Thursday, February 09, 2006

Stallman, Commons, and the GPL3

Stallman, Babies, Bathwater and the GPL.

Why does Richard feel it necessary that if something doesn't fit his model of freedom, that it becomes necessary to throw the whole thing out? He has directed this latest conciption at the Creative Commons folks. Noting that the variety of licenses developed by them contains some pretty restrictive licenses. Some are pretty open, and are more open than the GPL. Instead of noting that some of the licenses are pretty restrictive, he thought it better simple to davvow the whole thing and that if he endorsed certain licenses, people would misunderstand that to mean a blanket endorsement of all the Commons licenses. I would call that copout in today's world. Communication is networked. People can quickly find out which licenses are FSF(Free Software Foundation) friendly by pulling up the browser Richard. There shouldn't be any confusion about which licenses you feel are appropriate.

However instead of actually suggesting which Creative Commons licenses are FSF friendly, Richard simply suggests that he actually can't be bothered with it. Instead he writes in a LinuxP2P article.


Some Creative Commons licenses are free licenses; most permit at least noncommercial verbatim copying. But some, such as the Sampling Licenses and Developing Countries Licenses, don't even permit that, which makes them unacceptable to use for any kind of work. All these licenses have in common is a label, but people regularly mistake that common label for something substantial.

I no longer endorse Creative Commons. I cannot endorse Creative Commons as a whole, because some of its licenses are unacceptable. It would be self-delusion to try to endorse just some of the Creative Commons licenses, because people lump them together; they will misconstrue any endorsement of some as a blanket endorsement of all. I therefore find myself constrained to reject Creative Commons entirely.


His suggestion? Why the GPL of course. He does note,

It may seem obvious, but it's not true. The GNU GPL is written primarily for software, but it can be used for any kind of work. However, its requirements are inconvenient for works that one might want to print and publish in a book, so I don't recommend using it for manuals, or for novels.


And actually Richard the GPL is nigh unto useless for any creative endeavor such as novels, stories, manuals, music etc.

Richard displays this same idiosyncractic nature in the proposed GPL3. Linus has thoughtfully pointed out the tactical error of fighting the DRM and commons war in the latest version of GPL, noting that providing copies of your private keys so others can copy your signed GPL application is a non starter since that completely undercuts the useful security features.

Richard is trying to make a point about DRM. However he is trying shoehorn it into a license where he doesn't belong. His recent turnaround on the Creative Commons is because he believes his way is the only way. He believes the GPL3 should be the single point of attack of securing both our rights as software users and content consumers.

Richard's stubborness is an admirable trait in an advocate. He has stood for the rights of programmers everywhere. But stubborness often leads you astray. The GNU project struggled for years attempting to complete a micro kernel. The HURD is still incomplete after 20 years of struggle. This means litterally hundreds of thousands of man hours spent on the project. It should have become apparent after the 5th year that this particular tree wasn't going to bear fruit. Yet Richard continued to encourage and focus on the hurd for ANOTHER 12 years.

Richard's stubborness (literally that it's his way or the highway) means that he is missing an essential component to the growth of the free software movement. It's the critical mass of people writing and using free software. For the new cultural commons to be built, it's going to take a large group of writers, producers, musicians, videographers, choreagraphers et al to develop it. The GPL is simply the WRONG tool to develop this new cultural commons. Yet he changed his mind about the Creative Commons licenses, after the introduction of the GPL3. I mean the highly restrictives licenses of the Creative Commons have always been there as part of the organization.

I hope Richard will give more thought to his decision that he can "no longer support the Creative Commons." The GPL3 isn't a broad enough tool to develop that Cultural Commons.