I really need to stop taking weekends off from blogging. Over at Tech Liberation Front, Tim Lee has taken our ongoing discussion on the GPLv3 and started a rather interesting new thread on the topic. Since, I’m already 3 days late to the party, I’ll try to summarize and start a new discussion here.
In response to my evidence that the FSF designed the GPLv3 to prevent the growing collaboration between proprietary and free and open source software developers, Tim offered the following rebuttal:
The problem with this argument is that if you look at the FSF’s actions, you’ll find very little evidence that they’ve ever tried to prohibit GPL users from collaborating with proprietary software firms. Stallman doesn’t approve of distributing proprietary software drivers with free software, but as far as I can see, nothing in the GPL prohibits doing so…
…And for that matter, I can’t even think of any examples where the FSF has criticized efforts to make free and proprietary software more interoperable, provided that they didn’t involve incorporating free software into a proprietary system. For example, has Stallman ever criticized Samba, a program whose entire purpose is to make free software work on Windows-based networks? Has he criticized efforts by the Open Office team to allow free software users to use Microsoft Word documents?
Tim is right about one thing. There isn’t anything in the GPLv2 or current drafts of version 3 that actively prevents free software distributors from shipping proprietary binaries alongside free software. Unfortunately, Tim is missing the forest for the trees.
In the Mac, Windows, Unix and all non-free software operating systems, many proprietary video and audio card drivers are seemlessly integrated into the software. Free Software distributors are forced to ship them as separate binaries (if their moral compass even allows them to do so), which is a klugey solution at best. And why are they forced to do this? Because the GPL demands it. It prevents the integration of proprietary and open source code. If you are a believer in the Free Software cause, this is sacrifice you’re willing to make, but for the rest of the world… well, we just want things to work.
Another fact that Tim has right while missing the big picture is that Stallman has never attacked the Samba team. Samba is helping create free alternatives to the Windows Operating system, of course he would not attack them, as long as they don’t integrate any proprietary code into their system. The part that Tim doesn’t seem to get, is that the GPL deal goes both ways… it’s not just designed to prevent proprietary software companies from usurping free code, it also prevents open source companies from integrating any proprietary code into their products, OR even having dependencies on proprietary code.
This brings us to one fact that Tim got blatantly wrong. Stallman HAS attacked the OpenOffice team for relying on proprietary code in the past. This article from NewsForge chronicles the dispute over OpenOffice’s reliance on Java code and the FSF’s plans to rewrite the code to remove any of those dependencies.
Despite what Tim asserts, Stallman is not content with promoting his goals merely through persuasion and cooperation. The GPL comes complete with the copyright equivalent of land use restrictions that limit what you (and now your customers) can do with that software. It essentially says that if you build a new barn on top of your land (aka GPL Software), you need to share your designs with the entire world. Does that REALLY jive with traditional libertarian beliefs? The GPL is designed to force anyone who uses that software to accept the ideology of the FSF either for moral or pragmatic reasons.
Unfortunately, Tim wants so badly to preserve his image of Richard Stallman a libertarian crusader, that he seems willing to ignore any facts that contradict that theory. Stallman is an idealogue, Tim. One that is willing to force his views on others and defend the orthodoxy of the Free Software movement (For example, see his article "Why Open Source misses the Point of Free Software"). If you’re looking for a libertarian hero among the open source community, I suggest Linus Torvalds himself.