits of different licenses, which leads me to believe that you are confusing this with me somehow sharing an opinion on which is better.
The BSD license doesn't really express the notion of a user. You and I are free to distribute, modify and use the software under the same terms that Intel does. Compared to GPL, there's no fundamentally conflicting idea of what a user is. The difference is in what obligations the licensee has.
> So how can one compare the licenses on the amount of "freedom" conveyed to "potential users" if they don't want to use the same meaning of the word "user" as the GPL does? And does purposefully, with the end goal of serving said users.
Tanenbaum considers Intel to be a user of his software and that they benefit from the freedom granted to them by the license. If you want better information than my take on what exactly he means you should ask him, not me.
Also, you – a potential user – are free to do whatever you want with MINIX.
> Not sure about "at best", but I can. And there are licenses (such as AGPL) that limit what one can do with software accessed over a network as well.
OK, so we agree that you can. For all I care there can be licenses that limit at what times a week I can pick my nose based on the proprietor's notion of what a user is.
> You never "start or stop" an operating system, you just push a button. You don't interact with it directly either: you communicate with hardware devices and user-facing software.
There is a very wide span in which you could place the definition of a "user" if you are willing to reduce the concept to this level of absurdity. Maybe it was a bad idea to bring the subjective notion of a user up at all, since the BSD license is after all very clear on what it permits and under what circumstances.
> I am discussing the Open Letter, and not your opinion in a vacuum.
Explain your point rather than ask me what I think that he means. You can discuss whatever you feel like, of course, but don't expect me to be your soapbox for ranting about how superior GPL is. I don't have the energy to engage in some sort of socratic exchange where you slowly try to pull your point out of me. There is a reasonable interpretation of "free" for which the BSD license may be considered to offer more freedom to users than the GPL. Most importantly, it comes with less obligations. There is also a very reasonable interpretation of "free" for which the tables are reversed. Tanenbaum obviously favors the former.
I have a problem with Tanenbaum claiming that having Intel ask him to work for free then taking his work to implement a hardware backdoor without giving anything back (not even credit) is somehow a great thing and a proof that BSD is superior to the GPL. And that only because it means that he can say that MINIX is somehow "most widely used operating system in the world on x86 computers", which, I guess, is kind of technically right. Somebody should send him a t-shirt or something.
I license my code with BSD because "I don't care what you do with it", mostly. I won't write a thank you note if some of my code ends up in some closed source product, especially something as shady as Intel's ME. And I definitely wouldn't knowingly do custom work for a company as big as Intel for free.
> [...]your engineering teams contacted me about some secret internal project and asked a large number of technical questions[...].
> [...]your engineers began asking me to make a number of changes[...]
Those are two cases where Intel asked Tanenbaum to work for free. First as consultant and then implementing custom code modifications.
Yes, not many people will charge for answering questions and maybe he thought that the changes requested by the Intel engineers were appropriate and useful for the project itself, but the fact remains that this work was valuable to Intel and required Tanenbaum to spend time on it.
I think it's debatable whether being contacted for information or asked to make changes to your open source project is "working for free". It's being asked to work on open source software, there's a difference.
I don't think there's any implication that MINIX was relicensed specifically for Intel.
I'm surprised how much difficulty some people have in understanding that others might make different licensing choices. If I license software under a BSD/MIT-like license, it's not an accident – it's specifically done so that there are as few restrictions on that software as possible.
Don't get me wrong – the GPL is important and making the choice to license under it is a totally legitimate personal choice with various pros and cons versus a BSD license. But it's not the only rational choice to make, and I wish you'd be a bit more open-minded about that.
"I have run across this before, when companies have told me that they hate the GPL because they are not keen on spending a lot of time, energy, and money modifying some piece of code, only to be required to give it to their competitors for free. These discussions were why we put MINIX 3 out under the Berkeley license in 2000 (after prying it loose from my publisher)."
Nowhere does it say that discussions with Intel in particular motivated the license change away from the GPL. Only discussions with unnamed corporations as long ago as 2000.
My point is that you are drawing odd/bad conclusions from a misreading of the information contained in the letter.
> You're thanking someone because they asked you to relicense your hard work so they can use it for free (BSD) and you complied?
Nowhere in the letter does it imply that the entity being thanked (Intel) is the same entity that motivated the author to change the license.
Intel used open source software according to the license they found it with. The author is pleased his software is powering global infrastructure, and is likely pleased he's contributed to human progress, but is slightly peeved he received no personal thank you as a matter of politeness/etiquette. I'm struggling to understand what criticism you have for this process. No-one has been dicked.
MINIX was first and foremost an educational system -- simple OS so that students can see how every OS component works on a real end to end system during a single semester course. And easily try their own changes.
As such wider acceptance is something to celebrate. It might also be a (partial) vindication that an alternative design you absolutely hate and tried to kill is a huge success and is everywhere from supercomputers to cell phones.
You're thanking someone because you relicensed your hard work so they can use it for free (BSD) and you complied?
All for the stated reason that they don't have to relicense their work to other people so they could use it for free?
/facepalm
It's like some version of the Stockholm syndrome, deserves a name.