October 2, 2007
Berkman lunch: James Vasile on the limitations of the GPL
James Vasile of the Software Freedom Law Center is giving a Berkman lunch. He’s going to talk about aspects of the Gnu Public License that people don’t generally talk about. He says he’s going to skip the part where he explains how great the GPL is, which he fully believes it is and focus instead on some problems with it. [As always, I’m blogging sloppily, missing stuff, mischaracterizing, etc.]
The Software Freedom Law Center is a pro bono, non-profit law firm for people who produce free software. It spent a year crafting a “really good license.” It’s a copyright license that gives others conditional permissions to use the software. The GPL is also a patent license, as of version 3.
What isn’t the GP? It’s not a social contract. It’s not the embodiment of an ethos. “It is not the constitution on which the software world is built.” It’s sometimes treated that way, but it’s really just a set of permissions. “There are people running around with images about what the GPL says that don’t match what’s in the license.” E.g., people think the GPL forbids the commercial use of free software, although it’s never said that. People insist on believing that. it does It will never be everything that people want it to be. That’s the price of having “one dominant license,” which, however, is good for interoperability.
Although the license isn’t perfect, it’s really good. “In fact, we’ve won.” The free software wave is not going to end. There are more projects every day, and they’re getting better and better. Businesses use free software not because they believe in the ideals of free software but simply because it’s efficient. But that means “we’ve invited into our community” stakeholders who don’t share our “starry-eyed ideals.” What do we do about starting a conversation about what we owe each other? What does the partnership actually mean on a day to day and long-term basis?
The GPL is also not a trademark license. Some large free software projects have their own brand managers. E.g., Gnome would like to let people use their foot symbol with some degree of freedom, so they’re writing their own trademark license. That’s not covered by the GPL.
Q: (wendy seltzer) Does the community need its own, special trademark law?
A: I often tell them they don’t need a trademark law; they need a trademark policy delineating what is ok and what is not. The GPL has habituated to thinking that licenses should tell them what’s right and wrong, as if a license were a good way to communicate with developers.
Q: (me) Didn’t that happen because the license precipitated the conversation and was the place where the details had to be worked out, as opposed to thinking that people wanted to read legal language?
A: Yes, but we shouldn’t move forward by working on the license. E.g., we need a discussion about trademark, but it shouldn’t happen within the framework of the discussion of the GPL.
The GPL is also not a document that reads itself. Version 3 has more pieces than 2, and the pieces interact in more complex ways. It’s tough for a layperson to read. The GPL four freedoms are useful but not enough.
The big benefit of the GPL was that it made it easier to make it compatible with, e.g., the Apache license and the Affero license. (Wikipedia on Affero: “…derived from the GNU General Public License with an additional section to cover use over a computer network.”)
Finally, there are the hard cases. ” E.g., DRM is complicated. “There will never be a system that allows you to authenticate a Britney Spears song that doesn’t also authenticate a client.” Some people wanted the GPL to prevent free software from having any DRM, but there were too many unintended consequences of doing so. It’s an interesting area we should watch.
Many of the above limitations are inherent in using legal documents to create documents.
Q: (wendy) The technology is the same to authenticate a game client and an authorized copy of a song, the game player can make a choice to be part of a network where no one can cheat, while the music purchaser hasn’t made that choice.
A: You could let people explicitly opt in rather than relying on the implicit acceptance of the terms of service. But trying to write that into a generally-applicable GPL would be extremely difficult. We thought about it.
Q: I just hate it when people say that there’s no difference between bank security and DRM because they really want DRM.
A: Oh, I agree. I am as bothered by DRM as Richard Stallman is. E.g., E-911 legislation forbids the owner of cellphone from disabling the auto-locater functionality. So, “can you deliver a GPL phone in the US without running afoul of E-911 legislation?
A: (wendy) The legislation says that device must be “robust” against user modification, which free software isn’t.
Q: (me) How do we have the conversation but not around the GPL? And where do we get a plain English version of the GPL so we can understand it?
A: Try here. And it’s not clear where the conversation could be held, and bringing all the voices to the table would be difficult.
