Underfunding or why I am not interested

[anatoly techtonik]

On Sun, Feb 23, 2014 at 9:49 PM, Aaron Wolf <wolftune at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I believe that the point of conflict is that somebody is earning money,
>> and others do contribution (for him) for free. That's discouraging. And to
>> avoid the discouragement people invented GPL and (later) AGPL.
>
> This is historically inaccurate.

My fault. s/invented/used/

> This motivational issue is indeed real, but
> not for everyone in every case.

Very generic statement. Let me do a best guess approximation and say
that the motivational case is the reason of choosing GPL/AGPL in more
than 80% of events, that means - it is the main cause.

> What you are describing really applies to
> the problematic non-commercial restrictions of a license like CC-BY-NC.

CC-BY-NC is not a software license, not approved by OSI and therefore
is not an option for developers who are affected by the conflict.
GPL/AGPL is the only choice from alternatives and good in practice.

> The
> reason people like me go out of the way to emphasize that GPL and AGPL are
> not anti-commercial is to distinguish them from licenses with NC
> restrictions.

"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In
practice there is."

Perhaps if you could name just a few known AGPL titles that are
commercially successful, I can believe you. What you can sell is not
what is written in the license - it is what market accepts, and market
won't accept sold AGPL products, because if it is AGPL - there is
clearly a "free stuff" version available.

Underfunding is the result of not being able to balance the interests
with people who proficient in economics to see where the trend goes.
If you really care about software to become excellent, you need to
develop ecosystem around it, and it is more complicated than just
asking for money.

I don't like that you skip the constructive side of the discussion
into religious matters. I want NPO accounting project to be funded
properly for the software to be developed. Campaign for AGPL failed. I
proposed the alternative.

> The invention of the GPL / AGPL arose from a desire not to see the sorts of
> restrictions and anti-features that are common with proprietary software.

Please be specific if you feel it is relevant. URLs to concise
checklist of common restrictions and anti-features of proprietary
software are completely ok with me. Just to make sure that we can
concentrate on what is applicable in the context. I already see the
trend that you don't want to define "the freedom" as you see it, and I
don't want to approve or deny your statements that may or may not
reflect my real points.

> It
> was definitely not from a motivation of avoiding a situation where some
> contributors were paid and others weren't. That speculation is simply false.

I already apologized for the wrong usage of the word invented. Thanks
for your clarification, but historical aspect is not relevant. Sorry
for confusion.

>> You skipped the part about "freedom to maintain your branch private".
>
> Because that is not differentiated. The AGPL permits that freedom. It only
> says that you must share your source and license freedoms if you publish.
> There is no such thing as a "private branch" that is public. That's a direct
> contradiction. If it is public, it's not private. The AGPL puts no
> restrictions on what is done privately.

Funny reading for me. You say contradicting thing, then say that the thing you
said is a contradiction and then you say that because of this contradiction,
the common fact that AGPL is a restrictive license is not true. Something is
bad with the schematics of your logical gates. =) Let me try to fix it.

AGPL restricts the usage of software developed in private branch. Private
branch is private and nobody sees it, but public knows that it exists, because
sold software contains features that are not present in public branch.

Let me fix that as a definition of "freedom to maintain your branch private".
Or, again, propose your definition - I am still interested (to some degree) in
unambiguous and clear discussion that is easy to follow.

>> Freedom of one's is a restriction for others.
>
> It can be said, "your freedom to swing your fists stops where my nose
> begins". Freedom to restrict others is not included in the range of freedom
> I'm talking about. That's the definition.

And according to that definition AGPL/GPL are not licenses that support this
freedom, because it restricts the freedom of others to maintain software used
by users in their hidden branch.

Finally I'm feeling that I am doing something useful here.

> I will restate what was confusing from before.
>
> There are two logically consistent positions that oppose AGPL in principle:

I don't want to discuss AGPL. I want you together with me to discuss specific
allow, deny rules that you want to impose on NGO accounting project and why
do you want them. Hopefully, that clears all confusion.

> 1. You say that you care about freedom.

No. To discussion it we need to define that freedom of yours for this narrow and
specific context that we all are stick into.

(I'm getting a feeling like I am talking to those guys who occasionally knock
the door, but this time somebody replaced the word "god" with "freedom"). )

> So, you reject the AGPL and also
> reject proprietary licenses. You believe both are not free enough. In your
> view of freedom, AGPL is non-free. You are not a hypocrite because you also
> say that proprietary licenses are at least as bad if not far worse.

Stop saying the word "freedom". I already made it clear that "my freedom" and
"your freedom" are different. Let's see which is better and translate bible
statements to my poor technical language.

> 2. You say that you don't care about freedom.

I probably lost the temper a few mails ago and it doesn't make any good of me
to see the reference to these seven letters.

"freedom" is bullsh*t - let's talk about "balance of interests".

> There is a third position that is like position one but does not oppose AGPL
> in principle. It says that AGPL is fine and is free enough but is just a bad
> tactic.

This one is almost good. Let me edit.

   There is a third position that does not oppose AGPL in principle.
   It says that AGPL is fine but is just a bad tactic for this NPO accounting
   project.

Brilliant. Thanks. I can now sign this paragraph.

> I'm not trying to say we always agree on exactly what freedom is or when it
> matters.

You don't need to. The only problem that you continue discussion about
implications coming from what is hidden behind the word "freedom" for other
parties. Without definition your monologue becomes just a reference from
some bible context that nobody else is aware of, and hence can not follow.
I tried, but failed.

> I'm just saying that we are indeed talking about the same general
> topic.

No. The heck no. I am trying as much as possible to keep this specific and
not generic. I am not in your "we" list. =)

> I do not appreciate your attempts to mark what I'm talking about as
> some sort of pedantic unusual interpretation.

I am just using my the freedom of opinion in order to make NPO accounting
project interesting for me and clarify the position of people here after failed
fundraising campaign. In particular about if non-restrictive license would help
to close the goals. I also need to understand that management strategy
behind solution to continue with underfunded project anyway.

You interpretation is very valid and good and I appreciate it, because it
defends the certain position in a best possible way (lawyers would approve
it too). But I also see things in your interpretation that don't allow
me to reach
my goal. Maybe it is a problem with my way of expressing my goals. Instead
of asking directly I just threw in the emotional opinion, which is more related
to user experience, but that was probably a goal too - transmit the image.

> I'm not talking about whatever
> you think GNUfreedom is. You are misunderstanding a basic fact: All the GNU
> folks know that the GPL clause restricting license changes is a restriction
> of freedom, they just think that is a good tactic for freedom overall
> because their motivation is to discourage proprietary licenses which are
> even more non-free.

I think I understand now more. Intuitive feelings are hard to
describe, that's why
I try to define things as much as possible to clarify.

So, I appreciate the value of GIMP, Mercurial, Linux, Blender and support the
developers, but I am not interested in participating in new AGPL/GPL projects,
because I think that the tactic of discouragement and persuading people with
misleading arguments based around vague "freedom" definition is harmful.

If you can objectively say what are the tactical benefits for the accounting
software developers to choose this way of dealing with projects, I may change
my views, but I already said that software is live only until there
are people who
know it. NPO care about people and they care about money. They need this
software and it will live as long as there is a open source branch of it living.
Developing software takes time and hence money. Current management
practices of big corporations will squeeze every single bit of you for their
purpose and I don't see who is interested in developing your AGPL project in
their free time. My opinion is that chosen strategy is dead already, and the
software you develop without necessary vitamins will grow up crippled and
freaky unless you think about how to develop a real world working ecosystem
around it. That tree on sfconservancy logo - it doesn't deserve it, because in
ecosystem every organism needs to be adaptive, and I am looking at a old
stale trunk that doesn't have any sprouts or flowers.
-- 
anatoly t.